Originally presented at South Langley Mennonite Brethren Church, April 29,
2001.

Love to God and love to neighbor are like two doors that
open simultaneously, so that it is impossible to open the one without opening
the other, and impossible to shut one without also shutting the other. –Søren
Kierkegaard

Introduction

The Anglican apologist C.S. Lewis wrote of reading George Macdonald for the
first time, and knowing he had just crossed a great frontier. About ten years
ago, I was asked to review René Girard’s Violence and the Sacred (1977), and
felt a similar sense of having encountered a "great frontier". Evangelical
author Donald Dayton wrote of so connecting to Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics
that he fairly had to go out for regular walks during reading them to burn off
the excess energy. Likewise, in engaging Thanksgiving weekend the recent
anthology of Girard’s works entitled The Girard Reader
(1996) while accompanying my sons salmon fishing on the Chilliwack River, at
times it was all I could do to restrain myself from overwhelming the roar of
that river – and totally embarrassing my sons! – with wild cries of
YEEESSS!!!

John Howard Yoder had first written to my predecessor in the work I do in
criminal justice with the Mennonite Central Committee to suggest that Girard’s
writings might have specific pertinence to non-retributive responses to crime.
At around the same time, I read in Jacques Ellul’s book, Jesus and Marx, about a
non-academically trained theologian, René Girard, who
probably would never attract the notice of his biblical scholarly counterparts
because of his nonsacrificial and non(traditional)-theological way of reading
the Bible. I was intrigued.

But I wish I had begun reading Girard’s
second major book, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1987), and
not his first, Violence and the Sacred – as I set out to do for a review
request. It is the only book I have attempted to review and never did. As I look
through its pages again, I see that I underlined much and put points of emphasis
beside many a passage. Still, I wrote back that I would not review the book for
I did not understand adequately what Girard was getting
at. This was in part due to my relative ignorance of ancient Greek literature
and of psychoanalytic theory.

A colleague, Vern Redekop, was asked by the
same person to do something with the Girardian material. Vern, who now is
completing a doctoral dissertation on the thought of Girard, produced an essay that I eventually had published in an
"Occasional Papers" series we do in our criminal justice work. It was entitled
Scapegoats, the Bible, and Criminal Justice: Interacting with René Girard (1993). It remains a fine brief introduction to the
thought of Girard. Girard himself
gave his imprimatur to the book. It has been especially helpful to understand
criminal justice in light of Girardian theory.

I proceeded to read other
essays on the thought of Girard in fits and starts. At
times, part of me felt overwhelmingly like dropping everything in order to
pursue uninterrupted further exploration of Girardian theory. I thrilled to the
reading of his second major work, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the
World, knowing that indeed at last I had crossed a great frontier! Vern Redekop
began attending an annual international gathering of scholars investigating the
ramifications of Girard’s thought, the first one of which was held in 1990. The
conference is known as a Colloquium on Violence and Religion, and attracts
mainly scholars in a variety of disciplines, in particular literature, the
social sciences, and yes, theology – thankfully to prove conclusively Jacques
Ellul’s prediction wrong. Papers are presented, invariably one or more by Girard himself, and workshops held. I was privileged to
co-present a workshop at the

1995 Colloquium, Loyola University,
Chicago.

Why All the Fuss?

"Why all the fuss?", one might ask.
Besides the annual Colloquium gatherings, two international conferences of the
social sciences have been convened to engage Girard’s theories. On the front
cover of The Girard Reader is a quote from the journal,
Comparative Literature: "René Girard’s work suggests the projects of those
nineteenth-century intellectual giants – Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud – who
still cast such long shadows today." Girard dialogues with
most of these great thinkers, and is ever courteous, but likewise proves
unyielding in application of the scalpel where needed, and of extending praise
when appropriate.

Though he himself eschews any aspiration to or claim of
originality, in the words of Gil Bailie: "… Girard has
made the most sweeping and significant intellectual breakthrough of the modern
age….

"….The unedifying spectacle of Marxist and Freudian doctrine
collapsing in intellectual and spiritual exhaustion has left the human sciences
understandably wary of unifying theories. In a desire to avoid further
embarrassment, modest goals and modest hopes have been the order of the day.
About the only sweeping theory that has recently found favor is one that holds
that sweeping theories are no longer possible. [In a nutshell, this is the
message of post-modernism.] When, in this milieu, René Girard proposed a sweeping new theory and argued for its
universal applicability, it seemed almost a nuisance to have to reckon with it
(1995, pp. 5 & 6)."

At the conclusion of a 1983 symposium on
Girard’s work, philosopher Paul Dumouchel wrote: "Beginning from literary
criticism and ending with a general theory of culture, an explanation of the
role of religion in primitive societies and a radical reinterpretation of
Christianity, René Girard has completely modified the
landscape in the social sciences. Ethnology, history of religion, philosophy,
psychoanalysis, psychology and literary criticism are explicitly mobilized in
this enterprise. Theology, economics and political sciences, history and
sociology – in short, all the social sciences, and those that used to be called
the moral sciences – are influenced by it (quoted in Bailie, p.6)."

In a
world grown weary and in fact downright suspicious of any universal claims to
"truth", Girard emerges, insisting that there is
revelatory truth to be discovered in all great literature, and therefore
language itself still, à la Shakespeare and pace post-modernism, "signifies
something." He also claims that the ultimate and unique revelation of the human
predicament and humanity’s liberation is found in the Bible. Girard stands over against a pervasive "hermeneutics of
suspicion" applied to every traditional text and interpretation in a post-modern
world, one populated by cultural sycophants convinced that the only real clothes
for the "Emperor", contemporary culture, are various forms of nihilism. Instead,
he takes on the role of the little boy in the Andersen fable who cries out: "But
the Emperor has no clothes!" And those alert to his cry suddenly see that our
contemporary culture is indeed shivering naked in the cold Winter winds of a
ubiquitous skepticism about knowing universal truth, especially Christian truth.
In contradiction of a post-modern world that has given up the hope of ever
discovering truth outside of "my own privatized truth", religious or secular,
Girard joyously declares that there are warm clothes
available for everyone after all, and the wardrobe containing them is Christian
revelation.

"If," he says in a recent interview, "you believe that
Christianity is truth, including societal truth, you are not going to reach
truth by bracketing it out [,for the … idea of silencing Christianity in

the name of Christian humility is a Christian idea gone mad]. You can
see the result of this method all around us, in the current academic debacle for
instance." He continues: "The biblical scholars who are still talking in terms
of bracketing truth out are still thinking in nineteenth-century terms. They are
on their way to a goal which the deconstructors reached long ago. If we must
have nihilism, let us not dilute it with water and let us drink it full
strength, with Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the deconstructors. In order to reach
the end of the present crisis we must first experience it fully, we must not
interminably repeat attempts which already failed a hundred years ago, like ‘the
quest for the historical Jesus’. [He has in mind undoubtedly The Jesus Seminar
scholars and others.] (p. 288)"

The image here is of a culture entirely
stripped of all clothing, naked, and buffeted by howling winds in minus forty
Winter conditions. This is the enterprise of post-modernism. This is the cup of
nihilism – nothingness – drunk in its full potency. This is the extreme folly of
our skeptical age. The pretence of people like the Jesus Seminar scholars
actually claiming to have found superior new clothing for our culture through
speculative historical reconstructions of the Jesus story falls apart
dramatically with Girard’s cry: "…we must not interminably repeat attempts
which already failed a hundred years ago, like ‘the quest for the historical
Jesus’."! What historical Jesus questers of the Jesus Seminar ilk think of as
"new clothing" is like wrapping a person shivering naked at minus forty with yet
one more layer of human skin (call it "christian" nihilism, which denies the
substance of the Gospels), when what is wanted is a full skidoo outfit (the
truth of the traditional Gospels). Theirs is an "Eighteen Percent Solution" in
finding only that portion of sayings authentically from Jesus, when a One
Hundred Percent Jesus of the traditional Gospels is desperately called for.

Girard does not stop with a negation however. He
proceeds to offer those with "eyes to see, ears to hear" real clothes, warm,
inviting, and protective against all the elements, if only we dare risk putting
them on; if we in fact, as the Apostle Paul repeatedly admonishes, "put on the
Lord Jesus Christ" as found undiluted in the New Testament!

Girard says at the conclusion of the above interview: "Mine is a
search for the anthropology of the Cross, which turns out to rehabilitate
orthodox theology (Williams, pp 287 & 288)." On another occasion he writes:
"It should be noted however, that the discovery of this evangelical anthropology
in no way contradicts traditional theology. On the contrary, it reinforces its
now threatened credibility (Bailie, p. xii)." Girard
indicates elsewhere that "Christianity" in the academy is the "last politically
correct scapegoat (Hamerton-Kelly, 1994, p. xi)." We will return to this
understanding that Christianity, and the text of the Christian revelation, in
fact undergo an expulsion akin to the crucifixion of Jesus at the hands of
misguided "questers after the historical Jesus", would-be discoverers of
anti-Semitism in the New Testament, and many other "demythologizes."
(Incidentally, the best book I know of in response to the historical Jesus
questers is The Real Jesus (1996) by Catholic New Testament scholar Luke Timothy
Johnson.)

So why all the fuss about Girard? Why all
the fuss?! Do you not feel, as you are full participant in the twilight of
Western culture, the cold blast of the Winter blizzard all around us? Do you not
(sometimes) desperately long for the warm clothing Jesus offers but find it
repeatedly snatched away by the likes of Jesus Seminar scholars and a host of
howling naysayers who shout "Crucify him!" all over again? Only this time they
direct their cries towards the New Testament text, while claiming to be doing so
in the name of the very cultural values birthed through the crucifixion and
resurrection of Jesus!

Girard is on to something at
the threshold of the third millennium that we miss or reject to our own despite.
That’s why all the fuss! Let me explain a little more by looking at some of
Girard’s key insights. Before that, however, I wish to tell you a little about
Girard the person.

But first a caveat, a warning:
don’t expect the warmth of the clothing Girard offers you
automatically to feel that way when the storm still is raging. And warm clothing
is no immediate antidote for frostbite and hypothermia already set in. Time and
other medicines and shelters all must be applied and sought out appropriately
for the full remedy to the profound religious and cultural crisis of the late
twentieth century to begin to take. And please, do not expect immediately to
grasp what Girard is about – even if my attempt is
reasonably faithful.

Girard the Person

René
Girard was born in 1923 in Avignon, France. In 1947 he had
the opportunity to spend a year in the United States. He never returned to live
in France. He was first trained as an historian, and completed a Ph.D. in 1950
in that discipline. But he was early in his career assigned to teach courses in
literature, a fateful turn for him, leading to his eventual international
reputation as a literary critic.

In the Winter of 1959 Girard underwent a conversion to Christian faith. He describes
it thus in an interview with James Williams (J.W. in the
interview):

"When I wrote the last chapter of my first book, I had had a
vague idea of what I would do, but as the chapter took form I realized I was
undergoing my own version of the experience I was describing. I was particularly
attracted to the Christian elements, for example, Stepan Verkhovensky’s final
journey and turn to the Gospel before his death. So I began to read the Gospels
and the rest of the Bible. And I turned into a Christian.

"Now this
experience of an intellectual-literary conversion, as you might call it, was an
enjoyable one. I was teaching at Johns Hopkins at the time, and I had been
invited to teach a course every week at Bryn Mawr. So I traveled there and back
every week by train. I remember quasi-mystical experiences on the train as I
read, contemplated the scenery, and so on. But this initial conversion did not
imply any change of life… up till the day I found out that I had a cancerous
spot in the middle of my forehead. I went to a medical doctor, a dermatologist,
who was–how shall I say?– remote, unsympathetic, distrustful of me. Perhaps he
feared he wouldn’t be paid. He removed the bit of tissue which turned out to be
cancerous. From that time on I was pretty scared, because he never told me that
this type of cancer was eminently curable and usually did not return after it
was removed. So to me it was as though I was under a death sentence. For all I
knew, I had melanoma, the worst form of skin cancer. A complication was that I
had some swelling of that area of the forehead, which turned out to be due to
acne.

"So my intellectual conversion, which was a very comfortable
experience, self-indulgent even, was totally changed. I could not but view the
cancer and the period of intense anxiety as a warning and a kind of expiation,
and now this conversion was transformed into something really serious in which
the aesthetic gave way to the religious.

"So I had an extremely bad
period, and this period coincided with the liturgical period of Lent in 1959. I
was thirty-five years old. I was aware of the liturgical period, though I had
never been a practicing Catholic. The doctor himself had been somewhat concerned
about the swelling, so he

evacuated it. I will never forget that
day. It was Holy Wednesday, the Wednesday before Easter. Everything was fine,
completely benign, no return of the cancer.

"Immediately after that
experience, I went to confession and I had my children baptized. My wife and I
were remarried by a priest. The priest to whom I went for confession was an
Irishman, whose religious and cultural background was a little alien to me. He
had a hard time understanding my experience.

"JW: You noted in [another
interview] that Holy Wednesday is the traditional end of the period of
penance.

"RG: It is the beginning of the holiest part of Holy Week. So on
Holy Thursday I went to Mass after going to confession. I took the Eucharist. I
felt that God liberated me just in time for me to have a real Easter experience,
a death and resurrection experience.

"JW: So resurrection and conversion
are very difficult to distinguish….

"RG: Conversion is resurrection.
But conversion is a more objective reality than what we call objective the rest
of the time. Awareness of guilt is forgiveness in the Christian sense. Since I
tend to analyze everything to death, I might not have believed in my own
experience of conversion if I had converted as a result of fear rather than
before I had experienced the fear. The prior conversion was too easy; it
entailed no demands or commitments which I perceived at the time, but it
prepared the way. So with the definitive conversion I was both emotionally and
mentally prepared to accept God’s grace and believe.

"JW: Your experience
is similar to the Gospel pattern of discipleship. Recently, in preparation for
writing a paper on discipleship, I conferred with scholars in Judaism, Hinduism,
etc., and I found that the Gospel pattern is evidently unique: the disciples are
initially called, but they fall away and then return through a kind of second
conversion, which is associated with the resurrection.

"RG: That’s
true… true of all the martyrs in fact (Williams, 1986, pp. 285 –
286)."

In 1981 he began to teach at Stanford University, where he
remained until his retirement in 1995.
Two further questions were posed by
the interviewer above, one about sharing the Christian faith, another about
Christian faith and other faiths. Before proceeding with some key Girardian
concepts, I will read the questions, then Girard’s answers, to you:

"JW:
What about non-Christians and a pluralistic society: Do you favor converting all
non-Christians to Christianity?

"RG: Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the
truth, and the life,’ and he told his disciples to go into the world and make
converts. If we give that up, are we still Christian? The idea that if we
respect other religions more than our own and act only according to PC
[political correctness] peace will break out all over the world is fantasy and
delusion. The Christians should certainly enjoy the freedom to spread their
faith as much as the other religions.

"You see, is Christianity really
so powerful that it should be forbidden to spread its ideas, whereas other
religions should be allowed that same right?

"JW: You are advocating
freedom of religious expression…

"RG: Of course. I think the Christians
who do not want to share their faith do not really believe. The fear of
religious tyranny is an anachronism, a false issue which puts political
correctness ahead of the truth. I believe there is a truth, and the only way of
telling it is by connecting with people.

"JW: A question related to the
conversion of others, yet distinct from it, is whether one’s Christian faith
should enter into one’s approach to other religions and cultures? Or is it
necessary to ‘bracket out’ one’s faith in order to do scholarly work or to be a
thinker?

"RG: I don’t think you can bracket out a faith which is
responsible for the best in the modern world. That is totally artificial. I
don’t think you bracket out an idea or ideal that you really hold — or that
holds you. If you bracket out something that is central to your life, you become
a shadow of yourself and your intelligence is not effective. There is no science
without faith. Everything great is always a question of faith. Of course, I
suppose you could speak of a kind of kenosis of faith, that is, emptying
yourself of mimetic rivalry as you approach others and your intellectual work.
This is a sort of kenosis from below, as contrasted to the kenosis of Christ
from above according to Philippians 2. As your faith grows, the more you empty
yourself of rivalry and self-aggrandizement, the more you feel impelled to
communicate to others, with others, the truth you have experienced. This belongs
to the essence of Christianity. The idea of silencing Christianity in the name
of Christian humility is a Christian idea gone mad — as Bernanos used to say:
une idée chrétienne devenue folle, like much of the madness in our world
(Williams, 1996, pp. 286 & 287)."

Girard did
not begin with Christian revelation and move to his great literary and
anthropological discoveries. He began instead with literature and culture, then
encountered the Bible’s liberating power for all cultures in all times. He says
however, "It should be possible, especially for a Christian scholar, to reverse
this order and analyze myth and culture from the standpoint of the Gospels
(Williams, p. 264).", which is "a more fundamental understanding (Williams, p.
266)."

In the remaining few minutes, I will now share some of Girard’s
ideas that impinge upon our conference this weekend. I will begin with his
unique biblical perspective, reading the Scriptures in light of anthropology.

Anthropology

Perhaps what first struck me as most remarkable
about Girard was his anthropological emphasis on Christian
revelation, the reading of the Gospels from the horizontal, not the vertical
plain. This is to be distinguished from Friedrich Schleiermacher of the last
century, who simply replaced theology with anthropology: who made God over in
the image of humanity and human culture, an ever-tempting enterprise throughout
judeo-christian history, in which historical Jesus questers and others before
and since continue to participate.

Girard writes
that "The problem with Christians is that they have lost all confidence in their
Scriptures …the Gospels contain an anthropology of religion far superior to
anything the social sciences can provide…" Girard in
fact has led in "… the discovery of a most neglected dimension of the Gospels,
their anthropology, which too exclusive an emphasis on theology has obscured
(Bailie, p. xii)." As already indicated however, Girard is
at pains to tell us that the anthropological understanding of the Gospels
reinforces the threatened credibility of traditional theology. He says in an
interview: "what theology needs is a corroborating anthropology (Williams, p.
282)." This has been his offering in witness to "the faith once delivered (Jude
1:3, KJV)."

When the Bible is approached through the lens of
anthropology, a whole new set of questions is brought to the texts that leads to
some remarkable insights. The entire enterprise of the Gospels for Girard is in fact the application of Jesus’ repeated admonition
to have "eyes to see, ears to hear", such that the various violence oriented
lenses we all wear begin to be removed and the filters fall away. For
"anthropology" as a science was birthed by the judeo-christian tradition which
taught in the first place the stepping outside of culture to question or
"demythologize" it, in particular, the violence of all cultures. Says Gil
Bailie: "Anthropology has rightly been recognized as Western civilization’s
quintessential science. Anthropology can, of course, explain many things, but,
until it acknowledges its debt to the biblical tradition, it cannot adequately
explain itself… Anthropology is simply the study of culture by people who are
no longer entirely contained within one, and Paul, along with the Hebrew
prophets before him, is its originator (p. 38)."

According to Girard, Christian revelation first taught the art of
"demythologizing." "Myth" in fact according to him is a "narrative centered in
[violent] scapegoat events (Williams, p. 294)." -a narrative whose
legitimization in all cultures in all times is undone definitively only and
uniquely in the story of Jesus. Without Christian revelation, Girard teaches, there would only be the unanimity found in all
cultures that always supports violence towards scapegoats, towards victims. For
violence is the core of every culture, the essential building-block upon which
all cultures are erected.

So when the text of Scripture is approached
anthropologically, which the prophets and supremely the Jesus story first taught
its adherents to do in response to all cultural and religious phenomena and
texts, the myths that justify violence in all cultures begin to evaporate under
the strong rays of Gospel glare. Girard writes: "I
certainly do not believe that the Bible gives us a political recipe for escaping
violence and turning the world into a utopia. Rather, the Bible discloses
certain truths about violence, which the readers are free to use as they see
fit. So it is possible that the Bible can make many people more violent…

"In the Hebrew Bible, there is clearly a dynamic that moves in the
direction of the rehabilitation of the victims, but it is not a cut-and-dried
thing. Rather, it is a process under way, a text in travail… a struggle that
advances and retreats. I see the Gospels as the climactic achievement of that
trend, and therefore as the essential text in the cultural upheaval of the
modern world (Hamerton-Kelly, ed., p. 141)."

So Christian revelation gave
the world anthropology, and when the Bible is approached from this perspective,
some remarkable discoveries are made about the human condition and humanity’s
liberation.

Girard’s Three Great Discoveries

But as indicated,
Girard did not approach the Bible anthropologically until
he had already encountered two of "three great moments" of discovery in his own
thinking and writing: mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism.

Mimetic Desire

Robert Hamerton-Kelly explains that in Girard, "Desire is mimetic in the sense that it imitates desire,
it copies the other’s desire for an object and not the outward form of the
other’s actions (1994, p. 132)." When two toddlers are in the nursery surrounded
by toys, one child is perfectly content to let a certain toy lie untouched
beside him until the other child suddenly wants it. That demonstrated desire by
one child suddenly awakens desire in the other, and literally, "all hell breaks
loose" – if we understand hell in the biblical sense to be the self turned
inwards, without loving reference to God or humanity. Violence erupts, violence
which is always the outcome of the contagion of a desire whose origins are
Satan.

James puts the matter succinctly: "…each one is tempted when,
by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has
conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to
death (James 1:14-15)." This is mimetic desire gone amok, derivative from Satan
who is "the personification of the rivalrous mimesis [imitation], the mimesis
engendering accusation and violence (Williams, p. 293)." As Jesus himself says:
"You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s
desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for
there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is
a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44)." The same Greek work (epithumia) is
used in both texts for "desire."

Girard
understands desire ultimately to be metaphysical: it wants to be the other, who
acts both as a model but then as an obstacle. "This is the source [for Girard] of fascination, hypnosis, idolatry, the ‘double’, and
possession (Williams, p. 290)." As one interpreter explains: "The experience of
the double occurs when the model-obstacle as overpowering other is so
internalized that the subject does not experience a distinction of self and the
model-mediator." He continues: "The extreme alternatives are suicide or murder
of the model-obstacle. Other possibilities are schizophrenia, escape into a new
identity, and liberation through the release experienced in love and forgiveness
."

The writer concludes: "This latter is the work of a good or
conversionary mimesis (Williams, p. 290)." For mimetic desire is not inherently
bad or destructive, rather it is the means whereby we become open to God and
others. "If, " the same author explains, "it becomes effective in a fundamental
change of personality through the imitation of God or Christ, it could be termed
‘conversionary mimesis’ or ‘conversionary imitation (Williams, p. 291)." A
classic text is Ephesians 5:1 & 2: "Be imitators of God, therefore, as
dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave
himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

Put
slightly differently: the desire for a self ever found in the well-being of the
other, which is a life of "embodied forgiveness" according to Gregory Jones
(1995), a consciousness that Jesus can be discovered, as Mother Teresa puts it,
even "in the most distressing disguise" – and always in everyone, is mimetic
desire gone good, and the ultimate and only antidote to violence. For the test
case of love of God is love of neighbour. And the test case for love of
neighbour is love of enemy. "Love" in New Testament parlance is a concrete
action designed without limit to make the other a friend. For it is, again to
use the earlier image of clothing oneself, putting on the only clothing capable
of withstanding the Winter storm in this culture and all cultures, namely, in
the Pauline admonition, "putting on the Lord Jesus Christ".

For Girard, good mimetic desire towards God in Christ spells an
explicit end to all legitimized scapegoating violence by the state or society,
and all illegitimate violence proscribed by law. "Just war" and "just
executions" are therefore a direct contradiction of the fundamental revelation
of God in Christ. They are in fact a perpetuation of a scapegoat mechanism of
sacrificial violence Jesus explicitly reversed. In Girard’s words: "Not to love
one’s brother and to kill him are the same thing. Every negation of the other
leads, as we have shown, toward expulsion and murder. The basis for all of this
lies in the fundamental human situation of a mimetic rivalry that leads to a
destructive escalation…. To kill is to die, to die is to kill – for both stay
within the same circle of evil reciprocity, in which reprisals inevitably take
place. Not to love is to die, therefore, since it is to kill…. It is quite
literally true, when we are concerned with the confrontation of doubles, that he
who wishes to save his life will lose it; he will be obliged, in effect, to kill
his brother, and that means dying in a state of fatal misunderstanding of the
other and of himself [and one could add of God]. He who agrees to lose his life
will keep it for eternal life, for he alone is not a killer he alone knows the
fullness of love (Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World…, 1987, pp.
213 – 215)."

According to Girard, Jesus died
because he gave the lie to legitimized violence. It is in fact, its direct
inversion, and therefore the very antithesis of all Just War
theory.

Scapegoat Mechanism

Herein is the irony, which arises from
the second great moment of discovery for Girard, the
"scapegoat mechanism". The irony is precisely this: the faith that was initially
built upon the revelation of God in Christ of a totally nonviolent mimetic
desire centred in Christ turns the symbol of that very rejection of violence,
the Cross, into the model for how Christians have interpreted the work of
Christ, the atonement, ever since. Because God ordered the execution of Christ,
the dominant theology goes – all the way back to Saint Anselm in the 11th
century – he not only therefore models an ultimate violent response to enemies,
but as well decrees violence upon all who literally or vicariously participate
in crucifying the Lord of Glory – the very execution God ordained! Says Bailie:
"The most familiar form of the atonement doctrine… supposes that a wrathful
God demanded that a victim pay in blood for human sin… and that God chose to
take a human form and pay for the sin ‘Himself.’ It is an understandable
doctrine, given the religious and cultic backdrop against which early Christian
thought was first forming. But the doctrine is not only logically incoherent; it
is morally and theologically inadequate as well (p. 37)."

The above is
what usually is called the "satisfaction theory" of the atonement, reflective of
an 11th century feudal culture where the lord of the manor demanded violent
"satisfaction" of his serfs for offences committed. Girard
throughout his writing anathematizes it, and another interpreter dubs it a
"mysticism of pain which promises redemption to those who pay in blood
(Gorringe, p. 102)." (Incidentally, it is this theory that originates the
dominant form of Western criminal justice, "retributive justice" that has
bequeathed a nightmare of horrific pain upon convicted criminals to this
day.)

The second great moment of discovery – of the "scapegoat mechanism"
– completed the mimetic theory for Girard. Scapegoating is
"The age-old way of gaining release from the violence or potential violence that
mimesis produces … through nonconscious convergence upon a victim (Williams,
p. 293)." The Holocaust directed toward the Jews by the people of Germany in the
Second World War is a clear example of a centuries old practice by Christians
both productive of, and resulting from in part, a "satisfaction theory" of the
atonement.

Girard understands the birth of all
cultures, including Christendom and Christian culture, to arise from the
unanimity achieved by scapegoating a victim or victims. Ritual, prohibition, and
myth dominant in all cultures religious and secular arise in the repeated
exercise of a sacrificial mechanism designed to reestablish the peace. Cultic
rites the world over in archaic religions and scapegoating interpretations of
Christianity demonstrate the phenomenon; the criminal justice system in a
secular society serves a similar "scapegoating mechanism" function (Redekop,
1993, pp. 32ff) -though this was not initially recognized by Girard in Violence and the Sacred (1977, pp. 22 & 23).

The "scapegoat mechanism" is "simply a generative scapegoat principle
which works unconsciously in culture and society (Williams, p. 294)." A mundane
example. I return from work troubled by mimetic conflict with a colleague. I
begin yelling at the kids. My wife, ever patient, gently asks if it was another
difficult day with Sam. I suddenly realize my violence towards my kids is an
unconscious scapegoat mechanism. If I am sensitive, I stop immediately yelling
at them and make amends.

Gil Bailie supplies a more sinister example,
the 1989 execution of serial killer Theodore Bundy, when hundreds of men, women
and children camped outside the Florida prison in a festive spirit one reporter
likened to a Mardi Gras. The same reporter described the event as "a brutal
act.. [done] in the name of civilization (Bailie, p. 79)." Bailie reflects on
that commentary thus: "It would be difficult to think of a more succinct
summation of the underlying anthropological dynamic at work: a brutal act done
in the name of civilization, an expulsion or execution that results in social
harmony. Clearly, after the shaky justifications based on deterrence or
retribution have fallen away, this is the stubborn fact that remains: a brutal
act is done in the name of civilization. If we humans become too morally
troubled by the brutality to revel in the glories of the civilization made
possible by it, we will simply have to reinvent culture. This is what Nietzsche
saw through a glass darkly. This is what Paul sensed when he declared the old
order to be a dying one (I Cor. 7:31). This is the central anthropological issue
of our age (p. 79)."

And this is the grand enterprise of the Gospel
impetus: to reinvent culture consonant with the Peaceable Kingdom: "The wolf
will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and
the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow
will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will
eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the
young child put his hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor
destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of
the LORD as the waters cover the sea (Isa 11:6-9)."

What Girard considers the most difficult aspect for others to grasp
of his understanding of Christianity is "that scapegoating does not play an
essential role in the Gospels, whereas it has an enormous role in myths since it
generates them." In fact, says Girard, "…Christianity
… [witnesses] to the God who reveals himself to be the arch-scapegoat in order
to liberate humankind (Williams, p. 263)." Now that turns the traditional
doctrine of the atonement on its head, and reveals the scapegoat mechanism to be
part of the murderous lie upon which all cultures (including Christendom) are
founded and from which the Jesus story is the Ultimate Declaration of
Emancipation!

The Bible as Demythologizer

Finally, Girard explains in an interview: "The third great moment of
discovery for me was when I began to see the uniqueness of the Bible, especially
the Christian text, from the standpoint of the scapegoat theory. The mimetic
representation of scapegoating in the Passion was the solution to the
relationship of the Gospels and archaic cultures. In the Gospels we have the
revelation of the mechanism that dominates culture unconsciously (Williams, p.
263)."

Girard suggests that this order of discovery
should in fact be reversed, that Christians should work from the Bible to myth
and culture. Walter Wink in his trilogy on the Powers, in particular Engaging
the Powers (in which he incidentally devotes a whole chapter to Girard) is an illustration of this. Wink begins his study:
"Violence is the ethos of our times. It is the spirituality of the modern
world…. Violence is so successful as a myth precisely because it does not seem
to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things.
It is what works (1992, p. 13)." His entire work is a challenge to what he calls
"the myth of redemptive violence" which dominates the world like no
other.

The biblical text, in a travail of discovery and rejection of the
scapegoating mechanism in the Hebrew Bible, climaxed in the story of Jesus who
eschewed all violence and all "domination systems", to use Wink’s term.

But the irony is, the Gospels themselves have now come under attack as
sources of scapegoating and demonization. They are seen for instance as the
ultimate generation of anti-Semitism, oppressive patriarchy, and scapegoating
violence in direct contradiction to their reality. Weddig Fricke, for instance,
in a claim to be devoid of any "faith" bias in his conclusion that "the Jesus
portrayed by the Church and from the pulpit differs in a number of decisive ways
from the Jesus who emerges from the historical record insofar as it can be
established (1987, p. 5).", demonstrates a most remarkable faith (and
overweening arrogance!) in the "necessary truths of reason" (Lessing) he applies
to the Gospels. He fails to see the hidden scapegoating dynamic in his own naïve
faith in a historiographical methodology he applies to the New Testament text in
the interests of (imagined) "objective" historical research. So he says,
"History teaches how easily naive faith can degenerate into fanaticism and
persecution (p. 5)", then proceeds with a book-length study demonstrating
precisely a remarkable fanaticism and persecution towards and of the New
Testament text! Likewise, American Episcopalian Bishop John Spong demonstrates
in all his writings a virulent intolerance towards Christian fundamentalism
befitting the worst of the "fundamentalists" he excoriates! "We go on
persecuting," Girard says, "but in our world everybody
persecutes in the name of being against persecution; that’s what we call
propaganda. We have our own scapegoats, but they are always the people who make
scapegoats, and we never persecute directly anymore (Hamerton-Kelly, 1987, p.
142)."

So Girard responds to an interviewer’s
comment, "To take the Gospels seriously in the way you do is extremely
difficult": "It is difficult because it is too simple. Everything that happened
to Jesus is happening to the texts of revelation themselves. This scapegoating
of the Gospel texts is probably a necessary – but not excusable – phase that we
are going through. It is a form of ingratitude toward God, and one should say
so, boldly (Williams, p. 264)." This is reminiscent of Jesus’ words: "Woe to the
world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but
woe to the man through whom they come! (Matt 18:7)." For it is a participation
in the violence of the world upon which all culture is founded, a violence that
first of all crucified the Lord of Glory, and now seeks to cover the murder by
expelling the very and only text that teaches humanity definitively that all
such murder and violence is wrong!

So Girard adds:
"Political correctness is good to the degree that we now have an awareness of
victimization and victimary mechanisms. But now this awareness supports attacks
on Christianity and its texts, which are the very inspiration of our modern
concern for the victim (Williams, p. 265)." This is of course the ultimate
instance of the dog biting the hand that feeds it. Do you see the scapegoating
dynamic hidden here? And therefore why Jesus continually admonished, "If you
have eyes to see, see"?

I have relatives and friends who have long since
left the church and with it have scapegoated traditional orthodoxy, while
failing to understand the violence in that expulsion, and that the origin of the
very sensibility at back of their rejection is the truth of the traditional
Gospels, a truth designed to set one free. Yet the very wellspring of that truth
is one that God patiently risks seeing repeatedly turned on, such that "church,
creed and canon" are scapegoated like no other in the academy and in wider
society. Some of my friends and relatives, caught in a web of allegiance to
"political correctness" that would preclude them from letting drop a negative
sentiment about the gay lifestyle, feminism, pro-choice, etc., freely excoriate
traditional Christianity, apparently oblivious of their own intolerance and
prejudice!

So Girard envisions the ongoing
emergence of new ideologies continually presenting themselves as better than the
Gospel, which they will in turn routinely demonize. Marxism was a past example,
some forms of radical feminism are current instances. Many more will come,
ironically all inspired by the victim sensitive Jesus story! So Girard comments: "All the excesses of the modern world are
distortions of Christian truth." He continues: "The only difference is that our
narcissistic culture, which is really intensely mimetic and [rivalistically]
other-centered, is a deviation and a caricature of the Christian person, not its
fulfillment (Williams, p. 279)."

Bailie sums up the situation thus: "The
Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel did not say that the greatest commandment was to
believe in God and love humanity. He did not say that we should be nice to one
another because that’s the way God would like us to behave. He said the first
and most essential thing is to love God with a paramount love. It is the most
hackneyed notion in the world, but once or twice in a lifetime its dulling
familiarity vanishes, and one feels for a moment the unfathomable significance
and centrality of Jesus’ suggestion for breaking the grip of sin and death: to
love God. Partly due to the humanists’ romantic idea of basic human benevolence
and partly to the rationalistic "where-there’s-a-will-there’s-a-way" spirit of
the Enlightenment, the modern world came to believe that it could fulfill the
requirements of the second commandment without having to bother with the first.
We moderns came to believe, in effect, that, by itself, the second commandment
was a civilizing force sufficient to the task at hand. The creaking and
groaning, indeed, the shouting and shooting, that we now hear all around us is
coming from the collapse of the assumption. If we need an epitaph for it, this
from Girard will serve:

‘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 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 [quoted
from Girard, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the
World…, 1987, p. 399]’ (p. 272)".

Conclusion

In many ways, René
Girard’s project is an extended commentary on I Cor. 1:18 – 31, a passage which
in turn anticipates two great watersheds of the Christian era: the Constantinian
Embrace of the Christian Church; and the Enlightenment. In the former case, the
Church definitively took up violence as its modus operandi, moving from the
position, ecclesia abhorret a sanguine ("the church abhors the shedding of
blood") to in hoc signo vinceres ("in this sign [of the labarum] you will
conquer"). In the latter instance, the church began to accept, as Lessing
taught, that there was indeed an "ugly broad ditch between the accidental truths
of history [Christian revelation], and the necessary truths of reason
[culturally dominated definitions of truth]." Over against a culture unable to
accept Christ as "the truth", Girard presents Jesus Christ
as the Wisdom of God who alone is able to liberate us from the cultural snares
of scapegoating violence. And over against a world and a Christian tradition
bathed in violence at its very core, and fundamentally opposed to Christ as "the
way", Girard presents Jesus as Stumblingblock (Greek,
skandalon – a model/obstacle in Girard’s understanding) to the Powerful who only
know violence as the ultimate resort, and therefore repeatedly crucify the Lord
of Glory in endless persecutions. To embrace Christ in this context is indeed to
discover Jesus as ultimately "the life", which all of us are offered "abundantly
(John 10:10 and 14:6)."

Can you now feel some appreciation for why I
wanted to thunder YEEESSS!!! across the Chilliwack River on Thanksgiving
Weekend!

I can do no better than conclude with the final two paragraphs
in Gil Bailie’s work: "At the outset, I had no intention of ending it, as I
have, on such a confessional note. It has ended that way because writing it has
drawn me ever deeper into the mysterious power of the Christian revelation, and
it would be silly to put on a wooden face and pretend otherwise. While one
needn’t wear one’s faith on one’s sleeve, neither is there reason to equivocate.
In writing this book, I have grown ever more aware of how great is my
intellectual debt to René Girard. More importantly,
however, I have come to realize the degree to which his groundbreaking work is
part of what Andrew McKenna has called ‘the legacy of the crucifixion
narrative.’ Mediated as it is through the example, work and thought of others, I
now believe that legacy to be the world’s wellspring of moral and religious
truth and its ultimate guarantor of intellectual clarity.

"Grateful for
his inspiration and friendship, I want to give the concluding word to René Girard, for he summarizes best the work he so profoundly
inspired:

‘Beyond the misunderstandings, calumnies and encroachments of
which it is the object, beyond the historical reversals and even the disasters
that result, and beyond all that disfigures it in our eyes, the truth of the
victim that we at last possess is the greatest, most fortunate event in the
history of religion and the whole of humanity [quoted from Girard, Job: The Victim of His People, 1987, p. 108].’ (pp. 275
& 276)."

Bibliography

[NOTE: All publications listed are the
English titles and dates. All book publications by and about (recent) Girard in English are listed, whether used in the essay or not.
A listing of other language books by and about (recent) Girard, and articles in French or English by Girard, is at the back of Williams (1996).]

Alison, James
(1993). Knowing Jesus, Springfield, Ill: Templegate.

___________ (1996)
Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, New York:
Crossroad.

___________ (1997) The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin
Through Easter Eyes, New York: Crossroad.

Bailie, Gil (1995). Violence
Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, New York: Crossroad.

Bandera,
Cesáreo (1994) The Sacred Game: The Role of the Sacred in the Genesis of Modern
Literary Fiction, University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press.

Bellinger, Charles K. (2001). The Geneaology of Violence:
Reflections on Creation, Freedom, and Evil, New York: Oxford University
Press.

Chilton, Bruce (1992). The Temple of Jesus, University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press.

Dumouchel, Paul, ed. (1988) Violence
and Truth: On the Work of René Girard, London: The Athlone
Press.

Fricke, Weddig (1987). The Court-Martial of Jesus: A Christian
Defends the Jews Against the Charge of Deicide, New York: Grove
Weidenfeld.

Gans, Eric (1993) Originary Thinking: Elements of Generative
Anthropology, Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press.

_________
(1997) Signs of Paradox: Irony, Resentment, and Other Mimetic Structures,
Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press.

Girard, René, ed. (1962). Proust: A Collection of Critical
Essays, New York: Prentice-Hall.

__________ (1966). Deceit, Desire and
the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, Baltimore, London: Johns
Hopkins University Press.

__________ (1977) Violence and the Sacred.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.

__________ (1978) "To Double
Business Bound": Essays on Literature, Mimesis and Anthropology, Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University.

__________ (1987). Things Hidden since the
Foundation of the World: Research Undertaken in Collaboration with Jean-Michel
Oughourlian and Guy Lefort, Stanford: Stanford University
Press.

__________ (1987) Job The Victim of His People, Stanford: Stanford
University Press.

__________ (1991) A Theatre of Envy: William
Shakespeare, New York: Oxford University Press.

__________ (1997)
Resurrection from the Underground: Feodor Dostoevsky, New York:
Crossroad.

__________ (2001) I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, New York:
Orbis.

Goodhart, Sandor (1996) Sacrificing Community: Reading the End of
Literature, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Gorringe, Timothy
(1996). God’s Just Vengeance: Crime, violence and the rhetoric of salvation,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goslan, Richard (1993). René Girard and Myth: An Introduction, New York:
Garland.

Hamerton-Kelly, Robert G., ed. (1987). Violent Origins,
Stanford: Stanford University Press.

______________________ (1992) Sacred
Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross, Minneapolis:
Fortress.

______________________ (1994) The Gospel and the Sacred:
Poetics of Violence in Mark, Minneapolis:
Fortress.

______________________ (1994). "A Tribute to René Girard on his 70th birthday", Contagion. Rocky Mount: Colloquium
on Violence and Religion at Stanford.

_____________________ (1994). The
Gospel and the Sacred: Poetics of Violence in Mark, Minneapolis: Fortress
Press.

Johnson, Luke Timothy (1996). The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest
for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels, San
Francisco: Harper.

Jones, L. Gregory (1995). Embodying Forgiveness: A
Theological Analysis, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company.

Kaptein, Roel (1993) On the Way of Freedom, Blackrock Co.,
Dublin, Ireland: Columbia.

Livingston, Paisley (1992) Models of Desire:
René Girard and the Psychology of Mimesis, Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press.

McCracken, David (1994) The Scandal of
the Gospels: Jesus, Story, and Offense, New York: Oxford.

McKenna, Andrew
(1992) Violence and Difference: Girard, Derrida, and
Deconstruction, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press.

Oughourlian, Jean-Michel (1991) The Puppet of Desire: The
Psychology of Hysteria, Possession, and Hypnosis, Stanford: Stanford University
Press.

Redekop, Vern (1993). Scapegoats, the Bible, and Criminal Justice:
Interacting with René Girard, Akron: Mennonite Central
Committee.

Simonse, Simon (1992) Kings of Disaster: Dualism, Centralism
and the Scapegoat King in the Southeastern Sudan, Leiden and New York:
Brill.

Smith, Theophus, and Mark Wallace, eds. (1994) Curing Violence,
Sonoma, Calif.: Polebridge.

Williams, James G. (1991 and 1995) The Bible,
Violence and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence, San
Francisco: HarperCollins and Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International.

_______________ (1996). The Girard Reader, New
York: Crossroad Herder.

Wink, Walter (1992). Engaging the Powers:
Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Minneapolis: Fortress
Press.

********

The Bulletin of the Colloquium on Violence and
Religion – published biannually by the COV&R Society (since 1990), includes
updated bibliographies. Internet (which includes back issues and other helpful
information): http://info.uibk.ac.at/c/c2/c204/bulletin/
Address:

Wolfgang Palaver,
Institut für Moraltheologie und Gesellschaftslehre,
Universität Innsbruck
Karl-Rahner-Platz 3, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria/Europe

Tel. (43 512) 507-8585 or 507-8581
FAX: (43 512) 507-2959
E-mail:
Wolfgang.Palaver@uibk.ac.at

Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and
Culture – annual journal (since 1994).
Address:
Andrew
McKenna
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
Loyola
University
Chicago Illinois
USA 60626
Tel.: (312)508-2850
FAX:
(312)508-3514
E-mail: amckenn@orion.it.luc.edu

Related WEB Site:
http://www.florilegia.org/ (full of information on Girard’s theories, and the
work of a significant interpreter of Girard (Gil Bailie),
who has much to offer in his own right)