Rene Girard and N.T. Wright

Those with a conservative background who start reading Girard are struck by how much he “gives away” with regard to the integrity of the scriptural text. That is fine—we ought to notice it. At the same time, it would be a very great mistake to identify him as some kind of liberal. Once you get used to him, it is very striking how triumphalistic he can be when it comes to a comparison of the Christian faith with all other comers. This is not said by way of agreement, but rather in the interests of accurate disagreement. Girard should be read, not as a systematic theologian, but rather as a remarkable exegete—pointing to places in our text that say some quite obvious things that we conservatives have never seen there before.

For Girard, the distinctiveness of the Christian faith does not arrive (fully formed) in Scripture from day one, although Girard claims it is distinctively visible in the scriptural text from Cain and Abel on. “The founding character of the murder is signaled just as clearly, and perhaps even more clearly than in the nonbiblical myths. But there is something else, and that is moral judgment” (Reader, p. 149). In the pagan rituals, there is nothing to sit in judgment on the sacrificial rites—the sacrificial rites are the ultimate judgment available to them. But in the biblical text, the possibility of a gross miscarriage of justice is always before us, because God sits in judgment on the sacrifices—and the Bible consistently takes up the cause of the victim. This means that if paganism is civilization, based on the founding murder, then the biblical faith is the un-civilization, the alter-civilization.

First, let’s consider some places where Girard misses some things. Girard does take liberties with the text. “The authors of Genesis have recast a preexistent mythology” (Reader, p. 151). And astonishingly, on the page after he has quoted Isaiah 53:6 (“the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all”, Girard takes verse 4 (“we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted”) as meaning, “It was not God who smote him; God’s responsibility is implicitly denied” (Reader, p. 157). But then he turns around and points to another example of the same thing. But note how he puts it:

“Even in the most advanced texts, such as the fourth ‘Song of the Servant,’ there is still some ambiguity regarding the role of Yahweh. Even if the human community is, on several occasions, presented as being responsible for the death of the victim, God himself is presented as the principal instigator of the persecution. ‘Yet [it] was the will of the Lord to bruise him’” (Is. 53:10).

We have no problem with this because we affirm the doctrine of propitiation—meaning that it was the will of the Lord to bruise him. The wrath of God was poured out on Christ on the cross. But for the present purpose, these are distractions. As we shall see, Girard believes the Bible straight up the middle at some other places where virtually no one else appears to see what it is actually saying. Those parts can be harmonized with the portions that Girard cannot get to harmonize, but let’s just allow him what he does get.

“Suppose that, far from being a gratuitous invention, myth is a text that has been falsified by the belief of the executioners in the guiltiness of their victim; suppose, in other words, that myths incorporate the point of view of the community that has been reconciled to itself” (Reader, p. 150). And contrast this with what the Bible does: “Abel is only the first in a long line of victims whom the Bible exhumes and exonerates” (Reader, p. 151).

Let’s set this up in an interesting way. There is a sense in which Girard offers a very healthy corrective to some of what is being circulated under the banner of the New Perspective on Paul, particularly in N.T. Wright’s resistance to the propriety of applying the charge of Pharisaism in any kind of universal way (to medieval monks, say). There is a sense in which we must insist on “timeless truths” if we are to understand what happened with the Pharisees at all. But so we don’t get distracted by notions of atemporality, let’s just talk about universal truths. When Jesus is attacking the scribes and Pharisees, is He doing something that can be safely locked up in a “Second Temple Judaism” box? Not a bit of it.

“Obviously he is directing his accusations at them, but a careful examination reveals that he is using the Pharisees as an intermediary for something very much larger, and indeed something of absolutely universal significance is at stake” (Reader, p. 158).

In these rebukes of the scribes and Pharisees, what does Jesus invoke? He tells the Pharisees that on them will come all the righteous blood shed on earth (Matt. 23:34-36). Starting with Cain and Abel, all murders are cumulative. And all of it will come on that generation. But although Abel was righteous, he was not a Jew—he lived thousands of years before the first Jew, and an additional couple thousand years before Herod’s Temple was started.

“The text also makes explicit mention of ‘all the righteous blood shed on earth.’ It therefore looks as though the kind of murder for which Abel here forms the prototype is not limited to a single region of the world or to a single period of history. We are dealing with a universal phenomenon . . .” (Reader, p. 159).

Luke makes things even stronger. “It identifies ‘the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world’ from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah’ (Luke 11:50-51). Shed from the foundation of the world. In Matthew 13:35, Jesus came in order to speak in dark parables, in order to utter out loud what had been hidden from the foundation of the world (same phrase). “Jesus is pointing not only at the Pharisees, but at the whole of humanity” (Reader, p. 159).

The issue is covenantal solidarity. When Jesus rebukes them for building the tombs of the prophets, and keeping them shiny, He is showing that something deeper than simple cognitive agreement is going on. “The sons are therefore still governed by the mental structure engendered by the founding murder” (Reader, p. 160).

Girard shows the essential agreement between John’s gospel and the three synoptics on this. How is it that in John 8:43-44 the devil is called “a murderer from the beginning”?

“Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:43-44).

“Here the essential point is that a triple correspondence is set up between Satan, the original homicide, and the lie. To be a son of Satan is to inherit the lie. What lie? The lie that covers the homicide . . . To be a son of Satan is the same thing as being the son of those who have killed the prophets since the foundation of the world” (Reader, p. 160).

“Human beings are sons of Satan because they are sons of this murder. Murder is therefore not an act whose consequences could be eliminated without being brought to light and genuinely rejected by men. It is an inexhaustible fund, a transcendent source of falsehood . . .” (Reader, p. 162).

“They must kill and continue to kill, strange as it may seem, in order not to know that they are killing” (Reader, p. 162).

“Human culture is organized around a more or less violent disavowal of human violence” (Reader, p. 165).

Now Girard wants to push this into all the corners, which is fine, so long as it is the corners of our own little evasive hearts. But we have to draw the line when he has to do violence to certain texts. We saw this with Isaiah earlier, but let’s take the example of John. The same apostle who saw the things revealed that had been hidden from the foundation of the world also said things like this. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36).