Now I was to be led a step further. For while I was repeating Paul’s words “one died for all,” and again, “one died,” it occurred to me “Yes, but he does not say how he died. Is he ashamed to speak of the shamefulness of the death, the slave’s death, death upon the cross?” So I looked through the Roman letter, right to the end, and I could find no mention of the “cross” or of “crucifying.” But in the very next column, where the first Corinthian letter began, I found this passage: “Christ sent me not to baptize but to preach the Gospel, not in wisdom of ‘logos’ (i.e. word), lest the cross of Christ should be emptied of its power. For as to the ‘logos’ of the cross, to those indeed who are going the way of destruction, it is folly: but to us, who are going the way of salvation, it is the power of God. For it is written:
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise
And the subtlety of the subtle will I bring to naught.’
Where is the ‘wise’? Where is the learned writer? Where is the ‘subtle’ discusser and disputer of this present age?”
Then followed some very difficult words: “Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the Cosmos? For since, in the wisdom of God, the Cosmos, through that wisdom, recognised not God, God decreed through the foolishness of the proclamation of the gospel to save them that go the way of belief: for indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks seek after wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified; to the Jews, a stumbling block; to the other nations, a folly; but, to the called and summoned—Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
I have translated this literally so as to leave it as obscure to the reader as it was to me when I first read it. Even when I had read it over two or three times, there was a great deal that I could not understand. But it appeared to me to be ironical. It suggested that the “logos” of God may be different from the “logos” of men, or at all events, the “logos” of Greek philosophers. I had for some time been drawing near to a belief that “logos” might include feeling as well as reason. But this strange contrast between the unwise “wisdom of logos” and the wise “logos of the cross” came upon me as (possibly) a new revelation. As for the saying “the Greeks seek wisdom,” it reminded me how Epictetus used to deride the man of mere logic, words without deeds, the futile spinner of syllogisms. “Epictetus,” I said to myself, “would agree with this accusation.” But then I reflected that Paul would perhaps class Epictetus himself among these futile Greeks; and had not my Master himself confessed that the Jew, by mere force of “pathos,” outclassed the Greek in resolution and steadfastness, although the latter was backed by “logos”? The conclusion fell upon me, like a blow, “Here is Paul boasting as a conqueror what my Master confesses as a man conquered! Both agree that the ‘feeling’ of the Jew is more powerful in producing courage than the ‘reasonableness’ of the Greek!”
I did not like this turn of things. But I was intensely interested in it; and it quite decided me to continue the investigation. The question turned on “logos” and I quoted to myself Plato’s precept, “Follow the logos.” Epictetus made much of “logos.” Well, I would “follow the ‘logos,’” in its fullest sense, and would try to find out whether it did, or did not, indicate that “feeling,” as well as “reason,” may help us towards the knowledge of God. Dawn was appearing when I rolled up the little volume and placed it in my cabinet by the side of Scaurus’s sealed note with WORDS OF CHRISTUS on it. That reminded me of my old friend. What would he think of all this?
I sat down at once and wrote to him that I had not opened his note. If I ever did, it would be, I said, because I accepted his verdict. Epictetus really did seem to have borrowed from Paul. The subject was very interesting to me from a historical as well as a literary point of view; and I hoped he would not think it waste of time if I investigated it a little further. At the same time, I sent a note to Flaccus. Æmilius Scaurus, I said, had sent me some “words of Christus” extracted from Christian books, and I desired to receive the books themselves. As for the “scriptures” from which Paul so frequently quoted in their Greek form, I knew that I should have no difficulty in procuring copies of all or most of them from Sosia. This I resolved to do on the morrow, or rather in the day that was now dawning. It was not a lecture-day. Even if it had been, in the mood in which I then was, I should have thought a lecture or two might be profitably missed.