The scandal of the cross (Derek Tidball)

I just found something in Michael Gorman's blog that is very helpful. Here is an excerpt from his blog (which, in turn, cites Derek Tidball).

“The scandal of the cross continues. From Paul’s day to our own, [it] has never been anything other than a scandal, a cause of offence. People respond to its offensivness in different ways. Some ridicule it. Others try to ignore it. Chrstians, no less than others, have their techniques for reducing its shame. Long familiarity with it has lessened its absurdity and repugnance and led us to turn it into an item of beauty…. Morna Hooker comments: ‘Our problem is simply that we are too used to the Christian story; it is difficult for us to grasp the absurdity—indeed, the sheer madness—of the gospel about a crucified savior which was proclaimed by the first Christians in a world where the cross was the most barbaric form of punishment which men could devise.’”

[Derek Tidball, The Message of the Cross (The Bible Speaks Today; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2001), 200.]