PREMIUM FEATURE
Advanced Search Filters
Filter search results by source, date, and more with our premium search tools.
MSB: The triumph of Christ marks the culmination of your work from a thematic point of view. But in the world itself, it also marks the culmination o… - René Girard
" "MSB: The triumph of Christ marks the culmination of your work from a thematic point of view. But in the world itself, it also marks the culmination of the long journey of human violence. RG: I think that Saint Paul's letters, particularly Romans and Corinthians, have the form of a mimetic spiral. Everything we've been talking about constitutes a sort of exegesis of what Paul had to say about the centrality of the Cross. The Cross is not only knowledge of God, but first and foremost an understanding of mankind. Paul was perfectly aware of this. It seems to me essential that the notion of the crucified Christ as “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23) be examined more closely. I had thought that Jacob Taubes, in his book on Paul's political theology, would develop this idea, but he never really gets around to it.6 MSB: Your acquaintance with Paul seems to have deepened over the years. RG: I hope it has. In a way it is rather recent. I have come to better understand Paul through reading and talking with Protestants. Most Catholics speak mainly of the Gospels. Protestants, on the other hand, speak mainly of Saint Paul; they consider Saint Paul's letters to be the primary Christian documents. I would find nothing more interesting than to write on the relationship between Protestantism and Catholicism. True ecumenicism would be exactly this, understanding what the Gospels and Saint Paul fundamentally have in common. The anthropological interpretation of Satan offers an opportunity for going further in this direction, it seems to me. MSB
English
Collect this quote
About René Girard
René Girard (December 25, 1923 – November 4, 2015) was a French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science. His work belongs to the tradition of anthropological philosophy.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Rene Girard
•
René Noël Théophile Girard
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by René Girard
We are not capable of foreseeing the creative possibilities that this kind of deconstruction — the deconstruction of the old sacrificial system — produces. I think that we must examine our history and try to see whether, beneath what has already occurred, there are not additional layers of phenomena waiting to be revealed; whether some aspects of life that used to be constrained by the old sacrificial system are not going to flourish, other domains of knowledge, other ways of living. Everything that the Passion undid in the cultural sphere might well be an opening, an extraordinary source of enrichment. I am certain it is. One must also keep in mind what Jesus called the “signs of the times.”4
If the patriarchal system, when compared to primitive systems, seems to represent a “lesser” degree of structuralization, then Western civilization since the decline of the patriarchal system can be said to have been governed by a principle of decreasing structuralization or destructuralization during the whole of its historical course — a tendency that can almost be seen as an ultimate aim. A dynamic force seems to be drawing first Western society, then the rest of the world, toward a state of relative indifferentiation never before known on earth, a strange kind of nonculture or anticulture we call modern.
PREMIUM FEATURE
Advanced Search Filters
Filter search results by source, date, and more with our premium search tools.
MT: That also makes me think of Jesus's “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” And yet, doesn't Christ also speak of violence? RG: “I didn't come to bring peace but war, I came to separate the son from the father, the daughter from the mother, and so on” doesn't mean, “I've come to bring violence,” but rather, “I've come to bring a kind of peace that is so utterly free of victims that it surpasses what you are capable of and eventually you'll have to come to a reckoning with your victimary phenomena.” These texts are the religious texts of the modern world. They're not just Western. They don't belong to anyone, they're universal. MT
Loading...