It is by recognizing that biblical texts are a new creative engagement of the human condition’s capacity to copy others, and the conflict and violence it causes, that we will find the story of salvation which evolves to turn us from our own human self-destruction as a species.
In the following chapters I will work with biblical texts to illustrate the other dynamics that are part of the paradox of human copying—both its violent and creative capacities. In doing so I will be mainly in an exchange between the works of Richard Dawkins and René Girard, along with others, to draw out how the biblical texts are an engagement with the evolutionary condition that we have as humans—copying and mimetic rivalry. The salvation story is designed to reveal human violence, lay bare our human capacity to scapegoat—victimize others, and conceal the evidence. The salvation story engages our human blindness to this violence by offering us identity beyond the need for rivalry, identity in Jesus Christ.
1. Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 90.
2. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 32.
3. Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 94.
4. Girard, The One by Whom Scandal Comes, 5.
5. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 177.
6. Lazareth, Christians in Society, 71.
7. Girard, The Scapegoat, 25.
Isaiah
1:1 The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. 2 Hear, O heavens, and listen, O earth; for the LORD has spoken: I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. 3 The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.
Isaiah is a prophet at the time of the fall of the northern empire of ancient Israel to the Assyrians in 721 BCE. Isaiah lists off the kings who are part of a monarchy that treats its own people unjustly. Long before Warner Brother Cartoons’ character of Bugs Bunny outsmarted Elmer Fudd, Isaiah portrayed the animals as being wiser than humans.8 Isaiah sees how the power of his own kings now oppresses the people, especially the poor. Isaiah writes, “What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord GOD of hosts” (Isaiah 3:15). Walter Brueggemann wrote about how the exploits of the kings numb the people and leave them feeling powerless. It is the task of the prophet to engage the people back into the experience of their suffering and death.9 Isaiah uses nature to do so. In chapter 6, he depicts Israel as a tree finding itself reduced to a stump.
6:8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” 9 And he said, “Go and say to this people: ‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.’ 10 Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.” 11 Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said: “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate; 12 until the LORD sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land. 13 Even if a tenth part remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains standing when it is felled.” The holy seed is its stump.
Isaiah develops a paradox of power whereby the more Israel attempts to listen, it cannot comprehend; the more it tries to look, it cannot see. Isaiah depicts human nature as utterly blind. I find Isaiah’s depiction of Israel not at all far removed from Richard Dawkins’s claim on evolution, namely that “It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, for foresight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”10
Isaiah also uses the image of Israel as vineyard in Chapter 5:
5:1 Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 2 He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. 3 And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 4 What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?
5 And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. 6 I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. 7 For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry! 8 Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land! 9 The LORD of hosts has sworn in my hearing: Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant. 10 For ten acres of vineyard shall yield but one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield a mere ephah. 11 Ah, you who rise early in the morning in pursuit of strong drink, who linger in the evening to be inflamed by wine, 12 whose feasts consist of lyre and harp, tambourine and flute and wine, but who do not regard the deeds of the LORD, or see the work of his hands! 13 Therefore my people go into exile without knowledge; their nobles are dying of hunger, and their multitude is parched with thirst. 14 Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure; the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude go down, her throng and all who exult in her. 15 People are bowed down, everyone is brought low, and the eyes of the haughty are humbled. 16 But the LORD of hosts is exalted by justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy by righteousness. 17 Then the lambs shall graze as in their pasture, fatlings and kids shall feed among the ruins.
Keeping with his construction of paradox Isaiah writes in 3:14, “The LORD enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.” Isaiah depicts Israel as a vineyard that is trampling itself. This makes perfectly good sense in terms of the paradox of human power I noted earlier with mimesis—our human capacity to copy—to create yet at the same time also enter into destructive rivalry. René Girard notes, “There is no human society that is not liable to break down as a result of its own violence.”11 In Isaiah’s paradox of power, it is not the Lord who is destructive, it is humanity itself.
Verse 15, “People are bowed down, everyone is brought low, and the eyes of the haughty are humbled,” parallels both the image of a trampled vineyard (3:14) and a tree that has been reduced to its stump (6:13). In our age of concentrated wealth and power, where unlimited campaign contributions replace actual democracy and the voice of the people, where we find the same powers in denial about climate change, Isaiah’s vision of human power is timely, for it reminds us that these powers are self-destructive and cannot sustain their own reign as creation itself enters into the Lord’s judgment against humanity.
Isaiah’s paradox with nature contains the same theme of the unity of redemption between humanity and creation that is found