The Nutcracker & the Beast

René Girard's Catholic Conversion, Allegiance to Academia, & Career-Making Blind Spot

(Audio version at the end of the piece)

13 Questions

J.R. Hammond asked some questions recently at Children of Job, “The Cross & the Abyss: René Girard & the Jesus Principle in Theory & Practice, Part 3.” His comment begins, “You are right that I don’t yet understand Girard,” after which he quoted a passage from the article:

Like the book of Job in the Old Testament, the Gospel’s truth reveals its own foundations as a murderous lie: for God to become real to us, all previous interpretations, all prior forms of worship, first need to be shown to be false.

Question 1: If this is the correct reading of Girard, isn’t it extremely problematic that he remained within the Church?

I do not think I have extrapolated overly in this interpretation, so much as unpacked and reformatted statements Girard has made over the years (some of which are quoted in my series). The fact no one asked him this question (assuming they didn’t) might indicate that Girard was himself unaware of the full implications—and the resulting inconsistency—of his own Catholic affiliations, and that this blind spot transferred to those around him and caused them to ignore it. Or, it might indicate that Girard intentionally kept his conclusions ambiguous, and somewhat ephemeral, to allow for sufficient wiggle-room, both for himself and his interpreters.

Or I could have read his statements wrong. But if I changed the word “false” for “inadequate,” or “evolving,” that would surely reduce the impact significantly. And yet they aren’t really that different. Girard himself wrote, and/or said, in this very context, that yesterday’s God is today’s Satan—which is an almost Gnostic position.

(Perhaps Girard was secretly involved in Gnostic Catholicism? Certainly it would be unwise to assume he was entirely what he appeared to be.)