Aug 17, 2026 · 59 min · 10 segments
The Pugsters welcome Fr. Dwight Longenecker to the show to discuss his new book, Bloodshed and Blessing. The book discusses blood sacrifice as a component of all traditional religions until those…
Dwight LongeneckerGuest
C. R. WileyHost
Glenn SunshineHost
Tom PriceHost
The book began out of my own... sort of curiosity about why in the modern age we Christians still, all of us in one way or another, still use the language of blood sacrifice.
and in the 10 stories of blood sacrifices that I relate in the first half of the book, I explain how bloody this actually was.
And for instance, as a Christian pastor and a sacrificing Catholic priest, I've often read the books of Leviticus and be quite grateful that I'm a priest in the New Covenant, not the Old Covenant, because it was a messy business, okay? And so, but still...
My core question is why do we in the modern age with Netflix and Zoom and jet planes and all the modern tech, why do we still use the language in our religion of blood sacrifice? You know, Catholics talk about this oblation, this sacrifice, this perfect sacrifice, the blood of Abel, the sacrifice of Isaac.
In every church we have a bloody crucifix hanging on the wall, and that's actually mandatory.
In my Protestant upbringing, we sang hymns like, being washed in the blood of the lamb, there is a fountain filled with blood.
And all Christians, apart from perhaps very modernist ones, use this blood sacrifice imagery and language all the time.
What could it possibly mean to a modern person who does not have any background in the Bible, in the scriptures, and in the history of religion? And so I wanted to try to answer that and say, well, here's what the ancient people did What were they thinking? What did they imagine that they were doing? Why did they do this? Why did they go to this effort? And it was a great effort and a great sacrifice because those people didn't sacrifice their babies and their young warriors and their young virgins without any compunction.
What were they thinking? And influenced by the thought of René Girard, also the philosopher Scheller with his book Résentiment and Nietzsche to a certain extent, and various other modern thinkers, I've tried to weave together various different strands to say, this is what they were actually working through in ancient times, even though they didn't know that's what they were doing.
I believe they were doing all these things from a deep instinct and a result of certain corporate tensions that were going on, which I explain in the book, and that the sacrifice was a way to actually relieve those tensions and feel that they were satisfied.
So one of the tensions which is there is this tension about the human instinct of saying, something's wrong, I'm unhappy, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I don't have everything I need, I'm suffering.
Why am I suffering? It must be somebody's fault because it's not my fault because I didn't make myself suffer.
Maybe I blame the gods who have brought a plague or a famine or whatever.
And therefore, if it is someone within my world, what do I do with that person I blame? Well, I have to get revenge.
And thus, within culture develops this need to shift the blame to find someone to blame, even if it's an innocent person like a scapegoat, I've got to shift the blame somehow.
And when I do, I feel personally and corporately this great sense of relief, joy even.
The book began out of my own... sort of curiosity about why in the modern age we Christians still, all of us in one way or another, still use the language of blood sacrifice.
and in the 10 stories of blood sacrifices that I relate in the first half of the book, I explain how bloody this actually was.
And for instance, as a Christian pastor and a sacrificing Catholic priest, I've often read the books of Leviticus and be quite grateful that I'm a priest in the New Covenant, not the Old Covenant, because it was a messy business, okay? And so, but still...
My core question is why do we in the modern age with Netflix and Zoom and jet planes and all the modern tech, why do we still use the language in our religion of blood sacrifice? You know, Catholics talk about this oblation, this sacrifice, this perfect sacrifice, the blood of Abel, the sacrifice of Isaac.
In every church we have a bloody crucifix hanging on the wall, and that's actually mandatory.
In my Protestant upbringing, we sang hymns like, being washed in the blood of the lamb, there is a fountain filled with blood.
And all Christians, apart from perhaps very modernist ones, use this blood sacrifice imagery and language all the time.
What could it possibly mean to a modern person who does not have any background in the Bible, in the scriptures, and in the history of religion? And so I wanted to try to answer that and say, well, here's what the ancient people did What were they thinking? What did they imagine that they were doing? Why did they do this? Why did they go to this effort? And it was a great effort and a great sacrifice because those people didn't sacrifice their babies and their young warriors and their young virgins without any compunction.
What were they thinking? And influenced by the thought of René Girard, also the philosopher Scheller with his book Résentiment and Nietzsche to a certain extent, and various other modern thinkers, I've tried to weave together various different strands to say, this is what they were actually working through in ancient times, even though they didn't know that's what they were doing.
I believe they were doing all these things from a deep instinct and a result of certain corporate tensions that were going on, which I explain in the book, and that the sacrifice was a way to actually relieve those tensions and feel that they were satisfied.
So one of the tensions which is there is this tension about the human instinct of saying, something's wrong, I'm unhappy, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I don't have everything I need, I'm suffering.
Why am I suffering? It must be somebody's fault because it's not my fault because I didn't make myself suffer.
Maybe I blame the gods who have brought a plague or a famine or whatever.
And therefore, if it is someone within my world, what do I do with that person I blame? Well, I have to get revenge.
And thus, within culture develops this need to shift the blame to find someone to blame, even if it's an innocent person like a scapegoat, I've got to shift the blame somehow.
And when I do, I feel personally and corporately this great sense of relief, joy even.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
