Mimesis and atonement: Rene Girard and the doctrine of salvation [Paperback edition first published] 9781501325427, 9781501325434, 9781501325441, 1501325426, 9781501342714, 1501342711

Table of contents :
List of Contributors Preface Foreword Rowan Williams (Master, Magdalene College, The University of Cambridge, UK) 1 Traversing Hostility: The sine qua non of Any Christian Talk about AtonementJames Alison (Imitatio Foundation) 2 Jewish Atonement and the Book of Jonah: From Sacrifice to Non-ViolenceVanessa Avery (Webster University, USA) 3 Orthodox Debates in the Twentieth Century on the Question of AtonementAntoine Arjakovsky (College des Bernardins, Paris, France) 4 Wright, Wrong and Wrath: Apocalypse in Paul and in GirardStephen Finamore (Bristol Baptist College, UK) 5 Paul and Girard Agonistes: Against Theological ViolenceAnthony Bartlett (Syracuse University, USA) 6 Salvation through Forgiveness or through the Cross? Raymund Schwager's Dramatic Solution to a False AlternativeNikolaus Wandinger (University of Innsbruck, Austria) 7 'Strategies of Grace': Mimesis as Conversion in Girard and in TheologyMichael Kirwan(Heythrop Institute, University of London, UK) 8 Violence Unveiled: Understanding Christianity and Politics in Northern Ireland after Rene Girard's Re-reading of AtonementDuncan Morrow(University of Ulster, UK) 9 Sacrifice and Atonement: Strengthening the Trinitarian Aspects of Mimetic TheoryArpad Szakolczai (University College, Cork, Ireland) Index

Citation preview

Mimesis and Atonement

Violence, Desire, and the Sacred Series Editors: Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge Volumes in the series: Vol. 1. Girard’s Mimetic Theory Across the Disciplines edited by Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge Vol. 2. René Girard and Sacrifice in Life, Love, and Literature edited by Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge Vol. 3. Mimesis, Movies, and Media edited by Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge Vol. 4. René Girard and Raymund Schwager: Correspondence 1974-1991 edited by Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, Joel Hodge, and Mathias Moosbrugger translated by Chris Fleming and Sheelah Treflé Hidden Vol. 5. Mimesis and Atonement: René Girard and the Doctrine of Salvation edited by Michael Kirwan and Sheelah Treflé Hidden

Mimesis and Atonement René Girard and the Doctrine of Salvation Edited by Michael Kirwan and Sheelah Treflé Hidden

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

N E W YO R K • LO N D O N • OX F O R D • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway 50 Bedford Square New York London NY 10018 WC1B 3DP USA UK www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Michael Kirwan, Sheelah Treflé Hidden and Contributors, 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kirwan, Michael, editor. Title: Mimesis and atonement: Rene Girard and the doctrine of salvation / edited by Michael Kirwan and Sheelah Treflé Hidden. Description: New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. | Series: Violence, desire, and the sacred | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016025389 (print) | LCCN 2016038775 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501325427 (hardcover: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501325434 (ePub) | ISBN 9781501325441 (ePDF) Subjects: LCSH: Atonement. | Girard, Renâe, 1923-2015. Classification: LCC BT265.3 .M56 2016 (print) | LCC BT265.3 (ebook) | DDC 232/.3–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016025389 ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-2542-7 ePDF: 978-1-5013-2544-1 ePub: 978-1-5013-2543-4 Series: Violence, Desire, and the Sacred Cover design: Catherine Wood Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

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Contents Contributors Preface Foreword, Rowan Williams Traversing Hostility: The sine qua non of Any Christian Talk about Atonement  James Alison 2 Jewish Atonement and the Book of Jonah: From Sacrifice to Non-Violence  Vanessa J Avery 3 Orthodox Debates in the Twentieth Century on the Question of Atonement  Antoine Arjakovsky 4 Wright, Wrong and Wrath: Apocalypse in Paul and in Girard  Stephen Finamore 5 Paul and Girard Agonistes: Against Theological Violence  Anthony Bartlett 6 Salvation through Forgiveness or through the Cross? Raymund Schwager’s Dramatic Solution to a False Alternative  Nikolaus Wandinger 7 ‘Strategies of Grace’: Mimesis as Conversion in Girard and in Theology  Michael Kirwan 8 Violence Unveiled: Understanding Christianity and Politics in Northern Ireland after René Girard’s Rereading of Atonement  Duncan Morrow 9 Sacrifice and Atonement: Strengthening the Trinitarian Aspects of Mimetic Theory  Arpad Szakolczai

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Contributors James Alison is a Catholic theologian, priest and author who earned his doctorate in theology from the Jesuit Faculty in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He has studied, lived and worked in Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile and the United States as well as his native England. A systematic theologian by training, James has developed Jesus the Forgiving Victim, a programme of induction into the Christian Faith for adults, following on from the insight into desire associated with René Girard’s thought. He is the author of Knowing Jesus (London: SPCK, 1992; Springfield: Templegate, 1993); Raising Abel (New York: Crossroad, 1996; London: SPCK, 2010); The Joy of Being Wrong (Crossroad, 1998); Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (London: DLT, 2001 and Crossroad, 2001), On Being Liked (DLT, 2003 and Crossroad, 2004); Undergoing God (DLT and Continuum, 2006); and Broken Hearts and New Creations: Intimations of a Great Reversal (DLT and Continuum, 2010). Antoine Arjakovsky is a French historian and co-director of the Centre for Research ‘Société, Liberté, Paix’ at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris. He has worked for the French Department of Foreign Affairs, as director of the French University College in Moscow, as deputy director of the French Institute in Ukraine and as an education attaché in Kiev. In 2004, he created and directed the Institute for Ecumenical Studies in the Catholic University of Ukraine, and remains a member of its Administrative Council and its senior fellow. He has published several works dedicated to the history of Christian Orthodox thought and has taught in universities in Europe and North America, such as the Academy Mohylin Kiev, the Lomonossov State University in Moscow, the Catholic University in Louvain, the Centre Sèvres and Notre Dame University. He is the author of Russie-Ukraine, de la guerre à la paix? (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2014) and The Way, Religious Thinkers of the Russian Emigration in Paris and Their Journal, 1925–1940 (Notre Dame University Press, 2013).

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Vanessa J Avery is visiting assistant professor of religious studies at Webster University, and holds degrees from the University of Exeter, Yale Divinity School, King’s College London and McGill University. The focus of her research is the problem of violence and its antidotes, as found mainly in the Hebrew scriptural and rabbinic traditions. She is a member of various interfaith dialogue groups and runs organizational and school programmes on religion, conflict and peace. Prior to her appointment at Webster, she taught as Adjunct Faculty in Religion at Sacred Heart University, while operating as an organizational consultant on issues pertaining to religious, cultural and international diversity. Anthony Bartlett attended a seminary of a Roman Catholic religious order, studying philosophy and theology at Heythrop College in London, and the Lateran University, Italy, from 1965 to 1974. He resigned from the Catholic priesthood in 1984 and worked as director of a homeless shelter in London. In 1994, he relocated with his wife and children to Syracuse, New York, where he studied at Syracuse University, Deptartment of Religion, gaining his PhD in 1999. He subsequently taught at Bexley Hall Episcopal Seminary, Rochester, and G.T.S. New York. In 2007, he co-founded Theology & Peace, an organization dedicated to the theological and pastoral development of Mimetic Theory, serving as board member and contributing theologian till 2013. He is the author of Virtually Christian, How Christ Changes Human Meaning and Makes Creation New (0-Books, 2011) and a recently published sci-fi novel, Pascale’s Wager: Homelands of Heaven (Hopetime Press, 2014). Stephen Finamore trained for ministry and read theology in Oxford. His doctoral work is on the Book of Revelation. His interests include biblical studies, christian doctrine, mission studies, ecclesiology and apocalyptic, and he has made a particular study of the work of René Girard. Before becoming principal of Bristol Baptist College, Stephen Finamore was minister of a church in north-west Bristol. In the past he has been a lawyer, led a community development project in inner London and worked for a rural development project in the Andes of northern Peru. Steve maintains links with Peru, especially with the Evangelical Seminary in Lima. He was involved with the

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agency Tearfund for over twenty years, including ten as a trustee and director. He is the joint editor (with John Weaver) of Wisdom, Science and the Scriptures; Essays in Honour of Ernest Lucas, 2012; A Kinder, Gentler Apocalypse? René Girard, the Book of Revelation and God, Order and Chaos; René Girard and the Apocalypse (Paternoster, 2009). Michael Kirwan is a British Jesuit priest lecturing in theology at Heythrop College (University of London), where he completed his doctoral studies on the theologies of martyrdom from the perspective of Girard’s Mimetic Theory. He has an interest in political and liberation theologies, and in the relation between theology and literature. He is the current director of the Heythrop Institute: Religion and Society, which is home to the REMUS project (Religion-Mimesis-Society) exploring aspects of Girardian theory and practice. He is the author of Discovering Girard (DLT, London, 2004); Political Theology: a New Introduction (DLT, London, 2008) and Girard and Theology (T & T Clark, Continuum, London, 2009), as well as essays on theology and literary criticism. Duncan Morrow holds a BA in philosophy, politics and economics, University of Oxford (1982), a PhD in ‘Neutrality as Foreign Policy in Austria since 1955’, University of Edinburgh (1987) and a postgraduate certificate in University Education, University of Ulster (1993). He is currently the director of Community Engagement at the University of Ulster, responsible for developing the university’s partnerships with groups and organizations across the community. He is also a lecturer in politics. In 2002, he was appointed as chief executive of the Community Relations Council, where he championed the concept of a shared future. He developed the council’s role in research and active learning in policy development, working on key issues such as interfaces, parading and regeneration, and working with victims and survivors of conflict. After his return to the university in 2011, he was also appointed as chairman of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Tackling Sectarianism, Scottish Government, 2012–13. He is the co-author (with Roel Kaptein) of On the Way of Freedom (Columba Press, 1993), for which René Girard wrote the introduction.

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Arpad Szakolczai is a social theorist with a particular interest in the sociology of the renaissance and its relative impact on the rise of modernity. After completing studies at the University of Budapest and a PhD from the University of Texas, Austin in 1987, he taught social and political theory for eight years at the European University Institute in Florence, and is now professor of sociology at University College, Cork, Ireland. His recent and major publications include The Dissolution of Communist Power (1992; with Agnes Horvath), Max Weber and Michel Foucault: Parallel Life-Works (1998), Reflexive Historical Sociology (2000), La scoperta della società (2003; with Giovanna Procacci), The Genesis of Modernity (2003) and Sociology, Religion and Grace: A Quest for the Renaissance (2007), as well as articles and essays in leading journals. Nikolaus Wandinger was born in Bavaria, Germany. He studied at the universities of Innsbruck and San Francisco, and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. His doctorate in theology from the University of Innsbruck explored the concept of sin/original sin in the theologies of Karl Rahner and Raymund Schwager. Since 2013, he has been an associate professor in Innsbruck. The main focus of his work is dramatic theology and its relation to Mimetic Theory, theological anthropology and Christology.

Preface The chapters in this book are intended to update and consolidate existing debates within Mimetic Theory (MT) and theology, and also to break new ground. The contributors were asked to revisit the discussion on the doctrine of salvation and MT, which is at the heart of the letter correspondence between René Girard and Raymund Schwager (one of Girard’s most important theological collaborators). This is important given the ‘New Perspective’ scholarship on Paul, which was beginning to blossom at the time of the correspondence, and clearly has a bearing on its themes. We especially wanted to bring established Girardian scholars from different persuasions into contact with each other, and it is heartening that this book opens with voices from the Catholic, Jewish, Orthodox and Evangelical traditions. Collectively, the chapters bear witness to Girard’s theory as a ‘game-changer’, inviting us, as Rowan Williams proposes, to think about how we do theology, and how it is to ‘be more itself ’. Raymund Schwager died suddenly in 2004; with the loss of René Girard in November 2015, it is comforting to think of their conversation being resumed in a better place. May they rest in peace. Our warmest thanks to the Imitatio Foundation for their encouragement and support, and to everyone who enabled this project to take place. Michael Kirwan and Sheelah Treflé Hidden

Foreword Rowan Williams

René Girard’s comprehensive and still controversial theories about the origins of culture continue to be discussed in relation to an ever-widening range of disciplines; recent collections of essays have explored their connection with evolutionary biology and neuroscience, as well as with the more familiar areas of anthropology and literary criticism, and an increasing number of studies have looked at the relevance of Girardian analyses to the concrete problems of modern politics and international relations. But the theological agenda has always been a central aspect of Girard’s own concerns and a major area of impact for his theories. Girard has consistently argued that the narrative of the gospel, the narrative of the paradigm case of an expelled and executed innocent, a scapegoat, turns inside out the categories of archaic religion (including the archaic religion that masquerades as modernity). If human culture rests on a ‘founding murder’, the basic act of expelling an arbitrarily designated figure to carry the unbearable tensions of the community outside its boundaries and so remove their burden, then Christianity, to quote Girard's own formulation is ‘a founding murder in reverse’. That is not an immediately transparent formulation. But it means something like this: Human beings are – before they realize it, independently of their realizing it – driven again and again to repeat, with ever greater ingenuity, the pattern of foundational violence. Culture goes on reinventing scapegoats, and humans are permanently and paralysingly involved in this mechanism, struggling to make peace and to secure boundaries by acts of exclusion, which guarantee that anxiety and division will continue. ‘Sacral violence’ is a human addiction, because we have never learnt of ourselves what a community of shared identity might be that was based on something other than this. The uncomfortable truth about a lot of Christian theologies of atonement has

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been that they claim that there has been one simple and ultimately effective application of sacral violence in the death of Christ. Christ, the innocent carries our sins; he is thus identifiable as ‘the victim we have always been looking for’ – and Girard’s most challenging theological insight is that this is exactly what the death of Christ cannot and must not be. His argument is that we have to digest a paradox: Christ’s death is the inversion of the mechanism in such a way that it exposes the self-destructive character and irrational nature of the mechanism, rather than satisfying its requirements once and for all. Rather than as the victim we have always been looking for, the supremely effective victim of sacred exclusion, Christ’s effectiveness is in showing that we can be delivered from our addiction to that pattern and establishing another kind of common identity. Our human helplessness is outmanoeuvred by a freedom of action that is completely beyond our negotiated efforts to establish peace. The act of God is there first: an act which in its universal invitation and non-exclusionary love holds open the possibility of a communal identity that is shareable by all. This is what the ministry of Jesus already affirms and it is what the events of Easter embody. The new community is not created by the ‘successful’ slaughter of the innocent (which in the gospels is connected with the drastic fragmentation or destruction of the fellowship of Jesus’ followers) but by the triumphant and undeniable reaffirming of Jesus’ proclamation in the resurrection, vindicating his anti-violent gospel and exhibiting the contradictory and death-dealing nature of the scapegoat mechanism itself. Instead of the cross of Christ being the long-awaited answer to our question about how we might ‘finally’ make the mechanism work, it dissolves the entire working of sacral violence and casts the emphasis on the free act of a divine agent beyond all rivalry, negotiation or competition. God is ‘inimitable’ and needs no imitative struggle to attain divine identity; God’s radical generosity is thus uniquely able to expose the self-subverting arbitrariness of human exclusion. How this maps in detail on to the range of classical Christian theologies of redemption is not a simple matter; some formulations already imply just this paradoxical reversal, some embody in emphatic form precisely the mechanism Girard thinks must be exploded, and it is not straightforward to tell which is which. Some expositions of substitutionary satisfaction may

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surprise us by effectually subverting their own terms; an apparently liberal bit of exemplarism may lead us straight back into sacral violence of a new kind. We are in need of careful and imaginative readings of our tradition in the light of Girard's remarkably fertile models – and this is what the present collection splendidly does for us. Atonement theologies can constitute one of the most frustrating areas of doctrinal reflection and analysis, a territory populated by ‘ignorant armies clashing by night’, with stereotypes thrown around and a failure to attend to the detail of argument. Thinking through these questions with Girard on one hand, and the gospel on the other, is (appropriately) a salutary experience. It will not allow us to settle with a theology that simply presents God as responding to the terms in which we put our question, which is always a seduction to be resisted in theology; Girard obliges us to think what difference it might make theologically if we genuinely try to make sense of the act of God in the passion of Jesus as the act of a radical freedom from the fear of otherness, a radical freedom from competition. Whatever account of the redeeming work of Christ we emerge with will at least not be just a repetition of the crudest forms of sacrificial economy – and in recalling us to these basic ‘grammatical’ considerations about how the act of God is to be imagined, it will have implications for many more areas of the theological task, so that this is not just a book about one topic but an invitation to think about the method of a whole discipline. It is a book that should help theology to be more itself.

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Traversing Hostility: The sine qua non of Any Christian Talk about Atonement James Alison

Recovering Our Lord’s account of his atonement In each of the three Synoptic gospels, Jesus teaches the parable we know as that of the ‘Wicked Tenants’ or the ‘Murderous Vinedressers’. The place in which the parable is given, the Temple, is the same in each version, as is the timing. It follows Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, to the accompaniment of Davidic acclamations, his prophetic acting out of judgement on the Temple and his announcement of its caducity, by means of the overturning of the tables and the blighting of the fig tree. The parable then precedes Jesus’ prophecy of the physical destruction of the Temple and his remarks concerning the unimportance of that event, his eschatological teaching and his closing the parentheses of all this teaching with the final example of the fig tree. In all three cases, the parable is delivered to the Chief Priests, Scribes and Elders (Mk, Mt.) or in their presence (Lk.), and is part of Jesus’ response to their question concerning his authority for performing the signs he has just performed. There are differences between the three versions of the parable. The Marcan and Lucan versions reveal greater hints of the day-to-day agricultural concerns and property law, which the first listeners would have understood as appropriate to a rental arrangement of the sort described, while the Matthaean version is more schematic – and for anyone interested in following up on those matters, I cannot recommend highly enough the late Duncan Derrett’s masterly discussion.1 It is not, however, those differences that interest me here, but, rather, the way that Matthew resolves the flow of the story by comparison with Mark and Luke.

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In Mark’s version (Mk 12.1-12), the parable is a monologue, with Jesus telling the story of the tenants, asking what the owner will do, and himself giving the answer to the effect that the owner will destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Then he quotes Psalm 118 concerning the stone that the builders rejected, and at some point, his listeners pick up that he has told the parable against them. In Luke’s version, Jesus tells the story, asks what the owner will do, and himself gives the answer concerning destroying the tenants and giving the vineyard to others. At this point, his listeners interject: ‘Heaven forbid!’ whereupon Jesus looks at them and asks them what the quote from Psalm 118 means, adding some thoughts concerning falling and being crushed. These seem to be an interpretation of Isaiah 28.16 and Isaiah 8.14-15, appropriately enough for a parable whose most obvious scriptural allusion is to the vineyard of the Lord’s beloved in Isaiah (Isa. 5.1-2). Again the Scribes and Chief Priests, who are among the listeners, pick up that he has told the story against them, and are only restrained by fear of the crowd from arresting him on the spot. In Matthew’s version (Mt. 21.33-46), Jesus is talking to the Chief Priests and elders, and tells the story of the tenants rather succinctly. However, when he asks what the owner will do when he comes, this is not a rhetorical question, and the Chief Priests and elders supply a vehement answer: the owner will put those bastards to a bastardly death and lease the vineyard to others who will produce its fruit in due season. Reacting to this, Jesus quotes Psalm 118 to them, in wonderment that they seem to have no understanding of it. He then implies that it is because of that lack of understanding that the Kingdom of God will be taken away from them, his listeners, (whom he here addresses directly as ‘you’), and given to others who will produce its fruit. He then adds, at least in some ancient authorities, the verse about falling on the stone and being crushed. The Chief Priests and the Pharisees (whose first appearance is in this chapter – earlier it had been the scribes or the elders who had accompanied the Chief Priests) realize that the parables (i.e. not this one alone) were about them (not against them as in Mark and Luke), and want to arrest him, but fear the crowds. I take for granted that each of the three versions is a different way, presupposing a different audience, of enabling a Christian preacher, teacher

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or expositor to make available from highly compacted material something that Jesus really did teach in just the circumstances described, and which was sufficiently dense, complex and surprising that those who first heard it did not grasp it immediately, but gradually. And what the authorities who were listening, and who were by no means stupid, did eventually understand, or thought they understood, was sufficiently shocking that they then contemplated the comparative danger to public order of doing something about it as opposed to doing nothing, neither being a good option. However, whatever it was that Jesus was teaching was not so obviously and straightforwardly blasphemous, seditious or partisan, so that only particularly stupid stage baddies could have missed out on its point until it was too late, when they were left to grind their teeth in a vaudeville of villainous vexation. I would like to concentrate on Matthew’s account here, since there is something about the pauses, gaps and changes of voice and of emphasis in his version that seem to me especially useful if we are to focus on a particularly Jewish sense of the difference between what is of God and how we humans think. I consider this to be of the essence in bringing out the dimension of awe to which I fear that I, at least, have often failed to bear witness when discussing the atonement. First, let us remember that Matthew’s account, like all the others, is Jesus’ partial answer to the question put to him by the Chief Priests and those with them as to ‘by what authority he did these things’ – the things in question being his prophetic acting out of the arrival into Jerusalem of the promised Davidic heir, and the symbolic and enacted declarations of the Temple’s usefulness and time having come to an end. So no account of the parable that does not offer some hint of an answer to that question can be said to be entirely plausible. As most commentators observe, Matthew does not follow the legal niceties present in Luke and Mark, where the owner first sends servants before any fruits could possibly be claimed, servants who must return bloodied as part of showing that they had at least staked their master’s claim. Nor does he seem particularly interested in following the tenants’ progress towards establishing ownership by the law of ‘adverse possession’.2 Rather, in Matthew’s account, the sendings of the servants seem already to be those of the prophets, divided into two series: those from before the Babylonian exile and those after. And so

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we come to the arrival of the final emissary, the son, whom the tenants refer to as the klhronόmoV (kleronomos), which is usually translated as ‘the heir’, though it might also mean the usurper, or the one who has come to lay rightful claim to the property. I guess most of us assume that the word ‘heir’ refers to someone who expects in due time to become the owner of the property, rather than someone who, following the demise of the landowner in whose will they are named, is, in fact, already the new owner. But there is in the word itself no indication as to which of the two is the case – and this raises the question of whether or not the tenants in the story thought they were killing their future or their current landlord. If they thought they were killing their future landlord while their current landlord, although distant, was very much alive, they would have been doing something rather stupid, since, of course, the current landlord, on hearing the news, could be expected to engage in reprisals to re-establish his authority. However, if they thought that the arrival of the klhronόmoV was a sign that the old man had died, and that they were dealing with the current owner, who had, furthermore, arrived without any backup, then killing him was not a bad idea at all – especially if they did it outside the vineyard, so that the circumstances could be murky, and they could prevent his spilled blood from soiling productive ground. Such soiling would, for generations, have rendered the vineyard’s produce impure, and thus much less valuable. Under these circumstances, however immoral it may seem to us, killing him, and doing so off the premises, may well have seemed quite savvy, since there would henceforth be no one to contest their title, and no one to be a witness against them or to vindicate the original owner’s authority. I hope that you can see that, given the ambiguity concerning the status of the klhronόmoV, how Jesus poses the next question to his listeners and what he means by it are crucial. He asks them, ‘Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ Up until this point in the story, it has not been clear to the tenants that the first owner, the father of the son who has just been killed, was still alive. They may well have thought that there was no owner to come, since they had killed the one they imagined to be the current owner. But for those outside the story, like Jesus’ listeners, it has been

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obvious all along that the original owner is still alive. So they answer in the obvious way: the original owner will establish his authority over the vineyard, his ownership of it, in a violently retributive way, doing unto the criminals, who thought they had got away with a successful takeover scheme, what they had done to his son. And here’s the rub: in answering him in the obvious way, Jesus’ listeners remain outside the capacity to imagine the parable as a response to their own question: ‘by whose authority’? For that question concerns the signs they had witnessed, and which were perfectly comprehensible to them, by which Jesus is establishing that he is the Priestly King of Davidic line, promised from of old, turning up to visit the vineyard, and, of course, its Watchtower, the Temple. It would have been perfectly obvious to them all that King David was long since dead, and not capable of turning up with an army to punish anybody. But if Jesus is the long-awaited anointed Son of David, then, in fact, he is not representing the owner: he is the owner. It is at this point that Jesus shifts register by expressing amazement that they have not understood the verse from Psalm 118 (with which they were certainly familiar, and so had ‘read’ in the obvious sense) concerning the stone that the builders rejected becoming the cornerstone. By asking them ‘Have you never read …?’ he is pointing out to them that they have, by their answer, chosen to remain outside the story, rather than answering him concerning the owner as if they were the tenants from within the story. If they had thought of themselves as the tenants from within the story, and could recognize their own murderousness, then they had in Psalm 118 a rather good defence of what the tenants had done: their putting the one they had thought to be the owner to death was part of a providential plan and the Lord would vindicate his own authority, outside any retributory logic, by making this to be for the best of all of them: ‘This was the Lord’s doing, and it is wonderful in our eyes.’ However, his listeners are either incapable of accepting, or unwilling to accept the implicit challenge, by entering inside the story and seeing themselves as the murderous tenants. Rather, they remain outside it and beholden to an entirely retributory logic of righteous innocence: ‘We would never do anything like that, and anyone who does something like that should have meted out to them the same violence they had themselves meted out.’ It is this retributory

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logic, preventing them from reading the murder in a providential way, rather than the murder itself, that is the cause of the Kingdom of God being taken away from them and given to a people producing its fruits. It is not the fact of the murder, but whether that murder functions for its accomplices as a source of accusation or of forgiveness, that is going to be key. The retributory logic within which Jesus’ listeners choose to remain will henceforth be perpetually scandalized. They will be outmanoeuvred by the logic of the providential vindication of the Lord’s authority in instantiating and making visible, through his death and resurrection, the mechanism of the aleatory victim. The mechanism was accurately prophesied by David in his psalm, and the consequences of its instantiation clearly understood by Isaiah – for the verses quoted from Isaiah concerning falling on a stone and being crushed point out how exactly the same mechanism that brings salvation to some ties others into scandal. Please notice the rather subtle distinction I am attempting to bring out: in Jesus’ telling and reaction, it is not at all the fact that the tenants have killed the son that is the problem. In fact, Jesus in telling the parable seems cheerfully unconcerned – indeed, almost indulgent – about the murder. The murder is the baseline, differing reactions to which will determine future tenancy, and it is those differing reactions that bear the weight of the story. Where the parable ‘catches’ its listener is that it requires a movement from outside the story to inside the story if it is to answer the question that the Chief Priests and elders had put to Jesus concerning ‘by what authority do you do these things’. But the moment its listeners take that step inside the story, then they accept complicity, identifying with murderers whose murder is going to be turned to their advantage. For Jesus is effectively saying to them: The Lord, through David his beloved, planted this vineyard long ago. I, deliberately acting out the coming into the vineyard of David’s son and heir, Am the one whom I am enacting. Hence my entry into Jerusalem, my curing of blind and lame people in the Temple who have not been allowed onto the Temple mound since David’s time, even before Solomon built the Temple (Mt. 21.14; 2 Sam. 5.8-9). Hence my refusal to silence the children who are announcing the return of the Davidic heir. I am bringing to an end the tenancy, with the need to pay me first fruits, which

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is represented by the Temple. Indeed, I have not found any fruit there, merely a lot of cosmetic foliage, as I demonstrated with the fig tree. Henceforth I intend to be present myself in those working the vineyard. My Davidic authority, which is a first-person authority, will be demonstrated, after you have killed me, in exactly the way David himself prophesied through Psalm 118. The coming of the owner, the posthumous vindication of the son and the bringing to an end of the Temple regime of sacrifice will turn out to be the same thing. And it is only in the light of David’s own words that you could conceivably interpret any question of Davidic authority. From now on, those who are scandalized by their own involvement in the murder that is to happen and by this teaching about it will remain scandalized by it; while those who recognize their complicity with the perpetrators of what has gone on and allow themselves to be forgiven will find themselves producing the desired fruit of the vineyard. I hope now that it is clearer why Matthew says that the Priests and Pharisees perceived that he was speaking ‘about’ them rather than ‘against’ them: they are being challenged to consider their place in all this. The answer to the question of ‘by whose authority you do this’ is only available when they step inside the story. Yet, the moment they do step inside the story, they are faced with the fact that they are going to have to assess for themselves the first person authority of the one coming towards them. There is no other way to be sure whether they are dealing with the current or the future owner and, therefore, what the owner’s exercise of authority might look like – and they will only understand any answer given to the question of ‘by whose authority you do this’ in the degree to which they accurately assess the one with whom they are dealing. Furthermore, they are being invited to consider that the owner may have a more indulgent understanding of the tenants’ own murderousness than they themselves, an indulgence that shades into a benevolence which they can access precisely in their recognizing that murderousness: ‘This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes’ (Ps. 118.23). I hope it is clear that contemplating this leaves them stuck, both inside and outside the story, as people who are, in fact, thinking about doing to Jesus just what is described, but have no wish for any divine elements to accrue to that. These are not scenarios that are quickly thought through without scandal.

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Taking incomprehension seriously Please excuse the very long introduction to what are going to be some shorter observations. My purpose here is not to remain focused on textual detail, but to enter into the underlying hints of theological vision. I suspect that we have in this parable the nearest thing to Our Lord’s own narrative account of the atonement, a fuller acting out of which he is shortly to perform for his disciples in the Last Supper. In John’s Gospel, the two valencies of the reading of the murder, from outside and from inside the story, are brought out in Caiaphas’ remark about one man dying for the nation, and in the Evangelist’s own gloss on this: that Caiaphas had been telling the truth despite himself, being the mouthpiece of a High Priestly prophecy that was, in fact, being fulfilled, and of whose fulfilment its utterer had no understanding at all.3 Piercing knowledge and extreme ignorance are here formally identical. In the first letter of Peter (1 Pet. 2.4-8), exactly the same two valencies are set forth, using exactly the same quotes from Isaiah and Psalm 118 as we saw in the parable, and there also the two valencies of the same murder are treated as being the entire difference between being and not being a believer. What I think is special about the Parable of the Vinedressers, and particularly Matthew’s version of it, is not that it is saying anything formally different from either John or 1 Peter. I think it is revealing the same thing that they are. No, that which is special is that in the Johannine or Petrine version, we can get away with treating the insight as though it were an intellectual matter, something about a ‘him’ or a ‘them’ that can be schematized. Whereas in the Matthaean version, we are given a scarcely veiled first-person account– ‘What I am doing’ – put forward by someone who simultaneously knows how extremely difficult it is for any listener of his to understand what he is doing, and yet, amazingly, wants to make it easier for them to find a way in, so that they will not be trapped in the result of their own malice. To say this in another way, it is easy, rather too easy, for us to discuss the two valencies of sacrifice present in the atonement as though they were ideas. It is an altogether different matter to find ourselves on the inside of someone else’s narrative in which that someone else is trying, in as firm but as amicable a way

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as possible, to talk us beyond our own hostility to the one talking to us. It is here that I begin to get some glimpse of what I have so often failed to bring to our discussions of atonement: a sense of awe at the hugeness and difference of a deliberate, intelligent and even indulgent, love for us that is only available to us as it traverses our hostility. For what we have in the parable is Our Lord traversing our hostility in two senses. In the first sense, he is describing what he is, in fact, doing in the first person, answering what it looks like for ‘I AM’ to come to his vineyard and take charge of it so that it produces fruit, making it quite clear that he expects to be murdered and, furthermore, that this is not a problem for him. It is, rather, the previously considered and generously assumed cost of business in a project of love. So the whole movement of love towards us takes for granted, and is not fazed by, the fact that ‘I AM’ is loving us, who are, unbeknownst to us, his enemies. Our enmity does not prevent his love for us. It does not even limit it in any way. Our enmity does blind us to that love, as it blinds us to who we really are, and yet it also provides the murderous circumstances in which it is possible for that love to be shown to us. The second sense, then, in which Our Lord traverses our hostility, is in trying to make it possible for us, his enemies, to understand what he is doing for us. His movement into the vineyard, by fulfilling the Davidic prophecies and carrying out the signs, is pointing to something quite objective that he is doing, whether we get what it is or not. But in addition, he actually teaches what he is doing: ‘I AM giving I AM’s account of what I AM doing.’ And this can only be done by sign and parable because part of our being enemies is that we cannot understand someone doing something for us in any straightforward and direct way. It is not that we are decent people who just happen to be hostile to this or that manoeuvre of someone who may or may not like us. Rather, we come pre-formed in hostility to our own best interests. Only the indirection of the parabolic method could possibly get us to take the time to be quizzical concerning who we are, and just possibly self-critical concerning our place in what is unfolding. However, the ability of the parable to do that is not a foregone conclusion: it may turn out only to blind further into outraged righteousness those to whom

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it was seeking to offer a way in to understanding someone doing something loving and friendly towards, and for them – and this, of course, is very exactly how Jesus had described the function of the parables: This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which says: ‘You shall indeed hear but never understand, and you shall indeed see but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn for me to heal them.’ (Mt. 13.13-15) All this Jesus said to the crowds in parables; indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable. This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet: ‘I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.’ (Mt. 13.34-35)

So the fact of what is being done, the atonement, is something that traverses our hostility – and it cannot be the case that the teaching about it comes to us via some other, clearer, more linear route. It is only as enemies who are being let off our enmity that we could conceivably have any idea of what is being done for us. But this means that any theological reception of the atonement, any genuinely theological attempt to teach and pass on the doctrine of the atonement fails seriously if it is not marked by an awareness of the hostility to what is proposed, on the part of those even now receiving it; and an awe on the part of those receiving it, in the face of an almost impossible-to-discern generosity and love. This generosity and love is not a response to our hostility, is not circumscribed by it in any way at all, and yet makes use of that hostility to turn us into something much beyond ourselves. To put this in other, more Tridentine terms, atonement is performed in the face of fallen humans who are averse to perceiving that this is something that does them good; and even afterwards, as our scandal at ourselves unravels, the understanding by the baptized of atonement, of what has been done for us, is as marked by concupiscence, the remnant in our redeemed lives of the failed mind and distorted desire of the Old Adam, as every other dimension of our postbaptismal lives.

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Liturgical presence and awe It is for this reason that I think it particularly important that we have received from the Apostles not a theory of the atonement. Rather, we have been given the knowledge that the atonement has happened, and a liturgical way of being able to find ourselves inside what it was that happened, and how that reaches us. I would like to illustrate this with reference to the martyrdom of Stephen (Acts 6.8–8.1), since there all the elements of presence, hostility and scandal, at which we have been looking, are very clearly illustrated. Stephen gives an extended account of the history of the people to whom he is talking, starting with Abraham. The thrust of his narrative is to indicate that the default reaction to any prophetic voice coming from God has been one of incredulity and rejection, and that exactly this default reaction has been shown in how they acted towards the Righteous One. In other words, he is indicating to them that hostility to God is our default reaction, and that we hate to detect our solidarity in hostility. Pointing this out to any of us can have one of two results: the result which Peter’s preaching had in Acts 2 – some of his listeners were cut to the heart, asked what they should do, and were told to repent and be baptized; or the result that it has here – the listeners become enraged and grind their teeth. At this moment, Stephen sees ‘the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God’ and says, ‘I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’ This is very exact: Stephen is describing undergoing the Throne Vision, which had been described by Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. This is the vision of the Lord, previously seen in the Holy of Holies, with strong anthropomorphic elements that had come into closer and closer focus until finally Stephen announces to them that the mysterious ‘one like a son of man’ whom the prophets had seen being taken up into the very identity of the Lord was, in fact, this man, Jesus, whom they had considered to be a seditious blasphemer and punished as such. The one they considered to be a severely irritating contaminant to anything to do with God’s holiness had turned out to be, in fact, the source of all holiness. That they understood very well what was being said is shown by their extreme hostility to it – and please notice, this is not because they were particularly hostile or evil people. On the contrary, it is because they were particularly attuned to

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the good, particularly well educated with relation to the things of God, and particularly sensitive to that which is holy. The movement they undergo is as if it were an allergic reaction to an abomination, the bringing together of two things that, for good and holy people, could not, ever, possibly, conceivably, be brought together: that cursed and sinful dead man, and the holiness of God. Nevertheless, it is exactly that man whom Stephen sees, who has, in fact, brought into clear focus the holiness of the Most High. Stephen’s vision happens independently of the Temple, and reveals that the Presence of the Most High is now, unalterably and forever, inseparable from the Son of Man – even here on earth, as it was previously only in Heaven – and that there is no other form of Real Presence of the Most High than this form. This Real Presence is one of deliberate love in the midst of violent and allergic hostility, and empowers Stephen to recreate and bear witness to that love very exactly in the manner of his dying. So when we celebrate Mass, the Real Presence to which we are being given access is not some blander version of God, with the love that traverses hostility being kept under wraps only for some special occasions lest it frighten us too much. That would, indeed, be a taming of God to be ‘good’ for those who are ‘good’. No, the appropriate awe is due because there is, indeed, something terrible about a love that traverses our hostility – and does so in such a way that it is very easy for us to be tipped over into righteous rejection of it. The awe does not attribute any violence to God. It begins, however, in an awareness that it is, indeed, a violent and frightening thing to undergo being unhooked from our own, easily knee-jerked, allergic constructions of fake righteousness. It is an awe made available to us over time as a narrative of amazement that ‘I have been found by the love of one who I treated as my enemy’. And it means that there is no genuine teaching about, or reception of, the atonement that does not include a rigorous approach to human scandal at what is being proposed and our finding ourselves set free from that scandal.

Forgiveness prior to being A final very quick point, which I would love to develop more, and hope to have the opportunity to in future: One of the things that has emerged for me

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as I have meditated on Girard’s insights, and allowed my reading of the New Testament to be permeated by them, is how much clearer it becomes that the gospels do allow us to detect a very clear, firm and rich human intention in Jesus, doing what he did, and teaching what he did, on his way to a death he knew he was going to – this by contrast with an exegetical fashion of a few decades ago where interpretations of Jesus’ death were assumed to be post-resurrection creations, or at the very least, developments of something of which Jesus himself knew little, with scriptural florilegia added after the event. It seems to me much clearer now than it did when I coined the phrase ‘the  intelligence of the victim’,4 how much the active, generous and even indulgent intelligence that made available, and led to, the atonement, was, in fact, Jesus’ intelligence, nourished by prophetic insights he knew himself to be fulfilling, on his way to the events concerned. Furthermore, the priority of Jesus’ intelligence to the events in question seems to me of huge theological significance. For what was known by Jesus, within history, of what he was intending, desiring and doing bespeaks a divine knowledge, intention and plan that ‘pre’-cedes, is anterior to, or outside of, history and creation. If the murder was taken for granted beforehand, and Jesus was disposed to give himself up for it, and if, furthermore, Jesus taught those in whose midst he was doing this, how it was for their advantage, then it does mean something fundamental about what being human is. It means that, rather than our being the sort of beings who occasionally get things wrong and need someone to forgive us for that, in our case forgiveness is prior to being. The intention to forgive, the deliberateness of making forgiveness possible and the prior recognition by the One forgiving of our scandalized nature go together such that we are not first created and then forgiven, but rather it is through forgiveness that we enter the possibility of being created. I rather suspect that this, the priority of forgiveness to creation, notion of ‘the lamb slain from the foundation of the world’ is what is pointed to by the doctrine of ‘Original Sin’, and it is why that teaching, hard to tie down as it is, is an essential corollary to teaching concerning the atonement. A final (for this chapter) consequence of this understanding, and one that has raised its head again as the twin Synods on the Family [held by the Catholic Church in 2014–15] have got under way, might be as follows. Some have talked

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about mercy as though it is something ancillary to the gospel and the life of the Church – so the Church needs to be ‘merciful’ to this or that group of people so that they can fit in to what everyone knows to be good and proper, and failure to comply with which needs to be forgiven. However, if Our Lord’s atonement is deliberate from even before any of us could have realized we needed it, and thus active and creative rather than reactive, then forgiveness is not an afterthought to a stable and ordered reality. Rather, there is an epistemic dimension to our undergoing forgiveness: it is only as we find ourselves being forgiven that we learn what really is, on our way into becoming fully aligned with what really is. What appears to us as an interruption of a stable given reality is, in fact, the prior intention of creation emerging in the midst of something not yet fully created. It is not only our disorder, but also our order, our stability as well as our instability, that is revealed to be much less good, much more dangerous, than we had thought – and forgiveness is the condition of possibility of even, and perhaps especially, the ‘good’ finding themselves on the inside of being created. Every human institution is permeable by this emergence, without exception. The Holy Father, Pope Francis, had it exactly right in offering, at the conclusion of the Synod on the Family, an analysis of the twin temptations we face5: on the one hand, the hostile rigidity that regards the good as given and is thus incapable of learning what really is, and on the other, the cowardly ‘goodness’ of those who want to be merciful, but as though mercy were a kindly add-on to a stable set of definitions whose fixity they dare not challenge. Neither of these plumb the consequences for us of sitting under the love that has traversed, and continues to traverse, our hostility. Both of them shut off the possibility of our discovering ourselves simultaneously redeemed and entering consciously and rigorously into a New Creation. Getting beyond those temptations is, indeed, our challenge.

Notes 1 J. D. M. Derrett, Law in the New Testament (London: Darton, Longmann and Todd, 1970), 286–312. 2 This is a legal term for a method of gaining legal title to land by the actual, open, hostile and continuous possession of it to the exclusion of its true owner for the period prescribed by the law of the relevant jurisdiction.

Traversing Hostility: The sine qua non of Any Christian Talk about Atonement 15 3 John 11.49-52 (RSV): ‘But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all; you do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.” He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.’ 4 J. Alison, Knowing Jesus (London: SPCK, 1993). 5 ‘One, a temptation to hostile inflexibility, that is, wanting to close oneself within the written word (the letter), and not allowing oneself to be surprised by God, by the God of surprises (the spirit); within the law, within the certitude of what we know and not of what we still need to learn and to achieve. From the time of Christ, it is the temptation of the zealous, of the scrupulous, of the solicitous and of the so-called – today – “traditionalists” and also of the intellectuals. The temptation to a destructive tendency to goodness [in Italian: buonismo], that in the name of a deceptive mercy binds the wounds without first curing them and treating them; that treats the symptoms and not the causes and the roots. It is the temptation of the “do-gooders,” of the fearful, and also of the so-called “progressives and liberals”.’ http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/ en/speeches/2014/october/documents/papa-francesco_20141018_conclusionesinodo-dei-vescovi.html.

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Jewish Atonement and the Book of Jonah: From Sacrifice to Non-Violence Vanessa J Avery

Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of atonement. On Yom Kippur, after fasting for almost twenty-five hours, and edging towards the conclusion of the day, the gathered congregation is commanded to hear the Book of Jonah from the Bible. Some questions may arise with respect to why the Book of Jonah is given the spotlight on the most high of Jewish holy days. Why not, for example, something from the Pentateuch, or perhaps a psalm? Jonah is a rather funny little book – a kind of fable with historical elements, featuring, of course, the recalcitrant prophet and the famous very big fish.1 As entertaining and brief as the story is, though, its theological veins run deep. This chapter asserts that the Jonah narrative illustrates two dichotomous atonement theologies: one sacrificial, the other anti-sacrificial. While both kinds of atonement prove efficacious, it is my argument below that the book as a whole is a critique of sacrifice-based atonement as ritual scapegoating violence. The basis for this interpretation is in the theory of religious sacrifice put forth in René Girard’s work Violence and the Sacred.2 An attentive Girardian-informed analysis of the Jonah narrative sheds light on how easily humans can be duped by the effects of sacrifice as so-called ‘good’ violence, the unfortunate effect of which is the failure to develop the patience and awareness necessary to achieve full, genuine, free and non-violent at-one-ment.3 The narrative of Jonah, which leads the reader from sacrificial to antisacrificial atonement, also parallels the evolution of Jewish atonement theology from one featuring a divinity requiring propitiation to one seeking contrition. In turn, the text models how humans are to ‘return’ from the fragmented state

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of sin and violence to wholeness and inclusion on the high holy day of Yom Kippur. This process in Judaism is not just called atonement, but teshuvah.4 During the ten days leading up to Yom Kippur, called the Days of Awe, the Jew is to reconcile with his or her community, to shore up his or her integrity and finally stand trial before God. The process of teshuvah is complete when the Jew is at-one with his or her community, has returned to his or her true and authentic self (at-one with himself or herself), and is then accepted and reconciled back to God (at-one with God). The movement of teshuvah, as the movement from fragmentation to wholeness, from sin to integrity, from exclusion to embrace, is also the movement from violence to non-violence.5 Historically speaking, the Book of Jonah has been used for the purpose of non-violence since the days of ancient Judaism even before it became part of the Yom Kippur service. In early usage, Jonah was a type of ‘crisis text’ that was read during times of famine, drought or widespread illness.6 As a crisis text, the purpose of Jonah was to steer the community towards peace and unification to conserve resources, and away from the human inclination towards rivalry and violence during times of adversity. Thus, just when humans may have been tempted to fend only for themselves for survival, letting instinctual ego fears override reason and rationality, Jonah somehow helped the Jewish community retain discipline, self-control, unity, community and a focus on God. Something in the Book of Jonah helped the community remain at-one when the temptation to splinter and compete was greatest. Jonah as a crisis text provides an interesting context now for interpreting its significance for Yom Kippur. While on trial before God, each Jew’s life exists in a spiritual, some might even say literal, state of crisis – in the balance between life and death. Will one be written into the Book of Life for one more year? Has one made the effort to return? Has one succeeded? Or did one get stuck in the fragmentation of sin, duped by ‘good’ violence? Hearing the Book of Jonah on Yom Kippur, in effect, provides the congregation a last opportunity to reflect upon the method they used to achieve their own return, as well as one lastditch opportunity to pray for reconciliation if Jonah reveals lingering violence in their hearts or hands. The following exegesis of Jonah will delineate the two dichotomous methods for atonement, their implications about human nature and how humans construe of the nature of God.

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The first atonement theology in Jonah is presented in Chapter 1 of the book, and presents atonement as dependent on sacrificial violence. At the beginning of the book, one reads of Jonah’s call from God to prophesy and ‘declare doom’ upon the wicked Ninevites. After receiving this call, Jonah finds and boards a ship headed towards Tarshish, which is in the opposite direction to where he was commanded by God to go. Then, only four verses into the narrative, there is what Girard would call a mimetic crisis: ‘The Lord hurled such furious winds toward the sea that a powerful storm raged upon it; the ship expected itself to crack up. Terrified, the sailors appealed, each to his own god(s), and, to lighten their load, they flung their equipment overboard’ (Jon. 1.4-5a). According to Girard, a natural crisis, such as this storm threatening the ship at sea, is a standard cause of social breakdown and disorder, leading to specific symptoms including competition, mirroring, escalating rivalry and violence.7 Remarkably, however, the sailors do not demonstrate the chaotic ‘all-against-all’ response to the crisis, which Girard points out as the norm; rather, the sailors work in an orderly fashion, each making an effort towards one’s communal survival. Jonah, on the other hand, has ‘descended into the vessel’s hold’ and fallen into a ‘trance’. What is truly remarkable about the remainder of this chapter, though, is in how the sailors treat Jonah despite his negligence and culpability, and despite their being in the midst of a life-threatening crisis. The next few verses read: The captain came and said to him [Jonah], ‘What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.’ The sailors said to one another, ‘Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.’ So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, ‘Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?’ … Then they said to him, ‘What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?’ For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. (Jon. 1.6-8, 11)

One might imagine that a crisis such as this, one in which death lurks close by, would bring a more intense chastisement upon Jonah who is found ‘sleeping’ in the hold. Further, the sailors discover that Jonah is the one guilty of causing

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the crisis! But the sailors demonstrate the calm of military Special Forces operatives.8 As Sasson describes this scene in his work The Book of Jonah, ‘formalities triumph over terror’.9 Sasson remarks on the sailors’ response as follows: By casting lots, the sailors eventually discover that Jonah is the cause of their troubles. That in the midst of a tempest they would politely pose a series of questions (not all of which can be of immediate benefit to them) obviously retards the tale’s thrust; that the sailors would ask Jonah, the designated guilty party, to instruct them on the way to behave, certainly tests our credulity.10

Sasson’s words reveal how he thinks most people would respond in such a situation – that is, the pinpointing of a guilty party in the midst of crisis would likely not be the venue for a polite interrogation. Sasson may implicitly share Girard’s own viewpoint here: under stress of crisis, humans fall prey to rivalry, irrational ‘herd’ mentality and violence. But this is not the situation we have in Jonah. The sailors’ response is surprisingly calm, diplomatic and forgiving. Indeed, they find no threat in Jonah and ask questions of him to include him in the problem-solving. The sailors, in a sense, are on a practical mission – they want to know what has caused the problem and how to fix it. Plus, since Jonah has caused the crisis, the sailors place responsibility on him to find the solution to it. By calling on Jonah to rectify the problem he himself has caused, the sailors avoid affixing him with irreparable blame. They provide, in fact, a lesson in what I might call ‘how not to get caught up in a crisis’ and ‘how not to fall unconsciously into violent scapegoating’. If the sailors’ cordiality above is striking, the next part of this scene is even more striking, and makes further, direct commentary on the inclination to scapegoat and sacrifice. After being asked what will stop the storming seas, Jonah tells the sailors that they must throw him overboard. But the sailors’ refuse: ‘Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land; but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them’ (Jon. 1.13). The sailors, given permission from Jonah himself to perform the sacrifice of throwing him overboard, demonstrate here their outright denial to give in to violence.11 The sailors are insistent upon respecting the humanity and life of Jonah, even in spite of Jonah’s own insistence otherwise and his increasing liability to their own safety.

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Unfortunately, the sailors believe they are in a no-win situation. They think they have done everything they could to avoid meeting their end in the sea – they have prayed to their own gods, they have tried to row back to shore – but to no avail. Thus, they see only two possible solutions: either they all die or they must sacrifice Jonah. Faced with this seemingly impossible situation, they choose the sacrifice of Jonah. The moral consciousness the sailors demonstrate in their reluctant choice to create a ‘victim’, however, is important to note. The text explains: They then appealed to the Lord, ‘Please, Lord, do not let us perish because of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.’ So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging. (Jon. 1.14-15)

Many commentators interpret these verses as evidence of the sailors’ heightened sense of duty, morality and justice. Greenberg, for example, states: Their prayer climaxes their service to the story as a spiritually sensitive foil to the unresponsive, finally lethargic, prophet. While he slept in the teeth of the storm, they made prayers each to his God; while he refused to warn Nineveh away from disaster, these heathen sailors risked their lives to save his; whereas he was in rebellion against his God, they acknowledged his sovereignty in their prayer to him.12

The sailors, I agree, initially act with a heightened sense of communal responsibility and spiritual consciousness, as Greenberg observes. Their petition to God seems to underscore this heightened sense of spirituality and morality as well; it certainly sounds as if they are aware of the crime they are about to commit. But despite their understanding of the wrong, they are not as spiritually enlightened as one might initially believe. If we dissect the petition of the sailors, we see that they, unfortunately, ‘catch’ Jonah’s sacrificial inclination, and get swept up in the ease of correcting their situation through an act of scapegoating, and through the convenience of passing blame. The sailors make two separate appeals to God to ‘neutralize’ the guilt of the crime they know they are about to commit.13 Their first appeal states: ‘Lord let us not perish [for the guilt of] this man’s life.’ Simply put, this plea implies the sailors’ consciousness that they are taking a life, which in their view

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makes them guilty of an undeniably wrong act. The sailors’ second appeal to God, though, demonstrates a shift. They plead, ‘Do not assess innocent blood against us for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.’ The phrase ‘innocent blood’ acknowledges the blamelessness of the victim (which continues to be ironic as Jonah is guilty), but the more interesting part here is that the sailors fall into blaming God for their crime: ‘For you, Lord, have done as you pleased.’ The sailors understand themselves as being about to do something that is wrong, but instead of the typical human response, which might be to blame the scapegoated Jonah and justify his punishment, they proclaim Jonah innocent and God as guilty. God is forcing them to kill an innocent man. Despite the sailors’ initial noble behaviour, their frustrated attempts to mitigate a crisis compel them to turn to ritual violence and displace blame. Anthropologically, the sailors’ consciousness of scapegoating as a crime demonstrates the profound ethical awareness of creating victims for the sake of safety and peace. They know this is the wrong way to save themselves, but they have no other means yet of doing so, and so they rationalize their act through blame. Blaming God, however, imputes a theology to their act – a theology featuring a deity that requires violence. But one must note that the biblical text never says God requires Jonah’s sacrifice (implicitly, what God requires is Jonah’s repentance and return, or teshuvah).14 According to the text, Jonah himself is the only one declaring that he must be thrown overboard to save the ship, and the reader of this text must be careful to avoid projecting Jonah’s own human solution onto God. It is Jonah’s sacrificial mindset that draws in and traps the sailors who had previously opposed violence.15 What follows the sacrifice of Jonah is telling, too. The sailors, after throwing Jonah overboard, see that the storm abates, and they praise Yahweh through performing more sacrifices! As the biblical text states, ‘So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows’ (Jon. 1.15-17a). The efficacious and violent scapegoating (the ‘originary event’ in Girardian terms) is memorialized through repetitious sacrificial ritual. What we have here in this first very short chapter of Jonah, then, is an initially non-violent community that becomes infected by immediate and effective violence. The sailors’ brand of atonement for their sin includes

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creating a sacred that requires violence for propitiation, and then thanking the propitiated deity through further imitative violence. If we read carefully, however, it is clear that the need for sacrifice is Jonah’s brand of atonement theology, not God’s; and it is a kind of theology that separates and scapegoats rather than binds and reconciles. This sacrificial theology is further dependent upon rationalization and blame, thereby lacking honest, authentic sentiment. Chapter 3 illustrates the second kind of atonement theology in the Book of Jonah: that is, non-violent teshuvah, or return. Chapter 3 resets the scene with the Lord calling out a second time to Jonah. Whereas in Chapter 1 the Lord calls Jonah and Jonah flees, here the Lord calls again and Jonah does as commanded: ‘So the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying: “Arise! Go to Nineveh, the great city; let her hear the proclamation I am telling you.” Jonah arose and went to Nineveh as he had been told by the Lord’ (Jon. 3.1-2). Jonah’s obedience allows attention to shift, at least temporarily, to Nineveh, which is described as a ‘great city before God, a three days’ walk’ (Jon. 3.3). It is uncertain why exactly Nineveh is described in such a fashion; it does seem sure, however, that the greatness of Nineveh is here extending beyond size. What most commentators agree upon is that the phrase suggests that Nineveh is of importance in God’s eyes – that perhaps God has ordained greatness for the city, or perhaps it suggests a divine abode (‘great-for-God’).16 The repeated use of the term ‘great’ also recalls the ‘great’ wind, the ‘great’ fear and the ‘great’ fish of which the reader has already heard – all wonders of miraculous proportion – indicating once again that Nineveh will be the site of something out of the ordinary, and, indeed, it is. The next few lines consist of Jonah’s entering the city and proclaiming, ‘Forty days and Nineveh will be overturned!’ This is the shortest of all biblical prophecies, with what is also perhaps the most dramatic response. Though consisting of only five words in Hebrew, it is this short proclamation that makes clear the choice given to human beings: to either remain embedded in the violent sacrificial structure of the past, or to embrace the opportunity for change. The nature of this choice between continuity and change is inherent in the equivocal language of the proclamation. Trible asserts that the words Jonah utters are inherently unstable and invite ‘characters and readers to exploit

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meanings’.17 She points to many examples of linguistic instability including the lack of the prophetic formula ‘Thus says Yahweh’ as well as the combination of the ‘od (‘yet’) plus the conventional ‘forty days’, which ‘signifies an unspecified time of trial and testing’.18 Most significant, though, is the verb form used for the end of the fortyday process, ‘to overturn’. Trible discusses the ‘mercurial’ verb form of ‘to [over]turn’ that contains opposites within its meaning and seems deliberately ambiguous (180–2). Nehpaket, an ‘N form’ of the verb hpk, comprehensively means either destruction or deliverance. On one end of the spectrum, the verb is, for example, the same verb used for the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19.21, 25, 29) and is used generally as a kind of biblical cliché for severe wrath and destruction.19 On the other end of the spectrum, the verb is used to indicate the transformation of one thing into another. For example, nehpaket is the verb used for Moses’ staff turning into a snake; the waters of Egypt turning to blood (Exod.); feasting turning to mourning (Lam. 5.15); and mourning turning to joy (Est. 9.22). It is even used for the transformation of a human in 1 Samuel 10.6. when Saul is ‘turned into another man’. Just a few verses later, the narrator of 1 Samuel (10.9) more specifically describes how Saul’s heart was ‘turning into another heart’. These transformations – significant transformations of the natural world and of human nature – come across as immediate and dramatic. They exist outside the realm of the ordinary, and constitute a complete one-hundredand-eighty-degree turnaround, whether it is Saul turning from rancher to ruler, or a piece of wood into a snake. The reader of this passage in Jonah, therefore, does not know whether Nineveh will meet the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah or whether, like Saul, it will receive another heart. This deliberate ambiguity points to the tangible possibility for either complete destruction, or transformation and salvation. The Ninevites are, like the sailors had been, literally in the balance between life and death. It is in the midst of this crisis that they have to choose who they will be, and how they will act. The Ninevites sense this urgency and waste no time, as seen in the next verses. As quickly as Jonah’s proclamation is spilled out, the Ninevites respond. Verse 5 tells the reader: ‘And the people of Nineveh believed God, and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.’ The immediacy

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of this statement about the Ninevites’ belief signals a radical shift in the story. Whereas Jonah’s proclamation was inherently ambiguous and unstable, leaving the fate of this city undetermined, the city’s inhabitants do not respond in kind  – there is no ambiguity in their response. With utter conviction, the totality of the population ‘believes’ and takes on acts of penance, as indicated in the phrase ‘from the greatest to the least of them’.20 Why the Ninevites respond so decisively and immediately remains unknown from the text, but their lack of resistance certainly stands in stark contrast to Jonah’s obstinacy.21 The remainder of Chapter 3 follows suit and depicts Nineveh as a city of collective effort, true community, hierarchy yet equality and a distinct (surprising, given their reputation) lack of any type of conflict, rivalry or struggle. The text reports how, once the news of Jonah’s prophecy reached the king, ‘he rose from his throne and stripped off his royal mantle; he put on sackcloth and sat on dirt’. The king responds just as the people of his kingdom – with immediacy and humility. That the king sits on ‘dirt’ is also worthy of comment. Most translations render the Hebrew word (‘eper) as ‘ashes’, bringing to mind images of burnt sacrifices, especially in light of the sailors’ sacrificial offerings earlier in the book. As Sasson points out, however, this Hebrew term is ‘precise only in referring to soil, whatever its ingredients; the same can be said of Greek spodos, which the LXX uses in translation’.22 Acknowledging the more specific translation of this term as ‘soil’ highlights the absence of any sacrificial activity accompanying the king’s response. There is no sacrifice ordered in the king’s edict, nor in his own action, as a vehicle through which to gain God’s mercy. To further emphasize this absence of sacrificial activity, the king then orders all of the inhabitants of Nineveh, including animals, to fast, wrap themselves in sackcloth and appeal to God with fervour. The inclusion of animals in the penitential activity of Nineveh has piqued the curiosity of many commentators who have typically scoured the scriptures and classical texts looking for parallels. Within the schema of our Girardian analysis, however, the inclusion of animals in penitential activity only underscores the value and the fragility of their lives over and against their functional usage as scapegoats for human salvation. There is no substitution of any kind here – no transference of blame or guilt. Bringing the animals into the collective mourning emphasizes how each person, and the community as a whole, maturely take responsibility for

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their behaviour. Unlike the sailors who, though noble at first, succumbed to blame and sacrificial activity, the Ninevites in a comical scene join their animals in a fast, wear sackcloth and appeal to God in mourning. The animals that would normally be singled out and sacrificed as expiation are, instead, included and integrated into the community. The Ninevite king’s command to his community then spells out what the community’s actions have already implied. The king calls for an explicit inner change, commanding his people to relinquish violence: ‘Each person must forsake his evil conduct and/all must turn away from the/violence they plan against others’ (3.8b-9). The word for violence here is hamas, which refers to ‘the physical violence that issues from wicked design and purpose’.23 The Ninevites are clearly being urged away from not just evil deeds, in this passage, but also evil intentions (‘violence they plan’).24 In addition, this linguistic construction in Hebrew encourages the mind to imagine a line of paired hands, emphasizing each individual’s violence even as it distributes culpability among the whole community. Whatever wickedness had plagued the Ninevites, they now radically embrace being at-one as individuals and as a community, turning from whatever sins marred their past, to a new present that even includes kindness towards animals. Unlike the sailors, who were initially non-violent and succumbed to the lure of sacrificial religion, the Ninevites, who were well known for their immorality and ignorance, present a unique and unexpected return from sin. The Ninevite atonement is one of radical inclusion, a kind of atonement that does not even consider sacrifice, that speaks nothing of blame, but answers the divine warning with humility, responsibility, kindness, creativity, surrender and maybe even a bit of humour. The Ninevites have ‘been overturned’ in the sense of Saul’s having obtained a new heart. Or, put another way, the Ninevites have fully returned in the sense of complete teshuvah. They demonstrate in their actions a true inclusiveness, a true at-one-ment. The final verse of Chapter 3 tells the reader of the response one might expect from such a dramatic turnaround: ‘When God himself examined their deeds – for they forsook their evil conduct – he renounced plans for the disaster he had threatened against them and did not carry it out’ (Jon. 3.10). It is no coincidence that the deity chooses non-violence in light of Nineveh’s non-violence. Where

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there is no violence in human hands, there is also no violence to rationalize away or project elsewhere. The Ninevites’ non-violent teshuvah is not only an anthropological lesson in how to manage a crisis without scapegoating, but also an explicitly anti-sacrificial theology that supports a non-violent God. In the sailors and the Ninevites, then, we have two very different kinds of atonement. Each kind of atonement is effective: the sailors do manage to stop the storm; the Ninevites are delivered. But the former is done through exclusionary human violence, generates a deity that requires violence, and in turn ritualizes violence, while the latter is done through a complete renunciation of violence in both intention and action. Judaism has a long history of practices and ideas associated with atonement and a case can be made historically for either one of these theologies and practices. In ancient Temple-centred Judaism, for example, sacrificial atonement was standard, and clearly commanded in Leviticus 17.11: ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement, by reason of the life.’25 The sacrificial animal was the substitute for the High Priest who could only access God’s holiness as one whose life was forfeit. Actual death was the paradoxical gateway to life in this sacrificial structure. The sailors, in this respect, are not far off. The Essene community at the Dead Sea, alternatively, viewed not blood but their own suffering as the access to God’s holiness. The Essene community did not practice sacrifice, but believed that their own suffering, caused by their persecution by others, provided atonement. Their suffering and their unjust victimage made them the seat of God’s holy presence, even if there was no actual bloodshed.26 Perhaps Jonah saw himself as the holy victim in a similar sense. The notion of atonement as individual and communal ‘return’ presented through the example of Nineveh, however, is the mainstream Jewish view that developed most emphatically after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE (when Judaism was no longer dependent on the activities of a high priest for expiation), and is also a foundational biblical idea.27 The Ninevite atonement is one of individual responsibility and contrition, which would do violence neither to an ‘other’ nor to one’s ‘self ’. As we saw in the sailors’ example, the so-called ‘good’ violence can appear to be effective, and often dominates religious ideology, thought and practice. But the Ninevite non-violent method

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is the type of atonement in line with the nature of human beings as created in the divine image of goodness and freedom, as relayed in the biblical creation accounts. It is also the most authentic and complete form of return in its being an unmediated process, placing all responsibility on the individuals directly involved.28 It may even be that the reader of Jonah is to understand the first episode featuring the sacrifice of the sailors, in an ironic sense, as an antisacrificial sacrifice; that is, the obvious nature of their sacrifice as a crime (in addition to the obvious element of blame) underscores their violence as an unsavoury and, ultimately, undesirable solution.29 The sailors’ episode also emphasizes the lack of freedom and creativity of the sacrificial system itself – a system in which ritual violence is the superficial substitute for the deep, genuine, repentant movement of the human soul. On the most sacred and serious of all holidays, indeed, we read of a prophet who snores through a storm and an ‘evil’ nation that tenderly dresses its animals in sackcloth. This is an absurd world that Jonah depicts. But perhaps it is through this very absurdity that one might glimpse the creativity, peace and freedom that are possible when violence is abandoned. So as the Jew’s stomach burns with hunger on Yom Kippur, one struggles with the possibilities for teshuvah as illustrated in the Book of Jonah. How will one finally respond to the spiritual crisis of the Day of atonement? If one really hears the Book of Jonah during the last hours of hunger, one might, indeed, hear that the real and only divine demand is the sacrifice of the ego mentality that separates, blames and scapegoats. The real and only divine demand is for non-violence, which will appropriately reflect the non-violence of the deity demanding it. Even if Jews fall back into the sacrificial mentality during the year, as everyone is prone to do, the ram’s horn blown at the beginning of the High Holy Days is the wake-up call for the soul to return to wholeness and to holiness. It is the call for the soul to return home.

Notes 1 For a detailed analysis and discussion of the genre of the Book of Jonah, see V. Avery, Jewish Vaccines for Mimetic Desire: René Girard and Jewish Ritual (Doctoral dissertation), 2014, https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/ handle/10871/14604 (accessed 23 April 2016), 167–78.

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2 R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, [1972] 1977). 3 Chapters 1 and 3 of the book of Jonah are examined here. For an analysis of Chapters 2 and 4 of Jonah, see Avery, Jewish Vaccines for Mimetic Desire, 164–228. 4 ‘Teshuvah is often translated as “repentance,” but the Hebrew term is in fact a derivation of the Hebrew root for re-turning, highlighting the purpose and dynamics of the act.’ S. J. Levine, ‘Teshuva: A Look at Repentance, Forgiveness and Atonement in Jewish Law and Philosophy and American Legal Thought’, Fordham Urban Law Journal 27, no. 5 (1999): 1682, http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1797&context=ulj (accessed 24 September 2014): note 10. 5 The Jewish spirit sees sin as a departure from the true self, from the community and from one’s covenantal relationship with the divine. Teshuvah, to return, is to be back in integrity in these three areas of life – to be, in all respects, at-one. 6 E. Levine, The Aramaic Version of Jonah (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Academic Press, 1975). 7 We do see a certain mirroring, or ‘sameness’ in Girardian terms, in the case of the sailors, too: each of them is appealing to his personal divinity, and working to lighten the load of the ship to prevent what seems like imminent disaster. 8 Yale psychiatrist Andy Morgan, for example, has been conducting studies of Special Forces recruits to test their responses to extremely stressful situations. Many of the recruits, despite being put into situations simulating tortures and enemy capture, maintain extraordinary calm and mental clarity. A. Morgan, 2011, http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/007953.html (accessed 11 October 2012). 9 J. M. Sasson, The Book of Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretation (New York: Doubleday; The Anchor Bible, 1990), 341. 10 Sasson, The Book of Jonah, 132. 11 The sailors’ aversion to sacrificing Jonah was not overlooked by rabbinic commentators, either. Midrash Jonah, for example, tells a humorous tale to underscore the compassion of the sailors (even upon a guilty party) and the impossible situation they faced: They took him and placed him into the sea up to his knees, and the storm abated. They lifted him back on board, and the sea became agitated against

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them. They placed him back up to his neck, and the sea-storm abated. Once again they lifted him back among them, and the sea again agitated against them. Finally they cast him in entirely, and immediately the sea-storm abated. (quoted from Levine, The Aramaic Version of Jonah, 68–9; and in Sasson, The Book of Jonah, 141) 12 And ‘similar sentiments are expressed by most commentators’; see Sasson, The Book of Jonah, 142, footnote 19; M. Greenberg, Biblical Prose Prayer as a Window to the Popular Religion of Ancient Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 13 Sasson, The Book of Jonah, 132; Levine, The Aramaic Version of Jonah, 68. 14 That God wills the sacrifice of Jonah is a common assumption. Sasson, for example, concludes that the point of the sailors’ petition is that they ‘are not completely convinced of the truth conveyed by Jonah’ and that ‘the sailors have not yet completely and obediently yielded to God’s will’. While this theological interpretation is possible, it is based on the erroneous assumption that God’s will is for violence. As I mentioned above, the text never states that God wills Jonah’s sacrifice. Phyllis Trible points out how Jonah has, in fact, ‘trapped’ many scholars. She points to Leslie C. Allen, ‘who thinks here Jonah “realizes his guilt before God” ’. L. C. Allen, Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), 201ff; also Meir Sternburg, who thinks that the story ‘starts by opposing a compassionate Jonah to a wrathful God’. M. Sternburg, Poetics of Biblical Narrative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 56. Trible does not call up Girard in her discussion of Jonah, but seems in line with the Girardian insistence that the violence in this text is demanded by the human being (specifically by Jonah), and not by God. See Phyllis Trible, Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah (Augsburg, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), 147, footnote 73. 15 This urge towards sacrifice is in line with Jonah’s way of thinking throughout the text. As one can also see in Chapters 3 and 4 of Jonah, Jonah remains trapped in a type of binary, retributive mindset that cannot avoid violence for resolution. Trible also emphasizes Jonah’s responsibility here, in fact emphasizing the manipulation he uses to force the sailors into committing a crime. She states: Jonah seems willing to pay the price. He offers himself as sacrifice to save the sailors. The solution appears magnanimous, courageous, and altruistic. But appearance masks continuing disobedience. If neither flight nor sleep has saved Jonah from the divine imperatives, then perhaps drowning will.

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Concern for the sailors masks self-concern. Altruism discloses, even as it hides, egocentrism. Deception and irony abound in Jonah’s character to entrap the sailors who surround him. (Trible, Rhetorical Criticism, 147) 16 The designation as such is particularly odd given the ‘greatness’ of Nineveh’s evil according to other sources. According to John Craghan, for example, Nineveh connotes war, oppression, and brutality. Nineveh was the quintessence of insolence and unbridled inhumanity … to think that God would send a prophet to offer Nineveh the chance to repent seemed the greatest folly, if not the greatest contradiction. By choosing Nineveh, the author suggests the worst form of pagan life. See J. Craghan, Old Testament Message: A Biblical-Theological Commentary (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1982: 166–7); Trible, Rhetorical Criticism, 178 17 Trible, Rhetorical Criticism, 180. 18 Ibid. 19 Phillip Cary, Jonah (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2008), 108 points to other biblical narratives that use this verb: it is used for Babylon (Isa. 13.19; Jer. 50.40); for Israel (Deut. 29.23; Lam. 4.6; Amos 4.11); and for Edom (Jer. 49.18). 20 Trible, Rhetorical Criticism, 181. 21 For an exploration of how rabbis and commentators have tried to fill this gap, see Sasson, The Book of Jonah, 244. 22 Sasson, The Book of Jonah, 251. 23 Ibid., 259. 24 There are numerous scriptural parallels that tell of how hamas is provocative, entailing either the punishment of the wicked or the saving of the innocent (e.g. Gen. 6.11-13). 25 When we look to Paul’s letter to the Romans in the New Testament, we find a similar idea: ‘Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith’ (Rom. 3.23). 26 Vestiges of each of these theologies still exist today. The ritual of kapparah, for example, involves the sacrifice of a chicken that embodies the sins of the community. There is another ritual common to the Days of Awe called tashlich, which involves casting a stone representing sin into a body of living water. These rituals recall the Azazel goat of Leviticus who was set into the wilderness to carry off the sins of Israel. Rabbinic writings also refer to suffering – the suffering of

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the Jews throughout history, even during the Holocaust– as a kind of vicarious atonement, that is, the Jews suffering for the sins of others, a similar sentiment to the Essene view. 27 Examples include Deut. 4:30, 30:2, 30:10; Hosea 14:2 (Levine, ‘Teshuva’, 4, note 10). 28 The Ninevite notion of atonement is also what I believe Girard is advocating through his idea of innermost mediation. For a detailed discussion of this comparison, see Avery, Jewish Vaccines for Mimetic Desire, 229–60. 29 For a full exposition of this episode of Jonah as anti-sacrificial, see Avery, Jewish Vaccines for Mimetic Desire, 181–93.

3

Orthodox Debates in the Twentieth Century on the Question of Atonement Antoine Arjakovsky

A discussion of the Doctrine of atonement is very topical for the Christian Orthodox world to which I belong, considering that the current dominant anthropology within the Orthodox Church, of man as an ontological sinner and of a God of vengeance, is unfortunately the source of the political pessimism of the Russian Orthodox Church – a pessimism that is, itself, the origin of a neo-byzantine conception of the links between Church and State. This vision is disputed within the Orthodox world by the renewed vision of the Paris School, of Nicolas Berdyaev and Serge Boulgkov, who integrate the doctrine of redemption into the project of a divine–human world. This doctrine has been recovered by a great number of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine.1 In this sense, the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict can be understood not only as political and economic, but also as spiritual and civilizational. It is therefore urgent to recall the renewal that took place within the Paris School in the Russian Orthodox emigration of the years 1920–30.2

The renewal of Russian religious thought in Western Europe, 1920–30 The great renewal of Russian thought in the twentieth century is linked to what became known as the Paris School. This was divided between a theocentric current (Cassien Bezobrazov, Georges Florovski, George Fedotov), a personalist current (Nicolas Berdyaev) and a sophiological current (Serge

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Boulgakov). The reflections of Fedotov, Berdyaev and Boulgakov all mention the theodicy and anthropodicy of the following words of the apostles Peter and Paul: Christ is this Lamb who was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. (1 Pet. 1.20) We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. (1 Cor. 2.7)

They were able to correct the deficiencies of the pietist and Arian currents of Orthodox anthropology and soteriology, currents dominant at the time and represented by Mgr Antoine Hrapovitsky in Serbia, and Mgr Serge Stragorodskij in Russia. It is helpful to recall that these three currents (Paris School; Sremski Karlovtsi School; Moscow School) represented three opposing political and religious currents in the 1930s (the liberal and democratic current; the monarchist and conservative current; and the nationalist-communist, prostate current). Mgr. Antoine Hrapovitski (1863–1936) published Le dogme du rachat in Sremski Karlovsti in 1926. In this book, he critiques the vision of redemption as satisfaction that marked not only Western spirituality, but also that of Mgr. Theophane Prokopovytch and the Metropolitian Macaire Boulgakov. For Hrapovitski, the mystery of redemption was played out in the struggle of Jesus Christ, at night, in the Garden of Gethsemane. His perspective is psychological. But under the cover of apophatism and the incomprehension of the mystery of redemption, this theology poorly masks a moralizing vision of redemption. The Metropolitan Serge of Moscow disagreed with Mgr. Antoine, considering that in his vision Gethsemane obscures Golgotha too much. With Antoine Hrapovitski, only the bodily death, and not that of the spirit, of Jesus Christ occurs. This comes about because in Hrapovitski’s thinking, it is the Word who suffers and at the same time, the whole Trinity. Vladimit Iljine, who himself belongs to the Paris School, would say that for his part, it has to do with ‘a nominalisation and a psychologism’ (Put’. No. 8, 1927: 156). Mgr Stragorodshij (1867–1944) published his own perspective in 1898 in Kazan: La doctrine orthodox du salut, Essai de dévoilement des aspects moraux

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et subjectifs de salut sur la base des Saintes Ecritures et saints Pères. For him, God does not change, only man does. He affirms the presence of two natures in Christ: the human that Christ commits to God (‘Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit’), and the divine, in which the God–Man relationship is not clear. For the theologians of the Paris School, this has to do with an extreme kenoticism, of a Protestant type that denies the divinity of Christ at the time of his crucifixion. Indeed, the influence of Albert Richl (1822–89), a Protestant theologian who enjoyed great prestige in the theological academies of the Russian Empire, is obvious in his thinking. The latter understood justification as the removal of guilt from the conscience of man before God. The renewal of theology by the Paris School could be characterized by the term ‘dynamic soteriology’. It rejected the theology that, under cover of apophatism, allowed doctrines that flirted with heresy. It found its inspiration in the religious thought of Alexis Khomiakov (his rejection of legalism in the name of the alliance between God and man), and in that of Father Paul Florenski (his orthodox theodicy understood as a kenotic descent of God towards man in the name of the theosis of man towards God); and also in that of some of the hierarchy, such as the Metropolitan Philarète of Moscow, who is celebrated for a sermon given on Good Friday, in which he speaks of ‘the crucifying Love of the Father, the crucified Love of the Son and the Love of the Holy Spirit triumphant because of the wood of the Cross; in such a way God so loved the world’. The Russian thinkers reunited in Paris in the years 1920–30 extended this renewal to patristic theology.3 They meditated at length on the NiceneConstantinople Creed: ‘We believe in one God, Jesus Christ, who for us and for our salvation, descended from Heaven and became man.’ Father Serge Boulgakov made these words clear by explaining that the incarnation was God’s plan from the beginning in the form of the slain Lamb: We can say that God created the world to be incarnated, He created it because of this incarnation. This is not only a means of redemption, but it is his ultimate coronation. Embodying himself God showed his love for creation.4

Finally, they corrected the notion of theodicy, a concept created by Leibniz in 1711, which understood justification as not being of man, but of God

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when faced with the problem of evil. To do this, they referred to the thought of St Irenaeus of Lyon. This disciple of St John had meditated according to the recommendation of Christ himself under ‘the sign of Jonah’. This biblical episode informs us, through the tragi-comic story of Jonah, of the work that each of us is called to do to overcome our own unconscious fears. But for Irenaeus, this story demonstrates above all that, from the beginning, God accepted that man should be swallowed by the great sea monster so that he should overcome his monster from within. This vision presupposes the kenotic weakness of God the Saviour. It was proposed by Irenaeus in the year 170 after the death of Jesus Christ, as the only possible response to the gnostic heresy of that time. In this way, Christ must not be understood as a scapegoat. Christ took upon himself, at all times, all the violence of the world, all the fears of humanity, in order to demonstrate that nothing can separate God from man. In God, life is stronger than death.

Personalism, heir to a divine–human soteriology I have concentrated on the aspects held in common by the Paris School. Now I would like to say a few words about the specific deepening achieved in the domain of soteriology by the philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev; this renewed theodicy was called a revived anthropodicy. In his celebrated epistle, James strongly asserts that God is incapable of thinking evil (Jas 1.13-15). For Nicolas Berdiaev, a friend of Léon Bloy, ‘God has less power than a policeman.’ We see how, from a new soteriology, Berdiaev was able to propose a new personalist philosophy. Such were the reactions of the Russian emigrant thinkers to the currents still close to those considered the ‘traditional’ Orthodox teaching on redemption.

Atonement and personalism Berdyaev’s ontology was mythological. It was based on the following myths: boundless freedom as symbolized by darkness, Sophia as symbolized by

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light, and the Heavenly Man. ‘Only mythological consciousness has seen the irrational principle in being’.5 Freedom is understood as the desire or the ‘hunger’ of nothing to become something.6 This myth, whose importance for Berdyaev has already been pointed out in discussing his 1929 review of Koyré’s book on Boehme’s philosophy, was connected to his vision of the creation of the world. In his 1927 article ‘Some Reflections on Theodicy’, Berdyaev linked his ontology to his rejection of the traditional explanation of the creation of the world, which was founded, in his opinion, on ‘the ontology of sin’. In his article on Boehme, the Lutheran cobbler, he returned to this theme: I call the following conception of rational, cataphatic theology a comedy: God, so it seems, the perfect and immobile God, complete, satisfied, allpowerful, all-knowing and infinitely good, has created the world and mankind for his glory and for the good of creation. … God would have endowed his creature, the human being, with the fatal faculty of freedom. … But mankind would have used said freedom badly, rebelling against his Creator. … Having opposed the will of God, humanity would have been subjected to damnation. … Every creature moans and weeps. End of Act I. With Act II, redemption begins. … The person of the Creator is pushed into the background and the Redeemer takes center stage. … God, who created the world, has predestined it to be eternally lost for he knows the consequences of freedom. … He is playing a game with himself because he is the one who gives freedom and he knew its consequences since freedom is not unfathomable for him.7

Berdyaev’s ontology of grace was an attempt at personalizing the Absolute of traditional theology, at revitalizing it. For Berdyaev, evil did not come from the freedom that originally was pure potentiality, but from using this freedom to make God an object. This is where Berdyaev’s cataphatic and personalist aboutface occurs. Freedom is not the static possibility of choosing between good and evil. It is the relationship of love between God and his creature. Berdyaev wanted to preserve this relationship and to absolve God from any participation in evil. He did so at the risk of scandalizing his readers, for he affirmed, on the one hand, that God is not all-powerful with respect to humanity, and, on the other hand, that God is not perfect and that the fullness of freedom is not

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entirely his. Following Boehme, Berdyaev speaks of a theogonic process. This did not mean, as it did for Hegel, that God was born in time. The interior and eternal life of God reveals itself under the form of a dynamic process, of tragedy in eternity, of combat with the powers of non-being. … The creation of the world is part of the interior life of the divine Trinity, it cannot be something absolutely exterior to it.8

The fact that Berdyaev conceived of a freedom ‘outside’ of God did not mean that he considered it as something substantial. Even for Boehme, Berdyaev reminded the reader, ‘freedom as nothingness, as me on, does not have any substance in itself ’. Berdyaev continued: Perhaps for the first time in the history of human thought, Boehme saw that at the foundation of being and before being, there is freedom without foundation. … He thus laid the bases for a particular metaphysical voluntarism [giving priority to the will over intellect and emotion] not known to ancient and medieval philosophers.9

All the difficulty that reason experiences in grasping this non-hypostatic and non-substantial freedom or this emergence in eternity comes from the fact that thought transforms realities of the symbolic order into rational concepts. Such is the case for the symbols of anteriority and posteriority – and also for those of interiority and exteriority – of the images of nothingness ‘in’ God and ‘outside of ’ God. These images should be understood as symbolic and not conceptual. These symbols do not belong to space or time and should not be understood according to these categories. They indicate a non-hypostatic mode of being. The final lines of Berdyaev’s article are totally incomprehensible if the notions of abyss are understood in spatial and temporal terms. He writes: The doctrine of Boehme on the Ungrund should be developed along the lines of the distinction between, on the one hand, the divine abyss, the divine freedom, and, on the other hand, the meonic abyss and freedom. In the ultimate and inexpressible mystery, this distinction itself disappears, but, at the threshold of the mystery, the difference imposes itself.10

Berdyaev’s ontology borrowed a second myth from Boehme – that of Sophia – which corresponds to the image and likeness of God in humanity, to the

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myth of the ‘androgyny of humanity’, of its original integrity.11 For Boehme, Christ was the model of the androgyne. But, Berdyaev assures us, Boehme ‘is not a monophysite’. According to him, Christ realized the synthesis of celestial, androgynic humanity by incarnating himself in the masculine sex. In Berdyaev’s thought, this myth was linked to that of the Heavenly Man, of the Adam-Kadmon of the Kabbalah.12 He expressed this intuition in his Esprit et liberté (1928) when he wrote that ‘the whole generation of Adam is in the Son of God’.13 God became incarnate so that humanity might be divinized. In this perspective, the coming of the God-man should be seen dynamically, as the accomplishment of the project of creation, and only secondarily as the salvation of mankind. This was the source of Berdyaev’s basic understanding of this myth: ‘In Christ, humanity is raised up to heaven, up to the Holy Trinity’.14 The Mariology of Boehme is equally sophianic. The Virgin Mary brings about the synthesis between Sophia and its created nature through the Holy Spirit. Berdyaev wrote, ‘The cult of the Virgin is the cult of Sophia, of the Wisdom of God’.15 The myth of Sophia reaches into the depths of the Trinity. Berdyaev quotes John Pordage (1607–81), the seventeenth-century English theosophist and disciple of Boehme: ‘Sophia says of herself: “I am the virginal Wisdom of my Father, who cannot create anything without me, just as I can do nothing without the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” ’.16 Sophia is, by definition, the possibility of the transfiguration of the created world.

What is personalism? By specifying his discourse on being and freedom, and by separating, in a new and more antinomic way, the human spirit, created in the image of God, from human nature issued from the meonic abyss, Berdyaev established the ontological foundations of his mythology of the Person. The principal effect of situating nothingness ‘outside’ of God was to mytho-logize, to give life to the notion of a person possessing a freedom that is absolutely original. This was not dualism. The human Person and the divine Person merge in eternity in the figure of the Heavenly Man and in time with Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, in whom is accomplished the synthesis between human freedom and

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divine freedom. The antinomy was no longer between the God-Absolute and Being but between the freedom of the God-Person and the freedom of Man. This personalist evolution impelled Berdyaev to immediately put into writing, in 1931, the foundations of a new anthropology, in a book entitled The Destiny of Man, and a new personalist sociology, in The Self and the World of Objects 1934 (published in English as Solitude and Society). As of 1933, he wrote ‘from the point of view of existential philosophy’ in the hope of being integrated into a group of philosophers of the spirit, but he immediately added that this had nothing to do with Heidegger and Jaspers. In fact, by making this turn, Berdyaev experienced a profound solitude, which he described in The Self and the World of Objects. He probably should have written ‘from the point of view of mytho-logy’, since for him, existence was based, above all, on the myth of the person. In his 1935 article entitled ‘Personalism and Marxism’, Berdyaev continued with his mytho-logy of the person. He distinguished the individual, a biological and sociological category, from the person, a spiritual and religious category. The person is a whole and cannot be part of something more general. The person was not part of society – quite the opposite. Citing Nesmelov, he described the person as an ‘eruption’ in the natural world. The person was unity in plurality, the structure in the movement. The person, Berdyaev stated, presumed a super-personal superior being, which it reflected, and superpersonal values, which it realized and which constituted the riches of the content of its life. The person was not something already complete; rather, it created itself, it proceeded from itself towards others. This was not the rather passive idea of ‘life’, which was the active principle of the person according to Scheler and Frank – it was the spirit. Berdyaev then called for a complete ‘revolution’ of values: ‘Underlying personalism’s conception of the social world one does not find the idea of equality or of justice but rather the idea of the dignity of every human person who should be given the possibility of realizing himself.’17 For Berdyaev, just as for Shestov, Florovsky and Frank, a central idea was that of no longer ontologizing God. What was unique in Berdyaev’s thought was that, for him, in the sphere of the divine, there was no longer any object in general, for being had disappeared. As he wrote in ‘Two Ways of Understanding

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Christianity: Concerning the Disputes Concerning the Old and the New in Christianity’: ‘In his deepest mystery, God is not an object and is not part of the objective world’.18 Being, understood as God, was dead. But God as object was also dead. God as person, in his otherness, is Spirit – and this is why a discussion on the myth of God is possible. For Man, created in the image of God, as a being-in-relation, also has a spiritual nature. This nature explains why the incarnation of God in man is possible. Man, integrated into the inner life of the Trinity, became the source of creation and activity. The objective world, which seemed to exist autonomously, was an illusion of our consciousness. In opposition to those whom he called conservatives, those who believed that the subject, dominated by the object, is passive, Berdyaev did not hesitate to justify Spinoza, Voltaire, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, biblical criticism, the mythological theory, Nietzsche and Rozanov.19 The conservatives, according to Berdyaev, always believed that the world was a finished product; Fedorov, on the other hand, launched an appeal to vanquish the established order in the name of the resurrection of all. This ushered in a new ethic. In what could sound like a declaration of war on Florovsky, Berdyaev argued that, after the humanistic Renaissance, ‘it is impossible to return to a patristic or Thomistic anthropology’.20 He took aim, in particular, at the traditional doctrine of the church concerning hell and paradise. In The Destiny of Man, he embraced a new eschatology, directly based on his personalism. Human consciousness could no longer accept the fear of hell as a road towards the Kingdom of God. Berdyaev affirmed that from an ‘objective’ point of view, on the level of divine omnipotence, hell had no ontological reality. ‘Moral consciousness began with the divine question: “Cain, what have you done with your brother Abel?” It will find its consummation in this other question: “Abel, what have you done with your brother Cain?” ’21 Like Origen, Berdyaev believed that Christ would remain on the Cross as long as there was a single person in hell. Berdyaev, however, rejected Origen’s doctrine of the apokatastasis, according to which every creature will be ‘forced’ to enter into the Kingdom of God. Berdyaev accepted hell from a ‘subjective’ point of view, on the level of the individual person, in the realm of meonic freedom. Like paradise, hell became a symbol of spiritual experience.

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Hell was ‘an absorption in one’s self such that eternity closes around itself. … The experience which gave birth to the idea of an eternal hell is that which a person lives in the subjective sphere, as endless. … But this infinity has nothing in common with eternity’.22 Hell corresponded to a meonic or nihilistic freedom that had degenerated into adversity. Only Christ, the redeemer and saviour who descended into hell, enables the human being to abandon the creation of hell and consecrate himself to the creation of the Kingdom of God. Consequently, the ultimate maxim of ethics, in Berdyaev’s system, was closer to that of Fedorov than to that of Kant. It can be summed up thus: ‘Act by directing all the forces of your spirit towards Christ so as to deliver the dead from death and hell.’23 Given the personal spirit of each human being, the realization of the Kingdom of truth depended, for Berdyaev, on the degree of communion among people. This is why he regarded apophatic knowledge as the purification of tradition of all its social mutations, and as the liberation of individuals from all the hellish fears that fill our collective subconscious. Christianity will bring about social justice, it will create a new life when it ceases to be, subconsciously, a social religion, a religion of a specific type, of the State, of the nation, of a certain class, of ratio, of law, and when Christians will hear the voice of God and not that of society, the voice of infinity rather than the voice of finitude.24

The debate in The Way Fr Sergius Chetverikov, the spiritual guide of the Russian Student Christian Movement, took on Berdyaev. Chetverikov first published an open letter to Berdyaev in March 1935, in which he asked him to define his position more precisely. With sensitivity and respect, he posed three questions concerning Berdyaev’s pessimistic understanding of the role of God in the world, the place he allowed for the church in his ethics and the possibility of a non-divine freedom. In his reply, Berdyaev limited his polemics to a simple dismissal of ‘the self-satisfaction of the Pharisees’ and explained, more seriously, the tragic and antinomic characteristics of his thought. He rejected a Christianity that divided the saved, within the borders of the church, from the damned, who are outside

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these borders. Such a view was due to the fact that nature itself is antinomic. Moreover, he refused to have his ethics qualified as ‘pessimistic’, because God, for him, was a God of love who recognized human freedom. If God, as he believed, was not at work in evil, this meant that evil had another source. Berdyaev concluded that there existed a ‘freedom of God and in relationship with God’. It was because of these views that Berdyaev, although he understood ‘the limits of language’, could dare to speak of ‘the powerlessness of God in the face of the freedom of evil’ and of the possible solution to evil through God-the-Redeemer. Berdyaev was no more satisfied with the solution of agnosticism, of the impossibility of rationally solving the mystery of evil, than he was with the Augustinian theodicy of predestination. Indeed, ‘in theology as in metaphysics, this theory has never held up until the end, and there have always been theories which are humiliating for a sensitive conscience’.25 In his conclusion, Berdyaev opposed his conception of the church as the Mystical Body of Christ to that of the church as a sinful social institution. Berdyaev complained that the necessity of repentance as a way of salvation, the necessity of taking upon one’s self the sufferings of the world, was considered rhetoric by most Christians. ‘Job debated with God, those who consoled him were pious.’ But, he added, only Job was justified by God. Thus, for Berdyaev, optimism did not consist in believing that God was the saviour of those who are within the church. Rather, one should struggle with God for the salvation of all. Chetverikov was not satisfied with Berdyaev’s replies. He took up the issue again in an article dated 18 May 1935. This final duel between Berdyaev, who represented the neo-modernist current in the church, and Chetverikov, who defended the enlightened traditionalist current, was decisive, for it marked the end of the journal’s nonconformist period. Both of them went as far as they could in their faith to try to find a common language. By the end of the summer of 1935, as we shall see, this possibility was out of the question. Chetverikov rephrased his questions in a more direct manner: ‘Does Christ’s work continue on earth through the church? How is this non-created freedom to be reconciled with the Christian affirmation that all things come from God?’ Chetverikov argued that Berdyaev’s theodicy did not resolve the aporia or paradox of evil, for God, when he created mankind from meonic freedom, should have foreseen that humanity would use this freedom to its detriment. Why not accept the idea, Chetverikov continued, that God gave freedom to the

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human race not so that it might commit evil, but in order that it might choose between good and evil? Why not admit that God accepts evil by limiting his omnipotence in the name of that freedom which he gave to humanity? In his reply, Berdyaev reaffirmed the uninterrupted presence of Christ in the church, but objected to a vision of a narrowly limited church. Above all, he returned to the question of theodicy. Berdyaev stated that, for him, the distinction between good and evil was already a consequence of the Fall, whereas freedom preceded it. Berdyaev’s argument was as follows: If God grants freedom, he grants the freedom of doing good and of doing evil. This is why it is illogical to impute to God only the freedom to do good and to humanity only the freedom to do evil. Berdyaev reaffirms: ‘It is impossible to attribute the prevision of evil to God because evil has its source outside of being and outside of the world created by God’ (Berdyaev 1935: 71). Chetverikov, Berdyaev wrote, did not suppose that evil had not been vanquished by God, but he forgot that the traditional doctrine of the church admitted the eternity of hell, as if evil was indispensable for God. Finally, Berdyaev put his finger on what was essentially at issue in the debate. The discourse on evil can only be mythological, that is, founded on symbols, on antinomy and on the goal of history. Freedom, as an irrational principle of the order of non-being, ‘cannot be grasped as a concept, it can only be spoken of in a mytho-logical way, with symbols’.26 The Fall cannot be understood rationally. It is a myth – which does not mean that it is opposed to reality. The creation of the world can be interpreted as a struggle against non-being, against an adversity in the somber element of non-being. The freedom to sin and do evil that issued from non-being could not be overcome in the first act of the creation of the world by God the Father, but it is vanquished by God the Son, who descends into the somber depths of non-being; it is vanquished not by force but by the sacrifice of love. This is the whole mystery of Christianity.27

From the logic of this argument, freedom is shown to be twofold. But Berdyaev put truth above cataphatic thought. One could only speak of the ‘non-discursive mystery of God’ in a negative way: On this level there is no longer any dualism, any opposition between light and darkness; there is the pure divine light, which is darkness for reason,

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and there, hell is no longer possible nor can there be any trace of any sort of pessimism. This is the limit of thought, the sphere of mystical contemplation and of unity.28

Conclusion The renewal of redemption theology brought about a genuine revival of the philosophy and political theology that is described by the term ‘personalist’. This intellectual renewal was ignored after the Second World War, until today, with the exception of certain great names such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Pope John Paul II and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In France, Paul Ricoeur wanted to put an end to this philosophical current, by rejecting all philosophical thought that was open to revelation, perhaps also by a desire to distance himself from Emmanuel Mounier, who was a somewhat special disciple of Berdyaev. But today, with the renewal of soteriology, the time is ripe to rediscover personalist thought.

Notes 1 A. Arjakovsky, Russie-Ukraine de la guerre à la paix? (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2014). 2 A. Arjakovsky, The Way: Religious Thinkers of the Russian Emigration in Paris and Their Journal 1925-1940 (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2013). 3 P. Gneditch, ‘Russkaia, Bogoslovshaia literature o dogmate iskuplenia v period s 1893-1944’, JMP 8 (1962): 68–72. 4 S. Boulgakov, L’Agneau de Dieu (Paris: L’Age d’Hommes, [1932] 1982), 95. 5 N. Berdyaev, ‘Studies on J. Boehme’, 1, Put’, No. 20, 2/1930; B44. 6 Berdyaev, ‘Studies on J. Boehme’, 61. 7 Berdyaev, in ‘Boehme, Mysterium magnum’, Paris: 14. 8 Ibid., 60. 9 Ibid., 62. 10 Ibid., 79. 11 N. Berdyaev, ‘Studies on J. Boehme’, 2, Put’, No. 21, March 1930a; B46, 34. 12 Ibid., 40.

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13 N. Berdyaev, Esprit et Liberté (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, [1928] 1992), 140. 14 Berdyaev, ‘Studies on J. Boehme’, (in Boehme, Mysterium magnum, préface, French trans: 1930a: 32). 15 Berdyaev, ‘Studies on J. Boehme’, 45. 16 Ibid., 50. 17 N. Berdyaev, ‘Personalism and Marxism’, Put’, No. 48, 7–9/1935c; B75. 18 N. Berdyaev, ‘Two Ways of Understanding Christianity’, Put’, No. 36, 12/1932; B62. 19 Berdyaev, ‘Two Ways of Understanding Christianity’, 36. 20 Ibid., 28. 21 N. Berdyaev, De la destination de l’homme: essai d’ethique paradoxale (Paris: Éditions ‘Je Sers’, 1935d). 22 Berdyaev, De la destination de l’homme, 346. 23 Ibid., 361. 24 Ibid., 43. 25 N. Berdyaev, ‘Concerning Christian Optimism and Pessimism’, Put’, No. 46, 1–3/1935a; B73. 26 N, Berdyaev, ‘A Return to the Subject of Christian Pessimism and Optimism’, Put’, No. 48, 7–9/1935b; B76. 27 Berdyaev, ‘A Return to the Subject of Christian Pessimism and Optimism’. 28 Ibid.

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Wright, Wrong and Wrath: Apocalypse in Paul and in Girard Stephen Finamore

Introduction The interpretation of Paul, never a straightforward matter at the best of times, is once again a heavily contested issue. The Pauline corpus has, of course, long been the home of readings that bolster and defend significant theological and ecclesial traditions. My impression is that things had seemed to settle down a bit. Roman Catholic and Protestant exegetes had dug their particular trenches and, apart from the occasional skirmish, had settled in for the long haul. Of course, there were differences within each camp. On the Protestant side, for example, participants had agreed to disagree with one another on questions such as authorship and dating. Nevertheless, they were pretty much unanimous in asserting that the Reformation rallying point of justification by faith is both affirmed by these texts and is the lens through which they are to be read. Or, to put it another way, they all asserted that the Letter to the Romans expounds the doctrine of justification by faith and that it constitutes, with some strategic support from Galatians, a systematic presentation of Paul’s theology; it is therefore the text through which all the other Pauline letters, indeed, many Reformed Protestants would argue, the Scriptures as a whole, are to be understood. This cosy arrangement, if it ever really existed, is now wholly disrupted. The writings of Krister Stendahl, E. P. Sanders, J. D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright, to name a few, have seen to that. Important doctrinal positions are perceived to be under threat and so a defence has been mounted. It is the advocates

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of the so-called ‘New Perspective’ on Paul who are the cause of particular consternation. The foremost of these is probably N. T. (Tom) Wright, whose two-volume, four-part book on the Apostle was published in 2013. Wright has published many books on Paul over the years, but these volumes offer a full and systematic presentation of his views and form a part of his multivolume project Christian Origins and the Question of God. Among the many controversies that his work has generated is one that concerns the meaning of Paul’s justification language. Wright insists that this should be understood in terms of law courts and covenant. The former suggests that the concept involves judgement and the latter that it concerns belonging to the people of God. This use of covenant implies that his view might be described as ecclesial. Clearly, this is not a position that many of his Low Church brothers and sisters are keen to embrace. Words that they have long cherished as being about their personal standing before God might now be interpreted in terms of belonging to an institution. And nobody wants that, do they? It goes without saying that the traditional Protestant frameworks are not threatened only by ideas emerging from those, like Wright, who are committed to the authority of the Scriptures. There are also the continuing liberal attempts to blame Paul for all the ills of both the church and the modern world. To these charges must be added those persistent claims that the Apostle somehow betrayed the simple message of Jesus of Nazareth – and, as if all this were not enough, there are, of course, regular Roman Catholic essays, fully embracing scriptural authority, that seek to liberate Paul from his Babylonian captivity within Protestant exegesis and reclaim him for the true fold. And finally, offering significant challenges and fresh insights to the entire field, and a new approach to the authority of the Bible, comes René Girard with the Girardians in his wake. Small wonder that many of us seek to take refuge in old certainties. Confronted as we are by all of this, it is astonishing that any of us know where to pitch in, especially in a relatively short article. I have decided to focus on the issue of the wrath of God. I intend to do this with one eye on the explication of wrath in Romans 1.3. I last gave serious attention to the issue in 19951 and I suspect it is time to look again. After all, the wrath of God is a

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significant theme in Paul, it is an important component in most understandings of justification and it is an issue that Wright discusses. Most significantly, while the idea of God’s wrath might have offered a challenge to his commitment to the non-violence of God, Girard has developed an interesting interpretation of the apocalyptic language in which some New Testament references to the wrath of God occur. This chapter will suggest ways in which Girard’s approach might supplement some of Wright’s exegetical conclusions, and perhaps indicate some places where Girard’s focus on anthropological and historical matters leaves space for theological and transhistorical possibilities. It may even be possible to say something irenic and ecumenical about how we might understand justification – though that may be a step too far.

The scholarly debate about the wrath of God It remains interesting to me that those who write on this topic, even after all these years, feel the need to refer to the views of C. H. Dodd2 and his follower, A. T. Hanson,3 if only to dismiss them as inadequate. As is well known, Dodd wants to dissociate God from wrath and prefers not to think of it as something that belongs to God personally. Instead, the wrath is understood as the way in which the consequences of human wrong work themselves out as a process of cause and effect in a moral universe. Most criticisms of Dodd’s position point out that, for Paul, the wrath is eschatological, and that the parallels between the revelation of God’s righteousness in Romans 1.17 and his wrath in 1.18 need to be taken seriously. On the whole, these points are well made. However, the strength of Dodd’s view lies in his association of the wrath with a process. The threefold repetition of ‘handed them over’ or ‘gave them up’ in verses 24, 26 and 28 strongly suggests development. Of course, some have argued that these verses describe what provokes the eschatological wrath that will be revealed. However, this interpretation has to contend with the fact that the key verb apokaluptetai in verse 18 is in the present tense. It is probably a divine passive and closely linked to the same verb in the previous verse. There God is revealing his dikaiosune,

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his righteousness, his justice, his faithfulness, his integrity (take your pick), in the gospel. In verse 18, he is revealing his wrath and it seems most likely that we should understand that this too is revealed or made manifest in the gospel. I will return to this issue below. Before we turn to Wright and to Girard, it is worth reminding ourselves of why the wrath of God is so important in some circles. You will remember that Krister Stendahl claimed that Luther had read his own existential dilemma into his interpretation of Paul.4 Luther was famously concerned with how he, a man deeply conscious of his own wrongdoing, might find mercy from a holy God. For Stendahl, this kind of introspective soul searching was not and could not have been Paul’s primary issue. Such ways of thinking emerged much later and so Luther’s reading was anachronistic. This conclusion threatens understandings of justification derived from Luther. In 2013, with just this line of thinking in his sights, Stephen Westerholm published a brief but considered book on Paul’s use of justification language.5 His purpose was to challenge the position of those he regards as revisionists and to reassert the teachings of his own tradition. He begins by attempting to distil Paul’s kerygma. He asks what it was that drew so many of the Empire’s Gentiles to the Apostle’s message. Basing his initial argument on 1 Thessalonians, Westerholm states that Paul’s message was a warning to his contemporaries that, on account of their immorality and idolatry, the divine wrath would shortly overwhelm them. God’s patience was running out and retribution would soon come. The good news was that God, through his Son, offers deliverance from this wrath. For such a message to have had any appeal, insists Westerholm, the question ‘How can I find a gracious God?’ must have been a pressing one. He then goes on to link this argument with the language of righteousness and justification: ‘Paul uses justification language as the answer to the human dilemma. … How, in the face of coming judgement, can anyone … find “salvation”?’6 Of course, Westerholm may be wrong. We do not know that the ideas he refers to in 1 Thessalonians (particularly 1.10) were the main things that Paul proclaimed – and, if they were, this does not mean that this is what initially attracted those who became Christians. It is possible that Paul’s proclamation awoke a concern about the consequences of immorality and idolatry that did

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not exist before he spoke. Furthermore, we should not ignore Paul’s claim that the word of God came to the Thessalonians in power and in the Holy Spirit (1.5). If this hints at the signs and wonders that Paul elsewhere insists were part of his missionary work (Rom. 15.18-19), then these may have played a considerable part in persuading his converts to believe his message. Nevertheless, Westerholm is helpful in reminding us that all the way from what is generally regarded as one of Paul’s earliest extant letters, 1 Thessalonians, perhaps written in the mid- to late-forties, through to what many see as the most developed statement of his theology, Romans, written in the mid-fifties, the Apostle stresses the idea of the wrath of God as an aspect of the divine response to human wrong. It is there in the opening chapters of both letters. Needless to say, there are theological issues underlying the exegetical arguments. If God is wrathful, this might imply that God acts violently – and a violent god strikes some as an altogether pagan idea; such a god would not be worthy of worship. For others, if God feels no wrath, he can exercise no judgement and all hope of ultimate justice is lost. Furthermore, if there is no judgement, then there is no ultimate tribunal in which the Christian will be vindicated and so there is no context where his or her justification will be made manifest. In the light of all this, we inevitably find ourselves asking whether we are trying to decide what Paul really meant or are trying to interpret him in such a way that his arguments support our prior theological positions. Perhaps, the more loudly anyone insists that he or she is guided only by the words of the Apostle, the more suspicious we should be.

The wrath of God in Paul There are explicit references to wrath in only four of Paul’s letters. Of these, two, Ephesians and Colossians, are sometimes regarded as deutero-Pauline. However, for the purposes of this chapter, I shall treat these texts as a part of the Pauline corpus. Of course, the idea of wrath may underlie many other passages about future judgement such as 2 Thessalonians 2.3-10, but it seems best to restrict the discussion to the places where wrath is explicitly mentioned.

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Of course, many of our translations obscure the fact that Paul sometimes speaks of wrath without specifically saying that it belongs to God. This is true of the references in 1 Thessalonians and of some of the references in Romans. Some believe that this indicates that Paul intends to distance God from wrath, and is implying that it is a phenomenon or a process with which he is only indirectly involved. I have attempted similar arguments myself with respect to the book of Revelation.7 Nevertheless, before becoming too confident about this line of reasoning, it might be salutary to consider Romans 12.19, where the Apostle instructs the Roman Christians never to avenge themselves but to leave room for the wrath, before citing a text in which God insists that ‘vengeance is mine, I will repay’ (Deut. 32.35). This is followed by Paul’s insistence at 13.1-5 that God appoints authorities to execute wrath on wrongdoers. At the end of the first chapter of 1 Thessalonians, Jesus is presented as the one who rescues from the wrath that is coming. Most exegetes believe that this is a reference to the day of judgement when the Christians will be vindicated. However, it should be borne in mind that when Paul next speaks of wrath, he seems to have in mind some judgement of God within history. Those who persecuted the Thessalonian church (or perhaps the Jews who hindered the work of the gospel among the nations) have already been overtaken by the wrath (2.14-16). Assuming this passage is not an interpolation, it seems that, for Paul, the wrath may have historical manifestations to go alongside the eschatological ones referred to in Chapter 1. The other possibility is that the key verb should be understood as a kind of prophetic aorist and that for Paul this future judgement is a foregone conclusion. I am not sure that there are many other examples of this in Paul’s writings, and so it is at least possible that the reference here is historical. The final reference in the letter comes in 5.9 where the readers are assured, in the context of a discussion of the coming day of the Lord, that they are not destined for wrath. The word wrath occurs twice in Colossians and three times in Ephesians. Interestingly, it occurs at Colossians 3.8 and Ephesians 4.31 in lists of the vices that the Christians are to avoid. It is a little surprising, then, that elsewhere in the letters, the word is ascribed to God. Perhaps we should understand that, for Paul, or for the tradition derived from him, the word orge has different connotations when ascribed to God than it does when it is used of humans. In

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Colossians, just two verses before the text referred to above, there is a reference to wrath that is to come upon the disobedient. The most obvious sense is eschatological. A similar thought can be found at Ephesians 5.6. Elsewhere in Ephesians – 2.3 – we discover that the Christians, like everyone else, were once children of wrath, which suggests that they lived under the prospect of eschatological judgement. This leads us to our consideration of the references to wrath in Romans. I have chosen to take these in the opposite order to that in which they appear in the letter, so that we can finish this part of the chapter with a consideration of Romans 1. Romans 13, as we saw above, describes the authorities as having been instituted by God for the execution of judgement on malefactors. According to 13.4, ‘It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.’ One must be subject, in part at least, ‘because of wrath’ (13.5). This discussion follows the command at 12.19 that the Christians should not seek vengeance themselves but leave room for the wrath. The juxtaposition suggests that the civil authorities manifest the wrath when they act in accordance with the purposes for which God instituted them. So, while the wrath may be eschatological, or even primarily eschatological, it is not without its manifestations in history. It is linked to the motives that lie behind judicial decisions to impose penalties. Similarly, the discussion in Chapter 9 about the line of promise within Israel describes those outside that line as ‘objects of wrath that are made for destruction’ (9.22). The language earlier in the verse of ‘showing wrath’ suggests a phenomenon observable in history. In the course of the subsequent discussion, Paul seems to speak of the execution of judgement within the history of Israel. Again it appears that wrath has a historical dimension. There is a reference to wrath at 5.9, and it seems to indicate an eschatological salvation of those who have been justified by Christ’s blood. Verse 4.15 is an interesting text because it appears to make a direct link between wrath and violation implying that wrath should be understood as a judicial term; it is the attribute that motivates the carrying out of justice. Where there is no law, there may be a state of sin, but there is no possibility of transgression. It is transgression that provokes legal consequences and therefore the law, which is what makes transgression possible, provokes wrath.

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Continuing to work backwards, we come to 3.5 where wrath is again spoken of in a judicial context and as that which motivates a just judgement, and then to 2.5-8 where wrath is the fate of the wicked who have stored up wrath for the day of wrath. Here the context seems to be that of the eschatological judgement; the text speaks of God’s righteous judgement that will be revealed when the consequences of the judgement will reflect a person’s deeds. On the basis of this discussion, it is clear that the wrath is, in the case of many, perhaps most, of the places where it is mentioned, an eschatological phenomenon closely related to God’s future activity as the judge of the world. It is sometimes spoken of as though it had an existence independent of God, and this observation warrants some exegetical consideration though we should be careful to consider all the relevant texts and be wary that we are not too disposed to allowing our prior theological commitments to condition our exegesis. Significantly, it is also clear that, in Paul’s thought, wrath is not an eschatological phenomenon alone. It also has a historical and experiential dimension. This includes the judicial functions of human authorities, but may not be restricted to them. Before turning to Wright’s interpretation of Paul’s use of the term wrath in Romans 1, I want to remind you of Bockmuehl’s helpful study of Paul’s revelation language.8 When Paul uses the word apocalupto and its cognates, there is nearly always an eschatological context. However, this is not always the case. There are uses in Galatians 1.16 and 3.23 that clearly refer to past events that are related to the fulfilment of God’s promises and which have a continuing impact in the present. There are also a couple of non-eschatological uses. So, it is likely that Paul’s use of the term apocalupto in Romans 1.17 and 18 has an eschatological dimension; but this should not rule out the possibility that the thing revealed or made known also has a historical and experiential dimension. With these preliminaries in mind, I turn to a consideration of Wright.

Wright and wrath The title of his latest major book (Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 2013) is significant, for Wright is arguing that the Christ event and the gospel that

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announces it are the demonstration that God is being faithful in the present to his ancient covenant promises: in particular, the promises to Abraham that through him, or through his seed, the nations would be blessed, and also to what Paul understands to be the iterations of these promises in the psalms and the prophets (Rom. 15.8-13). Covenant faithfulness is Wright’s preferred translation of dikaiosune, usually rendered as righteousness or justice, which is revealed in the gospel. Wright acknowledges that Paul understands the proclamation of the gospel to unveil both covenant faithfulness and wrath. Wright stands in a line of scholarship that reaches back to C. H. Dodd through G. B. Caird. These are advocates of what is sometimes called ‘realized eschatology’. Caird’s book on the interpretation of the Bible9 was a particular influence on Wright. As a result, he has become associated with preterist interpretations of the synoptic apocalypses. In other words, he often takes the view that we should interpret the apocalyptic passages of the Scriptures in terms of events within history. We might have anticipated that he would take a similar position on the manifestation of the wrath but that is not the case. In Wright’s thought, the wrath of God is primarily an eschatological phenomenon. It refers to both God’s motive for and God’s action in judgement. The day of judgement is the day of wrath (Rom. 2.5). Thus he writes, ‘For Paul, “wrath” is the execution of divine punishment on sinners’10 and insists that ‘“the wrath” is indeed a future event (not … the process of moral decay within an ordered world)’ (768). When he considers why the gospel is the revelation of this wrath, Wright argues that the things unveiled are ‘the depth, and impartial universality, of the judgement’ (771) and the conviction that the agent of God’s judgement will be the Messiah Jesus. So, Wright’s primary position in his most recent major work is that the gospel events are an apocalypse of both good news and of the plight from which the created order needs to be rescued (771). He speaks of Romans 1.18–2.16 as ‘the apocalypse of the wrath of God in the gospel’ (811). This fits with Wright’s understanding of justification. Those who are embraced by God’s covenant faithfulness, that is to say, those who are a part of the people of God, are the justified; they are those who will be vindicated in the eschatological judgement. That verdict has been announced in the present. Elsewhere, however, Wright acknowledges that there can be manifestations of divine wrath in history. He hints that he might allow ‘a sense in which

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the essentially future verdict casts its shadow ahead of itself, a kind of grisly dark side of the inaugurated eschatology of justification (the verdict of the end already announced in the present)’ (766). An example of this may be the anticipated judgement on the Jerusalem temple. It is a ‘tragic consequence’ of human actions (1156). So, the exercise of wrath may refer to ‘events within concrete history’ (1245). This seems to me to be inadequate. While in Paul’s thought, the wrath is certainly eschatological and often seems to be related to the day of judgement, there are, as we have seen, more examples of its presence in history than Wright seems prepared to acknowledge. Indeed, in his major commentary on Romans (2002), Wright himself seems much more open to this possibility. He offers a definition of God’s wrath as his ‘determination not to give evil the last word, to root out from creation all that defiles and destroys it’, and he acknowledges that ‘the revelation of wrath is itself part of the good news’.11 It is both God’s attitude to idolatry and immorality and his actions that flow from that attitude. However, the eschatological dimension retains its priority; the ‘content of this wrath is not merely the process … of God’s “giving people up” to the result of their own folly. That, rather, is simply the anticipation of the final judgement itself. … The two are, of course, organically connected’ (431). It is important to bear in mind that one significant aspect of Wright’s approach is his understanding of what he calls the Apostle’s ‘apocalyptic theology’. This means that the decisive end anticipated by Second Temple Judaism is to be divided; some of the things associated with it are already fulfilled in the Christ event while others still remain to be accomplished. What Jesus has already done has ‘drawn back the veil on the wrath to come’ and ‘unveiled the wrath of God in a new way’ (431–2). However, the Christ event does not, as far as Wright understands things, make any difference to those who disobey the summons of the gospel. The Gentiles are wicked, but they were wicked anyway. No fresh dimensions of wrath are revealed in this scenario. The most significant difference is that we now know the name of the one through whom God’s wrath will be expressed. It may just be my impression but there seems to be some tension in Wright’s thought on this point. He sees that both God’s faithfulness and God’s wrath are revealed in the gospel but while he insists that the former has a clear

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manifestation in the present – those who believe in the gospel are justified and so in them the verdict of the day of judgement is anticipated – he is less clear that the latter has such a manifestation. Furthermore, while the gospel is clearly the demonstration of God’s faithfulness, it is not the demonstration of his wrath. The only fresh revelation is the identity of its agent. At points, Wright seems to be reaching for an argument that will allow the wrath of God to have been given fresh impetus by the Christ event and its representation in the gospel but he can discover no mechanism by which this might be explicated. He acknowledges that the wrath might operate in history but can offer no understanding of how this might be related to the gospel, even though his exegesis seems to suggest that such a relationship exists. Jewett grapples with the same issue in his commentary. He concludes that the killing of the Son of God at human hands is a demonstration of the depths of human wrong. The gospel therefore reveals wrath, not simply by reminding of future punishment or of ‘the inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe’, but by indicating the culpability of the human race at so egregious a level as to make retribution morally necessary and inevitable.12

However, this still puts the focus on the cause of God’s wrath rather than on anything active it might accomplish. Morris offers something more. Yes, the wrath is eschatological, ‘but we should not overlook the other truth that it is also a present reality’. While he acknowledges that the consequence of the wrath is seen in suffering and disaster, he argues that it is the cross that ‘shows us the measure of God’s wrath’.13 There may well be an insight here. However, we are still left wondering how any of this actually operates. It is in this context that we turn to Girard to see if his thought offers us any means of addressing the issue.

Girard’s overall goals Before we examine Girard’s thinking on this point, I wonder if some words about the overall goals or rhetorical purpose of Girard’s thinking might be

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in order. There is nothing very subtle about what I intend to do. I simply note that endings are extremely significant in many books; they surely tell us the thoughts that the author wishes to leave with us. In the light of this, I thought a glance at the closing paragraphs of some of Girard’s books might give us some clues about his fundamental concerns. I found the exercise quite interesting and I thought I would include it here because it offers some context for the discussion that follows. Deceit, Desire and the Novel ends with the observation that the great novelists make a break from ‘romantic and Promethean individualism’.14 Their novels all end with the repudiation of any human mediator along with an appeal to symbols of ‘vertical transcendency’ (309). This is the language of conversion. The conclusion to Violence and the Sacred begins with the recognition that the book makes no attempt to consider the Bible in the light of Girard’s theories, or vice versa.15 It ends with a paragraph that is ostensibly about Freud but whose purpose seems to be to assert that the contemporary world is experiencing a ‘sacrificial crisis’ the result of which will be that the ‘essential violence returns to us in a spectacular manner’. The crisis invites us, and these are the very last words of the book, ‘to expose to the light of reason the role played by violence in human society’ (318). The important pieces collected as ‘To Double Business Bound’; Essays on Literature, Mimesis and Anthropology are carefully ordered. In the introduction, Girard tells us, ‘I rest my case with the last of the essays that follow. And I hope for the best’.16 The last piece is an interview for the journal Diacritics and ends with a citation from a poem by W. H. Auden. The poem closes with the words, ‘For without a cement of blood (it must be human, it must be innocent) no secular wall will safely stand’ (229). In his words introducing the extract Girard states, with respect to the twentieth century, that the ideologies with the greatest power to fascinate the modern mind are also responsible for the greatest massacres in human history, but many intellectuals have been especially reluctant to acknowledge the fact, as if ideology reinforced in them the old capacity not to see that all victims are equally real behind ideological as well as the mythical text. (228)

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The ethical concern really breaks cover at the end of The Scapegoat, which ends with these two sentences, ‘The time has come for us to forgive one another. If we wait any longer there will not be time enough’.17 Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World ends with a citation from Ezekiel, in which the prophet speaks of the resuscitation of the dry bones in a valley. Prior to this, Girard has stated the view that ‘present-day thought is leading us in the direction of the valley of death, and it is cataloguing the dry bones one by one. All of us are in this valley and it is up to us to resuscitate meaning … which is being lost or threatened on all sides’.18 Girard’s is the largest single contribution to the book Violent Origins; Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation. His section ends with a discussion about the revelatory effect of the gospel. Girard states that this is something gradual; it is ‘seeping in through history’ and is ‘unrecognized’.19 He ends with the statement that ‘we are in a place between the full revelation of the scapegoat and the totally mythical. In history, we are always between gospel and myth’ (145). The final words of I See Satan Fall Like Lightning are a citation from 1 Corinthians 1. The context is a defence of Girard’s strategy of attributing earthly and rational meanings to, among other things, ‘apocalyptic danger’, which leads to ‘the true demythicizing of our world. … This enlightenment can only come from the Cross’.20 The last sentence of Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture iterates the concerns of The Scapegoat. It reads, ‘We do not have to accuse our neighbour; we can learn to forgive him instead’.21 And finally, the closing words of Battling to the End. Out of context, the words sound like hubris. They also sound like those of a prophet of old announcing the inevitability of judgement. The final chapter ends with the words, ‘Violence can no longer be checked. From this point of view, we can say that the apocalypse has begun’.22 The epilogue ends with this chilling warning: ‘Seeking to comfort is always to contribute to the worst’ (214). As you can see, the endings are all connected. They tell us that we find ourselves in an extended crisis, generated by the Christ event and its representation in the Scriptures. The chief symptoms of the crisis are a loss of confidence in the possibility of meaning and an increasing potential for

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violence. This reality is hidden by a combination of ideologies and mythologies that obscure the innocence or the arbitrariness of culture’s victims. The only hope for human flourishing lies in conversion, the main mark of which is forgiveness, that is to say, the renunciation of vengeance – and, if Battling is to be believed, it may already be too late.

Girard and the wrath of God There was a time when some people were prepared to deny that there is an apocalyptic dimension to Girard’s thought. Even those who acknowledged its presence did not necessarily consider it to have any great significance. The better-known introductions do not refer to it as a major element of his system. The work on Clausewitz, published in English as Battling to the End,23 has put an end to that. Or it ought to. I am not sure that I think it is a particularly satisfactory book. There are a few too many sweeping judgements. Nevertheless, some of its predictions, particularly those about the consequences of Western interventions in the Middle East, have proved terrifyingly perceptive. Added to this, Girard states baldly and boldly in the introduction that it is ‘an apocalyptic book’.24 In almost every chapter, the book confirms something that has been present in his thought for several decades: the gospel brings the apocalypse. In this book, as in Evolution and Conversion, Girard makes no systematic attempt to explicate what it is that means that the gospel subverts social order. The argument is presented in a sort of shorthand. Human cultures are founded on a primal murder. The representation of the crucifixion in the gospels reveals that this is so. No society can long survive the insight. I suspect that the intuition that these things are so must have its roots in the influence on Girard of ideas found in structuralism. There is a passage in the opening book of Things Hidden in which he discusses the transcendental signifier.25 Structuralism insists that human languages, and other cognate cultural phenomena, are systems of signification in which the signs possess meaning only insofar as they are part of a system, and by virtue of their difference from one another. The sign and that which it signifies are related to one another only by convention. The relationship between them is, in truth,

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arbitrary. The most straightforward differences are those between binary opposites; night and day, male and female, etc., and the construction of such oppositions is a fundamental operation of the human mind. Structuralists, therefore, study systems, like languages or other systems of exchange, which are shared by groups of humans. The systems are regarded as being intelligible only as wholes. Of course, those interested in questions of origins found themselves asking how such systems came into being. What is the original signifier on which the rest is founded? Those contemporaries of Girard who became the poststructuralist school abandoned the search for the transcendental signifier as futile. The system has no founding signifier and there is nothing that grounds signification in reality. Meaning is thus always deferred. Girard, as we all know, finds the original signifier that founds language and culture in the primal victim. Of course, the system that is founded in this way is unstable because the founding event is distorted in the way it is remembered; the story told by the killers necessarily misrepresents what happened. In truth, the primal victim is arbitrary. Once this becomes apparent, and the gospel renders this awareness unforgettable, there is no founding signifier to give stability to the rest. Little by little, the whole edifice collapses from within. The possibility of meaning is lost. So, the gospel is an apocalypse in both senses. It is a revelation or unveiling of a truth that had been hidden, and it is something that has the capacity to bring the end of the world as humans understand it. In principle, therefore, every human culture exposed to the gospel is dying. Given that cultures are, for Girard, systems for controlling the violence that is generated by mimetic rivalry, the collapse of a culture inevitably means that the brakes on retribution are lost and there is nothing to stop a society degenerating into all-against-all violence, like a bar room brawl from a Western played out in the whole of a social group. Girard calls this the ‘sacrificial crisis’. In the past, such crises might have been resolved through what Girard calls the scapegoat mechanism, a fresh primal murder that happens when the forces of mimesis transform the all-against-all violence of the crisis into the all-againstone violence of a lynching. While this may have been possible before the gospel penetrated people’s awareness, it is no longer so. The truth that our victims are arbitrary and innocent cannot be unlearnt.

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However, what is true in principle has, in most cases, not happened or has been delayed. There are a number of reasons for this. In different places, Girard has identified legal systems, consumer-driven industrial production (2003) and the sacrificial interpretation of the Scriptures associated with historical Christianity (1987) as being responsible for this. He has nuanced his position on the last of these over the last few years, but still claims that ‘Christianity is a religion that quickly returned to old sacrificial reflexes’.26 All these factors are worthy of discussion, but for our present purposes, the significant point is that they offer a rationale for the delay in the final impact of the gospel revelation. Indeed, they help account for the fact that, as Steven Pinker seems to have demonstrated in his history of human violence,27 the relative levels of violence have reduced rather than increased over the centuries. Nevertheless, in Battling, Girard is arguing that the impact of the gospel awareness is final. This is not new. The word ‘apocalyptic’ is on the opening page of Evolution and Conversion.28 Globalization has brought this dangerous knowledge to the whole world. Although Girard sometimes seems to be saying that violence is now increasing, this is not, I think, his point. Rather, it is that violence is now qualitatively different from that in the past. The key difference is its unpredictability.29 Let me try to sum up the argument of Battling. Christianity, insofar as its goal was to bring about God’s reign, or to enable humans to renounce vengeance, has failed, as it always knew that it would. Given this, the world will descend into apocalyptic violence. Girard says, ‘Christianity is the only religion that has foreseen its own failure. This prescience is known as the apocalypse’.30 The situation has now changed because there is a worldwide rejection of universal ethics. ‘We have entered a world of internal mediation, where there is no longer any external model to vouchsafe our conduct’ (33). An era is over and, therefore, violence ‘can no longer be checked … we can say that the apocalypse has begun’ (210). This descent is already happening and we are living through the things described in the synoptic apocalypses. ‘Apocalyptic texts do concern the disaster that is underway’.31 Further, with a nod to Nietzsche, Girard insists that ‘the linear time that Christ forced us to adopt makes the eternal return of the gods impossible,

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and thus also any reconciliation on the head of innocent victims’ (103). The situation is dire: The fetters put in place by the founding murder but unshackled by the Passion are now liberating planet-wide violence, and we cannot refasten the bindings because we now know that scapegoats are innocent. The Passion unveiled the sacrificial origin of humanity once and for all. It dismantled the Sacred and revealed its violence.32

This violence is of a quality different from any other. It is ‘absolutely unpredictable, truly undifferentiated’, a violence that ‘escapes all ritualization’ (39). Girard is less hopeful than he once was. He had previously hoped that Christianity might not fail, that it would ‘provide the point of view from which we could judge violence’33 and that ‘universal knowledge of violence would suffice’ (44). Now he reiterates the stark choices facing humanity in stronger terms than ever: ‘Christ thus imposes a terrible alternative: either follow him by renouncing violence, or accelerate the end of time’ (80). So far, so bleak. Now, while Girard is prepared to say that ‘God’s patience is inconceivable, but it is not infinite’, (47) hinting at some active role for the deity in this process, he more usually insists that the processes are explicable in anthropological terms. He claims that ‘the apocalyptic texts speak of a war among people, not of a war of God against humans’ (48). He accuses fundamentalists of advocating such readings, and therefore of having a cruel God.34 Nevertheless, Girard does not seem to be without hope. He seems to find solace in the strength of the papacy and, as we saw earlier, is prepared to urge that sleeping consciences be awakened. Thus, Girard believes that our society is experiencing what he calls a ‘sacrificial crisis’, that is to say, a period in which sacrificial violence cannot bring a resolution. Furthermore, the scapegoat mechanism will not be able to function to renew order. Girard’s other works suggest that certain characteristics will mark a sacrificial crisis of this kind. Differences are abolished as cultural differentiations break down. Girard sees this described in the Scriptures. The biblical text which goes further in this revelation is possibly Isaiah 40.3-4. It begins with the description of a crisis, where all mountains are eradicated and all valleys elevated. … I would say it is the most tremendous

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figura of the sacrificial crisis, of the violent undifferentiation process. … The fact that John the Baptist quotes that passage … means that Jesus emerges at the cynosure of a crisis which calls for the designation of a new scapegoat, and this would be Jesus.35

This is the chaos imagery of myths and the towu wabohu of Genesis 1. In the Bible, it is often associated with the wrath of God or, in Revelation, with the wrath of the Lamb. We might choose to read the wrath language of the Bible in terms of what Girard would call a sacrificial crisis.

Romans 1.18-32 If we apply this to Romans 1, we see that Paul describes humanity as being founded on a lie. In the light of the gospel and its proclamation, human cultures are tipped into sacrificial crises that are signs of impending apocalypse. While the passages of Scripture that are more obviously apocalyptic in nature seem to present cosmic chaos, this passage seems to suggest that the revelation of the gospel may be linked to a process characterized by deepening levels of moral chaos, which culminates in the existence of categories of people who know what is right and what is wrong but who not only choose to do wrong but also encourage others to do the same (1.32). The process begins with the parallel revelations of the gospel and the wrath of God (1.17-18). The key issue seems to be the suppression of known truth; this links the beginning of this part of the argument in 1.18 and 19 with its conclusion in 1.32. From 1.2 onwards, Paul tells a kind of anti-history of humanity, telling the story, from creation onwards, as one of moral decline rather than in terms of any form of progress. The explicit primal offence is named at 1.23 as idolatry; humans exchange the glory of the invisible God for images; the creature receives the honour due to the creator. This is the distortion that underlies all the others. Glory is given not to the creator but to representations of created things that reveal the creator. One thing that could be noted here is some kind of mimetic transference. Art is a means by which humans represent reality. All art, all mimesis, necessarily involves a distortion. However, the primal distortion is one in

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which a representation of a visible creature is used to stand for the invisible source of being. God is (mis-) represented in the form of part of God’s creation. The representation, the distortion, becomes the object of worship, is made the ultimate value, and a host of further distortions follow, as night follows day. In Chapter 4 of Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross (1992),36 Hamerton-Kelly discusses this passage along with Genesis 2.3. He explicates Adam’s transgression as the deformation of desire, and so understands sin as an activity associated with mimetic rivalry with God. Eve is encouraged to imitate God’s supposed acquisitive desire for the fruit, and so God ceases to be the one to whom thanks are due as the source of all things but becomes perceived as a rival for an object of desire. This leads to the process described by the Apostle in which wrath is understood as the divine non-resistance to human evil. In his discussion of this passage in Living in the End Times (1997), Alison takes a similar view. Human injustice keeps ‘truth a prisoner to injustice’.37 It is this phenomenon that is called the wrath or the wrath of God. It is not something that God does actively. Alison contends that to talk of the wrath of God ‘in an active sense is merely a human way of talking’.38 I am not sure that this view takes adequate account of the use of the word ‘wrath’ in judicial contexts. Nevertheless, Alison is very helpful in his discussion of the passage’s language of ‘handing over’ or ‘giving up’ (1.24, 26, 28). He points out that the same word paredoken is used for God’s handing over of Jesus to humans (an observation also made in Vanstone 1982). It is this that defines wrath; the killing of Jesus by sinful humans who cannot or will not receive the truth. Paul argues that this primal misrepresentation, this idolatry, leads to the degrading of the body (1.24) and then (1.26) to a degrading of passions and finally (1.28 onwards) to an inability or an unwillingness to tell right from wrong. Of course, it is hard to argue that the whole of this story is revealed in the gospel. The nature of the primal sin was known, at least among the Jews, for many centuries. What is new is that this reality becomes known among the nations; misrepresentation is exposed and this has its inevitable effect of making cultures unstable. Prohibitions against certain kinds of behaviours go unenforced because of lost differentiation and a corresponding loss of

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meaning. The end result is that cultures lose any capacity to decide between right and wrong, or good and bad. The gospel provokes the sacrificial crisis but Paul explicates it in terms of moral rather than cosmic chaos. This is one manifestation of the wrath. Let me remind you that Girard insists that the proclamation of the gospel exposes the lie on which human societies are founded and so sends them, sooner or later, into sacrificial crises. The Bible describes such crises in apocalyptic language, often articulating the crisis in terms of the experience of an unravelling cosmos; the fundamental distinctions on which creation is founded become blurred. Here Paul describes the same crisis in moral terms. This argument is part of a wider argument that asserts that every category of humanity has no case it can offer before the judgement of God (3.19). Of course, Paul does not always articulate the apocalypse in this way. There is talk of the birth pangs of creation in Romans 8, of the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15, of the Lord’s descent from heaven in 1 Thessalonians 4.5 and the Lord’s annihilation of the lawless one in 2 Thessalonians 2. On the whole, I think that Wright is correct to see some kind of division in Paul’s talk of the end. The end has impacted the world already and is impacting it still. There remains an eschatological end still to come, though it would not be amiss to describe the historical impacts as eschatological in a certain sense. The end to come will see judgement and the final execution of God’s wrath as a means of bringing judgement and hence justice and so restoring creation and enabling it to fulfil its original purposes. The language of wrath belongs to both the historical process initiated by the Christ event and to the related eschatological judgement. Girard, I think, articulates things rather differently. He speaks little of a judgement beyond history, but sees history moving very quickly towards the decisive judgement. The apocalyptic moment is not future but past. The cross of Christ is the moment of revelation and his resurrection the decisive judgement. Now judgement belongs to human beings who must decide whether we will destroy ourselves or forgive one another. If we were to use the language of justification in this context, we might say that the justified are those that have been embraced by and have absorbed the gracious revelation of the Victim, and so give glory to the true God, and therefore have learnt to forgive.

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Conclusions Wright’s reappraisal of Paul is an astonishing achievement. It seems to me that he is right about so many things. In many of his readings, he makes powerful use of preterist interpretations that enable him to follow Dodd and Caird in understanding apocalyptic language as a metaphor for events within history. These make him a potential ally for Girardian readings of those passages, I think, particularly of the synoptic apocalypses. Nevertheless, his understanding of wrath as primarily an eschatological, in the sense of a transhistorical, phenomenon linked to divine judgement is not something found in Girard’s published thinking, so far as I am aware. My own view is that he overstates the eschatological dimension of wrath, and understates its manifestation in history. Nevertheless, I think that exegetically he is right to see it as having a transhistorical dimension. What Girard can offer to Wright is the idea of the sacrificial crisis, a way of making sense of why Paul seems to understand the gospel to be something that initiates or accelerates the process or phenomenon he calls ‘the wrath’. Of course, for Paul, this may have been a matter of intuition or prophetic insight, rather than being based on a Girardian cultural analysis. If Wright were to adopt this suggestion, or something like it, it might allow him to show more confidence in those of his exegetical findings that suggest a link between the gospel and the wrath. Girard, on the other hand, at least so far as his published writings are concerned, seems to be interested primarily in events within human history. For him and for his interpreters, the wrath is something being manifested in human experience and has no existence beyond that. It is not an attribute that his thinking readily allows you to posit as belonging to God. The historical processes initiated by the gospel may legitimately be named as wrath but these are not his direct work; that direct work is found in the sending of his Son, of raising him from the dead, the sending of the Paraclete and the inspiration of the Scriptures, especially the gospels. Judgement is happening now and is being exercised by humans in the decisions we take in the light of the awareness of ourselves gained in the light of the gospel. God has spoken already. Needless to say, I find all this quite attractive. However, I am not sure that it will stand up

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to exegetical scrutiny. It seems to me that Paul has space for an understanding of wrath beyond history as well as within it. Of course, I could be wrong. And then again Paul could be wrong. And I suppose even Girard could be wrong. And given some of the dire promises in his last book, I confess that I rather hope that he is. Even those of us who agree with him could not take much joy in joining him in saying ‘I told you so’ when the moment comes when violence reigns unchecked. This is where Wright’s exegetical work might be helpful. There is a transhistorical judgement at which the justified will be vindicated as a part of the process by which the creation is reconciled to God. Putting all this together, we might say that God has justified the Messiah Jesus along with those whom he represents. This was announced at the resurrection and will be confirmed at the final judgement. It is also currently being confirmed in history as the people of God are making it clear that they will be those vindicated at the judgement. Their primary characteristic is that, even in the midst of a sacrificial crisis, they know how to forgive. In conclusion then, I may be allowed to hope that the world may heed the gospel and learn forgiveness. And I may also hope in the possibility that within history or beyond it, God will bring a true and righteous judgement that will contribute to the process by which the whole creation is reconciled to Godself. For while humans may not know right from wrong or N. T. Wright from wrath, some of us must surely hope that God does so and will choose to make it plain.

Notes 1 S. Finamore, ‘The Gospel and the Wrath of God in Romans 1’, in Understanding, Studying and Reading: New Testament Essays in Honour of John Ashton, JSNTSS 153, ed. C. Rowland and C. H. T. Fletcher-Louis (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998). 2 C. Dodd, Epistle of Paul to the Romans. Moffatt New Testament Commentary (New York: Harper and Row, 1932); C. H. Dodd, ‘Thirty Years of NT Study’, Religion in Life 47 (1978): 320–9. 3 A. T. Hanson, The Wrath of the Lamb (London: SPCK, 1957).

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4 K. Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays (Philadelphia: Fortress; also (1977) London: SCM, 1976). 5 S. Westerholm, Justification Reconsidered: Rethinking a Pauline Theme (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B Eerdmans, 2013). 6 Westerholm, Justification Reconsidered, 21. 7 S. Finamore, God, Order and Chaos: René Girard and the Apocalypse (London: Paternoster; Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009), 201. 8 M. Bockmuehl, Revelation and Mystery in Ancient Judaism and Pauline Christianity (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1990). 9 G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980). 10 N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 2 vols. (London: SPCK, 2013), 766. 11 N. T. Wright, The Letter to the Romans: Introduction, Commentary and Reflections, New Interpreters Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), 428. 12 R. Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 151. 13 L. Morris, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; also Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1988), 76–7. 14 Girard, R. (1965), Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 15 R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; London: Athlone, 1972), 309. 16 R. Girard,‘To double business bound’: Essays on Literature, Mimesis and Anthropology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; London: Athlone, 1978), xvi. 17 R. Girard, The Scapegoat (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University; London: Athlone, 1986), 212. 18 Girard, R. (1987a), Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. Research undertaken in collaboration with J-M. Oughourlian and G. Lefort, Stanford Ca: Stanford University Press. 19 R. Hamerton-Kelly (ed.), Violent Origins: Walter Burkert, René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 144. 20 R. Girard I See Satan Fall like Lightning (New York: Maryknoll, 2001), 192. 21 R. Girard, Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture; with P. Antonello and J. C. de Castro Rocha (London and New York: Continuum International, 2007), 262.

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22 R. Girard, Battling to the End: Conversations with B. Chantre (East Lansing, MI: State University Press, 2010), 201. 23 Girard, Battling to the End. 24 Ibid., 9. 25 Girard, R. (1987b), ‘Generative Scapegoating’ in R. Hamerton-Kelly (ed) 1987, Violent Origins: Walter Burkert, René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation, 73-105, Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press. 26 Ibid., 141. 27 S. Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined (London: Penguin Books, 2012). 28 Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 1. 29 Girard, Battling to the End, 39–40, 68. 30 Ibid., x. 31 Ibid., 103. 32 Ibid., xi. 33 Ibid., 35. 34 Ibid., xvi. 35 Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 209–10. 36 R. Hamerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992). 37 J. Alison, Living in the End Times: The Last Things Re-Imagined (London: SPCK, 1997); also published as Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, rev. edn (London: SPCK, 2010), 46. 38 Alison, Living in the End Times.

5

Paul and Girard Agonistes: Against Theological Violence Anthony Bartlett

In 1978, Girard published the French original of his watershed book Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, one year before E. P. Sanders brought out Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Sanders’ book lays excellent claim to mark the contemporary beginning of the so-called ‘New Perspective in Paul’.1 The book most singly and obviously catalyses the major treatments of the ‘New Perspective’ writers, and also those of its opponents. The fresh territory it opened around the question of Paul and Judaism triggered a seismic movement in the standard perception of Paul’s teachings, especially within the Reformed tradition. The nearness of the publishing years of this book and Girard’s should not be taken lightly. The ground of Christian meaning had shifted under our feet as the twentieth century became progressively more conscious and critical of its own traumatic and violent experience. These two scholars, each in his own way, were a key part of that shift, both reflecting and propelling it, and always in terms of a revolutionary relationship to the biblical text.2 We will turn to the biblical relationship momentarily, but before we do so, I want to picture more fully what the conjunction of these two frameworks – Girard and ‘New Perspective’ – means, to underline what it is to see one fully in connection to the other. It is as if two disciplines or pillars of thought were being pulled together at a dizzying angle by a unified force, and what we are witnessing is nothing less than the shaking and cracking of temple walls. The image brings us naturally to the figure of Samson in the temple of the Philistines; and to the eponym ‘Agonistes’ used by Milton for his poem, and also employed here for this chapter.

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Samson Agonistes has been noted as ‘a work of violence to its very core. It extols violence. Indeed, it exults in violence’.3 The play is also characterized as ‘a spectacular act of holy violence and revenge’.4 Milton supported the republican cause in the English Civil War and acted as propagandist against episcopacy and for the cause of the Commonwealth. It is probable he wrote the poem out of bitter disappointment at the defeat of the Commonwealth, giving his feelings a biblical turn. The trope of Samson’s blindness in the work stands for a spiritual blindness or failure brought on by human desire, but which is resolved somehow in the violent climax of the poem. The roof falls in on top of failure, and then all is some kind of peace. But the use of a hyperviolent event from the Old Testament in order to make sense of a bit of Christian-era history brings us in short order to the question of theological violence – the use of generatively violent images and themes to construct theological meaning. Milton stood at a point where two dissonant readings of the Christian tradition struggled head-on in violent conflict, as, indeed, was the case for all the wars of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.5 Here is the classic agon of theological violence that we are used to, the struggle to assert dominance, both intellectual and political through the use of generative violence. In contrast, the agon of Girard and the ‘New Perspective’ is different. It is intellectual in nature, but it also points to something else, something I believe is entirely new. It suggests a struggle for a different kind of humanity, one of effective peace. It represents, I think, a planetary shift that questions theological violence itself, and shakes our human foundations like never before. There is another theme in the poem, as I mentioned, that of blindness. It is one of darkness and regret for Milton, but it is also very relevant here. Have we not been ‘eyeless in Gaza’ up to now, seeing with eyes blinded by multifaceted violence? Does the gaining of fresh anthropological and biblical perspectives signal now not so much a new temple as the possibility of a new vision of the land itself? We understand that to say something like this will, inevitably, become agonistic with what previously counted as vision, and that struggle is what is engaged in this chapter. Yet, the struggle is uniquely epistemological in character: a matter of metanoia or a new mindset, rather than a new political or ecclesial order to be founded by force.

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It is well known that Sanders presented Paul in terms of ‘a solution seeking a problem’.6 N. T. Wright puts it this way: Sanders proposed … that Paul had actually, by his own account, been a good, blameless and successful Jew (Philippians 3:4-6), that he had seen nothing wrong with the Torah, and that the fresh revelation of Jesus on the Damascus Road forced him to conclude that there must after all have been some kind of a ‘problem’ to which Jesus was the ‘solution’. Sanders then uses this as a way of explaining Paul’s apparently bizarre and contradictory statements about the Torah: that they were not thought out or logically arranged but were simply the result of Paul waving his arms around, believing that something must have been wrong with his native Judaism and its Law but not having the time or the inclination to work out exactly what, and so resorting to a string of odd, disjointed polemical remarks on the subject.7

The central claim, that pre-Christian Paul was a blameless Jew, and not at all conscience-wracked, released a landslide of new thought on Paul with Romans as its centre.8 The core points of the discussion are the classic Reformation themes of ‘works righteousness’ and ‘justification’. If Paul did not have these things in his sights as a problem, what then is he writing about when he talks of ‘works of the law’, and what does he mean by ‘justification’? The answer came notably from two scholars James Dunn and N. T. Wright. Here is Dunn’s new understanding of works of the law. ‘Works of the law’ is the Pauline term for ‘covenantal nomism’, where both words are important – law as functioning within and in relation to the covenant, law as expression of a safeguard for the covenant, law as indicating Israel’s part of the agreement graciously initiated by God.9

The covenant is itself grace – not a state to be achieved by human merit – and the law simply functions to keep people within prevenient grace. Thus far this is entirely Sanders’ position. However, a discernible problem may emerge out of this, and here is how Dunn describes it. The law, thus understood, came to reinforce Israel’s privilege, the law as marking out this people in its set-apartness to God. As God’s choice of Israel drew the corollary that God’s saving righteousness was restricted to Israel, so the law’s role in defining Israel’s holiness to God became also its role in

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separating Israel from the nations. In this way the positive sense of ‘works of the law’, as equivalent to Paul’s talk of the obedience of faith, became the more negative sense which we find in Paul – works of the law as not only maintaining Israel’s covenant status, but as also protecting Israel’s privileged status and restricted prerogative.10

It is not that there is anything wrong with the law or the justice stemming from it. Rather, at a secondary anthropological level the whole thing gets changed into another animal entirely, a creature of rivalry with ‘the other’, of opposition and implied superiority. The problem shifts enormously. It is not a question of first-century Judaism trying to pull itself up by its bootstraps to God – God had already raised it up – but there was, putting it in Girardian terms, a mimetic tendency to translate difference into competition, election into object of desire. And, if so, there is now a whole new anthropological discussion to be had, not one about a value exchange with God, but a sense of institutionalized status in relation to other human beings. N. T. Wright makes much the same general case, but he massively enlarges the biblical and historical narrative in which to understand God’s work in Christ. The narrative is expressed in a series of wrist-bending volumes, plus smaller companion books, detailing the historical grounds of New Testament theology, as well as indicating its meaning for today. It is Wright’s panoramic vision, his prolific output and his lively and personable style that more than anything has put the ‘New Perspective’ on the map as a serious contender for evangelical Protestant allegiance. His latest major effort is, appropriately, on Paul, in two volumes, and coming in at 1,660 pages, it exceeds in length his combined two successive treatments of the historical Jesus (1,558 pages). This on its own demonstrates how indispensable the interpretation of Paul is to the Reformed tradition and, indeed, what an agon or struggle that interpretation generates in our time. But it is the grand narrative scope and rhetorical vigour of Wright’s scholarship that gives his eventual argument so much credibility and appeal. In his treatment of Paul, Wright takes the argument in Galatians as a critical starting place. It is the summoning of the figure of Abraham that establishes the narrative framework and tells us what essentially is going on. The covenant and promises made with Abraham are the beginning of a great story arc in which

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God wishes and intends to bring about the success of his human project. ‘The covenant [with Abraham] always had in view the liberation of the entire human race from the plight of Genesis 3-11. … God’s single purpose through the Abrahamic covenant was to rescue the human race from the present evil age’.11 The mention of Genesis 3.11 puts us on familiar Girardian ground: the mytho-realist stories of rivalry and violence in Genesis illustrate the mimetic universe in which we exist, and they provide Girard with crucial biblical evidence for his anthropology. As Girard has said: Il n’y pas d’autre homme que l’homme de la chute. Au début c’est la chute. (‘There is no other human being than that of the fall. In the beginning is the fall’).12 We will return to the Girardian vision shortly, but first we continue with Wright’s narrative. The content or constitution of liberation from the evil age is emphatically not a lifting-off from this benighted earth into an immaterial heaven. This assumed otherworldly salvation, ‘going to heaven when you die’, has … contextualized and conditioned the ways in which scholars and preachers alike have handled the questions which swirl around ‘salvation’: questions, not least of justification, the law, ‘works’, ‘grace’, and so on. But the secondTemple texts themselves tell strongly against an ‘otherworldly’ salvation; against (that is) that the ultimate aim of humans in general and Jews in particular was the escape of saved souls from their present embodiment and indeed from space, time and matter altogether. In … the continuous story we have been examining, the aim and goal does not have to do with the abolition of the universe of space, time and matter, or the escape of humans from such a wreckage, but with its consummation.13

Wright’s insistence on a this-worldly understanding of salvation also bumps against an individualized religious sense. I again quote Wright at some length in order to make explicit the ‘anthropological’ story he is shaping: If … we insist in projecting on to the texts the questions of individual salvation, in a classic western heaven-or-hell scheme, trying to discern where they fit in terms of the ‘qualifications’ people might have for the one or the other, and how (either through God’s grace or human merit or some combination of the two) some might attain such a salvation, we will simply miss the entire story within which the writers of those texts were living. And in doing this we will, almost certainly, distort quite radically the other terms that cluster

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around the larger notion of ‘salvation’. … This relatively modern approach to the texts, understanding them in terms of a non-spatio-temporal salvation, is basically telling the wrong story. It collapses Israel’s story, the main theme of book after book … into ‘my story’, the story of the individual soul on the way to heaven or hell. In the modern world, my story is then contextualized, by implication, within a larger implicit narrative, either the modern dream of ‘personal fulfillment’, or the Platonic one of leaving the world and going to a disembodied one instead; or some combination of the two. But to tell the story like this is arguably to take a large step away from the basic Jewish worldview and towards an essentially pagan one.14

Wright specifically invokes story in its anthropological sense as ‘mythos’, quoting Clifford Geertz. ‘We must know how we feel about things; and to know how we feel about things we need the public images of sentiment that only ritual, myth and art can provide.’15 Once again, this places Wright fundamentally in the same territory as Girard. Myth is one of the great triad of culture (ritual, myth, prohibitions), which, according to Girard, structured the order and meaning arising from original violence. So if Wright is now suggesting that Paul is telling a radically new or transformative story from Genesis 3.11, then, cutting back to a Girardian perspective, one may assume that this can only be a story seminally at variance with that of generative violence. There is little anthropological space between the two thinkers at this point, and it only seems to be a matter of finding an overarching concept or thematic to bring them together. Regarding ‘works of the law’ and ‘justification’, Wright agrees with Dunn that the former amounts to boundary markers setting Judaism off from Gentiles, something he also terms ‘ethnic identity’ given by such things as dietary rules and circumcision.16 In his reading of Galatians 2.15-16, he remarks that ‘in the gospel this ethnic identity is dismantled so that a new identity may be constructed, in which the things that separated Jew from Gentile … no longer matter’.17 It is a coming together of Jew and Gentile on the basis of a revolutionary Jewish ‘new’ covenant long intended by its God. We are now, of course, in difficult terrain for reasons inevitable in relation to interpretation of Paul: What does such language imply regarding contemporary Christian-Jewish relations? There are three remarks to make. First, Wright’s

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narrative approach sees a profound continuity between Israel’s covenant identity and Israel’s covenant purpose; it was for the sake of the latter that the former existed.18 Thus the redrawing of the covenant around the Messiah was a continuous effect of the original covenant. Second, Wright recognizes that there is such a thing as ‘Jewish supersessionism’, that is, a redefining of Judaism from within Judaism. Qumran was of this type, and so was primitive Christianity.19 Third, what was divided in the first century can be united in the twenty-first on the grounds, not of who is/was right or wrong, but precisely of the final purpose of the Abrahamic covenant.20 What is ‘justification’? The answer comes from a chain of signifiers or motifs – a method characteristic of Wright’s exegesis, insisting that we cannot understand many first-century biblical terms without giving them a linear and linked content. Thus, dikaiosunē means the God of the covenant has called people into membership of the family of Abraham, via the death and resurrection of the Messiah, and the badge of membership was pistis/faith, the living sign that a person was a Messiah-person.21 Justification is to be reckoned by God to be a member of his family, something that has a forensic dimension (God’s subjective or ‘possessive’ justice at work) but not a forensic essence (God’s abstract righteousness imputed to the individual)22; ‘Justification’ in the first century was not about how someone might establish a relationship with God. It was about God’s eschatological definition, both future and present, of who was, in fact, a member of his people. … In standard Christian theological language, it wasn’t so much about soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church.23

An immediate problem in this understanding is that, on the one hand, it appears to reinvent the ‘church catholic’ at the heart of the Reform, and on the other, given that Wright is certainly not advocating an actual return to some grand church institution, it seems vague about how it can be experienced – in comparison with the powerful Reform emphasis on imputed personal righteousness bringing serenity to the troubled conscience. This apparent lack would seem to militate against acceptance of Wright’s ‘New Perspective’  – however, it is far from the case. The transcript of a talk by J. Ligon Duncan on the ‘Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals’ website and entitled ‘Attractions of the

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New Perspective(s) on Paul’ lists no fewer than eleven contextual reasons why Wright’s approach has become persuasive for young evangelicals.24 The one that stood out to me was ‘The diminished view of sin of the New Perspective’. Duncan says this: Frankly, there are many people out there who are looking for relief from introspection and guilt in some other way than the way that is being offered in the traditional, biblical, evangelical teaching on the Gospel and justification. … I think that is one thing that makes the NPP attractive. It provides instant relief from introspection in an entirely intellectual manner. Call it a rationalist’s once-for-all-time auricular confession, with accompanying perpetual plenary indulgence!

You can hear a hint of the ‘good old cause’ in this dismissal, but what if the sense of sin is really not what it was? What if it is no longer so personal and introspective, but more relational and social? Indeed, I believe it is the positive sense of human transformation, rather than reactivity to introspection and guilt, that fuels the attraction of the ‘New Perspective’25 – and in this connection, it is perhaps the Christology at the core of Wright’s work that is the most pivotal to its new-found followers. Wright’s remarkable account of Jesus as Christos reconstitutes that word in its dynamic New Testament sense as Messiah, rather than an empty proper name or, later, an abstract claim to metaphysical or legal status. Following Richard Bauckham, he shows how Jesus’ position in the New Testament as somehow sharing the same terms and names as God derives, not from formal conceptualization, but from a dramatic experience of Jesus being included in the same functional identity as the single God of the Old Testament. According to Bauckham, Wright says: Jewish Monotheism … has three aspects: creational, eschatological, cultic. God is the sole creator; he will at the last establish his universal kingdom; and he and he alone is to be worshipped. … He (Bauckham) concludes that Paul, like the rest of early Christianity, unhesitatingly ascribed to Jesus precisely this triple divine identity.26

It is not the ‘what’ of a metaphysical God that early Christianity was talking about, but the dynamic ‘who’ of the God of Israel. To this Christology of

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practical divine identity, Wright adds a key mobilizing element. Above all, in the prophet Isaiah, God had promised a second Exodus, his return in glory to Zion. Now, in his life, death and resurrection Jesus had accomplished the new Exodus, had done in person what Israel’s God had said what he would do in person. He had inaugurated God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. … Jesus’ first followers found themselves not only (as it were) permitted to use God-language for Jesus, but compelled to use Jesus-language for the One God.27

To be ‘in Messiah’, en Christou, is, of course, a celebrated motif in Paul, and its so-called ‘participationist’ meaning has sometimes been set off against the forensic sense of justification so characteristic of Luther and the Reform.28 The way Wright deals with this is quite striking, because once again it removes the questions from a supposed ideal or ‘mystical’ realm and at the same time links it back to justification. The event of the resurrection is pivotal. Because the meaning of resurrection was a definitive eschatological event that in all the Jewish literature implied the whole of humanity, the fact that it had occurred singly in Jesus necessarily involved everyone in that meaning, and those who entered into relationship with him were at once a living part of that meaning. The full range of Paul’s ‘incorporative’ language can be thoroughly and satisfactorily explained on this hypothesis: that he regarded the people of God and the Messiah of God as so bound up together that what was true of the one was true of the other. And this becomes in turn the vital key in understanding the close and intimate link between ‘incorporation’ and ‘justification’, between ‘participatory’ and ‘forensic’ accounts of Paul’s soteriology – not to mention the themes of salvation history, ‘apocalyptic’ and transformation.29

Another way of saying this is that the universe itself has been definitively changed by resurrection, and those who are in relation to this change are in a new reality, and that is what it means to be justified! More of this in a moment. Another link in the chain – or perhaps I should say another broken link in the chains of an old perspective – is the fresh reading of pistis in some of the Pauline texts. Almost always translated as ‘faith’, it can also mean ‘faithfulness’. Thus Romans 3.22 is a crossroads of translation. Normally,

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it is rendered something like this: ‘The righteousness of God has been disclosed … the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe’ (New Revised Standard Version; compare New International Version: ‘This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe’). Something happening through ‘faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe’ is, of course, redundant. Wright translates instead: ‘God’s faithful covenant justice comes into operation through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah, for the benefit of all who have faith.’ And similarly at 3.26: ‘(God) declares to be in the right everyone who trusts in/shares in the faithfulness of Jesus’; rather than ‘he justifies him who has faith in Jesus (dikaiounta ton ek pisteōs Iēsou)’.30 We can hear the gears crashing as the great confessional understandings of Jesus take leave of a well-worn path and head up-country into uncharted territory. If what counts is God’s righteousness in faithfulness to his own creational covenantal project and this is manifest through the faithfulness of Jesus unto death, and this faithfulness becomes available to all others through the resurrection, then we are dealing with an entirely non-transactional, purely gracious divine initiative. In agreement with this, Wright has almost nothing to say about the traditional theme of atonement.31 He recognizes and rehearses Paul’s oblique use of sacrificial language and metaphor, but it plays no part in his overall thesis.32 That is because his narrative method and dynamic Jesus-based Christology circumvents a traditionally Anselmian and medieval approach. His thought is entirely messianic, as in the Messiah-as-such provides the whole solution to the human problem, neither more nor less. As he puts it in one synoptic, italicized sentence: ‘The boundaries of God’s people now consist of the Messiah and his death and resurrection’.33 Here is one agonistic pillar falling, that of the legal and metaphysical mindset, which has dominated soteriology since Augustine, replaced by something much more holistic, narratival and historical. But we are also close to the other falling pillar, and without it I believe Wright’s narrative approach could remain vulnerable. The grand sweep of his story could remain simply that: a grand récit, a meta-narrative without validation beyond its own internal rhetoric. The question could be asked, but yes, it seems that Jesus’ faithfulness to death is the semiotic fulcrum around which everything turns, but why? Why death, and why this death?

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In at least partial answer, the thought of René Girard supplies a compelling account of the historical impact of the biblical story and Christ’s passion in particular: what he calls its ‘powerful constraining effect’ in history, bringing to light the surrogate victim as the structural and semiotic basis of actual human culture.34 Girard has been called the Darwin of the social sciences, demonstrating the dark violence at the heart not just of natural selection but now of our ‘higher’ cultural attainments. His retelling of the human drama brings Genesis in evidence – in particular, the episode of Cain and Abel; and it provides a hermeneutic key for a great deal of the rest.35 But if Jewish and Christian scriptures have played such a singular role in unlocking and exposing these violent foundations, then it would seem necessary that there is with them a congruent, alternative non-violent foundation, one based in another core human semiotic, other than violence. Girard has also played his part in undermining traditional atonement approaches, putting him close to the same non-transactional territory as the ‘New Perspective’.36 But theologically, his work has limped not a little, by reason, I believe, of the relative lack of a positive theological-scriptural narrative – not just one revelatory of violence. This is where the ‘New Perspective’ perhaps establishes its value even more forcefully, to provide Girard’s vision with a much needed, more integral revelatory content. At the same time, when the ‘New Perspective’ is underpinned by Girard’s anthropology, it provides a much more developed vision of revelation’s actual dynamic. We will return to this complementary equation, but first we must look at one last question raised by the ‘New Perspective’, one that will prepare us more thoroughly for the Girardian discussion. In telling his biblical story, Wright has been struggling, on the one hand, against a Bultmannian-individualist divorce from history and, on the other, against an apocalyptic reading, amounting to an invasion of history entirely from the outside, a iustitia aliena that appears to render the Old Testament narrative redundant (for the key author, see Käsemann).37 Wright acknowledges the sense of in-breaking – above all, the shock of a crucified and risen Messiah – but he wants to place it as an intelligible shock within the narrative whole, accenting a deep, if eruptive, continuity with ancient and prophetic Israel. The narrative whole is, in fact, Wright’s golden compass, his hermeneutic DNA in every way, tying one piece to another in an evolutionary unfolding.

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At the same time, someone who also belongs to the ‘New Perspective’ household but places the emphasis squarely on apocalyptic is Douglas Campbell. The Deliverance of God38 is yet another geological event in Pauline studies, a powerful interruption in its own right of our understanding of Paul. Campbell gives us the sense of something dramatically and constitutively new, without a logic derived from the existing corrupted world, such that a selfinterested logic of ‘justification’ is able to opt for as salvation. As he argues, everything is a discovery, as it were, ex nihilo. It becomes apparent only by way of involvement within this extraordinary process of salvation just how desperate the prior condition of humanity was ‘in Adam’. … Hence, the perception of human incapacity is grounded not in itself but in this event of transformation, and this stands to reason. If it were grounded in an analysis of human incapacity per se, then its conclusions would be self-contradictory; a corrupt human condition could not derive accurate conclusions about itself. … Thus any knowledge of ‘the problem’ for Paul … is grounded in the revelation of the solution – in an apocalyptic moment and process.39

The exegesis that supports this understanding is based on an extraordinary interpretative strategy that reads Chapters 5 through 8 of Romans as Paul’s actual ‘good news’ and eliminates large portions of 1.16 through 3.20 as the words of an established Christian ‘Teacher’ in Rome against whose legalistic understanding of the gospel Paul is carrying out a pre-emptive strike, prior to arriving in Rome himself. The rhetorical technique being attributed to Paul is the diatribe, using speech-in-person to characterize the thought of the opponent. The working out of this strategy does not matter here; what is important is that by getting rid, in particular, of the accusatory elements of Romans 1 as Pauline doctrine, Campbell effectively undermines the ethical fortress of justification doctrine. There is no prior ethical condemnation from which we may be saved via the substitutionary death of Jesus. Everything becomes an absolute act by God rescuing us from a condition we did not know we were in! Indeed, as Campbell argues, this is the only appropriate solution by a benevolent God. The old, enslaved, Adamic being is terminated by [Christ’s] death. The Son is then raised to new life and to a new existence as no less than the template of a

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new humanity ‘that he might be the firstborn of many brothers’. (Rom. 8.29, Douglas Campbell trans.)40

And again a (revealed) pessimistic anthropology – and consequently unconditional soteriology – is reinforced by the radical transformational nature of the salvation that is being experienced: human beings … can scarcely draw themselves into the death and reconstitution of another. (66)

Part of the attraction of this dramatically bold analysis is the way it deals with the ‘wrath of God revealed from heaven’ (1.18) as part of Paul’s Gospel, making it, instead, the voice of the Teacher. Even if Campbell’s textual hermeneutic fails the test of time, his sensibility surely reflects a very contemporary concern for theological violence. Quite understandably, in Campbell’s account, Anselmian atonement falls away as a false economic intrusion in the unconditional gospel (50–5, 76). Thus Campbell opens another sinkhole under the traditional justification account and must form part of my initial image of one of the pillars crumbling. In itself, this cannot be simply considered a continued polemic from sixteenth-century debates. A new sensibility and even world view is at work. Campbell’s vigorous apocalyptic motif brings us fully into parallel territory with René Girard. The discoverer of sacrificial foundations has made apocalyptic a central part of his thought, as a real anthropological category arising directly from the revelation of the victim and its destabilizing impact on our world. Girard makes reference to apocalyptic in several of his works, but Battling to the End (2010) is the book where it becomes entirely thematic. In Girard, we have the anthropological second coming, as it were, of a biblical concept. But what is substantially lacking in Girard’s version is this positive sense of deliverance, of God’s unconditional, dynamic action to set humanity free: of the template of a new humanity communicated by the risen Messiah. This is where the destabilized or humbled pillar of justification doctrine may interact constructively with Girard’s crumbling pillar of sacrificial violence, with the first both encouraging the collapse of the temple and at the same time providing a new terra firma, or ground-base for a new vision. I want to underline this possibility by thinking more theologically about Girard’s theory.

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From a Girardian mimetic perspective, Protestant ‘works righteousness’ – meriting salvation – can readily be seen in terms of mimetic conflictivity. In other words, that particular element of justification theory would be endorsed by Mimetic Theory (MT): if I ‘do something’ for God along the lines of buying God’s favour, there is necessarily an implied violence requiring God’s reciprocity, and this, of course, negates divine initiative and transforming power (the essential account of deferred violence in exchange is still Marcel Mauss).41 Inversely, in a Girardian universe, the revelation of constitutive violence has to be by an agency that is completely other to it. Any constitutive violence in the Cross, for example, would have immediately obscured that revelation, plunging it once more into generative violence and at the point of death becoming just one more foundational sacrifice. Effectively, the Roman Empire would have won. But if the Cross genuinely discloses human violence, then it must be itself constituted by profound non-violence, and as such its ‘merits’ cannot be received by the violence of exchange. Instead, there has to be unconditional gift reconstituting the self so, by a real assimilation or imitation, it can reply in kind. I take it that this, in fact, is Campbell’s understanding. Girard also critiques the traditional theories of atonement. As he says, Medieval and modern theories of redemption all look in the direction of God for the causes of the Crucifixion: God’s honor, God’s justice, even God’s anger, must be satisfied. These theories don’t succeed because they don’t seriously look in the direction where the answer must lie: sinful humanity, human relations, mimetic contagion, which is the same thing as Satan. They speak much of original sin but they fail to make the idea concrete. That is why they give an impression of being arbitrary and unjust to human beings, even if they are theologically sound.42

That last phrase is Girard’s ‘plausible deniability’, his perennial claim not to tread on theological territory – and what he means by ‘arbitrary and unjust’, I would guess, is in terms of someone having to pay a penalty for a condition for which he is not responsible, and on behalf of a people who have themselves been born into it as their actual way of being human. Instead, Girard sees the revelation of the victim as a kind of knowledge setting us free. The complex influence of Christianity spreads in the form of a kind of knowledge unknown to pre-Christian societies, and it continually penetrates

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them in a more and more profound fashion. This knowledge, which Paul says comes from the Cross, is not esoteric at all. To grasp it, we need only ascertain that we all now observe and understand situations of oppression and persecution that earlier societies did not detect or took to be inevitable.43

In this statement, there are some highly significant markers for what might be called a Girardian understanding of the Cross, and for its relation to the ‘New Perspective’. It reflects Girard’s core thought of the Cross as revelatory of knowledge regarding human scapegoating and, beyond that, of human origins in violence. It is evident in Wright’s and Campbell’s account of Romans that a new thought of human existence has dawned in the Risen Crucified, but it can hardly be given a primary designation as knowledge. It is much more an event, an entirely new relationship with and to a new humanity, reconfiguring all previous relationships. For Wright, it is the gift of a covenant status by a righteous God, and for Campbell, a deliverance of God, but it is always via the faithfulness of the Messiah for the sake of faith/faithfulness in others (dikaiosunē theou … apokalúptetai ek pisteōs eis pistin, Rom. 1.17). However, for that very reason the event has to be also a noetic event, one that deeply affects the self-awareness or mind of one touched by it. Campbell, for one, argues explicitly that the transformative event grounds the revolutionary new perception of Adamic being, which he also recognizes as a condition of violence.44 Wright’s insistence on telling a new and different story emphatically underlines the changed world view or structure of perception involved. So Girard’s claim of ‘a kind of knowledge’ stemming from the Cross is both generally correct from a ‘New Perspective’ point of view, and also, according to at least one of its practitioners, in its particular content of violence. In sum, once it is asserted that the death and resurrection of the Messiah is not some kind of legal transaction, but, rather, the apocalyptic disclosure of an entirely new form of humanity, then the anthropological revelation of knowledge flows naturally and necessarily. Moreover, if a new kind of humanity entered the human scene, it would in principle be impossible to stop its leaking at one level or another into general human awareness, and especially over the course of hundreds of years. Christianity has never been a mystery religion, but something proclaimed at the crossroads. Conversely then – and right on cue, we might say– we have today the Girardian account of the disclosure of

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violence in the scriptures – above all, in the passion and resurrection of the Christ – and thus a vivid contemporary confirmation of what a messianic humanity will, indeed, make plain about actual human existence. Nevertheless, Girard’s personal relationship with Christian theology was always uneasy; we may now say that, in fact, it forms the complementary agon to the struggle of the ‘New Perspective’ for the meaning of Paul – not simply a struggle with modern, secular thought, as so often seems the way in Girard. Girard’s struggle is with and for theology as such, although he tried to avoid the struggle as much as he could. Here is not the place to tell the whole story, but we can cover the key points. The 2014 issue of Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis and Culture (vol. 21) contains a lot of the basic information, including accounts of a unique and privileged correspondence between Girard and Raymund Schwager, Jesuit professor of Theology and dean at the Faculty of Catholic Theology in Innsbruck (see especially 29–73). It was mainly through conversation with Schwager that the key theological issues were broached. Essentially, three topics came up for debate: the language of sacrifice, mimesis and freedom, and revelation as knowledge. The first does not have to delay us, as language use changes with time, come what may, is ultimately not under our control, and if there is anything essential in the issue, it will come out in other ways. Ultimately, Girard accepted a version of ‘Christian’ sacrifice, one of radical renunciation of the object of desire, and also an external ‘structural similarity’ between this and the archaic kind.45 The question of mimesis and freedom revolves around a need to find an original freedom from which mimesis and violence may be seen as a ‘fall’. This is much more Schwager’s issue than Girard’s, and apparently also a product of Urs von Balthasar’s critique that Girard left no room for theologia naturalis.46 We see at once a theological difference from Campbell’s idea of Adamic existence knowing its incapacity not via natural awareness but only through the event of transformation – that human corruption only discovers itself through an apocalyptic moment and process. Girard appears eventually to have accepted Schwager’s position of an essential freedom that he believed nevertheless remained unrealized in evolutionary terms (i.e. before the revelation of Christ; see Contagion).47 At the same time, he gives evidence that it was, in fact, only through the revelation

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of Christ that the scapegoat mechanism could be revealed: ‘The scapegoat mechanism literally cannot be revealed without Christ’.48 This position would perhaps nicely reconcile a radical human capacity – that is, an authentic existential possibility or horizon – with a de facto state of anthropological non-appearance, needing the intervention of the Messiah to bring to concrete historical light, the seed of freedom dormant in humanity suddenly flowering in the latter days. One of Girard’s foremost theological interpreters, James Alison, grounds his thought in this retrospective viewpoint, ‘the order of discovery’ as he calls it.49 We cannot know the truth about ourselves until we meet the Christ, but then in the existential surprise of the encounter, it is recognized as having been the truth all along. It is the third issue that is most vital, because it touches on the nerve-point where Girard may be seen to interact with the ‘New Perspective’ – and it also demonstrates Girard’s agon or struggle most poignantly, almost, indeed, his blindness as the pillars fall atop. As we have seen, in 1999 Girard still said that the influence of Christianity was ‘a kind of knowledge’. But a long time before, in 1978, Schwager had critiqued this emphasis, saying the Cross was a source of life not knowledge.50 Then, in 1995, in an article written on the occasion of Schwager’s sixtieth birthday, Girard denied the possibility of ‘a neutral ground … a nonsacrificial point of view which sages and scholars can permanently occupy, in order to apprehend the truth at minimal cost to themselves’.51 This seems to imply that a scientific understanding or knowledge of a non-sacrificial humanity is not possible. Finally, in 2007, in a footnote to the four books in one, De la Violence á la Divinité, including Things Hidden, Girard appended a new footnote. He confesses there that his opposition [in Things Hidden] between ‘nonsacrificial thought’ that is always faithful to the inspiration coming from the Gospel texts and ‘sacrificial thought’ that is always unfaithful to the spirit of the Gospels … reflects an ultimate humanist and ‘progressive’ illusion in my interpretation of Christianity.52

Here the issue is not the language of sacrifice as such, but the identifying of a position from which an assessment about sacrifice might be made, that is, an epistemological position broadly available, creating accurate knowledge

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of sacrifice, and not strictly enfolded either in sacrificial violence or in the boundaries of a church and its confessional speech. There is here what looks like a slow painful retreat from knowledge as a transformative power in human history. Instead, the revelatory understanding of sacrificial origins seems to be returned to a kind of privileged and boundaried religious sphere, one that mediates the truth to this present one but such that truth may always be copyright and even alien, in which case it appears that Girard’s original methodology of scientific hypothesis has been recanted – but that can hardly be decided by Girard himself: the arguments and evidence of his books Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden remain in the public sphere and will surely continue to have their own impact. The question extends back to Girard’s first book, Deceit, Desire and the Novel, where everything is based on a ‘novelistic conversion’, something verbally analogous to Christian conversion, but, nevertheless, working purely in terms of the creative human art of observation and writing. Surely, this again is a form of knowledge? The root question then is what kind of knowledge is at work in the revelation of the victim – the question, indeed, towards which this chapter has always been leading. Is the knowledge simply analytic, scientific? Or is it rather ecclesially mediated, as the last quotes from Girard might lead you to think? Or is it neither, but rather a messianic knowledge deriving from an apocalypse of a Risen Crucified, from the recreating of God’s covenant boundaries as inherently inclusive around the faithful human, the Messiah? A Messiah whose human faithfulness produces its own faithful copy in others and so changes humanity in its concrete existence or anthropology? Looking at the question from the point of view of the ‘New Perspective’, we can rightly ask how, indeed, a ‘template of a new humanity’ could have come into the world and not continually incise on all forms of human self-awareness. If God recreated membership boundaries in terms not of external markers but a faithful connection to a faithful human – specifically one who prayed for his enemies as he was dying – then really there has arisen in human construction a space that is constitutively open. However much all forms of concretely organizing this space fall back into self-legitimating boundaries (i.e. the sacrificial), the radical new human instigation of the gospel carries itself forward.53

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In effect, Christ has changed the human context – not in the sense that any exceptional individual might, and still less a master of violence like an Alexander or Napoleon. Rather, Christ has shifted the ground-zero equation or primitive semiotic molecule of our human being, transforming its violent exchange into non-violent self-giving. This makes sense of the ‘New Perspective’ Messiah from an anthropological perspective: It is the manifestation of a radically inclusive, forgiving humanity, one that any human can connect with simply by imitating that faithfulness in his or her own being – in which case, I believe we are dealing with a distinct and definite messianic form of knowledge, something I would like to term anthroponoesis. This is not a Platonic knowledge, an ideal truth of the intellectual self. It is, as the term suggests, a knowledge of the human, which includes every dimension, neural, semiotic, linguistic, collective, temporal. If we take the human self to be such a complex, then the Risen non-violent humanity of the Messiah continues to permeate that complex in multiple, unpredictable ways, simply as a matter of communication and information in the human totality. The only way in which this could not happen is if we consider each human mind in a Cartesian way as an entirely discrete intellect, not part of a generative cultural order. But, of course Girard (along with many others, at least from Durkheim onwards) has demonstrated the collective origins of human thought and the ‘interdividual’ character of human selfhood. The ‘New Perspective’, by its accent on the boundary-breaking-yet-human nature of the Messiah – ‘The boundaries of God’s people now consist of the Messiah and his death and resurrection’ – does itself point to this new anthropological category. If it is the Messiah-as-such who creates a people, then there is simply a distinctive kind of humanity at its core, and then progressively, this humanity cannot help but leak out as a new understanding or knowledge of humankind. It is both from and to this new humanity that the gathered community of the Messiah speaks. The revolutionary subjectivity of Christ, of the Messiah, turns the subjectivity of the victim inside out, not as overwhelming violence but as forgiveness. This is its mode. The forgiveness is conditioned by the enormous crushing weight of what there is to forgive: this is its content. Christ’s revolutionary faithfulness, which is the faithfulness of God, has become, however remotely, part of the semiotic fabric of human consciousness. Is it not because of this

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subjectivity that the ‘New Perspective’ has arisen, that in a way we really are catching up with the first century, that today the issue is not exchange but the new mind of the Messiah which cannot be relegated to a second order, moral, spiritual or intellectual? If we see this mind as new covenant – a relationship with people as such – then the Messiah must be understood as a change in the epistemological uptake of what it means to be human, a new way of being human, a new way of knowing what it means to be human. Nor, we should insist, is it a fairy tale, given Girardian anthropology. If our semiotic constitution depends on an original act of violence, then a figure or trope that enters that system in a real historical way – because the claim is always that the figure was real in history – and works both to expose the original semiology and reverse its core dynamic, this figure must progressively become a dramatically human meaning. In this sense, narrative is absolutely central, as in taking a continual drip of serum, which reforms the biological formula of the recipient. We keep telling the story not because it is ‘just a story, albeit a good one’. We keep telling the story because it intervenes at the root level, both concrete and abstract, of human constitutions. The Messiah is both the template and serum of a new humanity. Thus, even if the Girardian intellectual argument about violence may appear inadequate to hold back the escalation to extremes (see Battling to the End), that is by no means the whole story. The ‘faithfulness’ of the Messiah is not simply an aesthetic or intellectual exercise; it is an apocalypsis of God’s covenant and deliverance of his people, and cannot be restricted either to propositions or to any partial, historical perspective. We can never pre-empt its destiny or final effect. This is where, then, one collapsing pillar joins another, and where the total (ecclesial) landscape is remade. The ‘New Perspective’ on Paul sees his writing, especially in Romans, as the account of an unwarranted, but both promised and fulfilled possibility of human non-violence extended to all. The juridical gives way to the humanly transformative. Girard declared himself to be nontheological and found himself pressed to deal with theological concerns in which he felt he held no expertise. In the course of this pressure, he seems to retreat into a fideistic world where the grand sweep of his thought seems almost denied. But as his pillar of argument falls, it combines, I think, with

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the ‘New Perspective’ to demonstrate the messianic grounding of his thought, and, therefore, its continued vista of possibility for the whole world, contained always in the messianic revelation.

Notes 1 R. Girard with J. M. Oughourlian and G. Defort, Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde (Paris: Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle, 1978). 2 For background to Sanders, see minority-studies and post-holocaust studies referenced by Douglas Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009), 99. For Girard, the same context obviously, but in addition the traumatic and framing European experience of war become explicit in his final book Battling to the End (R. Girard, Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre, trans. Mary Baker (East Lansing, MI: State University Press, 2010)); the original French title is Achever Clausewitz (R. Girard, Achever Clausewitz (Paris: Carnet Nord, 2007)), whose meaning ‘completing/finishing off Clausewitz’ is as at least as terminal as the English title. 3 M. Lieb, Milton and the Culture of Violence (London: Cornell University Press, 1994), 237. 4 J. Coffey, ‘Pacifist, Quietist, or Patient Militant? John Milton and the Restoration’, Milton Studies 42 (2002): 149–74. 5 See Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (New York: Knopf, 2014); within a broad sweep of history and the phenomenology of violence, the book details the religious violence of that era. 6 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (London: SCM Press; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 442ff. 7 N. T. Wright, Paul And The Faithfulness Of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 748. 8 For a representative response, see D. A. Carson, P. T. O’Brien and M. A. Seifrid (eds), Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001). For full bibliography, see Campbell, The Deliverance of God, 955. 9 J. D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 355.

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10 Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, italics original. 11 N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 133–4. 12 R. Girard, Celui par qui le scandale arrive (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2001). 13 Wright, Paul And The Faithfulness Of God, 163. 14 Ibid., 64. 15 Ibid., 457; C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 2nd edn (New York: Basic Books, [1973] 2000), 82. 16 Wright, Paul And The Faithfulness Of God, 847, 932. 17 Ibid., 115–16. 18 Ibid., 899. 19 Ibid., 805–10. 20 See the universal sense in this Passover: http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/ blog/2012/01/velveteen-rabbis-haggadah-for-pesach-72-abridged-andexpanded.html (accessed 28 April 2016) 21 Wright, Paul And The Faithfulness Of God, 926–66. 22 N. T. Wright, What St. Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997), 101–3. 23 Wright, What St. Paul Really Said, 119. 24 http://www.alliancenet.org/the-attractions-of-the-new-perspectives-on-paul (accessed 28 April 2016) 25 Wright, Paul And The Faithfulness Of God, 781, 956. 26 R. Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge UK: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008–9), 15–30, 184; Wright, Paul And The Faithfulness Of God, 652–3. 27 Wright, Paul And The Faithfulness Of God, 655; italics original. 28 Going back to Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, trans. W. Montgomery (New York: Seabury, [1931] 1968). Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, gave fresh impetus to the theme. 29 Wright, Paul And The Faithfulness Of God, 826. 30 Ibid., 844–5. 31 Where he does mention it, he subsumes it under ‘election-in-Christ’, that is, not as transaction: (Wright, Paul And The Faithfulness Of God, 897). 32 Wright, Paul And The Faithfulness Of God, 845. 33 Ibid., 858.

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34 R. Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 138. 35 Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 141–58. 36 A. W. Bartlett, Cross Purposes: The Violent Grammar of Christian Atonement (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2001); M. Hardin and B. Jersak (eds), Stricken By God? Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans). 37 E. Käsemann, New Testament Questions of Today: Perspectives on Paul, trans. M. Kohl (London: SCM, 1971). 38 Campbell, The Deliverance of God. 39 Ibid., 65. 40 Ibid., 64. 41 M. Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000). 42 R. Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. J. G. Williams (Maryknoll and New York: Orbis Books, 2000); original French, 1999, Je vois Satan tomber comme l’éclair (Paris: Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle), 150. 43 Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, 154. 44 Campbell, The Deliverance of God, 88. 45 R. Girard, The One By Whom Scandal Comes (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014), 43. 46 M. Moosbrugger, ‘Raymund Schwager’s Maieutics: “Mimesis and Freedom” and the Transformation of René Girard’, Contagion 21 (2014): 55–65. 47 Moosbrugger, ‘Raymund Schwager’s Maieutics’, 63. 48 Ibid., 60. 49 James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1998), 100. Alison’s work has been described in terms of the scholastic Protestant distinction of fides quae creditur, and fides qua creditur, with Alison basing himself in the latter, that is, the subjective encounter with Christ, which makes theology possible. J. P. Edwards, ‘From a “Revealed” Psychology to Theological Inquiry’, Contagion 21 (2014): 121–30. 50 J. G. Williams, Girardians: The Colloquium on Violence and Religion 1990-2010 (Zurich and Berlin: Lit Verlag GmbH, 2012), 41. 51 Girard, The One By Whom Scandal Comes, 43. 52 Williams, Girardians, 44; R. Girard, De la Violence á la Divinité (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2007a), 10001, n. 1.

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53 Seen in this light, both of Girard’s positions – (earlier) valid knowledge of nonsacrificial humanity, then (later) the absence of neutral non-sacrificial thinking – are implied in a Messianic horizon. Transforming human self-knowledge is bound to be mixed with old knowledge, the old story. But that does not mean it cannot be accessed on its own terms as a radical possibility, and on various levels of awareness – transcendental, artistic, semiotic, neural, etc.

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Salvation through Forgiveness or through the Cross? Raymund Schwager’s Dramatic Solution to a False Alternative Nikolaus Wandinger

Introduction Raymund Schwager was, to my knowledge, the first theologian who discovered Mimetic Theory (MT) as a means to better understand the Biblical message and Jesus’ meaning for human salvation; he had done so already in 1974. As his correspondence with René Girard attests, the two thinkers developed their ideas in close cooperation and discussion (see Briefwechsel).1 For that reason, Schwager’s theology is suffused with MT. Here I will not draw explicit attention to that but will present Schwager’s theology in its own right, and hope that those readers familiar with MT will see the connections easily. I apologize to those who are not so well versed in Girard’s thinking, but I think it is an interesting experiment as to whether Schwager’s ideas can also be convincing without that background. After analysing different soteriological approaches throughout the history of  Christian theology with the help of MT,2 Schwager developed his own answer  in his main work, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation (1999).3 For that, he followed very closely the exegetical discussions about Jesus’ message of the Kingdom of God and the competing theories of salvation that the New Testament itself proposed. The discussion focused on the problem that different traditions in the New Testament seemed to propose different, actually mutually exclusive, theories of redemption: while Jesus’ message of the Kingdom of God seemed to proclaim salvation simply by proactive divine

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forgiveness, the Pauline corpus, especially, and also some passages of the synoptic gospels, and above all, the Last Supper narratives, seemed to say that salvation was conditioned on Jesus’ death on the cross, as a prerequisite for divine forgiveness. Schwager quotes Heinrich Schürmann when he describes these soteriologies as eschatological versus staurological, from the Greek stauron, meaning cross. Staurological soteriology basically claims: ‘Christians believe that Jesus died a vicarious death of atonement for the salvation of all of humanity by obediently offering himself to the Father on the cross, thus “sacrificing” himself.’4 Exegetes pretty much agree that this kind of belief ‘was not taught by Jesus before Easter, and he could not have conceived of it. In his day, Jesus proclaimed a different message of salvation, an “eschatological soteriology”’,5 which meant salvation through faith in the Kingdom of God. The German New Testament-scholar Peter Fiedler put it succinctly when he wrote: Does God really grant forgiveness unconditionally, as Jesus consistently proclaimed, or is it only because of Jesus’ death? A ‘both … and’ answer has to be excluded. … If one is not to insist that Jesus proclaimed to his hearers the message of salvation with this inbuilt contradiction – clearly unworthy of him – one can only assume that he died because of an error concerning the working out of salvation by God, which he should finally have seen.6

As we can see from this statement, it is not only theories about salvation that are at stake here; it is the very question of whether Jesus succumbed to a serious error in matters highly relevant for human salvation – a conclusion that, if accepted, would invalidate faith in Jesus as the Christ and Saviour completely. I will now attend to Schwager’s solution, which will be a ‘both … and’ solution, in a different sense, however, from the one that Fiedler described. Although the exegetical backdrop against which Schwager developed this solution might not be up to date anymore and one might wonder why we should still attend to it, it should be clear that the fundamental soteriological question behind this debate – whether salvation was only granted because of Jesus’ death, or whether God’s mercy offers salvation unconditionally – predates modern exegesis by far and is also highly relevant, even if some of the exegetical debates of the 1970s and 1980s are behind us.

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‘Atonement’ in a new paradigm: Schwager’s drama of salvation Schwager’s solution grew out of his dramatic model, which he developed to solve another age-old problem: the seemingly contradictory images of a violently vengeful and a non-violently forgiving God contained in both the Old and the New Testaments. The dramatic model takes very seriously the interaction and interdependence of different agents within the context of different overarching situations or acts. The five acts of his drama, in short, are as follows. In the first act, Jesus proclaims the Kingdom of God. This proclamation has several important components: the image of God as a loving, unrestrictedly and proactively forgiving Father, the call to a new community that would restore Israel as the holy people of God. The kingdom is a free gift given by God and embodied by Jesus himself in his conduct towards his contemporaries: in his community of meals, in his healing and exorcizing activity, in his general acceptance and forgiveness. The Kingdom, however, is not a fixed commodity; rather, it is a new relationship between God and humanity, which is mediated and realized by the relationship between the human persons. Therefore, the kingdom can only completely materialize and take hold when people emulate Jesus in their conduct with their fellow humans, which becomes possible when they experience God in the same way as Jesus does. While there are no preconditions for God’s love, there are – so to speak – post-conditions that enable the kingdom to completely materialize. Among those are the challenges to forgive one another as God has forgiven, to love one’s neighbour as oneself and, finally, to even love one’s enemies, because God does the same, as is shown by the fact that rain falls on both the just and unjust and the sun shines both on sinners and righteous persons (cf. Mt. 5.44-45). All this is only possible if and when humans also accept Jesus’ proclamation of the divine Father’s nonviolent, proactive mercy. Thus, for Schwager, Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom contains his very own message of God and salvation. Salvation will occur if and when the people accept that message. Accepting it would manifest in different behaviour among humans and would finally bring the Kingdom to fruition in the here and now.

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This proclamation thus brings for its hearers a situation that challenges them to a concrete decision: Will I aspire to this or will I refuse to do so, which is tantamount to rejecting God’s offer? The second act of the drama is defined by Jesus’ response to the rejection of this very message by those persons who determined public opinion: the religious establishment, in the New Testament often called Scribes and Pharisees. This way Schwager sees Jesus as one agent in the drama who is dependent on other agents and their conduct. Jesus in the first act sets an initiative and then it is the people’s turn to react to that. Subsequently, Jesus again responds to their reaction. As it turns out, the important religious authorities reject Jesus and his kingdom. Jesus’ response consists in showing the ensuing consequences of their rejection, and he does so by telling parables of judgement. Schwager argues that these parables, which taken at face value would amount to Jesus himself proclaiming a violent and vindictive God, do not imply a change in Jesus’ image of God and in Jesus’ teaching. Rather, they show that an unforgiving, vindictive behaviour among humans leads them to a spiral of mutual judgement and condemnation, which leads directly to self-inflicted hell. Since this human behaviour is grounded by a vindictive and violent image of God, this human-made process is perceived as a divinely generated process, as if God, now that humans do not emulate him, would emulate the unforgiving hard-hearted human behaviour, which Jesus had warned against. Schwager thus claims that under the condition of rejection, Jesus’ message becomes a warning against a human-made self-judgement that directly and, therefore, necessarily springs forth from the rejection of the basileia message. His main argument for that is that the criterion of judgement used in the judgement parables is taken over from those being judged in a twofold sense: it is their behaviour, and it results from their image of God. He shows this, especially, by analysing two parables: those of the Unforgiving Servant (cf. Mt. 18.23-35) and the talents (Mt. 25.14-30). The first parable initially depicts the king as merciful: when begged, he forgives an immeasurable sum of debt but – as Schwager argued – he demands a post-condition – that his behaviour be emulated and his servant treat his fellow servant in the same merciful way. When the servant behaves just in the opposite way, the master seems to reverse the roles of model and imitator and judges the servant by the same measure with which he

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judged his fellow servant. But, if a behaviour is to be qualified as opposed to the will of God, can we suppose that God really follows human example and imitates it? Or should we take it as a hint that we are dealing with human misconceptions of God here that Jesus lays bare? Schwager opts for the latter. In the parable of the talents, Schwager directs his attention to the strange tension between the initial behaviour of the master and the third servant’s perception of the master. While the master entrusts all of his servants with a huge sum of money,7 thereby bestowing trust and appreciation on them, the third servant experiences him as strict and unjust. The third servant’s perception is also at odds with that of his colleagues: they do not seem to ‘know’ their master in such negative terms. Yet, in the end the master seems to confirm the third servant’s suspicion completely. Schwager argues that this might be a false conclusion. The reaction of the master might be experienced that way because the servant cannot experience the master differently anymore: The master judges his servant only according to that picture which the servant himself has made of him. In the slightly altered version of Luke, the master actually says explicitly: ‘I will condemn you out of your own mouth’ (Lk. 19.22). The first two servants acted in accordance with the experience that they had of the master. They received from him and were led to increase what they had received. But the third had his fixed picture of the master, which could no longer be altered even despite the fact that he received a talent. Thus he acted according to the norm and the picture that he already carried within himself, i.e., according to the picture of a strict master, who had to be feared. Because he did not let go of this picture – despite the talent he had received – he was judged according to it. In his defense before the master he laid down the measure by which he was measured and by means of which he lost again what he previously received.8

Thus, it is the image of God that dictates the measure by which humans are judged, and it is humans themselves who judge each other. Schwager summarizes this when he says: Wherever people are ready to forgive and to receive there they will be given more, and they will become ever more able to give themselves. Wherever they are not ready to receive, and remain trapped in the norms of payment and repayment, … they will lose again even what they have received, and

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they hand themselves over to a process of judgment, based on repayment and payment down to the last penny. As each of us is a debtor, no one can endure this process; the demand for repayment becomes ever greater and the end of this escalating process can only be hell. … The sayings of judgment and hell, insofar as they are related to a new situation in the proclamation of Jesus, are not in opposition to the message of the dawning of the kingdom of God, and there is no regression because of them into the old norms of retribution, but rather they show how radical the basileia’s call to conversion is. Only with the judgment sayings does it become clear what decision people are faced with and how disastrous the old and apparently proven ‘wisdom’ of retribution finally is. Jesus’ call to conversion is consequently not first of all about better obedience to one or the other commandment, but about the choice between two visions of the whole of reality and between two basic ways of behaving.9

Here is not the place to enter into a complete discussion of Schwager’s interpretation of the judgement parable (for this, see Schwager).10 I will, however, venture at least one more argument a little later. The third act comprises the Passion. The situation is defined by Jesus’ adversaries, who are no longer content with verbal attacks on Jesus and his message, but want to destroy the message. However, Jesus has completely linked himself to this message and embodies it. In order to destroy the message, its opponents have consequently to destroy the messenger who embodies it. To this end, they utilize the vague religio-political connotation of the Messiah-title, thus being able to prosecute Jesus as a blasphemer, on the one hand, and as a revolutionary, on the other hand. What happens to Jesus is basically a scapegoat mechanism with a few important modifications: one is that Jesus is not a randomly chosen victim, but one who in a sense prompted his selection by his very teaching and behaviour; another is that according to the Christian faith Jesus is not only innocent with respect to the concrete accusation against him – as are all scapegoats – but he is innocent in every respect, he is completely without sin. However, what clearly distinguishes the Passion from the usual scapegoatmechanism is Jesus’ behaviour while he is being victimized. He does not consent to being guilty but clearly holds on to the conviction that he is innocent and his persecutors are not following God’s will when they convict and execute him. Still, Jesus does not resort to violent means in order to prevent his execution.

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He rejects this possibility on the grounds that it would counteract God’s will. Instead, he freely accepts the way to the cross as the will of his divine Father, while at the same time upholding the conviction that the human actions against him are unjust and opposed to God’s will. Not only does he refrain from defensive violence against his persecutors, but he also relinquishes any thought of a divine retribution against his tormentors by praying for them and for the forgiveness of their sin against him. In Schwager’s reading, Jesus’ adversaries are following their image of God in their action against Jesus and their conduct amounts to what Jesus has warned them against: they bring judgement on a fellow human being, creating hell in the process. Jesus, on the other hand, is following exactly his own message, as he had proclaimed it in the first act: he holds fast to the image of the non-violent Father, living the love of enemies that he had announced, even to his very end. The human self-judgement against which he had warned is occurring in his very passion, but in suffering through it in this extraordinary attitude, Jesus transforms it. He takes upon himself the human self-judgement and suffers the consequences that the rejection of his message entailed. This is also the strongest argument for the validity of Schwager’s interpretation of the judgement parables: Jesus conducts himself in full accordance with the message of the first act, while his adversaries behave according to the vengeful image of God contained in the judgement parables. That supports Schwager’s claim that in these parables Jesus does not develop or change his own teaching about God, but he mirrors his opponents’ image of God and its social and theological consequences. His own image remains the same and he continues to embody divine mercy, even in his passion. Jesus’ faith in his divine Father is vindicated in the resurrection, which brings us to act four. By raising Jesus from the dead, the divine Father, who so far has been the object of contention between Jesus and his adversaries, takes sides in this quarrel and he does so unequivocally for Jesus: Jesus’ image of God and his message of the kingdom are corroborated, and Jesus’ adversaries’ attitude is rejected and refuted. Still, soteriologically, this is also good news for them because the verdict of the heavenly Father is above all a decision for the Son who gave himself up to death for his opponents. It is therefore, when considered more

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deeply, also a verdict in favor of sinners. The opponents of the kingdom of God, closing themselves off, had the way to salvation once more opened for them by the Son, who allowed himself to be drawn into their darkness and distance from God. Although they had already turned their backs, as far as they were concerned, the self-giving of the Son got around this hardening of hearts once more, insofar as he allowed himself to be made the victim of their self-condemnation.11

The fifth act begins with the sending of the Spirit and lasts until the second coming of Christ. At the same time, it comprises all the other acts. It has, therefore, several important aspects. The first is that through the working of the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ initiative of gathering the holy people of God is continued; the disciples, who had abandoned Jesus in his suffering and who had even denied him, as Peter’s story shows, are transformed into converted sinners, who proclaim the newly granted forgiveness to all. A second aspect is that this gathering of the holy people now is not anymore identical with the gathering of the kingdom – a misconception that for many centuries poisoned the relationship of the church to its Jewish older sister, the Synagogue. However, Schwager argues, since the rejection of the kingdom by Jesus’ contemporaries, ‘the drama of salvation … continued in this world under the guise of signs’.12 Therefore the new community is a sign for the community of the Kingdom of God, but not the kingdom itself. The starting point from which the signs and the full working of salvation were distinguished, although they remained from another point of view closely connected, was the Last Supper. There Jesus gave himself to his disciples to eat under the sign of bread and wine and thereby established both the difference between sign and intended reality and their fundamental identity. (146)

As one can easily see, Schwager here draws on a Catholic theology of the sacraments, and especially on the Second Vatican Council’s understanding of the church as ‘a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race’ (Lumen Gentium 1)13 and anchors this theology already in the New Testament account of the drama of Jesus.

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The last important aspect of the fifth act that I want to mention is its containing of all the other acts. That way the situations that define acts one to four are ever again present in this world, in the life of the church and in the lives of individual believers. Therefore, the drama is not just some event, historically and experientially removed from today’s experiences. Despite the historical distance from the events of the first century, people living today are not mere onlookers on a drama that has long played itself out. In one sense it has, because Jesus has completed his mission. In another sense it has not: we are ever again confronted by the same situations and decisions that Jesus and his contemporaries faced and we must give our own answers. We are not mere spectators of this drama; we are also agents within its delicate fabric of interdependence. Before we leave the depiction of the model and proceed to the soteriological question, let us pause for a moment and reflect on Schwager’s model. The problem that gave rise to it – conflicting images of God in the Bible – was not discovered by Schwager. In fact, Marcion of Sinope had been excommunicated from the church in Rome as early as the second century for advocating a wrong solution to this problem. If Schwager wants to solve the same problem, what distinguishes his solution from Marcion’s? Marcion’s solution was quite radical: he suggested that a Christian canon of Scripture should not contain any Jewish writings (what Christians traditionally call the Old Testament), but only edited versions of the Gospel of Luke and of some Pauline letters.14 Schwager, of course, does not want to make any changes to the canon of Scripture, as it has been accepted in the Roman Catholic Church (the very fact that we do have a canon is partly due to Marcion’s idea). Yet, does Schwager’s solution somehow amount to a pseudo-Marcionism? This question must be answered in the negative, for several reasons. While for Marcion, Old Testament writings and New Testament writings that depicted a violent God were the message of a demiurge, who was not the divine Father of Jesus, Schwager emphasizes that the whole Bible is the written transmission of divine revelation. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the God of Jesus  of Nazareth. However, different images of God in the Biblical writings still need to be reconciled systematically, if the Biblical language about God is not to become arbitrary. For ‘if faith were simply to acquiesce to

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paradoxes and contradictory experiences, … our ordering and critical reason would have to resign its function, and religious utterances would no longer be distinguishable from every sort of myth’.15 Schwager offers two main ways of doing this. I have described the second one, which he prefers for the New Testament: the different images of God do not reflect a change in Jesus’ teaching; rather, they reflect the two contradictory images that Jesus and his adversaries espouse. Ascribing to the adversaries a violent and vindictive image of God, however, does not amount to saying that this image of God is irrelevant and has nothing to do with revelation – as Marcion’s hypothesis went. On the contrary, for Schwager, the judgement parables warn against real dangers, as we have seen. The image of God is not a theoretical concept that becomes obsolete when proved wrong. It is, rather, an active force in the lives of people. Even when wrong, it shapes their experience of reality, which that way becomes distorted too, and misleads humans into an ever deeper entanglement into self-deception and sin. Unveiling this detrimental process is an integral element of revelation, and therefore the pertaining image of God is also an integral part of revelation. It does not, however, reveal the true nature of God, but the catastrophe created by misconceiving of that nature. Schwager’s model is thus a far cry from Marcion’s idea of editing the Biblical canon. On the contrary, the Biblical canon reveals truths about humanity that we would like to erase but should not because they are life-saving for us, as uncomfortable as they might be. The first way of achieving a consistent image of God, which Schwager preferred for the Old Testament, is somewhat different. Since, from a Christian perspective, Christ is the epitome of revelation, Old Testament writings can be seen as ‘mixed texts’ that mix up genuine insights into divine nature with human projections on top of these insights.16 For example, Israel experienced its God as a liberator from oppression – a genuine insight into divine nature – yet it connected this divine way of acting with violent retribution against its enemies, an idea that one must classify as a human projection when looking back from the revelation in Jesus, who prayed even for his persecutors. Again, it is important for Schwager that both the process of projecting human expectations on God and their subsequent, though slow, deconstruction and correction through divine action are part of the self-revelation of God in salvation history.

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Therefore Schwager’s handling of Scripture clearly corresponds to the Second Vatican Council’s teaching that ‘the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit’ (Dei Verbum 11).17 Dramatic theology can also express this with a comparison to literary drama: Characters in a play may well voice convictions that are contrary to the author’s convictions; the author will depict a multiplicity of different, even contradictory viewpoints without himself or herself espousing those viewpoints. The author’s conviction may be elicited only by studying the whole play or even the author’s whole oeuvre. So, it is with God as the divine author of the Bible: He works through human authors (Dei Verbum 11) who may well express ideas that do not correspond to God’s eternal truth; but the divine author can integrate these into a development and process that in the end reveals his true intention. Christians believe that the best way to discern that meaning is to look at Jesus Christ, thus making him a criterion for interpreting the Old and the New Testament.18 The fact that being the author of something and espousing the conviction expressed is not necessarily the same thing is overlooked by theories along the lines of Marcion, as well as modern-day Biblical fundamentalists. Let us now return to the theological analysis of salvation and ask: If even Jesus’ adversaries receive a new opening to the Kingdom of God and thus still have a chance for salvation, should this be seen as salvation through the cross or salvation through the message of the kingdom – or should we consider that alternative as a false alternative?

The meaning of the term In a first step, Schwager inquires what the term ‘atonement’ exactly means, or rather, he analyses two different approaches when trying to answer the question whether Jesus himself attributed atoning power to his death. In the synoptic narrations of the Last Supper, he seems to do so; yet, many historians claim that this could not be the case because they think it contradicts the message of the Kingdom. Schwager doubts this logic. He points to his analysis that the idea of judgement has been transformed in the progress of the drama; hence, if

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somebody had a fixed idea of what divine judgement is to mean, and refused to allow this idea to develop with the unfolding of the drama, they would end up with a false idea of judgement. On these grounds Schwager argues: A step toward clarifying things should be possible only if one avoids setting out from fixed representations, either concerning atonement or concerning the kingdom of God. We have seen so far that Jesus operated entirely within the framework of Israel’s holy Scriptures, but by means of many small shifts he finally proclaimed a new overall picture of God, which contrasts in important points with the Old Testament one. The idea of judgment was not weakened, but it certainly appeared in quite a new light. From this transformation in the representation of judgment, the question necessarily arises whether the image of atonement had to change within the drama of Jesus’ destiny and whether the apparently unreconcilable [sic!] contradictions between the basileia message and atoning death do not stem from the fact that the starting point is a preconceived idea of atonement and that the statements made against it in fact contradict this.19

In other words, the preconceived idea of atonement cannot be reconciled with the message of the Kingdom. It does not follow that any idea of atonement is irreconcilable with that message. In fact, we touch here on a recurring and structurally paramount aspect of Schwager’s theology: when we pose a question, we cannot do so without using established terms like atonement or sacrifice. One way of progressing is to define or at least describe as clearly as possible what we mean by that term, and then set out to investigate whether such a thing exists. Another way – and the one that Schwager advocates – is to be prepared to have the initial meaning of our term qualified and transformed in the course of our investigation, so that at the end we might say: yes, there is a meaning of atonement or sacrifice that can be attributed to Jesus’ death, that we can even suppose Jesus could have conceived of, at least in a vague intuitive manner, but this meaning is – despite some similarities – fundamentally different from our initial understanding of the term. Schwager is convinced that the Bible itself does so when it rereads events in a different light, when it joins together concepts that had previously been unconnected or even mutually exclusive (such as the intertestamental idea of the Messiah and Deutero-Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, which are connected by

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the New Testament), and he also traces this paradigm in the development of the great Christological councils where supposedly familiar terms like ousia and hypostasis took on new meaning (see Dogma und dramatische Geschichte).20 Schwager is thus sure that he does not introduce some exception from the rule in the case of clarifying atonement, but that he is following a staple of theological method that he thinks should be generally applied. In order to find out how in all probability Jesus has understood his death, Schwager looks at two parameters. One is – in agreement with the historical– critical method – attempting to ascertain how the Jewish tradition and Jesus’ contemporaries might have understood certain things, in this case the idea of atonement. The other is – and this is not in agreement with the usual historical– critical method – the assumption that Jesus himself, rather than the early church, made significant modifications to the prevailing understanding of the time. For this latter assumption, Schwager puts forward a strong argument: the New Testament, in fact, reports some serious conflict within the new postEaster and post-Pentecostal community, concerning the Jewish-Christians’ conduct towards Christians who had come from paganism and concerning the rules applying to those converts. So, there were questions of some, but not major, importance that generated heated debates within the young church. The importance of questions surrounding the meaning of Christ’s death and his salvific role outweighs that of these questions by far; yet, the New Testament does not report any debate about them. They seem to have been settled. Who, Schwager asks, would have had the authority to decide these questions without causing dissent and debate in the young church, apart from Jesus himself? In a critical comment after a discussion with Biblical scholars, Schwager writes: For some historical-critical exegetes, the post-Easter community becomes a kind of a ‘black box’, … into which they put everything they want to deny of the historical Jesus for one or the other reason. … Yet, what happens in this black box and how the ghosts that cavort in it are formed into a new religion is not explained. Hardly anybody will deny that Christianity is different from Judaism in several important aspects. The gospels on the whole give a very plausible explanation for how this distinction came about, because they depict how Jesus ever again struggled with his disciples’ incomprehension,

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how difficult it was for him to make the newness comprehensible to them, how eventually through clearly specified crises and equally clearly specified overwhelming experiences they gained faith in Jesus as the Christ nevertheless. If one rejects this pattern without providing an alternative which is equally clear, one explains a clear picture by a phantom-like image. Hyper-criticism on the one hand then is counterbalanced by a corresponding naiveté on the other hand.21

I want to summarize here the most important elements of Schwager’s elaborate argumentation.22 He argues that an interpretation of Jesus’ death as atoning could neither have come from Hellenistic influences – because the Supper narrations display a Semitic choice of words and the tradition seems so old as to have originated in the Palestinian community, nor could it have sprung up in contemporary Judaism – because the idea of an atoning death was not prevalent at the time and there are many other expressions for the Christian faith that do not refer to atonement. For Schwager, this leaves ‘only one possible historical explanation for the post-Easter representations of atonement, namely, to trace them back to Jesus himself ’ (103). From here, Schwager asks what Jesus could have meant by it, what the new meaning of the term that we are seeking might be. He emphasizes that, for Jesus, his own fate was the fate of the Kingdom of God and his own behaviour while being persecuted was identical with the Kingdom’s response to its rejection. Presupposing what we said about the role of the judgement sayings in the second act, Schwager concludes: From the viewpoint of this understanding of judgment, atonement can never mean that the divine order of retribution must still be complied with …. Such an understanding remains under the spell of that picture of God which Jesus set out to overcome with his message of the basileia. But, in view of the reality of how quickly and almost instinctively people closed themselves up against goodness, the urgent question arose whether those … who have taken the path of self-sufficiency and self-condemnation can be helped [too].23

In other words: The question before which Jesus stood at the last meal with his disciples was not whether, after the rejection of the willing forgiveness of his Father, he should proclaim another opportunity for salvation, a ‘salvation on the

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basis of a substitute performance’. The dramatic question was rather how the goodness of his Father can reach human hearts, after it has been definitively shown what opposition existed in the forces of this world and how far people were subject to them. The surprising answer of Jesus appears in allowing himself to be handed over to the dark powers (lies, violence, diabolical selfcertainty) and to be struck by them. … The only remaining explanation is that Jesus must have expressly asked himself the question as to how the salvation that he proclaimed as unconditional with the kingdom of God at hand can become a reality despite the resistance of those who should have given themselves freely to it. (111–12)

By presumably joining together motifs from the intertestamental theology of the Messiah, of the role of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, and his unshakeable belief in the unwavering forgiveness of the Father, Jesus answered that question in a new way that also gave new meaning to the term ‘atonement’, as well as to ‘sacrifice’.24 Schwager argues: The self-judgment of humankind, in which people shifted their guilt onto Jesus in self-deception, became a judgment on him. But from his viewpoint this was a judgment of a completely different sort. He allowed himself to be drawn into the process of self-judgment of his adversaries, in order, through participation in their lot, to open up for them from inside another way out of their diabolical circle and hence a new path to salvation. He did not pay back the lying judgment and violent attack with the same coin, but he turned around the intensified evil and gave it back as love redoubled. He made of himself a gift to those who judged him and burdened him with their guilt. His atoning deed was not a reimbursement for sins, so that the heavenly Father would forgive, but an act in the place of those who should have welcomed the kingdom of God, but who from the beginning rejected it. … From this perspective it cannot be said that the Father handed over the Son because he wanted to judge him and punish him in place of sinners. The judgment did not start from God but from humankind, and the will of the Father was only that the Son should follow sinners to the very end and share their abandonment, in order thus to make possible for them again a conversion from the world of hardened hearts and distance from God. (117)

This becomes possible, according to Schwager, because Jesus identifies with all humans, including his persecutors, in a qualified manner, namely insofar

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as they are victims of sin. Schwager argues that even perpetrators of sin are victims of their own sinning, as are the people whom they hurt. So when Jesus identifies with all human persons insofar as they are victims of sin, Jesus quantitatively identifies with all human persons without exception; because he does not identify with them insofar as they are perpetrators of sin, he does not himself consent to sinning but remains outside the mimetic rivalries and contagions, and his acceptance of his death is not a tacit endorsement of it. Because Jesus refrains from identifying with sinners insofar as they are perpetrators of sin, his substitution is also a qualified form of substitution: he suffers the consequences of sin even for his persecutors insofar as they are themselves victims of sin. To the extent that they are perpetrators, they retain responsibility, which means that in order to be saved, they still have to turn around and convert their hardened hearts. Jesus does not want to be killed, but he accepts being victimized in order to open a way out for those who have shut themselves in, but they themselves have to walk that way with the guidance of the Spirit.25 Raymund Schwager’s former student and his successor as dean of the theology department in Innsbruck, Józef Niewiadomski, has, I think, clarified this in an important way. While we heard Schwager’s formulation that Jesus ‘made of himself a gift to those who judged him and burdened him with their guilt’, Niewiadomski would hesitate to say this so unreservedly. He argues that Jesus made himself a gift not to his persecutors but to the Father, and only through the exchange of love with the Father he became able to open up the situation, even for his persecutors: At this point we see the central importance of a conception of God that is purified of all violence. The Father is not in league with the crucifiers. … In the crucifixion we do not have a bi-polar structure in which victim and persecutors are opposed to one another, we have a triangular structure in this process. Looking from outside, one at first perceives only the perpetrators’ relation to Christ which aims at victimization; looking from inside, one perceives Christ’s relation to the Father. He dies in the active attitude of selfgiving to the Father, an attitude that is only a response to the Father’s attitude towards the Son, which is and always has been an attitude of love. From the power of the Father’s loving self-gift to the Son and the Son’s loving self-gift to the Father there arises the ability of Jesus, the victim, to establish a new relation to the perpetrators.26

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By his self-gift to the Father, Jesus removes himself from the dyadic perpetratorvictim trap and interrupts any mimetic rivalry. There is no instant during Jesus’ dying in which his desire would be directed towards his persecutors, his desire always remains directed at the Father.27 Jesus turns to the Father and asks for the establishment of a mediating relationship with those who seem to know only one direct confrontation of either killing or being killed. Thus he dies in the attitude of self-giving to the Father – and in mediation through that also in the attitude of self-giving to his adversaries, to sinners, to us. Viewed from outside, his death is the result of victimization, viewed from inside, his dying is an act of love, the handing over of his life to the Father and simultaneously an act of profound love of enemies towards us humans. This act of the love of enemies does not undo the tremendum of victimization but it transforms it. This transformation is not the result of a dialectical leap from death to life, not the victim is the source of life but the living God Himself.28

Salvation through forgiveness even by the cross Coming to a conclusion, we can say that by reading Jesus’ life and death in a dramatic way, and by establishing in this process the meaning of concepts like sacrifice or atonement, Schwager shows the choice of salvation either through the unconditional forgiveness of the message of the Kingdom, or through atonement on the cross, to be a false alternative. He advocates a both-and solution, by insisting that the meaning of the crucifixion and of atonement cannot be elicited independently from the message of the Kingdom, but is, rather, the new form this message takes on when it has been rejected in its original form and is still upheld. As an aside, I want to note that this way Schwager also overcomes an antagonistic mimesis between two competing soteriologies and their proponents, showing them that they are not rivals but co-workers. Thus we could say: if humanity had accepted Christ’s universal offer of divine forgiveness, the Kingdom would have fully materialized and it would have effected human salvation. Since humanity rejected this offer, the question arose whether this would cause the withdrawal of God’s offer or whether a new

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way of upholding this offer despite its rejection could be found. The way of the cross is this new way, which upheld the offer of forgiveness despite its rejection even unto death. Staurological soteriology and an atonement understood along the lines that we have sketched is the new form of eschatological soteriology, a form that became necessary because of human resistance to the original offer. Salvation through the Kingdom message alone was a real possibility. That its rejection, in retrospect, seems inevitable shows how deeply sin is entrenched in humanity, and that gives rise to the theology of original sin.29 That this rejection does not lead to universal damnation is due to the fact that God’s love finds another way, which may be called atonement through sacrifice, if we develop these concepts, not from our preconceptions, but from the drama of salvation itself.

Notes 1 R. Schwager, Briefwechsel mit René Girard, Gesammelte Schriften 6, ed. N. Wandinger and K. Peter (Freiburg: Herder, 2014). 2 R. Schwager, Der wunderbare Tausch. Zur Geschichte und Deutung der Erlösungslehre (München: Kösel, 1986), 7–31; a republication of this text is planned for 2015 as vol. 3 of the eight-volume Gesammelte Schriften. 3 R. Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation: Toward a Biblical Doctrine of Redemption, trans. James G. Williams and Paul Haddon (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1999). Originally published in German as R. Schwager, Jesus im Heilsdrama. Entwurf einer biblischen Erlösungslehre, 2 edn, Innsbrucker Theologische Studien 29 (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1996); a republication of the German text is planned for 2015 as vol. 4 of the eight-volume Gesammelte Schriften. 4 H. Schürmann, Gottes Reich- Jesu Geschick. Jesu ureigener Tod im Licht seiner Basileia-Verkündigung (Freiburg: Herder, 1983), 11, quoted by Schwager in Jesus im Heilsdrama, 22; my own translation, because the passage is not contained in Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation. 5 Ibid. 6 P. Fiedler, Jesus und die Sünder, Beiträge zur biblischen Exegese und Theologie 3 (Frankfurt a. Main: Lang, 1976), 280f. quoted by Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation, 10, in the translation given there.

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7 According to Joachim Gnilka, Das Matthäusevangelium, 2. Teil: Kommentar zu Kap. 14,1-28,20 und Einleitungsfragen, Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament I/2 (Freiburg: Herder, 1988), 145–6, a talent was the largest coin at the time, being worth between six thousand and ten thousand denarii, where a denarius was a day’s wage. Even the apparently small sum of one talent thus amounts to between six and ten thousand days’ wages! 8 Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation, 65. 9 Ibid., 67. 10 Ibid., 53–81. 11 Ibid., 135. 12 Ibid., 146. 13 Second Vatican Council (1964), Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/ documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html (accessed 28 April 2016). 14 For Schwager’s interpretation of Marcion, and Irenaeus of Lyon’s response to him in the light of MT, see ‘Der Gott des Alten Testaments und der Gott des Gekreuzigten: Zur Erlösungslehre bei Markion und Irenäus’. Schwager, Der wunderbare Tausch. 15 Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation, 1. 16 R. Schwager, ‘Biblische Texte als “Mischtexte.” Das hermeneutisch-spirituelle Programm der “Entmischung” ’, Katechetische Blätter 119 (1994): 698–703. 17 Second Vatican Council (1965), Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/ documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html (accessed 28 April 2016). 18 For elaboration, see Nikolaus Wandinger, ‘Raymund Schwager, S.J. Dramatic Theology’, Lonergan Workshop 19 (2006): 325–46, especially pp. 340–2. 19 Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation, 101. 20 R. Schwager, Dogma und dramatische Geschichte: Christologie im Kontext von Judentum, Islam und moderner Marktkultur, ed. J. Niewiadomski and M. Moosbrugger, Gesammelte Werke 5 (Freiburg: Herder, 2014b), 160–220. 21 R. Schwager, ‘Rückblick auf das Symposium’, in Dramatische Erlösungslehre. Ein Symposion. Innsbrucker Theologische Studien 38, ed. J. Niewiadomski and W. Palaver (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1992), 339–84. 22 Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation, 93–118.

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114 23 Ibid., 108.

24 For a thorough analysis of the discussion between Schwager and René Girard on sacrifice, see M. Moosbrugger, Die Rehabilitierung des Opfers. Zum Dialog zwischen René Girard und Raymund Schwager über die Angemessenheit der Rede vom Opfer im christlichen Kontext, Innsbrucker theologische Studien 88 (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 2014); for a brief summary in English, see M. Moosbrugger, ‘René Girard and Raymund Schwager on Religion, Violence, and Sacrifice: New Insights from Their Correspondence’, Journal of Religion and Violence 1, no. 2 (2013): 147–66. 25 Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation, 192–3. 26 J. Niewiadomski‚ ‘Opfer und Täter zugleich! Die mimetische Struktur des Begehrens und die Ambivalenz der “Zeichen der Zeit” ’, in Glaubensverantwortung im Horizont der ‘Zeichen der Zeit’, Quaestiones Disputatae 248, ed. Christoph Böttigheimer and Florian Bruckmann (Freiburg: Herder, 2012), 202–31; my translation. 27 Niewiadomski, ‘Opfer und Täter zugleich’, 229. 28 Ibid. 29 R. Schwager, Banished from Eden: Original Sin and Evolutionary Theory in the Drama of Salvation, trans. James G. Williams (Leominster: Gracewing, 2006), 59–60.

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‘Strategies of Grace’: Mimesis as Conversion in Girard and in Theology Michael Kirwan

The seismic impact of René Girard’s work on the theory of atonement derives from his devastating suspicion-critique of sacrifice, along with related religious practices. These he exposed as the disguised functioning of the victimizing mechanism – ‘scapegoating’ – which founds and maintains social order. Religion’s true function, that is, ‘containing’ chaos, is hidden from believers themselves who, unknowingly, are ‘butchers pretending to be sacrificers’.1 Girard’s polemic in La Violence et le Sacré and his anathema of the concept and practice of sacrifice from Christianity in Des choses cachées depuis la foundation du monde2 have reconstituted and re-energized debate on the meaning of sacrifice, within theology, and more generally within the study of religion.3 The shocking intellectual tour de force demonstrated in these two books has outlasted, and still largely overshadows, Girard’s subsequent revision of his position on sacrifice. His later, more positive acceptance of the concept is attributed to conversations with his theological interlocutor, Raymund Schwager S. J.; their collaboration over twenty years, until Schwager’s death in 2004, allowed for the development of Girard’s MT in the direction of a Catholic theological anthropology. This allowed for a transformed understanding of sacrifice, now rehabilitated as a fundamental religious category. It is interesting to note, therefore, that in the earliest communication between Girard and Schwager (their letter correspondence begins in 1974 and continues until 1991), the opening theological question is not about sacrifice at all, but about that most ‘Protestant’ of concerns: Paul and ‘the Law’.4 While

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Schwager does not directly cite Romans 7, he clearly has this passage in mind, as he asks Girard whether the ambiguous function of the Law can be understood in relation to the skandalon of mimetic desire, and whether ‘the law has the very precise function of awakening desire’ (‘elle éveille le désir’)5: Dans l’Ancien Testament ce ne sont pas les sacrifices mai la loi qui a la function la plus importante. … Sainte Paul ne parle presque pas des sacrifices, mais toute sa théologie est dominée par la confrontation avec la loi.

Girard’s response acknowledges that he himself has yet to look systematically at the Old and New Testaments. His most pressing concern, however, after La violence et le sacré, is to elaborate a universal ethnological framework, in the face of what he anticipates will be entrenched academic resistance: pour l’instant je me consacre a une reformulation plus serrée de la théorie ethnologique qui sous-tend mon travail, en langue anglaise … Peut–être je me trompe mai j’ai l’impression le préalable ethnologique est nécessaire á la compréhension de la thèse sur la christianisme.6 … A l’intérieur de ma problématique actuelle, je suis oblige de faire sortir la loi de la victim et non la victim de la loi.7

This phrase of Girard, ‘la loi de la victim et … la victim de la loi’, neatly summarizes the two distinct but convergent projects, which bear fruit in the two books that appear almost simultaneously in 1978. Girard (in Des choses cachées) expounds his intuition concerning exclusionary scapegoating as a general theory – hence his concern to ground this intuition by means of ethnology – while Schwager, working from the specific biblical testimony of violence and victimhood, discerns in Brauchen wir einen Sündenbock?8 the possibility of such a ground, precisely in those same Christian scriptures that have only begun to be the focus of Girard’s attention. At first glance, the two concerns appear to be separate. Their interconnection is made clear, however, when we recognize that an adequate soteriology – an account of human well-being and ultimate fulfilment – must ‘go to the heart of Christian identity’; that is, it must be universally applicable while remaining faithful to the specificity of the gospel testimony.9 In their respective concerns for universalizability, and for biblical specificity, Girard and Schwager move in the direction of a theological–anthropological synthesis that will eventually

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organize the disparate elements of their investigation. Other theological topics are explored by Girard and by Schwager in their long correspondence10; nevertheless, it is the nexus of Pauline themes around the ‘law’ and around universalization that draws most attention. The journey of convergence has two biblical focal points, a Johannine and a Pauline. Girard’s chosen hermeneutic in Des choses cachées is that of the logos of John, set in counterpart to the Heraclitian logos, according to which ‘war is the father of all things’.11 Raymund Schwager notes the question of ‘universalization’, with reference to the unanimity of people and political powers against Jesus at the time of his trial. Schwager’s appeal to Paul’s hermeneutic of the Law in his initial enquiry to Girard is an invocation of the ‘classical’ Adamic typology, whereby the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Adam denote two kinds of human solidarity and unanimity, organized around the dialectic of original sin, on the one hand, and Christ’s obedience and restoration, on the other. There are two corollaries to this methodological option for ‘typological’ or ‘figural’ interpretation, to which we will return. First, we note Girard’s own preference for this style of reading in his own literary criticism; his approval of the twentieth-century recovery of figural and typological approaches in Erich Auerbach, Henri de Lubac and Paul Claudel confirms its importance for MTs attempt at a theological organization of anthropological or literary insights. Second, if it is the case that the theological rendition of MT is best understood as implying an ‘Adamic’ typology, then one of its tasks must be a re-examination and updating of such a hermeneutic in the light of the ‘new Pauline scholarship’ of recent decades. Indeed, this development within biblical scholarship can itself be read in mimetic terms, as a controversial attempt to overcome the dynamic of distorting resentments generated by Reformation polemics.

Mimetic Theory and theories of the atonement Before returning to these two points in more detail, it is necessary to consider MT within a broader account of doctrines of the atonement, not least those that concern its contemporary relevance and coherence. A number of themes can be mentioned here.

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First, it has become standard to think of soteriology as a theological discipline that proceeds not by way of philosophical or conceptual precision, but by means of disciplined attention to the plurality of metaphors or symbols used, at different times in the Christian millennia, to describe ‘salvation’. This is to underline that the frameworks mentioned above – Pauline ‘Adamic’ Christology, and a Johannine dialectic of logos and ‘the world’ – are far from the only ways in which God’s saving intervention in Christ has been described. Metaphors (models, images) with power to grip the religious imagination enable us to comprehend our situation more forcefully than more discursive or abstract language. Such images are sometimes incompatible, but in principle we should look for ways in which they can enrich and complement one another. Daniel Migliore identifies clusters of metaphors in the New Testament, all of which centre on the death of Christ on the cross, and some of which have been expanded into elaborate theories of the atonement.12 Three receive particular attention: the cosmic conflict, or Christus Victor, which dramatizes, in images of strategy or military combat, the conflict between Christ and the forces of evil; the Anselmian theory of satisfaction, drawing on New Testament associations of redemption with vicarious suffering (an approach that is elaborated and refined in the work of John Calvin and Karl Barth); and the moral influence or ‘subjective’ theory (182–5). It is in the context of this plurality that Migliore introduces Girardian MT – specifically, the problematic of the cross of Christ as an act of violence, expressly announced in the ancient ecumenical creeds, and the scandal that this presents for believers. The world of contemporary violence – against women and children, against prophets, against the planet itself – is ‘the real world where the drama of salvation unfolds’, and where the divine “necessity” of God’s gracious and non-coercive love must inevitably collide with the human “necessity,” a sinful and violent world order.13 Here is part of the truth of the proposition that for our sake Christ ‘descended into hell’. Christ ‘died for us’: to expose the world’s violence for what it is; to extend God’s healing and mediating love; and to open, in the midst of this violent world, a new future of reconciliation and peace for a new humanity and a new creation. Migliore also cites Miranda’s riposte to Nietzsche’s deduction, concerning the death of God: ‘Christ died so that we might know that not everything is permitted’ (190).

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Each approach has its limitations, but each still has potential to interact mutually with the others, in a way that is fruitful for our own time. Flexibility seems to be the key, and two golden rules: do not let one metaphor dominate to the detriment of the others, and (related to this) do not let any single metaphor ossify into a doctrinal ‘system’ that closes off the religious imagination. In this respect, paragraph 18 of the Joint Lutheran/Catholic Accord on Justification 1999 is significant: Therefore the doctrine of justification, which takes up this message and explicates it, is more than just one part of Christian doctrine. It stands in an essential relation to all truths of faith, which are to be seen as internally related to each other. It is an indispensable criterion which constantly serves to orient all the teaching and practice of our churches to Christ. When Lutherans emphasize the unique significance of this criterion, they do not deny the interrelation and significance of all truths of faith. When Catholics see themselves as bound by several criteria, they do not deny the special function of the message of justification.14

The second aspect to contemporary soteriological theory, however, is a problematization of this scheme. The tasks of soteriology, as implied above, would appear to be comparatively straightforward: an interrogation of the traditional models and images to see which ones still ‘work’ or can be revived; a search for new models that speak more effectively to our contemporary generation; a general oversight of the ‘ecology’ of salvation metaphors, to ensure that the rich plurality of understandings is protected, and that individual metaphors do not petrify into inflexible and restrictive dogmatic schemes. The difficulties of this traditional scheme are identified by Walter Lowe15 in his attempt at a revised postmodern Christology that will transcend the alleged limitations of classical and modern theologies. Classical theology, he argues, is marked by a ‘metaphorics of economy’ that are ‘quasi-hydraulic’, such that a negative or deficient feature in one part of the system is compensated for by an opposite movement elsewhere (the so-called ‘ransom’ theory, or Anselm’s doctrine of satisfaction, are cited as examples). In the modern era, the problem is different but related: namely, that theology must inevitably strike a ‘pact with the negative’ if it is to achieve any purchase on human experience and existence. This is a paradoxical way of announcing the ‘good news’!

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The main difficulty, however, is that in modern theology, the work of ­soteriology requires a ‘preface’ identifying some kind of need or lack in humanity, before introducing the person and work of Christ. A classic s­ oteriology, in less sceptical times, was able to proceed the other way round. The sequence that follows – description–diagnosis–general recommendation–specific remedy (with Christ as the ‘remedy’) – is a chain that can be broken at any of its links; there is no guarantee that people will be led from recommendation to remedy, from the need for an analgesic to the choice of a specific brand, as it were. Lowe’s argument here seems to be a theological variant of the famous description from Alastair Macintyre, about the conceptual and practical confusion in ethical theory, which derives from the lack of a commonly agreed telos for humanity. Our inability to articulate a common view of who we are, and of our intended destination, naturally inhibits any account of how we might arrive at that destination. For this reason, a postmodern account of salvation and Christology, such as Lowe is trying to construct, is a complex and delicate task. Peter Hawkins argues the need for ‘strategies of grace’: modes of indirect address that he associates with a number of creative writers in the twentieth century. He begins with the case of the American Catholic novelist Flannery O’Connor, whose work conveys the conviction that the world is ‘largely one big mess’ (Wide Blood). And yet, O’Connor laments the difficulty she has in communicating this essentially religious appraisal of the world, because of the inability of many readers to respond to her kind of storytelling. It is as if the moral sense has been bred out of certain sections of the population, like the wings have been bred off certain chickens in order to produce more white meat from them. This is, she tells us, a ‘generation of wingless chickens’. Hawkins16 is interested in how O’Connor, Walker Percy and Iris Murdoch recognize the need for such strategies, and how they go about constructing them, so as to communicate truths of transcendent meaning to an audience that has largely lost the capacity to receive such truths. The authors themselves are an interesting contrast: O’Connor and Percy, robustly Catholic writers, while Murdoch is attempting to compensate for the loss of religious belief by reinstating the Platonic Good as the object of attention and devotion. Though their purposes diverge, Hawkins, nevertheless, discerns a common purpose in

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these three writers, in their recognition of the need to strategize in speaking the language of ‘grace’.

Conversion and ‘figural realism’ I have indicated above that two books are responsible for the seismic impact of Girard on atonement studies. However, in their respective treatments of Christianity, Des choses cachées (1978) seems to be poles apart from its predecessor, La violence et le sacré – even though only six years separate their dates of publication. Violence and the Sacred is so strident in its exposure of the mechanism of sacred violence that the book was welcomed by some (and repudiated by others), as the latest atheistic assault on religion. By contrast, a third of Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World is taken up with an extended meditation on the paradoxical superiority of the Judeo-Christian revelation – the Logos of John – over the violent logos of Heraclitus. The seeming abruptness of the transition – from cultural anthropology, in a decidedly anti-religious key, to an insistence on the unique significance and power of the scripture in laying bare precisely those anthropological facts – is less of a puzzle when we read both these books as developments of his first work, Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (1961; translated as Deceit, Desire and the Novel).17 Girard’s research into motifs of transcendence in five key European novelists, including Proust and Dostoyevsky, was the occasion and catalyst of a religious conversion – aesthetic to begin with, then more existential. His chosen novelists are by no means uniform in their religious commitment, and yet, for Girard, each bears witness to a process of human maturation, one that can only be adequately expressed in religious terminology: images of conversion, transcendence, grace, devotion and worship. The study of these novelists had alerted Girard to motifs of transcendence and the sacred that were inseparable from the ethical and existential content of the works. These religious motifs – specifically concerning patterns of desire and processes of group formation by means of exclusion and expulsion – were central to these texts, irrespective of the actual religious commitment of the novelists themselves. Girard distinguishes between literature that merely

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depicts these patterns (‘romantic’), and works that expose and deconstruct them, to the point where they become a key structuring principle of the novels themselves (‘novelistic’). The writers who are able to operate on this second level have, in most cases, undergone a transformation of emotional and affective life, which Girard does not hesitate to call a ‘conversion’. He declares: As far as I am concerned, the subject of literature and Christianity is literally the story of my whole intellectual and spiritual existence. … Great literature literally led me to Christianity. … My main interest has been the relatedness of a certain form of creation to this notion of religious and especially Christian conversion.18

The genesis of MT in Girard’s own two-staged or ‘double’ conversion to Christianity is well documented. He describes a movement from an initial, ‘aesthetic’ conversion to a more solid existential commitment. He finds parallels in scripture and tradition: in the ‘common-sense realism’ of the Prodigal Son (Lk. ch.15), in Augustine and in Virgil, escorting Dante out of Hell and Purgatory in the Divine Comedy. His chosen novelists similarly descend into hell, though they describe it in non-religious as well as religious terms.19 His research in Violence and the Sacred and subsequent works increasingly drew attention to the real presence of the scapegoated victim, underlying even the most innocuous-seeming mythical and legendary material. As it became apparent to Girard that it is the gospel revelation that has laid bare ‘things hidden since the foundation of the world’, the ethical religious dimension of his theory was finally consolidated. During the course of these investigations, a commonality of purpose is established between great literature and ethical religious concern, with the failure of desire, or desire gone wrong, as the point of convergence. Release from mimetic obsession requires an experience of radical change – going well beyond reform, repentance, repair, regeneration, etc. Girard points out two analogues to his own project: the existential religious concept of ‘repetition’, advanced by Søren Kierkegaard in his book of the same name; and the practice of typological or figurative criticism, familiar from patristic and medieval exegesis, and which found an extraordinary reprise in the work of the German philologist Erich Auerbach.

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This method of a biblical interpretation has, of course, a hallowed tradition in the history of scriptural hermeneutics. It makes a striking reprise in the twentieth century, through Paul Claudel, Henri de Lubac and in two works by Auerbach: his 1938 essay Figura, and in Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Fiction.20 Auerbach identifies two kinds of realism in the Western tradition: the descriptive and sensory realism that we find in Homer, and the interior, psychological realism of the Bible. Biblical realism leads us to new dimensions of representation: ‘pyschological depth, uncertainty of meanings and the need for interpretation’.21 To take this further, because these readings are underwritten by the figure of Christ, a man of humble origins who suffered the ignominious death of a criminal, forms of literary exploration emerge that are simply unimaginable to the classical imagination. The story of Peter’s denial of Christ, or of Alypius in Augustine’s Confessions, struggling to free himself from a pornographic addition to violent spectacles, are narratives that mix everyday reality with the most sublime tragedy. By making possible this ‘creatural realism’, a realism of corporeal suffering, the person and life of Christ become the cornerstone of a new aesthetic. In Mimesis, and in ‘Figura’, Auerbach recovers the late antiquity and medieval tradition of figural interpretation. The insistent linkage of type and antitype, relating all persons and all events to Christ, is, once again, a movement back and forth, one that is inherent in the notion of biblical prophecy. The way figural interpretation links biblical and pre- or non-Christian events is structurally similar to Girard’s reading of myths by means of the ‘novelistic truth’ contained in gospel texts.22 Auerbach’s reading of Peter’s denial of Christ in Mark’s gospel is especially significant. Girard agrees that it depicts a new level of ‘realistic representation’ – though Auerbach is unable to appreciate precisely why, because he is oblivious to the mimetic dimensions of this incident. The fact is that an adequate depiction of mimetic relations will, indeed, strike us as a ‘realistic text’, because this is how human relations are. The idea of an evangelical structuring of traditions of secular representational Western literature echoes Girard’s assertion of just such a structuring in the fiction of Proust: The novel, even though it is not Christian at all, is, in its beliefs, morals, and metaphysics, an aesthetic and even spiritual autobiography which claims to

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be rooted in a personal experience, a personal transformation exactly like the experience Christians call a conversion.23

Girard takes this further, as he clearly sees the aesthetic of the victim as a version of figural interpretation. The passion of Christ structures our perception and interpretation of the victimage mechanism, at work in all manner of literary and mythological texts.24 To this extent, Girard’s version of ‘creatural realism’ goes beyond Auerbach’s, insofar as Girard’s recognition of the innocent victim is more explicit.

Conversion and Paul We have seen that the key to Girard’s approach to literary criticism is in a recovery of a ‘typological’ or ‘figural’ style of reading scripture. (He shows little interest in biblical scholarship as such.) In Des choses cachées, he commends medieval figural analysis, which ‘in spite of its limitations … goes far beyond all that contemporary criticism has ever told us’,25 and cites Paul Claudel, Henri de Lubac and Erich Auerbach in Conversion and Evolution, where Auerbach’s figural interpretation is linked to Girard’s discovery of ‘novelistic truth’: ‘Auerbach sees something essential about the mimetic structure of these relational configurations’.26 As a result, his use of scriptural crucial method is less rigorous than Raymund Schwager’s, who as a systematic theologian can less afford to bypass the biblical sciences.27 Given the differences, we have seen how they, nevertheless, converge in their early exchange of letters, on the need to read Paul, and Paul’s teaching on the Law, alongside mimetic insight – and the discussion of Paul turns on a typological motif, the ‘two Adams’. A specific question arises, therefore, about what such an investigation looks like, in the light of the ‘New Perspective’ scholarship on Paul, which has burgeoned over the last thirty years. This research denotes various attempts to read Paul's letters outside a Lutheran/Reformed framework, instead interpreting them by means of a renewed understanding of first-century Judaism. E. P. Saunders, J. D. Dunn and (more recently) N. T. Wright are the names most associated with this approach.

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An overview of this contemporary scholarship on Paul, specifically of what is referred to as the ‘New Perspective’ – or better, ‘New Perspectives’ – should cause us to hesitate before taking this road. Even while this research does open up exciting new possibilities for mimetic readings of Paul, these are not necessarily the one envisaged by Raymund Schwager in 1977. To explicate this, a brief overview of the ‘New Perspectives’ claims is required. Broadly, its proponents assert that Pauline scholarship since the Reformation has been distorted by Lutheran and Reformed reactions against perceived sixteenth-century Catholic views that were ascribed to first-century Judaism. The ‘New Perspective’ attempts to read Paul’s letters in the light of first-century Judaism, understood on its own terms. In this light, Paul is arguing against the importance to be ascribed to observances such as circumcision and dietary laws, rather than engaging in a polemic about faith versus good works. E. P. Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977)28 sets out the case for the revised view, followed by James D. G. Dunn; more recently, Bishop N. T. Wright has popularized the ‘New Perspective’ outside of the academy. The perspectives differ in their reading of what Paul means by ‘works of the law’. For the new scholars, Paul’s key concern is ‘badges of covenant membership’ rather than issues around ‘works righteousness’. He is responding to Gentile converts who are being urged to take on Jewish practices as a token of belonging. By contrast, Paul seeks to demolish the idea that following traditional Israelite customs gives an advantage before God. This is not (contrary to the traditional Reformed view) an argument about the efficacy of grace and faith alone, over against human efforts (‘works’) to gain righteousness: Paul has nothing against the latter, but sees them (as does Christ) as the fruit and evidence of faith. Where this has considerable impact for the Girard-Schwager conversation is in the picture of the atonement that emerges. ‘Old perspective’ scholars had stressed the centrality of the doctrine of penal substitution, and the belief in the ‘finished work’ of Christ; recent scholarship challenges this centrality and asserts that other understandings of the atonement (mystical participation, ethical/cultic, etc.) are at least equally important for Paul. The point to be stressed here is that the ‘New Perspective’ scholarship situates Paul’s discussion of the law in a very specific context: namely, the dispute about how Gentile Christians are to think about identity and belonging, in the light of the Good

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News that has been preached to them. Paul is not seeking to offer a general account of humanity’s helplessness before the Law, or of the absolute necessity of faith over against works, etc. If the lines of this scholarship are taken up, therefore, it would be unwise to read Romans 7 as a commentary on the anthropology of mimetic desire. Schwager’s initial question to Girard, concerning the law and its ambiguous function, seeks to align the law with the paradox of mimetic desire. The ‘New Perspective’ scholarship relocates our appraisal of the law: from a statement about universal helplessness, to a specific dispute about identity within the Gentile Christian community, would suggest that this is not a promising avenue to take. In short, we should be very careful about taking Paul’s teaching in Romans 7 as the basis of a universal mimetic description. This does not mean that MT has nothing to gain by studying this passage, however. Schwager’s plea for a ‘dramatic’, rather than ‘dialectical’, reading of Paul and an engagement with the ‘new Paul’ enables a realignment of the discussion. Henceforth our attention is drawn, not to the law as a skandalon, put in place to convict and convince us of our mimetic helplessness, but, rather, to the deep entanglement of cultural identity formation with our sense of religious well-being. We have seen how the ‘old perspective’ stands accused of projection of sixteenthcentury hostilities upon first-century Judaism, to which is accredited all the worst perceived aspects of Catholic adversaries. Only as this sectarian bias is recognized and corrected can a nuanced perspective emerge – culminating in the wonderful breakthrough of the Joint Catholic-Lutheran Accord of 1999, in which the mutual distortions and misunderstandings of the last four hundred years are acknowledged and repaired. Such progress has not been uncontroversial; the ‘New Perspectives’ scholarship has met with considerable resistance from British Evangelicals to any mitigation of the doctrine of penal substitution, and to the classical Augustinian interpretation of election. N. T. Wright has been the target of much of this backlash; he himself has commented on the levels of abuse to be found in internet exchanges on this subject. It is fair to say that the debate has unfolded along denominational lines, with reaction against the ‘New Perspective’ largely from the Reformed scholars, while their Catholic and Orthodox counterparts are (e.g. Marshall 2010) largely favourable.29

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For Schwager, what is at stake in the rejection of penal substitution doctrine is the gradual, dramatic, but non-dialectical, revelation of God’s utter noncomplicity with human violence. The common ground between his position and the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus becomes clear when we interpret mimetically the Catholic-Lutheran Accord as a fruit of the new Pauline scholarship. Knowledge and science do not empower us to stop hunting for victims; it is the other way round: our readiness to renounce victimization and resentment opens us up to new forms of causality, and makes new knowledge available to us; see the argument of the concluding chapter of The Scapegoat, about the power of the Paraclete in history.30 The post-Vatican rapprochement between Christian denominations, which had been sundered by the Reformation, as well as between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people, has surely facilitated the ‘New Perspective’ research. In its identification of sectarian, even anti-Semitic bias in previous scholarship, and in the rancorous polemics that the ‘New Perspective’ scholars have generated, it is hard to think of a better ‘case study’ for mimetic theorists exploring the dynamics of resentment in group formation.

Conclusion This survey of MT and the doctrine of the atonement began with the initial theological probing of Schwager and Girard as to how to read mimetically Paul’s treatment of the paradox of the Law. Here, and also in the Genesis narrative of Adam and Eve, is the skandalon: the obstacle that, by prohibiting desire, in fact, provokes it. The trajectories of the two thinkers are distinct, but convergent. Schwager seeks to utilize a mimetic hermeneutic so as to resolve paradoxes and aporias in the Bible – above all, the problem of divinely sanctioned violence. Girard is keen to ground his mimetic insights in a firm ethnological base, pursuing a goal of universal ‘scientific’ validity. As their subsequent cooperation has shown, the approaches are after all complementary – above all, with regard to the present discussion. A theologically adequate doctrine of atonement, and the metaphors or pictures that instantiate it, must be faithful to the biblical narrative; yet, it needs also to be universalizable.

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Girard’s intuitions are fundamentally Johannine: the logos of the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel is expelled by the hostile unanimity of ‘the world’, held in Satan’s mendacious grip. By contrast, we have noted that the Pauline dynamic of Law and grace, explored tentatively in the Girard/Schwager correspondence, may be a more complicated point of departure than one might think. Certainly, it makes sense to begin to interpret original sin mimetically, as is accomplished to great effect by Schwager31 and by James Alison32; but given that the recent Pauline scholarship has called us to consider ‘the law’ differently – as indicator of a specific dispute about Gentile Christian identity – it is a less feasible depiction of universal helplessness or depravity. The need for universalizability remains, along with its dangers. In an article written originally in 1997, Louis-Marie Chauvet attempts to delineate the relationship between theology and anthropology.33 The risk for the theologian in this interdisciplinary conversation is that he or she is so at home with his or her religious convictions that he or she is on ‘automatic pilot’, failing to achieve scientific neutrality and operating, instead, out of a ‘crypto-theology’. Girard’s theory, while providing a corrective to excessive post-medieval and, especially post-Tridentine notions of sacrifice and expiation, nevertheless offers a theory that ‘may be seductive but is dangerous in its very generality’.34 Here, again, the theologian-turned anthropologist must examine his/her crypto-metaphysical and crypto-theological reflexes: But by reason of the mental structure (what the Scholastics would have called the habitus) that theology has given them and that persuades them to place in dialogue with the one and only God a generic and only human being, i.e. a being whose universality is conceptually established at the price of crushing its characteristic socio-historic mediations, they must remain particularly vigilant in order to adopt over-hastily a general theory that follows their reflexes and their Christian self-interest.35

I have argued the case elsewhere for reading Girard’s considered position on sacrifice as broadly similar to Chauvet’s, so the objection that Girard has abandoned the concept altogether does not strictly hold.36 It is also worth noting that the warning, directed as it is at the theologian and the theological habitus, does not strictly apply to Girard, who consistently refuses the

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label ‘theologian’ in any systematic sense.37 In any case, Girard’s career as a ‘theological’ thinker, if anything, shows him oscillating between timidity and enthusiasm, as he works through an ambiguous and complex relationship with institutional Christianity. It is not true to say that Girard’s ‘reflex’ attitude is, straightforwardly, a habitus of orthodox affirmation. In the foreword to a recent book of essays on the conversation between MT and evolution, edited by Antonello and Gifford, Rowan Williams commends MT’s engagement with the sciences of human origins, but notes that MT’s insistence on culture’s embroilment in a sort of symbolic original sin ‘takes us beyond empirical science alone’, and requires a phenomenology. At the same time, MT’s function as a heuristic myth can continue to open up possibilities for genuine empirical work; it is a working scientific hypothesis, not simply a useful fiction. The chapters that follow Williams’ foreword, exploring structures of victim identification and expulsion across the animal–human divide, the role of ‘religion’ as a primary cultural matrix, and so on, all ‘tell strongly in favor of something very like Girard’s account as an empirically credible story of cultural origins’. The precedent of Darwinian theory is invoked: ‘a “big picture,” inspiring and exasperating, gradually fleshed out by work in unexpected fields’.38 Nevertheless, Chauvet’s warning is resonant, and it is comforting as well as amusing to note that help is at hand in the quest for ‘universalizability’ from surprising non- or even anti-theological sources. One such unexpected field, perhaps, is worked by Stephen Mulhall, who identifies in each of three philosophers – Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein – something of an analogue to the theological doctrine of ‘the Fall’. These are accounts of the human condition that appeal to a notion of sickness rather than imperfection, and that insist on both the non-individual genesis of the condition and the incapacity of the individual to escape from it unaided. Mulhall affirms the intention of the three thinkers to preserve a recognizable descendent of the Christian conception of human nature as always already averting us from the relation to truth, comprehension and clarity that is nonetheless our birthright – hence as structurally perverse or errant and yet redeemable from that fallen state – but as refusing to accept

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that such redemption is attainable only from a transcendental or divine source.39

Nietzsche, in particular, attempts to speak the words of Christianity – because they are the right words – but to speak them differently. However, the more he and the other authors seek to articulate this condition in non- or antireligious terms, the more evident is their reliance on the conceptual structure, and even vocabulary, of Christianity, which ‘appears in Nietzsche not so much as the reverse of the truth but as the truth in foul disguise’.40 By the same token, Wittgenstein’s critical reading in the second section of the Theological Investigations of Augustine’s view on language acquisition (Confessions Bk 1.8) is a theologically inflected appraisal of the limitations and dangers of human learning, guided as it is by desire. In short, Wittgenstein’s critique is a ‘virtual transcription’ of the account of original sin offered by René Girard, and the theologians who are inspired by him. The exact nature and extent of Wittgenstein’s own religious commitments remain ambiguous – intriguingly, he wished to apply to his own work Bach’s prayer of dedication in his organ-book, ‘To the Glory of the Most High God’. This allows Mulhall to suggest that ‘Christianity is in possession of at least some of the right words for what Wittgenstein has it at heart to say’ (117). Such, too, might be an apt description for the responsibility of all contemporary theologians – Girardian or otherwise – united in their concern to convey the urgency and relevance of the gospel message: to speak the words of Christianity – because they are the right words – but to speak them differently.

Notes 1 To adapt the words of Brutus from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: ‘Let us be sacrificers but not butchers’ (Act 2 Sc. I. 1.66). 2 R. Girard, La Violence et le Sacré (Paris: Grasset, 1972); R. Girard, Des Choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde (Paris: Grasset, 1978). 3 One argument of this chapter is that the insights of Mimetic Theory (MT) are necessarily only available to mainstream theological discourse by means of a certain strategy of ‘indirection’, familiar from literary and philosophical

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sources. I am indebted to Peter Hawkins for the suggestive notion of ‘strategies of grace’, which I have made the title of this chapter. P. S. Hawkins, Strategies of Grace: Flannery O’Connor, Percy Walker and Iris Murdoch (New York: Seabury Classics, 2004). 4 An English translation of the letters is available in René Girard and Raymund Schwager: Correspondence 1974-1991 (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016). I cite here from the unpublished French translation by Sheelah Treflé Hidden of the correspondence, referenced by the letter’s date. 5 Raymund Schwager to René Girard, 16 September 1975. The Pauline text (Romans 7: 5-8) runs thus: ‘For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead.’ 6 Girard to Schwager, 8 April 1974. 7 Girard to Schwager, 2 November 1975. 8 R. Schwager, Brauchen wir einen Sündenbock? Gewalt und Erlösung in den biblischen Schriften (München: Kosel, 1978). 9 D. Ford, Self and Salvation: Being Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), i–vi. Ford asserts that an adequate soteriology must be widely accessible, related to imaginative emotional and pastoral concerns; it should be encapsulated in one or a few symbols or metaphors that have ‘intensity or gripping power’, as well as heuristic richness and practical fruitfulness for Christian activities such as worship, life in community and the struggle for justice. 10 Themes discussed in the correspondence may be briefly listed: the significance of the Letter to the Hebrews, for example, which Schwager accurately predicts will be a source of controversy for Girard. Schwager’s distinction between the Cross as a ‘la revelation d’un savoir’ and ‘la croix comme d’une source de vie’ (Schwager to Girard, 29 March 1978), prefigures the debate about the alleged gnosticism in Girard’s work, and, indeed, the revaluation of sacrifice that takes place as a result

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11 Heraclitus, Fragment DK22B53, in K. Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 1948). 12 D. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2004), 182–91. 13 Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 188–9. 14 Vatican website, Joint Catholic-Lutheran Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, 1999, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/ chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-jointdeclaration_en.html (accessed 29 April 2016). 15 W. Lowe, ‘Christ and Salvation’, in Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. K. J. Vanhoozer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 235–51. 16 Hawkins, Strategies of Grace. 17 R. Girard, Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (Paris: Grasset, 1961); R. Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965). 18 R. Girard, ‘Conversion in Literature and Christianity’, in Mimesis and Theory: Essays in Literature and Criticism, ed. R. Girard (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, [1999], 2008), 263–73. 19 Girard, ‘Conversion in Literature and Christianity’, 264. 20 E. Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, [1953] 2003). 21 M. Potolsky, Mimesis (New York and London: Routledge, 2006), 106. 22 R. Girard, J. Cezar de Castro Rocha and P. Antonello, Evolution and Conversion (London and New York: Continuum, 2007), 180–1. 23 Proust ‘enters great literature just as, earlier, he might have entered the religious life’ (270). See Auerbach on Proust: Auerbach, Mimesis, 541–4. Girard, ‘Conversion in Literature and Christianity’, 269. 24 During the D’Arcy lecture, which he delivered in Oxford in 1997, Girard expressed his excitement on discovering that in Byzantium, productions of Oedipus Rex were referred to as ‘the passion of Oedipus’. For further reflection on Auerbach and MT, see Cesareo Bandera, A Refuge of Lies: Reflections on Faith and Fiction (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013). Chapter One is entitled ‘Auerbach’s Mimesis Revisited’. 25 R. Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 274.

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26 Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 181–2. 27 See R. North, ‘Violence and the Bible: The Girard Connection’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 47 (1985): 1–27. North’s broadly sympathetic survey of Girard and Schwager commends as ‘excellent’ the use of exegesis in Brauchen Wir einen Sundenbock? This is in contrast to Girard, who is taken to task for ‘casualness and generalization’ in his use of OT. North’s survey specifies seven ‘points of unfinished business’, but also stresses eight positive features of Girard’s work, which he hopes will enrich exegesis. 28 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977). 29 T. Marshall, The Catholic Perspective on Paul (Dallas, TX: Saint John Press, 2010). 30 R. Girard, The Scapegoat (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; London: Athlone, 1986). 31 R. Schwager, Banished from Eden: Original Sin and Evolutionary Theory in the Drama of Salvation (London: Gracewing, 2006). 32 J. Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin through Easter Eyes (New York: Crossroad, 1998). 33 L-M, Chauvet, ‘When the Theologian Turns Anthropologist’, in Keeping Faith in Practice: Aspects of Catholic Pastoral Theology, ed. J. Sweeney, G. Simmonds and D. Lonsdale (London: SCM Press, [1997] 2010), 148–62. [Fr. Original: ‘Quand le théologien se fait anthropologue …’ in 1997, Approches scientifiques des faits religieux, ed. J. Joncheray (Paris: Beauchesne, 1997), 29–46], ‘When the theologian turns anthropologist’. Chauvet describes the ‘Girardian’ temptation as a tendency to flatten out the particularities of diverse sacrificial practices across many religious traditions. 34 Chauvet, ‘When the Theologian Turns Anthropologist’, 159. 35 Ibid. 36 M. Kirwan, ‘Eucharist and Sacrifice’, New Blackfriars 88: 1014 (March 2007): 213–27. 37 We may note here the tendency of some commentators precisely to think of Girard as a ‘theologian of spiritual transformation’, in the style of Hans Urs von Balthasar. The confusion may stem in part from Girard’s occupancy of Chair number 37 of the Académie Francaise – traditionally a theologian’s chair. The fact remains that to read Girard in this way is to fly in the face of his own selfdescription and clear sense of epistemological demarcation: see his comments on Balthasar in the letter to Schwager, 1 August 1979 (67): ‘… il voit en moi

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avant tout un théologien alors qu’en réalité mon enracinement est dans les textes littéraires et ethnologiques.’ 38 R. Williams, ‘Foreword’, in Can We Survive Our Origins? Readings in René Girard’s Theory of Violence and the Sacred, ed. P. Antonello and P. Gifford (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2015), xi–xvi. 39 S. Mulhall, Philosophical Myths of the Fall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 11. 40 Stanley Cavell, cited by Mulhall, Philosophical Myths of the Fall, 17.

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Violence Unveiled: Understanding Christianity and Politics in Northern Ireland after René Girard’s Rereading of Atonement Duncan Morrow

Introduction In the twentieth century, few places in Western Europe were as overtly ‘religious’ as the north of Ireland. Not only were church attendance rates higher than elsewhere, but the terms ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ had come to represent whole ethno-political groups and causes, a convenient, if not always accurate, shorthand for antagonism that was picked up and used both by outside interests and by local street fighters on either side. Although the resort by some to violence was regularly condemned from the pulpit and the graveside, the difficulty remained that no neutral observer could fail to note the continuity between the evident ethno-political hatred and the doctrines, practices, social relationships and attitudes of many church-going Protestants and Catholics in relation to one another. Religion was integral to experiences of imperialism, identity and cultural organization, and by the twentieth century had come to mark both the critical social and political boundary inside the north of Ireland, and to shape the difference between the north of Ireland and less enthusiastic churchgoers in Great Britain. Violent hostility had claimed ecclesiastical, cultural and political sanction and, even in the democratic era, ‘civic equality’ did not emerge easily. Northern Ireland remained a place where claims to be ‘the one true church’ were understood as claims to secular moral primacy and authority. The Catholic Church took on a powerful political role as the advocate for a

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whole community “vis-à-vis” government, and the power and ambition of the priesthood was evident to its critics through their formal role in controlling state-funded schools, hospitals and social services. At the same time, reformation documents that declared that claims by the ‘Pope of Rome’ to be head of the church, in fact, revealed him as ‘Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalts himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God’ (Westminster Confession of Faith)1 still had profound, current and concrete political implications for Protestant attitudes and rhetoric towards Catholics. Suspicion and hostility on confessional grounds found consistent succour and explanation in doctrine and practice. Since the seventeenth century, separation in the north of Ireland was more than a matter of ‘difference’ but was inseparable from mutually exclusive claims to be ‘better’ and ‘worse’, articulated in a recurrent experience of ‘friend and foe’ rooted in deep mimetic rivalries. By the twentieth century, it had fused in a remarkable way with ideas of identity and nationality and was explicitly used as support by militants on both sides for the ‘holy’ and ‘necessary’ resort to violence to political ends.2 The synthesis of post-reformation Christian boundaries, with politics to mark ‘sides’ to a wider imperial conflict, illustrates how deeply the churches and official Christianity were integrated into the mimetic patterns of both institutional and everyday life – so deeply, in fact, that nobody could pinpoint the precise boundary where the religious became the political and vice versa. By the twentieth century, the clergy largely regarded the use of religious categories to formally justify violence as anathema; but cultural antipathy, suspicion and mutual ignorance could sometimes appear ‘natural’ if not obligatory. Discrimination, forced territorial separation and cultural antagonism were normative and the use of violence to enforce this escalated seriously in the early 1970s. Without doubt, however, the appearance of physical force was a question of the escalation of conflict to ever-greater extremes from which the churches, Christianity and Christians could not be separated, rather than the generation of anything unknown or clearly distinctive or separate.3 This chapter is an exploration of the implications of René Girard’s rereading  of the nature of sacrifice in culture against the backdrop of this conjunction of Christianity with ethnic politics and violence. The relevance

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of the example of Northern Ireland does not stem from its peculiar violence, still less from its political importance, but from its emergence as a socio-drama of human conflict, where the mimetic pattern of violence became visible in an unexpected and apparently strategically irrelevant corner and time (it is not by chance that the gospel drama emerges from backwater Bethlehem and Nazareth, not fashionable Rome or Athens). Unusually for a situation of ethnopolitical violence, the consequences of escalating mimeticism were eventually ‘contained’. Paradoxically, the very ‘undesirability’ of Northern Ireland in international affairs along with its position as a small place surrounded by relatively wealthy Western neighbours, both allowed the mimetic nature of violence to become visible and has not yet become terminal. The second potential source of interest in Northern Ireland lies in the association of ethnic and Christian identities in conflict and in peace seeking. Christian theologizing has acted to both reveal and conceal violence in Ireland. Biblical text and doctrinal claims have been used over generations to give substance and meaning to parties in conflict, and few settings make more visible the struggle of the sacrificial and the anti-sacrificial within historical Christianity. Any reading of violence following René Girard inevitably implies a reading of Christianity by its own core texts. But unusually also, the search for a way out from the mimetic captivity of Northern Ireland in recent years has been characterized by the unexpected emergence of ‘reconciliation’ as a language of social and political change. Given the mimetic origins of the crisis, and the wider global erosion of structural alternatives, the question of how the almost unbearably radical implications of a Girardian reading of the crucifixion relates to the potential for reconciliation is both immediate and unavoidable.

For us and our salvation René Girard’s anthropological work has two central themes: first, that human violence arises from our propensity for interpersonal and social mimetic desire, which generates unmanageable patterns of rivalry and mutual antagonism; and second, that the threat which this creates for human society is ‘resolved’

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through the identification of a scapegoat, a victim sacrificed by the rest of the community. Paradoxically, this sacrificial process also brings peace to those who remain – in an apparently miraculous way. From the méconnaissance of the origins of social peace in sacrifice, human culture and religion emerged under the sign of the scapegoat, now recognized as divine for their capacity to bring both chaos and peace to the community. The origins of the community in this mechanism are retold in myth and in the identification of prohibitions and laws to preserve the peace. Over time, the efficacy of the mechanism to control violence is reinforced through ritual re-enactment of the original sacrifice and acts to delay the tendency to decay. Girard’s most radical claim, however, is that the predicament of the modern world lies in the fact that the roots of culture and religion in the sacrifice of a scapegoat have been revealed. For Girard, this is primarily the consequence of the action of, first, Judaism and, later, Christianity. In this reading, the Judaeo-Christian scriptures take on a meaning not only as sacred text but also as crucial anthropological adventure, recording the journey of exploration and discovery of the sacrificial reality underpinning culture. The revelation of the truth about human culture reaches its climax in the passion of Jesus of Nazareth and the story of crucifixion and resurrection at its core, as the gospel narrative almost uncannily re-enacts the foundational mechanism at the core of culture, only this time illuminating the process from the perspective of the victim: It is important to insist that Christ’s death was not a sacrificial one. To say that Jesus dies, not as a sacrifice, but in order that there may be no more sacrifices, is to recognise in him the Word of God: ‘I wish for mercy not sacrifices.’ Where that word is not obeyed, Jesus can remain. There is nothing gratuitous about the utterance of that word and where it is not followed by any effect, where violence remains master, Jesus must die. Rather than become the slave of violence, as our own word necessarily does, the Word of God says no to violence.4

The exposure of the violence at the heart of culture and of human being tears the veil from the claims of violence to be anything else (transcendence, sacrality, holiness) and places responsibility back on its human authors. Instead of a community based on driving out its own violence by violence,

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the victim is revealed as the miraculous image of a God who refuses reprisal, offers forgiveness and opens up a new world (the kingdom) that is marked by contrition, mutual service and forbearance. Jesus’ death, far from being an act to appease a jealous or wrathful God, is refigured in the gospel as the wilful but unwitting sacrifice of the God of love, by the jealous and wrathful crowd led by the powers of religion and politics. But instead of driving out God, revealed as a threat to the social and political order, the act of driving out reveals, at least to the small number of those around him both who God is and who we are: a God who refuses all violence and the complicity in and responsibility of the crowd for violence and murder. For Girard, the narrative history of Jesus in the gospels is the definitive account of the revelation of the surrogate victim mechanism, which manipulates the violence that is generated abundantly from the evolutionary system, both in the free play of pre-human nature and, albeit temporarily stabilized, in the world of human culture and human freedom. Furthermore, Girard reads the Passion story as a decisive disarming-by-disclosure of that sacralising victimary mechanism which now, in our own times, through the slow osmosis of Christianity into human culture at large, has become dramatically weaker, is losing control, and being pushed aside – thus ushering in the dramatically sharpened alternative characteristics of our times. Either the slouching beast will blow up Nazareth and all of us with it or else – impelled by the hope that comes with knowing that violence cannot be constrained by sweeping it under the carpet of sacrificial blood and mystic thunder, realizing that it no longer needs to be – we shall turn to loving.5 Grasping the fundamental nature of the breach that Jesus accomplishes has been the work of millennia. It is also clear that the claim is profoundly out of sync with the tenor of our own time. But the tendency of ‘Christians’ to return to a fundamentally sacrificial reading of the gospel, especially as it became central to the political organization of Western society, and later the globe, has been unmistakable. For some, like Ivan Illich, this process has resulted in the corruptio optimi pessima, what he calls ‘the perversion of the gospel’. The transformation by the church of the opening up to love of the other brought into the world by Jesus in the Good Samaritan parable into juridical and administrative order based on ‘criminalisation of sin’ have resulted in the

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triumph of system over person.6 As Dostoevsky demonstrates so remarkably in his exploration of the nature of ‘the Christian’ in The Brothers Karamazov, the consequences have been of institutions and human community, which has transported the gospel through time in culture, faithfully eroding both itself and culture in the process, and at times being its most faithless disciple: Regarding historical Christianity, we must be aware, consequently of its mixed character, the product of an intermingling of static and dynamic religion. … The Constantinian shift resulted in a Christian universalism that only seemingly resembles dynamic religion and its outreach towards an open society. This type of universalism is a form of imperialism that looks like a form of universalist mysticism but remains bound to static religion and closed societies. Bergson was very well aware that a merely gradual enlargement of a social entity does not lead to an open society. The expansion of closed societies does not change their nature. … Imperialistic universalism only seemingly leads towards an open society. In reality it remains a closed society, even where it aspires to take in the whole world to be governed by a world state. If Christianity wants to contribute to an open society and a unified globalised solidarity without the need of outside enemies, it has to overcome its own temptation towards collective pride. It has to detach itself from Constantinianism and its inherent temptation.7

The pivot of history in Girard is the reversal and revelation of the scapegoat mechanism. Our observations on this apocalypse at this point, however, will be limited to two: First of all, Girard overturns the classical medieval understanding of the crucifixion as substitutionary atonement for sin required as the price to appease the wrath of God, which has been of such central importance both to elements within Catholicism and to fundamentalist evangelicalism as it emerged in the West from the nineteenth century. Writing in response to Girard, the Swiss Jesuit theologian Raymund Schwager noted: It has been repeatedly said that Christ, as God-man, offered through his death an infinite satisfaction to his heavenly Father; that he vicariously atoned for the limitless offence inflicted on God through the sins of human beings. … Yet, the image of God that stood behind the long-accepted satisfaction theory can hardly be brought into harmony with the father

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to whom Jesus repeatedly referred. The parables of the prodigal son and the merciless creditor make it clear that God forgives without demanding satisfaction and payment in return. He demands only that we forgive others as unconditionally as we are granted unconditional mercy. … The God of Jesus Christ is exactly the opposite of violence. He does not seek a quid pro quo. He does not demand an eye for an eye. His limitless forgiveness and boundless love are distinct in every respect from the mechanism of violence and the vicious circle of mutual destructiveness. Therefore any thought of retaliation must be completely eliminated from genuine Christian teaching of redemption.8

Second, salvation can now be understood both as liberation from the reign of violence and as an invitation to life, a kingdom of love beyond death as instigated by Jesus – through self-sacrifice and endurance if necessary. The fundamental invitation of Jesus in the gospel is to follow him from the old world into the new, eternal world, ‘the possibility of post-sacrificial, nonviolent fellowship with the divine, as prefigured in the Hebrew scriptures, and as integrally expressed in the self-sacrificing death of Jesus’.9 The salvation of each believer and each believing community has its origins in divine grace, depends on forgiveness and forgiving, and is marked by humility and contrition.

‘A factory of grievances’: Religion and rivalry in conflict in Ireland Girard’s concern is ultimately for a clearer understanding of the dynamics of human cultural origins, history and future. Part of this development depends on exploring and tracing the path of violence and religion in historical time. In the case of Ireland, the specific additional dimension involves engaging with the ways in which Christianity has acted to both reveal and conceal violence. This chapter is neither a history of conflict in Ireland nor a history of Christianity in Ireland, both of which are enormous subjects inevitably full of contradictory and complex evidence. Rather, it is a schematic consideration of the ways in which Girard’s theories of the mimetic nature of violence throw light on the origins of conflict in an ethnic frontier like Northern Ireland, and

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more specifically, a short consideration of some of the ways in which historic Christianity has interacted with ethnic identity and the use of violence. Tracing the mimetic origins of conflict in the north of Ireland inevitably reconnects the particular circumstances of Ireland back into the wider emergence of conflict in Europe and Christendom. ‘Sectarianism’ – conflict between people separated within a religion, each making rival claims to transcendent power and authority – in Ireland emerged as a specific aspect of movements of political and social rivalry, all of which have a recognizably international and European dimension: the divisions of Christendom, the expansion of political empire and revolutionary attempts to establish democracy. In the sixteenth century, the edifice of ‘Christendom’ that reached its apex in the crusades was established on its transformation into competing dynastic and, later, national empires. After Columbus returned from his dramatic adventure in 1492, the balance of economic power moved decisively to the West. Ireland, previously largely peripheral to political interest, now lay closer to the Atlantic centre. In terms of mimetic patterns, Ireland unexpectedly found itself an object of desire. All of this was fuelled by the consequences of the Lutheran controversy and the rapid spread of Protestantism, and the descent into armed and political Christian civil war in Europe. By 1555, the German princes had concluded that only strict political separation could save the Holy Roman Empire from what we might call, after Girard, a crisis of undifferentiation. And so at Augsburg in 1555, they declared the doctrine of stability based on mutual exclusion: Cuius Regio, Eius Religio. The distinct circumstances of Britain and Ireland had different consequences. Unexpectedly catapulted into the place of the largest anti-Roman power in Europe, the English became increasingly concerned to ensure their Western flank in Ireland. Over a period of fifty years, this concern crystallized into a determination to bring Ireland under political control. The risk posed by Ireland was characterized by the potential for the island to act as a Catholic base from which to attack the fragile Protestant settlement. The pattern of mimetic escalation of conflict between the colonial administration and the native Irish took on an increasingly sectarian tenor. When the significant Irish resistance was defeated, and the Irish leadership departed to seek reinforcements among the courts of Catholic Europe,

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the British authorities took the fateful step of confiscating native land and establishing a policy of settling it with Scots and English who could be relied upon for loyalty. In Girardian terms, loyalty depended on settlers who could be relied upon to share the mimetic identity and rivalries of the state: in practice, this meant settling Protestants, or even more importantly, antiCatholics. Uniquely in the North, the settlement left two sides to an unfinished conflict living side by side, each aware that the other was intent on revenge. Instead of the violent separation required by cuius regio eius religio, settlement resembled a frontier of doubles, locked by mimetic rivalry in an endemic crisis of undifferentiation, in which Christian rivalries provided the most ready and reliable means of representation and differentiation. With that come the dangers, not only a danger that ‘history’ would be subsumed into memory of mimetic conflict, but also one that Christianity would be called in to aid in providing religious support for sacrifice. Clearly, then, conflict in Ireland has roots in the mimetic power struggles of civil powers in politics, economics and society. The claim is not that historical Christianity is the conflict, but that it must now be understood as a critical, and potentially unstable, element within a wider culture. In Girardian terms, the critical question is the extent to which that action has been to reveal the centrality of sacrifice or in what ways Christianity has actually acted to provide ballast to violent rivalry. The central role of Christianity in conflict in Ireland can in part be attributed to the weakness of the secular state and the explicitly confessional nature of the settlement. This led both settler and native to rely on residual ecclesiastical structures for order, legitimacy and comfort. In this anxious world, churches were a crucial available possibility of identity and solidarity, through rituals of solace and sacrifice. In line with much of Europe, the identification of denominated institutions with God’s elect gave moral meaning to a violent conflict as a struggle between good and evil. In the presence of actual threat and latent chaos, the experience of the community was narrated in churches against a social backdrop that consistently reproduced the division of the world into friend and foe. As it faced an apparently mortal threat, the attraction of a promise of salvation to God’s chosen and persecuted, and damnation to the persecutors, had an obvious resonance.

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In each case, the consistent tendency was to associate the history of the community with the sufferings of Christ, representing the predicament of their people as that of the victim. The division of the world into believers and heretics had immediate parallels with the social experience of friend and foe. As Christ had suffered, so the community must now endure. The theological centre of the narratives of conflict and violence was always the passion. But whereas Girard underlines the function of the cross in revealing the complicity of the disciples, authorities and crowd, theology in Ireland was overwhelmingly deployed to reinforce the innocence of the community. In most cases, this can be traced back to variations on the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Where the crucifixion was understood as an act of God in which Jesus took humanity’s debt for sin on himself to appease his God’s wrath, the cross was primarily a question of an economy of divine justice in the face of a God of wrath. Violence is not so much unveiled as redirected. Sacrifice is not murder but heroism. Within a world of substitutionary atonement, doctrines of election and forgiveness are transfigured into promises for the few, who are distinguished from their peers by their allegiance and unique access to truth, not by their conversion to non-violence. Through substitutionary atonement, those who believe are restored to right relationship with God. In its Calvinist manifestation, the believers are ‘washed clean’ by the blood of Christ, and restored to innocence. Ultimately, however, the world awaits the final wrath of God in a cataclysmic last judgement (apocalypse) in which the righteous will be called home. This identification of God’s people with the sojourn of a people, and the identification of those people as elect or chosen or true inevitably risks recasting God as the God of the tribe who protects over and against all others. At its most radical, the biblical narrative functioned as a hermeneutic of the innocent revealing the world as a battle between denominations standing respectively for good and evil, substituting for the saved and the damned. Biblical texts proclaiming Jesus’s death and resurrection, for US and OUR salvation took on specific ethnic meaning. In the middle of a mimetic vortex of conflict where each participant was convinced of his or her radical difference from the other, the demands of salvation effectively released the believers

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from the imperative to love enemies in the context of a political friend–enemy distinction, not unlike Carl Schmitt centuries later.10 What is striking to the outside observer, however, is the mimetic similarity of the narratives of struggle in the north of Ireland, even as late as the twentieth century. As Catholic emancipation progressed, it was increasingly reconfigured into a new form of Irish nationalism. But as it did so, British antinationalism (Unionism) was increasingly articulated in ultra-Protestant and anti-Catholic tones. The fact is that both sides confronted each other from a position of increasing equality. Mimetic rivalry succeeded. Threatened, as they believed, with rule by a resentful Catholic horde, Ulster Protestants pledged themselves in 1912 in solemn Covenant, throughout this our time of threatened calamity, to stand by one another in defending, for ourselves and our children, our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy … in sure confidence that God will defend the right.11

Irish republicanism understood itself as transcending barriers of confession in a common Irish project. But for at least one of the key leaders, Padraig Pearse, the task was seen in explicitly sacrificial terms that drew directly on the passion. Having declared that ‘blood is a cleansing and sanctifying thing’, he articulated his own dilemma: ‘I see my role in part as sacrifice for what my mother’s people have suffered, atonement for what my father’s people have done.’ He went even further in a poem written just before he was executed for his leadership of the abortive ‘Easter rising’ in Dublin in 1916: I say to my people that they are holy, that they are august, despite their chains,/That they are greater than those that hold them and stronger and purer,/That they have but need of courage, and to call on the name of their God,/God the unforgetting, the dear God that loves the peoples/For whom He died naked, suffering shame.12

Both invoke the defence of God’s justice in their sacrificial struggle against the evil enemy, and to legitimate specific violence rather than to constrain it. Both represent themselves as consistent with God’s justice and faithful to the justice revealed in the sacrificial scapegoat. Violence, in each case, is a violence to end

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violence, a necessary sacrifice against evil. Every death in this relationship is part of divine justice and part of a drama of substitutionary sacrifice in which many partake. Of course, this creates a caricature of the history of Christianity in the north of Ireland. Indeed, many may argue, with some justification, that the churches acted as a bulwark against extremism and against the escalation into violence. But any examination of rhetorical Christianity’s relationship to politics will be struck by the relative isolation of voices of protest against this drift, especially at times of escalation. There is no doubt that the alignment of Christian denomination with national identity in conflict in Northern Ireland was and remains striking. Violence in this relationship was inevitably experienced from within religious communities, and the potential for ‘mimetic capture’ was considerable. Churches organized to maintain boundaries against one another were condemned to protect and organize on behalf of one ‘party to conflict’, but seldom to mediate and reveal the relationship. Radical doctrines of both Protestant fundamentalism and radical Catholic liberationism were held by only small minorities within church hierarchies, but their influence and logic were everywhere in politics. Ultimately, it is this backdrop that underlines the significance which the elaboration of the scapegoat mechanism might represent in Northern Ireland. The tensions of relationships in Northern Ireland escalated to new and unseen levels in the early 1970s. Whole districts were cleared of their minorities, and sectarian murder reappeared. Churches that had begun to think about and even make gestures towards one another found themselves drawn into the crisis, uncertain and unclear and apparently drawn in every direction. Unusually, and possibly unexpectedly, the extreme escalation was slowed to what one British cabinet minister memorably called ‘the acceptable level of violence’. Fragile, bitter and uncertain Northern Ireland did not collapse. While conflict escalated to the extremes in an almost textbook ‘Clausewitz’ pattern, with no evidence of any appetite for Hegelian Aufhebung (see Girard),13 the crisis did not reach its appointed climax. Instead, it was held in a state of incompletion by the intervention of much bigger parties, who were by then sufficiently distant from the religious articulation of difference in Northern Ireland to enable them to resist the potential for mimetic contagion.

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Violence was not stopped but managed. Conflict was not resolved but channelled and dammed. Killing continued, but at a level that did not consume the system – for twenty-five years. In that sense, we were possibly both the luckiest and the most unfortunate people in any ethnic conflict, anywhere. In Girardian terms, this unusual attenuated escalation allowed us to innovate, to make gestures and … to survive with at least the possibility of meeting each other again on the other side.

He died for us: The possibility of reconciliation in Northern Ireland Identifying the mimetic character of violence in the ethnic frontier is not an especially complex undertaking. In Northern Ireland, the language of tit-for-tat has long had a common currency. One of the consequences of the slowing of the mimetic escalation has been the exposure of violence as a chain of revenge, which extends without limit until it reaches its cathartic climax. That so much effort was put into preventing precisely this climax left Northern Ireland with both aspects of the horror and fascination of violence unresolved. The exposure of the chain of causality even spawned a unique linguistic formula called ‘Whataboutery’, where every conversation about an incident of violence that pinned blame on one ethnic perpetrator was likely to require a responsive story pinning blame on the other side, and premised by the excusatory introduction, ‘but what about this other case …’ Identifying the existence of reprisal has, however, proved, much easier than identifying a mechanism to escape from it. In Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, Girard observed: People imagine that to escape from violence it is sufficient to give up any kind of violent initiative, but since no one in fact thinks of himself as taking this initiative – since all violence has a mimetic character, and derives or can be thought to derive from a first violence that is always perceived as originating with the opponent – this act of renunciation is no more than a sham, and cannot bring about any kind of change at all. Violence is always perceived as being a legitimate reprisal or even self-defence. So what must be given up is

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the right to reprisal and even the right to what passes, in a number of cases, for legitimate defence. Since the violence is mimetic, and no one ever feels responsible for triggering it initially, only by an unconditional renunciation can we arrive at the desired result.14

For this reason, models of so-called ‘peace-building’ that prioritize specific design of a new social contract or political order, or the satisfaction of particular issues, are always liable to relapse, unless they also alter the underlying relationship of mimetic rivalry through which the conflict is constituted, and bring either or both parties to that same place of renunciation that is made available to them through the passion of Christ. Far from pious rhetoric, the gospel is revealed as the ultimate realism. On the basis of Northern Irish experience, it is simultaneously urgent, accurate and out of reach. Problematically, however, Girard’s work on the scapegoat mechanism, and his work to trace its operation through the gospels, is, therefore, necessarily a matter of the revelation of our own complicity in these dense networks of mimetic desire and violence. This removes from us the capacity to act with anything other than humility. The possibility of reconciliation can only be established through the gate of revelation of our complicity with violence, and through the inauguration of a community that lives out of shared bread, forgiveness and contrition. The recognition has proved no easier in the Christian or the nonChristian world. In an unusual way, the language of reconciliation became the narrative of public discourse. Like everyone else, the institutional church seems determined to mitigate the exposure that the gospel indicates as the way towards freedom. Paradoxically, the language of reconciliation seemed easier for secular politicians rather than for confessing church people. But unsurprisingly, without a means to articulate grace, politicians have struggled at times to make sense of a concept whose consequences they seek, but whose origins they only dimly understand and whose Christian origins make them profoundly suspicious. Since the first flush of apparent breakthrough, it has become clear that recrimination over the past is the single biggest obstacle to a decisive break towards a future together. Even more, the possibility that we might have to change our narrative of purpose drawn from antagonism is an invitation to a

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kind of cultural death that is both dimly intuited and violently rejected. But the invitation to reconciliation is and was always an inversion of the narrative of innocence to a narrative of complicity and the possibility of redemption and forgiveness, and it is, in social terms, also an invitation to chaos. Dealing with the past has become the mantra hiding the insight that we cannot deal with the past in conflict without facing who we were for our victims – and they, in turn, cannot move out of their world, without meeting who they were for us. And in its midst, the hope of a new form of salvation also grew. I have lived some of this experience from an unusual vantage: from inside a Christian community brought into existence five years before the crisis to work for reconciliation as a critical voice from within the church and from an interchurch membership. In that sense, I am as much data as researcher, and what I have to say has to take account of that. In an academic volume, I have to beg your indulgence for my wilful ignoring of the rules. In the midst of our endlessly attenuated conflict, the community became a kind of refuge for people fleeing violence or the constraints of communities seeking to impose order in the midst of chaos. As such, it became a place of story and experience, of meeting and coping and recuperating and experimenting  – and it was mediated within a framework of Christian commitment, albeit from a slightly non-official, if still connected, place. At times, but over decades, this took us into our own narrative of innocence and superiority as we enjoyed too much our own publicity around reconciliation within our own circles. But, above all, meeting forced us time and time again towards recognition and service. In the midst of an ethnic conflict, it offered endless possibilities to be captured by the face of the other, in the sense described by Emmanuel Levinas: The face, le visage, is in Levinas’s conception the gateway through which the infinite passes. What allows us to escape totality, to pass beyond and open onto the infinite, is the face. The face for Levinas is a passageway, an opening. It is not an object, or a manifestation, or a form of any kind. If we had to delimit the face Levinas says, we would have to say that the face is nakedness itself, defenceless itself, utter vulnerability. … It is the speaking of the commandments, or, more precisely, of all the commandments as one commandment in particular, the speaking of the ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ And

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in its wake, we are held captive. We are its hostages, no more free to walk away from it than we are free to have the other individual die in our place.15

All of this was mediated within a relatively conventional Christian framework, albeit one with an increasingly sharpened ear for difference and reconciliation. But it was the irruption of the face of the victim into the community that breathed new life into our self-understanding. Through the work of Dutch colleagues, especially Roel Kaptein and Andre Lascaris, we were invited to meet our own interaction with the world, our own complicity with violence and our dependence on forgiveness for new life. Without theological seminars, we were invited to remove ourselves from the company of the good, and to reconfigure ourselves not as innocent, but as complicit and forgiven, and to see in the crucifixion and resurrection narrative of the gospel the way, the truth and the life in an entirely practical sense.

Conclusion For him, the word that comes from God, the word that enjoins us to imitate no-one but God, the God who refrains from all forms of reprisal and makes his sun to shine upon the ‘just’ and the ‘unjust’ without distinction – this word remains, for him, absolutely valid for him. It is valid even to death, and quite clearly that is what makes him the incarnation of that Word.16

The exposure of the scapegoat mechanism, and Girard’s reworking of the doctrine of atonement that it forces on us, is not merely a scholarly breakthrough. The experience of Northern Ireland suggests that, in the midst of a chain of revenge, the question of reconciliation becomes unavoidable. At the same time, the revelation that peace depends on the renunciation of revenge makes for complex politics. It also makes for revolutionary consequences for churches born of the Constantinian conviction that they are guardians of right rather than witnesses to grace. The Irish experience in both church and society, and of both war and peace, suggests that it is not a road that will be taken willingly, even if it is a road that must necessarily be taken.

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Notes 1 Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), http://presbyterian.ca/?wpdmdl=279 (accessed 1 April 2015). 2 D. Morrow, ‘There is a Crack in Everything’, in René Girard and Creative Reconciliation, ed. V. Redekop and T. Ryba (Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto and Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2014). 3 R. Girard, Battling to the End (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2007). 4 R. Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (London: Athlone Press, 1987), 210. 5 R. G. Hamerton-Kelly, ‘Survival and Salvation: A Girardian Reading of Christian Hope in Evolutionary Perspective’, in Can We Survive our Origins?, ed. P. Antonello and P. Gifford (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2015), 143–68. 6 D. Cayley, The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich (Toronto: Anansi Press, 2005). 7 H. Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (London: MacMillan and Co., 1935), 68–9; W. Palaver, ‘From Closed Societies to the Open Society: Parochial Altruism and Christian Universalism’, in Can We Survive our Origins?, ed. P. Antonello and P. Gifford (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2015), 97–114. 8 R. Schwager, Must there be Scapegoats? (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 206–7. 9 Hamerton-Kelly, ‘Survival and Salvation’, 159. 10 C. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1932], 1985). 11 Ulster Scots Community Network (2010), Understanding the Ulster Covenant (Belfast: Ulster Scots Community Network.) 12 P. Pearse, ‘The Rebel’, in J. Afolabi, Ireland: Being and Belonging, (2011), 216, Lulu.com. 13 Girard, Battling to the End. 14 Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 197. 15 S. Goodhart, ‘The Self and Other People: Reading Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation with René Girard and Emmanuel Levinas’, in René Girard and Creative Reconciliation, ed. V. N. Redekop and T. Ryba (Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto and Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2014), 49–62. 16 Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 206.

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Sacrifice and Atonement: Strengthening the Trinitarian Aspects of Mimetic Theory Arpad Szakolczai

Introduction Over the last half a century, René Girard pursued an intellectual project that came close to producing a paradigm shift in social theory. His ideas, to begin with, question modern rationalism at its core, by convincingly asserting the fundamentally mimetic nature of human conduct, returning to a point raised before by Gabriel Tarde – who wanted to place imitation at the centre of the then new discipline of sociology; Alexis de Tocqueville – who identified imitative behaviour at the heart of the enthusiasm provoked by the two great modern revolutions, the American and the French; and Plato – who funded rational thinking not by considering it as an anthropological constant, in the manner of Kant, flattering modern democratic pretences, but, rather, as a counterbalance to the social force of imitation that can be particularly overwhelming just under conditions of relative equality, and, in particular, in the public sphere. But his ideas also radically problematize the approach of Freud, which purportedly moved beyond rationalism, but is actually based on the same dualism of the object and subject. Perhaps most importantly, however, having started with the modern novel and following it up with a remarkable comparative study of the available anthropological evidence, in what is usually considered as the third part of his work– though a dimension present already since the late 1950s – Girard sparked a revolutionary, or rather – and strictly speaking– a counter-revolutionary return from inside social theory to the gospels, arguing that his theory developed

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on the basis of such a varied source of evidence could offer a social scientific justification of the gospels. Needless to say, the ideas of Girard provoked bitter controversies, but by now Girard’s standing as a major contemporary master thinker is beyond any reasonable doubt. The aim of my chapter will thus be neither to present nor to defend Girard’s ideas, as I hope I can take a certain knowledge of and interest in his work taken for granted. My focus is, rather, to carry it forward, while at the same time mending some of its shortcomings, which arguably prevented the ideas from consolidating the kind of paradigm shift so vitally needed today in social understanding. I will focus on two issues. The first is a short presentation of a broad field within social theory to which Girard’s work belongs, aiming at bringing together like-minded undertakings to generate wider support. The second point is empirical, and pursues further one of the most important paths in Girard’s work, the attempt to take literally and historically the story told by the gospels, in particular, that the Crucifixion was the unmaking of a concrete historical practice, rituals of sacrifice. My aim is to show that the sacrificial mechanism is not the origin of culture, but, rather, that it is connected to something like original sin. I must make it immediately clear that with this point I do not want to return to a ‘guilt culture’, the consequence of a long-term and systematic misunderstanding caused by the individualization of redemption as salvation; rather, I want to consider the idea of ‘original sin’ as an account of a concrete historical process, conveyed as mankind’s fall from a state of grace, which is carried over into everyday existence more through the logic of mimesis, so well exposed by Girard, than some kind of individualized sinfulness. However, before exploring this second point in further detail, let me start by clarifying the first issue, the tradition where Girard’s approach can be best located.

The return of religion at the heart of modernity Since the Enlightenment, with some roots in Renaissance humanism as hijacked by the Byzantine ‘learned men’ (dotti; see Szakolczai),1 it is a

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commonplace of modern European thinking that the advance of modernity is equivalent with the receding of religion. The figure in social theory whose ideas generated a radical reassessment of this point was, paradoxically, Nietzsche. Centrally, Nietzsche argued that modern humanism is nothing else but a secularized version of Christianity – thus the rise of the modern world should be positively rooted in a historical study of religion, of which he offered the Genealogy of Morals as a kind of prototype, and not simply negatively as a ‘critique’ of religion, as argued by neo-Hegelians like Feuerbach or Marx. This innovation of Nietzsche was taken up by Max Weber, who also attempted to correct the errors and excesses of Nietzsche through an intensive collaboration with theologians, though he did not succeed fully, in particular, because of his limited and still mostly negative understanding of religion – the concern with resentment being substituted by the experience of suffering and its overcoming. In the following generation, the spirit of Weber’s work, including the pursuit of a dialogue with theologians, was best carried further by Eric Voegelin; and it is this concern that was indirectly taken up in the Second World War generation by René Girard. A proper understanding and continuation of Girard’s work thus presumes intimate familiarity with this line of research – a line with which Girard, because of his background, was not very familiar. However, Girard’s lack of rootedness in sociology and philosophy had its own merits, as in this way he was spared the substantive dead-end and deep methodological shortcomings of modern secular social theory, which to some extent were pointed out by John Milbank2 – except for the significant fact of his misconstruing Weber’s work. Girard’s background in studying the novel was thus a crucial asset. This becomes best visible if we evoke some of the most important parallel projects in social theory outside the Weberian strand. Such figures include Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975), the Russian philosopher and linguist, who managed to overcome his own training in neo-Kantian philosophy not only through the ideas of Nietzsche, but also through orthodox theology (in particular, Pavel Florensky), and by studying the rise of the modern novel. Girard and Bakhtin were not the only major figures of contemporary social theory that attempted to overcome the shortcomings of philosophy and

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sociology through the study of novels. The same can be said of Béla Hamvas (1897–1968), one of the most important Hungarian thinkers of the last century, for long in partnership with Karl Kerényi (1897–1973); José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955), the most important Spanish philosopher of the last century; and also Pietro Citati (1930–) and Roberto Calasso (1941–), two of the most influential figures in contemporary Italian culture. The issue is not limited to the connection between social theory and the study of novels, as Hamvas, Citati and Calasso each are also intensely interested in mythology, religion and, occasionally, even theology. Girard’s thinking is thus part of a broad current in contemporary social theory, though this current has not yet been well integrated, much as a result of the amount of noise currently present in social thinking. But the one issue specifically posed by Girard, having clear theological relevance, and also closely related to the Nietzsche–Weberian strand in social theory, is to connect the concrete historicity of the epiphany of Christ with the concrete historicity of the sacrificial mechanism that it supposedly unmade. It is due to this, and at this point, that as a historical sociologist I take the liberty of entering the theological aspect of this problem, in particular, the relation to the Trinity and the question of Redemption or atonement.

The significance of the Trinity for understanding modernity It would seem that the doctrine of the Trinity is an exclusively theological issue, with no relevance for sociology or philosophy. In fact, hardly any sociologist or philosopher dared to enter theology over the last decades, even centuries (Schleiermacher having been, reputedly, the last person who had a joint appointment in philosophy and theology). Even Girard hardly took up theological questions directly. Yet, I would argue, in the footsteps of Eric Voegelin, that there are reasons for rethinking the relations between theology and social theory, as the separation of revelation and reason has gone beyond any meaningful limit. One can again take Max Weber as a starting point. In a much-cited passage of Science as a Vocation, he voiced the claim that only a hair’s breadth separates

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science and religion. Emphasis in the past was on the fact that thus the two are separate. This, however, could be rephrased in the language of liminality,3 a term that has recently even entered theology,4 arguing that this hair’s breadth also connects the two; and that at any rate one can situate oneself on this narrow borderline. In other words, and in a radical contrast to Kant, limits and boundaries are not ‘constructs’ of the transcendental mind, and thus it is up to the theorist to draw or, rather, have concrete, material reality. But what does this mean concerning the Trinity, and why should one risk the taking of up such a delicate, liminal position? In my view, there are at least two very good reasons for this, from the perspective of a sociology of modernity: one direct, another indirect. Concerning the first, following the lead of Nietzsche and Weber, and also an entire tradition of modern, especially Protestant, historical theology, Christianity is considered as a prophetic monotheistic religion. This, however, is somewhat misleading, as Christianity is an epiphany based and not prophetic religion: Jesus Christ is not considered a prophet in Christianity (this is, rather, the perspective of Islam); rather, he is considered the Son of God, implying the incarnation as an epiphany. Furthermore, by focusing on monotheism, the comparative perspective ignores the Trinity. The point is not to reduce sociology to theology, but to be careful about becoming entrapped in misleading generalizations spun by a misconceived agenda of comparative research. The central methodological issue for such research is not to force different phenomena into a straightjacket category, but, rather, to valorise differences. The indirect reason for my entry into theology is the anti-trinitarianism (according to many, outright Arianism) of Isaac Newton. This might seem a merely personal matter, of no relevance to Newton’s ideas and their eventual impact. However, I would rather argue that this issue is central for the entire intellectual project of Newton, and for its eventual effects. In this chapter, I can give no more than a hint about this broad problem, drawing on the interpretation of Newton in Horvath.5 There can be no question that Newton was a unique genius. However, exactly such geniuses, and because of their genius, have a potentiality of directing the nature and impact of their discoveries – and taking responsibility for it. The

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world in which we live is much shaped by the flaws of the greatest geniuses of European culture – Leonardo da Vinci, Newton and Nietzsche, in the first place. Scientific discoveries of the sort Newton made create a liminal situation in which an entire range of new options becomes opened up. The manner in which such openings would be taken up is not defined by the nature of the discovery, but it is at the discretion of the person who generated those openings, and is, therefore, historically contingent. In my view, it is here that the anti-trinitarianism of Newton came to play a central role,6 not simply in using his discoveries to directly discredit the Trinity, but, rather – at an even more basic, underlying methodological level – in ignoring the fact that we do not live in an absolute void, and cannot operate atomic particles. Instead, we exist in a very specific ‘middle’ or ‘in-between’ range, where our existence is not only limited, but also substantial and corporeal, and, in particular, thoroughly historical.7 Material reality, in contrast to the abstract ‘reality’ of atomic particles, is concrete and historical. A crucial element of this historicity concerns the relation between the divine and human spheres, and the Trinity is first of all the revelation of this fundamental and deep, radical – in the etymological sense of the term – historicity. This is not simply a question of historicity in a general sense, but – and here we again get close to Girard – it involves a very concrete kind of historicity. The evident axis of this historicity is the incarnation in Christ, understood as the redemption of mankind through the atonement of sin – an event-experience, however, that is unintelligible without another event-experience, which was the start of the process captured by the expression ‘original sin’8; an event and ensuing process that implied the committing of such an unspeakable atrocity that it single-mindedly broke the previous, harmonious relationship between the divinity and mankind. In radical contrast to the Gnostic storyline, according to which Creation was an error, this Biblical storyline recognizes the goodness of creation, the unspeakable beauty and harmony of the world in its original state. It recognizes also that the free will granted to humans entailed the possibility of their going astray; and it is this possibility that was ‘realized’ through the events, experiences and processes around the ‘original sin’, when a certain fracturing event took place that eventually entailed the collapse of the harmonious collaboration

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between human and divine realms. The dramaticity of such event-experiences, and subsequently of human history, is what modern theologians like Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Raymund Schwager, if I am not mistaken, place at the centre of their work.9 It is this event-experience that Girard also approaches through revealing the sacrificial mechanism. However, somewhat puzzlingly, Girard never discusses original sin, in its historicity, though his ideas offer an excellent perspective for revisiting this issue. He, rather, came to the position that the scapegoating mechanism represents the origin of human culture itself, particularly prominent in some of his recent writings that, furthermore, are also quite explicitly evolutionistic, and in the rather problematic sense of evolutionism characteristic of the social sciences. To begin with, both the scriptures and theology are very clear about a break in human history, associated with the loss of a paradisiac state: an event-experience and process that is captured in the ideas of ‘original sin’ and ‘expulsion from Paradise’. If human culture as such was generated by the sacrificial mechanism, then there was simply no ‘Garden of Eden’, and thus no original sin. But then, what was Christ redeeming us from? Evidently, from the very error of creation – because if we, humans, by our very nature are so mimetically violent that we can only be restrained by expulsing an innocent victim, then our creator is, indeed, guilty of not making our nature good enough. Thus Girard, by the very logic of his argument, comes close to a position that has Gnostic tendencies. But such erasing of the original sin is impossible, as there is a logical connection between the two event-experiences, the ‘original sin’ and the epiphany of the Son of God. The historicity of Redemption, or the revelation of the Trinity only makes sense, only represents atonement, a restoring of the broken oneness or unity between the divine and human realms, if there was a concrete and particular atrocious act committed in history. This historical event-experience, and the ensuing historical processes, however, and in contrast to the life, death and resurrection of Christ, evidently remained unrecorded, surviving only in the quasi-mythological narrative of Genesis chapters 2 and 3, and also in various, similarly mythological accounts, concerned with the past ‘golden age’ and its disappearance – accounts in which sacrifices play a considerable role.

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Can we find different, more concrete traces of this event-experience and the processes to which it led? My answer is in the affirmative, and in order to substantiate it, I first turn to a recent interpretation of archaeological evidence, and then to a similarly recent interpretation of the oldest layers of Brahmanic thought.

The Shaft scene of Lascaux Here I analyse only one piece of evidence from the Palaeolithic era, the ‘Shaft scene’ of Lascaux, dated about 15,000 years ago, using as my guide the recent analysis of Agnes Horvath.10 Horvath argues that this cave painting depicts a singular and radical historical shift, a wholesale break with the previous culture. Horvath’s work is anthropologically based and makes no theological claims, though it explicitly locates this break at the level of divine–human interaction. My analysis will risk interpreting this scene hypothetically as depicting the event-experience that in theology came to be called as the original sin. However, in order to be able to locate the break, it is necessary to follow Horvath in giving a sketch of the nature of the culture that was undermined, eventually even destroyed, as a consequence of the atrocity depicted in this singular scene.

The Shaft scene in context The basic concerns of the culture or civilization whose centre – in the concrete sense of cave-‘sanctuaries’ as centres of ‘pilgrimage’ – during the ice age was in South-Western Europe, can be described by the words beauty, love and care. Evidence of the culture of that period primarily includes wall paintings, and also quite a substantial amount of ‘mobile’ artefacts: musical instruments, female idols and some household objects. Still, this is arguably sufficient to form a confident view concerning the overwhelming role beauty played in the world view, or even simply the world of these our distant ancestors. Beauty was not simply a matter of ornaments,

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or a concern restricted to certain social strata or special occasions. Rather, it was the other way round; the surviving artefacts do allow us to draw a comprehensive judgement, overcoming our modernist and evolutionist prejudices: beauty in such remote times was the single most important element of the daily experience of living. Our ancestors lived amidst beauty and for beauty, and conducted a life whose central aspect was an uninterrupted praise for the beauty of the world in which they were living. This is difficult for us to apprehend, given that our values, orientated towards power and, especially, comfort are completely different, and that the modern age is concerned with the conquest and not the appreciation of the wonders of nature. However, by trying to imagine the life that must have been led in the midst of so many breathtakingly magnificent animals, we can gain a glimmer of understanding concerning the experience of living that must have been prevalent tens of thousands of years ago. Living in a world of beauty leaves a characteristic impression on the soul, generating kind dispositions towards fellow human beings and intuitions concerning the ultimate source of such beauties. It is this experiencing of the world that can be expressed through the term ‘love’: an experience that penetrates life from the inside. This is, again, not merely an afterthought based on recent findings, but was formulated, almost on the spot, well over a century ago by Édouard Piette, who in 1894 discovered one of the still most striking Palaeolithic objects, the inch-high statue of a female head called the Brassempouy lady (see Figure 1), carved about 25,000 years ago, and stated that ‘it seems to have been love that encouraged the first sculptor to carve ivory to depict the woman he loved’ (as in Horvath).11 Our ancestors not only lived in a world of beauty, but also led a life animated by the sentiment of love. A world of beauty is clearly a gift received; and even a social environment animated by love is something one joins and participates in. However, it also clearly occurred to our predecessors that the maintaining of such a state required human efforts, or care. It is in this manner that we can apprehend the otherwise striking, elusive nature of cave art. According to Horvath, these underground galleries of paintings cannot be compared to modern museums, and were not locations of ritual performances, either. Rather, the still striking, overwhelming contrast between the desolate though mysterious environment,

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Figure 1  The Brassempouy lady (c.25, 000 BC).

being well under the ground and in pitch darkness, often many hundred metres away from safety and light, was intended: this was the way in which our ancestors, or at least a selected few of them, had to confirm to themselves that they merited to stay alive and become part again of such a life of wonders. Experiencing the cave was something like a rite of passage, a struggle for life against the forces of death, helpful to reinforce the concern with care, so that beauty could be perpetuated. There were, however, some who failed to pass the test. At least, this is the way Horvath interprets the few surviving engravings of grotesque human figures that can be found in some of the deepest recesses of the great painted caves: self-portraits of those who did not manage to confront the forces of darkness, lost their spirit and stayed down, hopelessly wondering, for a time that evidently seemed like eternity. And the time would come when

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these dropouts would transform their defeat into a victory over the entire cave-painting culture.

The abyssal difference of the Shaft scene In contrast to the entire corpus of Palaeolithic cave paintings, the Shaft scene (see Figure 2) represents a decisive and radical break. The singularity of this painting is immediately visible because of a number of unique features. To begin with, this is the only human being ever painted on walls in the Palaeolithic – all other human representations are merely engravings. Furthermore, this is the only case in which an erect male sex is attached to a human being, and is not simply depicted alone. Even further, it is also the only scene that has an evident narrative content. This image can be found in the single most famous painted cave, Lascaux, the ‘Sistine Chapel’ of the Palaeolithic. According to Horvath, the side-cavity where the Shaft scene was depicted was an alternative sanctuary from where Palaeolithic culture was destroyed, as if

Figure 2  The Shaft Scene of Lascaux. Courtesy of the Centre National de Prehistoire.

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turned out of its corners; where – as a Nietzschean revaluation of values – some misfits who did not pass the test instigated a reverse motion that slowly but steadily unmade the entire culture. We cannot know whether the image itself was the original source of unmaking, or whether the image only represented a concrete deed, but this does not matter much, as evidently the image became an effective operator of large-scale civilizational transformation. But what was its actual message? In order to understand the full significance of this painting, we must start by recognizing the importance of the fact that the painting is not simply unique, a singular specimen, an outlier case, but it first of all directly and literally represents a ‘break’. To start with, it is not simply different from all previous paintings, but it literally broke, fractured, fragmented and destroyed the culture of cave art. It contradicted the world of harmony captured in them by exuding gravity and secrecy, which thus after a time became preposterous, unbelievable – and while this, of course, is an interpretation, signs of destruction and, in particular, breaking are omnipresent in the image. Both the man and the animals appear as being hurt, on the brink of death; the bison is disembowelled, while the human outstretched. A particularly conspicuous object of the scene is a broken arrow: a weapon; possibly a tool of the crime, murder; yet, itself broken. Most importantly, however, the break according to Horvath concerns the relationship between the human and the divine: the Shaft scene represents ‘the decomposition of the cooperation between the divine, animal and human realms’.12 The break, however, is not limited to the relationship between the human and the divine, but extends to the fracturing of the essence of each. Deprived of their essence, or inner animating force, humans are no longer capable of the graceful movements that animated the ever-spiralling circles of giving and love. Instead, with their integrity broken, they became haplessly subjected to two complementary mechanical movements that they end up repeating infinitely. On the one hand, the initial break or fracture is repeated in an endless series of schismatic developments. Every aspect of the Shaft scene and, in particular, the attitude of the human mask is contradictory, a sign of being divided in itself, schismatic.13 The human is on the ground, defenceless, extending his hands in the characteristic gesture of giving himself up, yet

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his erect member signifies aggressiveness; he is a victim, yet evidently also a perpetrator, as signalled by the arrow; he is weak, searching for pity and love, and yet his being sexually excited means that he is also ready to pounce, being intent on pure sex, rather than love. A fracture is thus not a single event, but, rather, the starting point of an infinite process of subsequent fractures and divisions, as if following Bateson’s rule. On the other hand, the loss of integrity derailed the gracious logic of spiralling gift-relations into empty, repetitive, circular movements. Yet, all these losses and breaks also entailed a gain, the obtaining of a kind of knowledge, which Horvath names technology. The fracturing, the loss of unity and integrity conjured up by the Shaft scene, can be the starting point of huge, potentially infinite growth. The Shaft scene thus reveals the great secret of technological knowledge, similar to the wisdom of the Citizen Kane of Orson Wells: it is simple to make money, even an infinite amount, the only price being the giving up of one’s integrity. Once the borderlines of entities are broken, it is easy to proliferate multiple and identical copies, to infinity. Such technological growth has two major correlates, and the Shaft scene presents both. They are the use of masks and the promise of infinite wealth: a bird-mask is placed on a staff, while the bowel-like object that emanates from the bison can be considered as a labyrinth, a sign of sudden and limitless prosperity.14 Those who perpetuate love and gift-relations can be honest and genuine; those who intend to spread the fruits of technological knowledge must always use tricks and hide what they are doing, and, first of all, hide themselves behind the mask of benevolence. Technological growth is propagated by trickster saviours. Such a close connection between technology and the mask even pushes Horvath to argue that the origin of technology is the first mask.15 This implies that though technology offers a quick and potentially infinite growth, and is thus supposedly beneficial to each and all, yet the ambiguities of its offerings are evident for any sane person; therefore, it is necessary for its proponents to hide behind a mask. Yet, the single most important aspect of the Shaft scene is still missing from the description, and this is its particular fusion of love and death, sex and sacrifice. It is this combination that defines the singularity of the scene, joining

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together opposites and offering an overwhelming atmosphere of gravity. Love, to be sure, is on the side of life, and opposite to death; yet, in this scene it becomes irreversibly attached to death. This is realized through reducing love to mere sexuality, as represented by the erect member. Yet, even this is not fully true, as the scenery is not merely sexual, and certainly has nothing to do with pornography, as the ithyphallic figure is in the position of a victim, catering for pity, compassion and love. It is not simply in but through this – evidently only faked – position of victimhood that aggression becomes lethal: lethal in the ultimate sense of entrapping the supernatural through generating pity by his make-believe self-sacrifice. Horvath offers a strange, striking, but ultimately convincing reading: the Shaft scene altered the mutual relationship of gift-giving between the human and divine realms, animated by love, through catering compassion for victims, and then capturing the attention elicited by transforming the supernatural, weakened by compassion, into a victim of sexual aggression. Love and compassion, the animating force of the Palaeolithic world of beauty, became turned into the instrument of entrapment and transmogrified into mere sex.16 The presence of the element of sacrifice at this pictorial representation of ‘original sin’17 can also be reinforced through the works of Roberto Calasso. Apart from being one of the most influential figures of contemporary Italian culture, through his editorial activities as well as his writings, Calasso was specifically instrumental in giving a wide dissemination to the ideas of Girard in Italy, and therefore was much responsible for the strong Italian presence of these works for decades, not least because of his own interest in sacrifice. My analysis will focus on the striking affinity between the Shaft scene analysed through Horvath as pictorial representation of the original sacrifice being the original sin, and the Satapatha Brahmana as analysed recently by Calasso,18 where I will again risk the idea that, as this Brahmanic creation story depicts a narrative that is surprisingly similar to the one captured in the Shaft scene, this story might again be the same as the one captured in a mythical form in Genesis 2.3 – though from a radically different and non-repenting perspective. The mythical account of an ‘original sin’, the ‘Shaft scene’, and the ‘original scene’ of Brahmanism therefore deal with the one and same concrete historical process.

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The original scene in Brahmanism Calasso is one of the most important contemporary theorists of sacrifice, recognized in a 2001 essay by Raymond Schwager, devoted to a joint analysis of the ideas of Girard and Calasso, though by no means giving full justice to the thinking of Calasso, which was then even impossible, given that the most important related works of Calasso were published after 2001. The Satapatha Brahmana is one of the oldest books of Hinduism, devoted to the task – evidently considered interminable – of presenting, commenting on and justifying rituals of sacrifice. The seventh volume of Calasso’s monumental project is devoted to the analysis of this text, though – as he intimates in the first page of the Conclusion to this work, magisterial in itself – the entire project must have had something to do with this single book. However, before going into details, it is necessary to offer a contextualization, relying greatly on a Preface Calasso published a year before the publication of the new Italian edition of Sylvain Lévi’s 1898 classic book on the same subject.

The Satapatha Brahmana in context The first point to note concerns the evident difficulties posed to Western scholars in understanding this singular work. Its sheer size is formidable, comprising five volumes and 2,366 pages in its as yet single translation by Eggeling, published in the last decades of the nineteenth century.19 The content, however, is evidently even more shocking, as nineteenth-century scholars, including its translator, considered the work as little more than empty and infinite chatter – one of the most absurd things ever written by intelligent beings, that should be studied in the way doctors analyse the stuttering of ‘idiots’ (sic; as in Calasso).20 Eggeling’s introduction to his translation, however, says Calasso, also contains a fundamental insight: the text recalls Gnostic thinking. In fact, a number of central motives in the text, including the idea that creation was a disaster, a mistake or even a sin, the subsequent dejection of the creator, being emptied by his futile efforts, and his rejection by his creatures, would return as central themes for the Gnostics – except that in

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the West, the Gnostics remained a sect, while in Brahmanic India, this mode of thinking represents the oldest layer of the tradition.21 Here, already, Calasso offers a series of fascinating remarks about Prajapati, the protagonist of the texts, a kind of creator deity: the stories about him are dramatic; they also – quite perplexingly for a creator god – demonstrate his vulnerability; and even more strikingly, this figure appears as an ‘ancient intruder’.22 Then, suddenly, in the last years of the nineteenth century, two books that radically revalorized the merits and significance of the work appeared. One is by Paul Deussen, the great German Sanskrit scholar, long-time friend of Nietzsche and a major formative influence for Eric Voegelin, who started the first chapter of his History of Philosophy with the story of Prajapati, therefore placing what just a few years previously Eggeling had considered as feebleminded mumbling at the very foundation of thinking, before the Greeks (22–3). The other is by Sylvain Lévi, a main figure of French intellectual life in the period and a formative influence – together with Durkheim – on Marcel Mauss, a central source for the classic analysis of sacrifice by Hubert and Mauss. This latter work, usually considered as a comparative anthropology of rituals of sacrifice, is according to Calasso fundamentally limited to the book of Leviticus and the Satapatha Brahmana, but takes its point of departure from the latter. Here Calasso becomes even more cryptic than usual, first defining Hubert and Mauss as ‘clandestine emissaries of Vedic ritualists in positivist Paris’, who thus acted partially and by no means following the rules of the comparative method (20); then he defends them by saying that they recognized the right starting point for an analysis of sacrifice that simply could not have been placed elsewhere (20–1); he raises praise to the highest pitch in arguing that by recognizing the unity of the sacrificial system, they produced a work comparable to the achievements of Newton (22); but finally, after a detailed presentation of Lévi’s work, he lets it transpire that the exaltation of trust in ritual exactness propagated by Lévi and his downplaying of faith and truth are extremely problematic and highly ideological (25–6). In summarizing Lévi’s ideas, Calasso clearly induces readers to recognize the problematic features of the ritualism so much praised by Lévi. The Brahmanic sacrificial system offers a strange kind of religiosity, combining abstract thinking – it is a ‘speculative machine’ (17) – and a lack of concern

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with virtue and morality – the ritualists are rather ‘immoralists’ (18), with a brutal and materialist theology, and a lack of interest in religious feelings and faith. For the ritualists, faith is not necessary, as the sacrificial ritual as a technique produces absolutely certain effects (25); therefore it can do without either religious sentiments or a moral ideal (23). The model of this mode of religiosity, outside the human soul or the social bond, is, rather, nature itself, where sacrifice is supposedly hidden within, and should only be ‘discovered’ (19). This involves a very specific understanding of nature, for which Calasso repeatedly evokes metallurgical or even outright alchemical metaphors: a nature whose essence can only be apprehended once it has become denatured through technology.23 In terms of Western analogies, and beyond the ancient Gnostics, Calasso invokes two parallels. One is with the idea of kenosis, especially as present in the letters of Paul – a parallel that we need to take very seriously, as it evokes affinities between the emptying produced by the original sin, and the self-emptying that Christ had to assume in order to unmake this event; the other is the claim that the two Western philosophers most attuned to this kind of Brahmanic thinking are Kant and Spinoza – indeed, central sources of the Enlightenment, and key representatives of modern Gnostic tendencies.24 Turning to Calasso’s 2010 book, the most relevant ideas are contained in Chapter 4, its most important and longest chapter.25 Entitled ‘Il progenitore’ (The forefather), it is devoted to the figure of Prajapati. It is about origins, as Prajapati is a kind of creator god; these origins are sacrificial, though it is not fully clear whether the origin is a sacrifice, or is established through a sacrifice; and, most importantly, this origin, the creation of the world, is described as a scene.

The origins of the world according to the Satapatha Brahmana This scene is told in several versions, but they are just minor variants of an identical scene in which Prajapati behaves in an identical manner – and not

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so much behaves, acts, or conducts himself, as simply is, since in this creation story, the role of the main deity is passive and suffering, by no means recalling the dynamism of God in the great monotheistic religions. Creation according to this account is an act of suffering, through and through; if anything, it recalls female labour, after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The act of creation by Prajapati and his position during this act are characterized by a series of terms that are either clearly negative, or merely express emptiness or void. Prajapati is lying on the ground, outstretched, raising his extended hands in evident pain, a pose that would become a standard position for sacrificial offering.26 He does not have a name; even worse, this void is offered as a paradox, or a verbal game: to the question ‘Who are you?’ (ka, ‘who’), he responds ‘I am who’ (ka).27 He thus has no identity, which is reinforced by the fact that, when renouncing everything after performing the creation, the only thing he keeps for himself is the unknown (ignoto). The centrality of void and emptiness is further underlined by the very place where creation took place, named asat (the ‘not-manifest’), or the opposite of being – in contrast to the fullness of presence characteristic of divine apparitions or epiphanies. Thus Prajapati becomes worn by the act of creation, leading eventually to his complete emptying (svuotamento), dismemberment or disappearance. Calasso repeatedly calls attention to parallels with the Christian idea of kenosis – strikingly not recognized by Christian interpreters – which is indeed there, though not fully in the sense suggested by Calasso. In Christian theology, kenosis is not associated with creation, but, rather, with redeeming the original sin, which messed up the created world – thus, implicitly, indeed, with original sin. Still further, it is this same nothingness and void that becomes his share on the part of his creatures, who – instead of expressing gratitude – abandon him.28 Prajapati is a creator who is nameless, empty and emptied, and who is creating out of nothingness, or ex nihilo – in this case recalling an idea that became the accepted dogma of Christianity, but which was originally a Gnostic idea, and whose acceptance within Christian theology remains highly problematic – one of the historical legacies that theology has not yet managed to overcome. Furthermore, he performs creation in utter loneliness – he receives no external help, no support; as no divine grace descends on him, or is possessed

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by him, he has to produce energy by himself, through a central term of Brahmanic spirituality, the title of Calasso’s book, ardore, meaning heat (tapas), the result of ascetic practices. Translated into the language of Christian theology, this evokes the debate between grace and work, where Brahmanism definitely takes up the side of work, effort, askesis – so it is again Pelagian, or Gnostic. Divine grace is simply absent from it, just as from Asiatic religions in general.29 In one way, this only reinforces the absence of gratitude described before, the word ‘gratitude’ itself being a derivative of ‘grace’. Still, creation is about creating something, so after all such negativities and absences, it must have produced something positive. Indeed, Prajapati produces, even in excess and overabundance: ‘In every moment Prajapati risks of being too much’ [sic].30 In this way, giving and generosity, again closely related to grace and gratitude, are also turned inside out, becoming liabilities out of assets. In fact, given that creation only exhausted Prajapati, failing to generate any gratitude and recognition, he had to prepare himself in order to become attractive, so that he could continue creation; and thus he invented make-up (trucco in Italian, linked both to ‘trick’ and ‘mask’). Central instances in this infinite act of creation – which supposedly lasted not for seven days, but, rather, for a thousand years, signalling the excruciating suffering undergone during the act – are the generation of the first son and the first daughter. They are closely tied to two fundamental concepts of this chapter: sacrifice and sexuality.

Sacrifice The birth of a first son, one would expect, based on the timeless experience of mankind, is a moment of great joy. Not so for Prajapati, who is not just any human being, but, rather, the creator god; it is a moment of outright terror. Prajapati is terrified, because his just-born son Agni, (‘fire’) wants to devour and annihilate him: he does not see anything of this son but an enormous mouth,31 which produces burning heat.32 Both the experience of terror, and fire and burning are closely associated with sacrificial practices, the central difference between gifts and sacrificial offerings being that gifts must be preserved, while

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an offering only becomes a sacrifice if it is destroyed, most commonly by fire – see for example, Greek thusia (sacrifice), meaning ‘burnt offering’. The invention of sacrifice is, indeed, directly associated with this strange scene of birth-giving. The story is again full of striking parallels with Christian theology. Sacrifice is invented as an act of self-defence by Prajapati: when terrorized by the open mouth of his fire-son, he looks for help, and this time, indeed, hears a voice – and what he hears is voice itself, or rather herself, as this signals the arrival of his first daughter, Vac (speech). The word is sacrifice offered to avoid death. Thus, as if out of John 1.1-3, the word was at the beginning, associated with the birth of the son, almost identical with him, just as Christ would become identified with Logos – though by no means in the same way, as, on the one hand, in Brahmanic thought it is associated with terror and on the other, this word is separate from the son, and is female. Thus, in both traditions, the association between Son, Word and sacrifice is present, but in a radically different manner. If this story concerning the origins of sacrifice has parallels with the Biblical story, through the Son and the Word, Christ and Logos, there is another Brahmanic account about the origins of sacrifice that has rather striking Palaeolithic affinities. Here sacrifice, in particular, the most important Brahmanic sacrificial ritual, horse sacrifice, is connected to the eye of Prajapati, the horse being nothing else than this distanced and inflated eye. The distancing of the eye is evidently linked to the emergence of reflexivity and thus self-consciousness, caused by Prajapati’s desire to see inside himself. Thus emerges, for the first time, the duality of the self and the I; and the reintegration of the eye, this fragment of Prajapati’s self, requires the sacrifice of the horse.33 Thus sacrifice is linked not only to the firstborn son, but also to selfreflexivity – and this origin of sacrifice, by invoking the animal most commonly present in Palaeolithic cave art, indirectly brings in the Shaft scene, concerned with sacrifice and self-reflexivity in the sense that the eye became distanced and turned back upon the agents, that is, the painters, who no longer depicted gracious animals, especially horses, but themselves, as if in the act of painting;34 thus implying the downgrading of the horse into a mere object of sacrifice – as its depiction was, indeed, ‘sacrificed’ or deferred in the Shaft scene.

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Sexuality The birth of the son, through sacrifice, led to the birth of the first daughter. Here troubles continue in this account of creation, as the first idea of the creator god, upon the birth of his first real daughter is again not graceful, being a sudden passion for sexual possession. This daughter was not Vac (speech), but, rather, she was either the Heaven or the Dawn.35 The aggression was not seen well by the previously born sons, one of whom attacked the father with an arrow, resulting in another origin of sacrifice, as the small piece of flesh torn out of Prajapati’s body by the arrow became the prototype of the sacrificial meat (107–8). This constitutes another major scene with three protagonists, again uniting sexuality and sacrifice, which requires further discussion. To start with, the scene has a stunning affinity with the ideas of Freud: the firstborn son tries immediately to kill the father, while the father tries to commit incest with his first (real) daughter. Girard36 showed that Freud’s ideas can be read in a sacrificial key. Thus, just as in the Shaft scene, and much more explicitly than in the Genesis storyline, sacrifice and sexuality are tightly interconnected. Affinities with the Shaft scene, as presented through Horvath’s reading of the Palaeolithic, are further underlined according to Calasso through another central theme in Satapatha Brahmana, the struggle with Death. It is not simply that creation for Prajapati lasts for 1,000 years, but also that these years involve a permanent struggle with death. In fact, creation is nothing but an unceasing and ultimately hopeless and futile struggle against death.37 In this struggle Prajapati has no allies; even his creatures desert him, so his only resource remains his own will – a will fuelled by heat (tapas), and animated by infinite desire. Even the eventual victory of Prajapati involves a paradox: one can only escape the infinite struggle with death, not through immortality, but by escaping life itself, as death does not die – and thus, the celebration of immortality becomes the celebration of death itself, which always remains inside the immortal (113). The ultimate victory is defeat itself; thus creation ends with the disarticulation and destruction of the body of the father (118– 20), again recalling Freud. Prajapati does not so much represent immortality,

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in the sense of eternal life, as the unlimited (apeiron),38 in the sense of an ‘immensity without borders’ (120).

Linguistic speculations by Brahmanic ritualists This was Calasso’s reconstruction of the original scene of Brahmanic thought, using the ideas of the ritualists themselves, already reduced to their bare essence by Lévi.39 At this point, Calasso turns to the linguistic speculations of the same ritualists, which offer the same result. This starts from the word already discussed, ka ‘who’, but involves another word that sounds almost the same, kha ‘space’. The being without name appears in a non-manifest place, or the pure space, without any positive characteristics. The connotations of this term (kha) are even more striking, as they include ‘orifice’ (body openings), ‘wound’, and ‘zero’40 – as many central terms of Horvath’s analysis of the Shaft scene, and, indeed, fundamental terms of Brahmanic thinking, in particular the zero itself, the number (and concept) positively ignored by Greek and Roman thought, but brought over into Europe by the Arabs from India.41 They are also evidently and closely associated with sacrifice, and according to the analysis of Horvath, exactly through the (broken) arrow – the same arrow that plays such a central role in the Brahmanic story told by Calasso about the origins of sacrifice. Here, the direct parallels with the Shaft scene multiply, apparently out of any bounds. Kha, the empty space, so reminiscent of Plato’s khora in the Timaeus, even linguistically, is now defined as the primordial space,42 being identical with the Brahman, as kha is now identified with ka. It is, furthermore, characterized as a ‘windy’ space: a space preceding anything, but also capable of receiving everything, through an eternal circulation of winds – which cannot help but recall the location of the Shaft scene, or the ‘Shaft’: a small recess with a six-metre drop, thus technically an abyss, which earlier continued in a side exit to the cave, thus had to have a particularly strong draft. And it is in this primordial space, which was also a non-place, that out of the decomposed body of Prajapati started to emerge an endless, infinite extension of desire – which by its very limitlessness established an iron-hard limit, putting an end to the

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precedent state of happiness; a limitlessness of desire that ended the previous world of – unconstrained as natural and rational – harmony and love.43 Yet, it is exactly at this point, where paradoxes seem to culminate in an apotheosis of nihilism, that suddenly the entire system as it were stumbles over into radiating meaningfulness. The sacrificial offering par excellence, the piece of meat torn out of the wound by the arrow, which becomes the primordial sacrificial offering, is counterbalanced by a similarly minuscule but completely different kind of entity: a mustard seed, going through an hourglass, as if the eye of the needle, and which thus expands inside the invisible; the mustard seed that – Calasso is explicit here44 – plays an identical role in the Upanishads as in the gospels, by being the same both inside and outside, but that is being really located inside the heart, ‘full and immutable’, identical to Kafka’s indestructible.45 It is the core of a ‘revelation that upsets (sconvolge) all previous forms of thought’, as it identifies a space (akasa: ‘sky’) that is both internal and external to man, his heart, with the space which this mustard seed goes through.46 This is a quite stunning development. At the very core of the Brahmanic proclamation of the rule of zero or nihilism, suddenly everything is as it were redeemed, and the law of the heart, in explicit and identical Biblical terms, seems to reassert its irreducibility and indestructibility. This is an extremely important point, as it indicates that no matter how tortuous a path a person or a culture follows, with as many errors and curves, after a time– as if to reassert the goodness of creation – one is bound to find the right road, the way of the heart: the genuine axis of our tradition, including Greco-Roman thinking as well as the Old and the New Testaments, animating Pascal’s reasons of the heart, Goethe’s search for interiority and Kafka’s indestructible. Yet, this is not the last word of Calasso’s chapter. The blissful moment is not lasting, as after this climactic page,47 Calasso continues retracing the tortuous path of the linguistic thinking of the Brahmanic ritualists. It involves an infinite and interminable speculation on death, returning to the most depressing idea that only death can liberate from death – a ‘stupefying overturning (rovesciamento)’ of the previous, promising form of thought (125), which represents a ‘piercing (lancinante) obsession’ of the Brahmanic ritualists (124), already forecast in the tenth Book of the Satapatha Brahmana, which defined Prajapati, the creator god, as also ‘the Year, the Death, and the Terminator’ (125).

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So it is not surprising that this ritualism ends on the same note as its great Gnostic successor, modern philosophy through Descartes, or the obsession with doubt, as the Brahmanic ritualist is also ‘a man of doubt’ (126), who is assailed after every single one of his acts by the interminable and unanswerable question whether this was the right thing to do – recalling the economists of rational choice theory, who forever vacillate in the paradox of the potentially infinite ‘opportunity cost’ of any action. This can only end up in the two ultimate and closely corresponding endgames of every profoundly nihilistic form of thought and spirituality: an ‘ultimate gesture’, completed in silence, that a ‘fourth world’, beyond the one that exists, our own three-dimensional reality, actually could exist – but we would never know, and so it might even not exist; and the resulting questioning of the existence of anything, or the ‘bedazzling (abbagliante) theological audacity of the ritualists’, the ‘capacity to instil doubt about their own existence’ (127).48

Conclusion This chapter presents an attempt to take up and think through the ideas proposed by René Girard. Based on a sustained and in-depth reading of the novels of the nineteenth century, Girard came to recognize that while modernity entertains belief in the autonomous subject, in actual fact, the modern world represents an increasing escalation of imitative desire. In subsequent works, Girard demonstrated that this same mechanism can be considered as an anthropological constant, having already escalated in various times and places in the past, and leading to a kind of endemic conflict and crisis that was bound to result in the setting up of scapegoating and the sacrificial mechanism. Subsequently, Girard argued that the central message of and the reason behind the coming of Christ was the revelation and unmaking of the sacrificial mechanism. While the work of Girard, indeed, represents one of the most important recent advances in social theory, it has a major shortcoming, at once theoretical and theological. According to him, all culture is generated by the sacrificial mechanism, which is close to a Gnostic position about creation being flawed.

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In this perspective, the coming of Christ represents something like redressing an error in creation. This chapter argues, in contrast to this, and hopefully realigning the crucial insights of Girard with theological orthodoxy, that Christ did not come to redress a purported error of creation, but, rather, to redeem from the historical eventexperience captured in the doctrine of the ‘original sin’. The historicity of the gospel logically implies that the historical process that it was supposed to redress also had to be concrete, historical. It had to leave traces, apart from the rather vague and clearly mythologized story told in Genesis 2 and 3. This chapter argues that there are two clear traces of this momentous, originary event-experience: one is the Shaft scene in Lascaux cave, which was analysed using the recent book of Agnes Horvath; while the other is the story of creation according to the oldest layers of Brahmanic thought, as contained in the Satapatha Brahmana, which was analysed using the similarly recent work of Roberto Calasso. Such a joint analysis leads to a strongly Girardian argument that this event has to do with violence and sexuality, culminating in the institution of sacrificial rituals; however, and against the somewhat evolutionist claims of Girard, it suggests that the sacrificial mechanism does not represent the origin of culture, but, rather, the ending of the ‘Golden Age’, through a concrete historical process to be traced to the event-experience of the ‘original sin’. In this sense, if the revelation of the sacrificial mechanism is understood as the unmaking of the original sin, Girard’s ideas help to escape Newtonian, anti-trinitarian scientism and pseudo-Darwinian social scientist evolutionism, and restore, in accordance with Trinitarian thinking, the singular historical coming of Christ as the axis point of world history, where the foundations, turned out of their corners around the original sin, are restored, or ‘atoned’. The completion of this work is, as was the offering of Redemption, beyond human remit, but is evoked in the Promise of a ‘Second Coming’.

Notes 1 A. Szakolczai, Comedy and the Public Sphere: The Re-birth of Theatre as Comedy and the Genealogy of the Modern Public Arena (London: Routledge, 2013).

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2 J. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). 3 For classical accounts, see A. van Gennep, Les rites de passage (Paris: Picard, [1909]1981) and V. W. Turner, ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage’, in The Forest of Symbol (New York: Cornell University Press, 1967), 93–111; V. W. Turner, The Ritual Process (Chicago: Aldine, 1969). For recent efforts to place this term at the centre of social theory, see A. Horvath, ‘Liminality and the Unreal Class of the Image-making Craft’, International Political Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2009): 53–72; A. Horvath, Modernism and Charisma (London: Palgrave, 2013), A. Horvath, B. Thomassen and H. Wydra (eds), Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality (Oxford: Berghahn, 2015). A. Szakolczai, Reflexive Historical Sociology (London: Routledge, 2000); A. Szakolczai, ‘Liminality and Experience: Structuring Transitory Situations and Transformative Events’, International Political Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2009): 141–72 and B. Thomassen, ‘Uses and Meanings of Liminality’, International Political Anthropology 2, no, 1 (2009): 5–27; B. Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern: Living through the In-between (Farnham Surrey: Ashgate, 2014). See also Voegelin’s Plato-inspired metaxy. 4 See the work of Elmar Salmann, Presenza di spirito: il cristianesimo come gesto e pensiero (Padua: Messaggero, 2000), and also Giuseppe Mazza, La liminalità come dinamica di passaggio: la rivelazione come struttura osmotico-performativa dell’inter-esse trinitario (Rome: Pontificia università gregoriana, 2005), a thesis directed by Salmann. See also J. Milbank, C. Pickstock and G. Ward, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London: Routledge, 1999), with their focus on Plato’s idea of ‘participation’, and, in particular, the claim that only transcendence has the force to stand up against nihilism and the void, which entails to ‘re-envision’ a Christianity that never sufficiently valued the mediating participatory sphere which alone can lead us to God (ibid., 3). 5 Horvath, Modernism and Charisma. 6 See J. M. Keynes, ‘Newton the Man’, 2006, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews. ac.uk/Extras/Keynes_Newton.html (accessed 28 April 2016), a lecture Keynes prepared for the Cambridge celebrations of the 300th anniversary of Newton’s birth, which was postponed because of the Second World War and not delivered because of Keynes’s death. It is this anti-trinitarianism that makes Newton not simply a scientist, but the source of scientism as well. On scientism, see in particular Eric Voegelin, ‘The Origins of Scientism’, in vol. 10 of Collected

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Works (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, [1948] 2000); see also his intriguing thought experiment around Newton’s obsession with the vacuum (Voegelin 2000). 7 This is the deep reason why the Latin word materia ‘matter’ is etymologically connected to mater ‘mother’, which also helps to understand why a certain streak of Protestant fundamentalism is so hostile to the veneration of the Virgin, being, in particular, puzzled by the materiality of the Incarnation. 8 About the expulsion from Paradise as a process, see in particular Kafka’s ‘Zürau aphorisms’, containing the core of Kafka’s theological philosophy (R. Calasso K (Milan: Adelphi, 2002)), which he carefully prepared in a booklet, evidently for publication, focusing on the idea of the ‘indestructible’, a term strikingly full of hope, which he, however, never mentioned in either letters or publications. 9 See also the related work of Eric Voegelin, ‘The Drama of Humanity’. Balthasar’s ‘Apocalypse of the German Soul’ was a main source of Voegelin’s monumental ‘Order and History’ project. 10 Horvath, Modernism and Charisma. 11 Ibid., 26. 12 Ibid., 29. 13 On schismogenesis, see G. Bateson, Naven (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1958); G. Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine, 1972), and also A. Horvath and B. Thomassen, ‘Mimetic Errors in Liminal Schismogenesis: On the Political Anthropology of the Trickster’, International Political Anthropology 1, no. 1 (2008): 3–24. 14 Horvath, Modernism and Charisma, 34. 15 A. Horvath, ‘Regression into Technology, or the First Mask’, International Political Anthropology 3, no. 2 (2010): 203–16. 16 In his magisterial study of Shakespeare, through interpreting his two epic poems, T. Hughes, Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being (London: Faber & Faber, 1992) came to identify a similar idea at the core of Shakespeare’s entire work. 17 Whether this image ‘represented’ the event-experience of the ‘original sin’, or whether the image itself produced such an effect is the kind of chicken–egg problem that is impossible to answer. Certainly, a spiralling circularity was involved between the image and historical processes. 18 R. Calasso, L’Ardore (Milan: Adelphi, 2010). 19 Calasso, L’Ardore, 417.

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20 R. Calasso, ‘La foresta dei Brahmana’, Preface to Sylvain Lévi, La dottrina del sacrificio nei Brahmana (Milan: Adelphi, 2009), 13–16. 21 Calasso, ‘La foresta dei Brahmana’, 16. 22 Ibid., 13. 23 Ibid., 25. 24 On modern Gnosticism, see, in particular, the ideas of Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952); Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics and Gnosticism (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1968), and Eric Voegelin, ‘Gnostic Politics’, in vol. 10 of Collected Works (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, [1952] 2000). 25 Calasso, L’Ardore, 93–128. 26 Ibid., 103. 27 Ibid., 95. 28 Ibid., 100. 29 The appearance of a concern with grace is usually traced to the devotional (bhakti) movements of the 7th century AD, originating in the Dravidian South, with roots in the Bhagavad Gita (1st century BC–1st century AD); see M. J. Milner, Status and Sacredness: A General Theory of Status Relations and an Analysis of Indian Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 45, 268, and R. C. Zaehner, Hinduism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 128–34. 30 Calasso, L’Ardore, 100. 31 Such a terrifying, wide-open mouth, intending to devour, is an ancient carnivalesque imagery, according to Bakhtin, present in Rabelais’s works. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 279. 32 Calasso, L’Ardore, 104. 33 Interestingly, both in PIE and in Hungarian, the ‘eye’ and the ‘I’ seem to have similar etymological origins; see Hungarian szem ‘eye’ and személy ‘person’. Calasso, L’Ardore, 101. 34 This recalls Foucault’s take on Velazquez’s Las Meninas and Tiepolo’s Alexander the Great and Campaspe in the Studio of Apelles, analysed by Calasso in 2006 in the fifth book of his series. These are not casual analogies, but paradigmatic descriptions, by two of the most important contemporary social theorists, of depictions of reflexivity built into artistic self-representations by two of the most important baroque painters. 35 Calasso, L’Ardore, 106–7.

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36 R. Girard, La Violence et le sacré (Paris: Grasset, 1972). 37 Calasso, L’Ardore, 111. 38 Here, the analogy is with the ‘first word’ of Greek philosophy, as surviving in the fragment of Anaximander. 39 Calasso, ‘La foresta dei Brahmana’, 17–18. 40 Calasso, L’Ardore, 122. 41 Horvath, Modernism and Charisma, 104. 42 Ibid., 121. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., 122. 45 Calasso discusses this at length in his Kafka book, fourth book of the series (2002), and which is also evoked here, in another crucial passage of this book, discussing the riddle of sacrifice and introducing the Sanskrit term for indestructible, aksara. This is nothing other than the ‘syllable’, or the basic unit of speech sounds that cannot be further decomposed, and which also stops ‘flow’ or ‘liquidity’ (ksara); see Calasso, L’Ardore, 54–7. 46 Calasso, L’Ardore, 122. 47 Ibid. 48 For a similar play with reality, see W. O. Doniger, ‘The Dream Narrative and the Indian Doctrine of Illusion’, Daedalus 111, no. 3 (1982): 93–113, about the ‘dream narrative’.

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Index Acts of the Apostles  11–12 Alison, J.  65, 70, 93 Anselm  118, 119 apocalypse, apocalyptic  56, 82, 90 and Girard  49, 66 Arjakovsky, A.  45 atonement, doctrine of, see also salvation, doctrine of; soteriology Girard on  84, 115, 125, 140, 150 Jesus’ understanding of  1, 10, 14 Jewish theology of  17–32 (see also Teshuvah (return); Yom Kippur) Orthodox theology of  33–46 (see also Paris School) Schwager on  97, 105–6, 112, 125, 127 and the Trinity  156, 159 Wright and  80 Auerbach, E.  117, 122–3, 132, see also typological interpretation Augustine 80 Avery, V.  28, 29 Bakhtin, M.  155, 180 von Balthasar, H. U.  159 Berdyaev, N.  33, 34, 35, 45 on Boehme  37–9 debate with Chetverikov  42–5 on personalism  39–42 Brassempouy lady  161, 162 Calasso, R.  156, 166–9, 174–9, 180, 181 Campbell, D.  82–3, 85, 91 Chauvet, L.-M.  128–9 Chetverikov, S.  42 debate with Berdyaev  42–5 Christ, Jesus account of atonement  1, 8, 107–10, 111, 176–7 ‘intelligence of the victim’  13 preaching of the Kingdom  95, 101 ‘revolutionary subjectivity’ of  89 teaching in parables  10

Cilati, P.  156 Claudel, P.  117, 123, see also typological interpretation Dei Verbum (Vatican II)  105, 113 Derrett, D.  1, 14 Descartes, R.  176 Deussen, P.  168 Dodd, C. H.  68 Dostoyevsky, F.  121, 140 dramatic theology, see under Schwager R. Fedotov, G.  33, 34 Finamore, S.  68–9 Florensky, P.  35, 155 Francis, Pope  14, 15 Freud, S.  58, 173 Genesis 176 Girard, R.  13, 48–9, 132, 153–4, 155, 181 Battling to the End  59, 60–4, 83, 90 correspondence with Raymund Schwager  95, 115, 125–7, 131, 140–1 and literature  122, 132 mimesis, mimetic theory  114, 117–18, 129, 137–8, 140, 176 overall goals  58–60 and sacrifice  115, 136 and theology  81, 84–5, 86–8, 90–1, 128–9 Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World  71, 91, 93, 59 Violence and the Sacred  17, 29, 58 Gnosticism  158, 169, 176, 179 Goethe, J.  175 Greenberg, M.  30 Hamerton-Kelly, R.  65, 69 Hamvas, B.  156 Hanson, A. T.  68 Hawkins, P.  120, 131–2 Heraclitus  121, 132

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Horvath, A.  159–64, 165, 178 Hraptovitsky, A.  34 Jewett, R.  57, 69 Jonah, Book of  17–32, 36 justification, doctrine of  77–8, 119 Joint Lutheran-Catholic declaration on  117, 126, 132 Kafka, F.  175, 179 Kant, E.  153 Keynes, J. M.  178 Khomiakov, A.  35 Kierkegaard, S.  121 Lascaus, Shaft scene at  159–66, 172, 173, 174, 177 Lévi, S.  168–9, 174 Levinas, E.  149, 151 liturgy 11–12 Lowe, W.  119–20, 132 de Lubac, H.  117–23, see also typological interpretation Luke, Gospel of  1, 2, 103 Macintyre, A.  120 Marcion  103, 113 Mark, Gospel of  1, 2 Matthew, Gospel of  1, 2, 3–7, 8, 10 Mauss, M.  84, 93, 168 mercy  14, 15 Milbank, J.  155, 178 Milton, J. Samson Agonistes  72, 91 Mimesis, mimetic theory  114, 115, 117–18, 129, 176, see also Girard, R. Morris, L.  57 Murdoch, I.  120 Newton, I.  157–8, 178 Nietzsche, F.  118, 129–30, 155, 158, 164 Niewiadomski, J.  110 Northern Ireland  135–51 possibilities for reconciliation  147–50 religious conflict  135–6, 141–5 O’Connor, F.  120 original sin  154, 159, 166, 177 Ortega y Gasset, J.  156

Pascal, B.  175 Paul  34, 47–70, 71–94, 103 and kenosis 169 and ‘the Law’  73, 115–17 Letter to the Romans  31, 82, 64–5, 115–16, 126, 131 ‘New Perspective’  47–8, 71, 78, 85, 87, 90–1, 124–7 Percy, W.  120 Piette, E.  161 Pinker, S.  62 Plato 153 Proust, M.  121, 123–4 Ricoeur, P.  45 sacrifice  109, 111, 114, 154, 171–2, 175 salvation, doctrine of  50, 95–6, 118–19, see also atonement; soteriology Sanders, E. P.  47, 71, 73, 91, 125, see under Paul: ‘New Perspective’ Sasson, J. M.  20, 29–30, 31 Satapatha Brahmana  166, 167–8, 169–70, 175 Prajapati  168, 169–71, 173, 175, 177 Schwager, R.  86, 93, 95–114, 117, 159 and biblical exegetes  107–8 correspondence with René Girard  95, 115, 125–7, 131 dramatic theology  97–103, 105, 112 Jesus in the Drama of Salvation 95 sexuality 173 soteriology 116, see also atonement; salvation, doctrine of eschatological and staurological soteriology  96, 112 Stendahl, K.  50, 69 Stragorodskij, S.  34 Szakolczai, A.  154, 177, 178 Tarde, G.  153 Teshuvah (return)  23, 27–8, 29, see also atonement: Jewish theology of de Tocqueville, A.  153 Trible, P.  30–1 Trinity  156–8, 177 typological interpretation  62–3, 117, 123

Index Voegelin, E.  155, 156, 179 Wandinger, N.  113 Weber, M.  155, 158, 164 Wells, O. Citizen Kane 165 Westerholm, S.  50, 51, 69 Williams, R.  129–30 Wittgenstein, L.  129–30

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wrath of God  49–50 in Girard  60–4 in Paul  51–4 Wright, N. T.  47–70, 73–8, 85, 92, 125–6, see also Paul: ‘New Perspective’ Yom Kippur  17–18, see also atonement: Jewish theology of

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