Presenting an original global theory of culture, Girard explores the social function of violence and the mechanism of the social scapegoat. His vision is a challenge to conventional views of literature, anthropology, religion and psychoanalysis. Rene Gerard is the Andrew B. Hammond Professor Emeritus of French Language, Literature and Civilization at Stanford University, USA.

A bold and persuasive case for abandoning old religions and still believing in God In this book, Mark Johnston argues that God needs to be saved not only from the distortions of the "undergraduate atheists" (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris) but, more importantly, from the idolatrous tendencies of religion itself. Each monotheistic religion has its characteristic ways of domesticating True Divinity, of taming God's demands so that they do not radically threaten our self-love and false righteousness. Turning the monotheistic critique of idolatry on the monotheisms themselves, Johnston shows that much in these traditions must be condemned as false and spiritually debilitating. A central claim of the book is that supernaturalism is idolatry. If this is right, everything changes; we cannot place our salvation in jeopardy by tying it essentially to the supernatural cosmologies of the ancient Near East. Remarkably, Johnston rehabilitates the ideas of the Fall and of salvation within a naturalistic framework; he then presents a conception of God that both resists idolatry and is wholly consistent with the deliverances of the natural sciences. Princeton University Press is publishing Saving God in conjunction with Johnston's forthcoming book Surviving Death, which takes up the crux of supernaturalist belief, namely, the belief in life after death. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

The Truth of Mankind draws on Cesáreo Bandera’s long lifetime of critical experience and literary scholarship. Bandera is not only a celebrated and distinguished interpreter of Latin and Greek literature, of Cervantes and Calderón, and many other seminal figures, but was also a friend and colleague of the late René Girard, the celebrated Catholic theorist of the “scapegoat mechanism” as the fundamental logic underlying all human communities and polities; and in the field of literary studies, he is considered a decisive interlocutor of Girard. Through striking readings of Biblical texts, of Cervantes, of Virgil, and, above all, of Girard’s own works, Bandera raises a fundamental question about Girard’s theory. Can it really, as Girard himself thought, be articulated in a way that does not rely on any particular theological standpoint? Or is it instead, as Bandera argues, intimately dependent on the revealed truth of Christ on the cross—a revealed truth which Girard, as a believing Catholic, himself confessed? The Truth of Mankind will be of interest not only to all who wish to understand Girard’s thinking and its relationship to Christianity, but also to anyone seeking to understand how Christianity can address the most urgent social and ethical questions faced by human life on this planet.

Colby Dickinson proposes a new political theology rooted in the intersections between continental philosophy, heterodox theology, and orthodox theology. Moving beyond the idea that there is an irresolvable tension at the heart of theological discourse, the conflict between the two poles of theology is made intelligible. Dickinson discusses the opposing poles simply as manifestations of reform and revolution, characteristics intrinsic to the nature of theological discourse itself. Outlining the illuminating space of theology, Theological Poverty in Continental Philosophy breaks new ground for critical theology and continental philosophy. Within the theology of poverty, the believer renounces the worldly for the divine. Through this focus on the poverty intrinsic to religious calling, the potential for cross-pollination between the theological and the secular is highlighted. Ultimately situating the virtue of theological poverty within a poststructuralist, postmodern world, Dickinson is not content to position Christian philosophy as the superior theological position, moving away from the absolute values of one tradition over another. This universalising of theological poverty through core and uniting concepts like grace, negation, violence and paradox reveal the theory's transmutable strength. By joining up critical theology and the philosophy of religion in this way, the book broadens the possibility of a critical dialogue both between and within disciplines.

Australian theologian Scott Cowdell explores how "having faith" has changed under the influence of modernity and post-modernity in the West. He returns faith from pious sentimentality and arid philosophy of religion to the realm of "participating knowing," "paradigmatic imagination," and personal transformation where it belongs as a "form of life," shaped by encounter with Jesus Christ and worked out through the Eucharistic community. This is shown to have been the typical understanding of faith from Saint Paul to the Fathers to the medieval monastic theologians. Since the rise of nominalism, however, modern individuals reflecting a God newly remote from the world have struggled to maintain this participatory vision of faith as a formative habitat. Mysticism is as close as modernity got, while "officially" faith was annexed by modern Western culture, coming to share its anxious need for certainty and control--systemic, exclusive, and violent-tending. Scott Cowdell has written a wide-ranging book, bringing together several normally separate debates while tackling the problem from a distinctive perspective. He explores faith against the backdrop of secularization, the collapse of community, and the encroachment of an intentionally destabilizing consumer culture. He expounds the nature of desire in terms of imitation and rivalry, and the violent false-sacred roots of cultural formation evident in the modern West's many victims, all according to the uniquely comprehensive vision of Rene Girard. Finally, he dismisses today's growing mood of militant religious skepticism as philosophically outdated and out of its depth before the resilient confidence of a genuine living faith. What Cowdell calls "abiding faith" emerges as a venerable yet strikingly contemporary possibility. This is good news for today's "homeless hearts"--there is the gift of a secure identity and a mature spirituality on offer, within a liberating, inclusive, world-affirming, ecclesial form of life.

This book explores the doctrinal, social, and spiritual significance of a central yet insufficiently understood tenet in Christian theology: creation “from nothing.” In this original study, Brian D. Robinette offers an extended meditation on the idea of creation out of nothing as it applies not only to the problem of God but also to questions of Christology, soteriology, and ecology. His basic argument is that creatio ex nihilo is not a speculative doctrine referring to cosmic origins but rather a foundational insight into the very nature of the God-world relation, one whose implications extend throughout the full spectrum of Christian imagination and practice. In this sense it serves a grammatical role: it gives orientation and scope to all Christian speech about the God-world relation. In part 1, Robinette takes up several objections to creatio ex nihilo and defends the doctrine as providing crucial insights into the gifted character of creation. Chapter two underscores the contemplative dimensions of a theological inquiry that proceeds by way of “unknowing.” Part 2 draws from the field of mimetic theory in order to explore the creative and destructive potential of human desire. Part 3 draws upon the Christian contemplative tradition to show how the “dark night of faith” is a spiritually patient and discerning way to engage the sense of divine absence that many experience in our post-religious, post-secular age. The final chapter highlights creatio ex nihilo as an expression of divine love—God’s love for finitude, for manifestation, for relationship. Throughout, Robinette engages with biblical, patristic, and contemporary theological and philosophical sources, including, among others, René Girard, Karl Rahner, and Sergius Bulgakov.

The Violence Mythos presents us with a powerful thesis on the nature and significance of violence in human society. It develops its argument with passion and concern, combined with a lucid and sensitive intelligence. The book is sharp and to the point, challenging any complacency with its idealism and its commitment to change. Whitmer is an author with attitude and with spirit. The violence mythos is a collection of beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and social expectations about violence in Western culture. It includes the war hero myth, the victimizer/victim exploitative dynamic, the theory of innate violence, the mind/body dualism, the myth of male aggression and the subordination of women, the marginalization of trust, and the development of technology in a tradition of destructive instrumentalism. At the core of the violence mythos is the belief that humans are innately violent. The cultural system is then able to legitimate, rationalize, and use violence to control "violent humans," and thus becomes a self-reinforcing, self-perpetuating system of direct and indirect means of social control. This is the repetitive cycle of violence in trauma reenactment, transferred intergenerationally through the roles and rituals of the hero/perpetrator myth. The cycle ceases with the understanding of trauma in the trust triad of the interdependent mythos.

What holds a society together, what makes it dissolve, and how is a society in crisis restored? These are the questions explored in this study, which brings the Serek ha-Yahad (IQS) into dialogue with mimetic theory. It thus aims to shed light on the forms of life and thought in the yahad, as well as on their underlying reason and purpose. From the analysis emerges an image of a community that not only has a strong awareness of the mechanisms of violence, but also of its cure. Its hierarchical organization and strict regulations are motivated by a perceived dissolution of contemporary society. By subordinating personal desire to community discipline and by establishing a system of differentiation, the yahad seeks to provide a model of how a society ought to be functioning.

Provides the first book-length treatment of what Augustinian thought has to offer contemporary economic theory.