The End of Violent Sacrifice Caused by Mimesis, not Nature

Hello All,

Many of you may be unfamiliar with René Girard, a 20th Century theologian whose atonement theory has found more and more voice in Christian circles. In short, Girard postulated that the self-sacrifice of Christ on the Roman cross of execution was done to expose the violent nature of humanity. God, who never delighted in sacrifice in the first place, entered into our need for sacrifice caused by a deep covetous desire to be God ourselves. Girard equates this desire with mimesis, the desire to imitate. For example, two children commonly fight over one toy, but only after the first child begins to play with it; the second becomes jealous and wants to possess it for his own. Add more children who want the same toy, and chaos ensues. In Girard's view, this has further implications for Christianity because we become violent in our mimetic jealousy and therefore need to find a scapegoat to unleash our violence rather than upon the community.  Therefore, a victim "saves" society. For example, Cain kills Abel because God was more pleased with Abel; or, Caiaphas' advice concerning the crucifixion of Christ: "You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” (John 11:50)

Below are more enlightening remarks by Girard:

The suffering of Christ "is the underside of scapegoating sacrifice; it reveals everything. In other words, it brings to perfection what is already there in the Hebrew Bible. It is the revelation of sacrifice as false worship: it is nothing more than the result of a false accusation against the victim. [...] Christ is in the place of all victims since the foundation of the world, all sacrificial victims, revealing their accomplice--a willing accomplice--of the violence of humanity with divine permission, as it were, to enable us to reach the point where we become able to understand that."

In other words, God divinely consents to be sacrificed as Christ by humanity's violence in order to expose its violent, mimetic jealousy and thus end the need for sacrifice forever, including its use by humanity as a unifying method. And yet, at the same time, through this sacrifice humanity is saved through Christ, for there could be no humanity without Christ's self-sacrifice--we would have eventually destroyed each other. Therefore, when you celebrate communion, you're actually celebrating Christ having ended the system of violent sacrifice, and through communion, drinking the wine and bread, you actually obtain what you were desiring from the beginning: to be united with God.

Lastly, I'd like to submit that the whole system of violence erected as sacrifice was brought about not by an evil human nature, but rather by blindness, by deception, and human *minds* hostile toward God. Even after the slaying of Abel, humanity remained in the image of God. It was Paul who clearly saw that Christ was in him and in the Gentiles, and who prayed that a person's heart and mind would be open to the reality that they were in fact objects of Christ's salvation, even while they continued to sin.

Grace=Peace,

Jeremy