Once you read Girard’s works, you realize how obvious it is that the violence at the cross had nothing to do with God, but everything to do with the human propensity to scapegoat. In anthropological terms, what was revealed by the death of Jesus was the human scapegoat mechanism. The truth that Girard revealed throughout his career is that wrath doesn’t belong to God. Indeed, without reading his books, it could sound like a form of penal substitutionary atonement theory that claims Jesus allows humanity to live by saving us from the violent wrath of God.īut nothing could be further from the truth. Many progressive Christians who do not know Girard’s work will bristle at that statement. “Christ agrees to die so that mankind will live,” wrote Girard in his book Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World.
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