Imaging Sin and the Passage to Holiness: René Girard,Ecclesial Vision,and the Spiritual Reshaping of Desires

The Revelation of Jesus and Rediscovery of Sin

The ministry of Jesus and the crucifixion traditionally have been delineated in a bevy of salvific effects upon humanity. For René Girard, not least of these is the revelatory impact of the crucifixion, in publicly exposing the scapegoat mechanism. ‘The whole of human culture is based on the mythic process of conjuring away man’s violence by endlessly projecting it upon new victims.’ ⁷ The results of humanity’s conflictual desires and animosities are on vivid display in Jesus’ execution; the same collective violence occurred in the death of John the Baptist, in a private setting. ⁸ Girard writes, ‘If God allowed Satan to reign for a certain period over humankind, it is because God knew beforehand that at the right time Christ would overcome his adversary by dying on the Cross.’ ⁹ Mimetic theologians thus elaborate on the sinful culture of acquisitive desire, rivalries, and the expulsions or deaths resulting from the scapegoat effect. Until the Christ-event, the hidden effects of envy remained far more potent, bringing about the persecution of the prophets and Job. The Cross must be appreciated as a source of real knowledge of sinfulness, eliciting the contrition, conversion, and forgiveness of Christians.

Conflictual human desires naturally produce rivalries, habitually ending in violence. The human subject and a rival-neighbour desire the same object or status, spawning a rivalry. This is not a spontaneous occurrence, but the neighbour indicates the desirability of the object to the other subject. The subject may indeed be preoccupied with the status and honour of his neighbour. Girard explains, ‘Two desires converging on the same object are bound to clash. Thus, mimesis coupled with desire leads automatically to conflict.’ ¹⁰ However, men always seem half blind to this conjunction, unable to perceive it as a cause of rivalry. A continuing system is thus in place, increasing in energy until someone is eradicated or jettisoned. ¹¹ Jesus’ claim to special relationship to the Father and refusal to participate in violence, will draw the rivalry and hostility of the Jewish authorities. ¹²

The harassment of minorities and those with physical abnormalities echoes through civilizations and centuries. In his cross-cultural survey, Girard locates very few societies that do not intimidate minorities. Physical criteria tend to draw the wrath of oppressors. These can be common illnesses, accidental injuries, or handicaps. The natural inclination to recoil at the sight occurs still today. Girard postulates, ‘In any area of existence or behaviour abnormality may function as the criterion for selecting those to be persecuted. . . . The further one is from normal social status of whatever kind, the greater the risk of persecution.’ Collective violence is common against those perceived to be guilty or irregular. ¹³

The underlying will to kill, latent in humanity, erupted with the violation of the Law and Jesus’ exalted claims. In his early ministry, Jesus’ relativizing of the Sabbath code drew anger from local authorities. All three synoptic evangelists make reference to the fact that Jesus called himself ‘Lord of the Sabbath,’ ¹⁴ while Mark even narrates that the Pharisees plot to kill him subsequently. In the Gospel of John, Jesus’ claim ‘I and the Father are one’ (10:30) compels his listeners to try to stone him. The necessity of Jesus’ death is clearly given in John 19:7. Girard’s colleague Raymund Schwager holds, ‘The prophet from Nazareth was not murdered by a few random evildoers. Against him stood a fundamental spirit at work in all men and women.’ ¹⁵ Stephen the Deacon would be silenced in the same manner after Jesus, stirring the same homicidal frenzy. ¹⁶

Girard pictures the Cross as a public exposition of the reality and powers of sin, shattering the deceptiveness of Satan. These accounts contain a sort of exactness and unanimity of what happened to Jesus; the narratives do not lend themselves to psychologizing, but to an apprehension of reality. The sinful, violent powers of the world expected to eliminate Jesus and remove his threat. Jesus’ unwillingness to partake in violence and sinful culture, drew the scorn and menacing attention of his contemporaries. The death of Jesus publicizes those mechanisms that recurrently persecute victims for a false harmony. After such a spectacle, society can no longer function in such a hidden and sinfully sacrificial manner. ¹⁷ Girard bemoans that past soteriological theories have fixated largely on the Father for the cause of the crucifixion. ¹⁸ It is humanity’s immersion in sinful culture that brings about Jesus’ death.

Gil Bailie establishes that the revelation of the Cross makes recognizing and addressing the sin of the world, an exigent necessity. Having been obscured by human culture and myth, the Cross exposes the truth about systems of sacrifice, sacred violence, and scapegoating. ¹⁹ Girardian analysis stipulates that mechanisms of violence are hidden and operative in society, targeting the pariah and perceived guilty parties. It is only once a wholly innocent person, Jesus of Nazareth, refuses to participate in violence and accepts his fate from persecutors, that a sinful human culture becomes revealed. The Cross exposes a fallen human condition. What’s more, the Mosaic Law had fixed guidelines for the prosecution and persecution of violators. A foremost oppressor of early Christians, Paul’s own life may be viewed as a transition from cyclical violence under the Law to the exposé of sin. As Bailie describes it, ‘Paul’s life and writings can be read, therefore, as the inaugural treatise on the symbiotic relationship between the SIN of the world and the Law.’ ²⁰ The indictment of culture includes that legislation that colludes in the maltreatment of the other, even if religious code.

The early church in Paul’s Corinthian community exemplifies the growth of conflictual desires unto factions, as outlined in Girardian analysis. According to Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly, Paul observes a progression into factions, ²¹ the community and his own suffering as victim, ²² and the invitation to imitate Christ through Paul and Timothy. ²³ The Corinthians had entered into crisis with their mimetic rivalries among followers of Apollos, Peter, and Paul; violence was latent between these Christians. ²⁴ In response, Paul does not castigate any one group but the issue of sectarianism. Publicly rebuking the sin laden in culture, he counters the malaise by exalting the Cross and denigrating ‘the wisdom of the world.’ ²⁵ Paul refers to himself as scapegoat; ²⁶ Hamerton-Kelly deduces that some irregularity such as an eye abnormality ²⁷ or speech impairment ²⁸ made him dislikeable to his communities at times. Some Corinthians denounced Paul as an inauthentic apostle, perhaps due to his physical deformity. Paul’s reply mocks the boasting of his opponents, and interjects his own identification with the sufferings of Christ. Crucially, since the nexus of the crisis is mimetic rivalry, one does not try to remove the problematic human beings but recognizes one another’s needs, frailties, and interdependence in the context of the sufferings of Christ. ²⁹ Paul redirects them to perceive one another within the victimhood and fragilities of Christ. Ultimately, the apostle corrects their conflictual mimesis via boasting, by the imitation of the ‘way of Christ.’ Paul dispatches Timothy to model the appropriate imitation of Christ. ³⁰

The Cross is an epistemological source of recognition of the reality of sin because it deconstructs mythical religion and the hiddenness of violence. Bailie returns to Paul’s steady concentration on the Cross of Christ as ‘the supreme instrument of intelligibility and the source of all real knowledge.’ ³¹ Society had functioned by eliminating a victim by expulsion or execution, returning to a provisional peace. The Cross exposes this movement of ritual catharsis and violent contagion through crowds. The initial movements of acquisitive desire and human envy end in the catastrophic destruction of the putatively innocent party. Until the revelation of the Cross, this dynamic pervaded human history and cultures.

The waywardness of human desires to envy and temporal objects, rather than God’s own desires, inclines human beings to sinfulness. Sin is not simply missing the mark, but having one’s desires fundamentally misdirected. Human communities present an array of different people and objects for our desire, accelerated by the activity of advertising in the contemporary world. Traditional theology has voiced the appropriate path as performing God’s will. But a host of desires predispose the human subject towards certain goals and consequent decision-making. ³² Many earthly objects that human beings desire cannot be owned by two persons, and rivalry begins. Bailie explains, ‘The failure to desire what God desires, the theme of the first commandment, is therefore the theological summation of the human predicament. The irresistible impulse to desire what our fellow fallen creatures desire . . . the anthropological summation.’ ³³ Humans are imitative beings, and the longing for possessions or earthly status, frustrates our imitation of God.

Akin to Peter’s self-understanding after the crucifixion, ³⁴ the individual Christian’s reception of this revelatory knowledge of sin sets the sequence for conversion. The ignorance of sin permits conflictual desires to perpetuate into violence. Girard alleges, ‘All those who join a belligerent crowd act more or less like Peter. They transfer their private scandals to some public target.’ ³⁵ Bailie describes how contrition, forgiveness, and conversion are interlocked and initiate with the symbolic Petrine crowing of the cock. ‘The sound that is the universal symbol for the moment of the dawning of a new day is the sound associated with Peter’s awakening from his subtle complicity in the contagious consensus of the accusatory crowd surrounding Jesus.’ ³⁶ Peter makes evident the movement from myth and cultic religion, to knowledge of mimetic sin and Christianity. The cycle of acquisitive desire unto scapegoat violence depends upon the concealment of the exact revelation Peter had. Once the human being recognizes his or her complicity to sin and desires forgiveness, the clout of sin is fragmented.

Theologians inspired by Girard’s thought presuppose humanity’s situatedness in a sinful culture, that affects Christian communities. The revelation of the Cross exposes the human desires that lead to sinfulness, and often result in violence. Jesus’ distinctiveness in relativizing the Mosaic Laws and exalted claims, draw these murderous inclinations into public view. ³⁷ Paul’s own Corinthian community proves this mechanism; the apostle’s rejoinder is to encourage an imitation of Christ. The Girardian schema thus depicts a Church community that possesses sinfulness, but at the same time undergoes contrition, forgiveness, and conversion through Christ. Girard and his interpreters stress the centrality of the Cross-event in this movement.

Humanity as Forgiven Beings: The Ecclesiology of the Halfway House

Girardian James Alison espouses a retrospective hermeneutic on original sin, through the lens of the Resurrection. This interpretation appreciates that the earliest human beings received divine forgiveness at the origin of the first transgression; it is constitutive of being human, to be forgiven. Moreover, it is the very process of self-knowledge, by which each individual appropriates his/her own humanity. Girardian theology thus admits human sinfulness, but pivots to forgiveness as an essential, original component of our personhood. These underpinnings allow for an ecclesiology of the halfway house, the Church as a body of people becoming holy by undergoing forgiveness.

Grant Kaplan proposes that forgiveness is the very mode in which the disciples come to understand God. Citing Alison’s first book Knowing Jesus, Kaplan observes the gratuitousness of the resurrection appearances, that display ‘the quality of knowing by grace.’ ³⁸ Alison’s mentor, Sebastian Moore, explains that the revelation of sin arrives with the crucified, then the forgiveness and healing begin. ³⁹ The forgiveness coincides with the sin. ⁴⁰ In the Gospels, it took the failure of the disciples at the Passion to come to an understanding of God. Kaplan deploys the metaphor of awaking from a dream, in which one can detach oneself from the circumstances of the dream. Importantly, the perception of one’s worth before God as either sinner or righteous diminishes, as one comes to be acquainted with a God who likes you, as Alison illuminates. ⁴¹ Kaplan specifies, this is a relationship not rooted in reciprocity.

This revelation through forgiveness extends into the community formed around the Eucharist. The same gratuitousness of the Resurrection appearances lengthens into the contemporary Church. ⁴² Kaplan outlines that the grasping of the identity of being known by Jesus, occurs in the Church. Prior to this ecclesial self-identity, one stays anonymous and participates in a culture of sinfulness, not merely single acts of sins. Kaplan notes that this sinfulness expresses itself in rivalry, relations governed by reciprocation, and habitual expulsion or ostracism. The invitation to the ecclesial community is fundamentally graced; it disrupts all other forms of community. Alison spells out that the Church is ‘the unity of humanity that the Holy Spirit creates out of the risen victim, the unity which subverts all other unities.’ ⁴³

This ecclesial experience brings attention to grace bestowed, regardless of any merit. Grace always arrives prior to any righteousness or accomplishment. The moments of forgiveness reveal via experience, the prior reception of grace. ⁴⁴ Therefore, Christians must militate against any modes of exclusion or sectarianism. Alison decries the constructions of ecclesial barriers, in which Christians perceive an inside-outside dynamic. Like grace, truth is essentially given, not earned or possessed. ⁴⁵

The instructive vision that Alison promulgates is the Church as a halfway house, a community of those in the process of being forgiven and healed. During periods of crimes and misbehaviour, human beings lose their optimal capacities for socialization. Some women’s and men’s lives may become so distorted, that the life of transgressions appears normative. The halfway house features an array of freedoms with benevolent supervision and conditions. This site offers social and business networks, as well as general counselling on facing a changing world. Alison points out that this model assumes optimal forms of human behaviour and socialization, not available during periods of incarceration. ⁴⁶

A chief attribute of the halfway house model is that the community recognizes that those recovering from misdeeds need help from external agents. The lack of proper socialization and freedoms have distorted these women’s and men’s disposition to civil society. The community comprehends that assistance is requisite to assist these people to a happier form of life and flourishing. The convict or transgressor might perceive the attentiveness and responsibility needed to set out on this path, but the process itself necessitates support from the outside. Analogous to the halfway house, the Church is not the end or pinnacle towards which one aims. The halfway house and Church are a stage to tutor women and men for the appropriation of their freedom. If successful, these people will integrate into new occupations, towns, and friendships. They will have capacities to be fruitful and flourish in contexts they would not have imagined before. ⁴⁷ Once these careers and social objectives have been attained, the halfway house modifies into an elective forum for their participation to assist others. ⁴⁸

The Church resembles the halfway house in its conviction of the fruitfulness of external support and that no fixed mould exists for the successful graduate. Whether they have been incarcerated or not, the external supporters grasp that their style of life cannot be fully valued by those incarcerated. Desires must be modified to new forms of careers and socialization. The halfway house, irrespective of its address and blueprint, symbolizes the benevolence of these external actors. Alison writes, ‘The halfway house, like the Church, is an effective sign of a draw from beyond itself that is empowering its residents into become creators of society.’ ⁴⁹ In addition, neither the Church nor the halfway house have a predetermined image for its human products. A whole array of careers may be successful for the former convict, not a foreordained path to landscaping. Girardian theology is attentive to the cultivation of desires; the woman or man should realize good objectives and uses of his/her talents. Once desires are effectively discerned, supervision and restrictions end, and freedom empowers the person’s contribution to the common good. Alison compares how the Church seeks to abolish the fears of death, to free human beings for harmonious social life and purpose. ⁵⁰

Shifting from this civic metaphor, Alison focuses on a Christocentric ecclesiology based in each believer’s participation in the forgiving victim. Just like the halfway house, Jesus intended to foster a whole new way of living with one another. Alison propounds that the classic theophany at Sinai must give way to Jesus’ victimhood as central. The primary presence of God is a victim who forgives; this setting is the inauguration of the Church. Further, this is intimately associated with the Eucharist. Citing John 11:49–52, Alison highlights how Jesus predicted the new community inducted in his death. The old community depended upon sacrifice and expulsion for a provisional peace; Caiaphas names this precise process, that Jesus will die for the nation. ⁵¹ Jesus gathers a Christian nation in a wholly different manner than the fear-driven chief priest Caiaphas. ⁵²

Jesus’ ecclesial renewal of human communities happens wherever unity is fashioned by an exclusion of others or expulsions. Alison belabours that Jesus did not strive to simply replace an outmoded, inefficient Judaism with Christianity. He sought to inspire a whole new communal dynamic, based on forgiveness. ‘With the help of the tools and instruments made available to him through ancient Hebrew and Jewish texts and institutions, Jesus came to reveal something about what humans do in such a way as to make it possible for a new way of being human to emerge.’ ⁵³ Alison stresses that Christ’s project occurs on a global scale: ‘undoing of all existing forms of cultural togetherness’ without destroying civilization altogether. ⁵⁴

The pneumatological re-formation of the Church community, depicted in Acts 10, outlines the formation of this novel community. The Roman soldier Cornelius, who lived uprightly, dwelt in Caesarea. Alison explains that ‘God-fearing’ residents of Palestine lived among the Jews, worshipping and praying, but unwilling to embrace the stipulations of the Mosaic Law. They lived on the periphery of centrepiece synagogue communities, with their own segregated worship spaces. Alison recalls the Centurion of Luke 7, who drew the praise of his community. These men had the favourable regard of their neighbours, but lived on a different social and spiritual plane. They could neither worship in full depth, nor expect the promises of born-Jews. ⁵⁵

A disruption and reconstitution of the community happens by means of visions to both Cornelius and the apostle Peter. An angel of God visits Cornelius, acknowledging that Cornelius’s prayers have reached God. He was then ordered to send messengers to Joppa, where the apostle stayed. ⁵⁶ While praying at midday, Peter fell into a trance, visualized animals, and was commanded that these creatures could no longer be regarded impure. ⁵⁷ Alison observes that this sequence happened three times, matching the three-fold error of Peter in denying Jesus. ⁵⁸ Peter was directed to meet with three Gentiles, and after traveling to Caesarea, he willingly enters the home of the Gentile Cornelius. When prompted, Peter replies, ‘but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.’ ⁵⁹ The divine vision at prayer had propelled him to reconsider those customs and practices which exclude. Rather than Cornelius, Peter was the person undergoing a revelation of the contours for the Church community. ‘Those implications are huge. There is no over-against in God: therefore being on the inside of the life of God cannot legitimize any form of group identity which includes self-definition over against another.’ ⁶⁰ Once held as sacrosanct, Peter discovered the divisiveness of the Mosaic Laws.

The apostle contextualized the foundations of this religious community on the Cross, surprisingly incorporating these Gentiles with the confirmation of the Holy Spirit. Peter’s summary of the Christ-event concluded with the accent on Jesus’ forgiveness of sins through his name. ⁶¹ Then, according to Alison, ‘The transformation of the cursed one into the bearer of opening up and new reputation has completely collapsed any notion of goodness by contrast with a shamed other.’ ⁶² The status of Cornelius and his devout Gentile friends was transformed into insider. Once again, this is a graced experience. The Holy Spirit ‘fell upon all who heard the Word’; those presented were astounded that Gentiles were included and given the gift of tongues. Peter came to his senses and baptized these believers, ritually and communally solidifying what the Holy Spirit had begun. No longer is participation and inclusion in the Christian community marked by the distinctive exclusion of others. ⁶³

Alison conceptualizes the process that Peter underwent as the reception of a new identity, following the breakdown of the old identity. Peter had grown up within the purity code of ancient Israel, which set boundaries against certain behaviour and people themselves. This code shaped who Peter was; it imprinted on him natural, automated repulsions to certain things. Alison highlights here, that all persons of each generation establish their own purity code. Acts 10 exposes that Peter had not fathomed the paradigm-shift that should happen after the crucifixion. Once the Holy Spirit descends upon Cornelius and the fellow Gentiles, Peter would have to disregard his inbuilt disinclinations to certain people and behaviour. The Gentiles alike would have to view Peter as part of the same social group. Alison describes, ‘They are going to start seeing people whom they have regarded as “special but different” as on the same level as themselves. And that too is no small disturbance.’ ⁶⁴ Ultimately, the foundation of the Church in the forgiving victim means that all parties rediscover an identity anew and do not control the barriers. Both Cornelius and Peter witnessed their social barriers dissolve, through visits of angels and the Holy Spirit. ⁶⁵ Neither party is the supposedly generous individual that invites the other into his/her group. Alison underscores that the old identity is no longer available; a ‘we’ is being manufactured which neither one can envision. To found a community on a disgracefully executed victim is rather destabilizing and shatters rivalries.

Alison concludes by recasting holiness from its cultural misunderstandings to its source in the forgiving victim. The contemporary connotation of holiness has become distorted; it conjures a beautiful ornamentalism or strangeness. On the other hand, one might perceive a moral authority of one over another. Alison realizes that holiness necessarily supposes another impure party, to draw the contrast. The authentic definition of holiness must return to Jesus as victim. It is only by the reception of forgiveness freely offered, that a human being arrives at holiness. Alison complains that too often Christians distinguish being members of the Church, from being forgiven. The self-identity of ‘being Catholic’ or ‘being Christian’ is juxtaposed against others, establishing an insider status. Nevertheless, there is no entrance into the Church without a forgiveness that resets the personal conception of ‘we’ and discovers ‘equality of heart with your repugnant “other.”’ Alison sketches that a genuine holiness frees and empowers the individual to let go of preconceptions of impurity, rivalries, and embrace receptivity. ⁶⁶

The regular participation in the Eucharist has an efficacy in enabling its members to read all of Scriptures, through the missing third person of Jesus. This perspective makes prominent the victory over death and end to rivalry. Alison equates here the Emmaus experience and the Catholic Mass: a role-reversal takes place at the meal where the guest becomes the master, recognized at the breaking of the bread. The prelude elements of the strangers journeying in conversation together, all feature the underpinnings of the liturgy. The actual presence of the Lord is proclaimed. ⁶⁷ Hence, a Girardian ecclesiology holds that, through the Eucharist, a disruptive, third person challenges his companions through his hermeneutical style.

In other words, we read through the eyes of one who is present amongst us and who causes us to undergo a complete change of belonging to our world so that we find him interrupting us, speaking to us from out of the periphery of our vision, from just off the screen of what we can understand, including us which is his story, the one of which he is the protagonist. What we gradually find is that his story gradually makes much better sense of our story, as we thought we knew it. We find ourselves, being taken somewhere else, drawn into a bigger framework. ⁶⁸

Not only are human beings healed for the proper utilization of freedom, but the Girardian lens indicates that an innovative angle on salvation history is endowed. Each Eucharist draws the participant into a far grander narrative than anticipated.

Grounded in the crucified Christ, forgiveness is the movement to understand God, undergo reformation unto flourishing, and the pathway to holiness. Barriers and perceptions of impurity constituted challenges in Jesus’ Israel and equally do so today. The basis of the forgiving victim is indeed Eucharistic and revelatory of the nature of God. ⁶⁹ Furthermore, it brings attention to the life of Christianity as graced, not merited or consequent of being part of a certain social group. It is only through Church membership that one can come to grips with the culture of sinfulness. The ecclesiological model of the halfway house presents the Church’s capacity to newly socialize and heal persons, from the damages of sin to flourish with new forms of freedom. This vision of Church cannot abide forms of exclusion; each member, not just converts, receives a new identity.

The Spirituality of God’s Desires and Others’ Desires as Our Own

Girard systematically communicates the danger of human desire in the path to competitiveness and violence. Both advertisements and witnessing one’s neighbour leads to acquisitive desire, formed along the lifestyles of others. Objects and social roles simply are not available in unlimited abundance, leading to frustrations and intensifying rivalries. Such rivalries can even be noticed among Jesus’ own followers, in the latter stages of his ministry. ⁷⁰ Jesus interjected a call to his disciples in order to interrupt the rampant, endless lust for earthly things and status. Some potential disciples could not distance or detach themselves from their possessions. ⁷¹ Jesus himself had denied these worldly desires and replaced them with those desires of his Father and the Kingdom of God. ⁷² Girard even names imitation of Christ as the only road to the true God. ⁷³ Once the Christian replaces the imitation of others with the imitation of Christ, a spirituality of friendship with Christ may emerge. God listens to our desires and shifts us to other ones; prayer may begin according to the desires of others.

Alison articulates a corresponding hazard, that the desire for status and approval, contributes to disharmony. Human beings often make decisions to win status and social approval. He writes, ‘They get the approval, and with it, they are given a “self” that is the function of the group’s desire. Belonging and approval go together.’ ⁷⁴ Unfortunately then, this entails that the individual will bolster the group’s integrity in unanimity and purity. The group is associated with the sense of self. Alison refers to the Gospel of Matthew’s instruction on prayer (Mt 6:5–6); the Pharisees had a well-formed practice of constituting and reinforcing their social image.

The reception of the self from God, resolves this crisis of approval and status. It further restricts the scattering of desire among reputations and possessions. Jesus’ directive in Matthew 6:6 is for the individual to go before God in secret. Typically interpreted as ‘bedroom,’ Alison explains that ταμιεῖον more precisely means a storeroom or pantry. This room had no windows and held foodstuffs in stable temperatures. ⁷⁵ The person praying in such a location, would do so in obscurity with no witnesses. Jesus suggested that one wholly detach oneself from a public image of piety. The crowd bestows identity in a fickle manner. Alison decodes Jesus’ exhortation as, ‘Go into a place where you are forcibly in detox from the regard of those who give you identity so that your Father, who alone is not part of that give and take, can have a chance to call your identity into being.’ ⁷⁶ Many times human beings carry the voices of mentors or influential figures in their memories, forming their self-appropriations. One may believe that he or she forms these self-impressions and desires, but they indeed arise from others. Alison gestures that the God who views an individual in secret, may call for richer and more powerful desires. ⁷⁷

Alison elaborates that our original worldly desires may be slowly restyled by God, into uncovering our real passions. God does not simply repudiate our desires in an abrupt manner. Alison details, God ‘takes us seriously in our weakness and unimportance, even when we don’t. If we learn to give voice to those desires, then there’s a chance over time we may move through them organically until we find ourselves the sort of humungous desirers who throw ourselves into peace work’ or other sorts of major campaigns. While Schwager outlines that Jesus’ interruption leads us more immediately to renunciation and God’s own desires, ⁷⁸ Alison speculates that God allows our primal desires to mature to the deepest, most authentic desires. ⁷⁹

A later section of Alison’s text appeals to Matthew 6, that prayer is not a repetitive entreaty to the divine, but an invitation to permit God into the fabric of our desires. Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew critiqued the loquaciousness of Gentile prayers. In actuality, the Father appreciates what each human being needs before he or she asks. Alison posits that Jesus teaches here that God has the more profound knowledge of each person’s needs. ‘In this picture it is precisely because our Father knows what we need before we ask him that we must learn to pray; our Father’s only access to us . . . is by our asking him into our pattern of desire.’ ⁸⁰ The mimetic framework of desire proposes that if God gains access to innermost desires, one can be remodelled from within. The social order loses its potency over the identity and perceived wishes of the person.

Schwager characterizes conversion as a total turn towards the Father, fostering a community of perfect trust. It was necessary to shatter the cycle of conflictual mimesis that spawns cyclical violence. Like Alison, Schwager recognizes the crucial shift that all must acknowledge an antecedent mercy, to overturn systems of revenge and reciprocation. In Jesus’ ministry, Schwager gives the picture of ‘an intensive, interpersonal event, in which the pure belief of Jesus touched the innermost hearts of his hearers and was affected by them in reciprocation.’ The Sermon on the Mount promulgated the new conduct requisite for this novel community. Schwager expresses that Jesus’ call had to reach the innermost freedom and desires of his listeners. Old desires could ‘serve also the defense mechanisms against God and their neighbors.’ ⁸¹ His disciples are called into no longer living their own lives, but an imitation of Christ in which they can be drawn to a higher reality. ⁸²

The imitation of Christ pointed his disciples towards the objectives of the Kingdom of God and the renunciation of desires. Schwager insists that it is not sufficient for human beings just to extricate themselves from routines and the behaviour of others. Each human being is dependent upon a model; it is simply impossible to be fully autonomous and select one’s own desires. Jesus’ path set a new course for focus wholly on the Kingdom of God. ‘The goal of his innermost striving he addressed as “Abba,” Father (Mark 14:36). His desire was one that would renounce any object of the senses, as shown in the stories of the temptation.’ ⁸³ Schwager cites John 4:34, that Jesus desired only to serve the Father. He missioned his disciples to desire and act in the same manner, to imitate him in prayer to God as the one truly desirable good. He requested that they leave everything behind to follow him. Because Jesus did not desire earthly goods or objects of the senses, this form of discipleship would not bring about rivalry.

God is infinitely abundant, so that the desires for God are neither frustrated nor conflictual. In the healings and teachings on the Sabbath day, Jesus demonstrated that God wishes human flourishing and does not oppose it by the religious code. The Pharisees had attempted to fabricate such an opposition between devotion and human happiness. Jesus rebutted the notion that the cult of sacrifice stood over human flourishing. For this reason, reconciliation is profiled as obligatory before the religious cult. ⁸⁴ These emphases overturn the false notion inherited from Genesis 2, that human autonomy and prosperity conflict with the commandments of the Father. ⁸⁵

Schwager upholds John 15 as the decisive moment when Jesus gathers the desires of his disciples and ends possibility of rivalry. The farewell discourse eliminated even jockeying for status among his disciples:

I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. ⁸⁶

Jesus holds back nothing of his life and its fullness from his disciples. ⁸⁷ He discards the label of servant, in favour of naming them friends. The immortality, blessings, and spiritual riches are not shielded and defended by Jesus, but freely shared with others. Later in this address, he called upon his Father to unify his disciples and draw them into communion with Him. ⁸⁸ Schwager stresses that Jesus attempted to widen their hearts past human, earthly proclivities to rid themselves of ambitions.

The bestowal of divine love on the disciples ⁸⁹ is an empowerment, that makes possible the Commandment to love. Alison reasons that simply proposing a commandment to care and love for others, may only pressure those who hear it. But the import lies in Jesus’ admission of love for them. ‘The gift of something done becomes a unique kind of commandment because it sets something in motion first, which then of itself stands as a summons inviting you in to reproduce it.’ ⁹⁰ Human beings are given the example, the affection, and only then prompted to carry it out themselves. Jesus expresses his love and induces a mimetic response, over old forms of negative imitation. John 15:12–14 articulates exactly this, with the mention of friendship for those who imitate him. The love that Jesus bestows upon his followers creates imitators, emboldened actors who replicate this love across communities. Jesus’ moral requirement is based on love received and friendship; in Alison’s terms, ‘we will in fact be becoming the Son, the ultimate insider in the life of God.’ ⁹¹

Conclusion

Flanagan’s discourse articulates a conundrum, describing a sinful yet holy Church, that mimetic theology addresses in the revelation of the Cross, the ecclesial vision of the halfway house, and the reconstitution of desires. A principal dilemma is the tendency to shirk recognition of the sinful dimension of the Church and the actual membership of sinful individuals. Holiness may become associated solely with the person of Christ, not imparted unto the Church. Not only do present-day holy figures become marginalized, but the call to Christocentric holiness is neglected. Those sinful elements of the Church become divorced from the fulfilment in the reign of God.

Mimetic theology sets forth that the Cross reveals the rife sinful aspect of humanity, present in Christians and Church. The onset of sectarianism, an estrangement of supposedly pure and wayward Christians, is swiftly attended to by Paul in the Corinthian community. ⁹² Rather than the barring or extrication of problematical members, he asks the Corinthian church to image one another in view of the victimhood and fragilities of Christ. ⁹³ Millennia into the future, Girard observes that the harassment of minorities and those with physical abnormalities has persisted through an assortment of human communities, including church. The Cross discloses that culture bears mechanisms that maltreat victims for a sham harmony. Misdirected human desires, longing for possessions and status, thwarts our imitation of God. ⁹⁴ Schwager describes how Christ calls all human beings to renunciation of worldly concerns and to recast their desires, through imitation of Him. Alison turns to Matthew’s discussion of prayer in chapter six: human beings should discard their social image and form their identity in collaboration with God.

Being known by Jesus and the reconstitution of desires occurs through Church. According to Kaplan, grace has interceded even before the moment of knowing Jesus, as if awaking from a dream. It is not a relationship founded in reciprocity, but the grace of being forgiven. It takes the disciples’ failure at the Passion and forgiveness, to apprehend the reality of their identities before God. The summons into the ecclesial community draws the individual away from the culture of sinfulness, disrupting and subverting all other communities. This universal reception of grace opposes any inclinations to sectarianism.

Alison’s ecclesial model of the halfway house preserves the image of a sinful and holy Christian community, on the passageway to eschatological fulfilment. Sin has disrupted the human faculties for socialization and the use of freedom. The halfway house is oriented for the repair of freedom and reintegration into society, aided by benevolent external actors. No one model sets a standard for this flourishing. The Church’s aptitude to abolish the fear of death among congregants, frees these women and men for an assortment of purposes. Its members possess the eschatological vision of the stage-beyond, even once rehabilitation and flourishing are attained.

Holiness, as participation in Jesus the forgiving victim, is the graced offer unto all members of the Church. Alison postulates this as the primary theophany, the very inauguration of the Church. Peter’s revelation in Acts 10 admonishes those who would suppose a static posture of holiness; the journey to holiness is one that is beside others, each discerning his or her novel identity in the Church community. The image of the forgiving victim is intimately eucharistic; Jesus foresaw a new community founded upon his death in John 11:49–52. This community is nourished and instructed by the missing third person of Christ, speaking to us beyond our own vision and narrative. A novel we as Church is realized as each member comes to know Jesus via forgiveness, prior to any righteousness or accomplishment.