"[René] Girard breaks from traditional philosophical conceptions branching from Plato to Hegel that view consciousness as preceding any acquisitive behavior." [1]
Extant philosophical conceptions have already laid a
framework for our thinking about ourselves almost before we are actually
thinking about ourselves, our world, and our origins. It seems everything
follows on the supposition that we acquired consciousness and that this
acquisition of consciousness constitutes the beginning of all else; the
foundational moment, the beginning of human "being".
What these philosophical conceptions seem to lack in my
unlearned estimation is a coherent and plausible explanation of how this
consciousness came to be. Girard posits that acquisitive desire precedes
all consciousness, language, or symbols and has articulately shown how this can
be. As a Christian considering this idea I was moved to re-visit the narratives
of origins that we know as the book of the Genesis.
When considering the primary theme of one of these
originating stories in Genesis - I am convinced that there are more than one
story told in the book that have been woven together over time - in the light
of Girard's counter view a rather interesting picture of origins unfolded. Only
briefly, the creation narrative culminates in the introduction of a man and a
woman who lived in what appears to be an idyllic setting charged with subduing,
[kaw-bash'] literally to "bring into bondage", the created world.
From Genesis 1:26-31 we have what appears a synopsis of one
complete creation narrative. The man and woman are created in one act as an
image or "phantom" [tseh-lem'] of God. They were, in some way, instructed
to multiply (have unbridled sex) and fill and subdue the earth, and they were
given all "grain bearing plants and fruit trees" for food. This
concisely completes the creation story of man from beginning to end. The story
concludes that "everything was good" and marks the end of the sixth
day of creation. We then have an intermission with the seventh day where God
rested from his work.
In Genesis 2:4-25 we have a different and more embellished
account of the creation myth. Here there are at least two significant thematic
divergences from the first story. We have the introduction of prohibition,
which appears before the creation of the woman, then, of course is the
divergence of the later advent of the woman; whereas in the first narrative man
and woman were created simultaneously.
In this idyllic setting the couple were free to wander
around naked - if we splice this information in from the second story - and to
do as they pleased. Food was plentiful and wild for the taking as needed with
not a care in the world. As a matter of fact such an existence seems to
parallel all the other creatures; free to roam, eat, drink, live, and sexually
procreate shamelessly; having their place in the created order. There is a single
element in the second narrative, that of prohibition, that seems incongruent
with such a setting and I think it appropriate to ask why is it there?
One thing missing in both of these narratives up to this
point is desire. The storytellers of the second and more colorful
narrative also tell us that the couple were naked and not ashamed. This seems
at least a very interesting piece of information. Generally this condition
exists in observable creation in every form of life; To live, eat, drink, roam,
and reproduce so why is it that the writer finds it necessary to mention the
absence of shame?
This appears to me that the writer is maybe intuiting
something that he might not be fully cognizant of himself. I propose that these
first two representatives of humanity weren't exactly, or yet completely human
as contemporarily understood. Following this interesting statement regarding
shame, the story takes a dramatic turn. What we find in chapter 3 verses 1
through 5 can easily be framed as an evolution of desire. We have the
requisite object, in the fruit, we have the model combined with prohibition,
and we have the subject.
The triangular structure of desire as Girard discovered has
all its elements.
I have for some time viewed the sequence in verses 1-5 as an
internal dialectic going on within the mind of one of these participants in the
story. This seems to be made clear by "the tell" within the story
that the woman ate the fruit "then gave it to her husband who was with her." Here we have two
very telling pieces of information contained it one phrase: "Husband"
and "was with her". The use of the term "husband" should
tell us that this is a very late piece of writing, as the establishment of
anything resembling marriage would have been quite far in the future.
Secondly, "her husband" was with her. If
this were in fact something like a real event then surely the "husband,
who was with her", aware of the risks, would have intervened in this
discourse between his woman and the serpent. Desire appears, the husband
desires also, according to the desire of his "wife" and desiring to
have the knowledge she would now possess and the first cycle of imitation is
complete. We have become human. They become as "one accord" yet very
shortly in the story we see that a specific type of division has manifest
itself that is unique in all creation; that of the accusation.
Never-the-less near the end of this part of the story in
verse 6 we have desire winning the day. What I find interesting is that desire
had not yet existed in creation - as far as the story reveals. Whether the
creation had been in six days or six million years is of no consequence. Desire
is appearing as something uniquely human, or conversely something unique-called
humans-appeared subsequent to desire!
And what might we think of that original desire? What was it
for? I posit that it was for autonomy. Autonomy from God, and each other. To gain identity apart from, independent of, the other. The story tells us this
in verse 5:
"Even God knows that on the day you eat from it, your
eyes will be opened and you'll become like God, knowing good and evil."
If we "become like" another then we are no longer
in need of nor are related to this other; we have assumed him in
ourselves. Now, these freshly "minted" humans have their autonomy,
their individuality, which is separation. This is something we were never created to function within. We
have this striving to be, without the other, yet we are bound by imitated
desires according to the other. We would annihilate the other so we would
become primary, yet empty, without the other, only to endlessly repeat the
pattern.
We desire to be like some other without the other; without
neighbor, without spouse, friends, brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers,
subsuming their lives into us. The only thing we can't seem to function without
are enemies and we make them continually to stamp our identity over and against
them and the more we do this the more we become like them, bondage to them
frustrating our longing to be. The great "romantic lie" of modernity
according to Girard is that we are autonomous individuals.
So how does good and evil function in our hands? It is used
as a line of demarcation that separates ourselves from the other. It promises
to temper our desires, yet this is a lie and it repeatedly fails. The taboo
sets us at enmity with all others who are "not like us" yet the
binding that it provides to those "like us" is founded in death as we
strive within "our camp" for identity and autonomy at the expense of
those closest to and most like us. The more we become like the other, the more we
hate them for "stealing" our identity as we strive harder for
differentiation, by stealing theirs. This "individuality", is forever fleeting because it is not in our
nature, it is a false god.
Only God knows the truth and has taken great pains to show
us.
1Jn_3:14 We know
that we have passed from death to life, because we love one another. The person
who does not love remains spiritually dead.
1Jn_4:7 Dear
friends, let us continually love one another, because love comes from God.
Everyone who loves has been born from God and knows God.
1Jn_4:12 No one has
ever seen God. If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is
perfected in us.
"This
is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you."
