Find Me A Victim

I've been reading "A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace", by Brian Zahnd.  It's a wonderfully written book - not difficult to read, and yet it gets its point across very well.  And the point of the book is one that is so important for the Church today - especially the Church in America.  The point being to challenge our sacred violence, especially within the context of our religious and political systems, which all too often serve to legitimate and sacralize our violence.

I found Chapter 5 of this book to be particularly insightful, and it inspired me to write my own thoughts.  The chapter is an in depth look at John chapter 8.  Before I get into this passage, I would like to lay out some groundwork.

The Bible As Constitution

One of the worst things to happen to Christianity, in my opinion, is when the Bible was divided into chapter and verse.  Oh, of course this makes certain things much easier - I benefit from this every time I write a blog, because without this divisional system I would not be able to call attention to statements and stories so quickly and easily.  But the division causes us to be lazy readers.  We all too easily forget that the original readers of these passages did not have chapter and verse, and would read the entire thing all at once - and thus the passages and verses were naturally contextualized within the whole "book" they were within.

But when we remove verses and passages from their context, we all too often fall into a pattern of reading the Bible - as Brian McClaren puts it in his book "A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith" - like a constitutional lawyer.  I think that this analogy of McClaren's is brilliant, but I would want to further clarify it - because we do it like a bad constitutional lawyer.

One of the best examples of this comes in the form of the gun debate.  There was an article on Mother Jones that demonstrated how, historically, the 2nd amendment of the constitution has never been interpreted to mean that anyone can have any kind of weapon and in any quantity and they can purchase them without any kind of check to make sure they are not mentally disturbed (or anything of the kind).  And in fact, as the article demonstrates, the purpose of the NRA used to be to encourage people to be more safe with their guns - but more recently, it has transformed into a lobbying group whose purpose is to radically change the perspective on the 2nd amendment to mean "anyone can have any kind of weapon and in any quantity and they can purchase them without any kind of check to make sure they are not mentally disturbed (or anything of the kind)."

This redefinition of the 2nd Amendment is accomplished by focusing very heavily on certain phrases within the 2nd amendment while at the same time blatantly ignoring their context (both literal and historical).  Those who push for this reading of the amendment will emphasize the phrases "Congress shall make no law" and "right to bear arms" - but when they do so, they have to ignore the fact that the amendment starts out with the phrase: "a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state".  Notice the terminology: "well regulated militia".  This means that if you wish to bear arms, you must be part of a well regulated militia - it seems pretty clear from this phrase that the purpose of the amendment was not to mean that the government can never regulate arms.

But if this doesn't make it clear enough, we can check Article I, Section  8 of the Constitution itself for the definition of a militia, which states that Congress (ahem…the Federal Government…) shall have the power:

Clause 15:
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
Clause 16:
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

The fact that the purpose of a militia - according to this passage of the constitution - is to be a force that the Federal government can call upon to suppress insurrections and repel invasions, and which the government can organize and discipline, makes it pretty clear that the purpose of the 2nd amendment was never to mean "anyone can have any kind of weapon and in any quantity and they can purchase them without any kind of check to make sure they are not mentally disturbed (or anything of the kind)."

Just like the bad constitutional lawyer who emphasizes the phrases "Congress shall make no law" and "right to bear arms" while ignoring the rest of the amendment and Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution itself, we do the same thing with the Bible all the time - we take phrases out of context and form theologies out of them, and then no matter what other sections of the Bible are called to our attention we argue and fight for our perspective.  I've actually written about how the 2nd amendment ties in to this bad form of Biblical interpretation before, and that post is relevant to this one in more ways than one - but for the purpose of this post I would like to now move on to another analogy before I begin to tie this all in to John chapter 8.

The Scapegoat Mechanism
In another one of my posts I wrote about how the atonement of the cross is connected to scapegoating, and I summarized Rene Girard's brilliant theory on mimesis and the scapegoat mechanism.  This theory also plays out in John chapter 8, so I'd like to once more summarize Girard's theory, which consists of 6 steps:

1. Mimetic Desire
   Mimesis is our human tendency to learn by imitating each other.  This tendency starts the moment we exit the womb - as has been demonstrated by one study, conducted on 74 newborn babies, that found that the mean age at which these babies began to demonstrate the ability to imitate facial expressions was 36 hours.  This mimesis is how we learn - and thus it is one of our greatest strengths.  Without it, we would not even learn how to talk.  But, it comes with a weakness - we not only learn good habits and behaviors, but bad habits and behaviors as well.  And not only this, but it is through mimesis that we learn what to desire - and so often these learned desires are harmful desires.
2. Mimetic Rivalry
   This learned desire often turns into a rivalry when we end up desiring the same things as the ones we imitate - when we all desire the same things, but there is a limited quantity of these things, we end up preventing each other from obtaining these things.  So this turns into a vicious cycle - the ones we imitate first said “be like me: value this object.”  But when we reach out to take it, the ones we imitate say “Do not be like me - the object is mine, and you can't have it!”  This rivalry is demonstrated at a very early age - my own children are wonderful examples of this.  I have two daughters who share a bedroom.  The older of the two has many stuffed animals - most of which she never plays with.  The younger - who is now 2 - has begun taking these dolls, which are otherwise never played with, and she will play with them.  But the older child is then incensed - "those are mine!"  The older child takes these dolls from the younger forcefully, and then we scold her for doing so.  So then she waits for the moment that the younger child puts the doll down so that she can scoop it up and pretend that she is very interested in playing with the doll - but she has never played with this doll before.  You see, the doll becomes much more desirable to my older daughter because someone else wants it.
3. The Crisis of Distinctions
   Our societies so often distinguish classes of people according to "haves" and "have-nots".  In this way, we tend to sacralize the desires spoken of in steps 1 and 2, and we distinguish the value of people by how much of these resources they have obtained.  But when everyone wants the same things, what often happens is that we end up causing a shortage of the resource - sometimes because we have used the resource up, sometimes because of a natural disaster (which could be a weather event, a disease, a famine, etc.).  When this happens, the distinctions that formerly separated persons and groups of persons into classes disappear.  Walter Wink summarizes what happens next in "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination":

   Students seize the administration building, demanding a share in decision-making power that has previously been the sole prerogative of the administrators. Mill workers shut down the plant, insisting on a voice in shaping their new contract. The hierarchical barriers that society has so carefully erected, unjust as they may be, dike society against the flood of anarchy. When these distinctions collapse (as when soldiers in Vietnam refused to obey orders from their officers), that social system faces the possibility of collapse. Collapse can be averted, however, if society can find a scapegoat.
   

   At this stage, society threatens to tear itself apart because we've got people fighting over these commonly desired resources.  If the fighting does not stop somehow, our societal structures will collapse.  This brings us to the next step:
4. The Necessary Victim
   In order to “save” society from the chaos that results from steps 1-3, a victim must be found - towards which all the violence of that society is then directed and released upon.  In order to do this, the society must find a victim which they can all agree is guilty, and this victim needs to be incapable of defending themselves against the mob.  So this victim often ends up being one which has features distinguishing himself/herself/themselves from the "norm" - the average citizen.  Once society has found such a victim - and one that they can all agree is guilty - the blame for all of society's problems is pinned on this victim, and they are punished by that society.  This victim then serves as a release valve - releasing the “steam” of the society’s violence.  What makes the scapegoat mechanism so insidious is that it works - after we've destroyed our victim, for a time the violence of our society disappears.  We feel good - we've taken out our anger on this scapegoat, and now people who were once enemies are friends because they've been united against a common enemy. 
   The fact that the mechanism seems to have worked leads to the next step:
5. Sacralizing the Victim
   The scapegoat is made sacred by being simultaneously regarded as cursed and life-bringing - the victim is cursed, because they were (according to our myths) to blame for all our problems, but they are life-bringing because destroying them caused the cathartic release from step 4.  Because the chaos within step 4 was survived and released through the scapegoat, the story of the scapegoat becomes sacred and cannot be challenged - a challenge to our scapegoat mechanism is a threat to society itself.  In other words, it becomes very difficult to challenge the guilt of the scapegoat, because society knows that if the scapegoat is not truly guilty, that means society shares in the blame - so if you stand up for a scapegoat, this often results in turning you into the next scapegoat.
   But this is not the final step of the cycle - because the scapegoat was not truly the problem.  Our mimetic rivalry and the fact that we never challenged our learned desires (do I really need this stuffed animal I've never played with before?) was always the issue.  So this leads to step 6:
6. Sacrificial Repetition
   The violence directed towards a scapegoat releases pressure on society, but only for a time.  And so the type of person who was made the scapegoat in step 4 must be repeatedly victimized and used as a release valve in order to control society’s violence.  This becomes a religious structure of organized violence in the interest of social tranquility.

This cycle is illustrated in the flow of John chapter 8 - but before I move on to demonstrate this, I would like to bring in just one more analogy.  Bear with me, and I promise I will tie all of this together.

Find Me A Victim

Find me a victim, or you'll be the victim!

When I was a child, one of my favorite things was Looney Tunes - Bugs Bunny, Sylvester and Tweety, Speedy Gonzales....  My family and I can quote entire scenes from some of these cartoons.  There is one particular episode that chapter 5 of Brian Zahnd's book reminded me of - it's called "Roman Legion-Hare" (you can watch it here if you like, though I will warn you that there are pop up ads).  The episode begins with a crowd at a Colosseum, awaiting the spectacle of a victim being thrown to a lion.  But after Emperor Nero announces the command to throw out the first victim, one soldier replies in a nasally voice "but sire, we're all out of victims!"  So Nero calls Yosemite Sam, and tells him to "get me a victim right away, or you'll be the victim!"  

Already, I would argue, we see a prophetic picture of the violence of Rome - as history shows us, Rome was so murderously violent that they could never find enough victims, and in the end the empire is so divided by its own competition and inner violence that they are defeated by an opponent which would seem to be weaker then their mighty empire.  So the picture in this cartoon is actually a great way for understanding how the supposed guilt of the scapegoat is really just a foil to mask our insane desire to take our violence out on someone, and this is why anyone who gets in between us and our victim often ends up being the next victim.

But back to the cartoon - after being told that if he does not find a victim, he'll be the next victim, Yosemite Sam scrambles off to find one and save his neck.  And of course, quite predictably, he runs into the wily trickster himself, Bugs Bunny.  As Sam repeatedly tries to capture Bugs, over and over he ends up being attacked by the lions which were intended for the victim.  At the end of the episode, both Yosemite Sam and Nero are standing on top of a pillar as these lions - intended for the sacred victim Sam was supposed to bring - are clawing after the victimizers.  As the old cliché goes - what goes around comes around. 

This is actually a great metaphor for how the scapegoat mechanism works!  Because if we're completely honest, it never fixes our problems, and in the end, those problems - our consuming desires and the rivalry that results from them, represented powerfully by the lions in the cartoon - end up devouring us!  We thought that by throwing a victim to our lions, we would be saved - but the lions are never satisfied!  This is because the solution to our mimetic desire and rivalry is not to find a victim - it is the realization that we don't really need the doll to be happy, and in fact if we'd just share this doll with our sister, we'd receive something much more valuable than a doll: a friend!

And now I will tie this all together, as promised.

The Truth Will Set You Free
In chapter 5 of "A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace", Zahnd talks about how we've stripped a certain saying of Jesus from John chapter 8 of its meaning and turned it into a meaningless cliché - that saying is "the truth will set you free."  It is because we don't pay attention to the whole chapter that we've done this - just like the bad constitutional lawyer.  Because we haven't paid careful attention to the context this saying is set within, we've made "the truth" of this saying into an arbitrary thing - "the truth" can be anything!  Or more specifically, "the truth" that "sets you free" is always whatever I say it is - and not what Jesus means by "the truth".  And so the saying becomes meaningless.

But if we really want to understand what Jesus is talking about when he mentions "the truth", we ought to pay careful attention to the entire chapter this saying is set within.  And when Zahnd did this, he discovered that the saying is bracketed by two attempted stonings - and so he feels that we should interpret the saying within their context.  This bracketing, by the way, actually seems to be a commonly used literary device in Jewish writing - it is used quite often in the Gospel of Mark, and without realizing that this is what is happening, certain stories can seem quite odd.  A great example of this is when Mark brackets the "cleansing of the temple" with the cursing and subsequent withering of the fig tree - if we don't understand that the fig tree is meant to help us interpret the "cleansing of the temple", it might seem very odd that Jesus has cursed a fig tree for not bearing fruit in the middle of a season in which no fig tree would have been bearing fruit in the first place (and thus, this would seem a misuse of Jesus' power).  But if we understand that the fig tree is meant to be a metaphorical aid for understanding what happens in the temple, the problems disappear.

Likewise, in John chapter 8, "the truth will set you free" is bracketed by two attempted stonings.  At the beginning of the chapter, "the scribes and Pharisees" - or the "religious industrial complex" of their day - bring Jesus a victim (think back to Yosemite Sam and the Scapegoat Mechanism).  This victim is clearly guilty, according to them - she has been "caught in the act of committing adultery"!  Never-mind the fact that one might question the circumstances in which one would catch this act happening (what were you doing sneaking around someone else's house?), or the absence of the other party in this accusation (hey, it takes two to commit adultery).  We have a sacrificial victim here, to satisfy our need to take out our violence on someone.  So the religious leaders demand that Jesus allow them to turn this woman into a scapegoat and stone her.

Now, we should pay careful attention to the fact that this is a stoning that they are demanding.  Zahnd highlights the importance of this by pointing out how stoning is not a very efficient way to kill someone - there are far more efficient ways to do this, and ones that could have been performed by the scribes and Pharisees without seeking the cooperation of a crowd.  So why is stoning the approved form of execution in Jewish law?

Notice how other forms of execution appoint a certain member of society to carry out the execution - the ruling authorities of society are never the ones to perform the act of execution that they demand, and thus they are able to avoid the guilt.  But no matter the circumstances - even when the victim is known to be guilty without a shadow of a doubt in the mind of the executioner and thus to be "deserving" of the execution - the executioner cannot help but feel guilty for this act.  This is why so often executioners have employed various coping mechanisms - such as wearing a hood or mask in order to, as it were, pretend that it is not them doing this thing.  Modern executioners have to repeatedly tell themselves that they are performing their duty - in essence they are displacing the guilt of the execution upon the government.

But stoning is a unique method of execution in that it is a communal form of execution - the whole society joins in the ceremony, and thus all members are able to release their need for violence upon this victim!  Not only that, but they are simultaneously able to lie to themselves about the hand they have played in killing this victim.  In a stoning, each person throws a stone - an act which, alone, would not kill the victim but merely bruise them.  Collectively, however, these stones are effective for killing the victim.  In this way, each member of the society is able to deny the hand they played in killing their victim while simultaneously satisfying their need for violence. 

So the religious authorities bring their scapegoat to Jesus and demand that he let them perform their sacred violence - but Jesus unmasks this mechanism and exposes it by demanding that the first stone be thrown by someone who is without sin!  This is a brilliant move on Jesus' part, because he is exposing the scapegoat mechanism as a way for fooling ourselves into thinking we've solved the problems that are tearing apart our society through killing a victim!  This context should not be ignored when we read Jesus saying, immediately after releasing their scapegoat:

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.

Jesus has just acted as light by exposing the scapegoat mechanism as a fraud, and demonstrating mercy - and this demonstration of mercy is the context for the phrase: "whoever follows me".  Jesus is asking us to follow him in the way of mercy - the way of releasing our need to carry out our violence, and to crucify our ego, as it were, so that we can stop fighting amongst ourselves over the same resources!  It is our egoic desire which causes conflict, and this is why Paul said in Acts 20:35 that "it is more blessed to give than to receive" - he is challenging the selfish desires that result in mimetic rivalry!

But going back to John 8 - after Jesus says he is the light of the world, the religious authorities question his testimony.  It really stings when our scapegoating has been invalidated, and so they are now seeking to redirect their violence upon Jesus - but first they need an excuse to do so.  They need to prove to themselves that Jesus is guilty.  In this context, Jesus then makes a powerful statement that is all too often ignored in Christian theology: "You judge by human standards; I judge no one." (John 8:15) 

It is further on in this same speech by Jesus that he declares (verses 31-32):

If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

It is Zahnd's contention in his book - and I would agree with him - that this statement should be contextualized within the events of the whole chapter.  Jesus has just freed a sacrificial victim and exposed the scapegoat mechanism as a fraud - and afterwards he said that he judges no one.  It is this word of non-judgement and mercy that Jesus is speaking of in the first half of the above statement - Jesus is saying that if you want to be his disciples, you must commit to a radically merciful life in which you judge no one.  And if you do this, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Now watch what happens next - because as I said, the author uses the Jewish literary technique of bracketing here in order to help us understand what is going on in this statement.  After Jesus talks about knowing the truth and being made free, it says in verse 33:

They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”

The fact that Jesus has implied that they are not already free upsets them - they are indignant over this implication!  But Jesus immediately replies in verse 34 that when we commit a sin, we are a slave to that sin.  Is Jesus speaking generally about sin here?  Perhaps.  But I think it would be better to consider the sin he seems to very specifically have within his sights throughout this passage - the sin of judging one another and victimizing; the sin of mimetic violence.  And Jesus delivers the punchline in verse 37:

I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you look for an opportunity to kill me, because there is no place in you for my word.

Do you see what's going on here?  These people need a victim.  Just like Jesus pointed out in verse 34, they are slaves to their violent behavior.  As soon as Jesus released their sacred victim, they started looking for another, and so they set their sights on Jesus.  Indeed, the chapter even lets us know this is going on right from the start when it starts the story of the woman they were trying to stone by saying in verse 6 that this whole scenario was a set up "so that they might have some charge to bring against him".

Further on in the story, the Pharisees insist that Abraham is their father - an attempt to proclaim their innocence of Jesus charge against their victimizing.  In Jesus' reply, he states (verse 41) that they are doing what their father does, and then he states in verse 44:

You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Now, does Jesus mean that Satan - as a literal being with his/her own person-hood - has literally fathered them?  He has impregnated their mothers in a dark inverse of the virgin birth?  No, I am sure he means this metaphorically - indeed, I have argued in my series "Satan: Lifting the Veil" that ha satan (literally: the accuser) is a metaphor for our accusing nature which causes violence.  So Jesus is saying here that our tendency to accuse each other when we don't get what we want is the cause of violence, and that accusation is always a lie in some form.  Once again we see that the theme of this passage is that Jesus calls his disciples to a radical mercy that refuses to ever judge anyone. 

But the Pharisees are relentless - they turn right around and accuse Jesus of being a Samaritan and of having a demon in verse 48.  This is an astounding accusation - proving that someone does or does not have a demon is an impossible task, but it could certainly be proven in a verifiable manner that Jesus was not a Samaritan, as this was (in their time) a matter of genetics and place of birth.  But why would they accuse Jesus of being one?  Because Samaritans were one of their favorite scapegoats - the relationship between Samaritans and "mainline Jews" of their day was similar to Christians and Jews, or perhaps Christians and Muslims (understand that Samaritans had shared the same religious views, but had broken with the "mainline Jews" over the issue of worshiping at the temple in Jerusalem).  In both cases (Jews and Muslims), there is a relationship with Christianity in that much of the same religious literature is shared, and many of the same convictions.  But the members of these religions are seen as "other", and are quite often portrayed by Christians as being violent, scary, without morals, etc., and they are highly resented.  This was very similar to the attitude between mainline Jews and Samaritans in Jesus' day.  The fact that these Pharisees accuse Jesus (quite falsely) of being a Samaritan exposes their pathological need to find a victim, and we see this carried out to the end of the passage in verses 56-59:

Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad.” Then the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

This entire chapter is about mimetic violence, and Jesus' call to radical mercy as the only thing which can solve the problems this violence creates.  But when we take a single statement like "the truth will set you free" out of its context, it renders it meaningless and turns it into a cliché.  But if we can see how our violence always comes back to devour us - like the lions in the Bugs Bunny cartoon - we can follow Jesus in the Way of mercy, and we will be set free!

Satan: Lifting the Veil - Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac

Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?

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The Gerasene Demonaic

One day, the Gospel of Mark tells us, Jesus begun to teach by the sea, and such a large crowd had gathered that he had to get in a boat and go out into the water and teach from there (Mk. 4:1).  And after he was done teaching, he dropped a bomb: "let's go over to the other side."  (Mk. 4:35, Lk. 8:22)  That was the bomb.  

You see, "the other side" was a phrase packed with meaning, for this crowd.  "The other side" was the region of the ten cities - Decapolis.  The Jews and Decapolis had...history.

The region of Decapolis was where the seven pagan Canaanite nations - driven out of the Promised Land by Joshua and the Israelites (Josh. 3:10, Acts 13:19) - had settled afterwards.  The prophet Isaiah speaks of these people as "a people who continually provoke Me to My face", they "sit among graves and spend the night in secret places", they "eat swine’s flesh", and yet their people say "keep to yourself, do not come near me, for I am holier than you!" (Isa. 65:3-5)  After the Maccabean revolt, when Israel had won their independence from the Greeks, the Hasmonaeans advanced into the territory of Decapolis, and conquered most of the area by the beginning of the 1st century BCE. Later, when the Jewish civil war broke out, the pagans of Decapolis massacred the Jews within their cities - an uprising for which Justus of Tiberias took bloody revenge.

The point is - Decapolis was enemy territory!  There was a history of violence between Israel and Decapolis, and what's more, the people of Decapolis had practices which Israel found to be...unclean.  Detestable might be a better word.

But Jesus casually says "let's go to the other side."  In "Who Is This Man?: The Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus", John Ortberg writes:

What was he doing?  Didn’t he know that the kingdom is for our side?  It’s almost as if he didn’t know that this is the other side.  It’s almost as if he thought it’s his side.  It’s almost as if he thought every side belonged to him, or that he belonged to every side.  It’s almost as if he thought that all the peoples of the earth were now going to be blessed through him – even the seven nations of Canaan.

So Jesus and the disciples go to the "other side."  What they find there was quite unlike what had become Jesus' usual reception (at this point in his career) of large crowds.  Instead, they found one lone demonically afflicted man.

The scene that follows (Mk. 5:1-20, Lk 8:26-39, Mt. 8:28-34) is ripe with juicy contextual clues. Going back to the massacre during the Jewish civil wars - the area the Jesus and his disciples go to is in the country of the Gerasenes.  The city of Gerasa alone had protected its Jewish minority during the Jewish civil wars - the others, out of hatred and fear, had butchered even those Jews who declared Roman loyalty.  Gerasa contained a temple to the god Zeus - to whom pigs were sacrificed.  Rome had also built a temple dedicated to the cult of Caesar there.  

In the story within the gospels, the demon possessed man runs to Jesus and kneels at his feet - the demon possessing him demanding to know what Jesus wants.  Jesus asks the demon its name, and the response is heavy on the symbolism: Legion.  Legion was the name the Romans used for a company of soldiers, and this area housed one of the largest of Rome's Legions.

These cities had seen their freedoms stifled by the Ptolemies, the Selucids, the Jews, and then Herod / Rome.  And during the Roman occupation, this area's economy had been hit hard.  They had to resent their Roman oppressors.

The gospels say about the demoniac: "no one was able to bind him anymore, even with a chain." (Mk. 5:3, Lk. 8:29)  What does this mean?  Are we to take it literally, or is it symbolic?  Could it be as Rene Girard writes in "The Scapegoat" - since we know that they really could have devised chains that would have been unbreakable by human strength, could the Geresenes have been play-acting and allowing this man to break free in order to serve their need to play out their inner violence?  If this is so, then when this man breaks his chains, he acts out the repressed desires of his society to break the chains of Roman oppression.  Could he be serving as an escape valve - relieving the built up pressure of seething discontent?  This would have given them a scapegoat who serves as a lightening rod, to draw away the volatile charge that would otherwise throw their society into chaos and strife.

In Girard's theory of scapegoating, there are four stereotypes which are often present in a situation of persecution.  

• The first is that cultural order is eclipsed and there is confusion resulting from undifferentiated society where individuals cannot be distinguished from one another in terms of hierarchy or whether they are friends or foe.  With the Roman occupation and the resulting economic turmoil we can check this one off.
• In the second stereotype of persecution, the people believe that some foreign element is responsible for their problems.  These foreigners are supposedly responsible for economic issues, crime, and even natural crises like disease or natural disasters.  Crime, intimidation and retaliatory acts are carried out by members of the community - focused on these foreigners.  But this usually only serves to increase the tension.  With the history of Decapolis, we know that Rome had dealt with small uprisings in the area - crushing them ruthlessly.
• In the third stereotype of persecution, the mob seeks a cause that will satisfy their appetite for violence - they need a way to release the angst that has built up over their crisis.  Could they have been using this man as this release valve?
• In the fourth stereotype, the people place the blame for their crisis on a group of people, or even an individual - usually someone who is different.  Is it possible that, as blaming the Roman oppressors would have resulted in imprisonment and/or death for the people of the area, they had scapegoated this demoniac?

When Jesus commands the demon "Legion" to come out of the man, the spirits asked to be sent into a herd of pigs - this response is heavy on the symbolism.  As I noted before, the temple to Zeus would sacrifice pigs on their altars.  Also, in 2 Maccabees, Jews had been commanded to eat pork by their oppressors and were slaughtered when they refused (see 2 Macc. 6 and 7).  Furthermore, the symbol of the Roman Legion in that area was a boar's head.  So the pig, as well as the name "Legion", were both symbols of oppression for the Jews.  Jesus casts the demon into the herd of pigs, which rushes to its destruction - a symbolic reversal of the oppression in 2 Maccabees as well as the Roman oppression through the liberation of a man from the "other side".

The people of Gerasa would have been under considerable pressure to comply with the Roman government - yet, the demoniac is able to live out the violence that everyone in the society secretly wishes they had an outlet for.  He has the freedom to be violent that no one else possesses, because he is “crazy” or “demon-possessed”, and so no one tries to help him.  This is a relationship of perverted mirroring or mimicry.  The demoniac even stones himself - as the Geresenes would do to their victims - and he lives among the tombs, where those who had been stoned would have gone.  It is almost as if he carried out his own sentence so that the society wouldn’t have to.  The demoniac does violence to himself as a reproach to the Gerasene society for their violence to him, and they in turn do violence to him in the form of trying to chain him up, and this cycle continues endlessly.  This demonstrates the insidious nature of accusation - for as the society piles on their accusation, their scapegoat begins to subconsciously believe these things about himself and act them out.  

As Girard writes in "The Scapegoat": 

Thanks to his well-known mimetic ability Satan succeeds in making the victim's guilt credible.

Girard describes this cycle as “aggravated mimeticism” - the demoniac is mimicking the society’s violence to himself, and they are in turn aggravating the situation by continuing to seek to do violence to him themselves.  And underneath all of this is hidden the true problems of this society - the society actually projects their madness upon the scapegoat in order to avoid dealing with their own problems.  “My name is Legion” - this man is taking on the role of the symbol of his own society's unresolved issues.  Roman Legions were disciplined and orderly, but this man was a perverted mirror of this symbol - perhaps as a way to reveal the true nature of the Roman Legion.  The society is possessed by a Roman Legion, just as this man is possessed by his own Legion of chaos.

To put it another way, René Girard says in "The One by Whom Scandal Comes": 

It is the unclean spirit who himself says: I am the crowd, I am the Roman crowd.

The demon Legion is the symbol of the Roman crowd that strips its captives of their individuality and dehumanizes them.  The Roman crowd possesses the cultures it conquers and enslaves, and the captive members of these societies are supposed to get in line and behave without protest.

It is difficult for us to imagine what "my name is Legion" would mean in its original historical context because we are so far removed from this period.  To get a sense of what it would mean to the audience this story was originally written for, we'd have to imagine a similar story with a Vietnamese demoniac whose demon was named "Napalm", or an Afghani demoniac whose demon was named "Drone Strike".  And the military theme is continued when the "demon" is cast into the pigs - the word used to describe this "herd" is strange, as pigs do not travel in herds, and actually the original greek word - agele - may refer to a band of military recruits.  Also, when Jesus gave the legion permission in Mark 5:13, the word that is used is epetrepseri which is a military command, and the pigs go charging (oremesen - another military term) into the sea and drown in a scene that is reminiscent of Pharaoh's army in the book of Exodus.

“Legion” may also allude to the angry mob of the Gerasene society who has cast this man out.  Note how the angry mob at Jesus’ trial spoke with one voice - just as this Legion, though they were many, spoke with one voice.  Through mimesis, individuality disintegrates as the multiple units mimic each other’s desires and cry out with one voice.  And just as a mob all clamors for a singular desire, they also fall off a cliff together in a panic - which, if you recall from the section on the Azazel goat, is the symbolic method of death for a scapegoat!  And do you recall how the people tried to drive Jesus off a cliff in Luke 4:28-30?

But there is something very interesting about this scene - there is no cliff anywhere near that part of the sea.  Are we to surmise that the gospel writers were ignorant of their geography?  Or, could they have deliberately chosen a symbolic image to communicate spiritual truths?

Being driven off a cliff is the ritual for disposing of a scapegoat.  But in this scene, the scapegoat ritual is not carried out - it is not a scapegoat forced off the cliff, but the Legion itself, along with the real "sins" of that society, which are symbolically represented by the pigs: the symbol of their oppressors.  It's almost as if Jesus is forcing the Gerasenes to face the real issues they’ve been repressing by removing their ability to effectively scapegoat this man any longer! 

Note that the demons in this story cannot survive without a host - or perhaps, we might ask, can they even exist without one?  The Legion of this man is sent out into the countryside, where it must be dealt with - because it is the symbol of the issues that this society has been repressing and avoiding.  This mythological language of pathology might be a mask for the political issues which no one dared speak of - it could not safely be expressed in the open, so it was play-acted out through this scapegoat.  This man's mental illness in this situation may have functioned as a distorted protest against occupation and oppressive authority.
 
Note also that Jesus doesn’t do anything violent to the “demons”: they do it to themselves in the end.  This reveals the futility of accusation - the Accuser's methods always end up causing self-destructive chaos.  And Jesus doesn’t come to accuse the demons of “Legion” - if he did, he would be fighting accusation with accusation.

After Jesus heals the demoniac, the reaction of the people from the area provides some very interesting psychological analysis.  Here was a man who had reportedly been causing a lot of trouble.  You’d think the townspeople would thank Jesus for taking care of their problem, and maybe even do as the Jews and bring him more of their sick for healing.  But instead, they begged him to leave.

Why?  Could it be because Jesus had removed their symbolic scapegoat, and forced them to deal with the real problems that were plaguing their society?

The former demoniac begs to go with Jesus - but Jesus says "no, go tell your story."  Jesus has freed this man from his insanity, and is now telling him to go tell his story - with a clear, rational mind now - and to spread the message that the way of Jesus provides freedom from captivity.

The gospel of Mark writes that Jesus returned to the area, in Mark 6:53-56.  And the scene is quite dramatic - they "ran about that whole country and began to carry here and there on their pallets those who were sick, to the place they heard He was.  Wherever He entered villages, or cities, or countryside, they were laying the sick in the market places, and imploring Him that they might just touch the fringe of His cloak; and as many as touched it were being cured."

Jesus had shown these people that the God of Israel cares about "their side", and they had come to believe that freedom came through Jesus.

Now, for those who find it difficult to bear my non-literal interpretation of the story of the Gerasene demoniac, I would like them to consider two things.  First, scholarship has noticed structural similarities between Mark 5:1-20 and Homer's Odyssey - specifically Odyssey 9.101-565.  Here is one link that outlines this structural similarity side by side. 

Another very similar tale to the Gerasene demoniac can be found in Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana IV:XX:

And when he [Apollonius) told them to have handles on the cup and to pour over the handles-this being a purer part of the cup since no one's mouth touched that part-a young boy began laughing raucously, scattering his discourse to the winds. Apollonius stopped and, looking up at him, said, "It is not you that does this arrogant thing, but the demon who drives you unwittingly," for, unknown to everyone, the youth was actually possessed by a demon, for he used to laugh at things no one else did and would fall to weeping for no reason and would talk and sing to himself. Most people thought it was the jumpiness of youth that brought him to do such things, and at this point he seemed carried away by drunkenness, but it was really a demon which spoke through him. Thus, when Apollonius began staring at it, the phantom in the boy let out horrible cries of fear and rage, sounding like someone being burned alive or stretched on the rack, and he began to promise that he would leave the young boy and never again possess anyone else among men. But Apollonius spoke to him angrily such as a master might to a cunning and shameless slave, and he commanded him to come out of him, giving definite proof of it. "I will knock down that statue there," it said, pointing to one of those about the Porch of the King. And when the statue tottered and then fell over, who can describe the shout of amazement that went up and how everyone clapped their hands in astonishment! But the young boy opened his eyes, as if from sleep, and looked at the rays of the sun. Now all those observing these events revered the boy, for he no longer appeared to be as coarse as he had been, nor did he look disorderly, orderly, but had come back to his own nature nothing less than if he had drunk some medicine. He threw aside his fancy soft clothes and, stripping off the rest of his luxuriousness, came to love poverty and a threadbare cloak and the customs of Apollonius.

Note in the above that the demoniac is notorious for strange behavior, that when the miracle worker (in this case, Apollonius) comes to cure him he protests quite loudly and makes promises in an attempt to bargain with the miracle worker, the method of exorcism is simply to speak sternly to the demon and command it to come out, when the demon leaves there is striking physical evidence which startles the audience, and afterwards the demoniac changes his clothing and follows the miracle worker.  These are all common elements with the story of the Gerasene demoniac.

In light of these similar stories, it seems likely that the story was not meant to be taken as history, but as a retelling of a familiar story (or part of a genre of fictional story) in which the audience would have noticed the "twists" and considered them of particular importance (or in other words, the "twists" would have signaled lessons or morals to be learned).  The point is not to take this story as historical fact, but as a tale which teaches truths to its audience.

It's time for another break - in the next section, we will discover further lessons on exorcism in the Bible. 

--------------------------------------

Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?
 

Satan: Lifting the Veil - Part 9: Azazel

Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?

--------------------------------------

Azazel

In my last post, I threw some challenges out at the so-called "Penal Substitutionary Atonement" theory that began to develop with Anselm.  The struggle that many people have with letting go of this theory stems from verses in the Bible that say things like "the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6) and "he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." (Isaiah 53:12)

But these passages don't bother me in the slightest.  In fact, I affirm them.  And yet I deny that God required a death in order to forgive.  How?

Catholic theologian and priest James Alison put it best, I think, when he wrote that the Penal Substitutionary model of thought "is far too little conservative. I want to put forward a much more conservative account."

I hope that sounds intriguing to you.  So let's explore this thought.

The problem with the Penal Substitutionary Atonement model is that it ignores the liturgy of Jewish sacrifice.  James Alison explains:

Now that doesn't sound like too much of a contrast in our world because we tend to have an impoverished notion of liturgy. And we do not realise how much our dwelling in theory complicates our lives. That in fact having atonement as a theory means that it is an idea that can be grasped – and once it is grasped, one has got it – whereas a liturgy is something that happens at you. I want to go back and recover a little bit of what the liturgy of atonement was about; because when we understand that we begin to get a sense of what this language of “atonement” and “salvation” is about.

The description of this liturgy Alison alludes to is provided in Leviticus 16:1-28.  In the description of this ceremony, the High Priest - whom, if you remember from before, plays a representative and mediating role between God and the entire nation of Israel - would go into the "Holy of Holies" - a section at the back of the temple that was blocked off by a curtain.  Now, the only person who was allowed in this area was the High Priest, and only on certain days of the year.  When he entered, the priest would take along with him one of two goats.  The passage in Leviticus explains that at the entrance of the Holy of Holies, he would choose between the two goats by casting a lot - this would identify one of the goats "for the Lord", while the other would be identified as the scapegoat (verse 8).  Interestingly enough, there is a footnote in most Bible's on this verse which explains that instead of "scapegoat", the name "Azazel" may be used.

What's so intriguing about this is that there is a connection between Azazel and Satan.  This connection is provided by the Book of Enoch.  In Enoch 8:1, Azazel is introduced as the leader of seven evil spirits who taught mankind how to make swords, knives, shields, and breastplates.  Also, he apparently taught man how to make mirrors, paint, and...how to beautify the eyebrows.  Apparently, Grumpy was right: women who use makeup are full of the wicked wiles.  At least, according to the writer of Enoch.

Please keep in mind that for the people during Jesus' day, this book was thought of as Scripture.

Now what's really interesting is that Enoch implies that Satan and Azazel are one and the same.  One has to read carefully to notice this, but you will find Enoch using "Satan" and "Azazel" interchangeably - for example, in chapter 53, verse 5 mentions the "host of Azazel" and then goes on in verse 6 to speak of this same group as the "ministers of Satan".   And furthermore, whenever the "father of all evil" is mentioned within this book, it is "Satan" or "Azazel" interchangeably.
 

A model of the temple.

So keep this in mind as we explore the liturgy of Leviticus 16:1-28.  Back to this ceremony - so the High Priest has cast the lots, identifying one goat to represent the Lord and one to represent Azazel.  Then he would take the goat that was representative of the Lord into the Holy of Holies.  He would do this dressed in a white robe, which represented the robe of an angel.  This signified that at this point he was no longer merely a human, but a son of God.  Not only this, but once he had put this robe on, he would put on a phylactery - a small leather box containing Hebrew texts that was fastened onto the priest by a leather strap.  In this ceremony, the phylactery would contain...the Name.  This was not any name - it was "the name which could not be pronounced".  The tetragrammaton - YHVH.  He would then enter the Holy of Holies wearing...the Name of the Lord.  Do you recall the phrase "blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord"? (See Psalm 118:26 and Matthew 23:39.)

So the priest - wearing the name of the Lord and representing a son of God - would enter the Holy of Holies with a goat representing the Lord.  And then he would sacrifice this goat, and sprinkle its blood all over the place.  James Alison explains:

The purpose of this was to remove all the impurities that had accrued in what was meant to be a microcosm of creation, because the Holy of Holies, in the understanding of the Temple, was the place where the Creator dwelt. The rite of atonement was about the Lord himself, the Creator, emerging from the Holy of Holies so as to set the people free from their impurities and sins and transgression. In other words, the whole rite was exactly the reverse of what we typically imagine a priestly rite to be about.

The high priest - representing the Lord and wearing the name of the Lord - would then emerge from the Holy of Holies.  He would pierce the veil between this place and the rest of the temple - this represented God breaking through the separation between Himself and the rest of Creation.  He would then sprinkle the rest of the blood outside.  What's interesting about this is that at this point, the priest himself represented God, and it was God's blood being sprinkled.  This would purify "Creation" and set it free!  

After this point, he would take the Azazel goat, and this goat would be driven off of a cliff by the people and die - and this represented the people's sin being taken away.


If you keep all of this in mind when you read the story of Jesus, you'll notice something very interesting.  When Jesus was hung on the cross, Christianity proposes that he was the one "who comes in the name of the Lord."  But you might notice something odd - Jesus is also the representative for humanity's sins.  And you might also notice a suspicious absence - where's the scapegoat?  Where's the Azazel?


In the ritual of Atonement, the scapegoat was taken outside the city, and killed there.  When Romans would crucify someone, it happened outside the city.  In "The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction", Peter Rollins writes:

For Roman citizens crucifixion was the most potent sign of someone being rejected by the cultural, political, and religious systems of the day, all of which were seen as divinely established. Those who were crucified were treated as complete outsiders. They were to die naked, alone, and in agony. But the execution meant more than torture and death; it was a sign that the one being killed stood outside of the divinely given order.

In contrast the Crucifixion of Christ today is seen as a key justification of a cultural, political, and religious matrix, a matrix that Kierkegaard called “Christendom.” It is difficult for us today to understand the extent to which this mode of execution signaled the exclusion of the victim from all systems of meaning, because it is so much a part of one for us. The Cross is so integrated into our religious, political, and cultural imagination that its reality as a mode of execution that placed the victim outside of these realms is utterly eclipsed. Instead of being a symbol of standing outside all systems of meaning, the Cross is now integrated into a system of meaning.

Atonement theories have to contend with the fact that the Jewish ritual involved two goats - one for God and one for the people: the scapegoat, or "Azazel" goat.  The latter represented the people, and it was through the death of this goat that the people's sins were atoned.  In the act of the cross, Jesus represented both.  

In Jewish theology, when someone was "hung from a tree", they were cursed.  Deuteronomy 21:23 says that they were cursed...by God.   However, the apostle Paul picked up on the imagery of Jesus on the cross, and wrote in Galatians 3:13:

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”.

Paul is alluding to Deuteronomy 21:23 here.  But did you notice something?  Paul left out the "by God" part of that quote.  That's because the cross is supposed to reveal something: God doesn't curse.  We do.  But God - in His mercy - takes those curses without offering any violence in return, and in so doing, He shows us that our curses only hurt ourselves.

The cross was where Jesus became the outsider and lost all meaning.  And when he was near the point of death, he cried "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mt. 27:46, Mk. 15:34).  Some may try to turn this into some sort of theater - like Jesus was just quoting a Psalm (Ps. 22:1) in order to fulfill a prophecy, but he didn't really think God had forsaken him (as if it were said with a wink at the camera).  But the problem with this interpretation is that Jesus spoke this in Aramaic - which was his native tongue - while the verse was written in Hebrew.  Yes, I'm sure that the author of the gospel narrative meant to give a nod to the Psalm, but he deliberately did it in the wrong language, indicating that Jesus actually felt this way!

In the Jewish ritual of Atonement, there was one goat inside the Holy of Holies, and one on the outside of the city.  But when Jesus dies, there is only one sacrifice - the one Who is outside.  In the temple ritual, after the sacrifice is offered, the High Priest comes through the curtain.  But when Jesus dies, the curtain is torn in two (Mk. 15:38 and Mt. 25:51).  The Holy of Holies represented access to God, for the Jews.  And many theologians have tried to turn the tearing of the veil into a message of Jesus giving us access to God. 

But what if it were indicating something else?  What if the Jewish audience would have realized that this indicated that God was not there.  There was no man behind the curtain - just an empty space.  Where was God?  Out there on that hill; the scapegoat; the outsider; dying from the wounds that the Priestly class had demanded be inflicted on Him; doubting Himself and His own faith.

By offering himself as the scapegoat, Jesus revealed the scapegoat mechanism for what it was - empty and meaningless.  Instead, Jesus instructs us to offer ourselves in acts of extravagant mercy - because this is what God would do.  Jesus instructed us to "take up our cross" (Mt. 16:24), and the apostle Paul instructed us to offer ourselves as living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1).  And even the symbolism of Eucharist points to this truth!  The message couldn't be clearer - we are to stop projecting our violence upon scapegoats, and instead offer ourselves in acts of extravagant mercy!  This is the way to defeat sin and violence - a complete rejection of accusation and the violence that always results from it!

Before Jesus - a completely innocent victim - died on the cross, he said: "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."  If anyone had a right to accuse, it was Jesus!  But he completely refuses to do this, and reveals that this is the only way to defeat the Accuser!

And consider the story of the Prodigal Son and his brother (Luke 15:11-32).  The Penal Substitutionary theory insists that before we can receive God's forgiveness, we must feel really bad about ourselves and truly believe that God killed His son to pay off the balance of our sin.  But this doesn't fit well with the portrait Jesus paints of the father in the story of these two brothers.  When the Prodigal returns, he has a whole speech planned out to convince his father to take him as a servant.  And it should be noted that this is not true repentance - the son doesn't seem to feel horrible about how he's insulted his father by demanding his inheritance before the father died (basically telling the father: "I wish you were dead").  He's just hungry, and thinks his dad can give him a more comfortable way of life.  But he doesn't even get a chance to give his half-heartedly repentant speech - the father interrupts him in the middle of his speech, ignoring everything he's saying and calls for a robe, a ring, and to kill the fattened calf in celebration.  Imagine how this story would play out in Penal Substitution land - the father would have to say "hold on, we need your older brother to come out here and be killed and you need to accept this before I can forgive you."

And what about the older brother?  The older brother is rarely focused on - but he is a major part of the point of the whole story, as Jesus is telling this story with the background of "the Pharisees and the scribes [...] grumbling and saying, 'This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.'" (Lk. 15:2)  The whole point of the story is that Jesus is trying to get these Pharisees and scribes to see the sin of unforgiveness.  But how does the father respond to the older brother's unforgiveness?  "His father came out and began to plead with him." (Lk. 15:28)  The father pleads with the grudge-holding older brother - he doesn't demand blood before he can forgive this sin!  But Penal Substitution turns the father into the grudge bearer.

The whole concept of Penal Substitution makes no sense at all, and it doesn't mesh at all with the picture that Jesus paints for us - a picture of the heavenly Father unconditionally and continually extending forgiveness!

Yeah, Penal Substitution is kind of ridiculous if you think about it.

The Penal Substitution model tries to make the very violence that Jesus' death exposes as meaningless into something sacred - it tries to tell is that God Himself sanctions acts of violence!  Indeed, this God cannot forgive if He does not get his pound of flesh!  In "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination", Walter Wink writes:

The God whom Jesus revealed as no longer our rival, no longer threatening and vengeful, but unconditionally loving and forgiving, who needed no satisfaction by blood - this God of infinite mercy was metamorphosed by the church into the image of a wrathful God whose demand for blood atonement leads to God's requiring of his own Son a death on behalf of us all. The nonviolent God of Jesus comes to be depicted as a God of unequaled violence, since God not only allegedly demands the blood of the victim who is closest and most precious to him, but also holds the whole of humanity accountable for a death that God both anticipated and required. Against such an image of God the revolt of atheism is an act of pure religion.

The Christus Victor theory of atonement shows us that it is not God being reconciled to us, but God reconciling us to Him (2 Cor. 5:18).  God breaks down the wall by reaching across to us and allowing us to take everything from Him - and He gives this perfect gift gladly and with no demand for anything in return, and in the process demonstrates to us "that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. 8:38-39 - whereas Penal Substitution states that we are separated from the love of God until and unless we say the magic wordies.)  But to be one with Him, we must enter into this way of being - we must “take up our cross” as well.  The cross was a tool of the Domination System - using fear and shame to control the people.  And when we make death the ultimate evil and survival the highest goal, we play right into the Domination System, as we begin to justify more and more in the name of survival.  

But Jesus taught that we must live the way of the cross - or the way of "no-self" (as the Buddha teaches) and the renunciation of ego (to put it in psychological terminology).  And by entering into the ego-less state which Jesus modeled through the cross, we have defeated death itself - which by default includes a victory over the Domination System, as death is its only tool of enforcement.  But when we say that God had to kill someone - that God demanded death just as Caesar does - we empty the cross of its power.

Anselm's logic for vicarious or substitutionary atonement seems very persuasive - but it relies on faulty presuppositions.  One of these presuppositions is that God's justice involves external punishments rather than internal and natural consequences - as John Dominic Crossan points out in "The Greatest Prayer".  External punishments involve prescribing painful actions that would not have normally occurred in order to frighten someone (and manipulate them) into behaving a certain way in the future - and if you believe that God does this, then penal substitution might make sense to you.  But if your image of God is a loving Father rather than a demanding and legalistic judge, this might not make as much sense any more.  And if the problems created by sin were internal and natural consequences, then what does sacrifice and atonement mean in that context?  Crossan gives the following example to illustrate what sacrifice means:

[L]ate in the afternoon of Wednesday, January 13, 1982, Air Florida flight 90 took off from Washington National Airport and almost immediately plunged into the icy Potomac off the 14th Street Bridge. Of the seventy-nine people on board that Boeing 737 only six managed to escape onto the tail as it stuck up above the surface of the river. The rescue helicopter repeatedly dropped lines to them. Arland D. Williams Jr. repeatedly passed the lines to others and, by the time five were saved, he had slipped under the water from hypothermia.

He was the only passenger who died from drowning, and the only adequate headline for his death would not have been “Man Drowns,” but “Man Sacrifices His Life.” All human life, and all human death, is sacred, but, by giving up his life for others, he had made it specially, emphatically, and particularly sacred, and “to make sacred” is “to sacrifice.” He risked, and unfortunately lost, his life to save others, but gift, not substitution, is the proper interpretation of his action.

The natural consequences of our sin led to a bloodthirsty Domination System - a system where power hungry people sought control over each other and killed those whom in any way threatened that control.  Jesus' death was not a payment to God to satisfy his wrath, but when he forgave those who hung him on the cross, he showed that he was giving his life as a gift in order to demonstrate the futility of Accusation.
 
Another one of the major issues I have with Penal Substitution is that there is a tendency to make Christianity all about having the right ideas.  It's not enough that God killed His son (according to the adherents to Penal Substitution) - I must accept within my head that it makes sense that He did so.

Jesus didn't say we will know whom his disciples are by what theories of atonement they intellectually assent to - he said that they will know by the love his disciples show for each other (Jn. 13:35).  And Jesus also said that if you love him, you will keep his commandments (Jn. 14:15).  The sign of a disciple is not the ideas one claims, but their character, as exemplified by the way they treat others.

George MacDonald - one of the Inklings, and a mentor to C.S. Lewis (who wrote that MacDonald was his "master") - wrote of this problem in one of his "Unspoken Sermons" named "The Truth in Jesus":

Even if your plan, your theories, were absolutely true, the holding of them with sincerity, the trusting in this or that about Christ, or in anything he did or could do, the trusting in anything but himself, his own living self, is a delusion. Many will grant this heartily, and yet the moment you come to talk with them, you find they insist that to believe in Christ is to believe in the atonement, meaning by that only and altogether their special theory about the atonement; and when you say we must believe in the atoning Christ, and cannot possibly believe in any theory concerning the atonement, they go away and denounce you, saying, "He does not believe in the atonement!" If I explain the atonement otherwise than they explain it, they assert that I deny the atonement; nor count it of any consequence that I say I believe in the atoner with my whole heart, and soul, and strength, and mind. This they call contending for the truth! Because I refuse an explanation which is not in the New Testament, though they believe it is, because they can think of no other, one which seems to me as false in logic as detestable in morals, not to say that there is no spirituality in it whatever, therefore I am not a Christian!

Later on in the same sermon, he writes:

It is the one terrible heresy of the church, that it has always been presenting something else than obedience as faith in Christ. The work of Christ is not the Working Christ, any more than the clothing of Christ is the body of Christ. If the woman who touched the hem of his garment had trusted in the garment and not in him who wore it, would she have been healed? And the reason that so many who believe about Christ rather than in him, get the comfort they do, is that, touching thus the mere hem of his garment, they cannot help believing a little in the live man inside the garment.

Walter Wink writes in "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination" of how the Christus Victor theory began to fall out of favor:

With the conversion of Constantine, however, the empire assumed from the church the role of God's providential agent in history. Once Christianity became the religion of the empire, notes J. Denny Weaver, its success was linked to the success of the empire, and preservation of the empire became the decisive criterion for ethical behavior. The Christus Victor theology fell out of favor, not because of intrinsic inadequacies, but because it was subversive to the church's role as state religion. The church no longer saw the demonic as lodged in the empire, but in the empire's enemies. Atonement became a highly individual transaction between the believer and God; society was assumed to be Christian, so the idea that the work of Christ entails the radical critique of society was largely abandoned.

God did not demand a price, but our resentment and will to kill is what made the cross necessary in the first place - as John 15:25 illustrates.  Raymund Schwager said: “It is not God who must be appeased, but humans who must be delivered from their hatred.”  And the only way to continue to break down and resist this demonic way of life is to enter into the way of Jesus - the way of the Cross.  

We find this idea that God does not demand a price back in the book of Job as well.  In Job 25, Bildad argues that "dominion and fear are with God", and declares that mere mortals - maggots, he calls them - cannot be righteous and pure.  But Job maintains his integrity, and later on Elihu contradicts Bildad in chapter 35 - he asks in verse 6:

If you have sinned, what do you accomplish against him?  And if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him?

And then, in verse 8:

Your wickedness affects others like you, and your righteousness, other human beings.

Elihu then proceeds to introduce the Storm of God, and when God is done speaking to Job, He rebukes Eliphaz, Zophar, and Bildad, "for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done" - and they go offer sacrifices in repentance (see Job 42:7-9).  But notice that Elihu, who said that our sins do not affect God, was not rebuked as having been one of the ones who misrepresented God!  This makes it difficult to present an atonement theory which states that God must be "paid" for our sins in some sort of pseudo-economic transaction.

By identifying with the symbol of the Azazel goat, Jesus is showing us that when we accuse, we accuse God - because every man and woman is made in the image of God - and we accuse ourselves.  "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Mk. 12:31, Mt. 22:39) combined with the principle taught in the parable of the sheep and goats (Mt. 25:40 - "to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me") and "love your enemies" (Mt. 5:44, Lk. 6:35) reveals that every rule, teaching, and doctrine is summed up in Universal Love (Gal. 5:14).  Jesus has just reversed the dualistic model Man adopted in the Garden of Eden, and rendered all of its effects null and void!  By taking on the symbol of the "one who comes in the name of the Lord" and the Azazel goat, he has completely reversed all effects of the fall (I Cor. 15:22, Rom. 5:18-19, Rom. 11:32, Col. 1:19-20, I John 2:2), rendered all labels and categories null and void (Gal. 3:28), and shown us that all are sons of God (1 John 3:1) and partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:3-4)!

René Girard writes: 

Jesus’ death is a source of grace not because the Father is “avenged” by it, but because Jesus lived and died in the manner that, if adopted by all, would do away with scandals and the victimization that follows from scandals. Jesus lived as all men should live in order to be united with a God Whose true nature he reveals.

Scapegoating and Mimetic Theory
French born historian, philosopher of social science, and anthropologist René Girard has devoted much of his career to studying the scapegoat mechanism, and what he calls Mimetic Theory.  Girard highlights how the accusing nature is the father of lies: 

They [speaking of myths that portray violence towards a scapegoat character or group who serves as the guilt-bearer for that society] are lies, certainly, but the specific kind of lie called for by mimetic contagion... the false accusation that spreads mimetically throughout a disturbed human community at the climax when scandals polarize against the single scapegoat whose death reunites the community.

I'd like to quickly highlight the main ideas behind Girard's Mimetic Theory of the scapegoating process in order to unpack this idea.  Girard's Mimetic Theory of scapegoating consists of 6 steps:

1. Mimetic Desire
   Humans learn by imitating their elders - it's one of our greatest strengths!  But it can also be our greatest weakness.  You see, we learn what to desire by imitation.  And so often, we pick up harmful desires in the process of our growth.
2. Mimetic Rivalry
   This learned desire often turns into a rivalry, when we end up desiring the same things as the ones we imitate, and thus end up preventing each other from obtaining these things.  So this turns into a vicious cycle - the one we imitate first said “be like me: value this object.”  But when we reach out to take it, the one we imitate says “Do not be like me - the object is mine.”
3. The Crisis of Distinctions
   Through mimetic rivalry, the distinctions that formerly separated persons and groups of persons into classes disappear, resulting from them desiring the same things and from the classes ending up with the same pain from not being able to obtain the objects of their desire.  Walter Wink summarizes in "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination":

   Students seize the administration building, demanding a share in decision-making power that has previously been the sole prerogative of the administrators. Mill workers shut down the plant, insisting on a voice in shaping their new contract. The hierarchical barriers that society has so carefully erected, unjust as they may be, dike society against the flood of anarchy. When these distinctions collapse (as when soldiers in Vietnam refused to obey orders from their officers), that social system faces the possibility of collapse. Collapse can be averted, however, if society can find a scapegoat.

4. The Necessary Victim
   In order to “save” society from the chaos that results from steps 1-3, a victim must be found - towards which all the violence of that society is then directed and released upon.  In order to do this, the society must find a victim which they can all agree is guilty - Girard explains:

   The violent process is not effective unless it fools all witnesses, and the proof that it does, in the case of myths, is the harmonious and cathartic conclusion, rooted in a perfectly unanimous murder.

   Often the victim must have defining characteristics that make them different - a foreigner, a cripple, an eccentric, a communist, a witch, a carrier of the plague, a homosexual, someone who challenges the system (a prophet), etc.  This victim then serves as a release valve - releasing the “steam” of the society’s violence.  If the gospels are revealing the scapegoat mechanism as illegitimate, this will explain Matthew 10:34 ("I have not come to bring peace, but a sword"), as doing so will dissolve the false peace that comes through the scapegoat mechanism.  But to reach the “peace that surpasses understanding” (Phil. 4:7), we must renounce the victimization mechanisms of the old world order in order to join the kingdom of God - in which there is no victimization, even for legitimate offenses.  Do you recall how Jesus instructed his disciples to forgive "seventy times seven" (Mt. 18:22), and the story of the attempted stoning of the adulteress in John 8:1-11?
5. Sacralizing the Victim
   The scapegoat is made sacred by being simultaneously regarded as cursed and life-bringing.  The violence has been survived, and the religious and political structures did not collapse - so the story of the scapegoat becomes sacred and cannot be challenged, or it is a threat to society itself.
6. Sacrificial Repetition
   The violence directed towards a scapegoat releases pressure on society, but only for a time.  And so the type of person who was made the scapegoat in step 4 must be repeatedly victimized and used as a release valve in order to control society’s violence.  This becomes a religious structure of organized violence in the interest of social tranquility.

If you keep this theory in mind, it is fascinating to watch how it plays out during Jesus' trial and execution.  For example, when Peter denies Jesus, we get a window into how violence can act as a contagion through fear - when Peter denies Jesus for the third time, in the accounts of Mark (14:66-72) and Matthew (26:58-75), Peter curses and demonstrates violent anger in his reaction.  It is as if he’s saying “see?  I’m part of your group, because we share the same scapegoat!”  Peter is giving in to fear (peer pressure), and saying "look!  The enemy of my enemy is my friend...."

René Girard writes in regard to this:

Peter spectacularly illustrates this mimetic contagion. When surrounded by people hostile to Jesus, he imitates their hostility. He obeys the same mimetic force, ultimately, as Pilate and Herod. Even the thieves crucified with Jesus obey that force and feel compelled to join the crowd. And yet, I think, the Gospels do not seek to stigmatize Peter, or the thieves, or the crowd as a whole, or the Jews as a people, but to reveal the enormous power of mimetic contagion - a revelation valid for the entire chain of murders stretching from the Passion back to “the foundation of the world.”

Also, during Jesus' trial, no one wants to accept the blame for Jesus' execution - in the depiction of the trial before Pilate, the gospels place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the mob, as Pilate is reported to say “I find no basis for a charge against him”  (see Luke 23:4, John 19:4).  This is a stunning picture of how the Accuser becomes the corporate spirit of a group, and in light of Peter’s denial, one must question how many in the crowd may have also felt that Jesus was innocent, but joined in the accusations because they were afraid of the consequences if they did not.  We might wonder if the “majority” who accused Jesus, in this case, were not even truly a majority, but were merely pressured by a very vocal minority to comply with the accusation.  Or if we accept that this was truly a majority, at the very least we must wonder how it is possible that the same crowd which a few days ago had led Jesus in a triumphant procession through the city (in essence proclaiming him their king) could have so quickly and decidedly reversed their view of this man.  Is it possible that even those who believed in the accusation were unaware of the ways in which they were unconsciously coerced into playing a part in the accusation of the mob?  This seems to be the conclusion of Jesus, as he cried “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34), and the sentiment is later echoed by Peter when he says “I know you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders” (Acts 3:17).

So often, this unconscious coercion works against our own interests!  In "Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence", Walter Wink writes:

Why have women allowed themselves to be despoiled of their rights, generation after generation, despite often being a majority? Why did so many women oppose the Equal Rights Amendment? How can six million whites subjugate the twenty-nine million other South Africans? Why did the lower and middle classes sit supinely by and watch the Reagan administration scuttle the graduated income tax, providing massive tax relief to a tiny fraction of wealthy people while the real incomes of everyone else were in sharp decline? Why do the poor and homeless not unite to form a powerful political bloc to win their universal human right to adequate food and housing?

Could this mimetic behavior be the answer to these types of questions?

As we continue to explore instances in the Bible where the Accuser and demons appear, you will notice that the themes of this post will reappear again and again.  We will continue to explore how Jesus confronted the scapegoating mechanism.

But at this point, we are going to take another break, and in the next post I will begin exploring the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert.

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Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?