the Greeks look for wisdom
here we are preaching a crucified Christ;
to the Jews an obstacle that they cannot get over
to the pagans madness
but to those who have been called
whether they are Jews or Greeks
a Christ who is the wisdom and power of God.
For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom
and god’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
(1 Cor 1: 17–25)
So the Good News of agapeic reconciliation is contrary
to any human philosophy and works with the logic of the Cross
which in order to reconcile with other logics is contrary to them.
Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy in treating the absurd logic
of the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and pentecost
goes beyond the old logics of the categorical syllogism,
the disjunctive syllogism and the hypothetical syllogism
to the modal logic of contingency and freedom that has been
revealed by the Cross of Christ in the power of sacrificial love.
Paul shows how the problem of evil can be the mystery of suffering
for when we offer our suffering with the suffering of the God-man
the evil of suffering paradoxically becomes God’s loving suffering.
Logic for the Greeks is related to the verb legein which means
to gather the parts into an orderly pattern and reasonable whole.
Logos is translated into Latin as ratio and into English as reason.
Logic in its basic meaning is related to theology because it is based
upon the necessary law that something cannot come from nothing.
What we call collecting in English is in Greek a syllogism.
It is the gathering of the logos of legein together or into
a collection of parts with each other into a coherent unit.
Logicians arrange their reasoning into syllogistic forms
based on three kinds of whole part meaning or relation.
An example of a categorical syllogism is: (1) Whatever is
caused is caused by another. (2) St. Paul is caused.
(3) Therefore, he is caused by another. An example of
a disjunctive syllogism is: (1) Either St. Paul is caused
or not caused, but not both. (2) But St. Paul is caused.
(3) Therefore, he is not not caused. An example of a conditional
syllogism is: (1) If St. Paul is caused, then he is caused by another.
(2) But he is caused. (3) Therefore, he is caused by another.
The Greeks thought that everything is held together in necessary
relationships based on whole part relations and logic makes
clear the necessary order of Being (ontology), of the world
(cosmology), of God (theology), of the living thing (psychology),
and of knowledge (epistemology). The faith of the Hebrew people
believed in a God that defied this logic of necessity by
deifying the Divine Will that could freely bring something
into existence out of the nothingness of a formless void.
But, when that omnipotent creator absurdly became a creature
and was both all powerful and all weak at once, that defied
both Greek logic and the Hebrew faith and when Paul experienced
the weakness of God that is more powerful than the power of men
he had to make sense of both the Greek and the Hebrew irrational.
The basic miracle in which the Hebrews believed had to do with
The Mosaic Covenant and The Davidic Promise by which
they were delivered from slavery in Egypt and as God’s
chosen people given a law that continued to save them, and
by which they were promised a land flowing with milk and honey
and that they would be a nation more numerous than the stars of the sky
and that they would be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth.
The Mosaic Covenant gave them their meaning from the past
and The Davidic Promise gave them their meaning for the future.
Abraham, their father, kept his faith as he was tried over
and over again with threats to all three parts of the promise.
But then came the worst when God seemed to contradict himself
and demand that he sacrifice Isaac in an absurd move which
would keep God from keeping his promise if Isaac through whom
the promise was to be fulfilled would be cruelly taken away.
But Abraham had faith and God came through and put an end
to child sacrifice at least for his chosen family of Abraham.
However, what Paul witnessed is that God sacrificed his
only Son in an absurdity that was without visible miracles.
The mystery of love was such that Paul actually witnessed
in Stephen no visibly resurrected Christ, but instead
a look of love on Stephen’s face that made more sense to him
than any logical meaning and it could fulfill The Davidic Promise.
Besides the look of love there was a voice so loving that it
called
