Top Highlights

• Human beings obviously have the same type of struggle in their rivalries, but it doesn't end with a dominant-dominated pattern, because we are more violent. Why are we more violent? We have a greater mimetic impulse, and that mimetic impulse that turns us into rivals; our imitation is more intense than the animal imitation. This is probably, in my ...
• Yes, the Passion is the underside of scapegoating sacrifice; it reveals everything. In other words, it brings to perfection what is already there in the Hebrew Bible. It is the revelation of sacrifice as false worship: it is nothing more than the result of a false accusation against the victim. It exposes. In other words, when institutions confront...
• In order to put the members of a victim that has been torn apart back together, you re-member the victim. Then, when you sacrifice, you re-member again. Therefore, culture is essentially remembrance; so you can see that even in modern languages, words can be very useful to teach you what's behind them if you use them in the right way. SB: Jesus als...
• It's very easy to turn a good reciprocal relation into a bad reciprocal relation, but it's very difficult to turn a bad reciprocal relation back into a good one, very, very difficult, and that's the problem of humankind. So in a way, the rules of the Kingdom of God – no reprisal at all – are precisely to have very good reciprocity. If we have good ...
• Oh, this sounds dreadful, but we don't want to worship violence. Christ teaches us that we have to worship only love, but we have to understand that worship of violence is a series of steps towards love. This is why I say revelation takes into account the whole history of human religion.