https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=zARN5r_x2KM
So, I’ve, you know, a big part of Girard’s thinking does have to do with sacrifice. And that’s kind of what I would call the societal macro community level pattern that he recognized, right? Something that happens at the community level. Because when a person, when anybody is seeking transcendence, there’s sort of something that has to die in order for them to achieve this sort of different quality of being that they’re looking for, right? So that happens at the individual level, but it can also happen kind of at the societal level. And, you know, I’ve listened to your kind of theory on sacrifice. I know you mentioned Girard in it, but I’m just curious as to, you know, do you think that Girard’s sort of idea of escape goat mechanism squares with what you’re saying? Or do you think it’s just like a subset of a larger kind of theory of sacrifice? That’s what I think. But I mean, maybe you can help me understand it better for me to change my mind. I’d be fine with changing my mind. But it seems when I look at sacrifice, what I see, the Yom Kippur sacrifice is probably the best version of a sacrifice because it’s an atonement sacrifice. It’s an, you know, it’s an at-one-ment sacrifice. It’s the sacrifice that makes us one. And it has two sacrifices as part of it. There is on the one hand, the scapegoat sacrifice that really where you take a goat, you put all your evil on it and you kind of kick it out. You abuse it, whatever. And then it falls off a cliff or it runs into the desert to become food for the demon. But then you also have another sacrifice, which is the pure animal, which is sacrificed up towards God. And what I see in sacrifice, at least in scripture, is those two types of sacrifices, one which could be called a scapegoat sacrifice. And you see it in a lot of cultures, you know, sacrificing a prisoner, sacrificing, you know, you see they did it even all the way up to Roman times when they would have people fight in the arenas. It was basically a human sacrifice of their captives in order to kind of manifest the glory of Rome in doing it. But then you also have a sacrifice, which I would call a vertical sacrifice, which is giving the best up. And you give the best up. And then that constant that is part of what constitutes the body. And I’ve talked about it, like, let’s say in terms of sports team, on the one hand, you do have to scapegoat in the sense that you can’t let anybody into your sports team, right? You have to eliminate behaviors and players that don’t fit into the team, that’s necessary. But then you also need to give your intention and your and your will and your best up towards the goal of what you’re doing. So that’s what I see these two. And so I don’t know if Girard accounts for them with his scapegoat sacrifice, or if he has two theories or I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t think there’s any conflict between what Girard is saying and kind of what I’ve what I’ve heard you articulate, which is just simply like the broader view of sacrifice. I don’t think Girard I think he he identified a very particular kind of sacrifice. And I agree with you that there’s all kinds of other sacrifices that don’t necessarily fit into the pattern of the scapegoat mechanism, necessarily. There’s like, sure. Identifying that has been amazing. I think it’s been really helpful to understand Christianity, but then also to understand the 20th century and to understand a lot of the things that that we went through, you know, as Christianity kind of started collapsing as well. Have you thought as did you talk about because one of the things that we say myself and also the people at Lord of Spirits is we say, you know, Christ is both goats. That is in the Yom Kippur sacrifice, Christ seems to be both the sacrifice of the the one who accepts to be the sacrifice of the stranger outside the city who takes on the sins, who accepts the blame, all of that. But then he also is something like the sacrifice of the firstborn. And the sacrifice of the firstborn, even in scripture, is not the same as the scapegoat sacrifice. So I don’t I don’t know, like, I also don’t know if you are to account for that idea. Like when when Abraham is going to sacrifice Isaac, it’s not a scapegoat sacrifice. He’s he’s supposed to offer his best up to God. And so I don’t know. Yeah, these are things that I that I that I think about, but I’m not an egg. I don’t know Gerard well enough to be able to Yeah, well, I want to go back to you your idea of what I like sort of horizontal and vertical sacrifice can up triggered an idea. So I want to get it. But what you’re saying now brings brings up questions like atonement, theology that are super complex. And we don’t need to necessarily get into those right now. But there is an idea I think you have to be careful that there is one conception of, you know, Christ sacrifice on the cross is sort of, you know, God needing some kind of blood sacrifice. Right? Yeah, I don’t see it that way either. No, I don’t like that. Either do And Gerard in his earlier days was sort of implying that and then he befriended this old priest, I shouldn’t call him old. I don’t know how old they were when he met. But in Austria, Father Raman Schwager, who sort of helped Gerard understand the theological implications of what he was saying. And I mean, I come from just a very old tradition of Augustine and Aquinas and Gregory of Nyssa and Irenaeus. And my understanding is that, you know, God could have achieved the salvation of the world in many, many different ways, right? And it needed not be that particular way. But this was a sacrifice of love, right? And in some senses, it was this the most perfect sort of way, but but needed not be that right. So in other words, it’s not like we, you know, we chose to, like affect what we thought was going to be yet one more effective scapegoat mechanism. Like, right. And yet, the whole thing was subverted by the set by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, because there was the Holy Spirit sort of enlightened the minds after the resurrection of a very, very small group of Christians that for the very first time, sort of saw the mechanism that was taking place, and saw like what we had brought on ourselves. So it’s a big difference by us sort of being responsible for the violence and God being responsible for the violence, right? Big difference, right? So it was it’s the revelation that we had. So God gave the revelation for us to be able to see the scapegoat mechanism in its fullness for the first time, through the crucifixion. It’s not the first time that it was ever there were never hints of it. I mean, the Old Testament is full of the story of Joseph and his brothers gives us a perspective of what’s going on that there’s really no comparable for in any other kind of literature. Like we see that Joseph is innocent, and sort of the victim of the scapegoating through the whole story. It’s almost like we have the the directors cut from the standpoint of Joseph or something, right? And we know that he’s not responsible for this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But there’s, it’s hard to sacrifice is one of the hardest things to think about, by the way, to be honest, it is so difficult to think about, because in some ways, so primordial and so encompassing. But so what one of the things you see, I think, this is my my perception also, what Christ is doing, one of the things he’s doing is that by willingly becoming someone scapegoat, you could say, he’s almost he’s kind of flipping or joining the two sacrifices together, where by by in his willingness to die. For others, you could say, he’s turning the scapegoat sacrifice into something like the, the the sacrifice of good odor, right? This idea of like, of the best which is given up. And the reason also why I think that that’s happening is because then you see that pattern pattern modeled in, in the early Christian martyrs, where the martyrs are basically saying, I’ll be your scapegoat. And then that scapegoat will become like a sacrifice of worship up to God. And it’s going to secretly change you without you even knowing what’s going on. It’s like, if I if I do that, and I don’t like I tell people, like, I don’t want to do that. Like, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to, I don’t want people to kill me. I’m not. But but I can see it that that seems to be what’s going on. It’s like, there’s a mechanism, it really is like a mechanism where self sacrifice seems to be the place where these two sacrifices get joined. And it’s like a refounding of reality, if you do it properly. I think that’s I think that’s right. And that’s there’s it this the idea of self self sacrifice is the key to I think understanding, right, like Christianity. And what’s happening in in the liturgy as well. So, God willing, you you or I will not have to become red martyrs, blood martyrs, and physically, who knows, and, you know, give up our bodies and blood. But there’s what what’s happening in the Christian liturgy in Orthodox and in the West is is a participation in that self sacrificial act on the cross, right. So it’s got what they, you know, the early church called white martyrdom, or, you know, it’s it’s a it’s still a form of dying to yourself and self sacrifice that, you know, if you’re if you really understand what’s happening, you’re sort of uniting your self sacrifice to Christ self sacrifice on the cross, and it’s all being offered offered, you know, and there’s something really beautiful about that. And and remembering part of a liturgy is an amnesis. It’s a remembrance of, of, you know, what is what has happened, right, it only had to happen once, right, doesn’t mean that we can’t continue to participate in it. But it’s a remembrance of that singular event. And also, very importantly, a remembrance of, and this is why, you know, Good Friday is so important. And I always for me, it’s always like one of the most, I mean, solemn and powerful sort of liturgies of the year, because it’s a remembrance of, of the scapegoat mechanism, and what the pattern of human behavior, it’s almost as if we, we keep we default back to the old rights to the old sacrificial rights that involve not self sacrifice, but sacrifice of other people to preserve ourselves. So sacrifice, there’s an there’s an element of like, self preservation in sacrifice. Yeah, of course. Huge element of to protect protect myself. And if that’s like my default mode of being, then I will inevitably sacrifice somebody else at the altar of my of myself. So there’s an aspect of remembering our, our tendency to engage in that kind of behavior, and then to see, I mean, every week, or every day, right, to see actually how that’s been completely transformed into an act that can be an act of love.