René Girard and the Coherence of the Redemptive Work: Example, Instruction, and the Sacrifice of the Cross

Abstract:René Girard's mimetic theory opens up a possibility of unifying the ethical and objective dimensions of Christ's redemptive work, harmonizing a problematic tension that arises from the redemptive act. To demonstrate this, I draw on Girard's writings on the Gospels to show how a Girardian reading of the cross leads to an understanding of the redemptive work of Christ as simultaneously exemplary, didactic, and sacrificial, with no real distance between any of these terms.