René Girard and the Nonviolent God

Scott Cowdell

Description

In his latest book on the ground-breaking work of René Girard (1923–2015), Scott Cowdell sets out a new perspective on mimetic theory and theology: he develops the proposed connection between Girardian thought and theological dramatic theory in new directions, engaging with issues of evolutionary suffering and divine providence, inclusive Christian uniqueness, God's judgment, nonviolent atonement, and the spiritual life. Cowdell reveals a powerful, illuminating, and life-enhancing synergy between mimetic theory and Christianity at its best.

With religion widely seen as increasingly violent and intransigent, the true Christian emphasis on divine solidarity, mercy, and healing is in danger of being lost. René Girard provides a countervailing voice. He emerges from Cowdell's study not only as a necessary dialogue partner for theology today, but as a global prophet offering hope and challenge in equal measure.

René Girard was a Catholic cultural theorist whose mimetic theory achieved a powerful symbiosis of social science with scripture and theology, yielding a unique perspective on humanity’s origins, violent history, and future prospects. Cowdell maps this synergy, revealing theological themes present from Girard’s earliest writings to the latest, less-familiar publications. He resolves a number of theological challenges to Girard’s work, engaging mimetic theory in fruitful dialogue with key themes, movements, and thinkers in theology today.

Bringing a distinctive Anglican voice to a largely Catholic debate, Cowdell gives an orthodox theological account of Girard’s intellectual achievement, bearing witness to Christianity’s nonviolent God. This book will be of great interest to theologians, seminarians and clergy of all traditions, Girardians, and Christian peace activists.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Religion
• Christianisme
• Anglican
• Christian Theology
• Religious
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Christianity
• Anglicanism
• Anthropology
• Anglicanisme

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268104566
• Langue: English

Extrait

RENÉ GIRARD AND THE NONVIOLENT GOD
R ENÉ G IRARD
and the
N ONVIOLENT G OD
Scott Cowdell
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
Copyright © 2018 by the University of Notre Dame
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cowdell, Scott, author.
Title: René Girard and the nonviolent God / Scott Cowdell.
Description: Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018043814 (print) | LCCN 2018044785 (ebook) | ISBN 9780268104559 (pdf) | ISBN 9780268104566 (epub) | ISBN 9780268104535 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 0268104530 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Nonviolence—Religious aspects—Christianity. | God (Christianity) | Girard, René, 1923–2015. | Anglican Communion—Doctrines.
Classification: LCC BT736.6 (ebook) | LCC BT736.6 .C69 2018 (print) | DDC 230/.046—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018043814
∞ The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
for Peter Thiel, and Imitatio
“I was a stranger, and you welcomed me” (Matt. 25:35)
When Jews and Christians came to use the word “god” it was already lying around and meaning something else.
—Herbert McCabe, God Still Matters
The God of Christianity isn’t the violent God of archaic religion, but the non-violent God who willingly becomes a victim in order to free us from our violence.
—René Girard, Evolution and Conversion
Je vous nomme désormais le nouveau Darwin des sciences humaines.
—Michel Serres, “Réception à l’Académie française de René Girard”
Here comes René Girard, the Poirot of theology.
—Sebastian Moore, The Contagion of Jesus
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Overture to Mimetic Theory
2. From Violence to Divinity
3. From Hominization to Apocalypse
4. Girard among the Theologians
5. A Divine-Human Drama
6. The Shadow Side of Finitude
7. Divine Overaccepting
8. Christ, the Nonviolence of God
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I greatly appreciate the congenial working environment afforded me by the Charles Sturt University Centre for Public and Contextual Theology (PACT), along with PACT funding to attend conferences of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion and the American Academy of Religion. For all this and more I thank our director, Stephen Pickard.
To those who kindly read and commented on all or part of this work in draft, I owe my sincere thanks for their time, encouragement, and (in one or two cases) their prudent advice: Jeremiah Alberg, Sandor Goodhart, Curtis Gruenler, Wayne Hudson, Stephen Pickard, Brian Robinette, and Bruce Wilson. Further thanks go to Jeremiah Alberg and Brian Robinette, who proved generous (if readily identifiable) “anonymous reviewers” for the publisher, and especially to Wayne Hudson and Bruce Wilson for their long-standing interest and support.
Once again, the University of Notre Dame Press has taken good care of me. To Stephen Little, Matthew Dowd, Maria denBoer, Wendy McMillen, and Susan Berger I offer my particular thanks. I thank Christopher Brennan for the index and Stephen Pickard for a PACT grant to fund its preparation. The striking cover image we are using features a piece of art glass by the Swedish sculptor Bertil Vallien. It was photographed by my wife, Lisa Carley, against a backdrop of plantation shutters slightly ajar. I thank Kosta Boda (in their 275th anniversary year) for kind permission to use this image ( www.kostaboda.com ), and I thank Lisa—not only for this photograph but for her support during another writing project and, more generally, for thirty-two years of love, loyalty, and laughter.

It would not have been possible for me to conduct research for and write this book without a generous three-and-a-half year fellowship from Imitatio, the Girardian arm of the San Francisco–based Thiel Foundation. My thanks to Jimmy Kaltreider, Lindy Fishburne, Trevor Cribben Merrill, the Research Committee and Board of Imitatio, and especially Peter Thiel—arguably René Girard’s most influential former pupil—to whom this work is gratefully dedicated.
Canberra, Australia
Octave of Easter
April 2018
Introduction
This is a book about René Girard (1923–2015) and what he brings to Christian theology. It comes at a time of dawning recognition about the significance of mimetic theory for theology, though the nature of that significance remains less clear. This book aims to provide that clarity. It seeks to mediate between Girard’s oeuvre and what we might call mainstream, orthodox theology—it is a particular concern of this study to show that Christian belief need not be bent out of shape to accommodate mimetic theory.
In so doing, questions need to be addressed about the compatibility of Girard’s self-declared scientific program with theology’s authoritative sources: scripture, creeds, and persistent tropes regarding creation, revelation, providence, Christology, eschatology, and atonement. Among the theological critics of mimetic theory to receive attention here are Hans Urs von Balthasar, John Milbank, and Sarah Coakley. Girard’s theological interlocutors and interpreters are also present, most notably Raymund Schwager and James Alison.
In this undertaking, the reader may detect a new accent in theology’s engagement with mimetic theory. Girard has received theological attention, both positive and negative, within his own Catholic Church and throughout the Protestant world. There has also been a smattering of Eastern Orthodox writings on Girardian themes. But there has not been extensive engagement with mimetic theory in Anglican theology, though Girard has been welcomed (with serious reservations) at the Catholic end of Anglicanism by Milbank and Coakley. Recurrent themes in this study reveal certain Anglican preoccupations on my part, as a theologian who has been influenced intellectually, but also spiritually and personally, by mimetic theory. If the integration of faith with reason, theology’s engagement with culture, and the ecclesial mediation of personal transformation all add up to a single gift and task for me, as a characteristically Anglican way of being Christian, so the discovery and exploration of mimetic theory has illumined and deepened my Anglican sensibilities.
First, consider the “threefold cord not quickly broken” of scripture, tradition, and reason. Anglicans who align their theological sympathies with those of Richard Hooker—the great apologist of the Elizabethan Settlement—believe that, while scripture is primary, nevertheless any adequate hermeneutics must involve respectful conversation with the church’s creedal traditions and with the canons of reason (reason being conceived more broadly than today’s instrumental rationality typically allows). Girard is manifestly sympathetic to maintaining this conversation. Second, with this structural commitment in Anglican theological method comes its predilection for situating doctrine in close proximity to prayer, worship, and the cultivation of Christian character. This association of rational theological discourse with personal and communal transformation through word, sacrament, and common prayer is highly compatible with Girard’s insistence on linking theoretical insight with personal conversion. Third, the aforementioned Elizabethan Settlement manifested classical Anglicanism’s commitment to maintaining peace in both church and nation. This emphasis perseveres in a characteristic spirit of irenicism and public-mindedness in Anglican theology, which finds obvious resonances in Girard. His mimetic theory represents wisdom for the common good, beyond any sectarian agenda. He also declares that rivalrous self-definition and scapegoating should be off-limits to Christians. Both these commitments echo Anglican sensibility at its best.

From motives that may be discerned in the conception of this study, we now turn to an overview of its contents. The first three chapters offer a close reading of Girard’s oeuvre, exploring what I call his early, middle, and late phases. These chapters reveal theological synergies that developed throughout Girard’s literary and social-scientific researches, along with a kernel of the whole mimetic theory that was already present at the beginning. Next, we turn to a theological assessment of Girard’s social-scientific program, considering how he might fit best into today’s theological conversation. In the two following chapters, on divine revelation and divine action in an evolutionary world, mimetic theory is aligned with divine providence conceived in kenotic and incarnational terms. The preferred vehicle for this alignment is theological dramatic theory, as illuminated by the double agency tradition. In two final chapters we look at key theological concerns that have been laid at Girard’s door. These include the tragic cast of mimetic theory and its apparent ontologizing of violence. Girard offers theology a way beyond the standard options that too readily either embrace or deny such tragic, violent elements. Here I invoke a practice called overaccepting, which comes from improvisation theory in drama. Overaccepting provides a key to how certain contested theological themes can emerge less problematically in light of mimetic theory. The concentration is on divine providence in general and Jesus Christ in particular—who he is, what he does, what can and should be said of him, and what ought not to be said—from the perspective of divine nonviolen