The Violence of God: a Final Response to Girard

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atonement, Bible, Caleb Nelson, crucifixion, literary criticism, nonviolence, Old Testament, propitiation, redemption, Rene Girard, sacrifice, salvation, soteriology, theology, violence

Sacrifice of the Old Covenant by Peter Paul Rubens (Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

by Caleb Nelson

Rene Girard pretends to be a mere literary critic who dabbles in anthropology. Actually, he is a full-blown theologian with a central dogma of non-violence. Despite the Biblical coloring Girard gives his doctrines, they are blacker than hell, for they proclaim a different gospel. In attacking violence, Rene Girard has attacked the very character of God.

The drowsiest reader of Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World will quickly see that for Girard, God is simply not allowed to be violent. No matter how clear and numerous the texts that proclaim otherwise, they must and will be massaged into a very different shape. Yet, contra Girard, violence stands at the very heart of the gospel. Christianity is unapologetically a religion of the blood. No exegetical gymnastics can vault over this fact.

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World presents a far-reaching anthropological vision to match its theological agenda. Over against the Christian teaching that humans beings are born dead in trespasses and sins, Girard has simply resuscitated the Pelagian teaching that human beings are born able to do what is right. “[R]econciliation with God can take place unreservedly and with no sacrificial intermediary through the rules of the kingdom” (183). This is law, not gospel. Girard has stolen the supernatural salvation offered by Jesus and substituted a natural salvation for it. In so doing, he has arrayed himself against every branch of the historic Christian faith. With the prophet Jonah, all true churches affirm that “Salvation is from the LORD” (Jonah 2:9 NASB).

Salvation is often described in resurrection terms: “you have been raised with Christ” (Col 3:1 ESV). Whom does God raise? The dead. “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes” (John 5:21 NASB). How did these dead people come to be dead? By the presence and power of sin in this world. “The person who sins will die” (Eze 18:20 NASB). “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23 ESV). Dead men cannot raise themselves. Salvation cannot be achieved by purely human effort, and the fact that Girard says otherwise simply shows that he is firmly camped outside the pale of Christianity.

Girard does not confine himself to attacking the human side of the gospel equation. Most of his time, in fact, is given to attacking the divine side. God’s actions, Girard correctly teaches, flow from his character. He does what is fitting for him to do based on who he is. But the Marcionite God of Girard is simply not the God of the Old Testament, the Gospels, the Epistles—or the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Exodus 34:7, God asserts to Moses that He will “by no means clear the guilty.” Furthermore, God is a consuming fire (Deu 4:24; Heb 12:29), indicating that it is His nature to consume and destroy all sin. As Puritan theologian John Owen commented, “As it is the nature of fire to consume and devour all things that are put into it, without sparing any or making difference, so is the nature of God in reference unto sin; wherever it is, He punisheth and revengeth it according to its demerit.”[1]  In short, it is apparent that it is fitting for God to punish sin—so fitting that He has no choice about it. He must punish sin, for His character is such that, were He to fail to do so, He must cease to be God. Habakkuk 1:13 makes this clear when it says that God is “of purer eyes than to look upon evil.” Similarly, Psalm 5 warns those singing it that God does not take delight in sin, that evil cannot dwell with Him, and that He destroys liars and abhors bloody and deceitful men (vv. 4-6). Perhaps most frightening of all, fallen humanity cannot hope to be delivered from God’s overwhelming justice by their own service, no matter how dedicated. When Joshua leads the people of Israel in a covenant renewal ceremony, they, overcome by emotion, promise to serve Yahweh faithfully. “But Joshua said to the people, ‘You are not able to serve the LORD, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins’” (Jos 24:19 ESV). The point is clear: God’s nature is such that he must punish sin wherever he finds it. God does not first witness sin and then decide whether he will do something about it. God’s disposition toward sin is fixed and unchangeable. He punishes it not just because he has promised to do so, but because his character will not allow him to do otherwise. This is not a “voluntary” action on God’s part, such that he can, if he chooses, let the guilty off scot-free.

Here we begin to see the glories of redemption. Every sin deserves the wrath and curse of God, and as he is a righteous judge, he executed that wrath on his Son Jesus Christ. In the final analysis, Jesus Christ had to die a violent, bloody death because of the righteous character of the Triune God. To say otherwise is to fall into heresy, both philosophical and theological. The philosophical heresy denies that persons, including the Triune God, have built-in essential natures. The theological heresy begins by devaluing the work of Christ and ends by devaluing his person. Human beings are stubbornly logical, and if a theological system does not really have a necessary part for Jesus to perform, then its adherents will sense his superfluity. Insofar as his work is perceived to unnecessary, his person will be found pointless. Though “Jesus” persists in heresies and cults, he is nothing more than a symbol of what man can become.

To denigrate violence is to denigrate the righteous character of God. God was the first to slaughter animals and cover Adam and Eve with their skins. God was the first to smite Uzzah, Nadab, and Abihu. God did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up a sacrifice for us all. In that bloody sacrifice, God’s righteousness has been demonstrated once and for all. In other words, righteous violence truly does exist. God commits it. And so must his image bearers. The state exists for the very purpose of (often violently) executing God’s wrath on evildoers.

The God Girard offers is not Jehovah; the salvation he offers is unobtainable; and the exegesis he offers is deceitful. His vision of mankind is not wicked enough, and his vision of Christ is not exalted enough. A God who cannot condemn is a God who cannot save. Our God has done both—at the cross of Jesus Christ.

This is the final part of a three-part refutation of Rene Girard’s theology. Here is Part I and Part II. Caleb Nelson is a Presbyterian rancher from Northern Colorado and a graduate student at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylors, South Carolina.

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[1] John Owen, An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, with Preliminary Exercitations, volume 3 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1991), 404.

Marcion Lives! René Girard’s Unoriginal Errors

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atonement, Caleb Nelson, evangelism, judgment, literary criticism, marcion, Postmodernism, redemption, Rene Girard, sacrifice, salvation, scapegoat, theology, victim, violence

(Photo Credit: Blogspot)

by Caleb Nelson

“Interpreters,” notes Rene Girard, “never notice that they are themselves invariably understood and explained by the text that they pride themselves on understanding and explaining to us” (212). This point ironically applies to Girard’s own work, of course—which, as a postmodern thinker, he himself would almost gleefully acknowledge.

From a pan- or mere- Christian perspective—bracketing the specifically evangelical commitments of most contributors to this website—Girard’s thesis presents difficulties both logical and doctrinal. In the spirit of the ancient father Tertullian, who first refuted the arch-heretic Marcion with arguments from reason and then with arguments from Scripture, I will undertake to refute Girard first with reason and then with Scripture.

Two arguments from logic militate against Girard. First of all, his thesis of mimetic desire is logically faulty, for it cannot explain the origin of desire any more than evolution can explain the origin of life. Girard powerfully criticizes Freud for postulating circular taboos—desire for the father is forbidden because desire for the father is forbidden—but apparently does not trouble himself about the circular origin of the first mimetic desire. Secondly, his attitude toward Scripture is internally inconsistent, as he accepts Scripture where it confirms his theory and rejects material he perceives as contradictory.

Two arguments from Scripture also militate against Girard. First, he contradicts the essential Christian teaching that Christ will judge the living and the dead. Secondly, the entire sweep of Biblical narrative is about bloody sacrifice. Girard’s wholly loving, nonviolent God is uncomfortably similar to Marcion’s God.

Two Logical Considerations

Where did the first desire come from? The answer to that question, says Girard, is bound up in the question of how the first man became a man. What provoked the process of “hominization”? The answer is in the work’s epigraph: “Man differs from the other animals in his greater aptitude for imitation.” This is a quote from Aristotle (Poetics, 4), and Girard enthusiastically embraces it. “The only thing ‘lacking’ in animal rites is the sacrificial immolation, and the only thing an animal needs to become human is the surrogate victim” (102). This statement of the problem comes after some caustic criticism of the evolutionary hypothesis. Girard correctly states that “[w]e have absolutely no idea what early ‘cultural’ processes consist of, how they interlock with ‘natural’ processes, and how they act on the latter to create more and more humanized forms” (88). In one of the brilliant insights he so frequently has about modern thought, Girard declares, “contemporary science has adopted the habit of treating the statement of the problem as if it were the solution. . . . Evolutionists answer the supreme confidence of the creationists with their own supreme confidence” (88). Both, he thinks, are merely speculating.

Though Girard’s theory can be faulted in many ways, it is not shy. Precisely where the confidence of the evolutionists falls short, Girard’s theory takes over and dogmatically asserts that hominids became human by their discovery of the power of mimetic desire. The founding murder brought about by this desire is the basis not only of human societies, but humanity itself. Yet where did this first desire come from? Simply put, if all desire is mimetic, then no desire can exist. It has to be seen before it can be felt, and it cannot be seen unless some other feels it. Yet that other could not feel it unless he first saw some third human feeling it. Remember, on Girard’s view, animals lack this capability for mimetic desire. The first human was the first mimetic desirer. But how did he get that way? Once more, the statement of the problem is regarded as the statement of the solution. The evolutionists, victims of Girard’s blistering criticism, say that somehow animals became man and therefore evolution is true. Girard himself, victim of his own critique, says that man imitates and animals do not; therefore, the first man came about by imitating another man. By definition, no man existed before the first man! So who did the man imitate? An animal? One does not become human by imitating animals. Girard cannot have it both ways. Either the first man was a man and the first, or he was not. Period.

The other logical problem in Girard’s approach arises in his treatment of the Gospels. For Girard, these four documents teach a wholly non-violent deity. One of the interlocutors in Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World brings up a problem with this view. In the parable of the wicked tenants of the vineyard, Christ Himself declares that the owner of the vineyard will eventually destroy the wicked tenants. This is the text of both Mark (12:9) and Luke (20:15-16). Matthew has a slightly different version, in which Christ asks the crowd what the vineyard owner will do. “They said to him, ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons’” (Mat 21:40-41 ESV). Girard explains. “Jesus does not credit God with the violence. He allows his audience to come to their own conclusions and these represent not his thoughts but their own, thoughts that take God’s violence for granted. I believe we should prefer Matthew’s text” (188). Girard, in other words, simply prefers the reading that supports his thesis and rejects the two that do not. In other words, Girard himself cannot read his thesis out of Scripture without cherry-picking texts. But why should we regard Matthew as correct if we are free to reject Mark and Luke? Once again, Girard cannot have it both ways. Either Scripture is authoritative, or it is not.

Furthermore, a glance at the passages in question demonstrates a stunning lack of scholarly care. Look at the text of Luke 20:15-16. “‘What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.’ When they heard this, they said, ‘Surely not!’” (ESV). So much for the audience’s belief in a violent God! Now, the chief priests, scribes, and elders (this parable’s original hearers) doubtless had a vested interest in denying the reality of God’s coming judgment upon them. Matthew records their recognition of the justice of God’s punishment; Luke, their fearful response to that same reality. This is not Jesus accommodating a misinformed crowd, but Jesus threatening violence against the religious leaders who knew only too well their own guilt before God.

Two Biblical Considerations

Virtually all Christians acknowledge that Christ “will come to judge the living and the dead,” as the Apostle’s Creed summarizes. The Swabian Revivalist preacher Christoph Blumhardt described one way out of this teaching: “Jesus can judge,” he said, “but not condemn.” But the very parable cited by Girard clearly shows this interpretation to be false, as do other clear passages. “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,” teaches Paul, “that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Cor 5:7 ESV). Jesus both judges and condemns.

Finally, Girard’s system contradicts the sacrificial and cultic core of the Bible’s teaching. What is the central chapter of the central book of the Pentateuch? Leviticus 16. That chapter outlines the crucial concept of the Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement. The Levitical cultus is the heart and soul of the Old Testament method of approaching God. The Old Testament is more than a Hebrew relic; it is truly Christian Scripture, and all Christians agree that it is important for their faith. Readers of the Old Testament are confronted with a burning question: Who can ascend the mountain of Yahweh (Psalm 24:3)? Only the one with clean hands and a pure heart. How can one get these hands and heart? Through animal sacrificial atonement. The entire core of the Pentateuch (and thus the foundation of all Scripture) is the story of Israel’s sojourn at Sinai, which runs from Ex. 19 to Num. 10. There the Tabernacle and the Levitical cultus was revealed to Moses. But of course, sacrifice shows up far more often than that in Scripture. How was the wrath of God placated after the Flood? By Noah’s animal sacrifice. How was Christ’s death interpreted by the writer to the Hebrews? As “offering one sacrifice for sins forever” (Heb 10:12 HCSB). These few points are merely the smatterings of the entire tone and tenor of the Bible.

God will judge, and he requires and accepts sacrifice. As Tertullian argued so long ago, a “wholly good” god who will not bestir himself to punish iniquity is a contradiction in terms. If he loves good, he must hate evil; and if he fails to hate evil, then he does not love good. The true God, unlike the God of Marcion and Girard, is wholly good, and maintains a holy hatred of evil.

The Biblical text understands Girard as a human sinner liable to God’s judgment. It explains his attempt to explain away God’s judgment as the attempt of that guilty person to justify himself in some way other than that offered by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Any interpreter who does not understand and explain these truths from the Biblical text has neither understood nor explained that text’s message.

This is the second part of a three-part refutation of Rene Girard’s theology. Here is Part I and Part III. Caleb Nelson is a Presbyterian rancher from Northern Colorado and a graduate student at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylors, South Carolina.

René Girard: Who Is This Guy, Anyway?

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anthropology, atonement, Caleb Nelson, desire, Jesus Christ, literary criticism, mimetic desire, Rene Girard, salvation, society, theology, victim

(Photo Credit: Films 7)

By Caleb Nelson

Though few in the church have heard his name, French literary theorist and anthropologist Rene Girard has strongly influenced the theology of both the emergent church and some sectors of evangelicalism. Born in 1923, Girard came to the U.S. after WWII and spent most of his career at Stanford University. Though he is still living (and publishing), he has been retired since 1995.

All desire, teaches Girard, is mimetic. That is, one does not develop a desire for an object unless he first sees another person desiring that same object. But when two people desire the same object, they inevitably fall into a rivalry. In the intensity of the rivalry, the two forget the object and focus entirely on their rivalry. Of course, this process is not limited to only two individuals, and eventually, it will infect an entire society. Society at that point becomes a mob and suddenly fixates on one particular individual as the source of the entire problem of unstoppable mimetic rivalry. That person is then murdered, and his murder brings peace and reconciliation. He is then sacralized as both the cause of societal chaos and the solution to that chaos. From this “founding murder” proceeds all human culture. Girard sees examples in the story of Cain and Abel (after murdering his brother, Cain founds a city, and his offspring invent music and metallurgy) and Romulus and Remus (Romulus murders his brother so that he can found Rome).

This founding murder is also the basis of ritual and religion, which seek to reenact the event which gave rise to community and thus ward off the mimetic chaos removed in the beginning by the founding murder.

The material covered in the first two paragraphs occupies the first section of Girard’s 1978 work, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. According to its back cover, this text falls into three categories: critical theory, anthropology, and literature. It relevance to theology is found in part two, in which Girard undertakes to prove that the Bible teaches Girard’s theory of mimetic desire and the founding murder. However, the Bible makes clear what all other myths conceal: the innocence of the victim and thus the illegitimacy of the founding murder. This is already clear in the story of Cain and Abel. The prophets, and especially the Servant Songs of Isaiah, teach that violence is a human product, and that Yahweh hates bloody sacrifice of all kinds. Nonetheless, even the prophets did not see quite clearly, for Isaiah 53 still contains some material indicating a bloodthirsty God: “Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief” (Isa 53:10 ESV). Only in the Gospels do we find the full revelation of the founding murder. In that revelation is its condemnation: for the murder to work, everyone must agree to believe that the victim was guilty. When it is shown conclusively that the victim was innocent, then the foundation of culture is put in jeopardy. The “founding mechanism” no longer works. Girard claims that within the Gospels is no trace of sacrifice; they are the pure teaching of non-violence. Jesus did not die in anyone’s place. When Solomon determined to divide the infant and give half to each claimant, the real mother offered to give up her baby that she might save its life. In a way exactly similar, Jesus gave up his life so that humankind might live non-violently in future. He allowed himself to be the founding victim, the object of the mimetic storm, in order to reveal to us the truth about human culture’s origin. He died for men, not the object of God’s wrath (God has no wrath), but merely as an object lesson to reveal what mythology had hidden since the foundation of the world.

God’s character is loving to the exclusion of all forms of justice and punishment.  “He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mat 5:45 ESV) is for Girard a complete description of the divine character. His description of Jesus’ messianic message is similar.

This is the essential theme, repeated time and time again, of Jesus’ preaching: reconciliation with God can take place unreservedly and with no sacrificial intermediary through the rules of the kingdom. . . . Thus mankind no longer has to base harmonious relationships on bloody sacrifices, ridiculous fables of a violent deity, and the whole range of mythological cultural formations. (183)

He enthusiastically declares the logical consequence of this view: the crucifixion was merely a drastic example of the consequences of failure to heed the call to Kingdom living. “If they had accepted the invitation unreservedly, there would have been no apocalypse announced and no Crucifixion” (202).

Girard freely admits that the sacrificial reading of the Gospel text is nearly universal. Both the churches and their enemies embrace this reading. Yet it is mistaken. The book of Hebrews (which Girard quotes) is simply a late document out of accord with the spirit of the Gospels and more like the theology of the Isaianic Servant Songs. Meanwhile, the document Christ canceled by nailing it to his cross in Colossians 2 “is human culture, which is the terrifying reflection of our own violence” (192). Thus, for Girard, the good news is simply that we no longer have to take the way of violence and mimetic conflict epitomized by the founding murder. Thus, he goes so far as to speak of “those who could have helped Jesus in his mission and made the good reciprocity really catch on” (203).

The favorite self-designation of Jesus was “the Son of Man.” Girard takes a view almost completely opposite to the generally accepted position, which sees this title stemming from the Messianic figure of Daniel 7:13 to whom is given dominion and authority. God addressed Ezekiel also by the title “Son of Man.”  Girard interprets the title in accordance with the mission of Ezekiel as a watchman, responsible to warn those who persist in their violent ways. Jesus was supremely one who warns the violent of the consequences of their violence.

Jesus is by nature God, though not in an exclusive sense. Other human beings can also attain to his divine status through his mediation. Girard even affirms the virgin birth, and a (highly) idiosyncratic reading of original sin.

If Christ alone is innocent, then Adam is not the only one to be guilty. All men share in this archetypal state of blame, but only to the extent that the chance of becoming free has been offered to them and they have let it slip away. We can say that this sin is indeed original but only becomes actual when knowledge about violence is placed at humanity’s disposition. (223, italics his)

Thus, “men are never condemned by God. They condemn themselves by their despair” (247). Jesus does not save; He teaches us to be better—if we’ll listen.

One cannot but applaud the creativity of Girard’s message. He has masterfully read the spirit of the age. But his teaching leaves the Christian reader with a question: is this new theology compatible with Scripture or tradition?

This is the first part of a three-part refutation of Rene Girard’s theology. Here are Part II and Part III. Caleb Nelson is a Presbyterian rancher from Northern Colorado and a graduate student at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylors, South Carolina.