The next several posts will be my attempts to process the compelling conversations at the recent meeting of the Catholic Biblical Association at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles. Today these are my notes on the presidential address of the Catholic Biblical Association given by Sandra Schneiders.

After a brief introduction she led us through a brief talk on the role of religion and violence. This is the backdrop for her discussion of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin(s) of the world. She uses Eugen Drewermann to provide a lens for the divine-human drama that is to say the structure of sin in the world. Drewermann describes a violent God image that derives from Genesis 3. From this analysis he determines that existential fear is the root for primal /original sin. This is the anxiety about the contingency of creaturehood.

Her second conversations partner is René Girard. Girard examine the role of sacralized violence. One element of Girard’s model that is helpful is the notion of mimetic desire. This is the desire to have what others have. This mimetic desire is a wellspring of violence. A mechanism of this violence is scapegoating.  Through a process of myth and ritual the scapegoating becomes sacralized in sacrifice.

Often if not traditional Jesus execution is viewed as a scapegoating violence that is a good violence that is meant to offset bad violence. Schneiders commended to us the book by S. Mark Heim Saved from Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross. Generally when persons read this passage in the gospel of John they construe this passage as an expression of scapegoating hence providing a biblical foundation.  She suggested that every scapegoating is a subversion of justice. One of the complicatinting factor is the fact that the Greek term the Lamb of God is a hapax legomena, (it is only found in one place) and that is in the Gospel of John. It never occurs in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Hence one must carefully navigate investigation to the background of the term.

Typically we think of Jesus as the scapegoat that takes on the sins of the world. In order to understand interpret Jesus as scapegoat: The Lamb of God first one must refer back to three Hebrew Bible/Old  Testament texts that provide a typology: The binding of Isaac (Gn 22:1-20); Passover lamb (Ex 12:1-14); Suffering servant (Is 52:13-53:12). Another element to understand the Lamb of God includes the first two types in the Passion narratives that is to say, what is God’s role in Jesus death (binding of Isaac) and the role of suffering in salvation (suffering servant).

Scheiders conclusions on the banquet of the Lamb and the forgiveness of sins provide an interesting backdrop for the ongoing discussion of penal substitution. This is the evocation of the third type that allows John 20:23 to provide an interpretative key for John 6. As the Father sent me (concerning the state of) sin, so I send you to forgive (behavior) sins.  Jesus provides the vehicle to replace the fear of the contingency of creaturehood  (primal/original sin)with a belief in Jesus that is not proposition but rather participation in a post-fear enterprise of God.

I invite you to look for the full article when it appears in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly later this year.