Jesus as Scapegoat?: Violence and the Sacred in the Theology of Raymund Schwager

JESUS AS SCAPEGOAT? VIOLENCE AND THE SACRED IN THE THEOLOGY OF RAYMUND SCHWAGER DISCONTENT WITH THE received vocabulary for interpreting Jesus's crucifixion is widespread among contemporary theologians. While adamantly opposed to saying that" the death of Jesus merely convinces us of a forgiving and salvific will of God which is absolutely independent of this death," Karl Rahner maintains that interpretation of the crucifixion in such categories as expiatory sacrifice is but a secondary and derivative way of expressing the basic Christian conviction that" we are saved because this man who is one of us has been saved by God, and God has thereby made his salvific will present in the world historically, really and irrevocably ." 1 Against the background of a different theology of death, Edward Schillebeeckx has stressed that understanding Jesus's death as an atoning, redemptive act is merely one of several New Testament ways of interpreting the crucifixion and argued that, while Christians are bound to whatever is entailed in Jesus, they are not committed to the use of such terms as propitiation, substitution, satisfaction and sacrifice in the articulation of their faith.2 Hans Kung likewise holds that" the universal significance of the death on the cross ' for us,' ' for the many,' 'for all,' can ... be expressed in different ways" and insists that " the permanent, definitive and irrevocable significance and effect of Jesus' death ... must ... be freed from the 1 Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: Seabury, 1978), pp. !l8!l, !l84. Cf. also "The One Christ and the Universality of Salvation," Theological, Investigations 16 (New York: Seabury, 1979), pp. 199-!l!l4. •Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (New York: Seabury, 1970), pp. !!74-!l94, 818; Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord (New York: Seabury, 1980), pp. 681-684; Interim Report on the Books "Jesus" and "Christ" (London, SCM, 1980)' p. 16. 178 174 JOHN P. GALVIN restrictions of the older terminology." 3 While some prominent theologians have recently re-emphasized the need to express the meaning of Jesus's death as death for us,4 no single constructive theory of redemption dominates contemporary theology, and efforts to articulate the salvific character of the crucifixion continue to form a major topic in current christological literature. One of the many recent soteriological proposals is of particula .r interest. Drawing heavily on the anthropology of Rene Girard, Raymund Schwager, a Swiss Jesuit theologian, has begun to develop a distinctive new approach to the ancient problem of interpreting Jesus's death. While his project has evoked considerable response in Europe, it has attracted little notice in the United States. Against the background of an outline of Girard's work (I), this essay will present the basic elements of Schwager's soteriology (II), survey the critical reception of his theory (III) , and conclude with a few evaluative remarks on its contribution to contemporary theology (IV) . I " For without a cement of blood (it must be human, it must be innocent) no secular wall will safely stand." 5 Formerly professor of French at the State University of New York in Buffalo and at Johns Hopkins, now again resident in his native France, Rene Girard began his studies with analyses of the novels of Cervantes, Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust and Dostoevsky,6 but subsequently expanded his range of inquiry 8 On Being a Christian (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), p. 426. •Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, "Crucifixus etiam pro nobis," Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift "Communio" 9 (1980) e6-85, and Martin Hengel, The Atonement: The Origins of the Doctrine in the New TcJtament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981). • W. H. Auden, "Horae Canonicae," Collected Poems (ed. Edward Mendelson; London: Faber and Faber, 1976), p. 484. The passage is cited by Girard at the close of an interview reprinted in "To Double Business Bound:" Essays on Literature, Mimesis and Anthropology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1978)' p. 229. •Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1965). JESUS AS SCAPEGOAT? 175 to encompass additional literary works, such as Greek tragedies, and ethnological material.7 In the course of these wide-ranging investigations of classical and modern literature, the history of religion and cultural anthropology, he has proposed a...