Scapegoating

This picture was taken by my daughter Issabella at a bullfight in Spain. She and husband Ted are finishing a year in Barcellona. Her blog is a wonderful description of Spain and her latest post inspired me to ponder Rene Girard's theory of scapegoating. Read Issabella's post - A wonderful nightmare in Sevilla - first.

With apologies to Professor Girard, I have outlined his scapegoating mechanism below. Included are comments by Walter Wink who linked Girard's thesis to atonement theories. Wink postulates that Jesus entire ministry was opposition to systems of dominance and that God did not kill Jesus - as most theories of the atonement say - but WE killed Jesus through the domination systems that continue to this day.

Rene’ Girard’s theory of the Scapegoat

It is clear that the domination system is founded on violence but not why.

Human origins of violence

1. We lacked instinctual breaking mechanisms – wolves will spare a defeated rival
2. Humans fell headlong into endless spirals of violence
3. We survived – Girard believes – because we discovered a mechanism that could perform a final killing  of a surrogate victim

Scapegoat

1. Usually randomly chosen
2. Disabled, old, or marginal
3. No one would seek to avenge – but everyone agrees is to blame
4. Regarded as odious – monstrous but because his death brings reconciliation he is a savior, a god, a cult figure

This is the origin of

• Religion
• gods
• Sacrifice
• Ritual
• Myth

Mimetic desire

1. We become human by learning from others
2. Imitate (mimesis) by desiring what they desire
3. In itself this is good
4. This defines value

Mimetic rivalry

1. But in a world of scarcity this is problematic
2. Be like me – but when you reach to take it  - don’t be like me
3. Conflict ensues
4. Girard believes Oedipal conflict is more simply explained this way than Freud’s

Crisis of distinctions occurs

1. When the differences that formerly separated potential rivals are dissolved as a result of both desiring the same thing –
2. Social distinctions which preserved order collapse
3. Students seize the admin bldg
4. Soldiers refuse to obey orders
5. Mill workers shut down a plant

Collapse can be avoided if society can find a scapegoat

The necessary victim

1. Can be a foreigner, an eccentric, a communist, a witch , a homosexual,a prophet
2. The fiction of the scapegoat’s guilt must be maintained  regardless of the real truth
3. Caiaphas – it is expedient that one man die and that the whole nation not perish (John 11:50)

Sacralizing the victim

1. Victim is rendered sacred as compensation for sacrificial death
2. Sometimes elevated to divinity
3. Not only is violence survived it is the impetus for
1. Development of religion and myth
2. Legislation
3. Human culture

Sacrificial repetition

1. Subsequent sacrifices repeat in strictly controlled ritual the primordial structure of the scapegoat mechanism
2. Internal aggressions are thus diverted and expended ritually
3. Social fabric is preserved
4. Religion is organized violence in the service of social tranquility
5. Kierkegaard – the ethical expression of what Abraham did is  - murder
6. Religious expression is - sacrifice

Girard’s conclusion

1. The Christian Gospel is the counterforce to this power – it reveals the immortal lie.
2. There is nothing unique about the suffering and death of Jesus
3. What is astonishing is that contrary to other myths – the gospel myth denounces the verdict passed by the powers that be
4. The gospels are at great pains to show that the charges against Jesus do not hold water
5. This is done to reveal the scapegoating mechanism

What went wrong

1. The earliest Christians were not able to sustain this intensity
2. The dimmed it by confusing God’s intention to expose the scapegoating mechanism with God’s intention for Jesus to die.
3. This took the powers off the hook

What is wrong with this kind of God?

1. Jesus simply declared people forgiven confident that he spoke the mind of God.
2. Why then is a sacrificial victim necessary to make forgiveness possible?
3. Does not the death of Jesus reveal that all such sacrifices are unnecessary?

Walter Wink on Rene’ Girard

1. Not all myths are lies masking events of generative violence. Some myths (sacred stories) reveal the truth.
2. Scapegoat myth is just a subset of redemptive violence
3. Paul betrays an ambivalence toward sacrifice  - Christ is the end of sacrificing by exposing the scapegoat mechanism BUT he goes on the say that Christ is the final sacrifice whose death was required by God.
4. Christianity has suffered ever since.
5. Our sacred stories do not have a monopoly on the criticism of violence

But in fairness to Girard, the other sacred stories (myths) do not raise the scapegoating mechanism to consciousness