Victims, violence and the sacred: the thought of Rene Girard - includes bibliographies of books by and about Girard - Cover Story

According to Girard, the mass murders of the 20th century have occurred because the gospel has undermined the traditional sacrificial system that previously protected societies from outbreaks of unrestrained violence. Now that the sacrificial system is collapsing, the old mechanisms try more and more desperately to function and so demand more victims. Whether this adequately explains the mass murders of this century is doubtful. Earlier ages knew mass slaughter, but they did not have the technology to kill on the same scale. If earlier centuries had been able to perform actions like the fire-bombing of Dresden or the nuclear bombing for Hiroshima, they probably would have done so. Whether the scale of the purges of Stalin or Mao and other mass murders can be explained as due primarily to the gospel's unmasking of the scapegoat mechanism is unlikely.

Girard concludes his reflections with an appeal about the future. "For the first time," he says, humanity faces "a perfectly straightforward and even scientifically calculable choice between total destruction and the total renunciation of violence." In this apocalyptic context, Girard presents a stirring call to wake up, to acknowledge the dynamics of history, to renounce the patterns of violence and scapegoating, and to allow the nonviolent appeal for the gospel to transform the earth. It is a powerful and moving appeal.

However, it is difficult to see how such an all-or-nothing choice for the future could be "scientifically calculable." It seems more likely that neither alternative will take place, at least in the foreseeable future. Rather than either a total destruction of human life or a total renunciation of violence, we are more likely to muddle through with limited conflicts repeatedly breaking out but not escalating to total destruction, whether nuclear or ecological.

One problem in assessing the appeal for nonviolence is that Girard does not define exactly what behavior counts as violence. If violence is something broader than causing physical injury to another person, then different cultures have very different perspectives on what constitutes violent behavior. The failure to define the meaning of violence leaves the call for a renunciation of violence vague. The dramatic rhetoric of either total destruction or total renunciation of violence leaves us in a situation in which the very meaning of effective action is unclear. Is an economic boycott that seeks to end injustice an act of violence? At what point do economic sanctions that result in the deaths of children become an act of war? Buddhists pondering the First Precept note that if you boil water, you commit an act of violence against the microorganisms in it. Girard insists on surrendering the distinction between "good" and "bad" violence, but the lack of a working definition of violence leaves the concrete means of influencing the course of events unclear.

Alfred North Whitehead asserted with his characteristic playfulness: "It is more important for a proposition to be interesting than that it be true." Propositions for Whitehead are "tales that might be told," visions of possibilities relevant to a particular situation. Even if it turns out that the universalizing claims of Girard's theory are not sustainable, his work nonetheless calls attention to widespread dynamics of cultural and religious life that have too often been neglected by theologians. For this, we owe him a debt of gratitude.