A view from the stern: James Alison's theology (so Far)

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 1999 by Hefling, Charles

Alison's answer, like his use of hypnosis to parse the hypostatic union, is tentative. It is not just that Jesus knew he was going to be killed. "There is a deliberate element in the way Jesus goes to his death.... It is the attitude of someone who is so entirely free of being involved in death that he manages to mount, to stage, a show, a mime, ... to organize a sort of stage death-a real death but transformed into theater" (Abel 58). The impotence of death and of all mechanisms of violence is shown once and for all by his rising from this death, and as a result others can learn to live as if death were not. Alison is aware of the potential for trivialization opened up by taking dramatization as his metaphor and making Jesus a thespian. But again it is a theme left undeveloped, although the juxtaposition of mime and mimesis alone would seem to call for further explication.

Nevertheless there is quite enough in what Alison does develop to compensate for some loose ends. That Girard has cut for theologians a hermeneutic key which opens windows on the gospel that have been largely if not completely shuttered, I for one am thoroughly convinced; and what Alison unlocks with it is important and compelling. Those who read his books attentively without being disturbed-about themselves and their own complicities-have perhaps not read attentively enough.

That remark leads to the second region of systematic theology that I think it worthwhile to investigate here: sin, and in particular "original" sin, the chief doctrinal theme in The joy of Being Wrong.

III

Some of the great Christian doctrines that Alison treats he treats as it were in passing. It is an aspect of his exuberant style to fire off theological rockets too good to keep back, without waiting to work out all the implications. Original sin is a different matter. The biggest of his three books has this doctrine as its focus, and the treatment he gives it deserves careful scrutiny.

The idea of original sin is contentious and unpopular. That goes without saying. Partly this is so because it is a complex and difficult idea. Like every other Christian teaching it has, or rather is, a history of questions raised and answers proposed, debated, and sometimes answered. Where Alison's proposal fits in the ongoing process can best be approached by asking first, not what original sin is, but bow a doctrine of original sin functions in relation to other Christian teachings. it can then be asked how far the version he presents meets the same theological exigencies. An indirect approach like this is called for, I think, because it seems clear that one reason for the slipperiness of this doctrine is that in its traditional form it does a number of things at once, like a pocket knife with several blades for different purposes. in the present context it will be useful to distinguish five functional connections comprised in the way original sin has most often been conceived.

(1) Non-dualism. The doctrine of original sin excludes dualism in the most serious sense. Human sinfulness cannot be traced to any power or principle that is either "within" or "alongside" the one God.