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McKechnie, Paul
2019.
Christianizing Asia Minor.
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The Politics of the Nonviolent God: Reflections on René Girard and Karl Barth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
Extract
Doctrines of the atonement in Christian theology, as Marlin E. Miller has pointed out, ‘usually limit their concern to reconciliation with God and, at most, consider reconciliation with others a secondary consequence of reconciliation with God’. Too often, in other words, the vertical aspect of reconciliation is allowed to overshadow its horizontal aspect. The vertical aspect of the atonement as it pertains directly to God is often treated in isolation as if its ethical implications were of no great importance. The reverse defect, however, would also appear to be widespread. Christian ethics as we know it today often seems to proceed as if the atoning work of Christ were of little or no relevance to its deliberations on human affairs. The social or horizontal aspect of reconciliation thereby eclipses its vertical aspect. Yet if the cross of Christ is indeed the very center of the center of the Christian gospel, as the church has historically believed, then how can it fail to determine the substance of Christian ethics as well as that of Christian theology? Moreover, how can the centrality of the cross fail to orient them both in any attempt to specify their inner unity, order and differentiation?
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References
1 Miller, Marlin E., ‘Girardian Perspectives and Christian Atonement’, unpublished ms., p. 19.Google Scholar
2 Hamerton-Kelly, Robert, ‘Sacred Violence and the Messiah: A Hermeneutical Meditation on the Marcan Passion Narrative’, unpublished paper, ms. pp. 6–7Google Scholar. Quoted by Williams, James G., The Bible, Violence and the Sacred (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 7.Google Scholar
3 Hamerton-Kelly, ibid. Quoted by Williams, , ‘Myth, Aphorism, and Christ as Sign’, Forum 5 (1989), pp. 73–91; on p. 81.Google Scholar
4 Girard, René, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), p. 154.Google Scholar
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6 Ibid., pp. 176, 178–9.
7 Ibid., p. 180.
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10 Girard would probably do well to reconceive his theory as a ‘research proposal’ in need of careful testing, refinement and delimitation. Unfortunately, however, he seems predisposed to regarding it as a ‘maximalist’ as opposed to a more nearly ‘minimalist’ position. See Williams, James G., ‘The Innocent Victim: René Girard on Violence, Sacrifice, and the Sacred’, Religious Studies Review 14 (1988), pp. 320–326; on p. 323.Google Scholar
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12 Ibid., p. 219.
13 Ibid., pp. 183 (atonement), 196 (resurrection), 215–16 (oncological deity).
14 Barth, Karl, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson Press, 1973), p. 297.Google Scholar
15 Ibid. (Translation revised.)
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17 Girard, , Things Hidden, p. 215.Google Scholar
18 Ibid., p. 201.
19 Even when Girard appeals to ‘divine grace’ in an effort to avoid ‘optimistic humanism’, he seems bound by essentially Pelagian assumptions. See ‘Violence, Difference, Sacrifice: A Conversation with René Girard’, Religion and Literature 25 no. 2 (Summer 1993), pp. 11–33; on p. 25.
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24 Ibid., p. 185.
25 Von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, Vol. IV, p. 346 (quoting Barth).
26 Ibid., pp. 240–44 and 317–19.
27 Ibid., p. 242.
28 Ibid., p. 319.
29 Cf. Barth, Karl, who also sees the cross as ‘the dominating characteristic of [Christ's] royal office’ (Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol. IV, Part 2 [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1958], p. 292)Google Scholar. Christ reigns from the cross (regnantem in cruce) (Ibid., p. 291). (Hereafter cited as IV/2.)
30 Although Torrance offersadistinctive slant on the unity between the incarnation and the atonement, it would be wrong to suppose that this ‘incarnational’ interpretation pits him against Barth. For example, of the conflict between divine righteousness and human sin, Barth wrote: Jesus Christ ‘took this conflict into his own being [as fully divine and fully human]. He bore it in himself to the bitter end. He took part in it from both sides. He endured it from both sides’ (Barth, , Church Dogmatics, Vol. II, Part 1 [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957], p. 397)Google Scholar. (Hereafter cited as II/l.)
31 Torrance, Thomas F., The Mediation of Christ (Colorado Springs: Helmer & Howard, 2nd ed., 1992), p. 114.Google Scholar
32 Ibid., p. 112.
33 Torrance, ‘The Priesthood of Christ’, unpublished ms., p. 6
34 Ibid., p. 18.
35 Torrance, , Mediation of Christ, p. 114.Google Scholar
36 Ibid., p. 112.
37 Ibid., p. 113.
38 Ibid., p. 112.
39 Ibid.
40 Torrance, ‘Reconciliation’, unpublished ms., p. 5 (italics added). The inseparability and indeed the coincidence of grace and judgment on the divine side finds its parallel on the human side, for there we find that judgment and sin are not only inseparable but coincident: ‘No man can evade, elude or avoid the fact that he is loved by God — therefore when he does the inconceivable thing in the act of that love, namely, refuse it, defy it, turn away from it, that unavoidable self-giving of God is his very judgment — it opposes his refusal of God, it opposes his attempt to elude God, and is therefore his judgment in the very event of refusal’ (Torrance, ‘Range of Redemption,’ unpublished ms., p. 8).
41 Torrance, , ‘The Understanding of Redemption in the Early Church’, unpublished ms., p. 11.Google Scholar
42 Ibid.
43 Torrance, Mediation of Christ, pp. 110–11. The atonement thus has much the same complex structure for Torrance as it did for von Balthasar. On the one hand, it is true in itself. ‘The atonement has an absolutely objective character in that it was wrought apart from our attitude to it, and while we were yet sinners’ (Torrance, ‘Range of Redemption’, p. 11). On the other hand, it must continually become true in us and for us. ‘The pouring out of the Spirit is not a new event, or some additional event in atonement… but the one atoning event inserting itself into man's life and actualizing itself within… Thus the communion of the Spirit is our incorporation or participation in Christ our substitute, who has already perfectly fulfilled in our name and in our place, our response to God the Father’ (Torrance, ‘Range of Redemption’, p. 8). It might be noted that the perceptive discussion and critique of Girard offered by John Milbank would have been even stronger if this complexity had been more truly honored. As it is Milbank unfortunately emphasizes the second aspect of the atonement to the complete neglect of the first. See Milbank, ‘Violence and Atonement (The Work of René Cirard)’ in Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), pp. 392–398; esp. p. 397.Google Scholar
44 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, Vol. IV, Part 1 (Edinburgh: T.& T. Clark, 1956), pp. 71–72. (Hereafter cited as IV/1.)Google Scholar
45 The idea that the cross reveals the nonviolence of God is a commonplace in the patristic literature. See, for example, Irenaeus: ‘God does not use violent means to obtain what he desires’ (Against Heresies, V.I.I.); or Gregory of Nyssa: God does not liberate us from our captivity ‘by a violent exercise of force’ (The Great Catechism, XXII).
46 The intrinsic connection between the divine nonviolence of the cross and the nonviolence of Christian discipleship was also commonplace in the patristic literature. See, for example, Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, LII.
47 For a discussion which carefully delimits the scope of such reflections without diminishing their primacy, see Barth, , Church Dogmatics, Vol. IV, Part 3, Second Half (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1962), pp. 628–629. (Hereafter cited as IV/3.)Google Scholar
48 For a discussion of Barth's views on war, see Yoder, John Howard, Karl Barth and the Problem of War (Nashville: Abingdon, 1970).Google Scholar
49 In this regard the following statistics may be of interest. In mid-1994 the average number of Christian martyrs per year was 156,000 as compared with 36,000 in 1900 and a projected 200,000 by the turn of this century. See Barrett, David B., ‘Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission: 1994’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 18 (1994), pp. 24–25; on p. 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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