Scandals Must Come

“Even in its accepted modern meaning, which converts scandal into a mere matter of representation, the notion of the scandalous cannot be defined univocally.”

—René Girard, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World

“I recognize in scandal a rigorous definition of the mimetic process.”

—René Girard, The Scapegoat¹

Not all rigorous definitions are univocal. But a reader of Girard’s works may be forgiven for thinking that the New Testament, or at least the Gospels, contain a uniform teaching on scandal. As Girard writes in Things Hidden: “A whole group of texts in the Gospels centers on the notion of scandal, and in others it makes a significant appearance. Bring all these together, and you will reach a definite conclusion, even though the texts are quite heterogeneous” (416). My purpose in this paper is not to prove that Girard is mistaken about such a definite conclusion, but to warn readers that this conclusion, as definite as it might be, is not the conclusion to a syllogism. Scandal remains that which we cannot fully master, at least not intellectually. In fact, I hold that scandal, as an object of intellectual inquiry, behaves scandalously: it fascinates, it shocks, it seduces, but it does not ever deliver. It leads one on by getting one to think, “Just a bit more thought and I will have a ‘theory of scandal,’” only to see it fall apart into conflicting pieces. Perhaps this is what Girard is indicating when he wrote:

In reality, no purely intellectual process and no experience of a purely philosophical nature can secure the individual the slightest victory over mimetic desire and its victimage delusions. Intellection can achieve only displacement and substitution, though these may give individuals the sense of having achieved such a victory. For there to be even the slightest degree of progress, the victimage delusion must be vanquished on the most intimate level of experience; and this triumph, if it is not to remain a dead letter, must succeed in collapsing, or at the very least shaking to their foundations, all the things that are based upon interdividual oppositions—consequently, everything that we can call our “ego,” our “personality,” our “temperament,” and so on. Because of this, great works are few and far between.²

This essay attempts to help the reader grasp the reality of scandal in a way that is both more and less than “purely philosphical.” It is less insofar as there is no theory of scandal offered here. There is no attempt to dialectically reconcile the contradictory notion of a strict prohibition of scandal on the one hand and a proclamation of the crucified One as a scandal, on the other. It is more in that it gathers together a variety of sources and experiences and shows how scandal has become both a greater threat to our social and individual well-being at the same time that it has become a greater opportunity to leading us closer to the truth of who we are and where we stand.

The Modernity of Scandal

There is nothing particularly new or modern about scandals. We could read the trial and death of Socrates as stemming from how he scandalized Athens by asking difficult questions of those in power and then further scandalized it at his trial by asking for free meals as his “punishment” after being found guilty. Still, a number of different scholars are giving attention to scandal as one element in the complex move from medieval and renaissance life to modernity. In particular they see the publicizing of scandals as both cause and effect of other changes in the development of modernity.³ In other words, the dominant tendency had been to react to scandalous events in such a way as to prevent or contain the scandal from becoming public. People were moved to new locations, certain things were not discussed, certain books or writings were forbidden, and certain actions, lawful in themselves, were discouraged, if not forbidden. Prudence was the watchword. The young and those weak in faith were to be protected from things that might damage their faith if...