Salvation on the Move: The Relevance of Jesus as Scapegoat to Migrants in India
The study of Christology surprises everyone with its inexhaustible doctrinal richness and the recognition of the unfathomable divine-human nature of Jesus Christ. Enriched by philosophical foundations, Christology becomes the center of Christian faith and pervades the entire human life, promising the fullness of life. In the analysis of Dramatic Theology, Jesus becomes the ultimate scapegoat to reveal the ensnaring human attitude of lie and violence that originates from the self-deception and self-defense against the promised fullness of life. Our time is not an exception, today mimetic violence and lies unload on migrants in our vicinity and makes them into scapegoats. I intend to show that Jesus Christ, who overpowered the clutches of violence and marked the end of scapegoating in a certain sense, is very much relevant in counteracting the prejudices, violence, and victimization inflicted upon the migrants.
Research Concerns
1. To try to show how the migrants have been made scapegoats in their destination places. The unbounded and overblown prejudices promote scapegoat attitudes toward the migrants and justify the violent or unjust activities performed upon them as good and an act of self-defense. The mimetic theory of René Girard would help us to explore the attitudes of the host states and develop criteria for their adequacy.
2. Portraying how Dramatic Theology has established that Jesus has been made a scapegoat by different agents for his announcement of the Kingdom of God and judgement sentences. Jesus accepted to be that scapegoat for the sake of his message in order to end scapegoating by revealing the self-deception and self-righteousness of those agents who caused his death. He thus broke the cycle of mimetic violence by not triumphing over his enemies through the means of violence but by his love of enemies and readiness to make peace with his persecutors. In an analysis of how by becoming the ultimate scapegoat, Jesus also became the Saviour of the World, we endeavor to lay the foundation for the third step.
3. Scapegoating continues to happen. It comfortably conceals behind the mask of regionalism, nationalism, and fundamentalism. It should be elucidated how the counteracting approach of Jesus in gathering a new people of God is also relevant to addressing issues of migration in our days. Since the area of research focusses on the condition of migrants in India, it seems especially apt to enter into dialogue with the father of the independent India, Mahathma Gandhi, whose notion of non-violence was inspired by the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. Gandhi’s development of the philosophy of non-violence shall be connected to Girard’s and Schwager’s analyses of violence and their approach to non-violence. Therefore, Gandhi’s contribution would enrich both the contextual and theological deliberations.
Questions
1. Can the situation of Indian labour migration be described as a scapegoating situation in the sense of René Girard?
2. How do Girard and Schwager render Jesus as the ultimate scapegoat and how is that relevant to human peacebuilding and salvation?
3. In what way can these insights promote the emancipation and salvation of the migrants?
Methods
The research methods will be to utilize the hermeneutical tools provided by mimetic theory and dramatic theology for the problem at hand. These two approaches have developed a hermeneutics both of situations of human violent behaviour and of Biblical texts enlightening this behaviour. In applying this hermeneutics to the migrant situation in India and to the New Testament Drama of Jesus’ mission to establish the Kingdom of God, we are confident to find an elucidation of the migrants’ situation and means to alleviate their lot and counteract scapegoating.
Literature
Schwager, Raymund. Jesus in the Drama of Salvation: Toward a Biblical Doctrine of Redemption. Translated by James G. Williams and Paul Haddon. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1999.
Schwager, Raymund. Must There be Scapegoats?: Violence and Redemption in the Bible.Translated by Maria L. Assad. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1987.
Girard, Rene. The Scapegoat. Translated by Yvonne Freccero. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.
Palaver, Wolfgang. Rene Girard’s Mimetic Theory. Translated by Gabriel Borrud. Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 2013.
Supervisor
Assoz.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Nikolaus Wandinger
Department of Systematic Theology
Doctoral Candidate
Sebastian Crossian SJ
Sebastian.Crossian(at)student.uibk.ac.at
