Acts 10:44-48

Resources

1. James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 100-105, 128. The two featured passages in Alison's treatment of universality are this story of Cornelius and Rev. 7. Of the former he says for example:

What Peter is saying when he affirms that God has revealed to him not to call anyone profane or impure is that the heavenly counter-history, the subversion from within of the story of this world, has an indispensable grammatical rule: that no discrimination against any sort of repugnant person can resist the crucible of learning not to call them profane or impure. The story of heaven is the story of how we learn not to call anyone profane or impure, so that a story is created in which there are, in fact, no impure or profane people, where not even disgusting people consider themselves disgusting, but rather where we have learnt to disbelieve, and to help them to disbelieve, in their own repugnancy. (p. 102)

What I wanted to suggest is that Jesus' resurrection is at the same time the revelation of that lie: the victim is innocent, and is hated without cause. That is to say, the mechanism which founds social order stands exposed, and for this reason it begins to become impossible to believe in the real blameworthiness of the victim. (p. 103)

And this is the great secret of catholicity: while every local culture tends to build its frontiers by means of victims, it is only if we begin from the forgiving victim that we can build a culture which has no frontiers, because we no longer have to build any order, security, or identity over against some excluded person, but the excluded one himself gives the identity by allowing us to share in the gratuity of his self-giving. (p. 108)

Reflections and Questions

1. Cornelius is obviously a Gentile and this story about the first Gentile convert. But is it recognized as often that, as a centurion, he also stood for the reigning sanctioned violence of Rome? What do we make of the first major Gentile conversion being that of one who stood so centrally within the scapegoating structures of his time? Is there a connection with the story that precedes it, the conversion of Saul? Saul is a central figure within the Jewish scapegoating structures; Cornelius within the Roman. They both are dramatically converted. Saul left behind his life of persecuting others. Do we assume the same for Cornelius? Did becoming a Christian mean that he could no longer be a centurion, a soldier?

1 John 5:1-6

Resources

1. "For the Spirit is the truth" (5:6) lends itself to some of the Girardian comments on John 14-17 where the Paraclete is also called the "Spirit of Truth" (14:17, 15:26, 16:13). It gives us the opportunity to go back to the reading of the 2^nd Sunday of Easter, which contains the only occurrence of "Paraclete" in 1 John (2:1-2):

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

This week's passage in 1 John 5 sheds further light on the interconnection of the Paraclete, or spirit of truth, and Jesus through the notion of "testimony." Verse 6 is the end of this week's lection, but it really belongs as the beginning of next week's lection, for 1 John 5:6-13 revolves around the theme of testimony. The verb form, martyreo, occurs four times in these verses, and the noun form, martyria, six times. Read these verses, then, in light of the Girardian interpretation of Satan and the Paraclete: Satan is the accuser, the prosecuting attorney who elicits testimony to establish the guilt the victim; the Paraclete is the advocate, the defender of the accused who elicits testimony to establish the innocence of the victim.

The Girardian references to the meaning of Satan and the Paraclete abound. I can refer the reader to the excerpts I put together from his essay on Satan. I have also put together a page on "The Anthropology of René Girard and the Paraclete of St. John." But let me give you a glimpse of the basics here.

The place where Girard himself first wrote about Satan vs. the Paraclete is in his book The Scapegoat, the final chapter entitled "History and the Paraclete." I highly recommend reading this chapter for insight into preaching on John 14-17. Here is an excerpt that presents Girard's explanation of the Paraclete:

Satan only reigns by virtue of the representations of persecution that held sway prior to the Gospels. Satan therefore is essentially the accuser, the one who deceives men by making them believe that innocent victims are guilty. But, who is the Paraclete?

Parakleitos, in Greek, is the exact equivalent of advocate or the Latin ad-vocatus. The Paraclete is called on behalf of the prisoner, the victim, to speak in his place and in his name, to act in his defense. The Paraclete is the universal advocate, the chief defender of all innocent victims, the destroyer of every representation of persecution. He is truly the spirit of truth that dissipates the fog of mythology.

We must ask why Jerome, that formidable translator who was rarely lacking in boldness, hesitated before the translation of the very ordinary, common name of parakleitos. He was literally taken by surprise. He did not see the term's relevance and opted for a pure and simple transliteration, Paracletus. His example is followed religiously in most modern languages. This mysterious word has continued to put in concrete form not the unintelligibility of a text that is actually perfectly intelligible, but the unintelligence of its interpreters, that of Jesus' accusation of his disciples, a lack of intelligence that history is slowly changing to comprehension.

There are, of course, innumerable studies on the Paraclete, but none provides a satisfactory solution, since they all define the problem in narrowly theological terms. The prodigious historical and cultural significance of the term remains inaccessible, and the general conclusion is that, if he is truly someone's advocate, the Paraclete must become the disciples' advocate with the Father. This solution invokes a passage in the first Epistle of John: "but if any one should sin, we have our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who is just" (2:1) . . .

In John's text Jesus makes himself a Paraclete. In the Gospel by the same author, Jesus effectively is shown as the first Paraclete sent to men:

I shall ask the Father,
and he will give you another Advocate
to be with you forever,
that Spirit of truth
whom the world can never receive
since it neither sees nor knows him; (John 14:16-17)

Christ is the Paraclete, par excellence, in the struggle against the representation of persecution. Every defense and rehabilitation of victims is based on the Passion's power of revelation. When Christ has gone, the Spirit of Truth, the second Paraclete, will make the light that is already in the world shine for all men, though man will do everything in his power not to see it.

The disciples certainly had no need of a second advocate with the Father, as long as they had Jesus himself. The other Paraclete is sent among men and into history; there is no need to get rid of him by sending him piously into the transcendental. The immanent nature of his action is confirmed by a text from the synoptic Gospels: "And when they lead you forth to deliver you, do not be preoccupied with what you will say, but say what is given to you at the moment for it is not you who will speak but the Holy Spirit." (The Scapegoat, pp. 207-209)

Aletheia comes from the root, letho, which is the verb "to forget." The prefix a is the negative. The literal meaning, then, of the Greek word for truth, aletheia, is "to stop forgetting." It is etymologically the opposite of myth. The gospels tell of a perfectly typical story of victimization with astonishing insight into the role religious zeal and mob psychology played in it. Most importantly, and contrary to all myth, the story is told from the point of view of the victim and not that of the righteous community of persecutors. Thus the passion story breaks decisively with the silence and circumspection of the mythological thought. The Gospel truth gradually makes it impossible for us to keep forgetting what myth exists to help us forget. It thereby sets up a struggle between the impulse to sacralize, justify, or romanticize the violence that generates and regenerates conventional culture and the impulse to reveal that violence and strip away its mythic justifications. Fundamentally, human history is a struggle between myth and Gospel. (pp. 33-34)

1. This is a rich passage for preaching on baptism. And it gives an interpretation of baptism that centers around testimony. The baptized are those called to be witnesses. The images of being born of God and of parentage link with the Johannine notion of paternity: are you of the father of lies (John 8) or of Jesus' father who sends the Spirit of Truth? The Spirit of Truth, in turn, links to the Paraclete of John 14-17. Does this all mean that our primary identity as the baptized is that we are to turn around and be advocates for those who continue to sacrificial victims in this world? Is that what it means to witness for Jesus Christ, the one who came to advocate for us?

John 15:9-17

Resources

1. The Girardian material on John 14-16 is abundant; I mentioned two chapters on Johannine theology two weeks ago with regards to 1 John 3 (Girard, Things Hidden, Book II, Ch. 4; Bailie, Violence Unveiled, ch. 13), and John 14-16 are always featured in those discussions, too. Another important chapter is James Alison's ch. 3 in Raising Abel, which suggests consulting John 14-16 while reading his chapter. This particular passage in John (15:9-17) is not widely cited, however, in the numerous Girardian commentaries on John 14-17.

2. Gil Bailie, "The Gospel of John" tape series, tape #10. Link to my notes / transcription of this lecture on John 14-17. The following comment ties together many of the themes already touched on here:

The reason the accusatory system lives on is because we always forget the truth. We carry around a myth, which the Spirit will no longer let us do. The world has to exclude the Paraclete in order to carry on in its ordinary way. Conventional culture exists by periodically re-convening its social consensus at the expense of its victim. And that world can only exist if it can misrecognize the arbitrariness of its selection of victims, and all the rest of it. So when the Paraclete comes and makes that misrecognition increasingly difficult, the world begins to deconstruct. The cultural structures begin to come apart.

1. There are numerous themes that link up with wider Johannine themes: "abiding" in God's love, the commandment of love, laying down one's life for friends. Somewhat new and unique to this passage is the emphasis on joy, on servants becoming friends, and on Jesus choosing them rather than them choosing Jesus. Considering the (sacrificial) games of winners and losers that we usually play, it seems that God enters into our games as the loser, as one of those whom we sacrifice. Link to a sermon on the theme of "Choosing the Losers."

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