Mimetic Theory and Original Sin: René Girard, James Alison, and Raymund Schwager

The considerable attention to the theme of original sin in post-Vatican II theology bears witness both to its perceived importance and to a sense of crisis as to how it should be articulated. There are two broad areas of concern. Firstly, attempts to reconcile the primal history of Genesis 1-3 (the story of a transgression which precipitates the fall of humanity from a state of original bliss) and evolutionary theory anxiously acknowledge a perceived divergence between faith/religion and reason/science. At stake is the intellectual credibility of Christian faith in the face of scientific modernity. To use a term that will be discussed below, we appear to be at a ‘Galileo’ moment.

The second challenge is related: an allegedly foundational component of Christian faith no longer has emotional hold, even for believers. Here is a question of affective rather than intellectual coherence. As David Ford points out, a successful metaphor of salvation must have ‘gripping power’ in order to do justice to the specificity and urgency of what is at stake. He cites the theatre director, Peter Brook: ‘For an idea to stick, it is not enough to state it: it must be burnt into our memories.’1 The doctrine of original sin, by contrast, seems to have no traction on the contemporary imagination.

William T. Cavanaugh and James K.A. Smith offer an interesting way of negotiating the two challenges. They urge us to move ‘beyond Galileo to Chalcedon’, by which they mean that theology is facing a dead-end if it sees the problem of original sin as an analogy of the Galileo crisis. This denotes an urgent anxiety to reconcile what science tells us about human origins and what our tradition asserts; if we fail in this task, the credibility of the Christian faith is imperilled. To cite Charles Taylor, we find ourselves ‘cross-pressured’. The problem is that, framed in these terms, there can only be one outcome: tradition will give way to scientific rationality, and the doctrine will have to go.

The alternative, according to Cavanaugh and Smith, is to think of this as a ‘Chalcedonian opportunity’, in which we creatively keep the tension in place rather than dissolve it. Just as the Chalcedonian fathers found a way of asserting both the divinity and humanity of Christ, so we need to ‘embrace the cross pressure as an impetus for genuine, yet faithful, theological development’.2

A shift ‘from Galileo to Chalcedon’ means the explicit adoption of the Council of Chalcedon as the model and template for creative theology in the contemporary ‘cross-pressured’ world. More generally, and with respect to the doctrine of original sin, it serves as a call to make Christology the guiding principle of our discussion, rather than the anthropological sciences. Such an emphasis is found in theologians inspired by the mimetic theory of René Girard (1923-2015), specifically James Alison and Raymund Schwager.3 Each seeks to secure the credibility of the doctrine in the light of evolutionary accounts of human origins. Just as importantly, they point to how the doctrine can have ‘gripping power’ once again, provided it is articulated in a way that is emphatically Christological. Theologians may differ in their response to the modern ‘turn’ to anthropology, but according to Alison, they mostly fall short of the important task: how to move from their theoretical starting point to the practicalities of Christian living.4

His dismissal of ‘all’ (sic) soteriologies, past and present, is the kind of sweeping judgement that makes Girard at times a frustrating read, even for sympathetic interlocutors. As Rowan Williams has asserted, ‘[i]n the English-speaking intellectual world, René Girard's work continues to inspire and exasperate in equal measure’.6 One source of this exasperation for theologians is his ambiguous relation to their discipline. Girard wrote as a committed Christian, and drew explicitly upon theological concepts and terminology; and yet he consistently refused the label ‘theologian’.7 To speak of a ‘Girardian’ understanding of original sin requires a careful examination, therefore, not just of his own work, but that of scholars who have attempted to incorporate his anthropological insights into a formal theological framework.

Girard asserts that soteriology has been defective because it looks in the wrong direction for an explanation as to why things have gone wrong. Theologians considering the human catastrophe have spent much of their time apportioning ultimate responsibility—or blame—to God, or to Satan, when in fact its source needs to be located unambiguously in dysfunctional human relations. As a result, talk of original sin has remained at the level of abstraction, and too many accounts of salvation seem to be arbitrary and unjust towards humanity. They may be ‘theologically sound’; but that is not enough.

There is work to be done, therefore, not just on a formal theoretical level but in making the doctrine accessible, convincing, and useful for the tasks of practical Christian living. And as Cavanaugh and Smith would add, this will not be achievable unless grounded in a creative Christological imagination. This article will consider the contribution of René Girard's theological interlocutors, Alison and Schwager (parts 3 and 4, respectively). As a prelude, however, part 2 will report on the status of Girardian theory as anthropology, and within the human sciences more generally. Clearly, if the Girardian/mimetic account of hominisation is judged to be untenable, then any attempt to incorporate it into a theology, however creative and ‘theologically sound’, will fall short of what is needed.

We have noted Rowan Williams's assertion that René Girard's work ‘continues to inspire and exasperate in almost equal measure’. This is not simply about Girard's style of thinking, but a description of the kind of theory that is being offered. Williams compares it to the history of Darwinism: ‘a “big picture”, inspiring and exasperating, gradually fleshed out by work in unexpectedly relevant fields’.8 A paradigm constructed before the supporting evidence is in; except that, as with any narration of human origins, the necessary evidence is hard, even impossible to find. For Williams, it is more accurate to say that we have a ‘heuristic myth’ or a ‘novelistic’ version of human origins, to be valued as a narrative which ‘makes sense of where we are’.9

This is not to evade altogether the question of evidence. In the context of the two volumes of essays that he is introducing, which ask ‘how we became human’ and if we can ‘survive our origins’, Williams wonders whether we have in fact underestimated the degree of confirmation already available to us. The things we know already ‘tell strongly in favour of something very like Girard's account as an empirically credible story of cultural origins’.10 If the Darwinian analogy holds, then what we ‘so badly need’ is careful work on the frontiers between Girardian theory and other currents of critical thought, including biology, neuroscience, and anthropology.

Paul Dumouchel considers the state of the question of Girardian-Darwinian approaches to hominisation.11 He divides current research into two groups: paleo-archaeological and paleontological research on the evolution of the genus homo; and evolutionary explanations of the difference between chimpanzees and modern humans. Neither fully addresses the question of hominisation, since ‘how we became human/who we are’ will depend on an understanding of ‘who we are’. Mimetic theory, says Dumouchel, offers a wider lens that takes in necessarily related questions about the origins of culture, or the distinction between good and evil.

Once framed in a more ambitious way, i.e., according to mimetic theory, the questions in fact become more specific. According to Dumouchel, the question of hominisation is a secondary one for Girard, in any case; Girard's primary interest is in the social mechanism which generates culture, and by implication hominisation.12 Proto-humans emerge from a violent crisis, with the victim at its centre becoming ‘an object of intense, watchful, and probably anxious attention’: the first non-instinctual symbol.13

Pierpaolo Antonello considers evolution from the perspective of the emergence of human consciousness.16 He begins with Genesis, and the serpent's ‘gift’ to Eve (of self-knowledge, and the ability to discriminate between good and evil). A connection is made, therefore, between self-awareness and moral outlook. This link argues against biological reductionism; in addition, there appears to be a convergence of mimetic theory with an increased awareness in scientific literature of the intersubjective constitution of the human mind, through internal mirroring mechanisms, empathetic attunement, and so on.

To these new understandings, mimetic theory brings important reminders about mimetic processes: that ‘imitation’ is mostly unintentional and unwitting, and that mimetic dynamics rely on a lack of self-reflexivity—méconnaisance—in group behaviour. As in the Genesis figuration, the sacred is intrinsically ‘deceptive’.17 Antonello goes on to consider the place of sacrifice in the construction of human cognition, and the presence in Vedic and Judaeo-Christian traditions of different levels of consciousness. Here, ‘awakening’ denotes a transition from primary level consciousness (shared by human and non-human animals) and higher-order consciousness (which, along with language capacity, is peculiar to humans).

In short, Antonello is able to discern from the sacrificial matrix found in ancient texts a cluster of behavioural and cognitive elements, which may have contributed to the development of proto-consciousness and conscience. Pre-eminent among these are: the strong, attention-grabbing emotional response elicited by ritual sacrifice; the cognitive and mnemonic reinforcements of repetition and ritualisation; and the emergence of symbolism and the mythical mind. Ecstatic practices (which, according to Girard are re-enactments of the primordial mimetic frenzy) ‘challenged and stretched the limits of normal, pragmatically oriented consciousness’.18 Similarly, ‘sacrificial creations of subjectivity’, in the form of codified development of ‘rites of passage’, elicit in the neophyte, through a symbolic resurrection, a ‘new subjectivity’, an emotional and cognitive self which is a proto-form of personal ‘selfhood’.

It is the paradox of mimetic theory (and confirmation of its elegance), however, that the same sacrificially-inflected mechanisms which shape the development and complexification of human consciousness are also responsible for the historical abandonment of ritualistic sacrifice. Over time, empathetic and self-reflective responses to violence move groups away from their violent origins.

Paul Dumouchel sees the ‘ambitious’ nature of mimetic theory as an advantage, which enables it to overcome the limitations of existing research into human origins. It comes as ‘part of a package’ which enables us to connect up the things that humans, and only humans, have in common: symbolic thought, religion/the sacred, rituals, myths, rules, and moral distinctions. This is the same sacrificial matrix which, for Antonello, generates proto-consciousness and conscience.

There have been other significant developments in support of mimetic theory, during the nearly fifty years since Girard put forward his theory of hominisation. In archaeology, new research into the explanation for decapitated skeletons and other features of the settlement in neolithic Çatalhöyük (southern Anatolia) seems to corroborate the scapegoating hypothesis.19 In neuroscience, mimetic theorists have shared the excitement around the alleged discovery by Giacomo Rizzolatti and colleagues of ‘mirror neurons’ in the 1980s and 1990s, a development which has led some to speculate that mirror neurons might even be the driving force behind the great leap forward in human evolution. Scott R. Garrels's edited collection on Mimesis and Science draws on research into child development and adult psychology, as well as evolution, culture and religion.20

None of these developments is uncontested. Nevertheless, as Williams concludes, ‘something very like Girard's account’ can be considered as ‘an empirically credible story of cultural origins’. He affirms the validity of the Darwinian analogy, of a ‘big picture theory’ which can organise our thinking, even in advance of its corroboration. Within the scope of this analogy, the anthropological substructure of mimetic theory, a half-century since its first articulation, remains plausible.

The first part of James Alison's The Joy of Being Wrong is devoted to the construction of a ‘theological anthropology’, which is followed by a corresponding soteriology. Nevertheless, Alison wishes to reverse the classic story line of original sin, which has traditionally begun with an account of the mess we are in, followed by how we are to be saved from it. The narrative should work the other way round: we do not have prior, independent knowledge of the mess. Nor should sin be the dominant shaping force in this story. The ‘order of discovery’ is crucial, hence the intriguing title of the book.

It is this ‘little glimpse of a sagesse’ that Alison incorporates into a theological anthropology, providing a third option between those of Walter Kasper and John Milbank.22 Where Kasper insists on the validity of the modern ‘turn’ to anthropology, Milbank, by contrast, argues that any notion of a social theory independent from theology is illusory. Alison sides with Milbank's option for rhetoric over philosophy, but asserts that both Kasper and Milbank are missing something important, namely, how one moves from either position to the practicalities of Christian living. The innovation of Alison's own approach consists not so much in its theoretical starting point, but in its practical implications. He offers a mediating ‘wisdom anthropology’, or anthropology of conversion.

The soteriology that corresponds to this account of the humanum is a process of human discovery. It posits a foundational event of intraspecies violence, culminating in the death of one of the group members. However, we can only get at this by a posteriori hypothesising, according to the death and resurrection of Christ. What Alison calls the ‘intelligence of the Victim’ is a new perception of reality which was unavailable while death was still a definitive reality. It involves knowledge, but is not gnostic.

This knowledge is universal, a revelation which applies to all societies. Alison speaks of ‘the universal christoformity of grace, whether present in sign or present anonymously’, as a more satisfactory alternative to Karl Rahner's formulation of ‘anonymous Christianity’.23 As the parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates, ‘there is no grace available to human beings that does not involve a turning toward the victim, that is a certain form of conversion’.24 In short, we have ‘a theology of redemption which is simultaneously a theology of revelation as human discovery which flows entirely from the resurrection.’25

Alison repeatedly tests the viability of this scheme against central Christian themes, such as the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, which, in its use of person language, is ‘applied anthropology’.26 He finds confirmation of its viability in Scripture, primarily from the fourth gospel and from Paul. He follows Girard in understanding the Devil as a ‘consistently anthropological tendency, revelatory of human reality, rather than a mythical tendency, displacing responsibility and manufacturing unnecessary entities’.27 The final section of the book, entitled ‘Is This What the Church Believes?’, checks the theory against different pronouncements, from the Council of Carthage (418 CE) to Joseph Ratzinger, taking in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.

Original sin is understood ecclesially, in Alison's distinction between an ecclesial hypostasis—‘what we are becoming through ecclesial life’—and the an-ecclesial hypostasis, which is what original sin locks us into. Baptism, our entry into the ecclesial hypostasis, is the unbinding of the an-ecclesial hypostasis (thus preserving the assertion that baptism removes original sin). This remains compatible with the notion of concupiscence; though we have some awareness of original sin through baptism, and are now in the process of being unlocked from a state of being which is antagonistic to the new creation, we are still ‘being run by’ the desires of this world. It is not so much a sin but a condition, which calls for change from within.28

Schwager follows Girard, in Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, in enlarging ‘the scene of the crime’. That is, he considers not simply the garden scenario in Genesis 3, but also its intertwining with what follows: the first fratricide, and the events leading up to the flood (Genesis 4-8). Original sin can only be appreciated in the light of this cascading sequence of disasters, a sequence which, Schwager proposes, is fully explicable by a mimetic analysis.33

The question for which we still seek an answer—hence the continued interest in original sin—is the ancient one of responsibility (or blame) for our dysfunctional situation. The fact that this question still persists, says Schwager, may be seen as a refutation of Friedrich Nietzsche who, in Liberation from all Guilt, had allegedly exposed the ‘summons to responsibility’ as bad faith, a disguised instinct for revenge. The fact that we seem to be caught up more than ever in the ambiguities of guilt and innocence suggests the doctrine of original sin may not be obsolete after all.34

Furthermore, one of the foundations of Enlightenment thinking, the bifurcation of nature and freedom, is no longer straightforwardly tenable, at least in evolutionary theories of knowledge and sociobiology. The objection that original sin involved a confusion of questions and categories, for example of hereditary transmission (natural science) and sin (freedom), no longer has force.

Schwager offers an alternative understanding of the scriptural ‘primordial scene’. As indicated, this follows Girard's own reading of Genesis 3 (the narrative of temptation and fall) as the beginning of a sequence of disasters that culminates in the flood narrative. The conversation between Eve and the serpent is mimetically structured: the serpent's question repeats—but not precisely—God's words of prohibition, and is an attempt to mimic God. In her response, Eve in turn misquotes the prohibition, making it more restrictive. By this stage the semblance of a perverse idol has been brought into view, such that in eating the fruit ‘you will be as God’.

Disobedience cascades into the subsequent events of Abel's murder and the flood scenario.35 In contrast with contemporary theological scholarship, which has moved in the direction of existential, archetypal, sociological, or philosophical/psychological explanations, Schwager argues for the historicity of this primal history.36 This is much in keeping with Girard's method, which is to look for a historical kernel within mythical or legendary accounts (above all, where these treat of processes of victimisation). Resorting to existential or archetypal explanation can be a strategy of evasion: the presence of mythical and archetypal elements should not of itself rule out any possible historical value.

Schwager seeks to make sense of the link between original sin and procreation, as found in classical accounts and indeed insisted upon in Trent, where the manner of transmission is via procreation, not imitation. This would appear to be an obstacle to any attempt to explain original sin as a mimetic phenomenon. Schwager suggests a possible resolution in Tomatis's description of hearing, language, and communication as pre-natal processes in which ‘[t]he fetus in its entirety is like an ear, the environing womb of the mother is like a speaking mouth, and the communication between the two flows into what makes the human being’.37 Even this paradisal state can be disturbed by negative or dysfunctional communication: witness numerous biblical passages about being ‘conceived in sin’. For Schwager, the conceptual frameworks of Tomatis and Girard allow for a new understanding of ‘hereditary transmission’, which is not in conflict with imitation.

A further analysis of the putative evolutionary history follows, with a suggestion that the acceleration of brain growth, which is both the product of inter-group conflict and a principal driver of human evolution, is what theologians speak of as a felix culpa. Brain growth is also a clue to understanding Paul's discourse on the ‘law’ in Romans, the mysterious dimension of human existence which relates both to the human tendency for violence and the gradual overcoming of that tendency through greater knowledge.38

Schwager posits three ‘thought experiments’ about the primal scene, inspired equally by theories of evolution and by aspects of the Christian understanding of salvation. The intensive experience that accompanies self-transcendence in the moment of hominisation could arise as the numinous thrill of sexual union; or in intensive forms of common eating; or in an awe-inspiring premonition of the victim during warfare or conflict. In each case, a significant benevolent advance in the self-formation of human subjectivity could have taken place, but did not. Schwager notes the anticipation of Christian doctrine in its understanding, respectively, of the conjugal and ecclesial ideal of a ‘unity of the flesh’; of the Eucharist; and of Christ's giving himself up to the violence of the cross.39

The overarching soteriological scheme into which these reflections upon the primordial scene are incorporated is that of dramatic theology. Here, the millennia-long process of humanisation, in its full ambiguity, is compressed into the timescale of Jesus's life and ministry, and above all into the dramatic action of Holy Week.40

To sum up: for Raymund Schwager, the difficulties of original sin are to be found not in the doctrine itself, but in the ‘dogma’ of modernity (pre-dating Darwin) which insisted on a strict separation between the realms of nature and freedom (history, social conflict). This separation, according to contemporary scientific research, is unnecessary, thus opening up a space for a rehabilitation of the doctrine. Antinomies such as propagation and imitation, individual and social organism, freedom and pre-set nature, must be overcome. An opportunity presents itself for theology, therefore, although it too requires a distinctive new paradigm.

The call by Cavanaugh and Smith to frame the question of evolution and the Fall according to a creative Chalcedonian paradigm, rather than a Galileo-type challenge, is an invitation to recognise that the alleged divergence between theology and science is contingent, and more to do with history and politics than with an inherent antagonism between them. The attempt to make sense of original sin should not be driven by the peculiarly modern anxiety to compensate for catastrophic mistakes of the past; the Christian theological heritage ‘is a gift, not a liability’.41 More positively, a ‘Chalcedonian’ creativity means allowing theology, and specifically reflection on the nature and work of Christ, to lead the way. This includes Christological practices, such as spiritual disciplines and worship, as ‘incubators’ of the theological imagination.42

Such a project would seem to align with the perspectives of James Alison and Raymund Schwager, who worked independently on original sin (their books being published in 1998 and 1997, respectively). The convergence of their respective investigations shows how the core elements are present in their common source, René Girard, and especially in his account of hominisation in Things Hidden. This article has presented the shared insights of this trio of thinkers, and their concern to retrieve the doctrine of original sin in a way that is theoretically sound and practically compelling. Mimetic theory presents, not theology as such, but an anthropological theory that offers insight into the human condition. Not only is it compatible with theology, it has proved valuable to theologians for explicating a doctrine that had been all but abandoned by enlightened modernity.43

As the measured assessment of Rowan Williams suggests, the mimetic paradigm still has considerable explanatory power. In some areas of research, exciting corroboratory evidence seems to have been found—the site at Çatalhöyük, the discovery of mirror neurons. What has been attempted is a broad narration of the ‘heuristic myth’, which Williams judges to be ‘an empirically credible story of cultural origins’.

For Alison and Schwager, original sin is a contingent, not a necessary reality. There is a historical core behind the biblical account (as opposed to existential, archetypal, or sociological interpretations). They present different versions of the originary scene, at the cusp of hominisation, but these are not dependent on any particular account of hominisation or evolution. By drawing on interdividual psychology and deep communication theory, respectively, they offer a way of understanding notions of propagation and concupiscence, and other aspects of the doctrine, which have proved resistant to the modern mindset.

Some further comment on the nature of mimesis is needed, however, as Petra Steinmair-Posel makes clear in discussing ‘original sin, positive mimesis’. The juxtaposition is important, in the light of an important debate within Girardian scholarship about whether ‘mimesis’ carries a negative valency or a neutral one. That is, can there be such a thing as positive mimesis in mimetic theory?

If the answer is no, then Girard and his followers are exposed to the charge of having made a pact with the negative, identifying him as an ‘Augustinian’ thinker with a bleak view of the post-lapsarian human condition.

Such a view is as unfair to Girard as it is to Augustine, though the bulk of his analysis is admittedly given over to dysfunctional or destructive mimesis, and his own pronouncements are ambiguous or contradictory. Girard claims variously that ‘original sin is the bad use of mimesis’, that ‘mimetic desire is intrinsically good’, that ‘following Christ means giving up mimetic desire’. When pushed on the matter in an interview, Girard acknowledged that mimetic desire is inescapable, but that only the kind that generates and is generated by rivalry needed to be renounced.44

The fact is, the vast bulk of Girard's writing treats of precisely this dysfunctional form of mimesis. In his later writing, he gives up on the attempt to establish the superiority of Christianity, now recognising that ‘[w]e have to think from inside mimeticism’. Girardian scholarship has similarly moved in the direction of thinking about positive (receptive, non-violent) mimesis. For systematic theologians such as Steinmair-Pösel, Alison, and Schwager, this simply means thinking about grace; a concept which Girard—the non-theologian—studiously avoids, except occasionally as metaphor.