In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

71 CHAPTER 5 The Lesson of the Gospels Beyond Scandal? Plato understood the limitations of reason. Reason cannot, on its own, withstand the temptation of looking at corpses. For that, Plato enlists another part of the soul, the spirited part with its anger. Anger does not enable one to look at the victim; instead, it keeps one’s gaze steady as one walks by the spectacle. The spirited part of the soul plays a role, as we shall see, analogous to that of primitive religion. Religion, in its traditional role, allows one to walk past the victim; in other words, it hides the victim. In this sense Rousseau and Nietzsche were the last true Platonists. For Nietzsche it is art rather than religion that keeps the gaze steadily averted from the victim. Art performs a kind of alchemy in transforming the victim from a portal to deeper anthropological knowledge to a spectacle that arrests the eyes and keeps them fascinated. Rousseau also wants the reader to look without seeing and to listen without understanding. He scandalizes the reader in order to fascinate, keeping her entrapped in a cycle of attraction and repulsion. For Rousseau the victim will always be only Rousseau himself, and the persecutor will always be the other. The reader, on the other hand, will oscillate between these two positions: the victim in the center or 72 Chapter 5 the persecutor on the periphery.1 Rousseau’s art never allows us to stay in either of these positions long enough to understand it. We are constantly being shocked, fascinated, and scandalized by either Rousseau or his authorial projection. A scandalized consciousness cannot escape or overcome scandal. The very attempt to do so further enmeshes one in it. How, then, does one escape the world of scandal? Is there an alternative? I offer below some suggestions about how to read scandalous texts from the Gospels. The Stone The women heading toward the tomb of Jesus were preoccupied with an obstacle they feared would interfere with their task of anointing Jesus’ corpse. Theyaskedeachother,“Whowillrollawaythestoneforusfromtheentrance to the tomb?” (Mark 16:3) Their fears, as it turned out, were needless: the stone had already been rolled away. That obstacle removed, a more difficult one appeared, and a greater fear emerged. The tomb was empty; there was no body to anoint. Instead, there was a young man who announced, “he has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him” (Mark 16:6). This chapter seeks in some small way to duplicate in the reader the experience of these women. It attempts to make explicit the obstacles that we believe we face in reading texts. Using some Gospel texts, I raise some issues and problems in order to get the reader to pose the question, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” Then, hopefully, a moment will come when the reader understands that the stone has already been removed. The immediate relief of the open tomb should then be followed by a trembling at its emptiness. The issues and problems that I raise with these texts are not pseudoproblems . Before the women saw that the stone had been removed, it was natural for them to be concerned about it. So the women were not “wrong” to go to the tomb, nor were they “wrong” to be concerned about how they would get inside it. In light of the Resurrection, however, these acts become way stations to revelation of the true task. The real obstacle turns out not to be an obstacle at all. The empty tomb reveals the need for faith and indicates to the women what they are to do—proclaim the resurrected Lord. The Lesson of the Gospels 73 Thus, the texts indicate an obstacle that is not an obstacle at all. It in fact has characteristics that are the opposite of those of the stone: rather than blocking the way, this obstacle is nothing. The tomb is empty, yet it poses an obstacle to human understanding. What can the empty tomb mean? He is not there. That is all that the women can see. Hence, they are bewildered; they flee; they say nothing. The empty tomb scandalized the women. This scandal led them to faith and the ability to proclaim to the disciples where the risen Lord was. Where this deeper scandal will lead the present-day reader is not for me to say. I will have...

Share