Episode 402: The Scandal of Particularity Revisited
About this episode
Scott Jones and Bill Borror discuss the implications of the scandal of particularity in theology, prompted by Yoram Hazony's critique of the Enlightenment's approach to universal morality.
In this episode of New Persuasive Words , Scott Jones and Bill Borror wrestle with one of theology's oldest and most unsettling questions: the scandal of particularity. Prompted by a provocative argument from Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony, they ask whether the Enlightenment's quest for universal reason came at the cost of dismissing the particular people, stories, and traditions through which faith has always been lived. Hazony contends that Enlightenment thinkers viewed the Hebrew Bible as an obstacle to universal morality because of its stubborn insistence on a chosen people, a promised land, and a God who acts within the concrete history of a particular nation. Scott and Bill explore whether this critique gets the Enlightenment right—and whether Christianity itself can ever escape the scandal of God's choosing one people, one place, and ultimately one person in Jesus of Nazareth. Is particularity the enemy of justice, or the very condition that makes love possible? Can genuine universality exist without first embracing the local, the historical, and the embodied? Along the way, the conversation touches on Jewish-Christian relations, the legacy of the Enlightenment…
More episodes of New Persuasive Words
- Episode 401: Whose Christian America?
- Episode 400: The Courage to Hope
- Episode 398: WWGD: What Would Genghis Do?
- Episode 397: Is this a Religious War?
- Episode 396: Was the Enlightenment a Mistake?
- Episode 395: The Second Death of Charlie Kirk
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