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| Mimetic Meatballs | | Date Created: Aug 14, 2005, 10:25 PM |
Has anyone else read Girard's I See Satan Fall Like Lightening?
ISSFLL is surprisingly orthodox. Compared with his earlier books, there are things here that make we wonder if he hasn't embraced the Christian faith in new and more honest way recently. I haven't noticed anything that would indicate, for example, that he denies the wrath of God. This is a question I've had reading his earlier works. And it seems to me that there are admissions and qualifications in this book that I have not read in his earlier works. For example, he makes the point that "mimetic desire is intrinsically good" (p. 15). This has not always been made clear in his earlier writings. But now he clearly says that we are made to image God and one another. It's not the imaging, not even the mimetic modeling of other people that is the problem. If humans stopped choosing models from those around them, we would have neither language nor culture. Rather, it is the "idolization" of non-divine human models that is the problem. Anyway, there's a lot more fascinating stuff here. And it all seems to be written in a much more accessible style than the typical Girard book or essay.
Girard has made me think in creative ways about the inter-trinitarian relations, specifically about how biblical covenants and scape-goating are related? I can't help pondering how God's covenantal order for man, especially as it reflects his own inter-trinitarian sacrificial relations, is, if faithfully followed "mimesis proof." Or maybe, to put it differently: only in covenant with God and one another (by means of God's covenant) is sinful mimesis is dealt with. Maybe this is pretty obvious, but I wonder if the implications have been worked out by anyone.
If the aboriginal form of the covenant is the triune relations between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and if these covenantal personal relations are inexorably sacrificial (negatively, anti-mimetic), then it makes sense to say that the aboriginal sin is mimetic desire. Such desire is at polar odds with each Person of the Godhead's covenantal relations with the other two. In the triune society each at the disposal of the others and have no desire to one-up the others. Indeed, each Person's desire is much different: to glorify the others. They give themselves utterly to one another. They exist for the other. The "other" is not a source of desire, but an object of love and self-sacrificial service – purified desire, if you will.
Adam's sin, then, is his mimetic desire vis-à-vis God. The Serpent arouses desire: "you shall be like God." The post-lapsarian form of the covenant, then, deals directly with the violence of mimetic rivalry – the animal is slain as sacrificial victim. This is how God trains humanity to learn to die to self and live for others. The sacrifices are, among other things, the Trinity's pedagogy for humanity. Jesus, of course, takes on our life and lives this out in the flesh, giving himself utterly to his Father and to us.
I guess I'm wondering about specific ways in which the covenant answers the problem of mimesis, both in its aboriginal, pre-lapsarian, and post-lapsarian form. (Don’t' you love those Latin words!)
Just musing out loud. . . Hey, back off, it's my blog.
In any case, ISSFLL is good stuff. I highly recommend it. |
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