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

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 1999 by Hefling, Charles

The first of the five points, to which I shall return below, seems to present no difficulty. Those who are being saved are passing out of a state of affairs that is not "the result of biology, or nature, or God" (joy 240). It is a state that need not be at all, and it does not "belong" to the created order as created. Alison's proposal is thus in keeping with point 3 as well. For just the reason that this state of affairs is passing away, we_know that there is nothing essential or necessary about it.

As for point 2, from the interdividual character of human identity and selfhood it follows that "man," the human race in its entirety and unity, can be conceived as one in virtue of a cultural solidarity, which in turn accounts for the pervasiveness and indeed ineradicability of "man's" propensity to violence. Original sin belongs to each of us because it belongs to all. The relevant universality is not, however, a metaphysical and much less a biological human "nature." Whether there is such a reality Alison does not say, but he does insist that there exists no "purely natural" human condition. Our selves are mediated from the first. "All human beings are, from conception, always a completely cultural reality" (joy 279).

With that, his position on point 5 should be clear. When it comes to specifying how an inclination towards sin passes from person to person, Christian theology has struggled with a dichotomy: "imitation" versus "propagation." That these alternatives are strictly exclusive, and that there is no third besides, would seem to be presupposed by the Anglican Articles of Religion as well as by the Council of Trent; and both come squarely down, with Augustine, on the side of propagation, as against imitation, "the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk)." Alison's position beautifully transcends the dichotomy. On the one hand, mimesis as Girard understands it is something quite different from imitation, understood as a deliberate act of emulating that begins from a morally neutral condition prior to the decision to emulate. Such a morally neutral condition has no concrete existence; the whole of conscious life is formed by mimesis which, on the hypothesis of original sin, is rivalistic and death-dealing. On the other hand, therefore, so deep and pervasive are the effects of interdividual psychology that, until an adequate mimetic theory was available, propagation in the sense of biological reproduction appeared to be the only mechanism that was thorough enough, so to say. From the cultural constitution of humanity, however, it follows that selves are, indeed, propagated, but that sexual reproduction is only a condition (though a necessary one) of their propagation. Exactly the same reasoning applies to "original sin."

Such is Alison's approach to point 5, the "originated" aspect of original sin. I consider it among the most important of his many achievements in The joy of Being Wrong. This leaves only the "originating" aspect, point 4, which functions as what I am calling the remote explanation, and which tradition names the fall. Granted that scapegoating in all its gross and subtle forms pervades human interdividuality, how did it get there? The question can be divided in order to articulate the issue more exactly. First and most obviously, does Alison hold that the fall is something that happened once, as a unique occurrence in the past, and, if so, what occurrence? Second, why, in the sense of on what grounds, does he hold what he does? These questions will occupy the rest of the present section. The section following will attempt a critical assessment.