Foreword
Violence
Renounced
“I see violence and strife in the
city . . . but I will trust in you,” writes the
Psalmist (Ps. 54). The biblical testimony witnesses both
to the violence of humankind and the graciousness of God.
How can the tension between these realities be
reconciled? From the murder of Abel to the killing fields
of Kosovo, humankind has struggled in prayer and politics
with the single most critical issue in history. Violence
is a principal concern of biblical writers and the
obsession of modern media. Shall we assert that violence
will be punished by God (by even greater divine
violence?) Shall we argue that our own violence must be
excused so we can save ourselves from the violence of
others? Do the scriptural accounts of human violence
offer a response to the most searing dilemma of human
existence?
One of the most penetrating analyses of
human culture and its relationship to religious history
and religious texts has been given to us by René Girard.
His brilliant exploration of the dynamics of desire and
the victimage mechanism has opened Scripture anew to
those who seek to understand the God of peace and the
mysterious origins of human violence. The essays in this
book not only contribute to our understanding of Girard=s
insights into human culture but also offer valuable
interpretive readings of Scripture in light of those
insights.
What is at stake in this study of Scripture is not only
our understanding of God and the Word of God but the
quality of our efforts to work for justice and peace in
human history. Implicit in these efforts is the
imperative to examine particular religious traditions and
how the texts of these traditions have been historically
interpreted, not only by believers but by those who
dismiss all religious texts as mythological. To suggest
that religious believers must constantly re-examine what
they understand to be God=s revelation is to reaffirm how
culture can deform both theology and praxis.
The history of anti-semitism and racial
persecution testifies to the often tragic blindness of
believers to the message of their own religious heritage.
The politics of identity, the zeal that overwhelms
humility and crusades in the name of a punishing God, can
generate a religion that betrays God. To misread
Scripture as a justification for violence is to read it
as mythology and not as the subversion of mythology,
which is its singular contribution to human history.
The inspired text will eventually
resist perverse reading; its inner dynamic will open the
minds and hearts of those who seek God not for the sake
of political and cultural survival but for the sake of
human salvation. The power and depth of the revelatory
text can call us to repentance and urge us to help with
that transformation of culture that is expressed in the
biblical ideal of the Reign of God.
Studying Scripture in the light of
René Girard's cultural anthropology helps us to
recognize, moreover, the inspiration behind those
non-Western religious traditions that are specifically
directed to heal the violence of human hearts. In
exploring them, we can do no better than to seek what
Scripture asks us to seek: the unity that comes from our
compassion for the victim, rather than the unity that
comes from the shoring up of cultural and national
identity.
To those who seek peace and for whom
Scripture is the normative textual source of God's
revelation, no undertaking can be more important than the
kind of study this collection provides. Willard Swartley
is to be commended for his efforts to provide us with the
record of an important conference and an instructive
sequence of readings.
Gratitude must be extended especially
to René Girard not only for his extraordinary
intellectual achievement but for his openness to critique
and debate. These essays constitute a vigorous engagement
with a great thinker on a critically important issue. It
is hoped that readers will take from this collection of
readings a new understanding of the significance of René
Girard's work, and a deeper appreciation of the power of
Scripture to heal and transform the world.
Diana Culbertson, O.P., President of the
Colloquium on Violence and Religion and
Emeritus Professor of English, Kent State University
Violence Renounced
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