Girard's Unique Perspective on Christianity

Why Christianity is Different from Other Religions | Girard’s Apologetic

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Summary

In this enlightening lecture, Johnathan Bi delves into the distinct nature of Christianity through the lens of René Girard's theories. Girard's perspective posits Christianity as a unique and transformative force differing radically from other religions. Instead of perpetuating myths from the perspective of the oppressors, Christianity brings a paradigm shift by narrating from the victim's viewpoint, thus exposing and subverting the violent scapegoat mechanism common in pagan religions. Bi explores how this perspective turns Christ into the ultimate innocent victim, whose crucifixion reveals the violent underpinnings of human culture, challenging followers to pursue a moral path of unconditional love and non-violence. This interpretation leads to a reevaluation of traditional religious concepts, presenting Christianity not as a religion based on transcendental rituals but as a revolutionary moral framework aimed at dismantling the deceit inherent in societal structures.

Highlights

Johnathan Bi discusses how his view of Christianity changed after discovering Girard. 🔍
Christianity is seen as a rupture bridging pagan past and modern present. ⚡
Girard argues that biblical stories distinguish victims from guilty persecutors. 🤔
The crucifixion is explained as a pivot point revealing societal violence. ✝️
Bi concludes that Christianity extends beyond rituals to advocate love and non-violence. ❤️

Key Takeaways

Christianity uniquely narrates from the victim's perspective, unlike other religions. 📜
René Girard sees Christ as exposing and dismantling the violent scapegoat mechanism. 🛡️
Christ's innocence, truth, and love serve as evidence of his divinity. 🌟
The lecture challenges traditional religious views, presenting a human-centric Christianity. 💡
Understanding Christianity this way redefines key religious concepts into social and psychological terms. 🔄

Overview

According to Johnathan Bi in his invigorating lecture, Christianity is not just another religion; it's a distinct framework that radically alters the narrative style seen in religious traditions. Through the work of René Girard, he illustrates how Christianity shifts the storytelling focus from oppressors to victims, fundamentally altering how stories reveal the human condition.

Bi expounds on how René Girard's insights portray Christianity as exposing the scapegoat mechanism prevalent in pagan myths, where victims are unjustly blamed and sacrificed. By identifying Christ as the ultimate victim who reveals these violent dynamics, Christianity instructs societies to adopt a radically new moral compass emphasizing unconditional love and non-violence.

By synthesizing theological concepts with social sciences, Bi presents a daring reinterpretation of Christianity. He suggests that the traditional approach to metaphysics and rituals in Christianity should not overshadow its core moral teachings. This perspective seeks to surface the inherent deceit within structural powers, urging a global shift towards empathy and ethical reform.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Personal Revelation The chapter begins with the author's recollection of their childhood, where they questioned biblical narratives during religious studies classes, believing they were clever for rejecting such ideas. The author specifically mentions doubting the historical accuracy of biblical events such as Moses parting the Red Sea and the existence of figures like Kane and Abel. Consequently, they dismissed these stories as they assumed they weren't literal occurrences.
00:30 - 01:00: Discovering Girard and Christianity's Influence The narrator discusses a significant turning point in their life when they discovered René Girard and began to take the Bible seriously, even if not literally. They realized how stories, like that of Cain and Abel revealed patterns of mimetic rivalry that were present in their own life. This led them to understand how these ancient narratives speak to enduring aspects of the human condition, illustrating the pervasive influence of Christian stories and worldview on Western thought and culture.
01:30 - 02:00: Lecture Outline: Past, Present, Future In this chapter titled 'Lecture Outline: Past, Present, Future', the discussion revolves around the influence of Christian thought on secular modern philosophical assumptions. Using Gerard's perspectives on Jesus Christ, it highlights how certain values considered to be 'obvious' in modern secular contexts, such as compassion and the concern for victims, have deep Christian roots. The chapter aims to offer a new perspective on Christianity by exploring these ideas.
02:30 - 09:00: Christianity vs Pagan Religion Distinctions The chapter titled 'Christianity vs Pagan Religion Distinctions' discusses how Christianity serves as a bridge between the Pagan past and the present modernity, as well as the apocalyptic future. The lecture is part of a series that explores the transition from Pagan beliefs to contemporary times and envisages a future apocalypse. Christianity is portrayed as a rupture that connects these different temporal phases, highlighting distinctions and transitions in religious beliefs over time.
09:00 - 15:00: Hebrew Bible Stories: Cain and Abel vs. Pagan Myths The chapter contrasts the influence of Christianity with pagan societies, emphasizing how Christianity has shaped a society distinct from the violence, deceit, arbitrariness, and injustice seen in pagan cultures. The narrative suggests that Christianity is the 'one true religion' amidst false beliefs, marking a significant turning point in history.
15:00 - 21:00: Joseph's Story: Comparison with Pagan Myths The chapter 'Joseph's Story: Comparison with Pagan Myths' explores the perspective of Gerard on Christianity, emphasizing its critical role in understanding the direction and meaning of history. The lecture is structured in three parts, beginning with an examination of Gerard's belief that stories in the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, significantly differ from those found in Pagan religions. This distinction is crucial for analyzing how Christianity can be a fulcrum to understand the past and present historical trajectory.
21:00 - 26:00: Incompleteness of the Hebrew Bible The chapter discusses the concept of the Hebrew Bible being incomplete or stunted in its message. It introduces Gerard's argument regarding Jesus as the completion or fulfillment of this incomplete message. The notion is that this completion not only enhances the Hebrew message but also establishes Jesus as the one true God. Furthermore, the chapter explores Gerard's anthropology of the Cross, translating core Christian ideas into more accessible concepts.
26:00 - 31:00: Jesus's Teachings Completing the Hebrew Bible The chapter explores the distinction between the stories in the Hebrew Bible and the Pagan myths of Europe. The aim is to demonstrate how the narratives in the Hebrew Bible fundamentally differ from these Pagan myths. The discussion is complex, especially when considering Gerard's perspective on the formation of Pagan religions. The chapter begins with a recap of the previous lecture, highlighting how societies typically descend into chaos, as part of the process described by Gerard.
31:00 - 40:00: Crucifixion: The Founding Murder to End All Murders This chapter explains the concept of a 'founding murder', where in a society driven by memetic contagion, a scapegoat is unconsciously chosen to bear all the blame and is then killed. This act is seen as bringing about miraculous peace, leading people to deify the victim. The pagan deity is depicted as a being of great power, embodying both good and evil by simultaneously causing and ending chaos. Myths are then created from these events, highlighting the deity's duality and significant impact on society.
40:00 - 50:00: Christ's Innocence, Truth, and Love The chapter delves into the core institutions of pagan society, explaining how myths generated prohibitions that prevented violence and rituals acted as a release valve for violence. It argues that both scapegoating and deification within pagan religions are deceitful practices. In these religions, the victim is falsely perceived as having the power to either cause or end chaos, which is merely a psychological projection by the crowd based on unanimity. This deceit is perpetually obscured by myths, as myths are written from a certain perspective.
50:00 - 59:00: Anthropology of the Cross and Satan's Identity This chapter explores the theme of persecution from the perspective of the persecutor and how a crowd's collective view can seem real, assigning blame, praise, and deification. These acts are not mere projections but are perceived as deserved, even though the power attributed to pagan gods is actually a projection of the crowd's unanimity. The chapter suggests that if people became aware of this projection, the pagan gods would lose their power, illustrating how pagan religions are formed.
59:00 - 70:00: Christian Revelation vs. Satan and Antichrist The chapter begins by drawing a parallel between the narrative of Christian revelation and the struggles against Satan and the Antichrist, analyzing the story of Christ's arrival in Jerusalem as an instance of societal unrest and memetic contagion. It highlights key components such as the scapegoating and crucifixion of Jesus, depicting them as foundational murder, followed by his resurrection and divinization. The chapter further delves into the mythologization of these events through the Bible and their institutionalization within the Catholic Church, crafted through various rituals and prohibitions.
70:00 - 76:00: Kingdom of God vs. Apocalypse The chapter discusses Gerard's perspective on Christian and Pagan stories. Gerard posits that while both narratives share a similar form, they diverge significantly in perspective. The Christian story, unlike Pagan religious tales, is recounted from the victim's viewpoint, particularly highlighting Christ as the scapegoated figure. This shift in perspective is crucial as it exposes the fallacies inherent in stories told from the persecutor's viewpoint, as seen in all Pagan religions. The Bible serves to retell these narratives from the victim's side, thereby uncovering the lies perpetuated by historical religious stories.
76:00 - 86:00: Unorthodox Christianity: Christ's Divinity and Redemption The chapter explores an unconventional perspective on Christianity, as interpreted through the theories of René Girard. It presents the idea that Christianity stands as a unique religion that aims to undermine the foundational principles of all other religions by exposing the violence and deceit inherent in their origins.\n\nGirard's interpretation of the Bible suggests that it serves as a powerful tool for revealing the innocence of victims and the guilt of the crowd. He theorizes that Christianity exposes the 'scapegoat mechanism' - the concept that societies unjustly place blame on an individual or group to alleviate their own conflicts or tensions. Thus, the Bible represents a form of 'religion' intended to dismantle and rectify the underlying myths and violent practices associated with traditional religious structures.\n\nThe text goes on to assert that Jesus Christ was aware that reason alone or a purely analytical approach to understanding this mechanism would not suffice. This knowledge underscores the depth of Christ's role in redefining the relationship between divinity and humanity, highlighting a path towards redemption that is inextricably linked to exposing and overcoming these age-old mechanisms of blame and violence.
86:00 - 91:00: Conclusion: Christianity's Worldly Impact The final chapter discusses how Christianity has the potential to alter societal frameworks significantly. It highlights the need for a compelling narrative that aligns with Christian values, which emphasize siding with the underdog and recognizing the flaws in societies' perennial cultural practices. Through the analogy of a vaccine, the chapter suggests that Christianity serves to inoculate against Paganism's scapegoat mechanism, presenting a moral framework that encourages empathy and understanding.

Why Christianity is Different from Other Religions | Girard’s Apologetic Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 lecture five the Christian revelation when I was a kid I used to March around my religious Studies classes thinking I was brilliant for rejecting biblical ideas I used to say things like Moses didn't really part the Red Sea or Kane and Abel weren't real historical figures and these stories didn't literally happen and so I dismissed them for
00:30 - 01:00 decades but but discovering Gerard was a turning point for me and I started taking the Bible seriously if not literally for example Gerard showed me how the same Cain and Abel story that I'd always dismissed revealed a pattern of memetic rivalry that was showing up in my own life and whether literal or not I saw how these stories spoke to the constants in The Human Condition and furthermore I learned how every Westerner bathes in the waters of
01:00 - 01:30 Christian thinking and Gerard shows us that even secular philosophical assumptions of modernity like say the concern for victims are Christian through and through and to the extent that Christian ideas like compassion sometimes feel obvious it's not because they're trivial but because they've been so influential and I hope that Gerard's unorthodox reading of Jesus Christ will help you see Christianity in a new light as it did I
01:30 - 02:00 in the last lecture we've discussed our past Pagan religion in the next lecture we're going to understand the present modernity and the lecture after that we're going to discuss the future apocalypse Christianity then is the rupture which Bridges our Pagan past with our modern present and apocalyptic future if modernity seems yearly similar to the
02:00 - 02:30 Pagan societies that we've discussed last lecture but also clearly distinct in important ways then you can thank or perhaps blame Christianity for that distinction insofar as our society doesn't resemble the violence the deceit the arbitrariness the Injustice of pagan society that all comes from Christianity for Gerard Christianity is the one true religion amongst a sea of false gods it is the pivot point where history gets
02:30 - 03:00 taken out of a cyclical View and thrown into a linear trajectory it is a necessary fulcrum for us to lean against if we are to grasp the direction and meaning of history and to make sense of our present that is why understanding Gerard's Christianity is the focus of this lecture this lecture will proceed in three steps first we're going to understand why Gerard thinks that stories in the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament are drastically distinct from the Pagan religions of
03:00 - 03:30 yore and what message they're trying to communicate whatever message we will find we will find it stunted and incomplete in very important ways and so second I will give you Gerard's argument for why Jesus is the completion of the Hebrew message and even stronger what makes him the one true God after these two moves I will finish painting Gerard's anthropology of the Cross to see how he translates the most important Christian phenomena into digestible and readily understandable
03:30 - 04:00 cultural psychological and social language our first task today then is to show that the stories in the Hebrew Bible are radically different from the religious Pagan myths of Europe This is a terribly difficult task on its own but made all the more challenging by Gerard's own understanding of how Pagan religions are created let me provide you with a brief summary of this process that we covered last lecture first societies would descend into chaos
04:00 - 04:30 memetic contagion then a scapegoat would be unconsciously chosen to inherit all the blame and be killed this is the founding murder this founding murder would bring back a piece so miraculous that people attributed the saving Force to the victim deifying it the Pagan deity will be defined by its power while being both good and evil causing and ending the chaos at the same time myths would be created out of this event
04:30 - 05:00 and out of these myths spawned the core institutions of pagan Society prohibitions prevented violence and rituals acted as release valves for violence both the scapegoating and deification are equally deceitful in Pagan religion the victim neither had the power to cause nor end the chaos it's all a psychological projection by the crowd grounded on nothing but unanimity and importantly this deceitfulness is always occluded by myth because myth is written from the
05:00 - 05:30 perspective of the persecutor the persecutor writes from the perspective of the crowd and from that Vantage Point all of this will seem real the blame the praise the deification are all deserved and Not Mere projections importantly none of this could be revealed because God's pagan gods here would lose their power if people realized that it was they themselves who through unanimity projected that power onto them now this story of how Pagan religions are formed
05:30 - 06:00 presents to us an immediate problem doesn't this track the biblical story of Christ quite clearly after all there's a civil unrest when Christ gets into Jerusalem what is that if not the memetic contagion there's clearly the unjust scapegoating of Jesus and murder on the cross that's the founding murder there's a resurrection and divinization there's a mythologization Through the Bible and an institutionalization through the Catholic church and its many varied rituals and prohibitions so how can the
06:00 - 06:30 Christian story be true but the Pagan religions be false Gerard's answer is that the Christian story is going to have the same form because Christ is also going to be scapegoated but with one crucial difference the Christian story will be told from the perspective of the victim what the Bible is doing is to tell the same type of story as Pagan religion has but from the other perspective not the persecutor which all Pagan religion has been told from but the victim and in doing so exposing the lies of all
06:30 - 07:00 religions to show that the victim is innocent that the crowd is guilty that there is no sacred power that all of that was merely psychological projection the Bible for Gerard paradoxically is a religion to end all religions a myth to end all myths a founding murder to end all founding murders by exposing their violence their unjust their deceitful Origins Christ knows that reason alone that an analytical proof of the scapegoat mechanism like the one I've
07:00 - 07:30 just provided you is not enough to shake societies out of this perennial cultural practice what we need is an equally compelling story that shakes us into a new moral framework that automatically identifies with the underdog mixes automatically side with the victim and in doing so see through the lies of the scapegoat mechanism and awe of Pagan religion the right metaphor then to think about the relationship between Christianity and Pagan religion is that of the relationship between a vaccine and the
07:30 - 08:00 original disease the efficacy of a vaccine in neutralizing the original host lies in its proximity and not its radical difference for example structurally the coveted vaccine is very similar to the original disease just with a few important tweaks and this similarity is what makes it a covet vaccine and not say a polio vaccine the Bible then is a myth vaccine and so the strategy of many modern Christians to show that the Bible has nothing to do
08:00 - 08:30 with the old myths that it is radically different Gerard believes is misguided I mean take something like the Epic of Gilgamesh one of the first known myths of Mesopotamia modern Christians often blush at the many similarities between the two there's a a quest for the fruit of immortality from a tree of eternal life exists in both the Epic of Gilgamesh as well as the Bible there's a deceitful snake eating the fruit and robbing us of our immortality and there's a great flood from which only
08:30 - 09:00 the chosen are protected Gerard would say don't blush and don't try to distance the Bible from these myths the Bible is effective and true because of its proximity or more precisely a key difference in its proximity now let's look at some of the stories in the Hebrew Bible where this intuition of the victim's innocence is already starting to take root let's examine the foundation of the first worldly Society As Told by the Hebrew Bible it's a story of Cain and
09:00 - 09:30 Abel and the story goes something like this Cain and Abel are the sons of Adam and Eve Cain is the firstborn he's a farmer and Abel is the second born he's a Shepherd they both frequently offer sacrifices to God God however constantly favored Abel's sacrifices over Cain's and so one day in the fields out of jealousy Cain murdered Abel upon seeing this God condemns Cain punishing him to wander the lands this
09:30 - 10:00 is what God says Genesis 4 12. fugitive and a vagabond shalt though be in the earth end quote Cain is frightened he's worried that people who know him and what he did will try to kill him for his transgressions for his crimes against Abel so God puts a mark on Cain to protect him God says this Genesis 4 15. therefore whosoever slayeth came Vengeance shall be taken on him Sevenfold
10:00 - 10:30 such is the founding story of the Canaanite Community now despite the superficial similarities the warring Brothers the sacrifice the expulsion we can hopefully see that this story is different from Pagan founding myths in the most subtle but important of ways the first big difference is that the victim is shown to be innocent and the Act of Killing is unjust take the case of the founding of Rome another Society founded by a murder of Brothers while the killing of Remus by Romulus
10:30 - 11:00 may have been presented as regrettable it is nonetheless justified by remus's transgressions Romulus only killed Remus after Remus jumped over the legitimate barriers that Romulus had set up around his City to Mock and humiliate Romulus Remus is really guilty he's guilty of hubris and transgression and Romulus was justified in The Killing even if it was regrettable able on the other hand is shown to be an
11:00 - 11:30 innocent upstanding servant of God not deserving any punishment Cain's murder is not justifiable there is no reason at all other than Cain's Envy which motivates this killing the most telling sentence is the first thing that God says to Cain after his murder God says this where is Abel thy brother of course God knows where Abel is he's God this isn't a question this is a deep moral condemnation especially the second
11:30 - 12:00 part thy brother the founding murder of the knee Community event is shown to be unjust and Kane was punished to wander because of it now the second big difference between this story and that of pagan myths is that violence does not bring about peace in the story of Cain and Abel but just more violence in Pagan mythology the peace that immediately follows from the expulsion is taken to be the final word think about Oedipus and the peace that visits
12:00 - 12:30 thieves upon his expulsion think of the hymn of purusha that we talked about in the last lecture how the sacrifice of purusha and dismemberment became the foundations for an orderly worldly Hindu Society in the case of the Canaanites violence does not lead to peace but only begets more violence what Dawns on Cain after his murder is not peace but an immediate awareness that other people will not try to kill
12:30 - 13:00 him for killing Abel this is why God put a mark on Cain and this Mark of Cain which God put that whosoever should kill him will have Vengeance multiplied Sevenfold is a Prohibition that is attempting to prevent this escalating violence but of course all prohibitions all legalisms fail over time Cain's grandson would go on to kill a man and a boy and go on to declare that if Cain shall be Avenged Sevenfold then he should be Avenged
13:00 - 13:30 77-fold I think it's helpful here to imagine Kane's grandson standing over the body of his victims thumping his chest and saying whosoever shall kill me shall be Avenged 77-fold which of course is just Old Testament speak for come at me bro what began then as a rule pronounced by God to prevent revenge and reciprocal violence this Sevenfold protection on Cain within just three
13:30 - 14:00 generations has become a war cry I shall be Avenged 77-fold declared by a man and not God what is important is both the escalating scale of violence from 7 to 77 but also who says it until what end goth says it to prevent violence Cain's grandson declares it to invite and seek violence the prohibition against the blood Feud has become the logic of the blood Feud the message from the story of
14:00 - 14:30 Cain and Abel is clear the victim is innocent the murder is unjust and the culture born of violence must return to violence the civilization might flourish initially but the violence will be inadequately contained by the legal barriers deriving from the founding murder let's look at another biblical story to see whether we can still find these differences from Pagan religion and that's the story of Joseph Joseph's story goes something like this Joseph was the 11th of 12 Brothers a
14:30 - 15:00 favorite of his father he was wildly envied and resented by his brothers and not I would wager completely without reason he kept interpreting these dreams that indicated the other brothers would be subservient and bowed down to him now as a result the brothers annoyed enough eventually expelled Joseph selling him into slavery where he found himself a servant to one of the pharaoh's ministers Joseph was continuously seduced by The
15:00 - 15:30 Minister's Wife and continuously refused until she out of anger and Desperation accused falsely that Joseph was the one trying to have sex with her Joseph was expelled again and put into prison but because of his charm and ability to interpret dreams found himself soon the cupbearer the right-hand man to the Pharaoh himself governing Egypt by happenstance Joseph is reunited with his brothers who do not recognize him he sets up a trap to test the resolve and character of his brothers by threatening
15:30 - 16:00 to enslave the 12th and youngest brother Benjamin now upon seeing this one of the older brothers Judah volunteers to sacrifice himself in place of Benjamin seeing that they have changed and matured Joseph Reveals His identity forgives them and the family reunites again there seems to be a superficial similarity to Pagan mythir the hubris the expulsion the sexual crimes the interpretation of Dreams the trials the family feuds but it is also different in
16:00 - 16:30 the most important ways the first point of Market difference here from Pagan mythology is that both acts of expulsion are painted as unjust even if the same acts in Pagan mythology were more than enough to justify victims expulsions the first expulsion where the brothers sell Joseph off to slavery was not completely without reason and that reason was Joseph's hubris he was annoying right Pagan characters were legitimately expelled for much less
16:30 - 17:00 Oedipus is hubris for thinking he can tempt fate Remus is a hubris for transgressing his brother's boundaries and yet despite this fact Joseph's expulsion into slavery is described as unjust through and through it's not as hubris but his innocence that is emphasized in this story this is what it means to be coming from the perspective of the victim and not the persecutor it's a paradigm shift in moral perspectives Gerard has this to say to the second
17:00 - 17:30 expulsion where Joseph is imprisoned on false charges of adultery Gerard comments how the charge put on the head of Joseph of trying to seduce The Minister's Wife is symbolic of incest because the minister treated him so well as if he were his father and so his wife would then be a maternal figure of course we know too well from Oedipus and the rituals of African kings that incest is so often a charge put on the victim well here then this canonical charge is
17:30 - 18:00 shown to be groundless as well the second point of Market difference between Pagan myths and the story of Joseph is the ending Judah offers himself as a sacrifice such that their youngest brother may be spared and go free gone are the days of Vengeance God is the cultural Moray of expulsion Joseph's seminal Act is not one of sacrificed in scapegoating but of forgiveness as a result the characters of the story are not made sacred deified like Pagan
18:00 - 18:30 characters given the Divine Aura of power seeming more than human they are simply humanized the final scene ends with Joseph crying with his brothers a deeply human sentiment Genesis 45 14. and he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept and Benjamin wept upon his neck end quote like Jesus then Joseph wept what we get is not sacredity but Humanity
18:30 - 19:00 the Hebrew Bible is filled with stories like this from the perspective of the victim you can even argue that that the story of the Jewish people centers around the victim where the founding story revolves around Moses and the way that the Jews are exiled from Egypt the story of Moses is told from the Hebrew perspective which is the perspective of the scapegoat right I think that's a good example because here again we find that the roles are reverse the expulsion of Moses is not the founding event of
19:00 - 19:30 Egypt the persecutors which it would be in Pagan myth but it's the founding story of the Jews who are the victims in Pagan myth the violence to the victim is either Justified as in the case of Oedipus or whitewashed if not forgotten as in the case of the hymn to purusha but what it can't permit is to have the violence shown to be unjustified these are the exact stories then that appear in the Hebrew Bible that tell us of the Innocence of the victims the Injustice of the expulsion and the
19:30 - 20:00 delusion of the crowd the key intuition that Gerard sees brewing in the Hebrew Bible is captured quite well by a poetic verse in Psalms 46. sacrifice and offering though does not desire Holocaust and victim though has not required the Psalms are an anthology of Hebrew religious hymns and this line is clearly Meant To Be Sung In Praise of the Hebrew God it is praising the Hebrew God for not wanting the sacrifices and victims
20:00 - 20:30 like the gods of yore however for Gerard the rejection of sacrifice only remains but a muffled intuition in the Hebrew Bible and won't develop into a fully articulate and resounding message until the arrival of Jesus Gerard has this to say throughout the Old Testament a work of exegesis is in progress operating in precisely the opposite direction to the usual dynamics of Mythology and culture and yet it is impossible to say that
20:30 - 21:00 this work is completed end quote Gerard as many Christians do find the Hebrew Bible incomplete in both its form and its content in its content Judaism does not fully renounce sacrifice and violence the god of the Hebrew people still receive sacrifices from Cain and Abel he still demands the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham he still used the Red Seas to destroy the Pharaoh's Army he still cast plagues upon Egypt as Divine punishment he still unleashes the flood
21:00 - 21:30 of Noah against immorality and impiety in its form the Hebrew tradition still clings to the Pagan logic of legal prohibitions and rituals it's fault is legalism the same legalism that is unable to contain the violence of Cain and the same legalism that will eventually contribute to Christ's death after all who were among Christ's persecutors if not the Pharisees and the scribes the Jewish legal authorities
21:30 - 22:00 Christ then for Gerard completes the Hebrew Bible in both its form and its content this completion is captured in no better place than Jesus's Sermon on the Mount where he articulates the core moral framework of Christianity I read to you Matthew 5 35 to 40. ye have heard that it hath been said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth but I say unto you that e resists not evil but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right
22:00 - 22:30 cheek turn to him the other also and if any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat let him have thy cloak also Jesus here is taking the Jewish intuition to its completion an eye for an eye is from Leviticus and this type of tit-for-tat morality is common to Jewish law the Jewish law only asks us to refrain from violent initiative but in some sense encourages violent responses
22:30 - 23:00 Jesus's point is that it's not enough to Simply refrain from violent initiative because in memetic rivalries we always feel we are wronged we are always acting on the defensive perhaps thinking about the example of nuclear war is helpful here you know some states around the topic of nuclear war have declared that they will not be the first to use nuclear weapons but I think that's a very little Comfort to anyone because it's so easy to misinterpret an innocuous action for an attack and thus initiate a nuclear war
23:00 - 23:30 when you think you're actually defending yourself the only way to be rid of the scapegoat mechanism is for everyone to unilaterally renounce violence even in the case where violence is committed unto us while the content of the Hebrew Bible delegitimizes and sometimes exposes violence it still permits for the controlled use of it Jesus is going to take that to the extreme we must say no to violence full stop period fully give up violence we must also move
23:30 - 24:00 away from legalism I read to you Matthew 5 21-22 ye have heard that it was said of them of old time though shalt not kill and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment but I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment and whosoever shall say to his brother worthless shall be in danger of the council but whosoever shalt say though
24:00 - 24:30 fool shall be in danger of Hellfire end quote Jesus also completes the form of Judaism he goes beyond mere legal prescriptions his morality is one that governs the internal soul and not just the actions of the external body not only is killing as it's prescribed in the Hebrew Bible a sin so is mere anger violent thought and intention legal rules Pagan prohibitions cannot save us from the scapegoat
24:30 - 25:00 mechanism from reciprocal violence because of Gerard's views on theodicy human nature is so essentially corrupt that it can poison the system we set around it and use it to persecute and scapegoat even if it was intended to stop persecution this was the story of Cain right what was a Prohibition set by God against violence that Cain shall be Avenged Sevenfold became a war cry the logic of a blood Feud for Kane's grandson declaring himself that he shall
25:00 - 25:30 be Avenged 77-fold I see this all the time where legalism fails where the laws don't do what we want them to do and if you go back a couple a couple years ago and you would drive around America you would see these big yellow Billboards that said Amazon 15 minimum wage and there are all these people throwing their fists up championing go Amazon go Amazon and those people often were wanted to support small businesses that was the thing that they were interested in they want to support labor but what happened was that 15 minimum wage actually made
25:30 - 26:00 it impossible for small businesses to compete against Amazon why because Amazon has a ton of cash these small businesses don't and so the laws end up having their opposite effect yeah I think that's a great example and I'm probably trying to stretch of an analogy here but it's something like in the same way that God prescribes uncaine that his killing would be Avenged Sevenfold and that was to protect them the same way social movements try to create minimum wage for labor and small business but
26:00 - 26:30 Justice Kane's grants son co-opted this law from God and turned it to the logic of a blood Feud in your example it seems that Amazon co-opted this law and turned it away to go against labor as well as small business is that right yeah yeah and that is precisely the problem with legalism no matter what legal institutions and rules you put in place no matter how well intentioned you are or even how good the effects initially Human Nature has a way of corrupting them and co-opting it for perverse means
26:30 - 27:00 Jesus then will end legalism Jesus is to the Hebrew Bible what the spirit is to the letter Jesus's completion of the Hebrew intuition that the victim is innocent will reach its Zenith in the crucifixion our second topic of discussion that we must now turn to Christ's crucifixion will be the founding murder that ends all founding murders the myth that ends all myths the religious event to end all religions for
27:00 - 27:30 Gerard the crucifixion exposes the scapegoat mechanism the basis for corrupt human society and false Pagan religions fatally wounding it once and for all by doing so Christ will show himself to be the one true God standing above a sea of false Pretenders the crucifixion is also the completion of the Hebrew Bible where the muffled intuition buried deep within its stories that the victim is will transform into a loud unmistakable
27:30 - 28:00 declaration Jesus is the ultimate victim he's the perfect Abel he's the perfect Joseph and a strategy to expose the scapegoat mechanism is quite similar the proximity to Pagan myth the metaphor of the vaccine that we just discussed so let us first reflect on how the crucifixion is very similar to the shape of Pagan religion well first we have memetic contagion within the people of Jerusalem the very crowd that has welcomed Jesus with open arms just days
28:00 - 28:30 before now has fully turned on Jesus this radical switching of allegiances is emblematic of a group in Contagion think back to Ajax how quickly his anger was redirected from the Trojans to Odysseus and think to their French Revolution and its revolving door of new victims violence is blind and it just wants to sink its teeth into something second then we have the Escape building event the founding murder the actual judgment sentencing and crucifixion of Christ and there cannot be a better example of violent unanimity everyone
28:30 - 29:00 stands against Christ the Jewish religious authorities the Roman political authorities the two thieves crucified at either side of Jesus who all hurl insults at him and all the disciples too betray Jesus including Peter upon witchrock the Catholic Church will be built all of them betrayed Jesus when being confronted by the crowd Peter denies that he has anything to do with Jesus Thrice
29:00 - 29:30 third then we have an unlikely piece that is established and brokered between two previous Enemies United by their dislike and expulsion of Christ this Pontius Pilate the Roman political Authority and Herod a Jewish ruler lastly we have the divinization of Christ in his resurrection following from that we have the institutionalization of this founding murder in the Bible the Catholic church and all the multitude of religious rituals and prohibitions that flow from
29:30 - 30:00 them many of which are still with us today the structure of Christ's crucifixion perfectly conforms to the pure form of a scapegoat mechanism and if this were the extent of the Christ story then it would be but another false Pagan myth for Gerard of course like Oedipus balder or Zeus but of course just like the stories of Abel and Joseph within the details we find a story that is radically different from classical mythology and one that seeks to subvert
30:00 - 30:30 Pagan religion from within for Gerard there are three qualities about Christ that both perfectly expose the scapegoat mechanism and show that he is the one true God his innocence his truth his love let's go through each of those qualities of Christ Christ's innocence begins before even Christ begins with his virgin birth immediately we are dealing with the being drastically different from the pagan gods whose Birth has always been
30:30 - 31:00 depicted as rape or rape like right think back to the Intercourse that made Dionysus for example Zeus Bears down on dionysus's would-be mother like a beast of prey that's how it's described Christ's birth is not bloody it's not a rape hell there wasn't even any sex in it it was perfectly clean and an innocent beginning but Christ's innocence is no better displayed than in a single line muttered by his prosecutor Pontius Pilate who judged and eventually sentenced Christ let me read you Luke 23
31:00 - 31:30 4. then said pilate to the chief priests and to the people I find no fault in this man end quote of course pilate here is talking about Jesus pilate had just interrogated Jesus by himself before he you know got caught up all in the crowd and his conclusion is unmistakable that Jesus is innocent even pilate's wife knew Jesus was innocent and pleaded for his release what this shows is that it was only forced by the hand of the mob did pilate hesitantly sentence and
31:30 - 32:00 crucify Jesus there's no room for confusion or doubt here on the guilt of Jesus Jesus is not guilty because what could be a better proof of the victim's innocence than that his judge believed he was innocent the mob is guilty the expulsion was unjust the victim is innocent this is the fundamental resounding message that comes from the crucifixion and it is a message that will Expose and begin to tear down the scapegoat
32:00 - 32:30 mechanism from this moment on we will be reading myths in light of the gospels which allows us to see their lies the idea goes something like this Christ's innocence and unjust prosecution through the proliferation of Christianity becomes the dominant moral Paradigm we view the world through we will always be looking out for persecution we will always be siding with the victim we will always be aware of the deceitfulness of the mob in so far as we are in this Christian moral
32:30 - 33:00 Paradigm and this lens allows us to slowly but surely decode and escape from the scapegoat mechanism which cannot function if people know that the victim is innocent because if the victim is innocent then catharsis cannot be achieved without catharsis there's no peace without peace there's no sacredity without sacredity Pagan worldly religions lose their Prestige and without Prestige they can no longer properly function Christ is tearing down the pillars of deceitful worldly Foundation
33:00 - 33:30 if not a proof on its own Christ's innocence for Gerard is a strong reason to believe that he is the one true God because of his Perfection he withstands Temptations He never wrongs anyone and unlike Old Testament victims who may have minor flaws like uh Joseph is hubris for example Christ is perfectly Innocent but it's not just the Perfection of his innocence but a Perfection of that innocence in the least hospitable environment which
33:30 - 34:00 Gerard thinks is so notable I mean recall how he said that in memetic Contagion when Society is in frenzy that frenzy tends to get to everyone well the fact that Christ was able to maintain his innocence gives us a hint that he is not subject to the same human Follies what makes Jesus's defeat of the scapegoat mechanism all the more total was that the reason Jesus was victimized was because he was trying to expose
34:00 - 34:30 victimization and so the very Act of his murder became a proof of what he was trying to expose let me try to frame this in other words Jesus had access to truth right the second quality Gerard believes that Jesus was the first being to understand the scapegoat mechanism and its effects on society Gerard interprets many of Jesus's Parables as hinting at the scapegoat mechanism and the role of violence and murder in the foundation of worldly culture and Society but none is as convincing as
34:30 - 35:00 what Gerard calls and some Christians call The Curse against the Pharisees the context of the passage I'm going to read you is this Jesus here is talking to and reproaching the Pharisees the Jewish legal authorities for persecution this is who Jesus is trying to defend Luke 11 50-51 the blood of all the prophets which was shed from the foundation of the world from the blood of Abel unto the blood of
35:00 - 35:30 Zechariah which perished between the Altar and the temple end quote Jesus is trying to defend all victims of persecution here able to Zechariah is supposed to represent all the victims with Abel being the first victim in Zachariah being the last from the Hebrew Bible what Jesus is trying to do is to expose the innocence of the victims but this middle sentence is even more
35:30 - 36:00 interesting blood Shed from the foundation of the world this Foundation is not Genesis it's not the creation of the world the Greek word that is translated to Foundation here connotes a passing over from disorder to order and what is that if not the peaceful effects of the scapegoat mechanism grounded on the blood of victims the foundation mentioned is the foundation of worldly order from the scapegoat mechanism that is what Christ is targeting here
36:00 - 36:30 in this Exchange in exchanges like this Christ wants to expose the role of innocent victims in the foundation of worldly power including the power of the Pharisees so of course the Pharisees cannot let him continue and will eventually be one of the key groups that push for Christ's deaths Christ's death then is in some sense a poetic Victory the fact that Christ got scapegoated for trying to expose scapegoating proves the point about
36:30 - 37:00 scapegoating but another way Christ set up the perfect trap for the scapegoat mechanism either you do nothing in which case more and more people will hear Christ talking about his message or you kill him which is what they did but in doing so proved the very point that Christ was trying to make and spread his message even further the very silencing of Christ became the loud voice that shouted his message as is the case with innocence it's not
37:00 - 37:30 just Christ's ability to access the core truth of human society in a vacuum ex-nilo but his ability to access that in the least hospitable of conditions that Gerard sees as a sign of superhuman divinity in the heart of the scapegoat mechanism where reason has no power where truth has no roots to grow Christ was able to see and expose the violent truth of human society only a Divine being so Gerard argues can do so
37:30 - 38:00 the last and most important quality of Christ is his unconditional total love this love unlike his innocence or his ability to grasp truth doesn't necessarily directly tear down the scapegoat mechanism but rather teaches us what to do when we find ourselves in it when we are being victimized or when we are doing the victimization Gerard tells us that there's only one way out and it's captured by Matthew 5 43-44 listen
38:00 - 38:30 to this ye have heard that it hath been said those shall love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy but I say unto you love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you end quote Jesus's prescriptions here is an extremely difficult one if not only because this radical commitment to love and commitment to renounced violence
38:30 - 39:00 must be done by everyone unanimously in order to end the conflict but it is the only possible solution other than the violence the deceit and the lies of the scapegoat mechanism to stop an escalating war of all against all perhaps we can at least take solace in the fact that Christ will eventually live up to his own word about unconditional love listen to this Luke 23 33 and when they were come to the place which is called Calvary
39:00 - 39:30 There They Crucified him and the malfactors of the criminals one on the right hand and the other on the left then said Jesus father forgive them for they know not what they do end quote at a point when everyone turns against Christ when he is suffering tremendous physical pain when he is at the end of his worldly life the dominant emotion for Christ is still
39:30 - 40:00 his love for others father forgive them for they know not what they do as is the case with truth and innocence it is not just the strength of Christ's love but the ability for him to love in such an inhospitable environment that Gerard sees as evidence of true divinity and you know this makes me think of my period of study and practice in Buddhist monasteries in Nepal one of the core tenets of Buddhism and being very
40:00 - 40:30 simplistic here is a love for all sentient beings not too dissimilar perhaps for what Christ is advocating here and what I realized when I was practicing in Nepal holed up in the Himalayas is that it's easy to love all sentient beings when you are holed away in a monastery without struggle or Strife in the world but as soon as you get back into the world as soon as your ego and your spirit enters into competition with others is it hard to love Christ then managed to show the greatest degree of love in the least likely of
40:30 - 41:00 situations when everyone is wrongfully blaming and hurting him perhaps Gerard is on to something with divinity after all to summarize the crucifixion exposed the founding mechanism mortally wounding it by showing that the victim is innocent the death of Christ confirmed and spread the truth of Christ's teachings about the unjust and violent foundations of society and the love of Christ gives us away however difficult of preventing and
41:00 - 41:30 dealing with the scapegoat process it's impressive already for Christ to have maintained his perfect innocence to have grasped the full extent of the truth and to have displayed an unwavering love but the fact that Christ was able to do so in environment that was completely hostile to innocence Truth and Love is what for Gerard makes him the one true God there's one last topic I wish to discuss
41:30 - 42:00 today and that is to finish painting Gerard's anthropology of the Cross and to reflect on the type of Christianity that Gerard has put in front of us by anthropology of the Cross I'm referring to Gerard's translation of the most important Christian phenomena into readily understandable cultural psychological and social language to take Christian phenomena from the other world and to ground it in this world I began painting the picture here in lecture two by arguing that the compulsive prideful unsatisfying
42:00 - 42:30 metaphysical desire the desire to be was nothing but our original sin I continued painting the picture in lecture three by describing the Christian concept of the fallenness of the world of a worldly evil if you will as really the psychological and social pathologies made necessary by our memetic Natures fetishization alienation bipolarity masochism oppression and inequity let's continue then in fleshing out this picture and translate more crucial Christian Concepts into anthropological
42:30 - 43:00 language what is Satan Gerard has this to say Satan is the name for the memetic process seen as a whole that is why he is the source not merely of rivalry and disorder but of all the forms of lying order inside which Humanity lives human beings are Sons of Satan because they are sons of this murder end quote Satan is a scapegoat mechanism he is the frenzy that leads groups to descend into chaos but also the violence and lies
43:00 - 43:30 that establishes the worldly order but isn't the scapegoat mechanism responsible for all culture and society and then and then does that make all human society satanic it does or at least you're almost right Satan isn't all of society but all of worldly power Satan is the prince and principalities of the world he strives to be like God he wants to be the ruler for this world just as God is for the next this is Gerard's conclusion it's very
43:30 - 44:00 surprising so not surprised at all that you jumped in and asked that question Satan isn't some scheming conniving figure lurking in the shadows trying to bring down the worldly order he is the worldly order this idea that worldly power is inherently satanic is not a foreign one to Christian Theology and its implications are profound the false pagan gods the scapegoat mechanism establishes those are all satanic the false Idols that take us
44:00 - 44:30 away from the one true God all of our institutions like law insofar as they are grounded on violence and lies those are also manifestations of Satan but it's not just violence that is satanic so is worldly order and peace that comes from this violence it is satanic because it is built upon the body of a murdered victim in that way by living in and benefiting from that peace Gerard thinks we are all you and I participating in Satanism
44:30 - 45:00 right now while the entire worldly order we live in is all tainted by Satan to some degree there are particular strands of ideas that are strongly and more explicitly satanic in for Gerard right-wing reactionary political ideologies such as Nazism that outwardly reject the Christian concern for the victim that want to go back to scapegoating and killing these for Gerard are all strongly satanic now let's think about another concept what does the Christian Revelation translate
45:00 - 45:30 to in anthropological language well that's what we've spent this entire lecture dissecting the Christian Revelation is the exposure and defeat of the scapegoat mechanism which is also Satan Christ expels and wounds Satan and Christ just has one thing to prescribe it's not the Eucharist it's not the Lord's Prayer it's not lend it's not virginity in this view even the belief in God the father is not the constitutive message of Christ all Christ asks us to do is love
45:30 - 46:00 unwavering unconditional love for everyone as Christ exemplified is the only thing that can save us when we are deep in the memetic process when we are in the grips of Satan let's continue painting the picture let's continue of building the dictionary what about the Antichrist how does that translate into anthropological language well first let's begin on the theological side the Antichrist is a devious figure only briefly mentioned in
46:00 - 46:30 the New Testament the Antichrist isn't Satan who directly opposes Christ but operates in a more subtle manner by competing with and subverting Christ the Antichrist will work wonders he'll sit in the temple of God and claim to be God himself this is what Gerard has to say the attempt by Nietzsche and Hitler to make humankind forget the concern for victims has ended in a failure that seems definitive at least for the moment
46:30 - 47:00 but it is not Christianity that profits from the victory of the concern for victims in our world is rather what I think must be called the other totalitarianism the most cunning and malicious of the two the one with the greatest future by all evidence at present it does not oppose judeo-christian aspirations but claims them as its own and questions the concern for victims on the part of Christians
47:00 - 47:30 the other totalitarianism does not openly oppose Christianity but outflanks it on the left wing all through the 20th century the most powerful memetic force was never Nazism and related ideologies the most powerful anti-christian movement is the one that takes over and radicalizes the concern for victim in order to paganize it s other totalitarianism presents itself as the Liberator of humanity in trying
47:30 - 48:00 to usurp the place of Christ the powers imitate him in the way a memetic rival imitates his model in order to defeat him they denounce the Christian concern for victims as hypocritical and a pale imitation of the authentic Crusade against oppression and persecution for which they would carry the banner themselves end quote if Satan is reactionary totalitarianism then the Antichrist is Progressive
48:00 - 48:30 totalitarianism why well for Gerard the core message of the Christian Revelation is that the victim is innocent and ought to be protected far-right reactionary movements directly oppose this message they want to bring back power they shamelessly persecute victims Satan stands directly opposed to Christ far left Progressive movements however a appropriate this message for Gerard they pay lip service to the protection of
48:30 - 49:00 victims in order to continue persecuting today the only type of persecution that is accepted is persecution in the name of protecting victims I mean think about all the horrors committed in the Soviet Union in the name of protecting the proletariat the little guy this is what it means to paganize Christianity and why Progressive movements insofar as they're hypocritical of course constitute for Gerard the Antichrist the false prophet who appears so close to
49:00 - 49:30 Christ but so easily leads us astray let's move on to a slightly more optimistic Christian notion what about the kingdom of God how does Gerard interpret that I quote you Gerard the significance of the kingdom of God is completely clear it is always a matter of bringing together the warring Brothers of putting an end to the memetic crisis by a universal renunciation of violence the kingdom of God means the complete and definitive elimination of every form of Vengeance
49:30 - 50:00 in every form of reprisal in relation between men end quote the kingdom of God is not necessarily only available in some otherworldly Beyond but establishable in this world it is made possible by Jesus exposing the scapegoat mechanism and giving us the prescription for unconditional love the kingdom of God is when all of us practice unconditional love and renounce violence and I do mean all of us because
50:00 - 50:30 if only some people ascribe to non-violence they will become victims and expelled as Jesus was however if we don't live up to this ideal of the kingdom of God then Gerard thinks we're heading towards apocalypse the Christian idea of Apocalypse as captured by New Testament books such as Revelations tells us the violent ending of the world Gerard humanizes this ending violence will not be caused by God but by us it will be human violence our inability to
50:30 - 51:00 follow Jesus's prescriptions of unconditional love that will be the end of us now that we no longer have the escaped goat mechanism an easy out from violence to lean on we are susceptible to a world-scaled memetic contagion engulfing our entire species and violence there's nothing otherworldly about this ending nothing religious in the traditional sense of the word religion as the cover of Gerard's most apocalyptic book he had the picture of a
51:00 - 51:30 nuclear explosion clearly apocalypse comes from the hands of man this is the anthropological reading we've compiled a dictionary here translating core Christian Concepts uh original sin evil Satan Christian Revelation Antichrist kingdom of God and apocalypse into anthropological terms and we can now use this dictionary to translate the essential Christian story into an easily digestible history of mankind the Christian story let me give
51:30 - 52:00 you that one first go something like this imitating Satan we developed original sin which is responsible for all worldly evil this original sin led us to worship Satan in the guise of false idols Christ exposed Satan and gave us the possibility of Freedom Satan and the Antichrist tempt us to this day and finally the Christian Revelation engenders either the kingdom of God or violent apocalypse it's a five-fold story and so let's now translate this story one sentence at a time for you to see
52:00 - 52:30 the power of this girardian dictionary that we've built the first sentence is imitating Satan we developed original sin which is responsible for worldly evil this becomes fundamental human Drive is metaphysical desire the desire to exist in great measure and it is responsible for all the psychological and social pathologies in this world the second sentence this original sin led us to worship Satan in the guise of false Idols becomes
52:30 - 53:00 metaphysical desire leads groups towards reciprocal violence the only solution to which is the scapegoat mechanism that violently and deceitfully expels innocent victims and directs arbitrary gods do you see the power of this dictionary the third sentence then is this Christ exposed Satan and gave us the possibility of Freedom it becomes the story of the crucifixion shed light on the violence and lies of the scapegoat mechanism and gave us agency
53:00 - 53:30 to build better societal structures four sentence Satan and the Antichrist tempt us to this day becomes in modernity far right movements openly persecute victims whereas far left movements persecute victims in the name of ending persecution finally the final and fifth sentence the ending to this Christian story is this let me repeat it one more time the Christian Revelation engenders either the kingdom of God or violent
53:30 - 54:00 apocalypse translated it becomes this escape goat mechanism now exposed and weakened we are at a time in history where we can recognize each other's humanity and unilaterally renounce violence however if we fail to do so the checks on violence are gone and we will perish in one last World War what an achievement this is to be able to render intelligible the core Christian message the core Christian story and worldview
54:00 - 54:30 without any appeal to metaphysical Concepts or otherworldly ideals but just human psychology and anthropological theories however it is because and not despite this massive achievement Gerard's ability to translate the Christian message into anthropological language that at the same time Gerard presents us with a deeply unorthodox Christianity it is unorthodox first because it must reject a canonical reading of the Christ
54:30 - 55:00 story that tells of the father sacrificing his one and only son to redeem Humanity Gerard's reading of Christianity forces him to push back on both fronts the father did not sacrifice his son and Christ's death did not redeem Humanity why well if the father sacrificed the son in the same way a tribal leader sacrifices a lamb to end a dispute then God would be like a pagan God demanding Blood for Blood he would be no different than Aztec gods he would
55:00 - 55:30 be no different than Apollo such a reading that the father sent Christ to die and made the mob turn on him so that his blood would redeem our sins paints a picture of a god keeping a vengeful moral tally that Gerard just cannot have in such a story would be missing the entire point of Christ's death because instead of putting the agency in the mob and realizing the universal human Folly of scapegoating you would be putting the agency of Christ's death
55:30 - 56:00 onto God suddenly then the crucifixion isn't about a core mechanism within human nature with the universal relevance instead it just becomes a particular event orchestrated by God and the Lessons Learned in it under this sacrificial reading are not applicable everywhere because this is a special show that God has put on for us Gerard has this to say I quote to interpret it as sacrifice absolves man the responsibility of murder it sugarcoats the crucifixion as a result
56:00 - 56:30 of a Divine pact rather than the misguided Deeds of man which we must introspect and correct end quote and so if God is sacrificial it's not the sacrifice of other for self that we used to think about in religious sacrifice it's not putting a lamb in place of our sins and killing it it's a sacrifice of self for other that Christ and God is doing like a fireman rushing into a building knowing that he will
56:30 - 57:00 likely perish and of course for Gerard Christ's death did not redeem our sins it posed our sins this exposure gives us the possibility of redemption indeed but it's not Redemption itself Gerard's Christianity then is unorthodox second because of his conception of divinity go onto the street and ask any Christian why Christ is divine why he's the one true God what do you think they're going to say they're probably gonna they're
57:00 - 57:30 probably gonna talk about the Miracles turning Water to Wine raising from the dead walking on water and then and then being resurrected precisely they would say the Miracles and the fact that Jesus came back to life but Gerard says nay that can't be why Christ is divine because pagan gods are resurrected all the time pagan gods perform a whole boatload of Miracles as well do you take Christ to be a conjurer of cheap tricks for Gerard Christ's Divinity is not in
57:30 - 58:00 his power and other worldliness but in his morality and humanism in defending Christ as the true God Gerard doesn't even bring up the Miracles and when he does bring up the resurrection what's important for him is less so that Christ was resurrected pagan gods yet resurrected all the time but that there were three days between death and Resurrection for Gerard this symbolized that the link between mob violence and life between violent
58:00 - 58:30 expulsion and worldly peace had been fundamentally broken in fact what is more a convincing sign of Christ's Divinity is his refusal to perform miracles on the cross to save himself and his experience of human suffering epitomized by his desperate cry on the cross Matthew 27 46 my God my God why hast Thou forsaken me this is Gerard's position I quote instead of making the crucifixion a
58:30 - 59:00 cause of Jesus's Divinity it is preferable to see it as a consequence of Christ's Divinity end quote Gerard's Point here is that if Christ were a pagan God if you were a false god then his death and the peace that ensued would be the cause for his divinity but Christ is the one true God one who is moral through and through perfected in his innocence Truth and Love and such a being was bound to be sought out and
59:00 - 59:30 killed by our violent and unjust world the crucifixion is the consequence of his divinity not the cause and so not only does Jesus dismantle the scapegoat mechanism but he also supplants the Pagan sacred with Christian Divinity the genuine sacred for Gerard is not power powerful and Powerless but morality Good and Evil the genuine sacred is not Pagan Transcendence being more than man having
59:30 - 60:00 these miraculous Powers but humanism perfecting the qualities of man of truth of Love of Innocence clearly there has been a revaluation of values from now on our dominant moral Paradigm will not be between powerful and Powerless but be between Good and Evil so what is so unorthodox about this well the problem I wager is that Gerard did too good of a job translating Christian phenomenon into psychological
60:00 - 60:30 cultural and social constructs and in doing so he de-emphasizes I think what most Christians probably consider a crucial part of Christianity the other worldliness the metaphysical theological cosmological Beyond let me give you a few examples right apocalypse comes from human hands Satan is just the emergent sum of the victim image mechanism what defines Christ is that he perfected human Virtues Of Truth love and innocence the next eternal life
60:30 - 61:00 is barely brought up Christ has not come down to teach us how to save our souls for eternity but how to be freed of violence in this world Christ's message has been transformed from other worldly salvation to this worldly peace in all of Gerard's books there's just one sentence where Gerard says something substantive about the other world about the Beyond upon losing hope that we can establish the kingdom of God on Earth Gerard says this Christ's Triumph take place in a Beyond
61:00 - 61:30 of which we can describe neither the time nor place end quote the only time at least that I can find where anything of import happens not on humanistic terms is this one single sentence that Christ will establish his kingdom not in this world but the next in about 20 or so books that is all that he has to say about the Beyond and I imagine many Christians will find it lacking how are our sins punished how
61:30 - 62:00 will God judge our souls how does Purgatory work what is the ontology of the next World these aren't even the questions Gerard bothers to answer if I may be as heretical to Gerard as I think he is the Christian Orthodoxy I would say that Gerard is giving us a very atheistic Christianity where even God himself doesn't play a big part listen to this this is Gerard I'm going to quote him so now we are liberated we know that we
62:00 - 62:30 are by ourselves with no father in the sky to punish us and interfere with our paltry business Divine punishment is demystified by the gospels it's only place nowadays is in the Mythic imagination end quote now this shouldn't be interpreted literally and taken out of context he is insane by that phrase no father in the sky that there is no God but that there's no punishing God no father in the sky to
62:30 - 63:00 punish us who gets involved in human Affairs but I think you get the intuition here Gerard has done such a good job explaining Christianity by appealing to humanistic mechanisms that there leaves little room for God or Beyond far are we from the meditations on Christian ontology that we find in Augustine far are we from the theological reachings for the Trinity that we find in Aquinas far are we from the detailed descriptions of the afterlife we find in Dante and far are we from the Angelic Civil War we find in
63:00 - 63:30 Milton in Gerard's Christianity God's absence is just as loud and jarring as Humanity's presence the success of his anthropology of the Cross crowds out a Theology of the cross but the question arises if Christianity is so humanistic and this worldly if it's really against religion and sacredity how has it become a religion in itself how have we founded societies with it as its bases
63:30 - 64:00 Gerard's provocative answer is this I quote the gospels can serve as a foundation for a new culture similar to all the previous cultures only as a result of a certain Distortion of the original message end quote the Third Way Then That Gerard's Christianity is unorthodox is that insofar as Christianity has taken on a religious form and insofar as it has been at the seat of worldly power it has
64:00 - 64:30 been perverted and that's almost all of historical Christianity for Gerard the very idea of Christian power is an oxymoron because the core message of Christianity is the Injustice of all worldly power and religion so it's not just the clear perversions of historical Christianity that worry Gerard it's not just the selling of indulgences or the orgies and the Vatican or the justifications of Conquest the very fact that Christianity has taken on a religious form as a
64:30 - 65:00 cultural Foundation is a perversion in itself people have deified and dehumanized Christ in the same way they did Zeus like the sacrificial reading the Christian story has been distorted to be more palatable Christianity has been the basis of persecution the Jews which is Muslims and there's a whole host of prohibitions and a whole host of rituals just as Pagan religion had Gerard's point is clear people have missed the core Christian message love thy neighbor renounce
65:00 - 65:30 violence that is the core of Christ's teaching which has been muffled by a religious form think about how radical this is what it means to be Christian and be like Christ he's not the Eucharist it's not the prayer it's not lent it's not Chastity it's not biblical study it's not even dare I say the belief in the resurrection or faith in the father while all of these may help or are necessary supports the constitutive quality of being Christian for Gerard is
65:30 - 66:00 aspiring to unconditional love and the renunciation of all violence unconditionally this incompatibility between worldly power and Christianity is so strong that there is one final gerardian unorthodoxy that flows from it every capital G good thing we have talked about today spulsion of the scapegoat mechanism the exposure of violence and deceit the introduction of Truth and Love in
66:00 - 66:30 history all of these will tear our worldly foundations apart and lead us to apocalypse and how can it not tear the world apart if human societies as we discussed last lecture depend on violence and deceit for worldly peace then the introduction of Love and Truth can only bring about chaos Satan is ultimately evil but brings worldly peace then Christ is ultimately good but
66:30 - 67:00 brings worldly catastrophe after all Gerard reminds us Christ himself tells us as much Matthew 10 34 Christ says think not that I am come to send peace on Earth I came not to send peace but a sword in the final two lectures then we will understand the terrible gash that
67:00 - 67:30 Christ's sword has left on human history thank you foreign [Music]