"my soul is like a weaned child"

The short Psalm 131 is built around a single image, a weaned child resting with his or her mother:

Lord, my heart is not proud;
my eyes are not haughty.
I do not get involved with things
too great or too wondrous for me.
Instead, I have calmed and quieted my soul
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like a weaned child.

The image of a weaned child, rather than a nursing child, is interesting. We're further along the developmental trajectory. Not a newborn infant, but a toddler who is walking around, talking, and eating solid food. The metaphor is less about dependency than trust. What we see in Psalm 131 is what psychologists would call a "secure attachment." The weaned child experiences their mother as a secure base and a haven of safety. 

The Psalm connects this trust with humility: "My heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty." There's also an experience of inner peace and tranquility: "I have calmed and quieted my soul." As I describe in The Shape of Joy Psalm 131 is depicting a "quiet ego." 

The story I tell in The Shape of Joy is how transcendence is good for you. The modern self has collapsed in upon itself, becoming introverted, ruminating, self-referential, and morbidly self-absorbed. We are incurvatus in se, as Augustine put it. Curved in upon ourselves. And there are mental health consequences of this curvature. Instead of quiet, the ego is loud, agitated, unstable, and reactive. 

Consequently, we need to make an "outward turn" to become excurvatus ex se, curved outward to make contact with a reality bigger and other than our own. The science of awe, humility, gratitude, meaning in life, and spirituality, in their relation to mental health and well-being, all converge upon this story. Joy has a shape.

And that's the shape we see in the metaphor of Psalm 131. Humility and inner quietude flow out of a relation of trust. That's the key. The story I share in The Shape of Joy is largely descriptive, connecting the correlational dots of positive psychology to bring its main, and often unstated, conclusion into view. Because a clear story has emerged. Trouble is, if you read a book on the science of gratitude, the research on awe, or the effectiveness of humble leadership, you can miss the forest for the trees. You won't see how all these disparate research literatures, along with their outward facing self-improvement podcasts and books, reach the same conclusion. Transcendence is good for you.  It's like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, each one touching a different part of an elephant and arguing about what the creature is, since each describes only the piece he feels—the trunk is a snake, the tusk is a spear, the leg is a tree. Each holds a bit of the truth but can't see the unified whole. The research on gratitude, humility, awe, and meaning in life is like this, each book and podcast a blind man describing only a part of the whole. We fail to see the elephant—transcendence—because we consume the science bit by bit. The goal of The Shape of Joy is the bring the elephant into view.

Still, as I said, that was largely a descriptive task. It doesn't really answer the question about why transcendence is good for us. That's an explanatory, rather than descriptive, question. And since I didn't want to get too preachy in The Shape of Joy I didn't push too hard in this direction. But the explanation is the one we find in Psalm 131. Specifically, the self is inherently relational. There is no isolated ego or self. We exist only in relation. Thus, I can only come to know, define, and explore myself through relation. Self-help, self-exploration, and self-actualization are, at root, delusional, resting upon a false ontology and anthropology. Consequently, it stands to reason that when the self cuts itself off from relation, and tries to explore, define, and know itself in isolation, it will become disordered and hallucinatory. Just look around at the world. That’s what we see at the heart of our modern mental health crisis—disordered, hallucinatory selves.

Transcendence is good for us because it restores relation. And at the heart of the Christian vision of reality is the confession that this relation is, ontologically, personal. A Martin Buber put it, our relation to reality is not I-It, but I-Thou. But actually, object-relations theory and Psalm 131 would reverse this. Thou precedes I. The relation is Thou-I. Relation is prior to the self. The child only comes to know herself in relation to the mother. Self-definition assumes relation. The Thou, the maternal relation, is prior to the development of the self, the I. 

That is the explanation about why transcendence is good for us. Our flourishing flows out of a trusting relation with reality. Our I comes into being in relation to a prior, parental Thou. And in trusting this relation our souls become like a weaned child, peaceful, quiet and at rest. 

As I mentioned, my explorations into Girardian thinking regarding the katechon were kicked off by my colleague David sharing a recent Wired article about the tech billionaire Peter Thiel. I didn’t know much of anything about Thiel at the time, and I typically don’t care what tech billionaires are up to or thinking. But I was struck by how Thiel had been going around giving lectures about the Antichrist and that his ideas were based upon his readings of René Girard. The article was also my first introduction to how the biblical reference to the katechon had been put to use in Girardian thought and modern political theology. I’d read Girard’s I See Satan Fall Like Lightning but missed his reference to the katechon and the work of Wolfgang Palaver at the end of the book.

So, what is Peter Thiel saying about the katechon and the Antichrist?

The most Girardian aspect of Thiel’s thinking concerns the coming Apocalypse. We’ve discussed this over the last two posts. Since the Gospel accounts have demythologized the sacred violence at the heart of archaic religion, modern societies have lost the ability to handle, direct, and discharge rising mimetic violence. Slowly, a war of all against all begins to tear the world apart. All this is foretold in the book of Revelation.

Revelation also foretells the coming of the Antichrist, a power that rises to global dominance. From Revelation 13:

The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to blaspheme God and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.

The Beast in Revelation is “given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation,” and “all the inhabitants of the earth” will come to worship the Beast. With the rise of modern dispensationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries, these lines from Revelation 13 were taken as prophecies about the coming of a global power ruled by an autocratic dictator. Because of this, Christians subscribing to dispensationalism have often been suspicious of “one world governments” and, in more recent times, anything related to “globalism.”

Here’s where Thiel’s ideas show up. According to Thiel, how does the Antichrist rise to global power? As the world faces increasing chaos and violence, it will look for a savior. The world will look for a katechon, a power with global reach that can hold back, contain, and restrain the enveloping darkness. The Antichrist will offer itself to the world as the katechonic solution to social dissolution and escalating bloodshed. As the katechon, the Antichrist will restore safety, peace, and prosperity. And so, the world makes a deal with the Devil. The Antichrist is given global power and authority to play the role of katechonic savior.

Those are the dominoes that fall. The world worsens and the Apocalypse looms. The world clamors for a katechonic savior, a power that can hold back and restrain the coming disaster. The Antichrist promises to be that savior but needs global power to do so. The world cedes that global power to the Antichrist. And that is how the Antichrist comes to rule the world.

I’m describing all this in biblical and apocalyptic imagery, which makes it seem occult and supernatural. But for Thiel, this is a straightforward material and political analysis. Liberty and freedom are ceded to centralizing governmental and economic forces that arrogate power for themselves by incessantly banging the drum about looming catastrophes—from global warming to AI to nuclear war to terrorism to economic inequality. Stated that way, one starts to see how Thiel leverages this suite of ideas to justify his support of right-wing politicians who decry globalization.

The pithy way Thiel has summarized his theories about the Antichrist is “Don’t immanentize the katechon.” This is a play on the political-theological maxim, “Don’t immanentize the eschaton.” An “immanentized eschatology” is a utopian vision of bringing heaven to earth, that the kingdom of God can be achieved by human effort from within history. Marxism, for example, has been criticized for trying to immanentize the eschaton by claiming it could establish a worker’s paradise on earth. You can see here Thiel’s (serious) joke about immanentizing the katechon. According to Thiel, it would be disastrous if we ceded our freedoms to a global power promising peace and security. It would be a catastrophe if the katechonic savior were realized upon earth.

Personally, I do find this bit of Thiel’s thinking worth pondering. In the past, political visions like Marxism were utopian. They promised heaven on earth. The political saviors of today, by contrast, present themselves more grimly and realistically. Today’s political saviors don’t promise heaven on earth. Rather, they promise to be strong enough to protect you from outside threats. They promise to be your katechon. They promise to fight for you and defend you. The salvation political saviors promise today isn’t utopian but katechonic.

And here, once again, we observe just how slippery all this is, how the katechon doesn’t hold back the Antichrist, as described in 2 Thessalonians, but becomes the Antichrist. The crux of Thiel’s theory is how the Antichrist gains power by promising to be the katechon. In biblical language, Satan is being used to cast out Satan. Satan prowls the earth, causing a rise in mimetic violence. Then we turn toward Satan to restrain that violence. 

Which brings us to the katechonic irony of Peter Thiel. In Ross Douthat’s interview with Thiel, he asks Thiel a sharp question. (Douthat starts his question around the 55:30 mark.) Douthat asks whether all the stuff Thiel’s developing—from AI to military tech to surveillance tech—in order to prevent the Antichrist from taking over the world might contribute to facilitating that arrival. As observers of the interview have noted, it’s a question that seems to put Thiel on his heels, giving him pause and making him visibly uncomfortable.

That’s the irony, isn’t it? Thiel is playing katechon. Thiel is trying to prevent the coming of the Antichrist, to restrain its coming. That’s his agenda. And to accomplish that goal—notice this—he’s banging the catastrophic drum. Thiel then steps in as katechonic savior to prevent the Apocalypse.

And isn’t that precisely what Peter Thiel says the Antichrist would do?

As mentioned in the last post, Wolfgang Palaver's 1995 article "Hobbes and the Katéchon: The Secularization of Sacrificial Christianity" in the journal Contagion: Journal of Violence Mimesis and Culture was influential in putting the political idea of the katechon on the radar screen of Girardians.

In the article, Palaver points to the work of the German political theorist Carl Schmitt (1888–1985). Schmitt is of interest to this story for two reasons. First, Schmitt was noteworthy for deploying the biblical allusion to the katechon, the “restrainer” that holds back chaos and the unveiling of the Antichrist, within modern political theory. Second, and notoriously, Schmitt invoked the notion of the katechon to defend Hitler’s rise to power. During the early years of National Socialism, Schmitt argued that while there was much to object to in Hitler and his political vision, Hitler’s strong leadership provided the katechontic medicine the Weimar Republic desperately needed. As events unfolded, however, Schmitt’s katechontic defense of Hitler was revealed to be a world-historic and catastrophic mistake. Yet Schmitt’s tragic error illustrates one of the central points of this series: how the katechon can become the Antichrist. Or how the Antichrist can come to power by claiming to be the katechon.

Back to Palaver.

The heart of Palaver's argument is that Thomas Hobbes' vision of the secular state in Leviathan is that of a Girardian ketechton. 

Recall how, according to Girard, the demise of archaic religion threatens to unloose social violence. Satan has been thrown out of heaven and now prowls the earth. The archaic religious scapegoating mechanism, where all (the community) were against one (the scapegoat), has returned to the primordial all against all. As a result, social dissolution threatens. There is no cathartic outlet for rising mimetic violence

Thomas Hobbes saw the looming catastrophe that was emerging in modernity. Witnessing the wars of religion that had resulted from the fracturing of the sacred order due to the Protestant Reformation, Hobbes argued that the secular state had to step into repress the escalating mimetic violence that was emerging between religions and individuals. As Palaver observes:

Hobbes's solution to the religious and political crisis of his time was the proposal to establish an absolute power that could prevent the outbreak of civil war. According to Hobbes, the civil sovereign should be the ruler of both politics and religion; he should be civil sovereign as well as head of the Church and sole interpreter of Scripture. If we study Hobbes's political philosophy carefully, we will realize that his state functions like a katéchon: it provides for the permanent prevention of chaos and violence...The aim of Hobbes's state is the restraining of the apocalyptic state of war.

Simply put, the secular nation state functions as the katechon to prevent the contagious outbreak of widespread mimetic violence. The key difference here is the secularization of the katechon. Where ancient societies relied upon sacred violence, the secular state is a demythologized power and can perform its katechontic function only if stands over and above religion. As Palaver writes:

Hobbes's political concept, the powerful state, resembles his image of God in many ways. Just as the [Biblical] God of the final speeches of Job or the [Egyptian] God Horus have to restrain the chaotic monsters, Hobbes's state has to prevent the outbreak of chaos or civil war. As Carl Schmitt notes, the purpose of Hobbes's state—which originates in the war of all against all—is the permanent prevention of that war. The analogy between Hobbes's image of God and his concept of the state and of sovereignty is an example of secularization...

Basically, the state becomes the new God of modernity, the national God who stands above the fractious gods of the Christian denominations. But notice what has happened here. A bait and switch has just occurred. By stepping in to prevent the Apocalypse, the state takes over the role of justifying violence. The scapegoating once hidden by archaic religion is now masked by a new sacred order, the violence of the secular state. Palaver makes the observation: 

Hobbes’s transfer of the theological concept of the katéchon to the secular realm of politics, for instance, is not a secularization of the true spirit of the Gospel. It is the secularization of a sacrificial theology. 

Here’s the question: How will the world be saved? We face, again, the choice between conversion and the katechon, a choice between “the true spirit of the Gospel” and the modern state’s katechonic “secularization of a sacrificial theology.” Modernity has chosen the state. And Christians have chosen the state! We apprehend threats all around us and run to the state as savior, the katechonic Restrainer who will hold back the chaos. And as our new God, the state preserves the social order just as the old archaic religions once did: through scapegoating violence. And that’s the Devil’s greatest trick. Through the state, as our katechonic savior, we use Satan to cast out “Satan,” the innocent scapegoat. Mimetic violence is directed toward the scapegoats identified by the state which secures national solidarity and peace. 

The tragedy of Carl Schmitt is repeated. The katechonic savior is, once again, revealed to be the Antichrist.

I mentioned in the last post that Peter Thiel is a follower of René Girard and connects his ideas about the Antichrist and katechon to Girard's vision of the Apocalypse.

I discussed Girard's thoughts about the Apocalypse in my most recent series about moral influence and the atonement. But a quick recap for anyone new and jumping in with this series. 

First, mimetic desire and mimetic rivalry. Humans imitate each other. When we imitate the desires of others, we come to desire the same things. This draws us into competition and rivalry. As rivalry spreads through mimetic contagion, the threat of collective violence and social dissolution grows. 

Second, archaic religion, sacred violence, and the scapegoat. Ancient religions solved the problem of mimetic rivalry by identifying a scapegoat. The violence of the group could be directed and discharged toward a single individual. The scapegoat is killed, and a collective catharsis is achieved. Over time, the power of the scapegoat to bring about peace is ritualized and mythologized. Sacrificial violence binds the community together. 

Third, the gospel unmasking of sacrificial violence. In the New Testament gospel accounts, for the first time in history, we see the dynamics of scapegoating and sacrificial violence from within, from the perspective of the innocent victim--Jesus of Nazareth. We see how communal peace is achieved through the scapegoating and killing of an innocent victim. The Gospels expose the violent and unjust roots of archaic religion and the sacred foundations of ancient civilization. Christianity calls both civilizations and individuals away from this sacrificial, scapegoating violence. Like Paul on the road to Damascus, we are saved when we stand in solidarity with those we have been victimizing. 

Fourth, the modern world and the coming apocalypse. Having had the illegitimacy of archaic religion and the catharsis provided by sacred violence exposed by the Gospels, modern society has been deprived of a release valve for its mimetic rivalry. Scapegoating still occurs, but this violence lacks sacred, universal legitimacy and therefore cannot generate the binding and unifying power archaic religion once provided. Consequently, rivalry and violence escalate. As humanity moves closer to social catastrophe and destruction, we face a stark choice: be converted or suffer the apocalypse. The book of Revelation predicts that while a few will be converted to the way of Jesus, most will reject his call and succumb to the power of the Antichrist. Armageddon is coming.

Here's some things I'd like to underline for the purposes of this series. 

What the gospel accounts provide us with is an apocalypse, an exposure and unveiling. The dynamics of history have been brought into the light. As Jesus said, things hidden from the foundation of the world have been brought into view. This unveiling provides us with moral clarity, and that clarity presents us with a choice. We can follow Jesus into the peaceable kingdom of God or walk the highway to hell. And as predicted by both Jesus and the book of Revelation, most people will walk the road to doom. As Jesus says (NLT translation): "The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it."

In this view, the gospel "saves" us by providing us a clear view and a clear choice. That choice is now up to us.  And this is, by the way, why I describe Girard's theory as a moral influence view of the atonement. Salvation is a choice we make.

In the conclusion of his book I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Girard reflects upon Jesus' statement in the gospels, "I see satan fall like lightning from heaven." As we've described above, divine and heavenly legitimacy has been stripped away from justifying satanic, scapegoating violence. Satan has been thrown out of heaven. And yet, as Girard observes, while thrown out of heaven Satan now prowls the earth. Scapegoating violence continues but the sacrificial mechanisms that once corralled and channeled this violence have been dismantled. And this creates a new set of problems. Girard:

By revealing the secret of the prince of this world, the Passion accounts subvert the primordial source of human order. The darkness of Satan is no longer thick enough to conceal the innocence of victims who become, at the same time, less and less "cathartic." It is no longer possible really to "purge" or "purify" communities of their violence. Satan can no longer expel Satan. We should not conclude from this that humans are going to be immediately rid of their now fallen prince.

In the Gospel of Luke Christ sees Satan "fall like lightning from heaven" (10:18). Evidently he falls to earth, and he will not remain inactive. Jesus does not announce the immediate end of Satan, not yet at least. It is rather the end of his false transcendence, his power to restore order through his false transcendence, the end of scapegoating...

Christianity expands the range of human freedom, which individuals and communities make use of as they please, sometimes in a good way but often in a bad way. A bad use of freedom contradicts, of course, what Jesus intends for humanity. But if God did not respect the freedom of human beings, if he imposed his will on them by force or even by his prestige, which would mean by mimetic contagion, then he would not be different from Satan.

Jesus is not the one who rejects the kingdom of God; it's human beings who do so...

So, with Satan now prowling the earth and humans increasingly misusing their freedom what is keeping the satanic escalation at bay? What is holding back the final arrival of the Antichrist?

Here Girard turns to make one of his few references to the image of the katechon in 2 Thessalonians. Girard:

What delays the "unbinding of Satan"? St. Paul, in the letter to the Thessalonians, defines it as a katechon, as that which constrains the Apocalypse in the twofold sense of the word as noted by J.P. Dupuy: to have within itself and to hold within certain limits. This "containing" is made up of a set of qualities that contradict one another, and in particular the force stemming from the inertia of the powers of this world, their inability to understand the Revelation of Christ in spite of their worldly intelligence and adaptability. 

In his work Girard did not discuss the katechon at length, but here he gestures toward the idea before turning toward his favored approach to address the threat of societal violence: the non-violent way of Jesus. Girard prefers conversion over the katechon. Regardless, Girard acknowledges that "the powers of the world," through their contradictory inertia, can delay societal collapse. These powers, however, lack an understanding of the Gospels and, while they may postpone the Apocalypse, they cannot prevent its eventual arrival. 

In making this point about the katechon in I See Satan Fall Like Lightning Girard footnotes the work of Wolfgang Palaver. In the Wired article I cited in the last post, Palaver is presented as a rival to Peter Thiel, albeit a respectful and friendly one, in how best to interpret Girard on the Apocalypse. Palaver is with Girard in calling for conversion to the way of Jesus. Thiel, by contrast, is more interested in the katechon. (More precisely, Thiel is concerned with how the Antichrist will put the katechon to satanic use. But that's getting ahead of ourselves...) For the purposes of this series, Palaver was one of the thinkers who elevated the idea of the katechon in Girardian studies. 

We'll turn to his work next.

Recently, my colleague David McAnulty sent me this Wired essay about Peter Thiel's theories concerning the Antichrist and how those relate to Girardian thought concerning the Apocalypse. Some of Thiel's beliefs concerning the Antichrist also showed up in his interview with Ross Douthat.

I had a vague notion about who Thiel was, a tech billionaire who has supported Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. What I didn't know, until reading the Wired essay, was that Thiel describes himself as a committed Girardian, and uses Girard to defend his beliefs about the rise of the Antichrist. Of particular interest to me was the role of the katechon in Thiel's political theology. All this sent me down a rabbit hole exploring how the katechon plays out in Girardian thought, and how these ideas are entering the political mainstream through people like Peter Thiel.

Also, since I just finished a series on René Girard where I discussed his vision of the Apocalypse I felt this would be a good follow-up series.

So, to start, what is the katechon? And what is the relation of the katechon to the Antichrist?

In 2 Thessalonians 2 there is an enigmatic discussion about the coming of the "the man of lawlessness":

Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.

A few verses later, Paul describe how the man of lawlessness will rise to power:

The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

The man of lawlessness is not explicitly called the Antichrist in 2 Thessalonians, but throughout church history the two figures have been closely associated. The man of lawlessness appears before the return of the Lord, leading a great rebellion against God. He deceives the world. He exalts himself in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be divine. These descriptions echo the Beast in Revelation, a figure marked by mass deception, global dominion, and open war against God. 

In describing the man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul turns to mention a second mysterious figure:

Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is holding him back (τὸ κατέχον), so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back (ὁ κατέχων) will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. 

At present, Paul says, something or someone is "holding back" the man of lawlessness. Something is "restraining" the Antichrist. This enigmatic "restrainer" Paul calls τὸ κατέχον (katechon), the "restraining thing" or "the one who restrains."

Okay, who is this Restrainer? Who is holding back the Antichrist?

This is where we take a turn toward political theology. For most of church history, the katechon was believed to be the power of the empire to prevent social chaos and dissolution. For example, some of the early church fathers felt that the Roman Empire was the katechon. Rome certainly wasn't good, but the civil order Rome provided did prevent the global rise of the Antichrist. Later, during the Medieval period, the Holy Roman Empire was believed to be the restraining power that prevented social unrest and upheaval. In short, up until the Protestant Reformation the katechon was believed to be legitimate political power to preserve the social order.

With the Reformation, however, the meaning of the katechon became deeply contested, a development that, as we’ll see, has relevance to contemporary debates surrounding Peter Thiel. Specifically, rather than viewing the political power of the Catholic Church, embodied in the Holy Roman Empire, as the katechon, the Reformers began to argue that the Church itself was the Antichrist. 

The upshot of this development is simply put: Your katechon might be my Antichrist. One person views a political power as holding back the chaos, while another sees that power as the Antichrist itself. Take Donald Trump as an example: Katechon or Antichrist? 

The katechon explains much of the attraction evangelicals have for Trump, an attraction that has puzzled progressive Christians. Morally speaking, Trump is not a Christian exemplar. Similar to Caesar, Trump isn't "a good person." But like the Roman empire, Trump is a katechon. Trump uses political power to "restrain" the darkness, as evangelicals understand that darkness. 

And yet, it's precisely here, with evangelical capitulation to strong-man authoritarianism, where progressive Christians see evangelicals falling prey to the powerful delusions and lies of the Antichrist. Trump is the man of lawlessness who is setting himself up as a divine authority and evangelicals are "believing the lie."

Again, one person's katechon is another person's Antichrist. And the slipperiness here is the theme of this series.

"Exile"

Hope cracks dry
underfoot,
tinder for despair.
Dreams sweaty,
fevered, tossed.
Chewed stories stale in the mouth.
Waiting souring
in curdled expectation.
A promise fatigued.

This is the brittle season.

Burnt eyes
scanning the horizon
for a dawn long delayed.
We wait in the city
of the dead.

"I wait for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning"

What a line right before Advent. Waiting for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning. 

An Advent tradition of mine is sharing a poem online on each of the four Sundays of Advent. A few years ago I collected those into a PDF booklet entitled "Glory Here in Straw and Blood."  The first part of the collection is entitled "Exile" and in the Introduction I describe those poems this way:

In the poems collected under “Exile” we are often a young person sitting around the campfire listening to old timers tell stories from Israel’s past. As we listen to these stories, we experience the Advent themes of longing and waiting. There is an impatience and irritation in these poems as the stories of God seem old and worn out. Hope is wearing thin.

The poem I'm sharing this coming Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, expresses these exilic themes. And the final lines of Sunday's poem use the image of Psalm 130, that of a watchman scanning the horizon looking for dawn. Trouble is, it's a dawn too long delayed. And because of this, hope is wearing thin.

This waiting is hard for us. Years ago, at my church, the very first song on the first Sunday of Advent was "Joy to the World." "Too soon!" I thought to myself. A proper Advent hymn places us in the experience of exilic longing, like O Come, O Come Emmanuel:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear

The plaintive plea of Advent, as we mourn in lonely exile, is "Come!" Some churches, to make the point plain, do not place the Christ child in the nativity scene before Christmas. With no child to gaze at, you're forced to use Advent for waiting.

So, my poem this Sunday isn't full of Hallmark Christmas cheer. It's an exilic lament about the pain of waiting. We begin Advent sitting in the dark, like a watchman, scanning the horizon waiting for the dawn.

So, what does it matter if, in the end, René Girard's theory is a moral influence view of the atonement?

Let me end this series by answering that question.

First, let's circle back to Girard's own pessimistic conclusion, that Christianity predicts its own failure. Or, more simply put, if it's up to us to save ourselves then things aren't looking very good. We're reminded again of the famous assessment J.R.R. Tolkien once shared in a correspondence:

Actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’— though it contains (and in legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.

One of the limitations of moral influence viewpoints is utopianism, the belief that humans can save themselves from within history. But the Christian vision of salvation is, to borrow again from Tolkien, eucatastrophic. We can only be saved from beyond and outside of history. Salvation is eschatological. 

Relatedly, human moral performance does nothing to solve the fundamental human predicament: Death. And this has implications for Girard's theory. Recall in this series how I put survival-based fears alongside mimetic desire as a source of scapegoating. If that is true, then our ability to step away from sacred violence demands a metaphysics of hope. As the book of Hebrews says, the fear of death is the power of the devil in our lives and Christ was raised from the dead to destroy that power. Our ability to step into the moral vision of Girard's theory, standing in solidarity with the victim, requires the ontological assurance provided by the resurrection. Otherwise, survival-based fears will continue to drive us toward self-interest. Recall, again, my example of lifeboats on the Titanic. A capacity for giving away my life for others is created by the conviction that sacrificial acts of love will be eschatologically vindicated. If not, well, every man for himself. 

Simply put, while important and necessary, salvation cannot be reduced to human moral performance. History will prove to be a long defeat. In the final analysis, salvation is eschatological and ontological. We will not be able to save ourselves. We await the eucatastrophe. 

There was a time when I considered René Girard's theory of atonement to be a species of Christus Victor rather than moral influence.

Specifically, the mechanisms and dynamics of sacred violence and scapegoating are satanic. Satan is, after all, the diablos, the Accuser. And accusation is what kicks off the scapegoating violence. We point the finger at the innocent victim. In coming to stand in solidarity with the victim we turn away from accusation. This entire dynamic is powerfully illustrated in the story of Jesus and the woman caught in the act of adultery. The men come as accusers, as diabolos, with stones in their hands. But by end of the story the stones are dropped. Jesus says to the woman, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, Lord,” she replies. This is the salvation Jesus brings us. We drop the stones in our hands. We turn away from accusation. We refuse to play diabolos. 

When we witness how Girard's reading of the gospels calls us to step away from a satanic social matrix, we are tempted to view his theory of atonement as a type of Christus Victor. For that is what Christus Victor atonement involves, liberation from malevolent spiritual powers. The social dynamics of mimetic desire, rivalry, sacred violence, and scapegoating can be viewed as a "principality and power" that we need to be rescued from. An exorcism is at work.

And we do need to be rescued. We need this exorcism. But over time I've come to view René Girard's theory as less Christus Victor and more a moral influence view of salvation. Why? Because while God acts within history to unmask and expose the satanic foundations of human civilization, at the end of the day our response to that exposure is one of human moral choice and effort. I have to read the gospel accounts and respond with metanoia. I must turn and repent. I must drop the stones in my hand. That is the moral demand. 

And to be clear--I feel I must keep repeating this--our turning does save us. So I'm not, for a moment, trying to discount how our repenting of scapegoating violence isn't a critical aspect of our salvation. What I'm trying to highlight is how, in Girard's theory, salvation is wholly reduced to human moral action. We are saved when we drop the stones.

In short, while God does act to expose the satanic matrix of society, the moment of liberation is effected by human effort. And this is why, I believe, Girard's theory is best understood as a example of the moral influence view of atonement.

Let me make the point sharper, though this will risk giving offense. What if, after hearing a long lecture about René Girard's theories, from the nuances of mimetic desire to the social dynamics of scapegoating to the unmasking of sacred violence we behold in the gospels, the person sums it all up and says, "So what you're telling me is to love everyone?" I think the honest answer would be, "Yeah, what I'm telling you is to love everyone." Now, of course, the Girardian is going to jump in here to offer some clarifications: "By loving everyone we mean stop scapegoating, stand in solidarity with your victims and the victims of your society and nation, drop the stones in your hands, stop playing the accuser, stop using God to justify your violence, imitate Jesus as the forgiving victim." To which the person would nod along and say again, "So what you're telling me is that I should love everyone?" 

My point is that, if we love everyone--and I do mean everyone--you end up precisely where Girard's theory wants you to land. If you want, you can sidestep Girard's theory and just obey the Sermon on the Mount. Job done.

If this is so, if love is the answer, then why are we messing around with René Girard? Recall, again, the point I've made in this series. What René Girard's theory was saving people from was penal substitutionary atonement. That's what the excitement was all about, being liberated from a bad theory of atonement. The victory wasn't moral, it was hermeneutical. For love is and will always be the answer. Girard's theory did nothing to change that story. What Girard's theory gave us was a new way of reading the Bible and thinking about the death of Jesus. To be sure, Girard's theory is prophetically helpful in exposing how violent readings of the atonement create violent Christians and violent Christian nations. Girard exposed how bad hermeneutics can undermine love. Christian failures of love become a lot more clear after Girard. But Girard didn't finally or uniquely bring Jesus' commandment to love everyone into human consciousness. Girard simply exposed why we fail, and continue to fail, at love.

And so this is why Girard's theory is a moral influence view. Girard's theory is profound, prophetic, and revelatory, but its moral imperative is the same one we get from all moral influence views of the atonement: 

Love everyone. 

Let me return to the thesis of this series, that René Girard's reading of the gospels is a moral influence view of the atonement.

In the last few posts I've made the claim that what René Girard saved many ex-evangelicals from was penal substitutionary atonement. Among evangelicals, it was liberating to discover that the violence of the gospels wasn't demanded or required by God. God was, rather, the innocent victim who entered the sacrificial machinery of sacred violence to expose our scapegoating practices as evil. The bloody roots of our civilization were laid bare. And in doing is, God has called us to stand in solidarity with the victims of the world, especially those produced by our own nations and societies. 

As I've said, this is a profound and powerful way of imagining the crucifixion of Jesus. A deep poison is being withdrawn from the Christian imagination, that God demands and sanctions violence. Girard provides us a way of reading the gospel accounts as an indictment of sacred violence. A peaceable faith opens up before us. 

These are amazing gifts, and I count myself a fan of Girard's theory. And not just as a theory, but as a spiritual and moral practice. As a citizen of the United States, the questions I ask myself about my country are these. Historically, who have been the victims of the United States? And today, who are the victims of the United States? Lastly, what sacred narrative is my country using to hide and justify its scapegoating practices? I love Girard because he puts these questions before us. And closer to home, I also ask of myself: Who are Richard Beck's victims? Who do I scapegoat? How do I hide and justify my own violence? 

So, if you're new to Girard I hope you can see the excitement his ideas engender. Suddenly, a way of reading the gospels deemed to be deeply problematic--penal substitutionary atonement--is replaced with a vision of considerable prophetic force. And where the crucifixion of Jesus had once been a bloody and archaic stumbling block for liberal humanists, René Girard transformed it into a rallying cry for social justice.

Okay, back to my thesis. How is Girard's theory an example of the moral influence view of the atonement?

The point is simply made. In Girard's theory salvation comes to us when step away from sacred violence to stand in solidarity with the victim. We're saved when we stop scapegoating. We come to imitate Jesus Christ as the model of a new and transfigured humanity. And as should be obvious, this change is one of moral effort. The demand here is for moral enactment. If we reject violence and embrace peace we shall be saved.

And this is true. Let me be very clear. Moral influence views of salvation are true! The Sermon on the Mount saves us. Love and peace are the way. The Bible describes salvation in precisely these terms:

They will beat their swords into plows
and their spears into pruning knives.
Nation will not take up the sword against nation,
and they will never again train for war.

So, insofar as Girard's reading of the gospels brings us to repentance and calls us to peace salvation comes to us. And yet, as I've highlighted over the last few posts, the path before us is difficult and narrow. The gospels may have stigmatized scapegoating, but our practices of scapegoating remain hidden and masked. We continue to provide sacred justifications for our violence. In addition, in a world of scarcity human relations crackle with paranoia and fear. Survival-driven concerns will perennially tempt us toward self-interest and self-preservation over against the claims and interests of others. And lastly, Girard himself in his later years admitted that the exposure effected by the gospels might have released more violence into the world. That the moral vision of the gospel would fail to save the world is something Scripture seems to forecast in the book of Revelation. 

Simply put, René Girard might be right about everything, but if it's up to us to save ourselves things aren't looking very good.

When René Girard's ideas were all the rage during the Golden Age of blogging, the tone was triumphalistic. Here was a way of reading the atonement that solved all of our problems! Here was a vision of salvation that would usher us into an age of peace! 

This triumphalism, though, was misplaced. Recall, most of the people touting Girard's ideas online were evangelicals deconstructing penal substitutionary atonement. Their excitement and enthusiasm was due to being saved from a bad theory of atonement. Stated plainly, René Girard didn't save us from violence but he did save us from penal substitutionary atonement. And given how penal substitutionary atonement was experienced as such an oppressive influence, stepping out of its dark shadow was exhilarating and liberating. We'd been set free! But being set free from bad theology is not the same as being set free from human sin and depravity. Good ideas alone cannot dispel the darkness within the human heart. Better theories of the atonement will not save us.

Plus, there was a nagging problem with Girard's ideas. Specifically, if the gospels unmasked the scapegoating mechanism, liberating us from the myth of sacred violence at the heart of civilization, then why has so little changed since then? Violence has continued. Scapegoating rolls on. 

Of course, this doesn't mean that Girard's reading of the gospels is wrong. Or that, if we were converted by the gospels, it wouldn't have consequential impacts upon the world. It's just that, as I've described in these posts, the scapegoating mechanism keeps getting masked. Again, the gospels stigmatized scapegoating as scapegoating. No society self-consciously scapegoats people they know to be innocent. Rather, we attack people we deem to be threats. Our violence is, in our eyes, a justified response to danger. So while the gospels might have unmasked the dynamics at work in all this--how the innocent scapegoat is viewed as guilty--there remains the issue of evangelism and conversion. At every time and in every place we must, here and now, unmask the satanic dynamic at work, how our present attributions of "danger" and "guilt" have become instruments of evil. But such a transvaluation of values is so huge, a complete flipping of good to evil and evil to good, that it is impossible to achieve on a widespread basis. In short, while Girard's is a truthful description of what's going on with us, it provides few tools to create a more peaceful world. Good diagnosis, but little by way of prescription. 

In fact, the gospels might have made the world worse. Girard himself admitted this. What the gospels unmasked was the sacred legitimacy of sacrifice in archaic religions. The gospels demythologized the practices of ancient sacrifice. And in doing so, the gospels robbed mimetic rivalry of its cathartic release valve going forward. And without that cathartic release, violence would escalate. As Girard has written, "Christ’s Passion unveiled the sacrificial origin of humanity once and for all. It dismantled the sacred and revealed its violence. And yet, the Passion freed violence at the same time that it freed holiness." Archaic violence had been bound in "fetters" due to the sacrificial systems, constrained and limited, but this violence was "unshackled by the Passion--with the result of liberating planet-wide violence." Girard unpacks this: 

By accepting to be crucified, Christ brought to light what had been “hidden since the foundation of the world”—the foundation itself, the unanimous murder that appeared in broad daylight for the first time on the Cross. In order to function, archaic religions need to hide their founding murder, which was being repeated continually in ritual sacrifices, thereby protecting human societies from their own violence. By revealing the founding murder, Christianity destroyed the ignorance and superstition that are indispensable to such religions. It thus made possible an advance in knowledge that was until then unimaginable.

Freed of sacrificial constraints, the human mind invented science, technology, and all the best and worst of culture. Our civilization is the most creative and powerful ever known, but also the most fragile and threatened because it no longer has the safety rails of archaic religion. Without sacrifice in the broad sense, it could destroy itself if it does not take care, which clearly it is not doing.

Girard goes further and makes the provocative claim that "Christianity is the only religion that has foreseen its own failure." This is the vision that unfolds in Revelation. The gospels do not save the world. The world is doomed. 

What the gospels do provide is apocalypse. Revelation. Unmaking. Exposure. History has been laid bare. And in this unveiling, a pathway toward salvation is opened. As Peter declared in the very first gospel message in Acts 2, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” And as Revelation pleads in regards to Babylon:

“‘Come out of her, my people,’
so that you will not share in her sins,
so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
for her sins are piled up to heaven,
and God has remembered her crimes."

And Babylon is then destroyed. John 3 puts it this way:

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.

Or, as Jesus said: "For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

As Tolkien observed, history is a long defeat. As depicted in Revelation, we will not be saved from within history. Help must come from the outside. Salvation must be a eucatastrophe. 

As Girard admitted, the scapegoating mechanism might have been unmasked in Christ's Passion, the light coming into the world, but that exposure has not turned the tide of violence within history. People love the darkness. What the gospels have given us, however, is moral clarity. The cross has gifted us illumination. The light shines. But the path is narrow. And the time is short. 

Psalm 129 is noteworthy for a very striking and vivid image of oppression. The image comes at the end of the opening lament:

“Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth” —
let Israel now say —
“Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth,
yet they have not prevailed against me.
The plowers plowed upon my back;
they made long their furrows.”

The embodied nature of the agricultural metaphor—plowers digging out long furrows upon a person's back—makes me wince. Most scholarship views the image as describing forced labor. Verse 4 describes God cutting “the cords of the wicked,” an image of being freed from the yoke. But other scholars don't see the image as being that of yoked oxen but rather of a violated, torn-up field. If the speaker of the psalm is corporate Israel, then the metaphor speaks to violence done upon the land by oppressive invaders and overlords. The back of Israel has been torn up like a plowed field. Still other scholars see the metaphor as a reference to violence inflicted upon the body, the furrows are images of physical beatings and scourging. Some see references to sexual violence in the image of “plowing” (see, for example, Judges 14.18).

All told, then, the image is one of the most embodied metaphors describing the experience of oppression. Images of forced labor, military conquest, scourging, and sexual violence are all invoked.

Consequently, given the violence imagined, it's not surprising that Psalm 129 turns to imprecation:

May all who hate Zion
be put to shame and turned backward!
Let them be like the grass on the housetops,
which withers before it grows up,
with which the reaper does not fill his hand
nor the binder of sheaves his arms,
nor do those who pass by say,
“The blessing of the Lord be upon you!
We bless you in the name of the Lord!”

I've made this comment before in this series, but it bears repeating. Many liberal and progressive readers of Scripture get anxious about the imprecatory Psalms. But I find this timidity hypocritical. Progressives love to see themselves as sticking up for victims. And yet, when these victims speak in Scripture, victims of physical beatings and sexual assault, the progressives rush to silence them. Psalm 129 is an excellent example of this and makes the point even clearer. Progressives routinely cite research on how trauma affects and changes the body. The body keeps the score, right? (I’m not interested here about the contested science surrounding that claim, just making an observation about trauma discourse.) Here in Psalm 129 we find a metaphor pointing toward the embodied memory of the victims, the damage and violation etched onto the body itself. And in response to that you want to silence the voices of those bodies? I thought we were supposed to listen to the traumatized body. And yet, that's precisely what progressive readers of Scripture do when they approach the imprecatory psalms. They silence the bodies of traumatized victims.

Soon after the publication of Unclean I was asked to present a paper, for the very first time, at a theological conference. The conference was devoted to the work of René Girard and I was asked to share how I integrated Girard's work into my research with disgust psychology. 

My paper shared the analysis from the last post, how attributions of disgust, marking an individual or group as "unclean," selects the scapegoat and masks the scapegoating mechanism. 

During the Q&A after the presentation I got into my first debate and disagreement with Girardian thinkers. 

The issue went to a footnote in Unclean where I named anxiety as a cause of social scapegoating, an anxiety rooted in scarcity. This goes against Girardian orthodoxy which places mimetic desire at the heart of the scapegoating mechanism. What I discovered in that exchange was how central mimetic desire was to many of Girard's followers. For many Girardians, mimetic desire is the anthropological key that unlocks the treasure trove of sociological and theological insights. My interest in Girard was less anthropological. My feeling is that scapegoating has lots of sources and causes, not just one. In fact, I believe that scapegoating is caused more due to fear than mimetic rivalry. Scarcity, I felt, was the main driver of scapegoating.

For example, as I pointed out at the conference, there is an assumption of scarcity behind Girard's theory of mimetic desire and rivalry. Girard's model is often diagramed as a triangle between a subject, a model, and an object. I observe a model desiring an object. And through mimesis, I imitate that desire. Consequently, my desire brings me into rivalrous competition with the model over the desired object. Two of us are now wanting the same thing.

Notice, I shared at the conference, how there is only one object of desire for two individuals. That's an assumption of scarcity. Two are fighting over an object only one can possess. By contrast, what if there were many objects being desired by the model? What if we assume abundance instead? In that situation, my mimetic desire wouldn't bring me into competition or rivalry as there would be plenty to go around. My point was that desire only brings about competition when the object being desired is scarce, where there will be winners and losers, haves and have nots. 

An assumption of scarcity also sits behind rivalries due to superior status, like we see in racism and nationalism. It's a game of King of the Mountain. Only one party can be "the best," sitting atop the hierarchy of value. Only one nation can be "the greatest nation in the world." Same with rankings of racial superiority and supremacy. If everyone, by contrast, could be the greatest or best we wouldn't be fighting over that top spot. But since only one among the many rivals can be "the best" we fight over that scarce, only-one-can-have-it, designation. By definition, there can only be one GOAT. 

I think these are good arguments, but you can rest assured that the Girardians had their rebuttals at the conference. And they were good ones. Look at children, they said, playing with toys. There can be plenty of toys around, but one child will want the toy another child is playing with just because that child is desiring it, having fun with it, even when there are plenty of identical toys at hand. Plus, what about mirror neurons! And so on, and so forth.

But here's my point. We can both be right! Like I said, I think scapegoating happens for lots of reasons, and not just mimetic desire. And I'm convinced that scarcity is one of the major reasons, or paranoia about a potential future scarcity, real or imagined. Why, for example, did the Nazis scapegoat the Jews? Perhaps it was due to mimetic desire. But I think one of the major reasons was the economic hardships the Germans suffered due to the Treaty of Versailles. That experience of scarcity and loss, economic and in terms of national shame, caused the Germans to look around for someone to blame. Hitler pointed the finger at the Jews. And continued, during his rise to power, to point the finger at the Jews as a persistent and ongoing threat and danger. Fear, again, plain and simple.

Think also about how illegal immigrants get scapegoated. They are taking our jobs and soaking up our benefits! Illegal immigrants are stealing scarce goods. Throw in descriptions of illegal immigrants as rapists, drug traffickers, and criminals, as dangerous threats, and a lot of fear gets stoked, fear that comes out in scapegoating. And listen, I'm not here to adjudicate the shape of a just and humane immigration policy. I'm just asking, as a psychologist, what best explains "Build That Wall!" xenophobia? It could be mimetic desire. But I think the simplest reason is scarcity and fear. Fear, real or delusional, that an illegal immigrant is going to take away a job, receive undeserved social benefits, or hurt someone. 

But again, Girardians have their answers to all this. The theory has to stay pure and uncontaminated. Only one cause for scapegoating is allowed. Everything must get stuffed into the explanatory box of mimetic desire. My view, by contrast, is that people scapegoat for lots of reasons. Mimetic desire is one. Scarcity-based anxiety, legitimate or paranoid, is another. You can think of some more. 

And if this is so, we reach another dim conclusion. Anxiety is endemic to the human condition. As I describe it in The Slavery of Death, as biodegradable creatures in a world of real or perceived scarcity fear will be our constant companion. Given this, more is needed than simply exposing the mimetic roots at the heart of sacred violence. Overcoming our anxiety is necessary. Which means overcoming the biological and material realities of human finitude and limitation. And Girard's theory just doesn't traffic in those sorts of ontological issues. Simply put, Girard's theory of "atonement," how we are saved, does nothing to address the harsh material realities that cause human persons and societies to act self-interestedly and violently. 

If life is like being on the Titanic, my problem isn't that you and I desire the same lifeboat. Our problem isn't mimetic desire. Our problem is scarcity, that there are not enough lifeboats to go around. You and I want the same boat because, tragically, there is only one of them left. And if your "plan of salvation" is to encourage frighted animals to give up their seat on the lifeboat in an act of heroic self-sacrifice, to "stand in solidarity" with the doomed, well, best of luck with that. Most people are going to try to get their loved ones onto that boat, at the expense of you and yours, and be very tempted to jump aboard themselves. This is a natural human response. As I describe in The Slavery of Death, fear tempts us toward self-interest. And there's nothing in Girard's theory, insofar as it eschews ontological issues, that can help us escape the underlying anxiety of the human predicament.  

As I mentioned in the last post, I was an early adopter and enthusiast of René Girard's ideas. And I'm still a fan. I shared Girard's ideas online in the early years of this blog and put them to use in my first book Unclean. 

Unclean was my "arrival" onto the theological scene. 

My scholarly career has had four phases. All of this can be traced on my Google Scholar page. 

Phase 1 (1998-2003) was publishing mostly empirical clinical psychology research in peer-reviewed journals. 

Phase 2 (2003-2011) was turning away from clinical psychology to psychology of religion as my research focus, still publishing this research in peer-reviewed journals. During this time I published the work that has had the most impact upon the research literature, studies on attachment to God, quest religious motivation, and terror-management theory. This phase culminated in my co-authoring, with my graduate student Andrea Haugen, the chapter on Christianity for the APA Handbook of Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality. During this time, in 2007, I started writing online. 

Phase 3 (2011-2015) saw my first academic books come out, Unclean, The Authenticity of Faith, and The Slavery of Death. These books flowed out of my prior empirical research, and they represent my first attempts to "do theology." 

In Phase 4 (2016-Present) I turned to popular and general-audience Christian writing. This phase started with Reviving Old Scratch followed by Stranger God, Trains, Jesus and Murder, Hunting Magic Eels, and The Shape of Joy. In 2021, I started cross-posting the original blog, which is still going, over on Substack. 

Anyway, like I said, Unclean was my theological coming out party. And in Unclean I made use of René Girard's scapegoat theory. 

Unclean is about the impact of disgust and contamination psychology upon religious belief, experience, and practice. That might seem to be a peculiar lens through which to explore religion, but it is a rich vein to mine. Notions of purity regulate much of our experience of the sacred, divine, spiritual, and holy. 

Because of this, disgust and contamination affect how we experience moral and social categories. These are often conflated into what psychologists call "sociomoral disgust," how we perceive "sin" and those whom we deem "unclean" because of their sin. Since disgust is a boundary-monitoring and expulsive psychology it creates a "social distancing" dynamic, where the unclean are expelled from the community in order to maintain purity and holiness. (Relatedly, when this disgust becomes internalized people come to experience themselves as "unclean" and therefore unworthy of community.) And it's precisely here in Unclean where I use the work of René Girard.

Specifically, I ask two questions. First, how are scapegoats selected by communities? And second, if the gospels have unmasked the evil mechanism of scapegoating why does it keep happening? In Unclean I use disgust psychology to answer both questions.

First, disgust helps us select scapegoats because disgust has always been used to stigmatize, marginalize, and dehumanize out-group members. As Martha Nussbaum has observed, 

Disgust is all about putting the object at a distance and drawing boundaries. It imputes to the object properties that make it no long or a member of the subject's own community or world, a kind of alien species of thing...Thus, throughout history, certain disgust properties—sliminess, bad smell, stickiness, decay, foulness—have repeatedly and monotonously been associated with, indeed projected onto, groups by reference to whom privileged groups seek to define their superior human status.

Second, disgust psychology masks the scapegoating dynamic. That is to say, once identified as "unclean," think of the Jews in Nazi Germany, these individuals and groups pose, in the view of the in-group, a threat to the social order. Consequently, when I scapegoat a group I don't see myself as scapegoating. I don't see the out-group as a victim, but as a danger. And this is why scapegoating continues. The mechanism has been masked. 

So, even if it's true that victimizing innocent victims has become for us an evil thing, stigmatized by the gospels, the people who oppress and victimize others aren't scapegoating in a self-conscious way. Otherwise, they'd stop. In short, the argument I make in Unclean is that social scapegoating is often hidden by purity psychology, the expulsion of the "unclean" as a dangerous threat to the community. We can't see the evil we are perpetrating because we believe we are doing something holy, righteous, and good. The old dynamic persists, hidden in the background. God is still being used to justify our violence. And no one sees it as scapegoating.

Which is a very pessimistic argument to make, and goes to a bit of what I want to say in this series. René Girard's theories may be perfectly correct as a suite of descriptive and explanatory ideas. But the underlying dynamics at work, the depth of human sin and depravity, may not be so easily overcome.