Prophecy & Sacrifice According to René Girard & Walter
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Heythrop College Publications The Reclamation of Biblical Concepts: Prophecy & Sacrifice according to René Girard & Walter Brueggemann James Stewart Mather Heythrop College, University of London Submitted to the University of London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) 2014 Abstract This thesis works on the basis of a ‘mutually critical correlation’ of the work of René Girard and Walter Brueggemann’s thought, particularly in relation to the biblical concepts of prophecy and sacrifice. The introduction sets out the character and scope of the two authors’ work, and considers two other figures that have had a major influence: Raymund Schwager on Girard, and Norman Gottwald on Brueggemann; the influence of Paul Ricoeur on both authors is also explored. Socio-literary and socio- historical methods are also laid out in relation to the work of the authors. In Part 1, there is an exploration of what biblical concepts are, and how they are founded in patterns of thought which are no longer the dominant ones in Western society. The nature of symbol and myth are investigated, and the thinking of the authors related to these. Then the decay of biblical concepts in the contemporary era is examined and related to the projects of the two authors; Brueggemann’s idea of a ‘dominant version of reality’, which is applicable to the schemes of both is interrogated. In Part 2, the idea of sacrifice, and the meaning of that term in prehistoric societies, in the Old Testament context, and in the New Testament and the modern era are unpacked and considered in relation to the thinking of Brueggemann and Girard. The idea of atonement and what is understood by that term and by ‘sacrifice’ in contemporary society are developed in the terms of the two authors. Part 3 is an investigation of prophecy in some detail. Beginning with the ideas of the sacred, the holy and the signified, and moving through the application of these to the ‘here and now’, there is consideration of the alternatives to the divine view: those of Satan, Dionysus and the ‘royal consciousness’. Brueggemann’s suggestion that preaching (and therefore prophecy) constitutes an alternative version of these realities which subverts the status quo, is considered. 2 Abstract Part 4 brings together these elements and uses the thinking of the two authors to build up a composite picture, in which intent and action, original sin and original blessing are assembled and counterposed. 3 Contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgments 5 Abbreviations & Terms 6 Introduction 1 Thesis Description 8 2 Methodology 16 3 Brueggemann & Gottwald, Girard & Schwager 28 Part 1 Concepts and Versions of Reality 4 What is a Biblical Concept? 60 5 Symbol, Myth & Intuition 72 6 The Decay of Biblical Concepts in Modern & Postmodern Thought 87 7 The Dominant Version of Reality 115 Part 2 The Fading Concept of Sacrifice 8 Prehistory & Girard 124 9 Brueggemann & the Old Testament Base 143 10 The New Testament and Beyond 159 11 Atonement & Contemporary Sacrifice 179 Part 3 Prophecy: Outdated and Never Outdated 12 The Sacred, the Holy & the Signified 191 13 The Holy & the Here-and-Now 209 14 The Royal Consciousness 225 15 Satan & Dionysus 241 16 Making the Texts Talk 253 17 When the Sub-Version Surfaces 273 Part 4 Synthesis 18 Covenant, Lament & Thanksgiving 290 19 Mimesis, Monarchy & Trinity 313 20 The Reclamation Assessed 333 Bibliography 342 4 Acknowledgements This thesis started as an MTh in Practical Theology by research at Aberdeen University, and has continued at Heythrop College, University of London. The length of the journey in geographical terms is matched by a winding route and a focus that has developed from a general interest in language and literature in religion, to a particular one on prophecy and sacrifice, and two writers, Girard and Brueggemann. My grateful thanks are due principally to my two supervisors at Heythrop College, Dr. Michael Kirwan SJ and Professor Keith Ward, without whose encouragement and wise guidance I would not have reached this point. I’d also like to thank those who steered me in my early steps on this journey: Dr. Peter Vardy, my tutor in an earlier phase, the MA in Philosophy & Religion at Heythrop, and Revd. Dr. John Swinton of Aberdeen University, under whose supervision I began this research. Thanks are also due to Dr. James Thornhill for his helpful comments on the thesis at an early stage in the process. I’d also like to thank Michael Kirwan and, through him, the Jesuit theology faculty in the University of Innsbruck for making available unpublished letters between Girard and Schwager. Grateful thanks are also due to those who have helped with funding this seven-year project: The Ministries Council of the Church of Scotland, Chelsea Methodist Church, and Kensington United Reformed Church. And, finally but not least, thanks are due to my wife, Jane, for all her support since we first journeyed to Aberdeen together in 2005. 5 Abbreviations & Terms Negative mimesis. The mimetic process which, according to Girard, became a pervasive feature of humankind at the point of hominization. It is based on imitative desire and results in rivalry and spirals of violence. Positive mimesis. Imitation which follows the example of God, particularly of God’s requirements for human conduct as described by Jesus and exemplified in his life on earth. DVR Dominant Version of Reality NG Norman K. Gottwald PR Paul Ricoeur RG René Girard RS Raymund Schwager WB Walter Brueggemann 6 INTRODUCTION 7 1 Thesis Description This project has a pastoral purpose: to identify forces for a positive energizing of community, freed from the destructive forces which mire the world in its old ways. Such forces are not contemporary in origin; they are present in voices from biblical times which have often been misheard, unheard, or ignored within Christian ministry. The possibility and the understanding of a process of re- energization is the project of both Brueggemann and Girard, and what is attempted in this thesis is a mutually critical correlation of their thinking1; that is to say, using the thinking of one to examine, and even more, to illuminate that of the other. These two writers are important, original contributors to contemporary theology – and both are controversial. Each is associated with a particular area: Brueggemann with prophecy, and Girard with sacrifice. Both of these terms have fallen into neglect and even disrepute within contemporary British culture, for reasons to do with post-modernism or the post-Christian condition we are supposed to have entered. However, the work of Brueggemann and of Girard does a considerable amount to show, respectively, how prophecy can be an authentic, corrective call to the way of truth; and how sacrifice is a troubled area in which the strategic deflection of conflict and violence onto an innocent third party is used to disguise the underlying truth of relational difficulties and avoid the unacceptable cost of reconciliation, and, at an extreme, a spiral of reciprocal violence leading to catastrophic destruction. However, the individual focus of these two authors does not amount to compartmentalisation; there are substantial overlaps, though these are not always obvious at first sight. This study examines both authors’ perspectives, 1 Tracy, 1975, Chapter 2 deals with the methodological implications of ‘mutually critical correlation’, though his position was first delineated in an article entitled ‘What is fundamental religion?’ in Journal of Religion 54 (1974). This was revised as chapter 2 of Blessed Rage for Order (1975). 8 1 Thesis Description and identifies the life which each of the writers brings to them and to theology generally. It also examines the implications of the arguments of each for the other, and makes use of the thinking of a few other writers to bridge gaps and enable a combined perspective to be assembled. The ultimate thrust of both Brueggemann and Girard is towards the truth of understandings of God, and by the same token they seek to root out the dead wood: erroneous and (let it be said) idolatrous concepts of God within the Christian and Old Testament Jewish traditions. Brueggemann and Girard are both Christians, though from differing backgrounds. Brueggemann is from North American Protestant stock, and Girard, who became an active believer in his adult years, from a French Catholic background. Brueggemann is an Old Testament scholar, Girard a historian, literary critic and (latterly) a cultural anthropologist. Each, though individually important, is associated with another scholar who has exercised considerable influence over him. In the case of Brueggemann, it is Norman K. Gottwald2, author of seminal socio-religious and socio-literary studies of Israel and its formative stages; whilst Girard owes much to the late Raymund Schwager3, the Jesuit theologian at Innsbruck University, who has provided ‘dramatic theology’ as a framework for Girard’s ideas, and who helped Girard revise his understanding of sacrifice4. These two thinkers have been useful to Brueggemann and Girard respectively through having a more established place in the mainstream of theological thought than they do themselves, and thus enabling an adjustment of their work to theology; in Girard’s case, this is significant because he himself lacks a background in theology, and in Brueggemann’s, because he sometimes seems to choose to pass over elements of Old Testament theology when they do not seem important to him. This writer has had the benefit of access to unpublished 2 B. 1923. Former Professor of Old Testament and Biblical at Berkeley Graduate Theological Union, California, now Professor of Old Testament Emeritus at New York Theological Seminary. 3 1935 – 2004. 4 This unfolds in an exchange of letters (unpublished to date), between the years 1975 and 1991, which the author has reviewed.