Authors: RENÉ GIRARD
R.G.:
Yes, if we are anti-Christian, we are bound to attract many eager intellectuals, not least the feminists. Another is Nietzsche, the patron
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3. Discussed in
The Scapegoat
, 49.
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saint of postmodernism. Although I have a great admiration for his real insights and I think
he has not been well understood by most of his devotees, he is also a madman. The blind
worship of him is not merely foolish but destructive.
J.W.:
Here is a different kind of question for you. I have recently encountered the criticism that Girardians wish to point to a historical or empirical basis not only for religion and culture
but also for the dynamics of human relations. Yet so far Girardians have not used or engaged
in empirical testing.
R.G.:
I have observed a lot of mimetic rivalry lately with my grandchildren. It is very easy to verify rivalry in infants. It is true, however, that people interested in the mimetic theory, and I
myself, do not feel attracted to the type of experimentation that keeps enormous armies of
psychologists busy.
J.W.:
It occurs to me that it would be really interesting to delve into infant and child
development.
R.G.:
I have received a lot of material from experimental psychologists on imitation, and it
verifies that imitation precedes consciousness and language. It would be interesting to
experiment with more complex aspects of the mimetic theory. Unfortunately, experimental
psychologists are not yet aware of its existence, it seems. Furthermore, it is not easy to test.
You need parameters and controls for long periods of time and a way of analyzing the social
order of the subjects, of which the experimenter is also a part. The experimenter too is
involved in mimesis. So it's very difficult to test in a way that truly meets scientific
requirements. It is always nice to verify the obvious scientifically.
It would probably be a good thing if some investigators holding to the mimetic theory did that
kind of testing. It would be a sort of validation, but it would be of limited value. It would not
be at the intellectual level of the theory as a whole, most of which cannot be subjected to
empirical verification or falsification through empirical testing or the canons of contemporary
science, especially the principle of falsifiability. The complexity of what we are talking about
is too great for that.
J.W.:
Some followers of Ernest Becker are doing testing on "mortality salience." This means that subjects are given questions about their own mortality; then when they complete that part
of the testing they are given questions about social and legal issues which involve people who
have gone over the boundaries of culturally accepted behavior. When asked to impose
penalties, those who have been asked to reflect on, or react to, their own death tend to be
much more severe than those in the control group. Those who are rigid or conservative in
their religious or cultural values are the most punitive of all. What do you think of
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that kind of test? And how do you unravel rivalry from mortality, from abandonment and
isolation -- all the states or conditions symbolically associated with death?
R.G.:
I do not see why "subjects" who are asked questions in laboratories should be regarded as more reliable than the rest of us. The preoccupation with death in a subjective sense is
peculiar to modern Western societies. In archaic societies death did not mean the same thing.
Most of the time, death was interpreted as a consequence of violence, human and/or
supernatural. So the kind of focus to which you refer reflects a new freedom and is a kind of
luxury, really. It is no accident, from a religious point of view, that so many aspects of life are
getting easier and easier. As they do, we have plenty of time to think about old age and death.
The experience of death is going to get more and more painful, contrary to what many people believe. The forthcoming euthanasia will make it more rather than less painful because it will
put the emphasis on personal decision in a way which was blissfully alien to the whole
problem of dying in former times. It will make death even more subjectively intolerable, for
people will feel responsible for their own deaths and morally obligated to rid their relatives of
their unwanted presence. Euthanasia will further intensify all the problems its advocates think
it will solve.
J.W.:
Surveys I have seen indicate that the general populace supports assisted suicide, at
least in Michigan, where the state's cases against Dr. Kevorkian have been in the news.
R.G.:
The increasing subjective power of death converges with the fact that people are living
longer lives. It is an enormous religious and ethical issue, to my mind. In the Netherlands,
where I gather assisted suicides have become commonplace, there are claims that some of the
assisted suicides are not suicides at all. Even if they are, the suspicion will linger that they are
not, and the fear of being murdered is going to merge once again with the fear of dying. Our
supermodern utopia looks very much at times like a regression to archaic terror.
J.W.:
You just touched on the question of ethics. There is a sense or intuition that the
mimetic scapegoating theory is driven by ethical concerns. Certainly it should have important
ethical implications, don't you agree?
R.G.:
It certainly does, and one should always look to the Gospels. What are the
prescriptions of the Kingdom of God? Basically, give up a dispute when mimetic rivalry is
taking over. Provide help to victims and refuse all violence. I find the allegory of the sheep
and goats in Matthew 25 to be a key text; it's all there. When we identify with the person
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in need or who has been victimized, we encounter the Son of Man, Jesus Christ.
What the mimetic theory as such facilitates is the understanding that these ethical
prescriptions or principles are against the mimetic spirit of the mob. The Gospels show that
faith emerges when individuals come out of the mob.
J.W.:
It seems at first blush ironic and even contradictory that here you should put such
emphasis on the importance of the individual separating from the mob. You undoubtedly
don't understand it as contradictory, but how do you relate the individual coming out of the
crowd or mob to the critique of modern exaltation of the self, which becomes even a sort of
divinization of the self?
R.G.:
I don't think there is any contradiction. All the excesses of the modern world are
distortions of Christian truth. The fact that there is a new type of individual in Christianity is
the most important thing in the world. The Christian person is new and would have been
viewed by traditional cultures as subversive. The only difference is that our narcissistic
culture, which is really intensely mimetic and other-centered, is a deviation and a caricature
of the Christian person, not its fulfillment. Jesus is a real person in the Christian sense. So
were the prophets. There is great continuity between the prophets and Jesus.
The Servant of Yahweh in Isaiah is at the same level as Christ in the Gospels. But Christian faith emerged because Christians saw Jesus as the real fulfillment of what had merely been
professed before. He is so close to God that we affirm that he is God.
J.W.:
You are now approaching the Christian doctrine of incarnation. So far you have talked
about Jesus the man as God. But you could go the other way, could you not, and talk about
God as becoming a human being?
R.G.:
Yes, no human is able to reveal the scapegoat mechanism. The number one proof of
this is the denial of Peter. It could be interpreted psychologically as the weakness of Peter.
The number one disciple should be able to imitate Christ and stand up for him. But as soon as
he is immersed in a mob of scapegoaters, he surrenders to the mimetic pressure and joins
them. This is the true revelation of a weakness which is ours as well as Peter's.
And by all accounts, in myths from all societies, the embodiment of mimetic rivalry and
accusation, Satan, should so distort Jesus' mission and message that he is viewed as the guilty
hero or god. In fact, Jesus has already called Peter "Satan" because Peter did not understand nonrivalrous love and innocent suffering, and so tried to obstruct Jesus.
So the question becomes one of the transformation of the disciples, how they become able to
advocate the truth of Christ and the Kingdom of God. This has to occur through the power of
grace alone. So Jesus
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says "it is better that I go," because then the Spirit will be sent. Because Christ did what he did, grace filled the hearts of the disciples. One person did something for all the others, like
Judah to save Benjamin in the Joseph story. Jesus alone acts as God would like all human
beings to act. Jesus never yields an inch to mimetic pressure.
I now accept calling this "sacrifice" in a special sense. Because one person did it, God the Father pardons all, in effect. I had avoided the word "scapegoat" for Jesus, but now I agree with Raymund Schwager that he is scapegoat for all -- except now in reverse fashion, for
theologically considered the initiative comes from God rather than simply from the human
beings with their scapegoat mechanism. I think the Gospels understand Jesus basically that
way, and also Paul, when he speaks of God making Christ to be sin, but also our wisdom and
righteousness. He is the scapegoat for all.
In the common human pattern Jesus' death should have been transfigured in a mythical way,
but it was not. So the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 is revelation, to be sure, but in the
Gospels the revelation is more complete.
J.W.:
This is a good point to ask you about the resurrection. In a recent article in
First Things
you made comments about the disciples and the resurrection similar to what you have just
said in our conversation.
4. H
ow does your position differ from that of Rudolf Bultmann, who spoke of the resurrection as Christ's rising into the kerygma or proclamation of the church
through the disciples? For him it was not an objective event, but an interpretive event in the
minds and hearts of the disciples.
R.G.:
For me the resurrection is an objective fact. Even though it is visible or comprehensible only to those converted or in the process of converting, like Thomas, it does not mean, in my
view, that it is not an objective fact. The mimetically blind cannot see the truth. In the story
of the two disciples on the way to Emmaus ( Luke 24:13-35) you have both the "rising into
the kerygma" and the real presence of a real human being who breaks the bread and eats it.
Bultmann found it impossible to believe in the resurrection in the age of the automobile and
electricity. He gives the impression of conforming to the contemporary mob that believes
only in technology, the real visible power in our world. I do not. I find electricity very
usefully and impressive, but I do not worship it.
J.W.:
You don't care to speculate about the content of the experience, I gather. As you
mention, there are a variety of ways of reporting the resurrection.
R.G.:
Yes, and these modern historians usually read them in such a way as to deny the reality
of the resurrection. When accounts are too
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4. "Are the Gospels Mythical?,"
First Things 62
( April 1996): 31.
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neat, this is held against their veracity. When they are not neat, this is held against their
veracity as well. But to me the variety is fascinating. In Matthew the disciples encounter
Jesus back in Galilee; in John it occurs both in Jerusalem and Galilee; in Luke only in
Jerusalem; and in Mark the disciples are supposed to meet Jesus in Galilee, but the ending is
aborted, and that is problematic because there may have been a longer original ending that we
don't have. Now many of the historical critics practically tell us that the Gospels try to
hoodwink us. If they do, they certainly botched the job very badly. So badly that the
pseudoscientific skepticism leaves me skeptical. Don't we find such a variety of narrative
portrayals of the experience of the resurrection that this lends itself to credence rather than
disbelief? I don't think the Gospels are hoodwinking us at all.
This, by the way, is one of the reasons why I think the final composition of the Gospels was
probably earlier than New Testament criticism generally holds. There are signs of disarray
which come across as very close to the experiences themselves, and which contradict, in my
opinion, the thesis that turns the Gospels into clever propaganda for Christian missionaries.
As propagandists, the evangelists are either dreadful, or so sophisticated (if their disarray is a
clever trick) that our historians have not yet caught up with them.
J.W.:
There is even a touch of disarray in the depiction of Jesus, for example, his anguish in
the Garden of Gethsemane as he prayed, or his cry of abandonment from the Cross according
to Matthew and Mark.
R.G.:
Who are very different from Luke and John. That is why I say Christianity is dynamic