1 Corinthians 2:2
1 Corinthians 2:22For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
The Watchtower agrees in principle that Jesus' death and resurrection are central to the gospel. In practice, "Jesus Christ and him crucified" is folded into a larger curriculum that includes Kingdom preaching, the organisation, the 144,000, Armageddon survival, and loyalty to the faithful and discreet slave. The narrowness of Paul's own self-restriction in 2:2 — resolving to know ONLY Christ crucified in his initial preaching — is not preserved in the Watchtower's progressive Bible-study programme.
2:2 is Paul's self-editing principle for his gospel preaching: "I resolved to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified." Not the organisation, not eschatology, not ecclesiology — Jesus Christ crucified. Pair with ("preaching about the stake is God's power") and (the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit). At the door: "When Paul came to Corinth — a city of philosophers, temples, and every kind of religion — he narrowed to one thing: Christ and him crucified. That is what he thought the spiritually dead needed to hear. If the Watchtower's first-study curriculum includes Armageddon, 1914, and the 144,000 before it includes the crucified Christ, Paul's resolution was the opposite."