by André Rabe
If we do honor the Genesis text, then surely we should appreciate that the creation narrative does not mention “nothing” at all, but it does mention many other “things,” including tohu wa-bohu, the watery deep, the face of this deep, the movements of ruach, and Elohim. Could it be that the Creator is more relational than what is imagined in the doctrine of creation ex nihilo? Could it be that here, in the Genesis origin stories, the author’s intuition of a complex, even chaotic relationship is an inspired insight into what would later become known as trinity. Trinity, after all, is an attempt to name the complexity of relationship inherent to God.
The alternative to creation ex nihilo is creation ex profundis - the profound depth of possibilities of Genesis 1:2. From the perspective of creation ex profundis, creation itself participates in its own creation. Both God, for whom all things are possible, and creation, which realizes those possibilities, are active participants in the ongoing event of creation. The God of love does not control the process or the narrative, but influences, seduces, and calls us forward towards the greater good and beauty that is possible. We are co-creators, invited to become the very display of God’s image and likeness in this world. But this also means that from the very start of creation, it is a journey towards fulfilling the possibilities in God. This story does not begin with a perfect creation, but a journey of realizing the inexhaustible possibilities in God.
All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs.
- Romans 8:22-23 MSG
Evolution testifies to a creation struggling and grasping to bring forth more than its past. Yet creation is inherently free to take turns and twists that are contrary to the nature and desire of God. The fall, in this context, is not falling from some pre-existing perfection, but falling short of what is possible. It is creating a narrative that is less than the love and beauty possible in God; it is choosing violence instead of transformation; it is building civilizations on the graves of victims, instead of embracing the outcasts; it is losing sight of the true image of God and therefore losing sight of our true nature and grasping after every delusion that promises fulfillment. Something better, more meaningful, and more beautiful is possible for us individually and for our societies collectively.
The Fall Radically Redefined
Is the concept of the fall still valid? The text most often referred to, in support of this concept - Genesis 2 and 3 - does not speak of a fall and does not even mention sin. The Old Testament is, in fact, oblivious to the later theological concept of a fall. It is only after the resurrection of Jesus that Paul searches for a comparison to this event that resets the trajectory of human development. In Romans 5 he compares Jesus to Adam but in the same breath admits that the comparison is inadequate. This passage would become the foundation for many interpretations of the fall. Especially an Augustinian misunderstanding of the text 2 (based on a wrong translation) would become one of the most influential interpretations of the fall. This popular idea of the fall implies, among other things, that a higher level of existence was previously a reality and that we have fallen from that state. Such an interpretation opens a lot of difficult questions: Why does God set up everything in such a way as to make the fall possible? Why invite humanity into an environment where this event seems inevitable? Why create the tree of the knowledge of good and bad if partaking of this tree is not something he wanted humans to do? And why not intervene if the consequences are so catastrophic?
This radically new understanding of the fall we are exploring here is also radical in the most fundamental meaning of the word, in that it returns to the root - the most original understanding of the concept. Instead of the image of a state of perfection from which we fell, the image of falling short - of not attaining the potential of our existence - is more appropriate to the Yahwist story. To state the same in a more positive frame: there remain possibilities of meaning, of beauty, of being, yet to be attained.
Irenaeus, one of the first Christian theologians, understood the story of Adam and Eve as one of human development that was stunted because of their impatience. Both the knowledge of good and evil and immortality would have been given to us, but through pre-mature grasping these human archetypes made the gift impossible. We can never possess divinity through grasping because it can only be received as pure grace. Irenaeus’s stunning interpretation of these origin stories states that humans were destined to become gods! His insistence that it is a story of human development even goes as far as suggesting that both Adam and Eve were created as young children destined to grow and mature into a place where they could bear the fullness of divinity within themselves:
God had the power at the beginning to grant perfection to man; but as the latter was only recently created, he could not possibly have received it, or even if he received it, could he have contained it, or containing it, could he have retained it. 3
The implications of understanding Genesis as humanity’s first archetypal narrative has profound implications for how we understand Jesus - the last Adam. Jesus retells the story of Adam but at each stage where Adam misunderstood and showed impatience, Jesus waits and learns obedience. In so doing, he undoes the archetype of the first Adam and introduces a new archetype, which is also the originally intended human - one who is free to receive all the possibilities of divinity.
If it is haste that alienates human beings from God, insofar as it leaves them ill-disposed to receive divine life, a fitting salvation would have to undo this impatience. Christ also had to submit to time, to grow into perfection. 4
Jesus recapitulates, summarizes the major points, in the human story and brings them to a radically new conclusion. As such, he reveals that the proper human relation towards God is one of waiting, of being open to the gradual unfolding of meaning. This posture is faith - not a presumptious confidence but a humble openness.
Central to the Genesis text is the creative processes that make us human, the relationships between God, humanity, and creation that converge in humans we recognize to be like ourselves. It is a story of divine seduction by which God lures humanity into the creative movement of becoming his image and likeness. But it is also a story that reflects reality - a reality in which humanity grasped for that which could only be received as a gift. Yes, we can say that a new concept of the fall is valid in the story, namely in the sense of lack, in the misunderstanding of God’s nature, in the twisting of desire, in the impatience of grasping, and in the act of scapegoating others.
In this sense, the fall is not so much based on partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but the means by which we partook. A parent might prohibit a young child from certain activities for their own protection. The two-year-old should probably not play with matches. However, at an appropriate age the child can be taught and trusted to make a fire. The prohibition against eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil can be understood in a similar way. To develop self-consciousness is not evil in itself, but is a creative process inspired by God. Imagining that we could remain in, or return to, a pre-conscious state with no knowledge of good and evil is to dream of being a two-year-old child forever. The capacity to make value judgments, to know degrees of good and evil is not a bad thing in itself. The process by which we get there needs transformation … and I think that is exactly the kind of development of consciousness that Jesus introduces into this cosmic story. But again the simple capacity to know good and evil is described, by none less than God, as the capacity that makes humans like God (Genesis 3:22). The New Testament as well extols the mature virtue of being able to discern between good and evil: “But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil ” (Hebrews 5:14 RSV).
Unfolding Meaning
The gospel is indeed larger than a promise of an
original perfection restored. In this story, the beginning, no matter how beautiful and insightful it might be, does not contain the whole truth. Jesus introduces a whole new creation. And in this new creation, truth is not preserved in a legendary origin but continues to unfold in an ongoing narrative. As such the meaning continues to expand into a future that is not limited to the past.
There is very little room for ongoing participation in creation, if creation is seen as a completed past event. If there was a perfect blueprint of your design, and your only contribution was to discover that blueprint and live accordingly, then you have no creative contribution to make to your design! You can only discover who you are, you cannot participate in the creative process of becoming. The future becomes irrelevant, for the most it can contain is a repetition of that original perfection. Nothing is truly new. And so this philosophy remains stuck in a nostalgic attachment to the original – it has nothing more to offer, nothing new, no future. John Haught, in his book, Resting on the Future , opens up another possibility:
What would it imply theologically if we looked forward to the future transformation of the whole universe instead of trying to restore Eden, or yearning for a Platonic realm of perfection hovering eternally above the flow of time? What if … theologians and teachers began to take more seriously the evolutionary understanding of life and the ongoing pilgrimage of the whole natural world? What if we realized that the cosmos, the earth, and humanity, rather than having wandered away from an original plenitude, are now and always invited toward the horizon of fuller being up ahead? 5
What a beautiful possibility: a God that is not stubbornly trying to conform us back into an original mold, but inviting us into an open and expansive future in which we get to co-create what has never been before? To open ourselves to these possibilities we have to unshackle ourselves from the concepts that reduce us to mere spectators.
Endnotes
1 Keller, Catherine (2003-12-16). The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming. Taylor and Francis.
2 Hart, D. and Hart, A. (2019). Traditio Deformis | David Bentley Hart. [online] First Things. Available at: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/05/traditio-deformis [Accessed 21 Aug. 2019].
3 Against Heresies IV.38.2
4 Jeff Vogel, “The Haste of Sin, the Slowness of Salvation: An Interpretation of Irenaeus on the Fall and Redemption, ” Anglican Theological Review 89, no. 3 (2007), http://www.questia.com/read/1P3-1327235991/the-haste-of-sin-the-slowness-of-salvation-an-interpretation.
5 Haught, John F. Resting on the Future: Catholic Theology for an Unfinished Universe. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Chapter Eight
Girard’s Narrative Conversion
Mimetic Theory
The very essence of what makes an individual is a unique story. The heart of what forms our societies are narratives. Consequently, the deepest transformation of both individuals and societies is a narrative conversion. Nothing really changes until our narratives change. Salvation is so much more than a transaction to appease an offended deity. Rather, it is a revelation that changes the meaning of our symbols and subverts our stories.
One of the greatest contributions ever made to the understanding of how the human story began, developed, and found its culmination in Jesus Christ, was made by the literary critic, René Girard.
The scope of Girard’s ideas are enormous. They explain everything from the process by which individual desires are mediated to the formation of civilizations; from the development of the symbolic consciousness to the nature of violence and the origins of religion. It was exactly because of the sweeping scope of mimetic theory, as it became known, that it was subjected to intense criticism. But, after decades of scrutiny, scholars from diverse areas increasingly began to appreciate the profound power of explanation these ideas possess. Anthropologists, philosophers, theologians, neurologists, and psychologists began to not only confirm the validity of mimetic theory but expand, refine, and apply it in their respective fields. 1
Origin Myths and the Bible
Our interest here is in Girard’s understanding of origin myths and, subsequently, the unique way in which the biblical Scriptures take the human story forward. The overview presented below is therefore kept to the minimum necessary to show the connection between these myths and the development of the biblical narrative. A more comprehensive treatment of Girard can be found in my previous book, Desire Found Me. 2 The structure of this mimetic story is not only present in history but is a pattern recognizable in our personal lives. Are there blind spots in the way we understand ourselves? Do we construct and live within the illusion of our own personal myths?
Origin myths share a common structure. Chaos features early and prominently, then comes a creative act of violence that brings about a new order. We have only lightly touched on a few of these myths in Chapter 3 but, in them as well, it is the “noisy” children, the dissatisfied junior gods, or the outright rebellious workforce, that prompt the senior gods to take action. The action always involves violence and is seen as creative, for a new order follows this time of upheaval. Girard recognized that real historic events lie behind these stories. Real communities faced complete breakdown as unrestrained violence threatened to destroy everything. But a new form of violence, sacred violence , could contain the situation and restore the peace.
Mimetic Desire and Chaos
Girard’s interpretation of the chaos is that it represents a real community in crisis. But what caused the chaos in these ancient communities in the first place? Exactly the same dynamics that cause conflict today. It begins on a small scale, with individual desire, and develops into broader rivalry. Conflict and violence naturally escalate. A community does not instantly go from peaceful co-existence to all-out conflict. There is a momentum that builds; individual rivalries grow into communal conflict.
How does desire cause conflict? Girard’s understanding of mimetic desire shows that what is actually desired is the being of another. It is a sense of lack-of-being that makes the being of another attractive. The object of desire is secondary. Do any of these insights remind you of the Yahwist narrative in Genesis 3? It was the suggestion that Eve lacked the likeness of God that made the fruit so attractive. In addition, the suggestion that God desired this fruit for himself exclusively intensified the desire. The awakening of desire goes hand-in-hand with a sense of lack-of-being. The Yahwist’s keen insight into the human condition saw this process of grasping for what we think we lack as fundamental to human development.
Advertising agencies understand this principle and so they use the most desirable models to present their products. They know that what their audience unconsciously wants is to be the model. If the model therefore desires an object, the object becomes desirable. To be the model is a goal not immediately attainable, but the next best option is to have what the model has. Desire is therefore mediated. It does not spontaneously erupt within a person; but rather desire is suggested to us as we observe what others want. This leads to the profound insight that desire does not originate in the self, on the contrary, self is created by desire. 3 It is the very distance created by desire that allows the sense of a separate self to emerge.
It’s not difficult to see how mediated desire causes rivalry and escalates into violence. Especially seeing that both rivals begin with a sense of lack-of-being. Mirroring one another’s desires leads to a situation where rivals are always reaching for the same object of desire. This reinforces the suspicion that the rival wants to withhold from me what I desire. And so, the conflict increases. We can see this play out on a micro level when two toddlers are left in a room with multiple toys. The first point of interest for each toddler will be the other toddler. The next most interesting object will be the toy closest to the other toddler. When the first reaches out for that toy, the second one will realize that it is the toy he always wanted, and war breaks out. This comical example is, unfortunately, an insight into human history.
You desire but
do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight.
- James 4:2 NIV
We’ve seen how desire can become twisted into coveteousness.How does this desire for what belongs to another escalate into violence? We can all recognize a situation in which an argument becomes more and more heated. As insults fly and tempers rise, the initial cause of the argument is forgotten. What started it becomes irrelevant because the rival becomes the focus of the anger. The greater the rivalry, the more each rival becomes like the other. From the respective positions of each rival, the other is the absolute opposite of who they are but, in reality, the rivals are mirror images of each other. We fight, not because we are different, but because we are the same. The more intense the conflict, the more all parties are conformed to sameness. Every act of the rival confirms the worst suspicion and energizes a retaliation that is a mirror reflection of the initiating act. Those caught up in this cycle of rivalry perceive the rival’s act as evil and their own act of retaliation as justified. The cycle of violence always blinds those who participate in it. In truth, both acts of violence are the same. Anger escalates, and as more people become involved, the energy within this cycle is multiplied. To express that anger becomes more urgent than to find a solution to the original problem. No one remembers the original problem for no one recognizes their own desire, rooted in their own sense of lack-of-being, as the energy source of the conflict. The obvious and only visible problem is the rival.
Scapegoating
Primitive lawless communities were constantly under threat of annihilation because of unrestrained violence from within and without. When violence is met with violence, a momentum grows. What might have begun as a dispute between two families can soon draw whole communities into its cycle of enmity. And if there is no restraint placed on this cycle, it reaches a critical mass where all distinction disappears in a war of all against all.