Living Faithfully ‘Where Danger Threatens’: Christian Discernment

according to John Cassian and René Girard

Kevin Lenehan

C’est une accumulation de désirs

qui doit faire éclater la Parousie.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Épilogue du Milieu divin.

The apocalyptic feeling

On the occasion of René Girard’s reception among the immortels of the Academie

française, Michel Serres spoke for them both: “We shared a childhood of war, an

adolescence of war, a youth of war, following a paternity of war.” He went on claim that:

“Historians will one day ask us to explain the unexplainable: this formidable wave of

violence that submerged the West in the twentieth century, that sacrificed not only millions

of young people during the World War I, but then dozens of millions during World War II.”1

Undoubtedly the violent history of the twentieth century has been a formative context for

the development of Girard’s mimetic theory. And perhaps it is no surprise that, late in his

life, after the events of 9/11 and the globalization of terrorism, he has turned his attention

to the study of modern warfare and the contemporary experience of global violence.

Indeed, at each developmental stage of his theory of the violent origins and sacrificial

1 Michel Serres, “Receiving René Girard into the Academie Française,” in For René Girard: Essays in

Friendship and in Truth (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2009), 8. On Girard’s recollection

of the war years, see “René Girard: ‘La guerre est partout’,” Le Point, 18 October 2007, available at

http://www.lepoint.fr/actualites-chroniques/2007-10-18/rene-girard-la-guerre-est-partout/989/0/206070,

accessed 3 April 2013.

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maintenance of human culture there has lurked the shadow of an uncontrollable violence

that cannot be “managed” successfully by the religious logic of the scapegoat mechanism.

Recently, in Battling to the End (2010),2 Girard brings us face to face with the prospect of an

escalation of violence among humans to a degree where our survival at the global level is

threatened.

In typically paradoxical fashion, however, Girard argues – in Achever Clausewitz and

a number of interviews conducted around the time of its publication3 – that while on the

one hand humanity has entered irrevocably into a new phase of its violent history, on the

other hand this feeling of things escalating out of control is nothing new. Not for those who

read the Hebrew and Christian scriptures anyway. The biblical text exhibits for us precisely

this “apocalyptic feeling”—an awareness that comes from living in the midst of violence

while knowing that violence is ultimately powerless. For Girard, “The apocalyptic feeling is

the consciousness that the scapegoat business has run its course ... Any great Christian

experience is apocalyptic because what one realizes is that after the decomposition of the

2 Battling to the End: Conversations with Benôit Chantre, trans. Mary Baker (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State

University Press, 2010), orig. Achever Clausewitz: Entretiens avec Benoît Chantre (Paris: Carnet Nord, 2007). 3 See Henri Tincq’s interview with Girard shortly after the attacks of 11 September 2001, “Ce qui se joue

aujourd’hui est une rivalité mimétique à l’échelle planétaire,” Le Monde, 6 November, 2001; see also “René

Girard: ‘L’apocalypse peut être douce’,” Le Figaro, 8 November 2007, available at

http://www.lefigaro.fr/livres/2007/11/08/03005-20071108ARTFIG00119-rene-girard-lapocalypse-peut-etre-

douce-.php, accessed 3 April 2013; “René Girard: ‘La guerre est partout’,”; “René Girard’s Accusation:

Intellectuals are the Castrators of Meaning,” Modern Age (Spring 2008) 180-185 [a translation by Paul N.

Farone and Christopher S. Morrissey of an interview with Girard by Giulio Meotti in Il Foglio, 20 March 2007];

Robert Doran, “Apocalyptic Thinking after 9/11: An Interview with René Girard,” SubStance 115 (2008) 29-32;

Cynthia L. Haven, “‘Christianity Will be Victorious, But Only in Defeat’: An Interview with René Girard,”

First Things, 7 July 2009, available at http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2009/07/christianity-will-be-

victorious-but-only-in-defeat; accessed 27 March 2013.

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sacrificial order there is nothing standing between ourselves and our possible destruction”.

“How this will materialize”, he concludes, “I don’t really know.”4

This eschatological realism has been a hallmark of Girard’s thinking from his earliest

writings.5 Yet increasingly he notices an uncanny resonance between global events and the

apocalyptic genre of some biblical texts: “Two world wars, the invention of the atomic

bomb, several genocides, and an imminent ecological disaster have not sufficed to convince

humanity, and Christians above all, that the apocalyptic texts might not be predictions, but

certainly do concern the disaster that is underway.”6 Several times, Girard has spoken about

two principal attitudes towards human history: the mythological and the biblical.7 The

mythological interpretation of history tries to dissimulate violence, in order to camouflage

and divert attention from the unjust violence upon which human cultures are founded and

by which they are maintained. This is the historical hermeneutic of the classical Greeks, the

great Eastern traditions, the Enlightenment philosophes and their critics; the logic of both

the “eternal return” and the “myth of progress”. It remains, Girard claims, the predominant

4 René Girard with Pierpaolo Antonello and João Cezar de Castro Rocha, Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues

on the Origins of Culture (London: T & T Clark/Continuum, 2007), 235. On Girard’s apocalyptic hermeneutic

of history see Wolfgang Palaver, René Girards mimetische Theorie: Im Kontext kulturtheoretischer und

gesellschaftspolitischer Fragen (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2003, 2008), 311-321. 5 Girard states that: “ma pensée a toujours été apocalyptique.” See “L’envers du mythe: Entretiens avec Maria

Stella Barberi,” in Celui par qui le scandale (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2001), 117. See also the penultimate

and revelatory chapter (“The Dostoyevskian Apocalypse”) of his first book, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 256-

89. In the 2007 interview “La guerre est partout”, Girard comments: “Dans ces conditions, je ne vois pas de

tâche plus importante que de rappeler sans cesse le realisme de la révélation et des textes apocalyptiques.” On

realism in Girard’s work see Desiderio Parrilla, “Las tres versiones rivals de la filosofía en René Girard:

Tradición, Genealogía, Enciclopedia,” Anuario Filosófico 43, no. 3 (2008): 637-660; Girard’s realist reading of

texts is critiqued by Richard Kearney, “Myths and Scapegoats: The Case of René Girard,” Theory, Culture and

Society 12, no. 1 (1995): 1-14. 6 Battling to the End, x It is important to underline that Girard does not read apocalyptic literature

mythologically but historically; the apocalypse is not the violence of God unleashed on the world, but “the

violence of man unleashed by the destruction of the powers [that restrain it].” Robert Doran, “Apocalyptic

Thinking after 9/11,” 26; Cynthia L. Haven, “Christianity Will Be Victorious,” 5. 7 See René Girard, “On Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ,” Anthropoetics 10, no. 1 (2004), 4; Haven,

“Christianity Will Be Victorious,” 6.

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religious attitude up to today. The biblical hermeneutic of history is much rarer, and is to be

found at work (to various extents) in historical contexts in which the Judeo-Christian

narrative has been culturally informative. Contrary to the mythological worldview, the

biblical attitude is the revelation of violence in all its injustice and all its illusory power. The

biblical perspective sees through the haze of escalating violence and notices the “real time”

of the victimage mechanism: the gradually unfolding process of accusation, expulsion, and

attempted divinisation of an innocent victim. Here progress is not the advance from one

turn of the sacrificial cycle to the next, or the self-determining fulfilment of human reason

or freedom, but the surprising and incomplete recognition of the innocence of the

scapegoat in all its cultural manifestations.8 Rather than a linear and predetermined

dynamic of progress, Girard prefers the formula of Jacques Maritain, that “with the passing

of time there is always more good and more evil in the world.”9

But here the paradox is again evident: the recognition of the truth about sacrificial

violence exposes us to the unfettered escalation of that violence (la montée aux extrêmes);

it disables the mechanisms and conditions (cultural, political, technological) which “contain”

our mimetically-generated violence. Thus real time, the time of the gradual recognition of

the innocent victim and undoing of sacralised violence, is experienced as “a great test”,

particularly by those who read history through the biblical text.10 It means learning to live

with the “apocalyptic feeling” of knowing the failure of violence in the midst of violent

attempts to gain security, prosperity, and unity. It means learning to live – in a phrase of

Hölderlin employed by Girard in the pivotal fifth chapter of Achever Clausewitz – “where

8 This gradual process is outlined in the final chapters of René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, translated

by James G. Williams (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2001). 9 Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 219-220; Robert Doran, “Apocalyptic Thinking after 9/11,” 27.

10 Doran, “Apocalyptic Thinking after 9/11,” 23.

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danger threatens”, without becoming scandalized by the escalating violence which

surrounds us and runs through us. This great test is the time of conversion – to introduce

the other side of Girard’s apocalyptic coin. The Gospel gives us no guarantee of a happy

ending to history, says Girard, “it simply shows us two options ... either we imitate Christ,

giving up all our mimetic violence, or we run the risk of self-destruction.”11 Learning to live

“where danger threatens,” neither fleeing from nor conforming to the escalating violence,

requires us to participate in a slow turning from the latter option towards the former, from

violence to truth.

Facing the danger

In the biblical landscape, the place where one learns to live faithfully “where danger

threatens” is the desert. The desert is the environment in which the apocalyptic feeling is

experienced and urgently intensified, where one enters bodily and spiritually into the

awareness that “there is nothing standing between ourselves and our possible destruction.”

In biblical literature, “the desert is a perpetual reminder of the reality of danger, hardship,

and death ... to lose one’s way in the desert was almost certain death (Job 6:18 ff).”12 Yet,

and because of this, the desert is also the place of encounter with God. By learning to

successfully negotiate the desert experiences of testing, temptation and trial, we learn to

sense the presence to us of “that which saves” from the danger – to cite Hölderlin again.

11 Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 237. 12 John L. McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible (London: Chapman, 1968), 195. On the biblical meanings of the

desert, see also A. Legendre, “Désert,” Dictionnaire de la Bible, vol. 2 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1912): coll.

1387-1393; Gerhard Kittel, “ἔρημος,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, vol. 2

(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964): 657-660; “Désert,” Dictionnaire contemporain des Pères de L’Église :

leurs mots, leurs textes, leur langage, ed. Marie-Christine Hazaël-Massieux (Montrouge Cedex: Bayard, 2011),

204-210.

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In early eastern Christianity, as the likelihood of persecutions and martyrdom

decreased and Christian people became accustomed to the patterns of the urban lifestyle,

some Christians intentionally sought out the experience of the desert and its apocalyptic

promise. Like the Israelites and Jesus himself at the beginning of his ministry, these

monastics exposed themselves to the dangers of the desert, dangers both physical and

spiritual, and to the task of learning to live faithfully, in a Christ-like mode, in the midst of

those dangers. Other commentators have brought Girard’s mimetic theory and various

monastic traditions and writers into mutually elucidating interplay.13 Here, I focus on

processes of spiritual discernment (discretio spirituum) described in the Conferences of John

Cassian (c. 360 – c. 435) in order to identify strategies of Christian living in the apocalyptic

context described so richly by Girard.

Written in a period of profound social and cultural change in the western part of the

Roman empire, and drawing on his earlier training in monastic practices in Egypt, the

Conferences of John Cassian outline a process of discernment (diakresis, discretio) based on

the extra-canonical saying attributed to Jesus from the time of the second century and cited

by many early authors: “Become like skilled money changers.”14 Exploring various aspects of

13 For example, Andrew Marr, Tools for Peace: The Spiritual Craft of St. Benedict and René Girard (Lincoln,

NE: iUniverse, 2007); Jonah Wharff, “Bernard of Clairvaux and René Girard on Desire and Envy,” Cistercian

Studies Quarterly 42 (2007): 183-207; Ann W. Anstell, “Saintly Mimesis, Contagion, and Empathy in the

Thought of René Girard, Edith Stein, and Simone Weil,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies

22 (2004): 116-131; Draško Dizdar, “Finding the Way: How to Study Scripture with the Help of Scripture and

the Desert Fathers,” in Violence, Desire, and the Sacred: Girard’s Mimetic Theory Across the Disciplines, ed.

Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge (New York and London: Continuum, 2012), 34-49. 14 John Cassian, Conferences I: 20-22, translated by Colm Luibhéid. Classics of Western Spirituality (New

York: Paulist, 1985), 54-58. On the saying about the money-changer see Michael J. Buckley, “Discernment of

Spirits,” in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, ed. Michael Downey (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical

Press, 1993), 278. Evagrius links the practice of stillness with the saying: “Be like an astute businessman: make

stillness be your criteria for testing the value of everything, and choose always what contributes to it.” See his

“Outline Teaching on Asceticism and Stillness in the Solitary Life,” in The Philokalia, vol. 1, trans. G. Palmer,

P. Sherrard, and K. Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1979), 33.

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the money changer’s know-how, Cassian outlines four procedures in the task of

discernment in the life of the monastic. I will describe them briefly.15

1. discerning the difference between the ways of good and evil. At the most

fundamental level, the task of the monastic is to choose between the two ways: good and

evil, life and death, the divine and diabolical. By the fourth century, all the Egyptian cities

had been Christianized, but the demonic powers were understood to remain active in the

surrounding desert areas.16 The monk stood on the front line of the apocalyptic struggle

between the powers of good and the powers of evil. Constantly at risk of being conquered

by the demonic energies that assailed him, the monk must learn to recognise their

strategies and avoid being controlled them. Diabolic manifestations can strike at any time

and place and in any activity; whether at prayer, work, or rest the monk must be spiritually

awake and ready. The demonic techniques, however, always bear the characteristics of

secrecy, disguise or deception, distorting reality and creating confusion. The demonic

powers attack the human person at the weak points of our constitution: the vulnerable

parts of our minds and senses, particularly our false sense of self, our pride, and obsessive

patterns of thought and will. Despite the fact that, since the fall, humans beings are off-

balance and prone to opting for these distorted images and demonic fantasies, Cassian has

confidence in the human capacity for this task of discernment, just as Jesus was confident in

the disciples’ ability to read the signs of the times. We learn to distinguish between the two

paths by the signs we become aware of: either the “fruits of the Spirit” or the “works of the

flesh” (Gal 5:19-24).

15 I am following here the study of Kees Waaijman, “Discernment: Its History and Meaning,” Studies in

Spirituality 7 (1997): 5-41. 16

On the desert as the place where the demons dwell, see Gisbert Greshake “The Desert Fathers Today,”

Theology Digest 52 (2005): 132-138, and A. Legendre, “Désert,” col. 1393.

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“If the kingdom of God is within us and that is a kingdom of justice, of peace,

and of joy, then whoever remains with these virtues is certainly in the kingdom of

God. By contrast, all who deal in unrighteousness, in discord, and in death-bearing

gloom have taken their stand in the kingdom of the devil, in hell and in lifelessness. It

is by these token that the kingdom of God or of the devil is recognized.”17

2. interpreting the current situation in the light of God’s intention. Once it is

discerned whether or not the coin is gold, we go on to “read” the image on the coin: does it

bear the likeness of the king or of the tyrant? As Cassian notes, this is a hermeneutical

process which follows after the fundamental discernment between good and evil, aided by

authentic practices of scripture interpretation. Here we learn to read the “neutral” or

“indifferent” events and circumstances of our day – what Cassian calls the “middle things”

(media), which are neither good nor bad inherently – in light of God’s desire for us and for

our flourishing as human beings. In the light of the scripture, we learn to interpret whether

these particular neutral circumstances (eg. my new occupation, a particular prayer practice

I’ve been using, a broken leg my spouse sustained in an accident) are in fact leading me

towards God or not. These middle things can become means in and through which God

communicates with us, making known God’s saving desire on our behalf. This requires an

openness on the part of the human person towards God and God’s intention for him or her,

and a spiritual freedom in the face of life’s circumstances. Cassian sees this attitude as an

exercise of humility. “True discernment is acquired exclusively by true humility.”18

3. responding in moderation, and through interaction with the community. Here the

minting process of the coin is explored. The coin is forged through a minting process, and

17

Cassian, Conferences I: 13, 46-47; Waaijman, “Discernment,” 8-9. 18 Cassian, Collationes II: 10; Waaijman, “Discernment,” 9-10.

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stamped with the minter’s mark. The task of discernment, also, proceeds through

interaction with others, and is marked by that interaction. Cassian sees this interaction

developing on two fronts: the discernment is shaped by interaction with excesses of “too

much” and “too little”, and by interaction with other members of the community and their

experiences and perspectives. These two shaping interactions are interrelated and forge a

moderated response of discernment; they keep the monk in the middle of the road, on the

“royal road”, the golden mean of prudence.

“The prudent standard of discretion ... consists in avoiding extremes on both

sides. It teaches the monk to walk always on the royal road. It keeps him from

veering to the right, that is, it keeps him from going with stupid presumption and

excessive fervour beyond the boundary of reasonable restraint. It keeps him from

going to the left to carelessness and sin, to sluggishness of spirit, and all this in the

pretext of actually keeping the body under control.”19

This moderation of response is mediated to the monk through relationship with the

other members of the community, living and dead. No person can live “where danger

threatens”, and persevere in spiritual warfare in that dangerous place, by themselves and in

isolation. Living in community with experienced people is a constitutive factor of the monk’s

identity, “he is inwardly molded by it. He learns to look through their eyes, to listen with

their ears. He puts himself squarely in the midst of the field of forces of the community

which is making him a monk, just as a mint strikes a piece of gold into a particular coin.”20

19

Cassian, Conferences II: 2, 62; Waaijman, “Discernment,” 26. 20 Waaijman, “Discernment,” 27.

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4. growing from what is to what can be. The skilled money changer knows what the

full weight of a particular coin should be, and what measure is lacking (due to wear or

accident or forgery). In discernment we see our present condition in light of our true

identity, as bearers of the image of God. And we see the step-by-step possibilities which

open from the present moment, and enable us to progress in “purity of heart.” For Cassian,

a pure heart – integrated, transparent, watchful readiness for love – is the goal of spiritual

growth. “Therefore, we must follow completely anything that can bring us to this objective,

to this purity of heart, and anything which pulls us away from it must be avoided as being

dangerous and damaging.”21 In the scriptures, this process of spiritual growth is described as

“being tested”, and consists in (a) recognizing the difference between the actual situation of

my life at present and the image and likeness of God I am intended to reflect, (b) making

attempts at extending the boundaries of my experience toward that destiny, so that (c) my

authentic self will emerge, as “gold is tested by fire” (cf. Jer 9:7; Zech 13:9). As the proverb

puts it (Prov 17.3):

“The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold,

but the Lord tests the heart.”

Through this process of testing, in which the heart is purified and made ready and

able for love to be received and given, the person is conformed to the image of God in

which he or she is created.

21 Cassian, Conferences I: 5, 40.

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Desire and Discernment in the Midst of Danger

Those familiar with Girard’s writings will be hearing resonances between mimetic

theory and the diakrisis outlined by Cassian, in terms both of their overarching themes and

their internal dynamics. Here I will draw on mimetic theory, particularly the “apocalyptic”

consequences of mimetic desire, to explore the four dimensions of discernment –

discerning, interpreting, responding, and growing – suggested by the comparison with the

skilled converter of currency.

Discerning. The two ways before which the human being stands, in Girardian terms,

are two types of transcendence. Our existence is fundamentally oriented toward the other

who transcends us, constituted as we are by our experience of desire “according to the

other”. Always present to us is the violently constructed transcendence that is produced by

the scapegoating mechanism, which Girard refers to as “the sacred” (le sacré). Girard has

often described the “phenomenological sequence” in which people are caught up as a result

of the mimetic nature of desire, and which leads almost inevitably to this relationship with a

false transcendence.22 But the biblical texts reveal another, utterly different, transcendence,

which originates beyond human mimeticism and the social structures it produces, and is

unmarked by the violence that creates the sacred. Recently, Girard has referred to this

authentic transcendence of the Judeo-Christian revelation as “the holy” (le saint).23 In

Battling to the End, Girard has simplified and intensified this fundamental discernment. He

22 See Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 56; “Introduction,” in De la violence á la divinité (Paris: Grasset,

2007), 7-28. 23 Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 217-218. Previously Girard had spoken of “the logos of Heraclitus and the

logos of John.” See Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, trans. Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer

(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 263-280.

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sees that there is battle being waged between – in Pascal’s terms – truth and violence,24 and

that we must learn to discern between them and decide where we stand in relation to

them.

While Girard observes that battle being waged in the global acceleration of

aggression, he is clear that it must also be confronted in the depths of each person’s

existence. We must decide which model of desire to imitate: Satan or Christ.25 Imitating

Satan leads us to participate in the way of desiring and relating structured by the false

transcendence of sacralised violence; imitating Christ leads us to participate in his non-

rivalrous desire emanating from the authentic transcendence of love, le saint. A primary skill

of living faithfully in apocalyptic contexts, as Girard has repeatedly insisted, is discerning

that the true source of the rivalry, conflict and violence that emerges in human relations is

not the living God (le saint) but the death-producing powers of the satanic transcendence (le

sacré).26 Cassian teaches that the way to recognise the satanic model is to learn to

recognize the strategies that it uses: in Girard’s terminology - rivalry, méconnaissance,

deceits of autonomy and distorted relations of desire. Followers of Christ freely enter into

the desert, as he did, to face the assaults of Satan, to learn how to distinguish between the

satanic voice and the Word of God, and to endure the trial of fidelity. While feeling the full

force of the violent transcendence, those who model themselves on Christ are fortified by

trust in the “victory of the cross” over the demonic forces (i.e. various manifestations of the

victimage mechanism) that exercise power in human relations.27

24 Girard, Battling to the End, 115, 213, 217. 25 Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 222-225; Battling to the End, 130-135. 26 See the Introduction to Battling to the End, ix-xvii; Doran, “Apocalyptic Thinking after 9/11,” 25-26; Haven,

“Christianity Will be Victorious,” 5. 27 See especially Girard, I See Satan, 137-153.

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Interpreting. But living in the midst of apocalyptic danger requires further, and more

nuanced, discernment – as the monastic desert-dwellers knew well. For even after the

fundamental choice between models has been made, that decision must be enacted in each

situation of daily life. Every circumstance of life is an opportunity to be drawn closer to the

model (Christ), or to be led away. In Girardian terms, this is the ongoing process of the

conversion of our desire to the imitation of Christ; it means the gradual, uneven but

persistent, alignment of the movement of our heart with the desire of Christ, as that is

made known to us in the scriptures. This process is accomplished, according to Cassian, by

spiritual watchfulness. “So we must first scrutinize thoroughly anything appearing in our

hearts or anything suggested to us. Has it come purified from the divine and heavenly fire of

the Holy Spirit?”28 Learning to be inwardly still before the suggestions that come into our

awareness – images, thoughts, feelings, memories, and not chasing after them in our minds

and hearts—allows us the freedom to interpret them in the light of the desire of Christ, our

true model. This practice weakens the méconnaissance that produces a false sense of

autonomy and righteousness about our thoughts and longings, and allows a proper humility

to emerge that recognizes our dependence on the model of our desire.

Although at times he has spoken about human desire in negative categories in order

to emphasise the dangerous consequences of its mimetic dynamics, both Girard and the

desert monastics understand desire to be a positive and creative – although ambivalent -

condition of human experience. This ambivalence arises from the restless and

undetermined nature of our desire, and from the impact of the model (Girard) or object

(spiritual writers) on which our desire comes to be fixed. The gradual process of releasing

28 Cassian, Conferences I: 20, 54. On the practice of watchfulness see, for example, Martin Laird, Into the Silent

Land: The Practice of Contemplation (London: DLT, 2007) and “Continually Breathe Jesus Christ: Stillness

and Watchfulness in the Philokalia,” Communio 34 (2007): 243-263.

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our desire from rivalrous and envy-producing models/objects – which can be spoken of as

the “renunciation” of desire29 - is at the same time the process of enlarging, intensifying or

“stretching of our desire” (Augustine).30 The discretio spirituum which occurs in the practice

of prayerful watchfulness is the means by which the violence of desire (its urgent and

compelling command of our attention) is transformed into ever more intense longing for the

authentic model, the one who truly enables our desire. In the language of the spiritual

writers, all our desiring is a manifestation of the more originary desire of God for us.31

Responding. This intensifying of our desire for a completely loving and non-

competitive model is further refined through our attempts to respond, to act, to live

faithfully where danger threatens, according to the desire of such a model. Cassian

identifies two inter-related moderating factors: the avoidance of extremes, and the

modelling of the community of disciples. Throughout his work, Girard has highlighted the

danger of mimetically-generated reciprocity, which, when infected by envy and

acquisitiveness, increases by more and more energetic oscillations between extreme

positions: model/rival, love/hate; brothers/enemies. This doubling in human relations

reflects the dualistic structure of the false transcendence of the divinized scapegoat. In

Battling to the End, Girard speaks of the need for an asymmetrical action which unlocks this

reciprocal escalation. This requires a type of “withdrawal” from the field of mimetic rivalry,

a renunciation of the next act of reciprocation in the cycle of violence;32 it offers neither

“too much” nor “too little” response in the relational dynamic. In an earlier essay, Girard

29 For Girard’s argument for the renunciation of desire see the conclusion of Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 290-

314. In recent years, Girard more often speaks of the renunciation of violence. See, for example, Battling to the

End, 211-217 and “La guerre est partout.” 30 St Augustine, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, IV, 6, available at

http://newadvent.org/fathers/170204.htm; accessed 20 March 2013. 31

“Désir,” in Dictionnaire contemporain des Pères de L’Église, 211-212. 32 Girard, Battling to the End, 120-123.

15

explored the consequences of good and bad reciprocity in a seemingly innocent gesture

such as a handshake.33 Of course, this kind of response is an art more that a categorical

imperative or a formal norm, and can only be discerned in particular circumstances and

contexts.

For Cassian, the monk also learns how to act in accordance with the desire of Christ

in the midst of the monastic community, and of its common traditions, practices, successes

and failures, in living together in following Christ. The community itself becomes an

exemplum, a model for the monk’s attempts to live faithfully in discipleship of the model,

Christ. Much has been said about Girard’s position regarding the possibility of individuals

and communities being peaceful and non-rivalrous models, i.e. the possibility of positive

mimesis among humans.34 While acknowledging that peaceful mimesis can occur among

people, Girard has maintained a type of prophetic critique of mimetic relationship,

convinced as he is of the difficulty of avoiding reciprocal rivalry at the level of actual

relations. It is significant, therefore, that the central chapter of Battling to the End, titled

“Hölderlin’s Sorrow,” stands under the rubric of keeping in mind the “possibility of positive

imitation.”35 In that chapter, Girard concedes to his interlocutor the need for a

consideration of the reality of peaceful mimesis in human relations. “Unlike what I thought

33 René Girard, “Violence et réciprocité,” in Celui par qui le scandale arrive (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2001),

25-26. See also René Girard, “La réciprocité dans le désir et la violence,” in Les Cahiers de L’Herne 89, ed.

Mark R. Anspach (Paris: Éditions de L’Herne, 2008), 183- 197. 34 Rebecca Adams argues for the possibility of positive mimesis in “Loving Mimesis and Girard’s ‘Scapegoat of

the Text’: A Creative Reassessment of Mimetic Desire,” in Violence Renounced: René Girard, Biblical Studies

and Peacemaking, ed. Willard M. Swartley (Telford, PA: Pandora Press, 2000), 277-307; Petra Steinmair-Pösel,

[“Original Sin, Grace, and Positive Mimesis,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 14 (2007):

1-12] concludes that a theological framework is necessary for the conditions of a positive mimesis to exist.

Raymond Bryce [“Christ as Second Adam: Girardian Mimesis Redeemed” New Blackfriars 93 (2012): 358-370]

argues that the kenosis of the second Adam reveals and remedies the acquisitive desire of the first Adam. 35 Girard, Battling to the End, 109 and 119. See also Evolution and Conversion, 222-223.

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for a while, you are forcing me not to linger on the duel, but to pass through it.”36 Yet Girard

alerts us, with his every breath, to the ambivalence of human relations, and the fragility of

the positive mimesis that exists among communities and their members. Christian

communities are marked by the same ambivalence and potential for violence that operate

in all human communities, and they too provide imperfect modelling of the gratuitous love

of the living God.

Growing. Cassian speaks of an ongoing process of growth from what is to what can

be, from the existence I am now to the existence I am intended to be as the image of God;

Girard describes the ongoing process of conversion “from reciprocity to relationship.” As the

méconnaissance of the satanic transcendence dissipates, and the violence of human

relations is recognized for what it is, Girard sees that Christians’ responsibility increases to

renounce that violence in all its manifestations, and more consciously conform our thoughts

and actions to the true model, Christ. The first step is one of humility: the peaceful

acceptance that we always already relate and act within the dynamics of mimetic desire,

that there is no “non-mimetic” sphere to which we may escape. “We will always be mimetic,

but we don’t have to be so in a satanic fashion. That is, we don’t have to engage perpetually

in mimetic rivalries. We don’t have to accuse our neighbour; we can learn to love him.”37

This is a Girardian description of Cassian’s call to growth in “purity of heart”.

Like Cassian, Girard also refers to this growth as a process of “being tested”. He

speaks of the “test of the warring brothers (frères ennemis)”38 in which the dangers of the

escalation to extremes are moderated by asymmetrical acts of generosity and mercy – the

36 Girard. Battling to the End, 131. 37 Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 225. See also Battling to the End, 109-110: “Christ invites us to work from

within mimeticism.” 38 Girard, Things Hidden, 277.

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love of enemies described in the gospels. In both monastic spirituality and mimetic theory

this testing process involves two movements: firstly, a separation of the person “from the

mob” of violently structured relations,39 brought about by an intensifying of desire for the

genuinely friendly model, Christ; secondly, the building of different relational dynamics

structured according to the desire of Christ for the other. Recently, Girard has referred to

this two-fold movement as the journey from reciprocity to relationship (de la reciprocité à la

relationalité), and as the freeing of “holiness from the sacred (la sainteté du sacré).”40 This

gradual transformation of human relations, made possible by the conversion of our desire

by way of the gracious model Christ, is realized through continual discernment, and through

trial and error, in concrete relationships.

Using the language of Girard’s mimetic theory to describe the tasks of Cassian’s

phases of spiritual discretio – discerning, interpreting, responding, growing – allows us to

recognise the fundamental role of the freeing of desire from the dynamics of self-seeking

reciprocity in order to imitate the gracious giving of self to the other modelled by Christ.

This fragile, step-by-step transformation of relationality is the work of non-mythological,

apocalyptic time; it calls for watchfulness, patience, and endurance in face of the dangers of

mimetically structured relations. As our affections and behaviours are unravelled from the

“excitement” of escalating rivalry, we must learn to live in the ordinariness of relationship.

At each step, we must renounce the dramatic extremes of reciprocity and choose instead

the slow, hidden work of non-violent solidarity with others. Girard calls this the “great trial”

that Christians must endure as the danger (which ultimately is powerless) threatens to

engulf humanity and our global environment. “During this long apocalypse, what do we

39 See James G. Williams, “The Anthropology of the Cross: An Interview with René Girard,” in The Girard

Reader, ed. James G. Williams (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 279; Girard, Battling to the End, 134. 40 Girard, Battling to the End, 122, 129.

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do?” Cynthia Haven put this to Girard in a recent interview, who replied: “Nothing

spectacular ... we just wait it out.”41 We should not take this to imply a passive

irresponsibility in the face of intensifying global strife. Rather, Girard is suggesting precisely

that we ought to take responsibility for not getting caught up in the reactive dynamics of

escalating reciprocity. Instead, we must endure patiently in the work of building

relationships in which that strife is “de-escalated”—relationships that have passed through

the “test” of reciprocity and been purified by acts of asymmetrical generosity and

forgiveness. Only such relationships, modelled on the desire of the Christ, can save us “from

the danger” that threatens to engulf our communities and our world.

41 Cynthia Haven, “Christianity Will Be Victorious.”