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Not contagious
Moral impurity should be distinguished from ritual impurity. Ritual impurity is impermanent, sometimes contagious, may defile the courtyard altar, and, while requiring cleansing, does not require forgiveness; moral impurity requires atonement (sometimes being cut off or death), defiles the land, along with the innermost areas of the sanctuary, but is not contagious.
L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? 159
Girard
I love big ideas that explain many things (see Edwin Friedman). René Girard’s big idea is to see a cyclical process of imitation (what he calls mimesis) and violence everywhere.
The cycle is as follows:
- Human beings are imitative people: we see what someone else is doing and are interested in doing the same. Deep down, this is because we see what someone else desires and we desire it for ourselves.
- This may begin quite innocently; for example, who can fault the desire to be a skilled musician? But it often escalates to a competitive situation: envy. Some situations may be zero–sum (e.g., two men desiring the same woman), while others may not be (there is room in the world for many great musicians). However, even situations that are not zero–sum result in envious competition, because what is really desired is the praise of men.
- It only takes two people for envy and scapegoating to happen. But within a society or community, it gains additional power as other people coalesce around the competition. This process is compelling because taking sides allows people to overcome their usual differences and experience unity. Thus, the competition escalates.
- The escalation results in violence, which can be ended only with a scapegoat: ideally, one party confesses guilt. In any case, that party is expelled in some sense.
- Over time a society buries the memory of its own guilt, and the expelled party becomes lionized as kind of hero or savior, with the narrative that they brought both unity and relief to the violence. (This is how myth begins.)
- However, this perverse cycle repeats indefinitely in a culture. Although it is evil, it is difficult to rid a culture of the scapegoating cycle because it is so (temporarily) cathartic.
Girard expertly identifies this pattern at work across a wide variety of situations in myth, scripture, history, and current events. While he may at times seem to be using his hammer to turn everything into a nail, it is amazing how many nails he finds. The scapegoating process is everywhere.
In Girard’s telling, there are a number of Biblical stories such as Job (who we should read first and foremost as a type of Jesus) that expose this process, but without giving way to it. Jesus’s own death is the great true–myth that is able to expose the scapegoating process, and therefore deal a final blow to it. Girard himself was brought to faith by his discovery that the Biblical stories all expose and defeat scapegoating, unlike any other stories.
Part of the reason that the scapegoating process is so powerful is that it is a justification mechanism. If you can demonize your opponent, then you are justified in whatever you have done or will do to him to gain the advantage. But there is also a kind of feedback loop here: the more we magnify the evil of our opponents, the smaller our own sins become. This enables us to feel justified in all our sins, even if they have nothing to do with the cause or opponent we are fighting. Whom do you despise? You are quite likely scapegoating them to feel justified in yourself. Especially if you despise them together with someone else, allowing you to feel a deeper unity in your justified despising.
This process obviously fails to justify us whatsoever. But what is amazing is that Jesus by his death as our scapegoat actually accomplishes our justification! However, in order to appropriate his justification, you must repent of your sins (including admitting to any scapegoating you have engaged in) and you must agree with his innocence. This completely reverses the pagan scapegoating process, where the scapegoat is made to plead guilty. (Cancel culture and watchblogging are evil things even when their broken clocks happen to tell the right time). If you make Jesus your scapegoat by hating him and persecuting his people, then you are not justified. But if you accept Jesus as your gift–scapegoat, then you are justified.
In order for Jesus’s kingdom to grow, we must become like him. This means that we resist and expose the scapegoating process wherever it appears, instead calling people to repentance and faith in Jesus. The church is often called to suffer like Jesus for the sake of the world, but equally like Jesus we refuse to agree with the false charges of our enemies. And while our growth in righteousness and mission requires us to faithfully imitate Jesus in all these ways, we must at the same time be watchful of ourselves, lest we allow our imitation of him to devolve into a pagan competition.
Additional resources and reading
- Peter Robinson’s interview with Rene Girard
- Girard’s book I See Satan Fall Like Lightning is the best place to start. His book The Scapegoat is interesting but more like a textbook treatment.
- Quotes
Various
If you don’t yet follow Wrath of Gnon, you should.
This is beautiful: The Sound of the Hagia Sophia.
Here are some fascinating pictures of the locusts in Africa.
North Carolina had a couple of earthquakes in the western part of the state this past weekend, but we felt nothing here.
Christian Leithart thinks about how to panic sensibly.
So do Squirrel Nut Zippers. From “La Grippe”:
There’s an Asian influenza
Infecting us all by the scores
And it’s turning into pneumonia
We must go out once more . . .
So we must go out and dance around
Have a look at Jelle’s Marble Runs and see if you can resist getting completely absorbed.
For fun, the kids and I were working through the alphabet on a theme of food, somehow coming to focus especially on fish. Asher pounced on G with the offering: ghoti. Ha!
My county library has Lewis’s space trilogy available in audiobook form. I’ve just finished listening to it after first reading the books eight years ago. I’m freshly encouraged in the task of Christian living (Lewis is quite the Kuyperian Chestertonian, isn’t he?), and also again amazed at Lewis’s Issacharian insight into our times in That Hideous Strength. I need to revisit these more often.
Mark Horne just published his reflections on Proverbs. It is outstanding; pick one up for yourself and for each of the young people in your life. Mark also reflects on current events and how wisdom takes some work and wrestling. You should follow Mark too.
Lord willing, Peter Leithart is coming to the Triangle in April to teach on worship. I’m looking forward to it; join me!
I’ve been appealing to Occam’s razor lately as a rule for evaluating architectural decisions and their tradeoffs. In particular, architectural decisions must take into account not only ideal considerations, but also a team’s capacity to develop, maintain, and support these decisions. Simplicity has its own rewards regardless of the size of your team, but the smaller the team, the more aggressively you must press for that simplicity. Don’t multiply entities unnecessarily!
My pastor touched on Hebrews 12 and shaking this past Sunday. A preterist reading of this and the wider context adds (but does not subtract) helpful insights. Certainly we are to cherish the hope that one day we will live in a fully realized and glorious city (ch. 11), and that one day all that can be shaken will be removed (ch. 12). But the original audience was also to take great hope in God’s breaking early into time and history, and so are we. We have come already to the mountain–city, Zion–Jerusalem (12:22), and especially in worship we stand together in this place with Jesus and the angels and the communion of the saints. The entire book of Hebrews is an exposition of this reality and an invitation to enter into it.
From this perspective, the great “once more” shaking announced in Hebrews (as well as Matthew, etc.) was the tearing down of the old covenant and its ways, the very persecution and mountain that was bearing down on God’s people and in which the author of Hebrews is trying to encourage them. These old ways ended forever in AD 70; no more sacrifices could be offered by the line of Aaron but only by the line of Melchizedek. The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple was both a vindication of Jesus against the old ways, and a deliverance for his church, his body.
Thus, we see both that God works in history, and also that this history is moving to a glorious conclusion. So we can hope for several visitations, several shakings, several days of the Lord: (1) Jesus visits his church weekly on the day of the Lord; (2) Jesus visits tribes and nations at various times in history in judgment and to deliver his people; (3) as proof of his resurrection and enthronement, and vindication of himself and his promises, Jesus visited the world in AD 70 to finish the inauguration of his new creation; (4) we have a glorious hope that after his present reign (and our reign with him) is complete, Jesus will visit the world and deliver it to his father (1 Cor 15, etc.).
AD 70 was thus the promised sign of the son of man’s entering into heaven.
There’s no other way
“You have done what was required of you,” said the Director. “You have obeyed and waited. It will often happen like that.”
C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
Keep in step with the Spirit
Paul makes an interesting sustained argument throughout Galatians 5 and 6. He pits circumcision against Christ, law against faith, flesh against Spirit, and flesh against cross.
By abandoning the way of the Spirit, the Judaizers gave way to the works of the flesh (5:16ff). In fact, they boasted in the flesh (6:12–13), which is a subtle sin that is not so shocking as Paul’s earlier list. We see from this that even what is good or appears to be good can become a source of pride and destroy us. We are to repent not only of our sins but also of our merits, of every seemingly commendable way that we try to find life apart from Jesus. “Seemingly” is of course the operative word. Ironically, circumcision signified the cutting off of the flesh, a confession of its impotence; the Judaizers turned it into its opposite. There is no more need for circumcision because the Seed signified by circumcision has come. His once and for all circumcision at the cross (Col. 2:11–12) has inaugurated the new creation (Gal. 6:15). We enter into this circumcision, this new creation, through our baptism into Jesus (Col. 2:11–12).
The Judaizers were offended by the cross (Gal. 5:11) and ashamed of it (6:12). Paul boasted in the cross instead (6:14). Paul’s opposition of flesh to both Spirit (5:16ff) and cross (6:12ff) leads us to look for links between Spirit and cross. Paul himself directly links the fruit of the Spirit to the cross worked out in the life of the Christian: “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (5:24 ESV). Part of our boasting in the cross should be to see and delight in how Jesus exhibits the fruit of the Spirit. Such love and kindness (John 15:13), joy (Heb. 12:2), peace and patience (1 Pet. 2:23), etc.! Beyond this, the cross is not only our great example, but also the very foundation of our own walking in the fruit of the Spirit.
Boasting in law–keeping is of course not the only possible kind of fleshly boasting. Just as circumcision was turned on its head, we can be tempted to turn the fruit of the Spirit to fleshly purposes. Consider how we do this by exaggerating the virtues of love, of winsomeness, and humility. It has become easy to wield these as fleshly weapons and thereby to mistake other virtues, such as godly confidence and courage, for fleshly boasting. Rene Girard has insight into how this humility competition is its own form of fleshly vaunting, and how it undermines the faith.
This is one reason why it is important to cultivate the fruits of the Spirit in totality rather than in isolation. We guard best against the flesh when we use all of our weapons; we need both a faithful love and a loving faithfulness; both a joyful self–control and a self–controlled joy.
The Piano
When I am stuck in writing a book, when I am stuck in a problem in life, if I go to the piano and play Bach for an hour, the problem is usually either resolved or accepted. I find, as I grow older, that I turn less to the romantics and more to the baroque composers, though they’ve always been my favorites. In college I asked if I could learn something with more feeling in it, and my professor gave me some Chopin. What I had really been wanting, of course, was Bach.
And I did, years earlier, discover counterpoint for myself. We were visiting my grandmother in the South. What I remember most about her big old house was that there was a small conservatory, always green-smelling and warm, and that there were birds in it; and I remember her white, cluttered bedroom, off which was a screened sleeping porch entirely surrounded by trees covered with Spanish moss and filled with the singing of birds; and I remember the music room, with double doors leading to the living room. I spent a lot of time there, the doors closed, and one evening after dinner I was leafing through some old music and came across a rondeau by Rameau. I hadn’t been taking piano lessons for more than a year or so, and I will never forget the shock of joy with which I heard my left hand repeating what my right hand had been doing, heard both hands together, one starting the melody, the second coming in with it: the feeling of discovery, of sheer bliss, is still vivid.
Here in Crosswicks we have my mother’s piano. It is older than I am, has become difficult to tune, is not always predictable. Keys stick. Notes do not always sound when struck. When we moved back to New York for the winters it was clear that the piano would not stand another transition. In any case, we did not want to empty the house completely; it still had to be Crosswicks.
For a while we lived in a lovely but almost empty apartment. My mother came up from the South to visit, and one day she said, “You do miss a piano, don’t you?” Yes, I did. Desperately. We kept our eyes and ears open for a second-hand piano, and eventually found one which Mother bought for me. It was not a great piano, but neither am I a great pianist. For a good many years it was perfectly adequate. Then it got to the point where the bass sounded dead and the treble sounded tinny, and tuning didn’t help at all.
One evening we were at Tallis’s for dinner. The friend who had cashed Emily Brontë’s check and I were with him out in the kitchen. Hugh was coming up after rehearsal; had he been there he probably would have shut me up, but I was beefing about the piano, and said, “If one of your ritzy friends is breaking up a big house and wants to dispose of a piano, I’m in the market.”
The following Sunday after church we were again up in Tallis’s apartment, and he staggered us by announcing, “Madeleine, I’ve decided to give you my piano.”
Hugh’s response was, “You can’t! Where will you put your pictures?” For the top of the piano was covered with dozens of photographs—friends, godchildren, people from all over the world, famous and infamous, majah, minah . . .
The piano is a Steinway grand. It came to Tallis from Austin Strong, the playwright. It has been played by Paderewski and Rachmaninoff. It has also almost undoubtedly been played by my mother, though none of us knew this at the time. Austin Strong was a friend of my father’s; they were of the same generation, and they saw each other weekly at the Players Club. My mother was a splendid pianist, and one of my earliest memories is hearing her run through an opera score while friends from the Met stood around the piano and sang.
The piano is now in our living room in New York. Tallis quite often remarks that things know where they belong. And The Piano is quite definitely an icon. I am convinced that the fact that Paderewski and Rachmaninoff have played it affects my own playing; the first night it was in our apartment I took my bath while Hugh walked the dogs, but instead of going to bed, I wrapped myself in a huge towel and, unable to resist, went to the piano. When Hugh came in he began to fumble with the dials on the radio-phonograph control, which are out in the hall by the front door. “What are you doing?” I asked him. He answered in surprise, “Are you playing? I thought it was WQXR.” Such was the effect of The Piano.
Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet, 165-167
Appetite
In Galatians 5, Paul presents a list of the “works of the flesh” followed, and contrasted, by the “fruit of the Spirit.”
Underlying the works of the flesh are fleshly appetites and fleshly strength, what you might call an “arm of flesh” (2 Chron 32:8). Consider how anger functions: we desire personal glory or vindication, and we go to war for it.
The fruit of the Spirit does not exist in a sphere apart from appetite or apart from strength. Rather, it grows out of spiritual appetite and spiritual strength. Spiritual appetite desires what is simultaneously true, beautiful, and good (e.g., Philippians 4:8). Spiritual strength is the strength to govern ourselves (self-control) and to die to our selves. Spiritual appetite is superior to fleshly appetite, and spiritual strength is greater than the arm of the flesh (Proverbs 16:32).
Although a spiritual appetite requires us to die to ourselves, we find that it is not just a rejection of our fleshly appetites, but instead is the fulfillment or perfection of what we were seeking. As Lewis says, “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Thus, in God, we find not a deprivation of pleasure and glory, but eternal pleasure (Psalm 16:11) and glory. In Jesus, we do not lose our opportunity for vindication, nor do we experience shame; but we find true justification and eradication of shame, so much so that God is proud for us to carry his name (as in Job 1:8) and pledges himself as our own redeemer-avenger (e.g., Romans 12:19).
Delight
I love Psalm 16:3, the treasuring of God’s people. Here, together with the following verse:
As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight. The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips. (ESV)
All my delight!
I was a little startled, however, to discover the NET Bible and Robert Alter had a slightly different take (both admitting that the meaning is unclear):
As for God’s chosen people who are in the land, and the leading officials I admired so much—their troubles multiply; they desire other gods. I will not pour out drink offerings of blood to their gods, nor will I make vows in the name of their gods. (NET Bible)
As to holy ones in the land and the mighty who were all my desire, let their sorrows abound—another did they betroth. I will not pour their libations of blood, I will not bear their names on my lips. (Robert Alter)
But upon reflection, these readings are not opposed to one another, and perhaps God has even left it ambiguous on purpose to provoke our reflection. We are to delight in our fellow saints, but equally we are to oppose those who prove to be false.
I gotta have my orange juice. 
Exile
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As this pandemic and pandemonium forces our churches to close, and we gather in homes instead, I agree with Ben Zornes that we should not be taking the Lord’s Supper from house to house. I have written on this previously, and also stressed that the command to discern Jesus’s body applies directly to our receiving one another in corporate worship.
This does not mean that Jesus is not with us when we gather! Where two or three gather, he is with us (Matthew 18:20) by his Spirit. But it does mean that there is a kind of famine of God’s special presence and feast, as I have written in support of weekly communion.
The church doesn’t need to be disobeying civil orders right now. And livestreaming music and teaching is a blessing; so is gathering in smaller groups as we are able. It’s just that these things do not constitute covenant renewal, the “sacrifice of praise” before the throne as the ekklesia–assembly–body–bride. It is not true that our individual intercession is cut off. But it is true that the church’s heightened corporate and covenantal intercession, our role as Esther herself, has been cut off.
https://twitter.com/BonifaceOption/status/1242134913350017028How should we understand this partial famine? For one, with the church’s intercession cut off, with an end to offering up a memorial of Jesus’s death (1 Cor 11), there is no more covenantal covering for God’s long-stored wrath toward the evils of our cavalier modern world such as abortion. This covering has allowed a merciful window for repentance, but now we should not be surprised to see God’s avalanche gather momentum, exactly and precisely because he hears and does not forget both corporate and individual prayers and cries.
But we also need to consider that judgment begins with the household of God (1 Peter 4:17), just as it did most dramatically in the first century. This event is not an attack by the world against the church; it is something God has brought about, and he is certainly disciplining us, removing unfaithful lampstands.
With that in mind, the letters to the churches in Revelation are especially timely for the church to consider. With allowances for over-simplification:
One aspect of treasuring Jesus over the world is to cultivate a better sense of just what it is we have lost in this time. Woe to me that I stay home! (Psalm 120:5) Be glad to go to Jesus’s house! (Psalm 122:1) May all who hate the church be put to shame! (Psalm 129:5) How good and pleasant is our unity! (Psalm 133:1) We are a thousand times more blessed to dwell in God’s house than anywhere else! (Psalm 84)
Finally, with respect to the evil of abortion, have we been complicit in telling lies to the world about the true value of children by failing to discern our little ones to be among the body of Christ? “That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.” (1 Cor 11:30) It is amazing to me that God has orchestrated this so that little ones are not dying!
Written by Scott Moonen
March 23, 2020 at 6:32 pm
Posted in Biblical Theology, Commentary