The Providential Failure of Christianity: René Girard,Ivan Illich,and the Renewal of Apocalyptic Theology

Abstract

The article argues that René Girard and Ivan Illich, each in their distinctive ways, draw upon the dimensions of the Christian apocalyptic tradition that are often ignored, and that their retrievals of this tradition, specifically of its theology of Antichrist, open up once again the theology of history, an area of inquiry in Christian theology that we often dismiss or ignore, thus yielding the field and allowing the figure of Antichrist and the apocalyptic tradition to be taken up and deployed as weapons of mimetic destruction in just the ways our popular culture has come to fear. It is incumbent upon Christian theology to take up once again difficult questions in the theology of history, particularly in an apocalyptic key, and Ivan Illich and René Girard, neither of whom claimed to be a theologian, may be our “two witnesses,” our “Enoch and Elijah,” who help us to do just that.