In Part I and II of René Girard’s I see Satan Fall Like a Lightning, René Girard, a French Christian philosopher, offers a sociological and philosophical perspective on the atonement as understood in the Christian tradition emphasizing the similarities between the mythological and the biblical of the Gospels. For him the way in which mythology and the Gospels characterize their victims is noteworthy. In this respect, Girard introduces the concept of scapegoats which are “innocent targets of a senseless collective transference that is mimetic and mechanical.” (p. 1) In other words, the scapegoat is a member of a community who is …