DEL SEGURO SOBRE LA VIDA

In offering Girard’s mimesis as a suitable theological resource in the Church of England context it is necessary to consider how it sits with respect to sin and atonement.

A focus for mimetic theory is the interpretation of Jesus’ understanding that “Satan expels Satan.” (Girard, 2001, pp.36-37) For Girard, this opaque comment reflects an end to cyclical violence. In the general cycle of mimetic violence Girard postulates a period of stability which is not a true peace but will lead to a new turn in the cycle of violence. This opens up the contrast between the limited violence of an organization which destroys itself and the unlimited violence of an organization which arises to the point of destruction, arrives at a false peace and is able to start a new cycle of violence. To achieve this false peace there needs to be a common willingness to see the victim as guilty. The organization can then be united in its relief in expelling the guilty and feel good about itself. The effect of the Cross is to bring to an end to the pattern of living with sustainable violence. For Girard, Satan does indeed cast out Satan because Satan’s activity in bringing the death of the ultimate sinless victim lays bare the mechanism by which Satan has been perpetuated through time. The beginning of the end, is humanity’s ability to understand Satan. A strength of this view of atonement is that it is a useful analytic tool for some aspects of scripture, however, an inadequacy is that it seems to reduce atonement to a lesson in cognitive dissonance where the message of the Cross is that humanity must learn to stop creating scapegoats and then destroying them.

For Girard, humanity is just starting to understand the message of the Cross. It is

demonstrated by the awareness of the innocence of victims that has risen in prominence in our era even if it is patchy. This means that any organization will find that the

scapegoating mechanism no longer acts like full reset because someone will always realize that the scapegoat was treated unfairly and this will spoil the sense of catharsis for the others. There may be some short term stability achieved but the stresses are already in place that will lead to the next scandal. This then applies even more strongly within Christian contexts because of the direct awareness of Christ as the sinless victim.

92 Collicut refers to the cyclical violence articulated within Girard’s work. She describes the identification of scapegoating as

the means by which communities manage systematic sin in the short term but perpetuate it in the long term…. The scapegoat is then destroyed, expelled or contained, allowing the community to feel that it has dealt with its sin, but masking the fact that sin is something that is distributed throughout it (p.203). This has deep resonance with the wider church and the diocese’s inability to engage effectively with the concept of bullying. However, it does raise consideration of where Girard’s work stands with respect to sin.

Girard places more emphasis on Satan than sin. His model suggests that when the church engages in the lynching of a victim as part of the single victim mechanism, it becomes an expression of Satan. Although this a powerful, attention grabbing, critique of the church, the repeated use of the concept of Satan could alienate a wider readership. Consideration of sin, which is present in Girard’s work through his discussion of the Ten commandments (2001, pp.7-8) is relevant because addressing sin is central to the understanding of what the church does. I do not want to exclude the connection with Satan but I recognize sin is a more accessible category to work with.

Girard’s consideration of original sin is worked out in the context of desire in Eden (2001, p.7). Girard is not specific about which desire in the Eden context he connects to mimetic desire. However, Hamerton- Kelly (1992) describes:

desire, nevertheless, freely corrupted itself by choosing the possibility represented by the scapegoat to desire acquisitively the prohibited object and thus enter into a relationship of mimetic rivalry with God. This transgression is rivalry because, to corrupted desire, the prohibition represents the desire of God for the prohibited object, and human desire mimes this misperceived divine desire. (p.92)

This passage may itself generate further questioning by its anthropomorphizing of desire, however, it usefully demonstrates Girardian reading of Genesis and draws attention to the significance of perception in forming desire.

Although Girard uses the term original sin, he does not discuss it in detail or connect it to Augustine. This lack of detail is offset by Alison (1998), Boersma (2004) and Palaver (2013). Alison and Boersma are a useful contrast to each other because Alison is writing

93 from a Roman Catholic standpoint and Boersma is writing from a Reformed standpoint. Of the two, Alison embraces Girard’s ideas more fully in developing an alternative to substitutionary atonement. He identifies original sin as being given more significance than it is due.

Palaver is a member of the editorial board of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion who focus on furthering Girard’s work. For Palaver, there is a connection between mimesis and Augustine’s, “perversa imitatio Dei, a form of vain madness identical to the essence of the devil.” (p.91) This brings together imitation and Satanic presence, though lacks the expression of Satan in the destruction of a scapegoat. For Alison, the lack of a doctrine of original sin in Jewish tradition suggests that atonement should draw its meaning from the resurrection. He identifies that this is often reversed with the resurrection presented as the solution to original sin. He corrects this by defining original sin as “a parting glance at a mode of humanity on its way out of being. …the an-ecclesial hypostasis…of death-related rivalistic desire” (p.237). The truth of the resurrection, illustrated by baptism is the opening up of the possibility of “undistorted desire…. the beginning of the ecclesial hypostasis, already implicitly related to the self- giving of the one foundational victim whose creative desire overcomes all desire locked in futility” (p. 185). Alison’s atonement as the opening up of the ecclesial hypostasis provides a sense of atonement of cosmic dimensions and answers the earlier critique of a cognitive atonement.

Applying this understanding of atonement leaves humanity and particularly the church with a great deal of work to do. The presence of bullying in the church context can be seen as a failure to appropriate the change of the world working by distorted desire to working by undistorted desire. It powerfully equates with the an-ecclesial hypostasis of desire locked in futility. A helpful comparison is between traditional understandings of original sin which might lead us to blame Adam and Eve for their sin and Alison’s reimaged original sin where we love Adam and Eve for their part in offering us a deeper understanding of God’s gracious gift to us in the resurrection (1998, pp.241-242). I link this back to the pervious discussion of shame (this work, Chapter 3) to say that the blaming, shaming, bullying church is the church failing to appropriate the potential of the resurrection.

94 In contrast to Alison, Boersma (2004) has a more ambivalent reaction to Girard

although he too seeks new understandings of atonement. He characterizes Girard’s portrayal of Christ’s victory on the Cross as a combination of atonement by moral influence and medieval Christus Victor theology (p.146). The nature of the

rehabilitation is that there is no sense in which God adopts Satan’s tools in an act of trickery, simply that Satan tricks himself into misunderstanding the truth of the Cross. Girard’s sense that humanity is slowly learning the truth of the Cross through beginning to be able to identify the innocent victims created by society links directly to this moral influence interpretation. A purely moral influence based understanding of the atonement would seem to me unsatisfactory as a basis for a theological tool to be used within the Church of England, so Christus Victor usefully begins to reflect the significance of the crucifixion. However, Boersma is unable to accept the foundation of violence within Girard’s work. He states, “It is difficult to see how Girard’s prioritizing of violence in terms of the origin of human culture fits with his notion of Jesus as the ultimate model of non-violence” (p.145). His critique could be seen to echo Adam’s previously discussed critique of the scapegoating of positive mimesis. Therefore, I would accept Boersma’s positive use of Girard’s work but see his criticisms as addressed by Alison’s shift of emphasis from original sin to resurrection and Adam’s recovering of positive mimesis.

CONCLUSION

I have demonstrated that mimesis is an appropriate tool for practical theology and positioned this study in the context of current work in the field. Further, I have

illustrated the diversity of models brought to understand bullying. These have individual strengths but their multiplicity is a barrier to engagement. My use of mimesis has been supported by theological writers in the key areas of the imitation of Christ, ecclesiology, sin and atonement. This establishes the argument that mimesis, as a model both

theological and psychological, offers a way for the diocese to comprehend the

complexity of the nature of bullying and formulate an effective response. The detail of this section applied to the theoretical framework (diagram (iii) forms the foundation for this research.

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PART 3 CHAPTER 6 NUMERICAL DATA: METHOD AND ANALYSIS