From Sparagmos to Agape Feast

Eric Gans in his highly insightful book, The Girardian Origins of Generative Anthropology, critiquing the thought of Rene Girard, says that what is missing there is any insight whatever into the content of sacrifice other than (expelled) violence, especially into its alimentary content and function. In actuality, according to Gans, what is missing is any description or inference as to what follows the “emissary murder” (as he calls the scapegoat’s sacrifice, somewhat in line with the French original) other than cessation of violence or resentments (or, rather, deferral thereof) and the ensuing, if temporary, peace. He avers that there is much more to such a moment and the respite that follows in its wake, regardless of whether it is the originary murder that “created” humanity out of its preceding prehuman state – through the creation of the first sign that in due course would become human language (Gans thought’s forte) – or any subsequent similar event.

Regarding this evident omission as a deficiency in need of correction, Gans sketches summarily in various places of the book scenarios of human exchange (economic, cultural, etc.) enabled by and engaged in during this respite. He touches also in this context, albeit briefly, on the Crucifixion of Jesus, which is obviously of special interest for the Christian. Not intending to question the centrality for Girard’s thought of this event, its exposition in it being decisive as to whether it actually stands or falls, Gans is also ready to acknowledge that the ultimate meaning of this event for Girard is Christ’s exhortation to universal love of one another. Yet, according to Gans’ reading of Girard, it actually is, and must be, posited merely as a call directed only to people as individuals, and, on Girardian grounds, for good reason: the ever-present risk of violent mimetic contagion, even in communities ostensibly pursuing nothing but and guided by universal love. Gans adds another reason, namely lack of any reference there whatsoever to signs or symbols, including those capable by virtue of their content of mediating this love. Thus love’s potential for community creation and communal action is never explored there and entirely missed. One might add that this is in total contradistinction to the various religious symbols and community-building rituals that Christianity has actually created.  

Now obviously in most forms of Christianity there exists today in ritual, even sacramental form a sharing (symbolic to some, mysteriously real to others) of the alimentary remains of the central Christian sacrifice. This is of course the Eucharist which, it is worth noting, was instituted by Jesus at the Last Supper as a memorial ritual in advance of His foundational once-and-for-all violence-revealing self-sacrifice. Yet Girard, a devout Catholic, has not written explicitly on the Eucharist, let alone analyze this central ritual’s symbolic meaning or assign to it any importance over and above a commemorative one. Apparently Christ’s mysterious presence in the Eucharist is purely a matter of faith to him and as such is not to be discussed in texts developing his anthropological hypotheses, which position obviously must be respected. He never passes over the threshold of theology proper. Yet this refusal is also evidently in line with his unwillingness to discuss sacrificial events’ alimentary function.  

It seems that any bloody sacrifice is so abhorrent to Girard that he cannot rationally bring himself to attaching any positive value to distribution for nourishment of any such sacrificial remains.  And the Eucharist is obviously celebrated in remembrance of Jesus’ bloody Passion. Girard struggled with this central Christian event. For example he has been adamant in denying its expiatory function, which position is shared by many Christians. He has also insisted that a gradually growing realization, first among various Roman empire’s subject peoples (and certainly by divine intercession, i.e., that of the Holy Spirit), that Jesus was an innocent victim (or, as later amended by Girard himself, an innocent self-sacrificing victim) of a scapegoating murder, openly and with determination claiming his innocence all along, testifies that His Crucifixion was not yet another sacrifice creating in its wake the “sacred,” that is, expulsion/ diversion/ deferral of violence.

But it is this very understanding, when coming to fruition, that was bringing in its wake various symbols, rituals and sacraments, including the exact sacramental formulation and meaning of the Eucharist. Consequently, Girard's anthropology, Christian as it is, would certainly benefit from assigning value to symbols and rituals meant to imbue both individual and communal action, and preeminently so to those connected with the Passion and, consequently, the Eucharist. This need for an enriched symbolic meaning becomes especially evident or even glaring now, as Christ’s call to universal love is coming to us across the intervening centuries of being ignored, misrepresented, corrupted or rejected outright. This call is certainly now becoming ever more urgent, yet ever less understood by many regular Church-goers, as this love is more and more widely taken to necessarily embrace broader and broader categories of up-until-now marginalized human beings that earlier versions of Christianity were satisfied to leave precisely there, on the margins, if not express or even foster prejudice against them.

So how are Christians acting on this call actually supposed to measure up to the task? Their need of focusing and grounding is certainly well served by Christ-centered contemplation, discussed in another post. But they would be equally well served if they realized, with their compatriots sharing the growing clarity of this overarching insight into love’s necessary universality and the concomitant rejection of any vestige of violence, that some additional – new or rediscovered – forms of community-creating/ sustaining action reinforced by meaningful ritual might also be of help. Such as would be able to counteract and hopefully dispel for them the well-entrenched and exceedingly pervasive myth of redemptive violence, a myth actually having its own insidious if often unrevealed rituals propagated by the media and politics.

Now there is historical evidence (e.g., several Scriptural passages and documents from the era as well as frescos from Rome's catacombs) from the times of the early, cruelly persecuted, Church of the existence of customs  that were of help in sustaining (or maybe even helping enlarge if not create) peaceful communities of ready-for-martyrdom believers. I am referring to agape feasts, or communal love-feasts. Many early Christians, certainly guided by the Holy Spirit, seem to have had wisdom enough to take their cue from Jesus’ example and exhortation to commemorate His Last Supper and create customs, if not rituals, based on this central event. It is true that there probably never was a uniform practice or form of agape feast, as well as that it was not universally known across the Christian world. But where they did exist, agape feasts seem to have been at least at some times and in some locations very closely connected to the sharing of the Eucharistic elements.

The custom unfortunately has long since fallen into desuetude, for various reasons, the Church becoming preeminently a this-worldly institution being probably the most important (signs of its imminent demise started to appear in force shortly after the Church became established.) But now that the Church is rife with confusion tearing it apart, it might be ripe for reintroduction of this custom/ ritual on a meaningful scale. And although it is worth remembering that one of the classes of marginalized fellow human beings are the destitute who could use this nourishment for their sustenance if not for sheer survival, I am not talking here about soup kitchens, even if staffed by church volunteers. The whole idea of the communal love-feast is that its participants should be all the members of a community, and in equal capacity, i.e., qua participants. That we truly encounter one another around the agape table.

By sharing in agape feasts with our fellow humans we would also be testifying to the true symbolic meaning of the Eucharist, this commemoration of the ultimate act of self-giving, that is to love. Eric Gans’ “aborted gesture of appropriation,” this sign that bestows meaning by deferring violence, made use of before one and all can peaceably engage in a sparagmos, or equal tearing-apart of sacrificial meat, all of that spurred by the appetites and mimetic desires of a whole crowd consisting of all the participants, would be superseded (and expressed) by the common transcendent desire of the agape sharers, the desire capable of forming a permanent peaceful community. And why? For this desire can be satisfied without fail in all those sharing (from) an Abundance beyond compare, sharing (from) the ever self-sacrificing God that is Love, sharing a Love that is God. We would be thus creating, and later sustaining and strengthening, communities of love witnessing to what true love of one another is about. And there is none other reason for that but the fact that the source of this transcendent desire of ours, namely Jesus Christ, has finally – across the centuries and lifetimes, over the infinite or infinitesimal spaces – become our innermost mediator, His Presence finally established in the hearts of us all who are heeding His call.