theologians of spiritual

THEOLOGIANS OF SPIRITUALTRANSFORMATION: A PROPOSALFOR READING RENÉ GIRARDTHROUGH THE LENSES OF HANSURS VON BALTHASAR ANDJOHN CASSIANmoth_1726 81..111

KEVIN MONGRAIN

I. Introduction

In 2005 René Girard was elected a member of the prestigious l’AcadémieFrançaise. Girard received Chair No. 37, which has been held by illustriousCatholic theologians such as the Cardinals Jean Daniélou and Eugène Tisser-ant, and most recently the Dominican spiritual advisor to Pope Paul VI, RobertAmbroise-Marie Carré.1 In one sense this is unusual company for Girard. Hehas been reluctant to identify himself as a theologian, preferring instead toconsider his work as belonging primarily to cultural anthropology with onlysecondary relevance to theology as its critical corrective. In giving him ChairNo. 37, however, l’Académy Française was making a shrewd invitation and aprovocative challenge: Girard ought to be read as if he were a theologianwhose intellectual home can ultimately be found on a theological map. Thisarticle takes up the invitation and challenge by proposing that we bringGirard’s thought into conversation first with the theology of Hans Urs vonBalthasar (d. 1988) and then with the theology of John Cassian (d. circa 435).Certainly Girard’s body of writing can function as a helpful lens for readingthese two theologians. The point of this article, however, is only to show thatthese two theologians can provide us with two distinct lenses that locate

Kevin MongrainExecutive Director, The National Institute for Newman Studies in Affiliation with DuquesneUniversity, 211 N. Dithridge Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, [email protected]

Modern Theology 28:1 January 2012ISSN 0266-7177 (Print)ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)

© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Girard’s thought within the family of Christian theology, and then they canalso help us identify its particular genus within that family, as well as itsspecies-specific traits within that genus. To do this hermeneutical work thetwo lenses need to be deployed sequentially. Deploying the Balthasar lens firsthelps us see that Girard is in the genus of Christian theologians who put theprocesses of spiritual transformation at the center of their soteriologies; muchof what Girard resists as “mythic” and “pagan” he opposes because it doesnot involve transforming the human heart from within, but instead involvesdeforming the human heart from without. More specifically, the Balthasar lensenables us then to see that Girard’s thought possesses certain species-specifictraits within the genus of theologies of spiritual transformation. These traitsmark him as a theologian engaged in the activity of distinguishing betweenauthentic and counterfeit forms of spiritual transformation, with the distin-guishing criterion being transformation toward or away from the biblicalnarrative and its God of mercy, justice, peace, and love. Girard, like Balthasar,resists “false gnosis” that pretends to be about spiritual transformationtoward likeness to the biblical God, but which in fact is instead a theoreticalexercise in the speculative transformation of Christianity away from thebiblical narrative and toward “mythic” and “pagan” religion. Girard, againlike Balthasar, seeks to protect a distinctly biblical theology of spiritual trans-formation by articulating it in terms of what was classically known as “truegnosis.” Deploying the Cassian lens next then helps us to further identifythe species-specific traits of Girard’s theology of “true gnosis.” These species-specific traits are characterized by the gradual transformation of one’s deepestdesires through the prayerful observation of one’s own thought patterns. Mostof this article will focus on seeing Girard through the Balthasar lens, whichis a prelude to seeing him through the Cassian lens; seeing him through theCassian lens can provide a more specific taxonomy of Girard’s theologicalprovenance among his fellow theologians of “true gnosis.” The readingof Girard yielded by the Cassian lens will be sketched at the end of this article,but, because of its complexity, it can only be fully developed in anothercontext.

II. A Rationale for this Method of Reading Girard

Why do we need theological lenses to read Girard? Why not just read Girardtheologically without their aid? It is after all fairly obvious to the naked eyethat there is something like a theological agenda at work in his writings. If weread attentively, we see that his anthropology is not anthropocentric butfundamentally theocentric and christocentric, which puts it squarely in thefamily of Christian theology. The anthropological doctrine of mimesis, whichGirard calls his “mimetic theory,” is therefore not at the center of Girard’sthought. Instead, a theology of God’s creation and providential guidingof history is at the center of his thought; his anthropology is merely the

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handmaiden to his fundamentally theocentric-christocentric perspective onsalvation history. He may have developed his anthropology deductively fromlooking at the parts of the providential whole, but eventually the providentialwhole crystallized in his thinking, and since then his anthropological doc-trine has been tailored to better serve the biblical narrative’s panoramic visionof salvation history. Aside from how Girard’s anthropological thinkingevolved, it is clear that for some time now it has reached a mature stage inwhich its explanatory value is determined by its ability to make the biblicalnarrative intelligible.

According to Girard’s theocentric-christocentric anthropology, humanbeings are fundamentally creatures of imitation, and they primarily imitatethe desires of others.2 There is ambiguity in Girard’s early writings on thequestion of whether imitating the desires of others is a sign of an inherentperversity in human nature, or whether it is simply a neutral fact of humanlife. However, eventually Girard makes a clearer distinction (as we will seebelow) between the simple anthropological given of desire imitation and the“mimetic rivalry” and violent conflicts that result when desires converge onthe same object. The anthropological given of desire imitation is axiomaticbut generally unanalyzed theologically in Girard’s writings. Most of Girard’sthought is concerned with describing the socio-cultural perversity thatfollows when desire imitation becomes (inevitably or not) mimetic rivalry. Ingeneral, he contends that there is a consistent and universal pattern in whichmimetic rivalry establishes violence as the foundation of all cultures andreligions. Organized violence results when the anarchic and contagious recip-rocal imitation of desire between rivals threatens to metastasize into a state ofcivil war. To prevent its own self-destruction in the violent mayhem arisingfrom mimetic rivalry, the group channels its violence toward a single victim,a scapegoat. Violently sacrificing the scapegoat brings peace and restoresorder. The scapegoat is then valorized in myth as the savior of the community.Although there are many permutations of this process, Girard sees a law-likeregularity to the basic “scapegoat mechanism” in all cultures and religions.Only the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross reveals the true origins of violencein mimetic rivalry, which thereafter enjoys no divine sanction whatsoever;indeed, the execution of Jesus Christ saves humanity by revealing once andfor all how Satan works through mimesis to pervert human desires and traphumanity in recurring cycles of violence. The Gospel ends all cycles of sacri-ficial violence by breaking the spell of the scapegoat mechanism, therebyexorcising from humanity the demonic belief that humans save themselvesfrom violence through some form of human sacrifice.

Admittedly, Girard’s theory is not theological in the narrow academic andhighly specialized and atomized senses of disputatio in the scholastic traditionand wissenschaft in the modern research university. But to limit the definitionof theology to only those constricted genres would be not only capriciousbut it would disqualify most authors in the Christian tradition, pre- and

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post-modern, from receiving the title theologian. (Is The City of God a theo-logical text? Do Ephrem the Syrian’s writings count as theology? Is Hilde-gard of Bingen’s Scivias a theological text? Is Dante’s The Divine Comedytheology? Is Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly theology? Did Charles Péguy writetheology? Etc.) The often overlooked truth about Girard is that, whileeschewing theology in the narrow senses of scholastic disputatio and modernacademic wissenschaft, he practices theology in the classical sense: speakingabout God’s relationship to the world in a genre that is intra-ecclesial, nar-rative, symbolic, panoramic, evocative, and even apocalyptic. In short, Girardwrites theology like someone who respects the Biblical narrative in all itsmessy imprecision as the source of truth about God and history.

This was evident as early as his 1978 text Things Hidden since the Foundationof the World (the title is from Matthew 13:35) in which he attempted togive a “non-sacrificial” reading of the Gospel. His theological agenda hasonly become increasingly obvious since 1978; his writings have become moreconcerned with biblical hermeneutics, the uniqueness of Judaism and Chris-tianity among world religions, the nature of the Satanic, the meaning of theCross for Christian theologies of grace and redemption, and apocalypticinterpretations of history. Indeed, he sees himself as a friend of orthodoxtheology in the contemporary academy. In a 1996 interview he states, “Mineis a search for the anthropology of the Cross, which turns out to rehabilitateorthodox theology.”3

Nevertheless, Girard resists the suggestion that the rehabilitation couldwork both ways—he has been reluctant to allow his thought to be read as aform of theology that could be appropriated and reinterpreted by theolo-gians. In an essay from 2000 responding to several theological reinterpreta-tions and critiques of his work, Girard wrote the following:

Theologians would like mimetic theory to answer many theologicalquestions to which I confess I have no answers. I understand very wellthat theologians would ask these questions—regarding the church, forinstance, and above all the matter of redemption—to understand atone-ment theories. Their answers interest me greatly. Yet it always takes me bysurprise that such questions should be asked before the repercussions ofthe mimetic theory on our understanding of the relationship betweenmythology and the Judeo-Christian tradition are really assessed andassimilated.4

Later in this same essay Girard insists that because mimetic theory is relevantto all religions and cultures, Christian theologians ought not to deploy itin the service of their “parochial ecclesiastical interests.” He cautions, “If theintellectual independence of the mimetic theory is obscured, if it is perceivedas mere servant of this or that theology, ancilla theologiae, its effectiveness isnullified.”5 Girard prefers instead to guard the intellectual independenceof mimetic theory—and its project to rehabilitate orthodox theology—by

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sheltering it under the category of “scientific anthropology.”6 Therefore alens-free reading of Girard’s theology will have to deal with Girard’s motivesfor this maneuver. Girard has made no secret of his disdain for theologianswhom he considers traitors to real Christianity because they have little or nounderstanding of the Gospels, the supremacy of Judeo-Christian tradition,or the challenges posed to theological discourse in the context of widespreadcontemporary relativism.7

Nevertheless, many contemporary theologians are so intrigued byGirard’s writings that they are not deterred from appropriating it for theirown theological projects despite his insistence that his work is science andnot theology. Yet among these intrigued theologians there are two distinctapproaches to theological appropriation. The first approach takes very seri-ously Girard’s insistence that he is a scientist, and it attempts a hostile take-over: it proceeds suspiciously and its model is the classic patristic maximthat one must first kill a poisonous snake if one wants to extract its venomfor medicine; this approach wants to despoil the Egyptians without in theprocess giving the Pharaoh of “scientific” mimetic theory sweeping power toenslave theology to some philosophical overlord.8 Because these theologiansaccept Girard’s view that he is not doing theology, they view any theologicalcritique as an external critique and any appropriation of its insights as theassimilation of an alien discourse. For example, Jim Fodor sums up a generalconsensus among this group when he argues that although there is much inGirard that is theologically useful, “the ore always comes mixed with clay.This means that Girard’s work must be subjected to a good deal of smelting,refining, and purging to be useful” to Christian theologians.9 Other theolo-gians take a less wary stance when appropriating Girard’s ideas; they see himas a pre-Christian Plato waiting to be baptized, or perhaps as a new Mosesleading theology to a promised land that, despite his obvious righteousness,he himself cannot enter. The late Jesuit theologian Raymund Schwager hasbeen a leader among this group.10 There have been many others who havebeen undertaking similar projects.11

In both approaches, however, theologians generally tend to take fartoo seriously Girard’s insistence that he is not a theologian and his work is nottheology. Therefore, they implicitly assume there is no theology alwaysalready there in Girard waiting to be identitied. This exegetical assumptionthen leads to the working hermeneutic assumption that if Girard’s insights areworth theologically appropriating they must first be lifted out of his non-theological texts and significantly altered into something theologically usefulaccording to the reader’s preferred theological protocols. A new approach toreading Girard theologically is necessary. No theological appropriation ofGirard’s thought that I know of seriously entertains the possibility that hisdisdain for contemporary academic theology implies a deep preference forsome forms of ancient and medieval intra-ecclesial theology.12 Indeed, heclaims the support of and allegiance to the theological core of his project from



none other than the master of ressourcement theology, Henri de Lubac.13 Couldit be that Girard’s numerous assertions about the radical novelty of hisreligious thought, as well as his willingness early in his career to dismiss largeswaths of the theological tradition as contaminated by “mythical” thinking,have thrown readers off the scent of his own ressourcement trail?

As the field of Girardian theology grows, it becomes more evident thatwe need some theological lenses for examining the theology already lyingwaiting—sometimes inchoately, sometimes not—in Girard’s texts, and alsofor examining how theologians use and misuse his texts. If we can see thathe is already doing theology then a theological critique becomes plausibleand valid in principle, and indeed becomes an internal critique. Applyinggood interpretive lenses will provide some rigorous criteria for analyzingthe degree to which Girardian theologians are following the internal logicof Girard’s thought in their appropriations of it. And as a corollary to thatanalysis, good lenses will allow us to examine to what degree theologians areimposing (inadvertently or otherwise) theological forms onto Girard’s textsthat are more or less alien to its own implicit and latent theological content.It is best to treat him as a theologian from the start, and then map him into apre-existing theological world of which he is more or less already a citizen(an idiosyncratic citizen perhaps but a citizen nonetheless). He belongs to atheological homeland already, and any attempt to appropriate his ideas forone’s own theological purposes have to understand and respectfully engagewith the world-view of his homeland. In this article I will propose a methodof reading Girard that will show that there is a certain kind of theologicalproject behind his façade of neutral scientific discourse, and the proof of themethod I propose will be in its results. The hermeneutic proposed here seeksto explore seriously what Girard presupposes when he says that his thoughtis “indirectly theological” in its exploration of “a Gospel anthropology unfor-tunately neglected by theologians.”14 There is more than meets the naked eyein that claim. Girard may have a unique rhetorical framing of his version of“Gospel anthropology” but it remains at its core a form of theology none-theless. Once we understand this, the only relevant questions are what is histheological agenda and in what place on the map of Christian theology doesit belong? If we use the right interpretive lenses we can answer these ques-tions in a way that is maximally fair to the inner logic of Girard’s own texts(granting of course the development of his thought and his changes of mind).Moreover, we can achieve not only a clearer understanding of his overallproject and generate some theological criteria for doing an internal critique ofboth his own texts and the texts of those we can reasonably consider to be hisclosest theological relatives and neighbors. Let us then begin looking atGirard through the Balthasarian lens. This will be a prelude to reading himthrough the lens provided by Cassian. The article will largely concern itselfwith the first lens and only offer a sketch of how the second lens couldfunction; a full performance of a second lens reading cannot be done here.

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III. Balthasar Applies His Own Lens to Girard

The work of reading Girard through a Balthasarian lens is both helped andhindered by the fact that Balthasar himself read and commented on Girard.Balthasar’s reading of Girard only takes account of his published worksthrough Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, and finds Girard’sthought problematic on a number of levels. However, he did recognize it asa form of theology and he presents a constructive and irenic internal cri-tique of it as such; even if Balthasar’s own reading must be corrected insome ways, it is a constructive misreading that casts light on Girard circa1978 as belonging squarely within the family of Christian theology, and thathelps us too make more sense of the revisions Girard has made to his ownthought since 1978 that make it the particular kind of theology it is today.Read in terms of both Balthasar’s constructive misreading, and hence alsothrough the lens of Balthasar’s own theology, which provides the criteriaBalthasar uses to interpret Girard and locate him on the theological map, wecan see Girard’s thought post-Things Hidden since the Foundation of the Worldcrystallizing into a more coherent theological form. The lens of Balthasar’stheological reading allows us to see Girard as a theologian who since 1978has been moving toward a more refined articulation of his theological iden-tity. With the help of the Balthasarian lens—both his critique and the criteriathat generated it—we can today recognize Girard as a type of contemplativeapocalyptic theologian whose most fundamental commitments are not toscientific anthropology or cultural critique but rather to a theodramatichermeneutic of salvation history and to a retrieval of Catholicism’s hagio-logical tradition of saints and martyrs.

In his 1980 text Theodramatik: Dritte Band: Die Handlung Balthasar declaresthat “Girard’s is surely the most dramatic project to be undertaken today inthe field of soteriology and in theology generally.”15 Moreover, on the ques-tion of humanity’s responsibility for the sinful condition that led to theCross, he grants that “Girard’s ‘scapegoat mechanism’ can prove helpfulhere to some degree . . .”16 Balthasar’s reading of Girard must be seen inlight of the overall intellectual framework in which it appears in Theo-DramaIV, which I have argued elsewhere is part of his overall project in identify-ing and resisting modern Gnosticism.17 In this particular text Balthasar isengaged with the question of what in our cultural context would qualifyas a genuinely “theodramatic” soteriology, as opposed to the counterfeitpseudo-dramatic ahistorical soteriologies of modern Gnostic “false gnosis.”That Balthasar considers Girard’s thought “helpful to some degree” indi-cates he sees in Girard what many others fail to see. But what exactly doeshe see? How is Girard helpful in the theological project of resisting falsegnosis, and why does Balthasar consider his contribution of limited value?We must examine some aspects of Balthasar’s own theology before we cananswer these questions.



For Balthasar, a central characteristic of “false gnosis” is its preferencefor purely speculative modes of theology that put God under human gaze,arrogantly reducing the personal Mystery of God to a mere object that can benarrated or defined from some master perspective acquired independently ofprayer. (We will return to this point below.) However, despite the prevalenceof much binary rhetoric in Balthasar, we must be careful to not read him as ifhe were simplistically asserting that Christian discourses are either purely“theodramatic” or purely Gnostic. Most of his thought concerns itself with abroad third category: the many contemporary religious discourses that aresomewhere in between being either genuinely theodramatic or Gnostic imi-tations of Christianity that engage in a hostile re-writing of it. Most of thesein-between discourses are oriented toward genuinely historical and theodra-matic soteriology. However, many of them nevertheless have an imperfectunderstanding of the fact that Christianity is not simply temporal and nar-rative, but also that the particular character of the post-Easter historicalsituation is agonistic and riven by the inevitable conflict between authenticChristianity and Gnosticism’s transgressive re-writing projects. This imper-fect understanding results in practicing insufficient resistance to all thebeguiling varieties of the Gnostic simulacrum. Much of Balthasar’s theologycould be read as offering a set of analytical principles for measuring variousChristian theologies for the degree to which they understand and resistarrogant Gnostic speculations by returning theology to its natural habitat inthe world of prayer.

We see precisely this type of exercise in his development of descriptive andevaluative criteria in Theo-Drama IV, where Balthasar presents the five “con-stitutive elements” of any genuinely theodramatic theology of the Cross:

(1) The Son gives himself, through God the Father, for the world’ssalvation. (2) The Sinless One “changes places” with sinners. . . . (3) Manis thus set free (ransomed, redeemed, released). (4) More than this,however, he is initiated into the divine life of the Trinity. (5) Conse-quently, the whole process is shown to be the result of an initiative on thepart of divine love.18

It is important to note that these five points are not meant to be a rigid,systematic explanation of the Cross. “Our aim is not to erect a system,” heinsists, “for the Cross explodes all systems.”19 Balthasar’s aim is to develop aset of criteria for measuring the adequacy of Christian soteriologies. The mostadequate soteriologies will balance the five “constitutive elements” in orderto do justice to “all the biblical data together” and “all the valid and fruitfulmotifs that arise during the history of theology.”20 His ideal is a symphonicholism (more musical score than philosophical treatise21) that holds differ-ences in a dynamic, tension-filled unity; it is the biblical narrative-governedholism of a providential theology of history, as in Irenaeus, rather than aGnostic speculative philosophy of history, as in Valentinian Gnosticism and

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Hegelianism.22 Indeed, points (4) and (5) are fundamentally importantbecause they emphasize that all true gnosis is rooted in prayerful faithengaged in a process of theosis. For Balthasar prayerful faith roots true gnosisbecause one knows God only insofar as one knows one’s self as known byGod and as partaking of God’s nature. This true gnosis provides both thesense of the unity of all reality under God’s providential plan, and also thesense of difference between the infinite Creator God and the finite creation, aswell as the difference between humanity’s sinful condition and its status asredeemed by Christ. Reason contributes to the sense of unity and difference,but it cannot know a priori (i.e., outside the experience of theosis in prayerfulfaith) the unity of salvation history as revealed by God, nor can it see the unityof the created order broken by human sin; once given the perspective ofrevelation, however, reason can discern the paradox of an over-arching unitythat preserves the irreducible difference between the tri-personal CreatorGod and creation.23

Balthasar’s thought is certainly characterized by a deep commitment toachieving a nuanced, subtle, and balanced perspective on the complexity ofChristianity’s view of God and the God-world relationship in history. Yet thisis not obvious to all readers. His explicitly demonological identification ofChristianity’s Gnostic enemies as the forces of a satanic Anti-Christ, coupledwith his very pointed use of terms like “war”, “battle”, and “combat” todefine Christian resistance to Gnosticism, suggests to some that he is anadvocate of religious violence. This however is a serious misreading of histexts. Balthasar’s depiction of Christianity’s Gnostic rivals is intended to bean exposé of the counterfeit forms of Christianity that attempt to groundpeace and justice on some theory or system of knowledge that is not funda-mentally guided by a prayerful faith formed by the biblical narrative. It iscrucially important to keep two things in mind. First, we must not overlookthe fact that Balthasar’s theology of theodrama is grounded in his theologicalaesthetics, which is itself an elaborate theology of the spiritual transformationof humanity’s latent desire for power over others into a desire to share lovewith others; this transformation occurs through encounter with the formsassumed by divine glory in salvation history. Second, the provocative analysisof modern Gnosticism in the Theo-Drama volumes is intended to demonizethe desire for violence that results from Gnosticism’s forfeiting of a genuinelybiblical theology of redemption through the Incarnation and its attendantproliferation of glorious forms in the life of the Church. In giving up achristocentric theological aesthetics in favor of speculative theories andcounter-narratives, Gnosticism leaves unchallenged the latent desire forpower and violence in human hearts, which in effect allows this desire togrow; Gnostic discourses then seek to enlist the desire for power and vio-lence in some kind of sectarian project to redeem humanity that repudiatesthe non-violent theological aesthetics of practical holiness that is fundamen-tal to biblical soteriology. In holding together his contemplative theological



aesthetics and his theodramatic theology of history, Balthasar presents anapocalyptic version of Christianity engaged in a life-and-death struggleagainst false gnosis to propagate its form of spiritual transformation as thehuman race’s only genuine hope of peace on earth.24 Were this aspect ofBalthasar’s thought used as a lens on Girard’s texts it could illuminate theirtheological architectonic.25 However, as we will see below, Balthasar exam-ined Girard’s thought and found it not fully adequate on this question: whatform of Christian thought is best able to articulate this religion’s intrinsicallynon-violent form of spiritual transformation while simultaneously maintain-ing its focus on resisting counterfeit Gnostic spiritual forms and their non-incarnational and ahistorical soteriologies?

Staying with Balthasar for a moment, we note that his own baselinefor theological adequacy, and hence for a holistic theodramatic soteriology, isa unity of the biblical narrative, a spirituality of prayerful receptivity totransforming grace, and an active life of fruit-bearing in works of love andteachings of wisdom (expressed in both formal doctrine and a variety oftheologies). Moreover, he believes that the name for this kind of unifiedChristian discourse is “marian” insofar as any theology of this type, irrespec-tive of its vocabulary, dialect, or accent, will follow a mariological grammar.26

What characterizes so much of modern and contemporary Christian dis-course, Balthasar believes, is its failure to speak according to mariangrammar, illustrated most clearly by the divorce of contemplative spiritualityand doctrinal theology. The result of this divorce is that Christian doctrinaltheology becomes bones without flesh and Christian spirituality becomesflesh without bones.27 Doctrinal theology then appears as nothing but emptyabstraction with no connection to real life, and spiritual theology becomesnothing but the description of interior states without any reference to God’slife in eternity or to the pattern of his providential work in history. Christian-ity thereby allows its discourse of true gnosis to be divided and conquered:the divorce of theology and spirituality leaves all Christian discourse open tohostile attack by the modern proponents of false gnosis, who seek to rewriteit according to their own Marcionite and Valentinian grammar.

The path to recovering the unity of theology and spirituality begins, Bal-thasar contends, with the biblical narrative, culminating in the Incarnation andPaschal Mystery. The Virgin Mary is for him the defining model of all genu-inely biblical theology. In her prayerful obedience, Mary is impregnated by theSpirit and drawn into her unique mission in salvation history. She gestates andgives birth to the Word in human form. This provides the grammar of allgenuine Christian discourse. To speak authentically of God and genuine faithin God one must, like Mary (and even under her supportive guidance from herplace in the communion of saints) submit one’s heart to God’s plan of salvationthrough first Israel and then the mission of the Son in time; one must beimpregnated by the Spirit with a unique, personalized mission in the drama ofsalvation history; one must gestate this spiritual seed in the depths of one’s

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heart with the placenta formed in the depth of self by the presence of the risenChrist and the Spirit; and one must give birth—i.e., bear fruit—to words anddeeds that are both fully human and fully divine; and these incarnations ofChrist from the womb of the heart must be ecclesially-oriented in that theycarry forward somehow the providential work of the new covenant and thenew people of God. This constitutes being born from above, and although itsfruits are certainly expressible in human words, its roots and dynamics ofgrowth are intrinsically intertwined with the ineffability of God’s eternal life.Authentic Christian discourse as biblical, marian, incarnational, and ecclesialwill therefore necessarily be a mixed discourse of word and silence, time andeternity, saying and unsaying, knowing and unknowing, reasoning andpraying. This is so because, as the third, fourth, and fifth points of his theodra-matic soteriology hold, being redeemed means being initiated into the divinelife of the Trinity under the initiative of divine love.28

So given his own baseline for theological adequacy, how does Balthasarevaluate Girard’s thought? He welcomes Girard’s contribution toward renew-ing in modern theology an appreciation for the second point of a theodramatictheology of the Cross (“the Sinless One ‘changes places’ with sinners”). But healso thinks that it is overall “unsatisfactory” because extremely incomplete.Balthasar wonders if Girard’s system “is sufficiently dramatic” or if it, likemost other modern theologies of the Cross, fails to include or take seriouslyenough all the essential elements of a complete theodramatic description ofthe interactions between divine and human freedom in salvation history. In avery serious criticism that crystallizes the central point of his critique, Bal-thasar goes on to assert that Girard’s understanding of the Cross “concernsonly men’s attitude to the Crucified, as if God’s attitude to him did not exist.”29

This is what Balthasar means when he says that there is a “clear, inherentcontradiction” at the center of Girard’s non-theological theology.30 Girardcomes dangerously close to excluding God’s initiative in salvation history.“Girard . . . proposed that it was not God but men who cast their sins onto theLamb of God; this, however, seemed to give men the initiative in the redemp-tive process, while God, whose part it is always to love and forgive . . . simplylooked on, failing to measure up to the divine action of self-giving.”31 Thenlater in a general critique of incomplete modern soteriologies, includingGirard’s, Balthasar writes, “God cannot function here as a mere Spectator,allegedly immutable and not susceptible to influence; he is not an eternal,Platonic ‘sun of goodness’, looking down on a world that is seen as a ‘gigan-tomachia’, a ‘vast, perpetual scene of slaughter’. Nor, on the other hand, canman, guilty as he is in God’s sight, lie passive and anaesthetized on theoperating table while the cancer of his sin is cut out.”32 Girard’s thought, onBalthasar’s reading, hits both the Scylla and Charybdis of a passive and anover-active God.

Any effort to appropriate Girard’s thought theologically, in Balthasar’sopinion, would have to do more than simply supplement what it gets right



with missing elements. Instead it will have to address the underlying “clear,inherent contradiction” in his thought, which Balthasar identifies as Girard’sskewed understanding of the relationship between natural religion and rev-elation, the consequence of which yields distortions in his conception of therelationship between reason and faith, and between human freedom andgrace.33 It is revealing that Balthasar compares Girard’s thought to “thesystems” of Teilhard de Chardin and Karl Rahner, which Balthasar considersoverly theoretical. Like de Chardin and Rahner, Girard “distills the basis of atotal anthropology from an all-embracing Christology.”34 Yet unlike them,Balthasar argues, Girard conceals an omni-explanatory agenda behind a dis-course of “sharp antitheses” in which Christ fulfills creation by radicallycontradicting it; the line between the inherent goodness of creation, whichChrist fulfills, and the evil of creation, which he exposes and destroys, is notat all clear in Girard.35 This critique points to the theologian with whom hethinks Girard has the most affinity: Karl Barth.36 On Balthasar’s reading, themerit of Girard’s thought is that it desires to do justice to both the all-embracing reality of Christ and the radical difference between God and thesinful world. This is exactly what he appreciates about Barth too.37 Of courseGirard’s “purely scientific” approach to the sinful world goes well beyondBarth—there is no pretense in Barth that he is anything but a theologian—and there is nothing like Barth’s doctrine of universal salvation in Girard.Nevertheless, Balthasar is astute in seeing a basic similarity between them:both Girard and Barth manage the uncommon feat of being simultaneouslyboth overly systematic and rigidly dichotomous. In both cases he sees a verystrong tendency to subvert the emphasis on divine revelation with a mecha-nistic conceptual apparatus that explains God’s workings in history so tightlyand infallibly that it leaves no room for divine or human freedom. In the caseof Girard, his anthropological system replaces God and human freedom withan omni-explanatory theory of human culture and religion that supposedlydemonstrates the truth of Christianity. Girard’s thought therefore, likeBarth’s, tends toward becoming a “closed system” that, despite itself, fallsinto the same philosophical hubris that it denounces.

On Balthasar’s reading, nowhere is the philosophical hubris more evidentthan in Girard’s Barthian contrast between biblical revelation and paganreligion, and between Christ and culture. Both theologians, Balthasarbelieves, operate too often with an unexamined Calvinist bias toward theo-ries of total human depravity and irresistible grace. Girard’s particular use ofmachine metaphors indicates his deterministic assumptions about humanevil and its overcoming by Christ: the scapegoat “mechanism” operates as a“hidden” force which completely enslaves all humans everywhere, and noone has the understanding or freedom to cooperate with or work against it;Christ’s unveiling of the “mechanism” operates as history’s “secret motor”driving everything in non-biblical culture and religion with irresistible graceeither toward the Gospel or toward ever more depraved acts of organized

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violence. This tendency toward mechanistic conceptual rigidity in the theol-ogy of sin and grace leads to the same result in Girard as it does in Barth. Inboth cases there is no goodness whatsoever to be found in human nature,natural law, or non-biblical religion that could crack the iron necessities ofhuman depravity and totalitarian grace.

But this way of thinking, Balthasar believes, is itself not biblical, nomatter how strenuously Girard claims otherwise. A truly biblical modeof thought—reason guided by faith rather than faith captured by a rigidexplanatory system—would respect God’s freedom and transcendencebeyond the borders of biblical religion. Girard’s system, whatever his inten-tions, is in fact so one-sidedly focused on the human recipient of salvationand so uninterested in the divine agent of salvation that it fails to see that allits claims about the absolute absence of God from non-biblical religion arean implicit denial of God’s freedom to work his grace beyond human expec-tation. Despite Girard’s insistence on the uniqueness of biblical revelation,and even on the divinity of Christ, his system is so excessively focused onhuman beings (their perversity and their liberation from perversity) thatGod receives insufficient attention. Instead what we get in Girard is acomplex but one-sided story of humanity’s creation and maintenance of aself-concealing “mechanism” of sin, with little attention paid to the natureand identity of the God who redeems. Certainly there is a God in Girard’ssystem, but Girard’s aversion to any “natural concept of God” and any formof “metaphysics” leads him to so extremely truncate his understanding ofthis God that the free God of revelation, the God of the Bible, is no longerrecognizable.38 Balthasar sees a great danger in Girard: an anthropologicalexplanatory grid will be imposed on all of reality in a very a priori manner,thereby distorting the relation of faith and reason and rendering impossiblea genuinely theodramatic theology.

However, we must not lose sight of two important things. First, Balthasarreads Girard’s writings as forms of theology, and second, he performs aninternal critique of them as such; for Balthasar, Girard’s thought is theol-ogy—even if it is inherently contradictory—and this is both its vice and itsvirtue. Although Balthasar sees a mutual distortion of faith and reason inGirard’s system, the distortion is only serious enough to produce conclusionsthat are “too one-sided” but not ones that are fundamentally Gnostic ordemonic.39 Nevertheless, Balthasar does identify thought-patterns and habitsof mind at work in Girard that, despite his best intentions, come too danger-ously close to the kind of unhistorical a priori thinking that we find inGnosticism. On balance it seems fair to conclude that Balthasar consideredGirardian soteriology deeply confused due to the “ineradicable contradic-tion” at its heart. “For, by acknowledging Christ’s divinity (and even his birthfrom a Virgin),” Balthasar explains, Girard “is positing a theological dimen-sion that explodes his allegedly pure scientism.”40 Recall that Balthasar’s owntheodramatic soteriology is based on the premise that “the Cross explodes all



systems.”41 Balthasar certainly respected much in Girard, but the respect waslimited and qualified because Girard at the time of Things Hidden since theFoundation of the World (1978) was not sufficiently aware that his theologyexplodes his own “science.”

IV. Girard’s Balthasarian Revisions

Balthasar’s reading of Girard and all that it presupposes about the theodra-matic, apocalyptic, and prayer-guided work of theology functions as anextremely useful lens on Girard’s theological agenda. Girard himself seemsto agree. We know that Girard has read Balthasar’s critique of his thought inTheo-Drama.42 There seems much evidence that he has welcomed it as aninternal theological critique and endeavored to revise his thought accord-ingly. The revisions Girard has made to his thought seem to be attempts toanswer it from within a shared anti-Satanic and apocalyptic framework.Interestingly, he signals his intellectual alliance with Balthasar by expressingconcern that modern theologians “suppress” both the apocalyptic and theSatanic passages of the Bible.43 Moreover, we can discern Girard seeking toclarify his interest in apocalyptic and demonological theology when heasserts, in I See Satan Fall Like Lightning: “Satan turns bad contagion intosomething I hope not to do myself, a totalitarian and infallible theory thatmakes the theoretician deaf and blind to the love of God for humankind andto the love that human beings share with God, however imperfectly.”44 Readthrough the Balthasarian lens, we can see this revision and others like themas Girard’s attempt to make his thought more immune to Gnostic re-writingand, consequently, more capable of offering effective resistance to the specu-lative theologies of false gnosis. Indeed, the more he clarifies his anti-Gnostictheological agenda the more his thought moves in the direction of articulat-ing a theology of true gnosis.

Along these lines, Girard has been loosening what appeared to Balthasar asa systematically rigid “scientific anthropology.” He denies that there was ever“le systeme-Girard” and now presents his thought as merely a useful heuristicthat explains many things, but not everything.45 There is, for example,his well-documented turn—which Balthasar failed to notice—from purehostility about sacrificial religious language toward a willingness to affirmsuch language if properly deployed and understood.46 Moreover, he has beenloosening the systematic Barthianism in his approach to non-biblicalreligions; Girard has shown willingness to at least consider the possibilitythat “natural” and “revealed” religion need not necessarily be conceived asinversely proportional, but instead in terms of a developmental processguided by providence from the beginning.47 He also has been open to for-mulating his own version of the “anonymous Christian” argument, holdingthat those are not explicitly Christian but who practice non-violence can beconsidered “implicit” Christians.48

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The loosening has been the result of two developments in Girard’s thought,both of which could reasonably be interpreted as responses to Balthasar’scritique: first, a gradually expanding willingness to acknowledge that hisclaims about the “science” of mimetic theory are designed to function morerhetorically—offering a holistic explanation of things like a classical Aristo-telian scientia—than reductively according to the standards of modern scien-tific method; second, a conscious effort to move away from anything likeCalvinistic doctrines of total depravity and irresistible grace and, concomi-tantly, an openness to accepting a genuinely paradoxical understanding ofhow gratuitous grace cooperates with free will in the process of salvation.

With regard to the first development, if we take a closer look at Girard’sjustification for his own unique blending of science and theology we see that,despite his misleading self-presentation early in his career, he understandshimself not as a fox who knows many things, but rather, to use Isaiah Berlin’sfamous contrast, as a hedgehog who knows one big thing. The big thing thatGirard knows is that mimetic theory and the origins of religion and culture inscapegoating are anthropological truths that corroborate the truth of Chris-tian theology.49 Moreover, Girard puts this one big thing into an even biggerframe: he is a hedgehog who knows that faith and reason are mutuallysupportive and can yield a faith-filled reason and a rational faith, neither ofwhich supply us with an imperial theory of everything or an iconoclasticanti-theory of everything. He sees his intellectual mission as maintaining theunity of faith and reason in a cultural context that wants to exalt reason overfaith or faith over reason; his apologetic aim is preventing reason alone(acting imperially) or faith alone (acting iconoclastically) from setting them-selves up as alternative religions to orthodox Catholic faith.50 More particu-larly, Girard’s aim is, as we have seen, rehabilitating Catholic orthodoxy,which includes both demonstrating the continuing relevance of Chalcedon’sdogma of the paradoxical unity of the two natures in Christ and (althoughless often stressed by Girard) the doctrine of the Trinity.51 Girard now clearlyidentifies himself as an apocalyptic thinker, which means for him that he is anincarnational thinker: “The apocalypse is nothing but the incarnation ofChristianity in history,” he explains.52 Along these lines, Girard uses “scienceof anthropology” merely to highlight in his cultural context the West’s theo-logical inheritance from the Catholic tradition, an inheritance that includedthe integration of grace and nature, faith and reason, spirit and institution,eternity and finitude.53 This highlighting serves the purpose of challengingthe “enormous idolatry” of scientific rationalism and the intellectual influ-ence of religious relativism, which “an empirical-mathematical conception ofscience” underwrites by ghettoizing as false any discourse that does not meetits standards of truthfulness.54 In this sense, Girard is a proponent of arhetoric of holistic scientific plausibility over against the Enlightenment’sreductive scientific rationalism, and his aim is reinstating the validity ofChristianity’s claim that the contingencies of the biblical narrative and its



particular tradition of interpretation of them count as truth.55 “In my eyes,”he explains, “the principal interest of mimetic theory was its apologeticpower in the face of religious relativism, revealing its weakness.”56 Girard isquite clear that he sees the idolatry of scientific rationalism and omnipresentreligious relativism of contemporary Western culture as the primaryobstacles to rehabilitating orthodox theology today.57 Yet for him the alterna-tive and antidote to religious relativism are the classical teachings of theCatholic religion, not pure reason or pure faith per se. It seems fair to sayGirard is now more clearly articulating a version of prayerful, faith-governedtrue gnosis. We can see this in his increasingly sophisticated use of religiouslanguage; he seems to have moved toward an openness toward revising hisown theories so that they function more rhetorically and iconically, which isto say more pastorally and oriented toward spiritual direction for the Chris-tians learning to pray in the Church, and less like totalizing conceptualexplanatory theories of everything for neutral, objective academicians.

Nevertheless, because Girard is still primarily speaking to the academy, hisagenda to reassert the value of Christian true gnosis inevitably suffers someobfuscation. His agenda is not completely hidden, however. If we lookclosely with the Balthasarian lens we see that Girard frames his religiousthought as “scientific anthropology” only so that he can get a hearing for hisCatholic version of true gnosis from an audience generally biased against theclaim that faith yields any form of real knowledge. Although Girard stilloften speaks as if he were a neutral scientist purveying universal anthropo-logical truth, if one reads his texts from the last few decades carefully it isclear that he also insists (even if not always on the same page) that realanthropological truth is accessible only by non-empirical and spiritualmethods specific to a particular religious tradition. Contrary to the impres-sion made by texts like Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, todayGirard concedes that the explanatory power of mimetic theory is bothderived from and expressive of “d’une raison plus haute que la nôtre”, andhence reason (in the form of mimetic theory) both has its origins in Christianfaith and demonstrates its superiority to all other forms of religion.58

Concomitant with his emphasis on the unity of faith and (a higher) reason,Girard’s thought has also become more and more concerned with expressingthe paradoxical unity of gratuitous grace and human free will.59 There wasalways a strong emphasis on grace in Girard’s thought. Yet his revised posi-tion on the reality of positive, loving mimesis in the imitation of not onlyChrist but also the saints shows he has moved from a general emphasis onthe biblical narrative and Christian tradition to a more particular and focusedinterest in the dynamics of desire transformation at their core. In other words,Girard has moved toward giving evermore attention to true gnosis as the freeprocess by which a person allows God to circumcise the heart. Granting thatGirard’s thinking on this point is undeveloped and not maximally consistentacross all his texts, it is also fair to say that he has been increasingly clear and

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consistent in the past decade.60 He has not only moved away from the purelynegative interpretation of mimesis he put forward in his earlier works inwhich human mimesis per se was the root of all evil, but he also has beenworking to erase the deterministic implications of some of his claims abouthow violent mimesis and/or non-violent mimesis control human decision-making. Perhaps more than anything else this movement in his thoughtillustrates his Balthasarian revisions: he not only wants to show he is againstfalse gnosis of all types (including relativism, which thinks about realityoutside the spiritually transformative processes of prayerful faith), but that heis now, contra Barth, a proponent of true gnosis via a freely chosen spiritualpath of desire transformation.

For example, in his 1993 interview with Rebecca Adams, Girard was askedabout whether his understanding of mimetic desire in Things Hidden since theFoundation of the World was an Augustinian doctrine of the bondage of thewill. He answers no, saying, “I believe in freedom of the will.”61 In thisinterview he goes on to explain that free will makes possible the “renuncia-tion” of mimetic rivalry:

The idea of renunciation has, no doubt, been overdone by the Puritansand Jansenists, but the blanket hostility that now prevails against it iseven worse. . . . [A]s to whether I am advocating “renunciation” ofmimetic desire, yes and no. Not the renunciation of mimetic desire itself,because what Jesus advocates is mimetic desire. Imitate me, and imitatethe Father through me, he says, so it’s twice mimetic. Jesus seems to saythat only way to avoid violence is to imitate me, and imitate the Father. Sothe idea that mimetic desire itself is bad makes no sense. . . . [M]imeticdesire is itself a pharmakon—a medicine or a poison. . . . Perhaps mimeticdesire per se is not to be done away with, but it is to be fulfilled—transformed, “converted.”62

When converted, desire for God becomes “nonviolent saintly” desire thatdeeply internalizes the Golden Rule and only desires what the Other desiresfor him or herself. Girard continues: “Wherever you have that desire, I wouldsay, that really active, positive desire for the other, there is some kind ofdivine grace present. This is what Christianity unquestionably tells us. If wedeny this we move into some form of optimistic humanism.”63 He adds thatgrace is present in all forms of positive desire “[w]hether or not it is recog-nized as such.”64

Since that interview Girard has been insisting ever more strongly that it ispossible to “convert away from” mimetic rivalry and violence and toward anew selfhood and form of life, one in which one thinks according to thehigher reason of faith and acts according to the higher freedom of love. In a1996 interview with James Williams he explained that when he speaks of“mimetic desire” he means something like “perhaps ‘drive,’ or élan vital, oreven Sartre’s ‘project.’ Almost any word that could express the dynamism,



the dynamics of the entire personality.”65 He also now insists more clearlythan ever that “the entire personality” includes human free will, and that,contrary to what he might have inadvertently implied in the past, he nowbelieves in the freedom of individuals to convert from mimetic rivalry andviolence through the imitation of Christ.66 Girard argues that evil is notirresistible, but rather humans are free and able to “resist desire and beingcarried away by mimetic violence.” To be “free” means that some individuals,like Jesus himself, have the “ability to resist the mimetic mechanism,” hemaintains.67 The freedom of such individuals to resist takes form as a “posi-tive mimesis,” but its condition is having either “Christ or a Christlike indi-vidual as a model for our desires.”68 “There are two arch-models: Satan andChrist,” Girard asserts. “Freedom is an act of conversion to one or the other.Otherwise it is a total illusion. . . . We are free because we can truly convertourselves at any time.”69 More recently he has asserted, “. . . escaping frommimetism is something only saints and geniuses can do.”70 He appears to beworking toward a theology of grace that respects the unpredictably complexand free processes of human repentance, and he has left behind his view ofhuman sinners trapped in a deterministic cycle of violence. Moreover, hiswillingness to grant that the model of positive mimesis could be a person(s)other than Christ himself suggests that Girard’s thought could be made morecompatible with ecclesial forms of faith than originally seemed possible toBalthasar when he read Girard in the late 1970s. Indeed, Girard seems to bemoving toward a place on the theological map occupied by those who believethat some of the best forms of theology are hagiographical descriptions of thedynamic interplay of grace and free will in the writings of saints and mystics.

But we can be more precise. We can map Girard into the Christian con-templative tradition insofar as he rejects a Pelagian model of exterior graceand is now working with a model of grace as working interiorly on the willand desires, i.e., transforming the heart. To be fair, Girard was saying some-thing like this even as early as Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World:

In reality, no purely intellectual process and no experience of a purelyphilosophical nature can secure the individual the slightest victory overmimetic desire and its victimage delusions. Intellection can achieve onlydisplacement and substitution, though these may give individuals thesense of having achieved such a victory. For there to be even the slightdegree of process, the victimage delusion must be vanquished on themost intimate level of experience; and this triumph must, if it is not toremain a dead letter, succeed in collapsing, or at the very least shaking totheir foundations, all things that are based upon interdividual opposi-tions—consequently, everything that we can call our “ego”, our “person-ality”, our “temperament”, and so on.71

In his most recent book, Battling to the End, he uses the term “innermostmediation” (“Médiation intime”) to describe the process saints undergo in

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being transformed from negative mimesis to positive, loving mimesis.72 Heexplicitly identifies this “innermost mediation” with Augustine’s saying inConfessions, “Deus interior intimo meo.” Girard explains, “Christ alone enablesus to escape from human imitation.” But the Christ he is speaking of here isthe interior Christ of the contemplative tradition, the Christ of Paul’s “it is nolonger I who lives but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:19–20) and theindwelling Johannine Christ. Or perhaps we could say Girard is on the wayto becoming, like Balthasar, a marian theologian whose ideal Christian dis-course follows the grammar of purifying one’s desires and becoming open tothe Spirit, then gestating Christ in the womb of the heart and, under theinitiative and guidance of the inner Spirit and following the external iconicmodels of the saints, giving birth to holiness in salvation history.

Of course, following this marian grammar would imply that we ought toread Girard as belonging within the category of mystical theology. This mightbe a problem given that Girard sometimes uses the words “mystic” and“mystical” pejoratively and he distances himself from what they often con-note.73 He tends to use this word as if it means being “mystified” and/orhaving purely individual, private, peak experiences along the lines of mood-altering drugs or something like the oddities William James describes inThe Varieties of Religious Experience. But he need not make that assumption.Indeed, the overall thrust of his texts—especially seen in his emphasis on “thedynamics of the entire personality”—is toward the holistic religious sensibil-ity described by the scholar of mysticism, Bernard McGinn:

No mystics (at least before the present century) believed in or practiced“mysticism”. They believed in and practiced Christianity (or Judaism, orIslam, or Hinduism), that is, religions that contained mystical elements asparts of a wider historical whole. . . . [I]t is important to remember thatmysticism is always a process or a way of life. Although the essentialnote—or, better, goal—of mysticism may be conceived of as a particularkind of encounter between God and the human, between Infinite Spiritand the finite human spirit, everything that leads up to and prepares forthis encounter, as well as all that flows from or is supposed to flow fromit for the life of the individual in the belief community, is also mystical,even if in a secondary sense.74

The “mystical” therefore can reasonably be construed to mean an overallpattern of religious life in which one seeks to live daily the esoteric meaningof the exoteric structures of a tradition. And if Girard is indeed interested inrehabilitating “orthodoxy” he surely must realize that the saints and doctorsof the Church who created and shaped the orthodox tradition were deeplyconcerned with finding expressions that protected and facilitated Christiani-ty’s mystical truth (such as the doctrine of theosis for instance). And asBalthasar observes, “Even so truly a ‘church of the people’ as the CatholicChurch does not abolish genuine esotericism. The secret path of the saints is



never denied to one who is really willing to follow it. But who in the crowdtroubles himself over such a path?”75 As we have seen, Girard’s most recentwritings certainly share a family resemblance with this way of thinking.Insofar as he is interested in rehabilitating orthodoxy with a religious dis-course of desire transformation through imitating Christ and his saints,Girard has inevitably and irrevocably entered the neighborhood of mysticaltheology. Whether or not he has always lived there or planned to move there,and whether or not he knows the inside of his neighbors’ homes very well,are not relevant for an overall theological reading of his texts that map him asa resident of this neighborhood. Applying the right second lens to his textswill further clarify this point. It will show both his commitments to resistingfalse gnosis, but also his resemblance to his nearest neighbors in the world ofmystical theology and true gnosis.

V. Conclusion: A Proposal for Applying a Second Lens to Identify Girard asa Theologian of Spiritual Transformation

At this point I would like to suggest that we might consider mapping Girardin the vicinity of theologians of desire transformation, and particularly theearly monastic Desert Fathers Evagrius of Ponticus (d. 399 AD), and, mostespecially, his most influential disciple, John Cassian (d. 435 AD).76 Suggest-ing Girard’s deep affinity with, and perhaps even genealogical roots in,the Christian monastic tradition might seem prima facie incredible given hisstrong interest in cultural theory and wide-frame perspective on politics,secularism, and salvation history. Could a Christian thinker possibly be morefocused on the world beyond the cloister than Girard? Granting this point, itis nevertheless reasonable to read Girard as a theologian of the cloisteredheart. Moreover, when Girard insists that his own personal religious conver-sion is fundamental to all his later religious writing, it is not unreasonable toread him as thinking within the basic theological ambit of the monastictradition’s insistence that the mind’s understanding of God must be both theproduct and expression of a contrite, prayerful heart.77

Girard also shares with the monastic tradition the assumption that whenthe mind thinks God it does so most profoundly not in abstract conceptsbut in symbols and narratives. This is why Girard sees theological themescoming alive again in the pages of literary works after they had found theirmortality in the pages of scholastic and academic textbooks. Interestingly,much of the literature Girard finds most theologically vibrant has deepinfluences from the Christian monastic tradition. For example, in the pages ofDante, Girard encounters the Cassian-Benedictine school of mysticism as itreaches a pinnacle in the Cistercian reformer Bernard of Clairvaux; it is notimpossible to see Bernard’s Cistercian theology of spiritual transformation atwork in the first two parts of the Divine Comedy long before Bernard himselfmakes his appearance as Dante’s guide to heaven in Paradiso. Moreover, from

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his studies of Dostoyevsky Girard encounters a host of monastic insightsabout human desire and purity of heart whose genealogy runs from theRussian starets tradition back through the modern hesychast movement underthe influence of figures like Tikhon of Zadonsk, Theophan the Recluse, andthe texts of the Philokalia, and back through the conduit of Mount Athos, andall the way back through Byzantium to the ancient Desert Fathers of Egypt,Syria, and Palestine. Near the origins of the desert monastic tradition thatGirard encounters in his literary studies we find the figure of Cassian, whohimself is the theological descendant of Basil of Caesarea (d. 379 AD),Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 390 AD), and Gregory of Nyssa (d. 394) via histraining by their friend, student, and deacon, Evagrius of Ponticus.78 If Girardis indeed seeking to rehabilitate orthodoxy, it is not unreasonable to assumethat he favors the perspectives of those in the circle of and/or deeply influ-enced by the theologians who had leading roles in creating orthodoxy, manyof whom had very close ties with fourth and fifth century desert monasti-cism. Yet genealogies aside, if we make a brief survey of some basic themesin Cassian’s thought we can see that it is plausible that his texts can functionas a useful second lens for reading Girard as a proponent of true gnosis.

Like Balthasar and Girard, Cassian practices a Christian discourse thatfocuses on training the heart’s desires through the imitation of Christ and thesaints; this type of discourse is centered on the biblical narrative in general,but with a specific focus on the new covenant’s christocentric spirituality ofimitating Christ’s love of the Father and imitating—not simply admiring—theholiness of the saints.79 The aim of this imitation is the true gnosis (spiritualknowledge) that comes from the “unceasing prayer” of the heart.80 Althoughit is rare in the contemporary academy to use the word “theology” for thistype of discourse, it has been commonplace in the monastic tradition at leastsince the time of Evagrius to consider it the highest meaning of the word“theology”. As Evagrius taught, “If you are a theologian you truly pray. If youtruly pray you are a theologian.”81 Cassian takes this Evagrian maxim (andmany other Evagrian doctrines) as axiomatic.82 Girard too seems to take thisEvagrian maxim as axiomatic, and it explains much of his—and Balthasar’s—disdain for most contemporary academic theology.

Cassian applies the Evagrian maxim in numerous ways, but it is clearly ondisplay in his theology of grace and free will. Writing with the contemporaryPelagian-Augustine debate in his peripheral vision, Cassian insists that anygenuine theology of how grace works to purify the heart cannot be basedon “vain talk”, “idle disputation”, or “human argumentation and reasoning”,but instead only “under the guidance of experience” of prayerful faith.83 Withthis theological protocol in place, we find Cassian teaching that free will andgrace work together in “numberless different manners and in inscrutableways” that cannot be explained in tidy theories.84 The result is therefore aparadoxical discourse that hold both that “without the help of God . . .human frailty can accomplish nothing which pertains to salvation” and that



“the grace of God always co-operates with our own will for its advantage, andin all things assists, protects, and defends it . . .”85 Like both Balthasar andGirard, Cassian is quite impatient with theological chatter and quarreling thatseeks to measure grace and freedom according to a zero sum calculus.Cassian insists on a religious discourse that emphasizes above all else faithand its processes of development in prayerful hearts. In his attempt to cri-tique both Pelagius and Augustine and to develop a non-theoretical and fullybiblical way of thinking about grace and free will, Cassian resists formulasand theories about God and grace. With Balthasar and Girard he knows thedanger of over theorizing the ways of God, which Scripture and experienceshow time and again cannot be put into any kind of explanatory box, into anysystem of orderly, tidy concepts. “Therefore it is understood by all the Catho-lic fathers, who have taught perfection of heart not by idle disputation but infact and in deed,” Cassian writes, “. . . we do not acquire faith from under-standing but understanding from faith. . . . For how God works all things inus on the one hand and how everything is ascribed to free will on the othercannot be fully grasped by human intelligence and reason.”86 The double“all” and “everything” in this claim frustrates those who want clear answersone way or the other, but Cassian will not give it to them. He is all aboutparadox and the priority and primacy of experience and its vicissitudes. Godis our teacher; he teaches us how to give and receive divine love according toour own freedom and uniqueness, and he teaches in myriad different waysdepending on whom he is working with, when he is working with them, thesituation in which the person is living, what God needs to get done at thatpoint in time and in that place, and what specific things are demanded by thecomplex interplay of all these factors.

If there is a theory or a system at work in Cassian supporting his theology,it is, analogous to Girard, a form of anthropology. Cassian sees humanpersons driven and controlled by “thoughts” and in need of deep transfor-mation of the desires. Working from the anthropology of figures like Eva-grius, Cassian sees the goal of all monastic life as “purity of heart,” and thisgoal serves the wider aim of living in the Kingdom of God in this life andin the next.87 As Cassian interprets the monastic tradition of the desert, purityof heart means a tranquil state of consciousness free of obsessively self-centering thoughts, free of desires for things that are physically and/orspiritually self-destructive. The monastic tradition, which Cassian inheritsfrom Evagrius and many others, holds a universal anthropological doctrinethat sees all people afflicted with the “eight deadly thoughts” or “eightdeadly faults”: greed, gluttony, lust, anger, acedia, sadness, vainglory, andpride.88 These are the most primal roots of human self-centeredness. Whengiven sustained attention these thoughts become obsessive mental habits(passions). Once thoughts become obsessions, Cassian explains, they trappeople in a constant feed-back loop of compulsive mental chatter that almostinevitably leads to acting out impulsively in sinful behaviors. Cassian writes,

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It is impossible for the mind not to be troubled by thoughts, but accept-ing them or rejecting them is possible for everyone who makes an effort.It is true that their origin does not in every respect depend on us, but itis equally true that their refusal or acceptance does depend on us. . . . Butit is, I say, largely up to us whether the character of our thoughtsimproves and whether either holy and spiritual thoughts or earthly andcarnal ones increase in our hearts. Therefore we practice the frequentreading of and constant meditation on Scripture, so that we may be opento a spiritual point of view.89

Although it seems paradoxical, Cassian believes that the habitual internalmonologue of self-centering “thoughts” is socially transmitted. Cassian, withGirard, believes that human perversity is like a contagious disease becausehumans model perverse desires for each other.90 Self-centered, obsessivethinking is a form of self-love that people learn from imitating the self-love ofothers; a comparison of Girard and Cassian on the social origins and internaldynamics of anger would be very fruitful in understanding the theologicalworldview of the former and the social implications for reading the latter asa proponent of social-political non-violence.

As is the case with positive loving mimesis in Girard and marian spiritualpurity in Balthasar, for Cassian it is a person’s power to allow one kind ofthought to grow or not grow in the heart. The human task is not to attack anddestroy what Cassian calls “earthly” thoughts (i.e., obsessive self-centeringthoughts). The task on the contrary is to not let them grow. People can do thisby not fighting them but rather letting holy and spiritual thoughts growinstead. Eventually, Cassian argues, the good plants in the garden of the heartwill crowd out and overcome even the most invasive and aggressive weeds.And this is why for Cassian, and the Benedictine tradition following him,spiritual transformation requires learning how to listen to what is happeningin the heart: the weeds of obsessive thoughts need the sunlight and water ofconscious attention to grow, and the more attention one gives them (even theaggressive attention of trying to battle them) the stronger and more numer-ous they become. If one can listen to oneself thinking, listen to the kindsof self-talk and mental chatter that dominate one’s consciousness, one willnotice what kinds of thoughts are growing within the heart. One must, as aGirardian reader of Cassian might say, turn away from the violence of themob, and go into the stillness of one’s own heart to find there Christ’s peace.Being interiorly still, quiet, and watchful allows one to get to a place apartfrom the contagious perversity of the mob, a place away from the mentalchatter echoing the perverse obsessions of the mob. Standing apart as aspectator from our own inner chatter gives one a sense of detachment from itand, if one is attentive enough, one can notice the cycles and patterns of ourobsessive self-centering thoughts and thereby realize one’s independencefrom them. We begin to see them as something almost foreign to us, like an



affliction or disease that we do not have to accept. Awareness of one’s self-poisoning thought patterns can enable one to engage in the process of freeingand detoxifying the heart.

For Cassian, the detoxification process is very difficult and requires muchlistening to the self and its obsessive chattering. Yet there is another kind oflistening that comes into play. The part of the self that is quieted and stilledenough to step back from obsessive thoughts is also able to begin listening tosomething else going on within. There is another voice, or set of voices,within: the whispering, murmuring voice of the triune God. Here Cassian isin complete agreement with Augustine’s Deus interior intimo meo; Girard aswe have seen identifies his view of “innermost mediation” with Augustine,but he could have just as easily identified with Cassian (and thereby avoidedassociating himself with Augustine’s more extreme anti-Pelagian claimsabout predestination). As Cassian describes this voice of God within it is,paradoxically, a silence that speaks. Listening to this silence is the goal ofCassian’s doctrine of “unceasing prayer.” Cassian knows that unceasingprayer is certainly not easy, but it is possible, practical, and absolutely nec-essary. The key thing, Cassian maintains, is that one not so much pray byone’s own efforts, but rather that one learn gradually to let prayer withoutceasing happen within; one learns to allow the power of a different kind ofobsession slowly to take over our hearts and consciousness. And here there isa remarkable connection between Cassian’s doctrine of grace and free willand his teachings on unceasing prayer: one can let unceasing prayer happenin the self because it is always already happening in the self. The murmuringsof God’s voice mentioned earlier are, Cassian explains, the whisperings ofthe Trinitarian Persons praying to each other in the depths of one’s own heart.Eventually, with enough detachment from the self-centering chatter andenough attentiveness to the murmurings of the Trinity’s prayers within theheart, one can be transformed from a person obsessed with worldly thoughtsinto truly loving person who is self-giving and who loves others like thePersons of the Trinity love each other.91 The imitation of Christ turns out to bethe imitation of Christ’s prayer to the Father as it is heard within the depthself. This is for Cassian the ultimate meaning of being a Christian gnostic (orin Evagrius’ term, a contemplative, qewrhtikoς92). A retrieval of Cassian’stheology would do much for the rehabilitation of orthodoxy that Girardclaims to be seeking. Perhaps Girard already knows that?

If we are to see the theology already latent in Girard, and accurately readhim theologically without eisegesis, and if we are to perform an intelligentinternal critique of his theology, it would be extremely helpful to beginreading him first with the Balthasarian lens so that we can identify Girard asan opponent of false gnosis. Then the Cassian lens can help us see not only thatthere is a theology of true gnosis latent in his texts (an insight provided by theBalthasarian lens), but also see in more detail how that theology emphasizesdesire transformation through a prayerful observation of one’s own obsessive

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“thoughts” and receptivity to Christ’s inner reorienting of the heart’s desires.Certainly performing an interpretation of Girard with the lens provided byCassian requires much more than I have been able to sketch here. Neverthe-less this sketch does point the way toward a fecund interpretive approach thatcould do much to shed new light on Girard’s texts and give his readers somehelpful criteria for interpreting both his texts and the texts of those whoendeavor to apply his texts to their own theological projects

NOTES

1 Girard’s December 2005 acceptance address to the l’Académy Française, which followsstandard procedure by giving an encomium to the writings of his predecessor, Rev. Carré,is published in Le Tragique et la Pitié: Discours de reception de René Girard à l’Académy Françaiseet réponse de Michel Serres (Paris: Le Pommier, 2007).

2 The best short introduction to Girard’s overall anthropology and cultural-religious theory isJames G. Williams’ “Foreword” to I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. by James G. Williams(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005), pp. ix-xxiii. A more detailed, and also quite clear andinformative, introduction to Girard is Michael Kirwan’s Discovering Girard (Cambridge,MA: Cowley Publications, 2005).

3 James G. Williams and René Girard, “The Anthropology of the Cross” in The Girard Reader(New York, NY: Crossroad Herder, 1996), p. 288. Girard has also written, “It should be notedhowever, that the discovery of this evangelical anthropology in no way contradicts tradi-tional theology. On the contrary, it reinforces its now threatened credibility.” Quoted in GilBaillie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads (New York, NY: Crossroad Publishing,1995), p. xii.

4 René Girard, “Violence Renounced: A Response by René Girard” in Violence Renounced: RenéGirard, Biblical Studies, and Peacemaking, edited by Willard M. Swartley (Telford, PA: PandoraPress, 2000), pp. 311–312.

5 Ibid., p. 315.6 For his basic statement of position, see “Book I: Fundamental Anthropology” and “Book III:

Interdividual Psychology: Chapter 1: Mimetic Desire” in Things Hidden since the Foundationof the World, trans. by Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer (Stanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress, 1978), pp. 3–138, 283–298. He retains the same basic position in Evolution and Conver-sion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture (New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing,2007); see “Chapter 2: ‘A Theory With Which to Work’: The Mimetic Mechanism” and“Chapter 5: Method, Evidence, and Truth”, pp. 56–95 and pp. 159–195.

7 The following passages from René Girard, André Gounelle, and Alain Houziaux, Dieu, uneinvention? (Paris: Atelier, 2007) illustrate this disdain: “ ‘La pierre rejetée par les bâtisseurs estdevenue la pierre d’angle.’ Qu’est-ce que cela veut dire? Le Christ le demande à sesauditeurs et il n’y en a pas un seul qui réponde. On pourrait croire que les théologiensmédiévaux et modernes ont repris une question posée par le Christ, pour essayer d’yrépondre. Est-ce que vous avez jamais vu un théologien s’intéresser à cette question poséepar le Christ lui-même? Jamais! Il s’intéresse à la philosophie grecque et à toutes sortes dechoses étrangères aux Évangiles, mais pas à la question posée par le Christ.” [“The stonewhich the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. ‘What does this mean?’ Christ askshis audience and there is not one who responds. One might think that medieval and moderntheologians have taken a question from Christ, to try to answer them. Do you ever see atheologian interested in the question posed by Christ himself? Never! He is interested inGreek philosophy and all sorts of things foreign to the Gospels, but not to the questionposed by Christ.”] (pp. 63–64); “Oui, la théologie actuelle refuse de prendre Dieu au sérieux.Mais n’est-ce pas cette peur qui est ridicule?” [“Yes, the current theology refuses to take Godseriously. But isn’t this fear ridiculous?”] (p. 66); “Mais, ce que je constate, c’est que nousvivons dans un monde où précisément, la vielle métaphysique et la théologie n’ont plusaucune action sur les hommes. Et j’ai l’impression qu’une approche anthropologique estpreferable dans la mesure où elle est comprehensible.” [“But what I see is that we live in a



world where precisely the old metaphysics and theology no longer have any effect on men.And I feel that the anthropological approach is preferable to the extent it is comprehen-sible.”] (pp. 68–69).

8 John Milbank’s contorted attempt to embrace and shun Girard sets the general pattern forthis approach. See his Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Cambridge: BasilBlackwell, 1990), pp. 319–320, 392–398. See also John Milbank, “Stories of Sacrifice,” ModernTheology, Vol. 12 no. 1 (January 1996), pp. 27–56.

9 Jim Fodor, “Christian Discipleship as Participative Imitation” in Violence Renounced, p. 266.10 Raymund Schwager is an astute reader of Girard who has produced fascinating theological

texts inspired by things he has learned from Girard; he does deserve pride of place amongtheological commentators on Girard, and detailed engagement with his texts is inescapablefor any complete discussion of Girard and theology. His published works are extensive, butthe best text to start with is Must There be Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in the Bible,trans. Maria L Assad (New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2000). Yet evenhis texts must be critically evaluated with this question: to what extent is Schwager perform-ing eisegesis of his own theology into Girard’s texts and to what extent is he identifying thetheology already there?

11 See for example S. Mark Heim, Saved From Sacrifice (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B. EerdmansPublishing Company, 2006); Gil Baillie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads (NewYork, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1996); James Allison’s The Joy of Being Wrong:Original Sin Through Easter Eyes (New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998).

12 René Girard, Celui par qui le scandale arrive: Entretiens avec Maria Stella Barberi (Paris: Descléede Brouwer, 2001), pp. 141–143.

13 Girard has made the following claim: “When I had been accused of not being a Christian,[Henri] de Lubac told me that everything that I was writing was right and there wasn’tanything heretical in it.” See “The J’accuse of René Girard: The Audacious Ideas of a GreatThinker,” interview with Giulio Meotti in Il Foglio, March 20, 2007; available in Englishtranslation by Francis R. Hittinger IV at http://home.uchicago.edu/~frh/girard.html.

14 René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. James G. Williams (Maryknoll, NY: OrbisBooks, 2005), pp. 191–192.

15 This essay will work with the English translation: Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama:Theological Dramatic Theory: Volume IV: The Action, trans. by Graham Harrison (San Fran-cisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1994). The citation here is from page 299.

16 Balthasar, Theo-Drama IV, p. 334.17 See Kevin Mongrain, The Systematic Thought of Hans Urs Balthasar: An Irenaean Retrieval

(New York, NY: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002), pp. 154–209. See also Kevin Mon-grain, “Rule-Governed Christian Gnosis: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Valentin Tomberg’sMeditations on the Tarot,” Modern Theology, Vol. 25 no. 2 (April 2009), pp. 285–314.

18 Balthasar, Theo-Drama IV, p. 317.19 Balthasar, Theo-Drama IV, p. 319.20 Ibid.21 See Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism (San

Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1987).22 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics: Volume II: Studies in

Theological Style: Clerical Styles, trans. by Andrew Louth, Francis McDonagh, and BrianMcNeil, C.R.V. (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1984), pp. 33–55.

23 In Hans Urs von Balthasar, Epilogue, trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco, CA: IgnatiusPress, 2004), Balthasar sums up a central idea of his entire trilogy: even the “data” ofrevelation given to humanity by God cannot “help reason attain to a conclusive system. Forthese data are only valid for what they themselves purport to be: God’s self-disclosure in afreedom that can never be transformed as such into material for reason” (p. 28). The Wordof God, he explains, is a question to humanity’s answers, not the answer to its questions; itis a Word that “accepts in silence many contradictions” and demands from humans simplytheir “unquestioning obedience” (p. 29). Later he provocatively asserts, “One cannot phi-losophize about Yahweh without making him deeply problematic” (p. 39).

24 Cyril O’Regan is one few commentators to draw attention to the apocalyptic roots ofBalthasar’s thought and to make the connection between it and his anti-Gnosticism. SeeCyril O’Regan, “Balthasar and Gnostic Genealogy,” Modern Theology, Vol. 22 no. 4 (October

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2006), pp. 609–650, especially pp. 616–617. See also the article by Cyril O’Regan, “Girard andthe Spaces of Apocalyptic,” in this issue of Modern Theology.

25 It is worth noting that Girard, like Balthasar, appeals to the Book of Revelation to make hiscase, although he prefers the apocalyptic passages in the four Gospels. See René Girard,Things Hidden, pp. 185–190. See also his discussion of the “apocalyptic” nature of his ownthought in René Girard, Joao Cezar de Castro Rochas and Pierpaolo Antonello, Evolution andConversion: Dialogues on the Origin of Culture (London: Continuum, 2007), pp. 234–238, andalso René Girard, Dieu, une invention? with André Gounelle and Alain Houziaux (Paris: LesEditions de’ L’Atelier/Editions Ouvrières, 2007), p. 102. See also his recent discussion of hisapocalyptic perspective in René Girard, Battling to the End: Conversation with Benoît Chantre,trans. by Mary Baker (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2010).

26 The following discussion is a summation of themes found all over Balthasar’s vast corpus.Readers interested in exploring specific texts might consult the following: Hans Urs vonBalthasar, “Spirituality” in Explorations in Theology, Volume I, trans. by A. V. Littledale, andAlexander Dru (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1989), pp. 211–226; Hans Urs von Bal-thasar, “Spirit, Love, Contemplation” in Explorations in Theology, Volume III, trans. by BrianMcNeil (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1993), pp. 173–183; Theo-Drama, Volume II:Dramatis Personae: The Person in Christ (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press 1992), pp. 365–382;Theo-Drama, Volume III: The Action (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1994), pp. 292–360;Theo-Drama, Volume V: The Last Act, (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1998), pp. 462–469;and “Mary and Church in the Redemption” in To the Heart of the Mystery of Redemption,trans. by Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2010), pp. 45–69. For ahelpful overview discussion of marian themes in Balthasar see Brendan Leahy, The MarianProfile in the Ecclesiology of Hans Urs Von Balthasar (New York, NY: New City Press, 2000).

27 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Theology and Sanctity” in Explorations in Theology, Volume I TheWord Made Flesh, translated by A.V. Littledale with Alexander Dru (San Francisco, CA:Ignatius Press, 1989), p. 193.

28 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, V, pp. 425–462.29 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, IV, p. 312.30 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, IV, pp. 310; 312, 309.31 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, IV, p. 317.32 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, IV, p. 318.33 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, IV, p. 309.34 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, IV, p. 298.35 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, IV, p. 298.36 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, IV, pp. 308–309.37 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. by

Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1992), pp. 383–384.38 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, IV, p. 308.39 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, IV, p. 305.40 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, IV, p. 309.41 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, IV, p. 319.42 Girard, Celui par qui le scandale arrive, p. 111.43 Girard, Celui par qui le scandale arrive, pp. 110–111.44 Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, p. 152. And: “La théorie mimétique ne pretend pas être

exhaustive d’un point de vue anthropologique. Elle veut définir le passage d’un type dereligieux à un autre.” [“Mimetic theory does not claim to be an exhaustive anthropologicalpoint of view. It wants to define the transition from one type of religion to another.”] Girard,Celui par qui le scandale arrive, p. 168.

45 See Rebecca Adams and René Girard, “Violence, Difference, and Sacrifice: An Interviewwith René Girard” in Violence, Difference, and Sacrifice: Conversations on Myth and Culture inTheology and Literature, ed. Rebecca Adams, A Special Issue of Religion and Literature Vol. 25 no.2 (1993), p. 21.

46 This turn is clear as early as 1993 when Girard admits he “was completely wrong” about hisdismissal of the Letter to the Hebrews. See Rebecca Adams and René Girard, “Violence,Difference, and Sacrifice: An Interview with René Girard,” p. 28. In 2004 Girard openlyexplained his complete change of mind about his earlier assertions on the inherent evil ofsacrificial religious language as follows: “Parlons net: un espace absolument non sacrificial est



impossible. En écrivant La violence et le sacré et Des choses cachées, j’ai tenté de trouver cet espaceà partir duquel tout pourrait se comprendre et s’expliquer sans engagement personnel. Jepense aujourd’hui que cette tentative ne peut pas réussir.” [“Speaking clearly: an absolutelynon-sacrificial space is impossible. Writing Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden, I tried tofind a space from which everything could be explained without personal engagement. TodayI think that this attempt cannot succeed.”] René Girard, Les origins de la culture: Entretiens avecPierpaolo Antonello et João Cezar de Castro Rocha (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2004), pp. 129–130.See also Girard, Evolution and Conversion, pp. 160, 178, 214–218; Girard Celui par que le scandalearrive, pp. 78–79, 82. However, what Balthasar would have made of this is unclear. At the endof his life he seems to have dismissed Girard, writing in Epilog in 1987 that “Girard and hisepigones” still fail to accept God’s biblical revelation of his “wrath” and continue to insist ontheir own purely theoretical speculations “that God is nothing else but love . . .” Epilogue,trans. by Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2004).

47 Given his frequent use of seemingly unflagging dichotomous rhetoric when contrastingnon-biblical and biblical religion, it is quite a surprise to find Girard making the followingclaim: “J’aimerais écrire une interpretation chrétienne de l’histoire de la religion, qui seraiten fait une histoire du sacrifice. Je montrerais que les religions archaïques ont véritablementéduqué l’humanité, qu’elles l’ont sortie de la violence archaïque. . . . On peut considérer lesreligions archaïques comme le premier stade de la revelation progressive qui culmine dansle Christ.” [“I would write a Christian interpretation of the history of religion, which is infact a story of sacrifice. I would show that archaic religions have really educated humanity,they have come out of the archaic violence. . . . We can consider archaic religions as the firststage of the progressive revelation culminating in Christ.”] Les origins de la culture, p. 129. Seealso Girard, Evolution and Conversion where Girard asserts, “There are elements of violencein the ancient God, but these elements are logically necessary, since they prefigure therefusal of violence that is the center of the Gospels, that there is both a break and acontinuity between archaic, sacrificial religions and the biblical revelation, which dispelsbut does not authorize us to condemn sacrifice, as if we were by nature strangers toviolence” (p. 218). Also, he grants that Plato saw more clearly than the pre-Socratics thedangers of violence, and this wisdom is essential to understanding his philosophy: Girard,Celui par que le scandale arrive, p. 179.

48 C’est pour cela aussi que ceux qui sont non violents peuvent être considérés commechrétiens de façon implicite, comme diraient les théologiens.” [“This is also why those whoare non-violent can be considered implicitly Christian, as the theologians would say.”]Girard, Celui par qui le scandale arrive, p. 142.

49 Williams and Girard, “The Anthropology of the Cross,” The Girard Reader, p. 282.50 Girard, Battling to the End, pp. 206–208.51 Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, p. 190. See also René Girard, Quand ces choses com-

menceront: Entretiens avec Michel Treguer (Paris: Arléa, 1994), pp. 165–166: “C’est essentiel dela foi, c’est le dogme de l’Incarnation! . . . Mais Dieu est une Personne! Il est même troisPersonnes en un seul Dieu. C’est le dogme même!” [“The dogma of the Incarnation is essentialto the faith! . . . But God is a Person! He is even three Persons in one God. This is the dogma!”]

52 Girard, Battling to the End, p. 199.53 “Ce que je dis, c’est qu’il y a là une voie d’accès dans les raisonnements anthropologiques

profonds pour montrer que le christianisme nous apporte une vision absolument différentede la nôtre, et qui nous entraîne vers une certaine notion du divin qui correspond parfait-ement à celle que décrivent les Évangiles. Donc je n’ai aucune querelle avec la théologie.”[“What I am saying is that there is a path in profound anthropological reasoning to show thatChristianity gives us a totally different vision from our own, and that leads us to somenotion of the divine which matches perfectly to that described by the Gospels. So I have noquarrel with theology.”] Girard, Dieu, une invention?, p. 67. And on the “rational” truth of theGospels: “Il est donc parfaitement rationnel mais d’une raison pus haute que la nôtre. Ils’agit ici, à mes yeux, d’une illustration nouvelle d’une très grande idée traditionnelle, laraison et la foi qui se soutiennent mutuellement. Fides quarens et intellectum et vice versa.”[It is perfectly rational, but it is a reason higher than our own. This is, in my view, a newillustration of a very important traditional idea: reason and faith are mutually supportive.Fides quarens intellectum and vice versa.”] Girard, Quand ces choses commenceront, p. 168.See also his comments on faith and reason in Battling to the End, pp. 206–210.

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54 Girard, Battling to the End, pp. 206–207. See also René Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. by YvonneFreccero, (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. 204; Girard, Quand ceschoses commenceront, pp. 94–95, 97, 99–100.

55 His interest in the rhetoric of science over against scientific rationalism explains in part whyGirard is so concerned with challenging Karl Popper’s argument that all truly scientific thesesmust be “falsifiable.” See Girard, Celui par qui le scandale arrive, pp. 169–170; Girard, Evolutionand Conversion, p. 164. “The Enlightenment was the triumph of a certain kind of reasoning,and Catholicism after the Revolution promoted another. . . . The goal of mimetic theory is tobring this rationality to the forefront.” Girard, Battling to the End, p. 197. See also Girard, TheScapegoat, p. 98.

56 “À mes yeux, l’intérêt principal de la théorie mimétique était sa puissance apologétique faceau relativisme religieux donc elle révèle la faiblesse.” [“To me, the principal interest inmimetic theory was its apologetic power against religious relativism, showing its weak-ness.”] Girard, Celui par qui le scandale arrive, p. 75; and pp. 29, 37. See also Girard, I See SatanFall Like Lightning, pp. 190–193; Girard, Evolution and Creation, pp. 177, 210–211; Girard, Dieu,une invention?, pp. 56, 67–68, 118.

57 See his detailed presentation and defense of this approach in Girard, “Théorie mimétique etthéologie” in Celui par qui le scandale arrive, pp. 63–82; see especially pp. 70–75.

58 Girard, Quand ces choses commenceront, p. 168. “Ma thèse entière est un effort qui cherche àmontrer de façon plus claire qu’auparavant que la raison, aujourd’hui, mène à Dieu, et queles circonstances historiques sont de plus en plus favorables à ce qui n’est pas un demon-stration, mais une monstration. À partir du moment où l’on voir le retournement Chrétiendes phénomènes victimaires, il est très difficile de considérer que le christianisme est unereligion sacrifcielle violente. Car ce retournement, c’est la croix du Christ. La religionarchaïque divinise les boucs emissaries mais sans reconnaître en eux des victims innocentesde la foule. Le christianisme divinise le Christ, mais le Christ nous révèle la fausseté dureligieux antérieur en nous révélant son fonctionnement, et la violence qui est la nôtre. Lavraie religion est d’abord une revelation de la fausseté de tout le religieux antérieur, àl’exception de la Bible.” [“My whole thesis is an effort that tries to show more clearly thanbefore that reason today leads to God, and that the historical circumstances are more andmore favorable to what is not a demonstration, but a monstration. As soon as one sees theChristian reversal of the victim phenomena, it is very difficult to think that Christianity is aviolent sacrificial religion. Archaic religion deifies scapegoats but without acknowledgingthem as innocent victims of the crowd. Christianity deifies Christ, but Christ reveals to usthe falseness of previous religion by revealing to us its functioning, and the violence whichis ours. True religion is a revelation of the falseness of all previous religion, except for theBible.”] Girard, Dieu, une invention?, pp. 118–119.

59 Regarding his thinking on grace and free will, it is not irrelevant to read his own conversionexperience as a guide to his theology. See Williams and Girard, “The Anthropology of theCross,” The Girard Reader, pp. 283–286. See also Girard, Battling to the End, p. 196.

60 Rebecca Adams is quite fair in charting the inconsistencies in Girard’s assertions about themoral orientation of mimetic desire up to the year 2000, but her contention that Girarddichotomizes good mimesis/bad mimesis in terms of a divine/human dichotomy no longerholds true. See her “Loving Mimesis and Girard’s ‘Scapegoat of the Text’: A CreativeReassessment of Mimetic Desire” in Violence Renounced, pp. 277–307.

61 Adams and Girard, “Violence, Difference, and Sacrifice: An Interview with René Girard,”p. 23.

62 Ibid., pp. 23–24.63 Ibid., p. 25.64 Ibid., p. 26.65 Williams and Girard, “The Anthropology of the Cross,” The Girard Reader, p. 268.66 See Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, pp. 13–15, 39–40, 137, 185; Girard, Evolution and

Conversion, pp. 211, 219, 222–224. “God can only speak to us—he doesn’t intervene toconstrain us precisely because he respects our freedom. It is up to us to go toward him.”Girard, Dieu, une invention?, p. 111. He also now insists that, despite his continued use ofmechanistic language, his view of violent mimesis is not deterministic: Girard, Evolution andConversion, p. 67.

67 Girard, Evolution and Conversion, p. 222.



68 Girard, Evolution and Conversion, pp. 222–223, see also pp. 214–216.69 Girard, Evolution and Conversion, p. 223.70 Girard, Battling to the End, p. 133.71 Girard, Things Hidden, pp. 399–320.72 Girard, Battling to the End, p. 133. The term “médiation intime” is from the original French

text René Girard, Achever Clausewitz: Entretiens avec Benoît Chantre (Paris: Carnets Nord,2007), p. 235.

73 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, pp. 4–5, 229; Girard, The Scapegoat, pp. 126, 210; Girard, ThingsHidden, pp. 29, 63, 178, 274, 361, 401, 446; Girard, I See Satan Fall, p. 98; Girard, Evolution andConversion, p. 80.

74 Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, Volume I: TheFoundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (New York, NY: Crossroad PublishingCompany, 2002), p. xvi.

75 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics: Volume I: Seeing theForm, trans. by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1982), p. 34.

76 For a helpful brief introduction to Cassian see Owen Chadwick’s “Introduction” in JohnCassian: Conferences, trans. by Colm Luibheib (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985), pp. 1–36.Perhaps the best overall study of Cassian, both the content of his theology and its sources,is by Columba Stewart, O.S.B. Cassian the Monk (New York, NY: Oxford University Press,1998). Thomas Merton’s lectures on Evagrius and Cassian are also very helpful; see hisCassian and the Fathers: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition, ed. By Patrick F. O’Connell(Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2005). The best English translations of Cassian’stwo main works are The Institutes, trans. Boniface Ramsey (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2000)and The Conferences, trans. Boniface Ramsey (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997).

77 See Girard, Quand ces choses commenceront (Paris: Arléa, 1994), pp. 216–226. See also RenéGirard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, trans. YvonneFreccero (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966); René Girard, “Literatureand Christianity: A Personal View,” Philosophy and Literature, Vol. 23 no. 1 (April 1999), pp.32–43. Michael Kirwan makes some helpful connections between Girard’s personal reli-gious conversion and his intellectual study of conversion in literature in Girard and Theology(New York: T&T Clark, 2009), pp. 1–4. Compare Girard’s point of view with the classicmonastic doctrine that the prayerful heart governs the intellect and guides it to think rightlyabout God; see Writings from the Philokalia: On the Prayer of the Heart, trans. E. Kadloubovskyand G.E.H. Palmer (London: Faber and Faber, 1951), pp. 229, 271.

78 For a brief but informative discussion of the relationship between Evagrius and the Cappa-docians, including the Evagrius’ involvement at the Second Ecumenical Council and thelater accusations of Origenism against him, see John Eudes Bamberger, O.C.S.O., “Introduc-tion” to Evagrius Ponticus: The Praktikos & Chapters on Prayer, trans. John Eudes Bamberger,O.C.S.O. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press and Cistercian Publications Inc., 1972),pp. xxxv–xlviii. Although there is no evidence that Cassian himself knew the Cappadocians,he was close to, and possibly ordained by, John Chrysostom; see Stewart, Cassian the Monk,pp. 12–15.

79 Cassian, Conference X, chapter VII.1–2; Conference XXIV, chapter XXVI.4; Conference XI,chapters V, VII.4, IX.4; The Conferences, pp. 375–376, 848. 411, 413, 416.

80 For Cassian’s doctrine of true gnosis, see Conference XIV “On Spiritual Knowledge” and forhis doctrine of unceasing prayer see also Conference XIV and Conferences IX and X “OnPrayer”; The Conferences, pp. 499–532; 323–393.

81 Evagrius, Chapters on Prayer, #60; found in Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos & Chapters onPrayer, p. 65. See also John Eudes Bamberger, O.C.S.O., “Desert Calm, Evagrius Ponticus:The Theologian as Spiritual Guide,” Cistercian Studies, Vol. 27 no. 3 (1992), pp. 185–198.

82 See for example Cassian, Conference XIV, chapters IX.7 and X.1; The Conferences, pp. 513–514. See also Stewart, Cassian the Monk, pp. 2, 9–12, 19, 23, 25, 28, 35–36. However, Stewartargues that Pseudo-Macarius and Diadochus of Photike were also very influential in Cas-sian’s spiritual theology.

83 Cassian, Conference XIII, chapter XVIII.1, 2, 4; The Conferences, pp. 489–490.84 Cassian, Conference XIII, chapter XVII.1; The Conferences, p. 488.85 Cassian, Conference XIII, chapters V.1 and XIII.1; The Conferences, pp. 470, 481.86 Cassian, Conference XIII, chapter XVIII.4; The Conferences, pp. 490–491.

110 Kevin Mongrain


87 Cassian, Conference I; The Conferences, pp. 41–64.88 Cassian, The Institutes, trans. Boniface Ramsey (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2000). See Books

V-XII. For a lucid and helpful overview of the doctrine of the “eight classes of thoughts” inEvagrius, see Gabriel Bunge, Dragon’s Wine and Angel’s Bread: The Teachings of Evagrius ofPonticus on Anger and Meekness, trans. Anthony P. Gythiel (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’sSeminary Press, 2009), pp. 35–38.

89 Cassian, Conference I, chapter XVII.1; The Conferences, p. 56.90 The metaphor of “contagion” is present throughout Girard’s corpus, but it is ubiquitous in

his most theological work, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, pp. 17, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 35,41, 42, 43, 50, 51, 57, 58, 65, 69, 70, 71, 74, 81, 86, 87, 94, 104, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120,121, 123, 124, 127, 131, 132, 138, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 156, 157, 173, 186,187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 197, 198, 199. For Cassian’s use of the term “contagion” (which is theEnglish word Boniface Ramsey uses to translate the Latin terms contagio and contagium) forinfectious sin, vice, and evil, see Institutes VII.XXVI.1; X.VI.8; XI.XIX.2 (The Institutes, pp.182, 224, 248); and Conferences IV.XIX.2; V.V.1; IX.III.3; XI.VI.1; XI.VIII.5; XII.III.3; XIV.II.1;XIV.IX.3; XXII.XI.5; The Conferences, pp. 167, 185, 331, 411, 414, 437, 505, 512, 774.

91 Cassian, Conference X, chapter VII.1–3; The Conferences, pp. 375–376.92 For a discussion gnosis in Evagrius, see Bunge, Dragon’s Wine and Angel’s Bread, pp. 48–49.



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