A bit about Scandals

 In the modern Church, we have become quite familiar with the idea of “scandal”.  From fallen Evangelical titans to covered-up child abuse in the Catholic Church, our world seems rife with it.  We do not typically see scandal as anything but negative.  But the word’s origin story ought to offer us some different perspectives on “scandal".

The Greek word behind our English word is skandalon (σκάνδαλον), which ought to make everyone think of that outstanding song of the same name from Michael Card.

“He will be the Truth
That will offend them one and all
A stone that makes men stumble
And a rock that makes them fall.
And many will be broken
So that He can make them whole.
And many will be crushed
And lose their own soul.” 

Scandalon is used 15 times in the Greek New Testament.  However, it also appears in the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. 

“Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God.  I am the Lord.”

Lev 19:14

 

“He will be a holy place; for both Israel and Judah he will be a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.  And for the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap and a snare.”

Isaiah 8:14

The word means “trap, stumbling block, offense, snare”.  The Hebrew equivalent is MIKHSHOL (מִכְשׁוֹל).  It is used 14 times in the Hebrew text, including eight times in Ezekiel, three in chapter 14.

Whether we experience scandalon as a positive or a negative depends in large measure on our point of view.  In a typically excellent article, Father Stephen Freeman writes about the incarnation and the transfiguration:

“The scandal of the Incarnation, God-becoming-man, is the seeming contradiction of the utterly transcendent God and the particularity and limits of human existence. It is a scandal whose errors  run in two directions.  First, there is an assumption that God is so displeased with sin that He can have nothing to do with it, or that sin somehow nullifies the work of God. Second, there is an equally odious belief that human beings, in their observance of the commandments, are never righteous enough to actually be compatible with true holiness. The first is an error about God, the second an error about human beings.”

 You can read the rest of Father Stephen’s piece here at his blog.