Rene Girard’s theory of culture and it’s impact on mormonism

i can’t say i’m an authority on the subject but it does interest me quite a bit. i discovered girard at the end of my mission when i met a member who has written basically the only articles i know of that try and fuse girard’s ideas with mormonism. it was basically an answer to my prayers as at that point i was on my second reading of the OT and had prayed desperately to understand it better and make sense of the violent nature of the god of the OT

rene girard is a french anthropologist/philosopher who teaches at standford, although i know his health is failing him so i’m not sure he still teaches there at the moment. he originally wrote on literature but he is most commonly known for his two theories on culture, memetic desire, and the scapegoat mechanism:

according to freudian thought which has dominated western psychology for the past several decades desire is completely spontaneous and autonomous and it basically independent of any outside sources. according to girard’s thought it is memetic, or copyed from other sources. instead of being spontaneous it is learned, and triangular (subject – model – object). our desires are influenced greatly by our culture. by desire i mean what we wear, what we do for a living, what type of women i think is attractive, what religion i choose, etc, etc, etc. so for example i think that charlize theron and scarlett johnansson are hott because of repeated images of tall, skinny, white, blonde women that dominate my culture on tv, movies, music, etc. if i were born in africa or the amazon, my idea of an attractive women would be totally different.

because i think this particular look is attractive i will most likely seek a mate that is similar to those characteristics so our desires play a great role in the choices we make. but my desire for this type of mate was mediated because someone else desired this look as well. when my desires come into competition with another’s desire it creates what is labeled by girard as “memtic conflict”. a easy example of this to see is when you watch a small child in a nursery. the child will be completely content playing with all the different toys but if you were to put another child in the room, immediately the first child wants to play with the toy the second child has picked out. which leads to his second theory…

rene’s complentary theory is the scapegoat mechanism. essentially it states that human culture is based upon sacrifice. accross all cultures, religions, and time periods, almost universally everyone practiced some form of sacrifice. the notion that animal sacrifice is completely unique and first practiced by OT judaism is completely false. basically in a nutshell girard’s theory that connects the two is this:

humans deal with their “memetic conflicts” in one of three ways, each of which, if there continues to be a unresolved conflict will result in violence – they either direct the conflict towards themselves, towards the person they are in conflict with, or thirdly and most commonly towards a third party or “scapegoat” in the extreme the first leads to depression and the violent end of suicide, the second murder, and the third possibly murder and according to girard, sacrifice.

organized or institutionalized sacrifice is used to avert mass violence and enivetable destruction, as a culture’s collective violence, which springs from a conflict in desire, is compounded into one. this is represented in the bible by the literal scapegoat in Leviticus 16. the priest would put his hands on the head of a goat which would ritually transfer the sins of the people onto the goat and the goat would be cast into the wilderness. remembering memtic desire, sacrifice worked because the entire society saw it as good. they would attribute it to divine inspiration or a commandment which gave it universal justification. essentially christ is the NT answer to the OT question of scapegoating as he voluntarily became the ultimate scapegoat to save us from our natural tendency to avoid our own problems and project them on others. as you might notice, looking culture post christ, no society that has even been remotely influenced by christianity, practices animal sacrifice any longer. it’s because christ showed us how rediculous it was and rendered it useless to solve our problems. instead of scapegoating our problems we must take personal responsibility for them and look towards the cross to resolve them.

the theory completely alters the source of animal sacrifice as it no longer attributes it to god but to man archaic way of solving his own problems. at best it is god approved as a necessary evil to avoid more serious sins but not commanded. there is biblical evidence for this, i will quote the most explict, overlooked scripture in regards to this;

Jeremiah 7:21-23: “21. Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices and eat flesh. 22. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them…, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices 23. But this thing commanded I them, saying, obey my voice, and i will be your God, and ye shall be my people…” many members i have spoken to are uneasy with this position as they usually site the POGP verses in moses that seem to say that adam was commanded to offer animal sacrifice. however, a closer look at the scriptures shows that the angel asks why he offers animal sacrifice and never commends him for doing so just explains that it is in “similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father” which could suggest that adam was just copying the common tradition of his day and god has just turned something less than good into something with meaning as he did with the sacrament or baptism or like moses did with the passover (the passover is borrowed from the pagan spring equinox ceremony)

this theory presupposes pre-adamites which some may feel uncomfortable with, but come on, the earch is a lot older than six thousand years old. there are many other scriptural supports for the theory that i won’t go into in this thread. it has great impact and can enlighten many parts of mormonism. for example, although this example is bibilically based, in the story of adam and eve you may notice that when god asks adam if he ate of the fruit he avoids the question and blames it on eve who in turn blames it on the serpent instead of taking personal responsiblity for their actions.

this is a very simplified version of the theory and i hope i explained it clear enough. the rhetoric typically used is very unique to itself so i hope that the terms i used weren’t ambigious.

If anyone here is familiar with Girard or is interested in what i just posted, what do you think his ideas could do for mormonism? could it be accepted in a mormon context? i will submit more to answers these questions later this was just intended to familiarize you with his theories. Also just a more general question, what do you think of violence in the scriptures? Is God violent?