Scapegoat

Resources: Books, Articles, Posts, Videos

with Ted Peters

When in the late 1980’s I gave concentrated time to the theology of sin, I found René Girard’s scapegoat theory very illuminating. Girard shone light where before there was darkness. The darkness of the lie.

Scapegoat theorist Rene Girard, Stanford University

One of the reasons that the phenomenon of sin is irrational and confusing has to do with a lie we tell ourselves. What you and I do almost every day is draw a line between good and evil. We then place ourselves on the good side of the line. I call this, self-justification. On some occasions, we place someone else on the evil side of the line. The one on the evil side of our imaginary line is the scapegoat. Because we are good and the scapegoat is evil, we are justified in ridding the world of that evil scapegoat. We may gossip–what I call cursing–or even perpetrate violence against the scapegoat. All in the name of the good, of course. The scapegoat bears our sins away, according to Leviticus 15. Well, at least this is the lie we tell ourselves.

What I eventually discovered is that there are two kinds of scapegoats. Girard discovered one compact form of the scapegoat. I unpacked what was compact and came up with two: the visible scapegoat and the invisible scapegoat. In some of the articles listed below, I tease out the difference. What they share in common is more important. Both visible and invisible scapegoats bind us together in community. Both bind as they blind.

When Christians generate atonement theories, we sometimes think of Jesus Christ as the final scapegoat. No more scapegoats!

I began to develop scapegoat theory in my book, Sin: Radical Evil in Souls and Society. I refined it somewhat in Sin Boldly! as well as in some recent articles and Patheos blog posts. Below is a list of resources that bring together self-justification coupled with scapegoating.