A Girardian Perspective on Kingship

Resources

1. René Girard; on Girard and kingship, The Girard Reader (p. ix) cites pp. 104-10 of Violence and the Sacred; ch. 3 of The Scapegoat; and pp. 51-57 of Things Hidden. There is also a good discussion of it on pp. 269-72 of the Reader itself, an explanation of his thesis that primitive kingship began as the king basically being a sacrificial victim with an extended sentence. On page 107 of Violence and the Sacred, for example, Girard writes, “The king reigns only by virtue of his future death; he is no more and no less than a victim awaiting sacrifice, a condemned man about to be executed.”

2. Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, pp. 123ff. Link here to his section "The Victim with an Extended Sentence," including some wonderful examples from Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power. An incredible piece from the latter on African Sacral Kingship is:

Sometimes the length of [the new king's] reign is fixed from the start: the kings of Jukun . . . originally ruled for seven years. Among the Bambara the newly elected king traditionally determined the length of his own reign. “A strip of cotton was put round his neck and two men pulled the ends in opposite directions whilst he himself took out of a calabash as many pebbles as he could grasp in his hand. These indicated the number of years he would reign, on the expiration of which he would be strangled.”

The Revolutionary Tribunal went to work, and a steady slaughtering began .... The invention of the guillotine was opportune to this mood. The queen was guillotined, and most of Robespierre’s antagonists were guillotined; atheists who argued that there was no Supreme Being were guillotined; Danton was guillotined because he thought there was too much guillotine; day by day, week by week, this infernal new machine chopped off heads and more heads and more. The reign of Robespierre lived, it seemed, on blood, and needed more and more, as an opium-taker needs more and more opium.

4. James G. Williams, "King as Servant, Sacrifice as Service: Gospel Transformations," in Violence Renounced, pp. 178-199.

Reflections and Questions

1. A general reflection on "Christ the King" Sunday: We don't often think in terms of kings or kingdoms anymore. The PC way of talking about it is to talk about a "Reign of Christ." But I'm not sure that catches it, either. In this democratic, capitalist age we don't talk about either kingdoms or reigns. Even "nation" is becoming less of an issue. What is it that we talk about the most these days when it comes to social constructs? Isn't it "culture"? Everything these days is about "culture," isn't it? So how about the "Culture of Christ" Sunday?

And then Girard's cultural anthropology, which is both generative and evangelical, promises tremendous insight. The generative aspect is quite unique. I'm weary, frankly, of going to seminar after seminar in which there is so much talk about culture that amounts to little more than a cataloguing of characteristics. I am not aware of any other theories about culture that actually suggests how culture is generated, how it comes into being. That kind of depth of understanding about culture has been sorely and ironically lacking in this culture of ours which talks ad nauseam about culture.

And Girard's cultural anthropology is evangelical in that he puts the Cross of Christ exactly at the center of what reveals to us the generation of culture as founded in murder -- which is exactly what this Sunday can be about. In the cross of Christ we see both the revelation of how we found our culture and how God founds the divine culture offered to us in Christ. The latter is founded in Christ's giving himself up to the murder which founds our culture, at the same time that he forgives us for it. That's grace!

I would love to go to a continuing education seminar sponsored in the church that actually used this evangelical resource to understand culture.

2. How different are these two categories of culture, human and divine? Perhaps a pertinent example is the ongoing crisis against terroism. Our human culture can conceive of no other option than to meet a violent force with another violent force. We make peace by threatening violence. We truly can't imagine another option for the President, can we? How could we possibly found the affairs of State on something like the Cross? What would that look like? We can't even imagine it. But God could. And God has, in fact, founded a new culture, a new reign, on the opposite of murder and vengeance, i.e., on "suffering violence" (Matt. 11:12) and forgiveness.

Ezek. 34:11-16, 20-24

Resources

1. James G. Williams, The Bible, Violence & the Sacred. Ch. 5, "Kings and Prophets," gives some good background on a Girardian reading of kingship from the perspective of the Hebrew prophets, which is what this text is about.

2. James Alison prepared several presentations to deliver in San Francisco October 1999. The one entitled "The Good Shepherd" uses an interplay of the Ezekiel 34 text with the John 10 text. It's an wonderfully concise expression of theology informed by the Girardian anthropology. One of the other two papers, "Moving On," performs a wholistic Girardian reading on the Book of Ezekiel in the section entitled, "Jewish Hints." It became chapter 5, "Moving on: the exilic transformation of anger into love," of Faith Beyond Resentment.

Eph. 1:15-23

Resources

1. Walter Wink, Naming the Powers, pp. 60-64.

1 Cor. 15:20-26, 28

Resources

1. James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 190-91. In concluding his eschatology with the image of wedding banquet of the Lamb, Alison cites 1 Cor 15:28 in the context of speaking of a "loving interpenetration of bride and groom":

But there is more: the banquet is not only a banquet, but it is a wedding banquet, and the guests also constitute the bride. That is, the rejoicing is not only that of guests, but of one being married, and here is where the image of heaven is, without any shame, marital. The wedding which is celebrated includes the completely loving interpenetration of bride and groom, in a relationship which makes of them one thing, a relation of infinitely creative fecundity, freed, of course, from all the tensions, rivalries and complications which surround and diminish our experience and living-out of things erotic. Paul points this out when he explains marriage in Ephesians 5, comparing the conjugal relationship to that between Christ and the Church, but please notice that he doesn't start from the conjugal relationship in order to explain heaven, but it is the heavenly relationship, that of heavenly self-giving and interpenetration in love, which is his starting point so as to understand the earthly reality of marriage. It seems to me that this image is also to nourish our hope-fired imaginations: it is the story of the ugly duckling, of Cinderella, made, much to her surprise, capable and worthy of a relationship of loving exchange with her swan, her prince, quite beyond her expectations. When Paul says that, at the end, everything will be subdued to Christ, who will be submitted to God, "so that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28), it is to be understood within this interpenetrative vision. Since we are formed from within entirely by the Other who has called us into existence, since "the other is consubstantial with the consciousness of the 'self'" (J-M Oughourlian "Un mime nommé désir" Paris: Grasset 1982 p 58), at the end we will be entirely possessed by the God who possesses pacifically in an interchange that is ever more fecund and creative. We will be married participants, all our desires fulfilled, in that effervescent creative vitality.

Matt. 25:31-46

Exegetical Notes

"Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." "Since the foundation of the world"-- apo katabols kosmou in the Greek -- appears in only one other place in Matthew: in 13:35, which is the verse Girard quotes for the title of his magnum opus, "things hidden since the foundation of the world."

There are five other instances of the phrase "since the foundation of the world" in the NT. Interestingly, Luke uses the phrase in another prominent Girardian passage, his version of the "Woes to the Pharisees" (Luke 11)

47 Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed. 48 So you are witnesses and approve of the deeds of your ancestors; for they killed them, and you build their tombs. 49 Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, 'I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,' 50 so that this generation may be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, 51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be charged against this generation."

NRS Hebrews 4:3 For we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, "As in my anger I swore, 'They shall not enter my rest,'" though his works were finished at the foundation of the world.

NRS Hebrews 9:26 for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.

NRS Revelation 13:8 and all the inhabitants of the earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slaughtered.

NRS Revelation 17:8 The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to ascend from the bottomless pit and go to destruction. And the inhabitants of the earth, whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will be amazed when they see the beast, because it was and is not and is to come.

The two Revelation texts raise the issue about the notion of the Lamb slain since the foundation of the world. The NRSV has chosen in 13:8 to make "since the foundation of the world" modify the writing in the Book of Life, not the Lamb slain, making it consistent with 17:8. But the word order in the original Greek is not consistent between the two verses. In 17:8 "since the foundation of the world" follows "the Book of Life," while in 13:8 it does immediately follow the words for "Lamb slain." In fact, 13:8 ends with the words in the Greek for "Lamb slain since the foundation of the world." So that's how the King James translates it. With the Girardian anthropology this option for translation is quite meaningful.

Resources

1. René Girard, The Scapegoat, p. 202-3. Girard quotes the passage in its entirety to make two basic points within the context of discussing "History and the Paraclete":

1. "In order to speak to violent people who are unaware of their own violence, it resorts to the language of violence, but the real meaning is completely clear."

2. "Henceforth, it is not the explicit reference to Jesus that counts. Only our actual attitude when confronted with the victims determines our relationship with the exigencies brought about by the revelation which can become effective without any mention of Christ himself."

2. James Williams, The Bible, Violence & the Sacred. This 'parable' is the featured text in Williams' discussion of the Gospel of Matthew, p. 194-99. Williams portrays Matthew as bringing together two major roles of Jesus: the Teacher of Wisdom and the Apocalyptic Judge. These roles are combined in a startling manner in Matthew 25:31-46 in an apocalyptic picture of the Day of Judgment which climaxes Jesus' teachings in Matthew. And it is all "centered in the revelation of the innocent victim," which is about to be further revealed in the Passion.

3. James Alison, Raising Abel, p. 126 & 157. These are the same passages we have looked at in recent weeks with the parables of Matthew 25. He has a very nice summary:

So, with Matthew, apocalyptic language and all, we see that his three final parables have to do strictly with how to live in the time of Abel: first, being alert means preparing yourself patiently for the duration; secondly, the patient construction of the kingdom means having your imagination fixed on the abundant generosity of the One Who empowers and gives growth; and thirdly, what is demanded is a non-scandalized living out which is flexible enough to be able to recognize those whom the world is throwing out, and then a stretching out of the hand so as to create with them the kingdom of heaven. All of this is a making explicit of the eschatological imagination through the subversion from within of the apocalyptic imagination. (p. 158)

The key feature of blessedness is that it involves living a deliberately chosen and cultivated sort of life which is not involved in the power and violence of the world, and which because of this fact, makes the ones living it immensely vulnerable to being turned into victims. That is the center of the ethic as taught by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. If we then turn to the end of Jesus' last discourse before his passion [Matt. 25:31-46] -- the mirror image of this, the first of his discourses -- we find the same intelligence at work. In the famous passage of the last judgement, the judgement is defined not in terms of belonging to this or that group, or believing this or that dogma. The judgement is presented in terms of the human relationships towards victims. Those who hunger, thirst, are naked, sick, or imprisoned. Those who have understood, whether or not they know anything about Jesus, are those who have seen their way out of the self-deception of the world which is blind to its victims, and have reached out to help them. Again, the intelligence of the victim [link to webpage on Alison's use of this phrase "the intelligence of the victim"]: it is the crucified and risen victim who is the judge of the world, and the world is judged in the light of its relationship to the crucified and risen victim.

Reflections and Questions

1. In 2004 I read an excellent book on the Book of Revelation and the dangerous interpretations of "dispensationalism," such as in the Left Behind series. The book is Barbara Rossing's The Rapture Exposed. One of the insights from this book that will stick with me forever is the understanding of Hebrew prophecy that she puts forth with a comparison to Charles Dickens' well-known story "A Christmas Carol." The three ghosts show Scrooge the past that led him to his present and, most importantly, his possible future given the trajectory of his behavior. We know from the ending of the story that Scrooge changes his future through repentance. The third ghost didn't show him a 'prophecy' that locked him into a certain fate. Likewise, the purpose of showing him his likely future was not to cement Scrooge into fatalism but to prompt him into exactly what he did, repent and change his ways, so that a new future could be written. I find this to be a wonderful teaching tool for understanding Hebrew prophecy along similar lines. God sent the prophets not to lock us into a certain fate but to lovingly invite us to repent.

Many of Jesus' parables have a component of such prophecy. This parable is a prophecy lovingly offered for repentance. It's purpose is not to give us an accurate picture of actual events as they will unfold on Judgment Day but rather to clue us in on the measure for judgment for the purpose of winning our repentance.

2. In 2005 I am using multimedia for my sermon that will feature a song by Brian Sirchio called "I See You" about an encounter he had in Haiti with a young street girl. He is conflicted inside about giving her money right on the spot. He knows that 32,000 children starve to death each day. Giving this one child food for today won't solve that problem, even for her. This is how the song ends:

And as I drove away I made a promise
Little girl, I never will forget your face
And I'll do what's mine to do to change the world for kids like you
And when I hear 32,000, I'll remember you and say...

I see you. I see you.
Hey little girl, I won't pretend that you're not there
I see you. I see you.
Little girl Christ, I see you.

3. The Niedner essay points to an inconsistency in this parable: the sheep have attended to the outcasts of this earthly life, and then in the heavenly judgment the Son of Man designates eternal, heavenly outcasts. Is it up to the sheep to now attend to those outcasts? This isn't the judgment of the cross in which the Son of Man lets himself be made an outcast so that those who judge him judge themselves.

4. Does it make a difference that this parable is spoken to the disciples only? Is it given to them to encourage their taking the side of the outcasts? What is the purpose of this parable in light of the preceding parable? I believe it is the kind of prophecy outlined above, a call to repentance. The question remains, however: why does Jesus still use judgment as a means to repentance when forgiveness becomes his main vehicle toward repentance?