No More Jew or Greek

“Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom,” says Paul. Most interpretations focus on the objects: Jews are defined by signs, Greeks by wisdom. Stanislas Breton (A Radical Philosophy of Saint Paul, 143-4) is more interested in the verbs: 

“We have here a simple typology, limited to an essential factor that seems to anticipate history itself by specifying less what is than what ‘had to be.’ The two Greek words (aitein and zetein) have, in the apostle’s intention, the value and force of a definition. The Greek is the man of inquiry; the Jew is the man of the question or of prayer. . . . They incarnate two ideas of man, or more precisely to ways of being that will sometimes be cited as fundamentals in the historical determination of the ‘human essence.’”

Specifically, “the Greeks seeks causes or reasons. He takes care to give an account of and to give reasons for that which is.” Jews on the other hand are “a people of prophets who are less interested in the order of nature than in the vicissitudes of a tormented history and in the advent of a justice whose future is not assured. Therefore their ‘demand’ has nothing to do with that of the ‘sage.’ It takes the form of a prayer that cannot be reduced to the request for material goods.”

On this account, Christianity is neither Jew nor Greek in a pure form. Christians are people of prayer; we ask for signs. But it’s hard to imagine a church without a “Greek” impulse, without the search for causes and reasons, without faith seeking understanding and using various modes of reasoning in the process. We both demand and seek. Jesus broke down the dividing wall, not only socially but mentally, forming a whole mind from the half-minds of ancient humanity.

That, it seems, is precisely what Paul is on about in 1 Corinthians where he contrasts Jews and Greeks in this way. To be sure, the cross is a scandal for Jews and madness to Greeks. (Breton [146] suggests this splendid translation: “Underneath the Apollonian face we give God, there is a nocturnal passion putting him ‘outside of himself’ in madness [to moron tou Theou] and impelling him toward the ‘infirmity’ of an abasement [to asthenes tou Theou].”) Yet in the folly and weakness of the cross, God displays a wisdom that answers the Greek search and a power that responds to the Jewish prayer. In the cross, inquiry and demand are united, wisdom and signs kiss each other.