In this study the elaboration of mimetic theory is set out in three phases. From the early stages, in Girard’s literary scholarship, his characteristic themes of deviated transcendence and its Christian alternative are already evident, along with the apocalyptic note that he first identifies in the novels of Proust and Dostoyevsky. The three key refrains are broadly these. First, Girard learns from great literature that desire is borrowed and derivative, that it makes us structurally prone to envy and rivalry, and that pursuing the being of our model or mediator of desire leads to the full range of modern pathologies as addressed for instance by Freud and by existentialist philosophy. This mimetic quality of desire has yielded a tragic state of affairs in which people are sacrificed to still the rivalrous escalation of violence—a cultural theme that Girard identifies initially in Greek tragedies, which began to call in question the more familiar mythical dissimulation of this mechanism. In the second stage of his project, moving from literature to anthropology, Girard delineates the universal shape of this phenomenon through a close reading of world mythology and ritual. His simple account of humanity emerging and growing to maturity on the back of this serendipitous discovery for keeping violence under control became the central theme of mimetic theory. The third key refrain is his contemporaneous discovery of a way beyond this state of affairs, which was disclosed in the Hebrew Scriptures and then decisively in the Gospels’ passion narratives.
As Aquinas takes up Aristotle to create a larger Christian vision, so Girard takes up Cervantes, Shakespeare, Proust, Dostoyevsky, Durkheim, Nietzsche, Freud, and Clausewitz. The mimetic theory is variously illuminated by each of these (and some others) in its dimensions of borrowed desire, escalation in rivalry, cathartic violence, and the threat of apocalypse, with psychological healing and a capacity to negotiate mimetic currents found to be most fully present in Jesus Christ. For Girard, Christ is present not only in person but also incognito as the form of conversion, standing behind every advance that humanity makes in mastering violence. Nietzsche is an especially interesting case for Girard. He was the first to understand that Christianity was incompatible with the mythical and the sacrifice of innocents, while rejecting Christ in favor of Dionysus.
Having set all this out, I then try to imagine the theological implications of mimetic theory. Revelation is central, but it is inseparable from the process of being caught up in God’s healing and liberating project that has slowly but surely come to light in history, centered on its world-transforming breakout in Jesus Christ. In light of which, mimetic theory requires a comprehensive, dynamic, spiritual theology to do it justice. The work of Bernard Lonergan has been associated with Girard, along with that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the unofficial theology of Simone Weil—the latter two sharing Girard’s critique of what religion as solely a human creation can descend into. I suggest that the théologie totale of Sarah Coakley is ripe for a Girardian appropriation or, alternatively, that mimetic theory is ripe for appropriation by théologie totale—and this despite Coakley’s persistent unease that Girard unduly problematizes the religio-cultural category of sacrifice.
Girard’s real theological marriage has to be with theological dramatic theory, as it devolves from Hans Urs von Balthasar into the hands of Raymund Schwager. Here is a comprehensive, self-involving, transformative model that links revelation and salvation. Theological dramatic theory can uphold providence against the problem of evil on the basis of its earthy realism coupled with its eschatological confidence. I seek to show that Girard is compatible with this approach, notwithstanding von Balthasar’s own doubts to that effect. I then venture a five-act Girardian Theo-drama that seeks to honor the evolutionary nature and scope of mimetic theory. A further theological tradition, that of double agency, is applied to fill out this Theo-dramatic account, in which divine providence is seen to work kenotically, incarnationally—sacramentally—through the within of natural processes. God is no stranger to God’s world, working through its natural and historical processes out of love for the world and respect for creatures who live according to their own natures (including humanity’s mimetic nature).
The subsequent challenge is to show how the shadow side of a Darwinian and Girardian world can be squared with theological orthodoxy. Having already affirmed Girard’s grip on the important theological theme of human freedom, I go on in a related discussion to answer John Milbank and other critics who think that Girard abandons theological orthodoxy by making violence ontologically fundamental to creation. Within the developing tradition of Irenaeus, there is scope for a more evolutionary sense of divine providence building stage by stage in light of an eschatological goal—not an onward historical march that sweeps victims aside, but a process that creates as it redeems, transforming the tragic evolutionary givens of life into gift as the Theo-drama plays out.
(excerpted from conclusion)
