Scripture Reference: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31
The cross of Christ later comes to have other meanings as well as the ones we covered in the previous part. It may be spoken about as penalty, as sacrifice, or as victory. But all such additional depths of meaning derive from and are dependent upon the social and historical one: a righteous Man was put to death because of the way He refused to let stand the unrighteousness of the powers in control of the people He came to liberate. It is also the way He calls all of His followers to take. That is what causes us to stumble; not that the cross is weak but that it asks too much strength from us.
Then, when Paul states that “Greeks seek wisdom,” again he is describing not a race or a nationality but a mental culture. By Greek he does not mean someone like Zorba. Nor does he mean all his readers in Corinth, the Greek city. He means to identify a mode of moral reasoning. Greek was the language of culture and of philosophy, even in Rome and in Egypt.
When he says “Greeks seek wisdom,” he is putting his finger on a way of reasoning with which we in most Western cultures have all learned.
All of our culture since then is indebted to the fathers of Greek philosophy, for the ability to ask regularly and rigorously, “But is that always true? Is it true for everyone?” We have learned to ask that truth be validated by its being general and not just particular, by its being true for everyone, not dependent upon perspective or bias. The philosopher Kant told us to ask of a moral statement whether it could be true for everyone. Democracy teaches us to consider as right what most people will vote for. Scholarship teaches us to respect the consensus of authorities. Truth is suspect if it cannot be commended to everyone.
When we apply that perspective to the Christian’s obligation to love the enemy, questions follow: “Can you ask that of everyone? Can you convince people that it will work? Does it not strike people as counter to common sense? Is it not most credible if you agree to label it as a rare peculiarity of a minority denomination, not to be asked or expected of others? Is it not irrelevant as guidance for the whole society?”
Paul does not agree with the “Greeks” that the word of the cross is foolish, but he understands how they might see it that way. He points out further that such wisdom does not in general facilitate people’s becoming believers:
“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth” (1 Corinthians 1:26).
God’s message runs across the grain of our sense-making reflexes because those reflexes are tilted in our favor. What we call “reasonable” is against sacrifice and for self-preservation, against trusting and for demanding explanations, against risk, against the outsider and the enemy.
The human spirit is a sense-making organ, and that certainly is a good thing. We learn to test thoughts for their consistency. But, unfortunately, that skill can run away with us if we try in the same manner to handle situations that are different. Or we can assume that something must be false, since we don’t know everything about the situation.
For instance, we don’t need to concede that a peace commitment is irrelevant, or illogical. It is, in fact, possible to argue for love of neighbor on the grounds of the general wisdom of an ancient philosophical consensus, and the lessons of the history of the race, and what will make sense to most rational beings thinking carefully. But at the outset we cannot and should not attempt to validate the “love of enemy” by such criteria, as if our using such arguments were to be taken as granting that they have the final authority.
To Be Continued
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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