scandal of particularity
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Calque of German Ärgernis der Einmaligkeit
Noun[edit]
- (theology) The paradox inherent in the idea of a particular individual human (Jesus of Nazareth) incarnating the eternal divine God.
- 1994: A materialism […] was supposed to be what science favoured: and the ‘scandal of particularity’, God becoming incarnate in Christ in human history, was indeed regarded as a scandal — that is, absurd — by contemporary intellectuals. — Richard Swinburne, Reason and the Christian Religion (Oxford 1994, p. 1)
- 2006: Reformed theologians look to the scandal of particularity as a way of naming how the unknowable God is known to us. — Cynthia L Rigby, ‘Scandalous Presence’, Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics (John Knox 2006, p. 59)