The Joy of Being Wrong by James Alison

Book recommendation:  The Joy of Being Wrong by James Alison.  Once the opening pages grabbed me, it didn't take me too long to burn through this one.  In this book, Alison relies on René Girard's theories of mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism to shine new light on the New Testament witness.  His most important contribution through this book is his insistence that theology must begin with the Resurrection of Christ, which is the key to understanding salvation, theological anthropology, and original sin.  Not only is the resurrection the moment when our salvation is revealed, but it's also the moment when our sin is made known, as well.  In being forgiven, that which we are being forgiven of is made known, namely, our complicity in violence and exclusion.  Though I cringed at a few places throughout this work, the insights offered are very rich and well worth the journey.

"Al human sociality is born thanks to the victim, and particularly, to ignorance of the victim(s) that gave it birth.  Human language and thought are already utterly inflected by this ur-violence from their conception."

-James Allison, The Joy of Being Wrong, 16.

"The risen Jesus did not need to say to those who had run away, 'I forgive you': his presence to them was a forgiving presence, was forgiveneness as a person.  So in Luke and John he gives them power and commands them to forgive others as the way of spreading this presence dynamically in human form.  To the disciples themselves the very fact of his gratuitous presence was forgiveness."

-James Allison, The Joy of Being Wrong, 75.

"Sin is recast entirely in the light of the casting out of Jesus... Sin is revealed a the mechanicism of expulsion which is murderous, and those are blind sinners who are involved in that mechanism without being aware of what they're doing."

-James Allison, The Joy of Being Wrong, 122.