Violence and the kingdom of God: Introducing the anthropology of Rene Girard

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 1998 by Marr, Andrew

In this understanding of religion, there seems to be no place for God. That is precisely Girard's understanding of the case. God would not want to have anything to do with religion that operates on the basis of sacred violence, and God does not.

The Hebrew Bible

Rene Girard sees in the Hebrew Bible a radical contrast with mythology. Far from veiling the truth, the Hebrew Bible begins to reveal the truth of sacred violence. There is much tension in the Hebrew Bible between God's revelation and the old projections of human violence on God. It takes time for God to wean humanity from the old means of keeping society from falling apart.

Like Romulus, Cain kills his brother and becomes a founder of cities (Gen. 4). It is significant that no clear reason is given why Abel's offering should have been more acceptable to God than Cain's. In a crisis generated by mimetic rivalry, nothing matters except the rivalry itself. The crucial difference between this story and that of Romulus and Remus is, of course, that while the blood of Remus was mute, the blood of Abel cries from the ground. The victim has been given a voice.'

There are many more stories that show mimetic rivalry resulting in violence. Joseph is shown to be the victim of collective violence because of the jealousy of his brothers. More important, he becomes an agent of reconciliation as a live human being rather than a dead one. Saul was driven to a murderous rage when David was credited with slaying tens of thousands and Saul only thousands (1 Sa. 18:7). Not only that, but when his son Jonathan befriended David, Saul tried, in vain to draw his son into his mimetic rivalry against David. Through his renunciation of that rivalry, Jonathan witnesses to a new way for humans to relate to one another in the fear of God. The Jewish religion is founded on violence, but with a radical difference from the founding mythology of other religions. Here, the story is told from the viewpoint of the victims. The Jews are the collective victims of Egyptian society, which has enslaved them. God's deliverance of the Jews from slavery, however, does not heal them of their own problems with mimetic rivalry and sacred violence. Violent tensions erupt periodically during the journey through the desert. In some instances, the people gang up on Moses and Aaron. In other instances, the people gang up on somebody else. Leviticus 23 narrates, in a straightforward manner, the story of a man, of foreign extraction, who commits "an act of blasphemy." An oracle cast by Moses says the man who committed the blasphemy should be stoned by all the people, and they obey the oracle. In each case, the stories show the collective violence for what it is.8 That violence is often projected onto God shows that the association of God with violence is still alive even with the chosen people.

The sacrificial violence as practiced by the other nations proved to be a constant temptation to Israel. The prophets constantly had to denounce the people for offering "up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter my mind that they should do this abomination, causing Judah to sin" (Jer. 32:35).9 Josiah tried to abolish this human sacrifice but, unfortunately, he did it by having all the prophets of Baal slain on their altars (2 Kings 23:20). In the act of fighting the victimization of the innocent, Josiah created more sacrificial victims.