Why Jews and Gentiles Rejected Paul’s Preaching

Tell me, then, you heretic, enemy of everyone, but most of all of yourself, you to whom the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is an offense, as it was to the Jews, and foolishness, as it was to the Gentiles; you who reject the mysteries of true salvation, stumbling like the first and foolish with the stubbornness of the second: why was the preaching of the apostle Paul foolishness to the pagans and a stumbling block to the Jews? Surely it would never have offended anyone if he had taught that Christ was, as you claim he is, a mere man. For who would have thought his birth, passion, cross and death unbelievable or hard to accept? Or what would have been new or strange in Paul’s preaching if he had said that a merely human Christ suffered what human nature endures among people everywhere every day? [a]

No, what the foolishness of the Gentiles could not accept, and the unbelief of the Jews rejected, was surely this: that the apostle declared that Christ, whom they, like you, imagined to be a mere man, was God. This was certainly what the minds of those wicked men rejected and the ears of the faithless could not bear: that the birth of God should be proclaimed in the man Jesus Christ, the passion of God asserted and the cross of God announced. This was what was hard to accept; this was what was unbelievable. For what had never been heard of as happening to the divine nature was unbelievable to human ears. So with a message and teaching like yours you are quite safe: your preaching will never be foolishness to the Gentiles or a stumbling block to the Jews. You will never be crucified with Peter by Jews and Gentiles, nor stoned with James, nor beheaded with Paul. For there is nothing in your preaching to offend them. You maintain that a mere man was born and a mere man suffered. You need not fear that they will trouble you with persecution, for your preaching is helping them.