The Girard Reader (36 page)

be cunning obstacles that our minds erect against the Gospel revelation. But from now on the

obstacles themselves must contribute to the invisible but ineluctable advance of revelation.

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Chapter 11 The Nonsacrificial Death of Christ

The Gospels bring culture's scapegoat mechanisms to light in their account of Jesus' ministry,

death, and resurrection. Paradoxically, the text itself is typically misunderstood. The founding

mechanism that is exposed through Jesus' teachings and fate is misconstrued as the

affirmation of the founding mechanism, i.e.. of scapegoating and sacrifice. However, modern

ignorance of the mechanism is not simply the work of fundamentalists and others who hold to

a sacrificial religion. Modern agnosticism and atheism, skeptical about all religion, serve to

perpetuate scapegoat mechanisms by effectively keeping them invisible.

The following discussion of the nonsacrificial death of Christ is taken from two parts of a

chapter entitled "A NonSacrificial Reading of the Gospel Text" in
Things Hidden
, 180-82, 205-15. It should be noted once more that in recent years Girard has become more disposed

to balance the violent, victimary side of sacrifice with an appreciation of its more positive

effects and connotations. On this see the introduction to chapter 6. In the derived sense of the

loving willingness to give of oneself, even one's very life, for the sake of the other, it has an

appropriate usage in the language of Christian liturgy, fellowship, and theology. Likewise

Jesus' willingness to give his life and to suffer an execution which was, historically

considered, a kind of public or civic sacrifice, could appropriately be described as sacrifice.

So from the standpoint of the historical background and context of Jesus' death, as well as the

derived positive connotations of sacrifice, the language of sacrifice cannot be dismissed from the language of faith. But sacrifice, even if retained in these senses, must be redefined on the

basis of faith in a God of love who does not make a secret pact with his Son that calls for his

murder in order to satisfy God's wrath (see

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Things Hidden
, 184). The suffering and death of the Son, the Word, are inevitable because of

the inability of the world to receive God or his Son, not because God's justice demands

violence or the Son relishes the prospect of a horrible execution.

R.G.:
The Gospels speak of "sacrifices" only in order to reject them and deny them any validity. Jesus counters the ritualism of the Pharisees with an anti-sacrificial quotation from

Hosea: "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice'" ( Matt. 9:13).

The following text amounts to a great deal more than ethical advice; it at once sets the cult of

sacrifice at a distance and reveals its true function, which has now come full circle:

So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has

something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to

your brother, and then come and offer your gift. ( Matt. 5:23-24)

G.L.:
Surely the crucifixion is still the sacrifice of Christ?

R.G.:
There is nothing in the Gospels to suggest that the death of Jesus is a sacrifice,

whatever definition (expiation, substitution, etc.) we may give for that sacrifice. At no point

in the Gospels is the death of Jesus defined as a sacrifice. The passages that are invoked to

justify a sacrificial conception of the Passion both can and should be interpreted with no

reference to sacrifice in any of the accepted meanings.

Certainly the Passion is presented to us in the Gospels as an act that brings salvation to

humanity. But it is in no way presented as a sacrifice.

If you have really followed my argument up to this point, you will already realize that from

our particular perspective the sacrificial interpretation of the Passion must be criticized and

exposed as a most enormous and paradoxical misunderstanding -- and at the same time as

something necessary -- and as the most revealing indication of mankind's radical incapacity

to understand its own violence, even when that violence is conveyed in the most explicit

fashion.

Of all the reappraisals we must make in the course of these interviews, none is more

important. It is no mere consequence of the anthropological perspective we have adopted.

Our perspective is rooted in the Gospels themselves, in their own subversion of sacrifice,

which restores the original text, disengaging the hypothesis of the scapegoat and enabling it

to be transmitted to the human sciences.

I am not speaking of my own personal experience here. I am referring to something very

much larger, to the framework of all the intellectual

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experiences that we are capable of having. Thanks to the sacrificial reading it has been possible for what we call Christendom to exist for fifteen or twenty centuries; that is to say, a

culture has existed that is based, like all cultures (at least up to a certain point) on the

mythological forms engendered by the founding mechanism. Paradoxically, in the sacrificial

reading the Christian text itself provides the basis. Mankind relies upon a misunderstanding

of the text that explicitly reveals the founding mechanism to reestablish cultural forms which

remain sacrificial and to engender a society that, by virtue of this misunderstanding, takes its

place in the sequence of all other cultures, still clinging to the sacrificial vision that the

Gospel rejects.

J.-M.O.:
Any form of sacrificial vision would contradict, I suppose, the revelation of the

founding murder that you have shown to be present in the Gospels. It is obvious that bringing

to light the founding murder completely rules out any compromise with the principle of

sacrifice, or indeed with any conception of the death of Jesus as a sacrifice. A conception of

this kind can' only succeed in concealing yet again the real meaning and function of the

Passion: one of subverting sacrifice and barring it from working ever again by forcing the

founding mechanism out into the open, writing it down in the text of all the Gospels.

G.L.:
I can see very well that a nonsacrificial reading is necessary. But at first sight it looks as though the enterprise will come up against some formidable obstacles, ranging from the

redemptive character of Jesus' death to the conception of a violent God, which seems to

become indispensable when you take into account themes like the Apocalypse. Everything

that you say here is bound to provoke in response the famous words that the Gospels have no

qualms about putting in Jesus' own mouth: "I have come not to bring peace but a sword."

People are going to tell you that the Christian Scriptures explicitly provide a reason for

discord and dissension.

R.G.: None of what you say is incompatible with the nonsacrificial reading I am putting

forward. It is only in the light of this reading that we can finally explain the Gospels' intrinsic

conception of their action in history, in particular the elements that appear to be contrary to

the "Gospel spirit." Once again, we must judge the interpretation that is being developed by the results it will offer. By rejecting the sacrificial definition of the Passion, we arrive at a

simpler, more direct, and more coherent reading, enabling us to integrate all the Gospel

themes into a seamless totality. . . .

R.G.: If we can rid ourselves of the vestiges of the sacrificial mentality that soil and darken

the recesses of our minds, we shall see that we now have all the elements to hand for

understanding that the death of Jesus takes place for reasons that have nothing to do with

sacrifice. All that

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remained unclear in the nonsacrificial reading should have been clarified in the most

comprehensive way.

As we have seen, Jesus is the direct, though involuntary, cause of the division and dissension

that is stirred up by his message, by virtue of the fact that it meets with almost universal

incomprehension. But all of his actions are directed toward nonviolence, and no more

effective form of action could be imagined.

As I have already pointed out, Jesus cannot be held responsible for the apocalyptic dimension that underlies Jewish history and ultimately all of human history. In the Jewish universe, the

superiority of the Old Testament over all forms of mythology meant that the point of no

return had already been reached. The Law and the Prophets, as we saw, constitute a genuine

announcement of the Gospel, a
praefiguratio Cbristi
as the Middle Ages testified, but could

not show, unable as they were to recognize in the Old Testament a first step outside the

sacrificial system, and the first gradual withering of sacrificial resources. At the very moment

when this adventure approaches its resolution Jesus arrives on the scene -- Jesus as he

appears in the Gospels.

From now on, it becomes impossible to put the clock back. There is an end to cyclical

history, for the very reason that its mechanisms are beginning to be uncovered.

G.L.
: I think that the same thing [begins to happen in the preSocratics]. . . . Empedocles

gives us the splendid anti-sacrificial text that you quoted in
Violence and the Sacred
, 1. but

the pre-Socratics are unable to see the ethical consequences of what they are saying in the

domain of human relationships. No doubt that is why the pre-Socratics are
still
fashionable in the world of Western philosophy, while the Prophets
never
are.

R.G.
: Let us come back to the attitude of Jesus himself. The decision to adopt nonviolence is

not a commitment that he could revoke, a contract whose clauses need only be observed to

the extent that the other contracting parties observe them. If that were so, the commitment to

the Kingdom of God would be merely another farcical procedure, comparable to

institutionalized revenge or the United Nations. Despite the fact that all the others fall away,

Jesus continues to see himself as being bound by the promise of the Kingdom. For him, the

word that comes from God, the word that enjoins us to imitate no one but God, the God who

refrains from all forms of reprisal and makes his sun to shine upon the "just" and the "unjust"

without distinction -- this word remains, for him, absolutely valid. It is valid even to death,

and quite clearly that is what makes him the Incarnation of that Word. To sum

____________________

1.
Violence and the Sacred
, trans. P. Gregory ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

1977), 69.

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up: the Christ can no longer continue to sojourn in a world in which the Word is either never

mentioned or, even worse, derided and devalued by those who take it in vain -- those who

claim to be faithful to it but in reality are far from being so. Jesus' destiny in the world is

inseparable from that of the Word of God. That is why Christ and the Word of God are, I

reaffirm, simply one and the same thing.

Not only does Jesus remain faithful to this Word of Love, but he also does everything to

enlighten men about what awaits them if they continue in the pathways they have always

taken before. So urgent is the problem and so massive the stake that it justifies the remarkable

vehemence, even brutality, that Jesus manifests in his dealings with "those who have ears and

hear not, eyes and see not." That is indeed why -- through a further paradox, which is

outrageously unjust but could have been expected since we know that no mercy can be shown

to the person who understands what all the world around him refuses to understand -- Jesus

himself stands accused of unnecessary violence, offensive language, immoderate use of

polemics, and failure to respect the "freedom" of his interlocutors.

Within a process that has lasted for centuries -- indeed, since the beginnings of human history

-- the preaching of the Kingdom, first in the Judaic world and later throughout the world,

must intervene at the very point when the chances of success are maximized: that is to say, at

the very point when everything is ready to slide into a limitless violence. Jesus lucidly

perceives both the threat and the possibility of salvation. He therefore has the duty to warn

mankind; by announcing to all the Kingdom of God, he is doing no more that observing in his

own behavior the principles he proclaims. He would fail in his love for his brothers if he were

to keep silent and abandon the human race to the destiny that it is unconsciously creating for

itself. If Jesus has been called the Son of Man, this is principally, in my view, a response to a

text in Ezekiel that accords to a "son of man" a mission to warn the people that is very similar to the one conferred on Jesus by the Gospels:

So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a

word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked

man, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that

wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn

the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way; he shall die in his