Violence in the Bible and Dramatic Theology

Abstract

Contemporary society demonstrates a largely justifiable trend toward the rejection and condemnation of violence in any form which today is simply not acceptable. This article reexamines the relation of Christianity toward the violence contained within the pages of Holy Scripture and presents a direction taken in theological reflection of the same which the Croatian theological milieu is insufficiently acquainted with. The first section deals with the issue of violence in the Bible, particularly how it is understood today, and introduces some relatively new ways of reading the Bible. Primarily, this applies to reading the French anthropologist René Girard. In the second section the study briefly presents Jesuit Raymund Schwager’s project of dramatic theology. Dramatic theology reads salvation history as a drama, the author of which is God, but with characters that possess a certain dose of autonomy. The climax of the drama as well as the key to a correct reading of it in its entirety is the event of Jesus Christ.