René Girard for Holy Week

On the Square - Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

Not surprisingly, that most Anselmian of contemporary theologians, the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, took issue with Girard on just this point—most directly in the fourth volume of his Theo-Drama, subtitled The Action (or “plot”). There he points out, tellingly, that in Violence and the Sacred the words God and Christ never appear (although Balthasar concedes God and Christ are present throughout the book implicitly). But, more to the point, Girard adopts a position on the Atonement, Balthasar claims, that is oddly redolent of the early Karl Barth:

Girard’s synthesis is a closed system, since it wants to be “purely scientific,” jettisoning all “moribund metaphysics.” All philosophy is secularized religion, and religion owes its existence to the covert scapegoat mechanism. There is therefore no such thing as a “natural” concept of God. This brings us back to the “theology” of the young Barth (and also to Barth’s later theology insofar as he regards the analogy of being “as the invention of the Anti-Christ”); for Girard, religion is the invention of Satan.

Yes, Girard is surely Catholic in his deepest instincts. He accepts Christ’s divinity and his birth from the Virgin, for example. But by accepting these doctrines, Balthasar points out, Girard has “explode[d] his allegedly pure scientism.” Perhaps this is why we always hear the words power and violence in Girard but rarely the word justice. “Can it be proved scientifically,” Balthasar asks, “that the justice for which men long is nothing but power in disguise?” (Odd how Girard echoes here not just the early Barth but also the mature Nietzsche.)