Pope Benedict has stirred Muslims around the world by quoting an old text stating that Islam is inherently violent implying, it seems, that somehow Christianity is not. Catholic and Protestant Christianity both have a history of religiously inspired violence - the Crusades, the murderous Inquisition, Luther's support for the violent repression of the Peasants' Revolt, Calvin and the execution of Servetus, and (in the eyes of Muslims)
today an openly avowed Christian President of the most Christian and militarily powerful nation on earth occupying and/or invading Muslim countries.


It is impossible to read the Koran without seeing God portrayed as violent, but the same is true of the Bible. The Penal Substitutionary Theory of the atonement, which some Christians falsely insist equals orthodox Christianity - i.e. that God required Christ's violent death on the cross to appease/propitiate his violent feelings (wrath) against sinful humanity - sets in concrete an image of God as violent.


If God is violent 'at the core' for Islam or Christianity then it is so much hot air to claim that the violence of fundamentalist fanatics misrepresents what are really peaceful religions. And the history of both religions seems to confirm a 'hot air' theory.


Orthodox Christianity certainly insists that Christ died for our sins and that through his death he opened the way to at-one-ment between God and humanity. But never ever - unlike the doctrine of the Trinity or of the Incarnation - has there been an orthodox doctrine of the Atonement.


To make belief in the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) obligatory for recognising authentic Christian faith - as do huge numbers of conservative Protestants and Catholics today - is itself unorthodox (i.e. heretical). Authentic Christians are free either to reject or accept the PST.


But the PST has become the default theory for many Christians because they have never been taught anything else. So they tend to read the Bible through PST doctrinal glasses and thus maintain a violent image of God. In a world where religiously motivated violence and counter violence threatens to consume us all, it is high time we Christians explored at depth the question 'Is God violent?' and, by implication, Jesus and the Atonement.


To begin a debate it would be hard to do better than to consider the views of a cultural genius who was converted to Christ by exploring this question.


In his demanding book's, Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, Rene Girard cites extensive anthropological evidence to show that violence, first in the form of human and later of animal sacrifice, is as fundamental to the evolution of the human mind and spirit as are mutations in the DNA code to bodily evolution. Sacrifice, human then animal, acted out in ritual and told of in myth, occurs in every primitive society all over the globe and is the religious glue that for most of human history has prevented the war of all against all. Anthropologists and Ethnologists have been so puzzled by this universality that, unable to explain it, they have dismissed it as superstition.


Girard, a polymath, became a Christian as an adult via his immense readings in myth, literature, history, anthropology and psychology (among other achievements, he is a Shakespeare expert) when he realised that the Bible was gradually revealing that images of god/s requiring sacrifice were false human creations. Creations founded in the fundamental violence involved with all human relationships and that come to particular focus on issues of access to food, sex, resources and territory.


Key to Girard's theory is the notion of the scapegoat, a figure evident in all ancient myths and religions.


The mystifying worldwide, phenomena of rituals and myths of actual human and animal sacrifice goes back, says Girard, to early human ancestors, hominoids, who had not yet acquired language.


He asks us to imagine a scene, repeated many times in many parts of the world, where total communal violence breaks out among these anthropoids. It is like a destructive plague, escalating with every new act of retaliation (the 'sacrificial crisis'). But suddenly the clan focus shifts to a single individual who is seen as the cause of the plague, the evil one. The whole clan in utter frenzy and screaming cacophony fall upon this one and tear him to pieces.


When he is dead, the frenzy and the screaming cease. There is silence and peace. The corpse of the evil one is now the focus of the whole clan. Alive, that body was reviled by all as the cause of the plague of violence, dead that same one is now revered as the cause of the peace.


Thus, at one and the same time, the scapegoat becomes the epitome of evil (i.e. before the collective murder, the cause of anarchic violence) and also the epitome of good (i.e. after the collective murder, the cause of peaceful harmony). Unconsciously, the scapegoat is thus transformed into both a violent and a peaceful god whose beneficent effects are repeated by the practise of sacrificial rituals.


No one in the clan can describe, or even has words for, the actual working of the sacrificial mechanism, but its effects are so beneficial that it becomes ritualised as the way of avoiding the evil plague of violence. From now on, the mysterious and destructive 'power' of violence can be overcome by invoking the mysterious 'power' of peace through repeating the murder of the scapegoat in sacrificial rituals.


We might see the same profound ambiguity in the PST of the atonement where God is also imaged as violent (his justice demanding judgement, death and hell) and as peaceful (his love, peace and gift of eternal life).


Girard says the Bible recognises that all human societies are based upon and maintained by violence when it tells us that Cain, the first murderer, is the founder of human civilisation, the first builder of a city. And we can see echoes, he says, of the transition from human to animal sacrifice in the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of his son Isaac, when at the last minute God substitutes an animal for Isaac on the altar.


In the later prophets with God's repeated refrain, 'I desire mercy not sacrifice', Girard contends, we are at an advanced stage of recognising that the real God is not violent at all. This recognition comes about by seeing reality not from the point of view of the murderers of the scapegoat (the winners?), who have heaped blame for their own violence onto the scapegoat (the loser?), but by seeing reality from the point of view of the scapegoat, the innocent victim of communal violence.


Before Christ, says Girard, the high point of the revelation that the real God is non-violent is the Servant Songs of Isaiah, especially chapters 52-3. Here the victim is clearly seen as innocent, though there is still a slight overtone that it is a God of violence that requires the victim's death (hence it is not a surprise to discover that these chapters are also used by the PST to interpret Jesus' death as a sacrifice to propitiate violent divine wrath).


Girard is not denying Biblical Revelation, on the contrary he is arguing that the Bible alone reveals the truth both about the human condition and God. But he is not a naïve literalist, insisting that all parts of the Bible reveal God equally. There is a progressive revelation; not because of any limitation of God but because of human limitation.


With Jesus, says Girard, God is finally revealed as totally non-violent. Jesus is the completely innocent scapegoat with everyone, the political authorities, the religious authorities, and especially the mob itself, crying for his blood; even his own close disciples flee from him or explicitly deny him. Jesus brings to completion a revelation the true God has been disclosing to Israel over centuries.


In the gospel stories of Jesus' resurrection appearances, Jesus does not come back breathing violent revenge but peace. His own non-violence is the imitation of the true God and the unmasking of the evil-good, violent-peaceful god/s of sacrifice.


With the invention of nuclear weapons, and their continuing proliferation (Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea! Iran?) Girard thinks it completely naive for secular Westerners to ignore Jesus' forecast about all humanity being consumed by ultimate violence (Armageddon).


Western culture, he says, is profoundly influenced by Jesus: sacrifice of scapegoats has been replaced by the rule of law (i.e. legitimate violence used to control illegitimate violence); myths and legends have been replaced by history and science; scapegoating is quickly recognised as victimisation. But it is Christianity itself that is now being scapegoated by Westerners, he says, either by direct ridicule or by relativising it as just one religion among many.


For Girard, Jesus death achieves at-one-ment by revealing to us the imitation of the true God as totally non-violent and the gods of the religions as human inventions founded in violence.


We certainly need our sins forgiven, especially the sins of violent scapegoating we continue to perpetrate in our families, workplaces and international relations, but most of all we need to renounce our images of God as violent and imitate Jesus who imitated God. For now we know, as Jesus did (says Girard), that Armageddon will come not from God but from our own violence.


To imitate him, Jesus said, we must 'take up the cross' i.e. when faced with violence we must accept victimage, not resort to retaliation: even if like him that means accepting death by trusting that the real God is love and resurrection life.


(The author - a scholar-friend - wishes to remain anonymous)