The Real Scandal of Particularity

The claim that God is to be encountered and salvation found in a crucified man -- a man stripped of all status and honour, dehumanized, the lowest of the low -- is the offense of the cross. This is the real scandal of particularity -- not that God's universal purpose pivots on one particular human being (though that was stumbling-block enough for the philosophically educated in Paul's day and the Enlightenment rationalists of our own), but, much worse, that God's universal purpose pivots on this particular human being, the crucified one (1 Corinthians 2:8). For those who see God in the image of their own power and status there could be no recognition of God in the cross. And yet the Christ who thus demeaned himself to the depths of human degredation, as Paul says in Philippians 2:6-11, is the one God has exalted to the throne of the universe so that every knee should bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord. The act of universal salvation of which the later prophesies of Isaiah spoke, the act which demonstrates God's deity to the nations, the new thing that God does for Israel so that the nations too may recognize him as Saviour -- this is the exaltation of the crucified Christ. God defined his own kingdom when he exalted the crucified Christ. (Richard Bauckham, The Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2003, p. 52)