I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

On the back cover of my edition of I See Satan Fall Like Lightning one of the reviews declares, “Girard enables us to talk for the first time about a ‘phenomenology of redemption.’” I think this is right. Girard offers an anthropological description of how the gospel transforms human interaction and thus societies. His approach is neither theological nor dependent upon Scripture as revelation. Rather, he uses Scripture as one document among others; yet, in the process they glisten with extraordinary light. One should not fault Girard too early. His conclusions are worth hearing even if one disagrees with minor or major points.

Girard asserts that by nature humans desire what other people have along with what other people themselves desire. One the one hand, this is the basis of role models, and it allows children to mature into adults. On the other, it forms a relationship of rivalry in which the one coveting desires his neighbor and the neighbor, by way of response, increases his own desire for the object. Compliment a man’s wife and he suddenly finds her more attractive! This dialectic of desire can quickly escalate into a kind of competition, especially if something scandalizes one’s desire. If emotions are strong enough, inhibition gives way to violence. Therefore, by characterizing human nature as ‘mimetic’, Girard concludes that society and human relations are founded on rivalry, competition, and finally violence.

If desire is fundamentally mimetic—copies what others themselves desire, this means that groups of people value common objects. Thus ‘scandals’ do not simply confront individuals but societies as a whole. Pressure builds as desire is frustrated. The result is often to trigger a “single victim mechanism” whereby blame converges on a single individual, usually a marginal victim. This is also where Girard introduces his conception of Satan. Satan, for Girard, is the impulse of blame and accusation. Distracting attention from the true contagion, he isolates and accuses a scapegoat instead. He is a principle of disorder and order. He harnesses the power of mimetic desire and then orders human passion by releasing it in an act of violence. This violence appears to remove the problem. In the end, however, it merely prolongs the process of coveting, rivalry, and blame. Evangelicals may be distressed by Girard’s assertion that, while Satan is real, he has no being. But the difficulty is partially alleviated if one remembers that Girard proposes an anthropological analysis of violence, not a theological one. Measuring Satan’s ontological activity is hazardous at best; most important, is positing the reality of a principle of sin and disorder that is targeted by God’s redemptive work.

One may ask where Girard gets his data for this analysis. One of his main sources is ancient myth. Against most anthropologists and comparative religion scholars Girard does not reduce myth to fantasy, but contends that myth represents real violence. It is not by accident that so many founding stories begin with murder and fratricide. In doing so these stories themselves prolong the cycle of violence and consumptive sacrifice. Here in the argument Girard introduces the gospels into the analysis. He insists that the gospel narratives are unique in that they do not condone the actions of the crowd or even the disciples, but rather justify the victim. Moreover, what is true of the New Testament finds early resonance in the stories of marginal figures like Joseph, Moses, and the prophets. Focused in the narrative of Christ, the gospels provide a principle of mimetic desire for humankind that subverts the power of egotistic desire. In Jesus, humanity discovers an anthropology derived from sacrificial love and the singular will to obey another. At the same time, Satan’s work is reckoned for what it is: evil.

One should not feel the need from Girard to shape his entire theology of redemption or atonement on the subversion of mimetic desire. What any Christian can take away, though, is the satisfaction that only the Christian Scriptures adequately estimate the bondage of the human will and provide a model for human interaction that is loving rather than competitive. As Christians, we follow Christ in laying down our lives for others. Girard reminds us that this ethic is a Christian contribution to the world.

Leviticus as Literature

Mary Douglas’s title Leviticus as Literature may appear oxymoronic or perhaps just moronic. For most readers Leviticus is more of an instruction manual than a piece of artistry. The layers of cultic instruction, moral laws, and interspersed stories of spewed fire obfuscate not only creativity but also theological meaning in the text. Even Calvin found it hard to comment on the book. This is not the sentiment of Douglas, though, who sees Leviticus as outlining a “modern religion” with emphases extending so far as animal justice. Yet, it is not Douglas’s ethical sensitivity which gives merit to the book--in fact, this may be her weakness. Rather, it is Douglas’s training as an anthropologist along with her literary sensitivity that stimulate fresh insight into a dusty text.

Anthropologically, Douglas has a different lens than standard commentators including even the doyen of Levitical studies, Jacob Milgrom. For example, rather that using the paucity of imperatives in Leviticus to draw inferences about authorship or dating, Douglas reads Leviticus comparatively against cultures where “direct commands are not necessary” because “authority is clear and everyone knows what is to be done” (35). Likewise, she excuses gaps in the text, reminding contemporary readers that a common cultural identity “makes explicit verbalization unnecessary” (38). Two points of particular interest are her anthropological discussions of the positive uses and benefits of divination (not in the ethical but pragmatic sense!) as well as her discussion of the problems that occur by de-mythologizing the presence of demons in the world. Concerning the latter topic, by eliminating the function of demons in the popular imagination for causing disorder, decay, and doom the Hebrew writers raise new questions relating to the goodness of creation and origin of evil. Douglas makes a consistent effort to read the impurity laws of Leviticus in harmony with the clear Genesis teaching that all of creation is good in essence and purpose. Another important insight she provides is the concrete nature of the command to love one’s neighbor. Douglas notes that in the text love does not denote an emotion, but rather a “legal idea of free and un-coerced willingness” (43).

The most provocative sections in the book, for me at least, are those dealing with the analogical structure of Leviticus. In chapter two Douglas goes to great pains to convince the reader that there are two equally valid kinds of reasoning, analogical and rational-instrumental thinking. Both occur within human societies and both are capable of focusing analytical questions. On the one hand, analogical reasoning projects patterns on the world. It is horizontal, concentric, hierarchical and usually accompanies a mytho-poetic worldview. The intellectual history of Eastern cultures exhibits this kind of reasoning. For example, Douglas notes, “Chinese mathematical thought traditionally uses analogy to construct parallel instances, and then to scrutinize them systematically, character by character, to check exactly where the correspondence lies” (31). [This sounds strikingly similar to Christian figural reading!] On the other, rational-instrumental thinking isolates, breaks down, and defines an object. As one might expect, Douglas argues that the logic of Leviticus depends on correlation and analogy, not logical or natural causation. She says, “Only the whole system of analogies in which it nests will show how it is to be read” (20). Elsewhere she extends the textual principle to Levitical cosmography: “Nothing can be justified in this universe except in terms of the proper position in the spatial/temporal order whose rightness is the only justification for anything” (39).

The application of this analogical reasoning is where Douglas’s exegesis becomes exciting. She sees a layered, tri-part pattern repeated from the initial covenant proceedings at Sinai to the structure of the tabernacle and further into the bodies of the sacrificial animals. This final correspondence is Douglas’s unique contribution to commentary on Leviticus, and she lends anthropological support to the hypothesis by drawing several parallels with totem-based cultures. She iterates, “In the space of the animal’s body [the writer] finds analogies with the tabernacle and the history of God’s revelation to Israel” (45). There are two analogical referents to the trizone anatomy: one is the way the animal parts would appear as the worshiper ‘enters’ the body with a knife; the other is the appearance of the pieces as they are arranged on the altar. The first instance mirrors entering the tabernacle from the courtyard, the second the ascent up Sinai during the initial covenant proceedings. For this reason, Douglas recommends seeing ‘inner’ and ‘upper’ as complementary.

All this may be difficult to conceptualize, so allow me to summarize the imagery. In the case of ‘entering’ the animal, the head and meat sections, which physically give access to the body, reflect the courtyard of the tabernacle and the base of Mt. Sinai where all God’s people could assemble. Thus all worshipers can consume these sections. Moving to the midriff area, one finds the dense fat that surrounds the kidneys and liver loab. These are altar portions. They are not for human consumption. Douglas imagines the layers of fat as analogous to the smoke of incense in the holy place and the cloud covering Sinai. Moreover, these ‘zones’ functioned as boundary markers separating common grounds from areas where only the elders--in the case of Sinai--and priests--in the case of the tabernacle--had access. Could the two kidneys represent the table and candelabra? Visually this works. Finally, the entrails, intestines and genitals, in which the fecundity, emotions, and feelings were supposed to reside, are analogous to the holy of holies. Here we see God as the source of vitality, life, and affection. Thus ‘entering’ the animal is a mimetic journey up Sinai or into the Tabernacle. While this may sound like Cabbalist mysticism to 21st century evangelicals, Douglas gives anthropological data of other cultures that project cosmic structures onto human and animal bodies. Personally, I like the thought of the physical construction of animal parts on the sacrificial altar as visibly reproducing the covenant proceedings of Sinai. Lest one be too skeptical of the thesis, Moses did after all see a heavenly pattern!

The parallels continue, though my time for writing fades. Douglas claims, “The structure of the text [Leviticus as a whole] is an analogy of the structure of the desert tabernacle” (198). Following the literary uses of ringlets and chiasm, she asserts that the narrative portions of Leviticus divide the book into three sections, each corresponding to a “screen” between subsequent sections of the tabernacle. For instance, the first section treats general sacrifices that pertain to all Israelites, mirroring the Tabernacle’s courtyard, etc. Microcosm upon microcosm, Douglas’s analogical reasoning builds a coherent reading of Leviticus. Allow me to conclude with a quotation: “Learning the book becomes a way of internalizing the tabernacle, in the same way as the spiritual Jerusalem was distinguished from the physical Jerusalem at the center of the world. At the same time, moving round the tabernacle with the book, they are also moving round Mt. Sinai, and even had access to part of it that only Moses had” (230). Perhaps the anonymous 14th century author and mystic of the Cloud of Unknowing was not so peculiar after all for basing a pattern of contemplative prayer on the physical dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant.

Orthodoxy

Imagine a book written arguing the case for Christianity, addressing the arrogance of unbelieving science and the ignorance of those who trust it, the worldliness and materialism of modern society, the emptiness of Buddhism and Confucianism despite their popularity, and the suitableness of Christ-centred, biblical Christianity. All told with true style and wit.

I'm sitting in Starbucks at the Quartermile in Edinburgh having just finished (at last) reading GK Chesterton's Orthodoxy and I am amazed at two things:
1 - How much I agree with this convert to Roman Catholicism
2 - That this book was first published, not in 2008 but in 1908

I won't say he's a theologian, but he is not here arguing points of theology. He makes just a passing remark or two against Calvinism and the Reformation for which we must forgive him. But he is an apologist extraordinaire.

Many Christian apologists are not taken seriously. Some put their argument across with such gravitas and academic lingo that you get lost in their rhetoric. Others pretend the arguments are so simple that they fail to address the issues. Chesterton is at once engaging and stylish in his writing whilst, at once, challenging but plain in his argument.

The reality of spirituality, of miracle, the tenacity of the scriptures, the sensibleness of the gospel and the helpfulness of the doctrine of original sin are all covered in this short work. Chesterton shows that beginning as a mere philosopher, every conclusion he ever reached by himself, he found to be the same truth as was taught in the Christian religion.

I want to give an example of his argument. Toward the end of the book Chesterton discusses the likelihood of miracle:

Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracle consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracle accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them...
The plain, popular course is to trust the peasant's word about the ghost as far as you trust the peasant's word about the landlord...
If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant's story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is you either you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism - the abstract impossibility of a miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence - it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed..."

People - get ready to think. Tolle lege.

The Self as Agent

John MacMurray is a Scottish philosopher (d. 1976) who deserves a wider hearing. His critique is brazen, nothing short of declaring the need to invert the fundamental assumption of modern philosophy. Following Descartes philosophy has built its house on the assumption of the 'self' as isolated thinker. In other words, what is the one ground of certainty that truth can stand on? Myself as a cognative being. The deadend along this road is Kant who, while positing the real existence of a world outside of humans, nonetheless concludes that this world is inaccessible to us. Reason is only helpful insofar as it follows concepts (rules) that in turn allow us to synthesize (schematize) experience according to unavoidably human categories. Transcendence is beyond us. The best we can do is - believing in the laws of non-contradition and moral law (faith alone!) - is hope our moral rectitude find reward if there is anything beyond us. Post-Kant, western philosophy dissolves. By the time MacMurray gives the Gifford lectures in the 1950's, philosophy is divorced between logical positivists (let's just clarify what we're saying) who maintain the philosophic method without ultimate concerns and existentialist who hold tight the concerns but without a method. What to do?

MacMurray's contention is that philosophy needs a new foundation, not the isolated thinker but the self as agent. This assertion presupposes that theory and practice cannot be unrelated. Humans are not fundamentally abstract thinkers, but persons with thoughts, intentions, emotions, and actions. Responding to the "crisis of the personal," MacMurray's goal is to replace the 'I think' with the 'I act' as the first principle of philosophy. Two things need to be said here. First, MacMurray's understanding of action is inclusive. What he means by this is, whereas action necessarily includes the rational faculties of a person, the same is not true of thought. He explains,

"The concept of 'action' is inclusive. As an ideal limit of personal being, it is the concept of an unlimited rational being, in which all the capacities of the Self are in full and unrestricted employment" (87).

While certainly no one achieves this limit in life, the construct is illuminating. Is this not the intent of so many New Testament passages that assert belief results in action? MacMurray's point is that knowledge is not abstract. The test of adequacy of any philosophy comes by applying theory to the world of action. Does theory clarify the telos of action? Does theory enable people to achieve that telos?

Second, MacMurray insists that "any philosophy which takes the 'I think' as its first principle, must remain formally a philosophy without a second person" (72). If you are an "I think" and I am an "I think", all either of us can do is "I think" about the other! Anyone married knows how far this is from personal knowledge of a spouse. Extending the point, however, Macmurray opines, "The idea of 'God' is the idea of a universal 'Thou' to which all particular persons stand in personal relation." Unfortunately, Kant did not have a category by which to schematize this!

There is plenty more to discuss in MacMurray. This book is only a prelude to a second volume that focuses the discussion of persons within the context of community. Perhaps the best way to conclude, however, is to ask what this means for theologians. Here are two brief suggestions:

1. If persons are agents (actors) and knowledge is not theoretical, theology should not be abstract. God is a trinity of persons and we are persons as well. Knowledge, therefore, must be inter-personal.

2. The divide of theory and practice is a modern contruct to be deconstructed. Practice is the fulfillment of theory and if in practice a theory doesn't work, it needs to be abandoned. This is precisely the wager of Christian faith. We believe that human fulfillment only comes by communion with God in Jesus Christ. If Christ does not have the power to change lives - not just minds - he is not worth following. This sounds blasphemous unless, that is, one really believes and has experienced the power of the resurrection.

Finally, let me end with a quotation worthy of resounding down the corridors of ever liberal religious studies department in the Western world:

"Is it not more likely that our capacity for scepticism is as unlimited as our credulity, and increases, like all our powers, with exercize"