I See Satan Fall Like Lightning Quotes

“Victimism uses the ideology of concern for victims to gain political or economic or spiritual power.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“The peoples of the world do not invent their gods. They deify their victims.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“The most powerful anti-Christian movement is the one that takes over and "radicalizes" the concern for victims in order to paganize it. The powers and principalities want to be “revolutionary” now, and they reproach Christianity for not defending victims with enough ardor. In Christian history they see nothing but persecutions, acts of oppression, inquisitions.

This other totalitarianism presents itself as the liberator of humanity. In trying to usurp the place of Christ, the powers imitate him in the way a mimetic rival imitates his model in order to defeat him. They denounce the Christian concern for victims as hypocritical and a pale imitation of the authentic crusade against oppression and persecution for which they would carry the banner themselves. In the symbolic language of the New Testament, we would say that in our world Satan, trying to make a new start and gain new triumphs, borrows the language of victims.

...

The Antichrist boasts of bringing to human beings the peace and tolerance that Christianity promised but has failed to deliver. Actually, what the radicalization of contemporary victimology produces is a return to all sorts of pagan practices: abortion, euthanasia, sexual undifferentiation, Roman circus games galore but without real victims, etc.

Neo-paganism would like to turn the Ten Commandments and all of Judeo-Christian morality into some alleged intolerable violence, and indeed its primary objective is their complete abolition. Faithful observance of the moral law is perceived as complicity with the forces of persecution that are essentially religious...

Neo-paganism locates happiness in the unlimited satisfaction of desires, which means the suppression of all prohibitions. This idea acquires a semblance of credibility in the limited domain of consumer goods, whose prodigious multiplication, thanks to technological progress, weakens certain mimetic rivalries. The weakening of mimetic rivalries confers an appearance of plausibility, but only that, on the stance that turns the moral law into an instrument of repression and persecution.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“The children repeat the crimes of their fathers precisely because they believe they are morally superior to them. This false difference is already the mimetic illusion of modern individualism, which represents the greatest resistance to the mimetic truth that is re-enacted again and again in human relations. The paradox is that the resistance itself brings about the reenactment. PILATE”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“If we listen to Satan, who may sound like a very progressive and likeable educator, we may feel initially that we are "liberated," but this impression does not last because Satan deprives us of everything that protects us from rivalistic imitation. Rather than warning us of the trap that awaits us, Satan makes us fall into it. He applauds the idea that prohibitions are of no use and that transgressing them contains no danger.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“What is the basis of imitating Jesus? It cannot be his ways of being or his personal habits: imitation is never about that in the Gospels. Neither does Jesus propose an ascetic rule of life in the sense of Thomas a Kempis and his celebrated Imitation of Christ, as admirable as that work may be. What Jesus invites us to imitate is his own desire, the spirit that directs him toward the goal on which his intention is fixed: to resemble God the Father as much as possible.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“Our concern for victims is the secular mask of Christian love.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“Jesus would not be astonished that his teaching is not recognized. He has no illusion about the way in which his message will be received. To the glory that comes from God, invisible in this world, the majority prefer the glory that comes from humankind, a glory that multiplies scandal as it makes its way. It consists in gaining victory in mimetic rivalries often organized by the powers of this world, rivalries that are political, economic, athletic, sexual, artistic, intellectual . . . and even religious.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“But an absolute value is not proven by logic or metaphysical arguments; it is accepted, believed (even when not discussed), and hedged about with taboos to protect it.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“Like Jesus, Satan seeks to have others imitate him but not in the same fashion and not for the same reasons. He wants first of all to seduce. Satan as seducer is the only one of his roles that the modern world condescends to remember a bit, primarily to joke about it. Satan likewise presents himself as a model for our desires, and he is certainly easier to imitate than Christ, for he counsels us to abandon ourselves to all our inclinations in defiance of morality and its prohibitions.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“The account thus shows once again the omnipotence of mimetic contagion. What motivates Pilate, as he hands Jesus over, is the fear of a riot. He demonstrates "political skill," as they say. This is true, no doubt, but why does political skill almost always consist of giving in to violent contagion?”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“3. The Greek pharmakoi, singular pharmakos, refers to victims who were ritually beaten, driven out of cities, and killed, for example, by being forced over the edge of a precipice. The word pharmakos, designating a person who is selected as a ritual victim, is related to pharmakon, which means both "remedy" and "poison," depending on the context. In the story of the horrible miracle of Apollonius, the beggar is a pharmakos, a kind of ritual victim. Apollonius points to him as the demon causing the plague (he is the source of pollution or poison), but his lynching restores the well being of Ephesus (he becomes the remedy for the crisis). — Trans. 4.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“There is nothing in the Gospels to suggest that God causes the mob to come together against Jesus. Violent contagion is enough. Those responsible for the Passion are the human participants them-selves, incapable of resisting the violent contagion that affects them all when a mimetic snowballing1 comes within their range, or rather when they come within the range of this snowballing and are swept along by it. We don't have to invoke the supernatural to explicate this. The war of all against all that transforms communities into a war of all against one that gathers and unifies them is not limited solely to the case of Jesus.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“If we ceased to desire the goods of our neighbor, we would never commit murder or adultery or theft or false witness. If we respected the tenth commandment, the four commandments that precede it would be superfluous.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“He is an unsuccessful scapegoat whose heroic willingness to die for the truth will ultimately make the entire cycle of satanic violence visible to all people and therefore inoperative. The "kingdom of Satan" will give way to the "kingdom of God." Thanks to Jesus' death, the Spirit of God, alias the Paraclete (a word that signifies "the lawyer for the defense"), wins a foothold in the kingdom of Satan. He reveals the innocence of Jesus to the disciples first and then to all of us. The defense of victims is both a moral imperative and the source of our increasing power to demystify scapegoating. The Passion accounts reveal a phenomenon that unbeknownst to us generates all human cultures and still warps our human vision in favor of all sorts of exclusions and scapegoating. If this analysis is true, the explanatory power of Jesus' death is much greater than we realize, and Paul's exalted idea of the Cross as the source of all knowledge is anthropologically sound. The”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“The commandment that prohibits desiring the goods of one's neighbor attempts to resolve the number one problem of every human community: internal violence.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“In the Gospel of Luke, just at the crucial moment, Jesus too is in the courtyard, and the two—Jesus and Peter—exchange a look that pierces the disciple's heart. The question that Peter reads in this look, “Why do you persecute me?” Paul will hear as well from Jesus’ own mouth: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” In response to Paul's question “Who are you, Lord?” Jesus answers, “I am Jesus whom you persecute.” Christian conversion is always this question that Christ himself asks. Because of the simple fact that we live in a world whose structure is based on mimetic processes and victim mechanisms, from which we all profit without knowing it, we are all accessories to the Crucifixion, persecutors of Christ. The Resurrection empowers Peter and Paul, as well as all believers after them, to understand that all imprisonment in sacred violence is violence done to Christ. Humankind is never the victim of God; God is always the victim of humankind.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“The anti-Semitic interpretation fails to discern the real intention of the Gospels. It is clearly mimetic contagion that explains the hatred of the masses for exceptional persons, such as Jesus and all the prophets; it is not a matter of ethnic or religious identity. The Gospels suggest that a mimetic process of rejection exists in all communities and not only among the Jews. The prophets are the preferential victims of this process, a little like all exceptional persons, individuals who are different. The reasons for exceptional status are diverse. The victims can be those who limp, the disabled, the poor, the disadvantaged, individuals who are mentally retarded, and also great religious figures who are inspired, like Jesus or the Jewish prophets or now, in our day, great artists or thinkers. All peoples have a tendency to reject, under some pretext or another, the individuals who don't fit their conception of what is normal and acceptable. If we compare the Passion to the narratives of the violence suffered by the prophets, we confirm that in both cases the episodes of violence are definitely either directly collective in character or of collective inspiration. The resemblance of Jesus to the prophets is perfectly real, and we will soon see that these resemblances are not restricted to the victims of collective violence in the Bible. In myths as well, the victims are or seem different. So”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“What Jesus invites us to imitate is his own desire, the spirit that directs him toward the goal on which his intention is fixed: to resemble God the Father as much as possible.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“Les représentations théâtrales, elles aussi, sont enracinées dans la violence collective et ce sont des espèces de rites, mais plus nettoyés encore de leur violence que les sacrifices animaux, et plus riches sur le rapport culturel, puisque ce sont toujours, au moins indirectement, des méditations sur l'origine du religieux et de la culture tout entière, des sources potentielles de savoir.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“Les mythes débutent presque toujours par un état de désordre extrême.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“Scandals are responsible for the false infinity of mimetic rivalry. They secrete increasing quantities of envy, jealousy, resentment, hatred—all the poisons most harmful not only for the initial antagonists but also for all those who become fascinated by their rivalistic desires. At the height of scandal each reprisal calls forth a new one more violent than its predecessor.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“Let us not confuse true enlightenment with the idolatry of the here and now.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“The powers and principalities want to be “revolutionary” now, and they reproach Christianity for not defending victims with enough ardor. In Christian history they see nothing but persecutions, acts of oppression, inquisitions. This other totalitarianism presents itself as the liberator of humanity. In trying to usurp the place of Christ, the powers imitate him in the way a mimetic rival imitates his model in order to defeat him. They denounce the Christian concern for victims as hypocritical and a pale imitation of the authentic crusade against oppression and persecution for which they would carry the banner”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“In a society that has fallen prey to anarchy the voracious appetite for persecution feeds on victims indiscriminately, as long as they are weak and vulnerable. The least pretext is enough. No one really cares about the guilt or innocence of the victim.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“The best way of preventing violence does not consist in forbidding objects, or even rivalistic desire, as the tenth commandment does, but in offering to people the model that will protect them from mimetic rivalries rather than involving them in these rivalries.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“2. "Mimetic doubles" refers to the situation in which rivals become so obsessed with each other that they mirror each other's emotions and actions. The doubles are alike but they mistakenly see a great difference between them. Mimetic doubles are quite dangerous to one another and to others and can be quite self-destructive. —Trans.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“The commandment to imitate Jesus does not appear suddenly in a world exempt from imitation; rather it is addressed to everyone that mimetic rivalry has affected. Non-Christians imagine that to be converted they must renounce an autonomy that all people possess naturally, a freedom and independence that Jesus would like to take away from them. In reality, once we imitate Jesus, we discover that our aspiration to autonomy has always made us bow down before individuals who may not be worse than we are but who are nonetheless bad models because we cannot imitate them without falling with them into the trap of rivalries in which we are ensnarled more and more.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“The modern scorn for the notion of the prophetic, the idea that prophecy is a theological mirage outdated by a "scientific method" that is necessarily superior to the texts and ideas it studies, is a more terrible superstition than ancient credulity, for its arrogance makes it completely closed to any comprehension.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

“Although it has its roots in deception, the false transcendence of violent religion is effective as long as all the members of the community respect and obey it.”
― René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning