Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

Erik Borgman    

The Weak Presence of Grace
A Theological Plea for the Return to the Ambivalences of Modernity

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Abstract

The recent discussions on the ‘clash of civilizations’, not just on a global scale but also within the societies of the Western world, give rise to a new culturalism. The clash itself is seen in terms of rivaling cultures with irreconcilable values, and the possibility to tolerate substantial cultural differences is also seen as a product of culture. This leads to a paradox: if rival cultures can only be reconciled by a culture of tolerance, the discussion on tolerance tends to continue the cultural rivalry with other means. 

In the analysis, Girard’s theory of mimesis counters this culturalist tendency. In parallel with a tradition reaching from Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism to Giorgo Agamben’s Homo Sacer, Girard relates typically modern violence not to rivaling cultures, but to the breakdown of culture and of the differences with which they structure and pacify social life. Both fundamentalism and virulent anti-fundamentalism can thus be understood as violent attempts to install difference in order to scapegoat others for the problems and tensions inherent in the situation. However, in his proposed strategy to stop this tendency towards violence, Girard is a culturalist. Only adhering to Christian ideas about the innocence of victims – which he claims are expressions of an absolute truth – makes it possible to break away from the mimetic mechanism of victimization. This changes the focus of Girard’s theory, from the position of the victims and their innocence to the meta-theory supposedly attributing this position to them. And it makes his theory a factor in the rivalry of civilizations and the tendency in civilizations with a Christian background to scapegoat other civilizations. 

To counter this, I will stress two aspects of the Christian tradition Girard virtually neglects. Firstly, Christianity is not a theory claiming to be absolutely true nor a culture propagating unflawed values. It is a religion stressing human dependence on Divine grace. This means that the Christian mission is not to solve the worlds problems by representing the absolute truth or preaching ethical or political change, but to see the places where these problems are already being solved. They should witness to the praxes taking shape there in such a way that they in themselves invite mimesis. Secondly, according to the Christian tradition the world still lies in evil, but is already redeemed and on the way to fully reveal its redeemed state. This means that, from a Christian point of view, it cannot be true that left to itself, modernity will clash in an orgy of violence. The world and its history are not left to itself, according to the Christian tradition, but the Word has become flesh and has dwelled among us. This makes it imperative to think of redemption as not simply contradicting, but also originating in situations of deterioration of pacifying cultural differences. 

Here, I will argue, there is room for Gianni Vattimo’s stress on the ‘weak’ presence of agape in modernity. This second aspect implies not just critique of some fundamental assumptions in Girard’s theory of mimesis, but also of central aspects of a broad spectrum of contemporary ideas on and analyses of modernity.