Must There Be Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in the Bible / Raymund Schwager

Schwager reverses three millennia of conventional understanding of the Bible as he argues that the God of the Old Testament is not a God of violence; that Jesus’ sacrifice is not an act of appeasement of the Father; and that the suffering and death of an infinite victim is not compensation for an infinite offence against God.

In the Hebrew Bible there is a gradual revelation over the centuries of God’s rejection of violence, sacrifices, and holocausts. But this revelation is rejected by the leaders of the people. The teaching of Jesus is seen as God’s final message denouncing the cult of violence.

Must There be Scapegoats? Is one of the most exciting and revolutionary works of theology to be published in four decades. Schwager reveals Jesus as the ‘necessary scapegoat’ who, unlike previous scapegoat-victims, rejects all aggression and so seeks to end the cycle of human violence.

This daring and unconventional view of Christology and the Hebrew Bible, set in the context of modern anthropology and psychology, builds upon the celebrated theory of Rene Girard’s scapegoat mechanism, which asserts that violence is at the root of all human society – a theory that may rival the Oedipus complex in explanation of people’s deepest and most destructive desires. Girard’s theory is tested and validated as Raymund Schwager applies it to the Bible.

“A landmark publication in the continuing development of interest in, and appreciation of, Girardian thought’. William Hewett, S.J.

“This is for me the most important German theological book of the past decade. Just as Aquinas baptized philosophy by using Aristotle, perhaps Schwager has baptized the human sciences by bringing Rene Girard into theology... Theology is now finally in contact with our most terrible problem: violence”. Professor Norbert Lohfink, S.J., Saint George, Frankfurt.

“Schwager’s book is in itself excellent and contains valuable independent insights. He is strictly not an exegete but a Systematiker. He virtually claims that there is a single theory of the whole Old Testament... Schwager has done his exegetical homework very well.” Robert North, S.J., The Biblical Institute, Rome

Raymund Schwager is Professor of Theology at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.