political theology, Vol. 16 No.

2, March, 2015, 101–115

From Dionysus to the Anti-Christ: Rene

Girard’s Defense of Christianity and Erik
Peterson’s Closure of Any Political
Theology
CHRISTOPH SCHMIDT
Hebrew University, Jerusalem

This essay is a reconstruction of Rene Girard̀s Christian apology in ‘‘I saw the
Devil fall like Lightening.’’ It develops Nietzsche’s antithesis between Christ
and Dionysius which Girard identifies as the antithesis of modernity as such.
Against Girard’s own alliance with Carl Schmitt the essay adopts the
Trinitarian point of view suggested by the author, in order to show that it is
Erik Peterson’s ‘‘Trinitarian’’ critique of Carl Schmitt’s political theology of
sovereignty which could fulfill the ‘‘true’’ aim of the author in fact much
better.

keywords political theology, Nietzsche, Carl Schmitt, Erik Peterson, Anti-

Semitism, mimesis, desire, mimetic desire

Girard’s anthropology of mimetic desire, collective violence, and the scapegoat do

not merely share a special affinity with the theology of the crucifixion. Rather, in
Girard’s later texts, we find an anthropological defense of Christianity, insofar as it
is Christian theology that reveals the insight into the mimetic character of desire
and its disastrous consequences through the scene of the crucifixion.1 Against the
mythologies that justify the collective violence against the scapegoat in his guilt,
Girard’s anthropology, together with Christianity, emphasizes the innocence of the
scapegoat. Thus, for Girard, Christianity bears witness to an incontrovertible

1
In the center of the following reflections I shall deal with Girard R. I see Satan falling like lightening. Translated by:
Williams JG. New York: Orbis; 2001. Cf. 3. The tendency to such an apology can already be found in Girard R Job,
The victim of the people, translated by: Freccero Y (Stanford: Stanford University Press; 1987), and especially in
Girard’s Conversation: Celui par qui le scandale arrive: entretiens avec Maria Stella Barberi (Paris; 2001). In this
context, it seems that Schwager R. Brauchen Wir den Sündenbock? Gewalt und Erlösung in den biblischen Schriften
(Wien: Thaur; 1994) has contributed to the clarification of the theological dimension of mimetic theory. See:
Niewiadowski J. Religion erzeugt Gewalt – Einspruch! Innsbrucker Forschungsprojekt Religion – Gewalt –
Kommunikation (Muenster: Thaur; 2003).

ß W. S. Maney & Son Ltd 2015 DOI 10.1179/1462317X14Z.000000000122

102 CHRISTOPH SCHMIDT

anthropological truth that will displace mythology as well as modern anthro-

pology, itself oriented toward myth.
Whereas Girard now reinterprets the figure of the devil and the Antichrist from
his anthropological perspective as a metonym for the mechanism of desire, this is
not only about drawing a sharp demarcation between the myths that justify power
against the innocent victim, and that of the Judeo-Christian tradition, that
repeatedly stresses the innocence of the victim. He is actually making a distinction
between a myth-and-power oriented political theology of sovereignty, and a theo-
political position grounded in the dogma of Trinity, which calls into question —
from the vantage-point of the victim — any power-oriented political theology.
With this distinction, Girard’s anthropology proves to share a remarkable
agreement with the work of the theologian Erik Peterson.2 Girard’s theory of
desire can almost be read as a surprising legitimation of Peterson’s famous thesis
on ‘‘the closure of any political theology’’ by the dogma of the Trinity.3 (1) Against
Carl Schmitt’s construction of a correlation between God’s sovereignty and
political sovereignty, Peterson — in his famous treatise of 1935 ‘‘Monotheism as a
Political Problem’’ — raised the issue of Trinity, to which nothing in the terrestrial
sphere could concretely correspond.
This Theo-political affinity corresponds to Peterson’s own strategy to identify
the political theology of sovereignty with the ‘‘prince of this world’’ and to
promote the theologomenon of the Satan for an understanding of the human
situation, even against the modern tendencies of a theological tabooing. (2)
At last I shall deal with Peterson’s fragmentary reflections on a theological
anthropology which present themselves as a reflex to the alternative between sovereignty
and martyrdom, as a counterpart to Girard’s own anthropological approach. (3)
On the basis of the confrontation with Nietzsche’s antithesis of Dionysus and
Christ, I shall reconstruct Girard’s theory of mimetic desire and its social
culmination in the collective violence against the innocent scapegoat. (1) In a next
step Girard’s reduction of Nietzsche’s concept of Antichrist to the mechanism of
desire will be analyzed (2) in order to pursue Girard’s replacement of Nietzsche’s
antithesis through and by Christ and Satan, especially in its political consequences
for the figure of the ‘‘prince of this world.’’ (3) Girard’s comparison between the
wrong, socially produced transcendence and the transcendence of truth (4) will
lead then to the final comparison between the political theology of the sovereignty
and the Trinity 5) as basis for a comparison between Rene Girard’s anthropology
and Erik Peterson’s Theo-politics from the spirit of the Trinity, its apocalyptic

2
Cf. Peterson E. Monotheism as political problem: a contribution to the history of political theology in the Roman
Empire. In: Theological tractates, translated by: Hollerich MJ (Stanford: Stanford University Press; 2011), p. 68–105,
Peterson E. Der Brief an die Römer. In: Ausgewählte Schriften VI (Würzburg: Echter; 1997), Peterson E. Offenbarung
des Johannes. In: Ausgewählte Schriften IV (Würzburg: Echter; 2004).
3
The famous thesis from Monotheism as a Political Problem appeared first in Jena 1935, then in the Theological
Tractates (see footnote 2). It created a political theological debate, which has influenced directly Metz J-B. Politische
Theologie in der Diskussion. In: Peukert H, editors. Diskussion zur politischen Theologie (Mainz; 1969) and
Moltmann J. The crucified God: the cross of Christ as the foundation and creation of Christian theology (London;
1974). The Thesis found in Schmitt C. Political theology II: the myth of the closure of any political theology, translated
by: Hoelzl M and Ward G (Cambridge: Polity Press; 2008) one of its sharpest critiques. In any case, the debate has
been going on since, see Taubes J. Der Fürst dieser Welt, Carl Schmitt und die Folgen (Paderborn; 1983) and Agamben
G. The kingdom and the glory (Stanford: Stanford University Press; 2011).
 FROM DIONYSUS TO THE ANTI-CHRIST 103

dimension in the confrontation between Christ and Antichrist, and finally their
fragmentary foundation in a theological anthropology (6).

Nietzsche’s antithesis
Rene Girard repeatedly recapitulates the foundations of his own anthropology in
comparison to Nietzsche’s antithesis between Dionysius and Christ, in order to
underline a radical difference in the interpretation of these facts.
‘‘Dionysus versus the crucified: here is the contradiction. It is not a difference in
terms of the martyrdom — the same has only a different sense. Life itself, its
eternal fruitfulness and recurrence determines the torment, the destruction, the will
to destruction […] in the other case, suffering, the crucified are seen as the
innocent, as an objection against this life, as a formula of its conviction.’’4
As to the facts of this comparison, Girard initially determines that ‘‘Nietzsche
was the first philosopher to understand that the collective violence of myths and
rituals (everything that named ‘Dionysus’) is of the same type as the violence of the
Passion.’’5 This refers to the primal scene of the genesis of civilization from an act
of collective violence that is directed against an individual victim, the scapegoat
and releases this individual to killing.
Like Nietzsche, Girard reconstructs this genuine act of violence, with which the
civilization comes into existence, from the previous martial State of nature, which
actually repeatedly afflicts the history of civilization in its cyclical crises. In the still
law-free zone, subjects as pure and absolute desire, as Eros or will to power, come
up necessarily in a conflictive situation, that potentially always escalates into a
‘‘bellum omnium contra omnes.’’ Only the strongest power can establish
civilizational order and the very law, which supports the power as it is supported
by this power.
Girard reconstructs this process where power asserts itself over the victim, weak
or even powerless, on the basis of his theory of mimetic desire, in order to specify
the transition from the State of nature to the Civil State as the transition from
violence of all against all to an organized violence of all against one. At the same
time, he can reconstruct more accurately the process, which Nietzsche describes
with his Antithesis of Dionysus and Christ as the antithesis of two conceptions of
the sacrificial ritual.
Girard assumes that every desire is based on the desire of the other from where it
takes its role model. Because the ego wants to have exactly what the other has, it
identifies with this other, raises him to an object of admiration or even an idol to
which it wants to be similar. This idolization already determines the conflict: the
more one’s own desire recognizes the idol as its own projection, the more likely the

4
Nietzsche F. Aus dem Nachlass der Achziger Jahre. In: Werke in drei Bänden (München: Hanser; 1977), III, p. 773.
‘‘Dionysos is imagined here as the redeemer: The two types: Dionysos and the Crucified. To be clarified, whether the
religious type of man is a decadent form (all the great innovators were sick and epileptics); but do we not omit here
another type of innovator, the heathen? Isn’t the heathen form of cult not a form of thanksgiving and of life
affirmation? Would not his highest representative have to be an apology and a divinization of life? The type of a well
behaved and enraptured inundating spirit! Type of a spirit who internalizes the contradictions and problems of life!’’
[the author’s translation].
5
Girard, I see Satan, p. 171.
104 CHRISTOPH SCHMIDT

conflict will break out, in order to potentially escalate into a bloody war. In reality,
both subjects of desire do not only want the same; they are becoming increasingly
similar in this war. They in fact dedifferentiate themselves, as Girard points out:
‘‘envy, jealousy, and hate render alike those they possess, but in our world people
tend to misunderstand or ignore the resemblances and identities that these passions
generate.’’6
When one projects this process back to the social level, it leads to chaos and
terror that not only forgoe the state of civil, but threatens to constantly blow up
the social cohesion all over again when it regresses about the mimetic conflict to a
state of all against all. ‘‘There would be perpetual war in the midst of all human
groups, subgroups, and families. The door would be wide open to the famous
nightmare of Thomas Hobbes, the war of all against all.’’7 Chaos or state of
emergency, the moment of crisis and its escalation in the ‘‘Bellum omnium contra
omnium’’ can only be prevented by a transformation of the violence of all against
all in an organized violence of all against one by uniting together the rival and
conflicting subjects and to select a scapegoat as the one guilty for the crisis. As
already striking other, stranger, or ill, it is not difficult for the majority to charge
the blame on this individual for the crisis, in order to dissipate the anarchic
violence through the act of a collective organization and bundling against this
individual one. He must be first found guilty, in order to justify the release of
violence against him. With the civilizing organization and institutionalization of
violence, the effect of relief from this violence becomes actually possible, since
with his death the victim pacifies the collective and turns into a peacemaker. In this
transfiguration, Girard not only recognizes the ancient mechanism as civilization’s
organized violence, but the genesis of the myth, or the mythical deity as a
metonymic figure of this ritual. The mimetic mechanism culminates in the
transfiguration of the victim in the return of the peacemaker as a mythical God,
with whom the constituted violence is not only justified, but can be suppressed ever
again.
As Girard holds, these ‘‘facts,’’ which determine the genesis of myth and ritual,
are interpreted by Nietzsche from the perspective of life, myth, and violence, and
that means they become justified by them. Desire, Eros and will to power, in order
to sustain and to increase themselves, have a right to aggression and violence. ‘‘Life
itself, its eternal fruitfulness and recurrence determines the torment, the
destruction, the will to destruction.’’8 The fact that the victim, against whom
life, fertility, and recurrence aligned with this devastating violence, is actually
defenseless and innocent, this is a truth which must be sacrificed itself for the sake
of the very preservation of life. In fact this is a truth which remains true for myth,
life and desire, even if it must be sacrificed consciously and deliberately from the
perspective of life. The truth of the innocence of the victim actually refutes the
epistemological skepticism and perspectivism of life, according to which all truths
are supposed to represent just another form of myth, fiction and lie.

6
Ibid., p. 13.
7
Ibid., p. 8.
8
Cf. fn. 4.
 FROM DIONYSUS TO THE ANTI-CHRIST 105

Different from myth, for which the name Dionysus stands, monotheism, which
Nietzsche identifies especially with the name of Christ, insists on the truth, i.e. the
innocence of the victim and is thus based on a radical criticism of the violence and
its psychological and social rituals. That’s why monotheism must be eliminated,
not only because it intercedes for the innocent victims, defends it against his
powerful accuser, but because it has revealed the truth as the truth about man.
Nietzsche thus reveals the truth about man, only in order to ‘‘discredit the
Christian awareness that this type of victim is innocent.’’9 Only because Nietzsche
anchors truth in its use for life and thus in the genus of human kind, he can
actually transform the objectively factual truth of the innocence of the victim in a
life-damaging lie and a fiction. The truth of monotheism and Christianity has to be
eliminated by the Dionysian lie, which is beneficial to the life of the genus and thus
can become itself a truth. ‘‘The individual was taken so serious by Christianity, so
absolute serious, was posited as absolute, that one could no longer sacrifice him:
but the species can exist only through human sacrifice […] The true love for
humanity requires the sacrifice for the benefit of the species. It’s hard; it’s full of
self-control, because it needs the human sacrifice.’’10
Girard thus confirms with Nietzsche’s antithesis the first anthropological fact of
collective violence, the ‘‘species’’ against the victim as the primordial scene of
social constitution. But against Nietzsche’s interpretation, he is sticking to the
factual truth of the innocence of the victim in order to confirm the truth of
monotheism against life, species, myth and falsehood by the anthropological
analysis, or to defend this innocence on the anthropological basis.

The Antichrist
If Girard, on the basis of anthropological truth, reverses the reversal of Nietzsche,
in order to adhere to its foundation in violence, then this reversal finds its own
apocalyptic expression in Girard’s inversion of Nietzsche’s usage of the theological
figure of the Antichrist. Where Nietzsche tries to justify his metaphysics of the will
to power in the mythical deity and the man-made idol, he equates this strategy
with the figure of the Antichrist. In other words, he wants to amend the Christian
strategy of demonizing and demonization of these mythical deities. This polemical
animosity against Christianity is in fact typical for an attitude since Goethe’s
Mephisto which identifies the devil himself as the Savior and Redeemer. It is
actually taken over by Girard, but he gives it back its original theological sense.
Nietzsche’s deliberate denial of the truth is simply the work of the Antichrist and
manages to define the radical anti-theological sense and from this perspective in

9
Ibid., p. 172.
10
Nietzsche F. Aus dem Nachlass. In: Werke III (München; 1977), p. 800: the text omitted in the brackets includes the
following reflection. ‘‘Before God all souls became equal: but this is precisely one of the most dangerous evaluations! If
one accepts the individual as equal, one questions the species, one favors a practice which leads to the ruin of the
species: Christianity is the counter principle against selection. If the decadent and the sick (the ‘Christian’) should have
as much value as the healthy (the ‘heathen’), or even more, according to Pascal’s judgment on sickness and health, the
natural course of things is crossed and the principle of anti nature is made law. This universal love for the human
means in practice the favoring of the suffering, the degenerates: it has indeed brought down the power, the
responsibility, the high duty to sacrifice humans.’’ [the author’s translation].
106 CHRISTOPH SCHMIDT

fact the also radically anti-anthropological meaning of secularization in

apocalyptic concepts. This Antichrist, in its various Metamorphoses, is actually
interested in nothing else but the organization of a collective violence against the
monotheistic victim, which is accused of its enmity against life and Eros, in order
to legitimize its elimination. Thus, the very instance, which traditionally takes
sides with the scapegoat against the logic of life, is turned itself into the scapegoat.
In fact, Girard designs in this context, a kind of sketch of the history of the
secularization of Nietzsche’s Antichrist, which corresponds to three epochal
metamorphoses. Lastly, it is necessary to explain how anthropology itself could
forget the truth about myth, victim and violence in this process and could equate
monotheism with myth:
1. with his antithesis, Nietzsche has initiated the process of the suppression and
displacement of the ‘‘mimetic difference’’ as the distinction between truth
and falsehood, innocence and guilt, monotheism, and myth. With
monotheism and Christianity, the truth about the victim i.e. the principle
of objective truth about people must be obliterated;
2. as Girard observes, even though Nietzsche would probably have been
startled about the ‘‘National Socialist way of being a Nietzeschean,’’11 the
National Socialists had actually done nothing other than to take him at his
word.12 His antithesis denotes the ‘‘spiritual essence of the movement,’’13
insofar as it sought to implement a declaration of war against monotheism
with the policy of extermination of the Jews, but later would go over to a
persecution of the Catholic Church, too.
3. the hostility against monotheism created by Nietzsche’s antithesis triumphs
after the Holocaust in the hostility against the Catholic Church, which now
promotes to the ‘‘main scapegoat.’’ ‘‘Up to and including Nazism, Judaism
was the preferential victim of this scapegoat system. Christianity came only
in second place. Since the Holocaust, however, it is not possible to blame
Jews. The intellectuals and other cultural elites have promoted Christianity
to the role of number one scapegoat.’’14
In both cases this irreconcilable hostility can be explained by Girard’s theory of
mimetic mechanism. Where the Nazis mobilized the terrorist myth of the German
race against the people chosen by God, it was actually an attempt to imitate this
theological election on the mythological level and thus to eliminate the negativized
idol of the Jewish race. Where the new ‘‘concern for the victims’’ should
compensate for the crimes of the Nazis after the war, this concern proves to be a
new version of mimetic desire which now fights monotheistic Christianity on the
very ethical level whose theology is founded exactly on the concern with the
victim. ‘‘The powers and principalities want to be ‘revolutionary’ now, and they

11
Girard, I see Satan, p. 175.
12
Ibid., Girard writes: ‘‘philosophers […] are not the only people in the world. Genuinely mad and frantic people are
around them and do them the worst turn of all: they take them at their word.’’
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid., p. 179.
 FROM DIONYSUS TO THE ANTI-CHRIST 107

reproach Christianity for not defending victims with enough ardor. In Christian
history they see nothing but persecutions, acts of oppression, inqusitions.’’15
In both cases, Girard contends, it is about the same Mimetic strategy, i.e. the
completion of physical — mental elimination of monotheism by a mythical self-
promotion in a new doctrine of salvation. It is this principle of a mythological self-
presentation as the savior, which is named with the name of the Antichrist and
which becomes so evident in the ultimate concern for the victim after the
Holocaust. ‘‘Satan imitates Christ better and better and pretends to surpass him.
This imitation by the usurper has long been present in the Christianized world, but
it has increased enormously in our time. The New Testament evokes this process in
the language of the Antichrist.’’16 The Antichrist, who prides himself, to bring
peace and tolerance among people, as they have always been promised by
Christianity, but never realized, contains an involuntary confession in Nietzsche’s
use of this figure as executor of the anti-monotheistic instinct. The confrontation
between Dionysus and Christ is not simply meant as an antithesis, but actually as
an appropriation of the monotheistic theology of freedom, salvation and
redemption through the mythical deity of life, the will to power and violence.
The antithesis itself has to be understood on the basis of the principle of mimetic
conflict. Nietzsche’s establishment of the Antichrist is meant as a rehabilitation of
myth and mythical deity which allows Girard to read the devil and the Antichrist
as metonyms for the anthropology of his mimetic mechanism.

The prince of this world: the devil against Christ

The principle of the mimetic mechanism is based on the paradox that it eliminates
the violence that threatens to destroy the order with precisely the same means of
violence. Where desire, Eros and will to power prevail absolutely over the other,
they are potentially turned into a violence against the other, which threatens to kill
this other. This reversal of desire into violence when it affects a whole society,
leads potentially always to a war of all against all, with which the society sinks in
chaos. This danger is averted, respectively, by organizing that aggression and
violence focusing it against a single victim. Like the archaic figure of the Pharakos,
the other or the stranger is held responsible for the crisis, is found guilty and
released for killing. Where the violence thus ‘‘disciplined’’ and ritualized liberates
society from violence, and ‘‘expels itself’’ so to say, it guarantees at the same time
only its self-preservation: its eternal return. The repeatedly stimulated desire, such
as the bundled violence against the innocent victims, is the two sides of the same
mimetic mechanism of self expulsion.
Girard designs from here an anthropological justification for the figure of the
devil — not only as the mythological counter-principle to the truth of monotheism,
but as a precise metonymy for his anthropology of mimetic mechanism as such.
The devil is precisely this principle of incitement and the dissipation of the
violence, which the gospel describes with the formula of ‘‘Satan who casts out the

15
Ibid., p. 180.
16
Ibid., p. 181.
108 CHRISTOPH SCHMIDT

devils.’’ This figure does not represent any substantial being or existence, but only
a mechanism which plunges the subjects of desire again and again in a cycle of
violence. ‘‘The devil does not have a stable foundation; he has no being at all. To
clothe himself in the semblance of being, he must act as a parasite on God’s
creatures. He is totally mimetic, which amounts to saying nonexistence as an
individual self.’’17
Through this non-being being, the diabolical principle of desire becomes in
Christianity the prince of this world, who preserves society, politically and
religiously, with the help of the mythical deities. The mimetic mechanism is not
only satanic because it feigns its own disposal, but because it also allows for the
suppression of the violence against the innocent victim through the deification of
the victim. Precisely because the victim makes the social peace possible and
appears after his killing as a deity, the mimetic mechanism fulfills itself in the
production of a (false) religious transcendence, which legitimizes violence ever
again. At the same time, this mythological deity is nothing more than the extension
of mimetic desire itself that simultaneously legitimizes the violence with his
epiphany and displaces it again. This deity is then like the devil himself, not a
being, but a pure appearance, a projection, an idol: i.e. The function of desire and
the unfolding of it through ‘‘false transcendence.’’
It is through this religiously sanctioned ritualization of violence that society
becomes the object of political domination: it requires only the subject of the
sovereign, who will assume the political leadership about the direction of this
ritual. With Philostratus’ life of Apollonius of Tirana, Girard explains this
connection. In order to avert the pest epidemic in Ephesus, Apollonius takes over
the direction of a collective lynch by drawing the attention of the crowd to an old
beggar. He urges the crowd to stone the beggar. The inhabitants of Ephesus
initially oppose this idea and the poor beggar flees to mercy. This is the satanic
moment in which Apollonius encourages the crowd and incites it until it detects a
bad fire in the eyes of the beggar and they fall upon the beggar, stone him and kill
him. Although in this report, the actual deifying of the victim is not completed in
the figure of the pacifying deity, this report nevertheless illustrates the role that the
leader assumes in this ritual as the stage manager of violence. He occupies the
archaic role of a political religious exercise of power, which is initially reflected in
the sacred kingship and later develops into the figure of the sovereign ruler, who
has his actions sanctified by the mythical God.
The structure of the political religious rule unfolds, thus, in the contrast between
the sovereign and the scapegoat, between power and sacrifice that oppose each
other in the event of a crisis and state of emergency in their polarity, in order to
take their role in the bloody drama of the restitution of peace and order. The
power that restores this order requires the victim — the archaic ‘‘Pharmakos’’ in
the disguise of the stranger, outsider or enemy — in order to stop the chaos or civil
war. Girard cites a note by Plutarch who reports of such an archaic ritual even at

17
Ibid., p. 42.
 FROM DIONYSUS TO THE ANTI-CHRIST 109

the time of the Greco-Persian wars in Greece. Themistocles had to sacrifice Persian
prisoners under the pressure on the eve of the battle of Salamis.18
This political religious structure clearly reveals once again the diabolical
mechanism of desire as it unloads in crisis and state of emergency through the
ritual of lynching.
The actual task of politics always communicates with the ‘‘Prince of this world’’,
but since policy aims primarily at the maintenance of order, it is essentially a
strategy of avoiding and preventing just this state of emergency. The Central task
of politics is, therefore, to establish order and security, and that means that politics
strives always ‘‘to delay the State of emergency.’’ ‘‘Thought not identical with
Satan, the powers are all his tributaries because they are all servants of the false
gods that are the offspring of Satan, that is, the offspring of the founding
murder.’’19 The political principle corresponds to the principle of the ‘‘Katechon,’’
that cryptic figure who is supposed to delay the appearance of the Antichrist (2.
Thessalonians 2:2ff): ‘‘Ce que l’ on peut faire, c’est retarder, jouer le role de
katechon et d’essayer de le perpetuer.’’20
It is in this political sense that Pilate first opposes the mimetic fury of the masses
and does not want to deliver Jesus to the infuriated excesses of the crowd. In fact,
he wants to keep the law of political order and let the condemned criminal Barabas
be legally executed. ‘‘From Pilate’s point of view Barabas offers the advantage of
being already legally condemned. His execution will not transgress the law.’’21 So
he tries to avert the virulent crisis with all available means, just as he can do
nothing against the will of the crowd, he joins their side and becomes an
accomplice of the ‘‘Prince of this world.’’
As Satan proves to be the real ruler of this world in political crisis, the death of
Christ on the cross manifests once for all time the truth about the collective
violence and its political theology. The event at Calvary, thus, becomes the event of
a final de- activation of the satanic mechanism, as it signifies once and for all the
innocence of the victim against the logic of desire. ‘‘The Cross enables the truth to
triumph because the Gospels disclose the falseness of the accusations; they unmask
Satan as an imposter. Or to say it in another way they discredit once and for all the
untruth of the principalities and powers in the wake of the Cross.’’22

From the false transcendence to the Trinitarian God

The anthropological insistence on the truth of the victim communicates with the
Christian theology, which ‘‘discredits’’ the mimetic machine with its own socially
determined transcendence of the mythical God through the son of God. The Jewish
God, who always takes upon the side of the people who are socially and politically
weak, the widow, the foreigner and the orphan, accomplishes his work of
revelation by stepping himself through his Son into the role of the victim. What is

18
Ibid., p. 81.
19
Ibid., p. 96.
20
Girard R. Celui avec qui le scandal arrive (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer; 2001), p. 149.
21
Girard, I see Satan, p. 25.
22
Ibid., p. 138.
110 CHRISTOPH SCHMIDT

required against the logic of desire is a transcendence which discloses its

psychological, social, political and religious mechanisms once for all. The cross
becomes the theological correlate of the anthropological truth, since through its
true transcendence it uncovers the deity which corresponds with desire as an
‘‘idol’’ and a product of ‘‘false transcendence’’. ‘‘The Cross has indeed transformed
the world, and we can interpret its power in a way that does not have to appeal to
religious faith.’’23 The cross stands from this anthropological disposition for the
‘‘thwart’’ of all socially determined idols and their anthropological and egocentric
perspectives. It describes the reversal of this perspective through the divine gaze:
the perspectives of the Christian icon which reveals the truth about the idols of the
people, of violence and displacement.24 Also from the anthropological perspective,
this can only happen as a reversal of the socially-determined mythical religion:
from the horizon of a divine counter perspective. The human sacrifice must thus
really be thought of, as a God beyond the idolatries and projections of desire. The
anthropological insight in the innocence of the victim, thus, finds its theological
correlate in the doctrine of the Son of Man as the Son of God and leads ultimately
to an indirect defense of the Trinitarian God: ‘‘To reconcile the divinity of the
biblical Yahwe with the divinity of Jesus, as well as with the Holy Spirit […] the
theology of the great ecumenical councils elaborated the concept of the one God as
a Trinity.’’25
Thus the Trinitarian theology with its logic of God’s kenosis, self emptying and
resurrection becomes from the perspective of anthropological truth the symbol of
the negation of every mythology and political theology of the sovereign power. It is
the only logical consequence of the anthropology of the victim. Christ is in so far
the God of sacrifice, as he shares his fate until the end. If one thinks about it, one
realizes that it cannot be different. If the logic of God has nothing in common with
the logic of God of the persecutors, with the mystifying mimetic, then there is only
one way to intervene in this world, namely through the possibility unfolded in the
Gospels.
Thus not only Nietzsche’s antithesis of Dionysus – Christ is transferred in a final
apocalyptic antithesis of Devil and Christ, but this apocalypse is the scene of a last
antithesis between the political theology of sovereignty, the authorities and powers
on the one hand, and the Trinitarian theology with which these powers are
disempowered, on the other hand. Girard cites in this context the letter of the
Apostle Paul to the Colossians (2:14): Christ ‘‘who has stripped the power of the
rich and mighty and has publicly displayed it, has got a triumph out of them.’’ It is
the eschatological moment in which with the coming of Christ, Satan and the
satanic principle are disempowered. It is the moment in which with the appearance
of Christ ‘‘Satan falls like lightning from heaven.’’

23
Ibid., p. 141
24
One could in fact engage here in a discussion about Jean Luc Marion’s God without Being (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press; 1991) and its phenomenology of the idol and the icon. Where Marion conceives of them as signs
representing different theologies, based either on the self or the other, there can be no doubt that the semiotic
difference is based on ethical grounds.
25
Girard, I see Satan, p. 121–22.
 FROM DIONYSUS TO THE ANTI-CHRIST 111

The dogma of the Trinity against the possibility of any political

theology
Although Rene Girard occasionally and positively relates to Carl Schmitt’s
political theology, he actually comes very close at almost all levels to the theology
of Schmitt’s major opponent Erik Peterson who turned the Christian dogma of the
Trinity against any political theology. It is especially in the connection with the
figure of the Katechon that Girard mentions the name of Carl Schmitt. If the
Katechon represents the principle which holds Satan and Antichrist, so he is —
according Carl Schmitt’s insight — the expression for the fact that the political and
social order owe their existence always to a crisis, a state of emergency against
which the order is erected.26 Girard does not enter any concrete reading of
Schmitt. No doubt, such a reading would have led him to take the side of Carl
Schmitt’s opponent, the theologian Erik Peterson, who on the basis of the dogma
of Trinity attacked the very possibility of any political theology of sovereignty.27
Moreover Peterson, like Girard, constructed this antithesis between political
theology and trinity as an apocalyptic scene28 (1) on the basis of the antithesis
between Christ and Satan (2), which he, too, redefined as two anthropological
options. (3) Finally for Peterson, too this anthropological dimension stands in the
sign of Nietzsche’s antithesis between Dionysus and Christ. (4) With that, Peterson
fulfills the program that Girard claims for his own anthropological defense of
Christianity relying on Simone Weill: theology is actually the ‘‘study of man’’
understood correctly.29
Girard’s way from anthropology to a defense of Christianity corresponds to
Peterson’s inverted way, from theology to a theologically influenced anthropology.
In fact, Peterson’s famous thesis that with the Trinitarian dogma the end of every
political theology has come up, receives through Girard an entirely different
legitimacy which is no longer based on a theological fundament: it coincides with
the truth of scientific anthropology.
Peterson’s famous thesis at the end of his treatise as ‘‘Monotheism as a Political
Problem’’ claimed that there is no equivalence for the dogma of the Trinity ‘‘in the
created order.’’30 In an explicit formula, he added to these findings the following
conclusion: ‘‘In this way, not only was monotheism as a political problem resolved
and the Christian faith liberated from the bondage to the Roman Empire, but a
fundamental break was made with every ‘political theology’ that misuses the

26
Girard R. Celui avec qui le scandal arrive. p. 150: ‘‘Mais je cite toujours Carl Schmitt quand on me reproche de
parler de violence et de crise. Carl Schmitt releve que la science possible pour le monde des Lumières etait la science de
l’ordre. Il considere aussi que cette science de l’ordre n’est pas l’ordre. Il s’agit du discours sur l’ordre. Et dans ce
domaine, la distinction faite par l’ecole linguistique est tout a fait pertinente. Un discours sur l’ordre, meme proclame
pendant des sciecles, peut tres bien ne pas refleter la verite. Ce que did Carl Schmitt est valuable pour toutes les
sciences de l’homme, pour l’anthropologie comme pour la science juridique et la science politique. Celas s’applique
aux sciences de l’homme qui n’ont jamais reussi a penser la crise. Et cependant c’est la crise qui revele ‘Who is in
charge’, qui décide.’’
27
Cf. Peterson, Monotheism as political problem.
28
Cf. Peterson, Offenbarung des Johannes und politisch theologische texte. In: Ausgewählte Schriften IV (Würzburg:
Echter; 2004).
29
Girard, I see Satan. p. 44.
30
Peterson, Monotheism as political problem, p. 103.
112 CHRISTOPH SCHMIDT

Christian proclamation for the justification of a political situation.’’31 This

statement was supposed to refer to the situation in the Roman Empire, but was
meant implicitly for the political situation in the Third Reich. Peterson carried on a
controversy with Carl Schmitt’s political theological analogy32 between divine and
human sovereignty and its derivation for a justification of the ‘‘Führerstaat,’’ as his
statement turned against the so-called ‘‘German Church’’ and the theology of the
Reich. Against Schmitt’s justification of the sovereign political power by the
analogy with the sovereignty of God, Peterson represented the position of a radical
questioning of any theological political analogy from the perspective of Trinitarian
dogma. As long as the Son of God was not of clear divine origin in the sense of the
Trinitarian dogma, he could be identified with a human messianic subject like the
nation, the class, the race or the leader who would be theologized. Peterson
identifies the various forms of political theology consequently with the Arian
heresy, to which theologians like Eusebius did not randomly succumb (when he
identified the emperors Augustus or Constantine with the redeemer). At the same
time Peterson acknowledges, that the dispute over this dogma had to develop ‘‘an
openly political struggle,’’33 so that Peterson himself created at least the
impression, he himself had withdrawn from his thesis of the non-political
character of the Trinity.
Whatever the implicit political sense of the ‘‘pure’’ theological dogma was
supposed to be, whether it was meant as a rejection of all politics,34 as critic of the
authoritarian forms of political theology35 or as another inevitable form of
political orientation,36 Peterson’s criticism turned clearly against any Sacralisation
of the political powers, which would give a religious — eschatological sense to
their specific exercise of power and violence. In this way, the Trinitarian theology
was to become always already a defense of the innocent victim, a defense that finds
its dramatic expression in the picture of the sacrifice of the Lamb of God by the
authorities and powers. What Peterson has described in his earlier lectures on St.
Paul (1923–26) as a radical antithesis between the political theology of the Roman
Empire based on Zeus and the Theo-politics of martyrdom based on Christ,37
appears later in the his treatise ‘‘On the Angels’’38 — written in the same year as
his ‘‘Monotheism as a Political problem,’’ (1935) — as the liturgical antithesis
between Polis and Ecclesia. The martyrs resist the authorities and powers, testify

31
Ibid., p. 104.
32
In Peterson’s famous last footnote here refers explicitly to Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology: ‘‘His brief arguments at
that time were not systematic. Here we have tried to show by a concrete example the theological impossibility of a
’political theology.’’ Ibid. p. 233–34. The famous answer of Carl Schmitt follows 35 years later in Schmitt C. Political
theology II. See the excellent contributions to the debate in: Taubes J, editor. Der Fürst dieser Welt. Schmitt und die
Folgen (Paderborn; 1983).
33
Peterson E, Monotheism as political problem, p. 102.
34
Cf. Maier H. Revolution und Kirche, Studien zur Frühgeschichte der christlichen Demokratie 1789–1901 (Freiburg;
1965), p. 162 refers to Peterson with the remark, ‘‘that the belief in the Trinitarian God does not only demand a
positive political analogy, but denies it at all.’’
35
Metz J-B, Moltmann J, Oelmüller W, editors. Kirche im Prozeß der Aufklärung (München: Kaiser; 1970).
36
Schmitt, Political theology II; Böckenförde E-W. Politische Theorie und Politische Theologie. Bemerkungen zu ihrem
gegenseitigen Verhältnis. In: Taubes, Der Fürst dieser Welt, p. 15–25.
37
Cf. Peterson, Der Brief an die Römer.
38
Cf. Peterson, The book on the angels: their place and meaning in the liturgy. In: Theological tractates, p. 106–42.
 FROM DIONYSUS TO THE ANTI-CHRIST 113

to their belief with their death and join the heavenly choir of the angels who sing
their prayers and praises in front of God’s throne.
In an excursus to his commentary on the Revelation of John, Peterson
formulates this antithesis between Trinity and political theology in apocalyptic
terms: ‘‘The revelation of John is a conflict with a particular form of political
power. The opposition against this particular form of political rule became
necessary for early Christianity because this form of rule appears in public with a
religious claim.’’39 The apocalyptic analogy between the imperial cult and the
Führer cult is unmistakable here, when Peterson speaks about the imperial
‘‘Princeps’’ (Führer) who holds on ‘‘to the democratic fictions’’ in confirmation
‘‘with the democratic ideals’’ of Rome,40 but practically concentrates all authority
and power on himself and raises himself — according to the model of mythical
deities — to a God. The ritual sacrifice in the imperial temple, carried out in the
gladiatorial games or the triumphal processions, is supposed to create the
unanimity of the masses, which confirm the divine power of the Emperor in
proskynesis, the acclamation. Christian apocalyptic, as it is witnessed in John’s
revelation of Christ as the Son of God, necessarily has to oppose to this political
theology of the mythical idol. ‘‘It is this deity of the political entity promissing
eternal life, that the God of eternity turns against, the God who is, who was and
who will come.’’41 This antithesis between the emperor and Christ corresponds in
the last instance to the antithesis of Satan and Christ, which Peterson has unfolded
again and again in his later writings.
In the fragment ‘‘Prince of this world’’ (dated 1940), he interprets this antithesis
for the theo-political context in which he actually adopts a ‘‘Heavenly Concept of
the Political’’ against Schmitt’s famous ‘‘Concept of the political.’’42 Satan has
broken out of the kingdom of God’s faithful angels, in order to form his own
earthly kingdom. This is actually based on nothing else than the principle of
mimetic desire, the desire and will to power to imitate God and Christ, in order to
turn the power of God in a right for radical self domination. This right represents
the claim, to acquire the divine as one’s own power and, in fact, to eliminate God
by this acquisition. Satan as a principle of imitation is the principle of the violence
and its own expulsion by an ever new violence: against the absolute object of
imitation: God. According to Peterson the heavenly concept of politics
corresponds to the heavenly concept of mimetic desire!
The essence of this imitation is, therefore, ‘‘robbery’’ and murder: the sacrifice of
the true God: The right for self domination of the devil (has to be conceived of) as
Rapina (5robber). Against this, Paul emphasizes that Christ ‘‘non rapinam
arbitratus esse se aequalem Deo.’ (Phil. 2:6).’’43 The Trinitarian dogma, which de-
activates the political theology of the Prince of this world, is not only thought from
the perspective of Trinity, to which no earthly creature corresponds, but from the

39
Peterson E. Der Kaiserkult, Exkurs zur Offenbarung des Johannes. In: Ausgewählte Schriften IV (Würzburg: Echter;
2004), p. 7.
40
Ibid., p. 8.
41
Ibid., p. 23
42
Ibid., p. 256.
43
Ibid., p. 257.
114 CHRISTOPH SCHMIDT

Kenosis of God as Son who evacuates himself of his divinity and becomes the
servant of human kind.’ This assumed humanity by Christ, as Peterson writes,
works ‘‘disarmingly,’’ it brings the rule of Satan and with him the political
principle of imitation by imitation, appropriation and sacrifice to its end. It is the
moment for Peterson when Christ has ‘‘stripped the rich and the powers of their
power and has showcased them publicly and […] has made a triumph out of
them.’’ (Col. 2:14/15) In an early fragment, Peterson concludes the antithesis of
Christ and Anti-Christ with the following image: ‘‘The Anti-Christian situation
of the imperium Romanum […] determines the language and image of Jesus. Satan
accuses the people, i.e. all people, Jews and Romans by God, but he sees Satan fall
from sky like lightening.’’44

Peterson’s sketch of a theological anthropology

Man dominated and enhanced by desire, by himself, his power and his human
right for self domination corresponds to Peterson’s fragmentary reflections on the
anthropology which is dominated by Satan’s ‘‘demonic possession.’’45 According
to Peterson man always already stands in front of a basic decision, either to imitate
the demons, or to make himself equal to the angels. The antithesis of Christ —
Antichrist is translated here into a last anthropological entrenchment. Christ’s act
of salvation consists, therefore, first of all, in the ‘‘expulsion of the demonic
spirits.’’ ‘‘The spirits as demons need to unmask themselves in front of the Son of
man.’’46
Christ’s work of salvation does not begin coincidentally with people who are
demonized by the world dominated by the devil and the demons that eke out their
miserable existence on the fringes of society. It is the people who actually live
already on the edge of the world, on the edge ‘‘to the other world.’’ ‘‘The poor
man, whom Jesus (5 in Lazarus), located, lies on the border of this to the other
world. He becomes an eschatological symbol in which Jesus recognizes himself.’’47
He recognizes himself among the people who are driven by the social powers and
forces towards the limits of society and who are delivered by these powers to
death. It is their fate that Jesus unveils, when he himself (as Peterson writes) ‘‘is
delivered into the hands of the people.’’ The human hands, which deliver the poor
and potentially sacrifice and kill him, are the physical instruments and institutions
of both the demonic obsession and also the revelation of this obsession in the Act
of Jesus’ crucifixion.
Hence, the ‘‘world evening has come,’’ writes Peterson,48 as he uses an image
that reminds of Max Weber’s vision of the gods rising from their graves: ‘‘The

44
Ibid., p. 231.
45
Peterson E. Was ist der Mensch? In: Theologische Traktate, Ausgewählte Schriften I (Würzburg: Echter; 1994), p.
133. This short, relatively late text has been published in 1948 in the journal Wort und Wahrheit. 1948;3:241–47, for
the first time. It seems to communicate with certain aspects of Otto R. Reich Gottes und Menschensohn. Ein
religionsgeschichtlicher Versuch (München: Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung; 1934). Both identify the actual deed of
redemption with the expulsion of the demons.
46
Ibid., p. 134.
47
Ibid., p. 137.
48
Ibid., p. 134.
 FROM DIONYSUS TO THE ANTI-CHRIST 115

evening of the world is here. The demons leave their homes in the bodies of the
humans.’’49 Peterson actually seems to hear the outcry of Nietzsche who wants to
replace Christ by Dionysus. It is the principle of the Antichrist, who imitates the
doctrine of salvation, in order to sacrifice the founder of Christianity, Christ
himself. ‘‘Do we not hear them (the demons), calling from within Dionysus, the
crucified of that Nietzsche, who had arrived as the last man according to the
setting of the Sun?’’50
Peterson’s theology, which can be read as a mirror image to Girard’s
anthropology, is based politically and theologically on the antithesis between
sovereignty and martyrdom, which the theologian summarizes in the program-
matic formula of the closure of any political theology by the dogma of Trinity,
which he then unfolds in the apocalyptic antithesis of Christ and Antichrist and,
lastly, translates in his fragmentary reflections on a theological anthropology. The
analogy between theology and anthropology of Peterson and Girard represents
itself, first, as a mutual confirmation and supplement. But Girard’s anthropology
serves in fact not only as a secular complementary to Peterson’s theology, it rescues
the theology behind this anthropological framework.

References
Girard R. I see Satan falling like lightening. Translated by: James G Williams. New York: Orbis; 2001.
Nietzsche F. Aus dem Nachlass der Achziger Jahre. In: Werke in drei Bänden. München: Hanser; 1977. III. p.
773.
Peterson E. Was ist der Mensch? In: Theologische Traktate, Ausgewählte Schriften I. Würzburg: Echter; 1994.
Peterson E. Der Brief an die Römer. In: Ausgewählte Schriften VI. Würzburg: Echter; 1997. p. 68–105.
Peterson E. Offenbarung des Johannes. In: Ausgewählte Schriften IV. Würzburg: Echter; 2004.
Peterson E. Offenbarung des Johannes und politisch theologische Texte. In: Ausgewählte Schriften IV.
Würzburg: Echter; 2004.
Peterson E. Monotheism as political problem: a contribution to the history of political theology in the Roman
Empire. In: Theological Tractates. Translated by: Michael J Hollerich. Stanford: Stanford University Press;
2011.

Notes on contributor
Christoph Schmidt is associate Professor at the department for Philosophy and
Religion at the Hebrew University. He has published numerous books on the topic
of political theology and is presently working on a book dealing with the very
concept of the Messiah in the debate between Martin Buber and Hans Urs von
Balthasar on ‘‘the two ways of belief.’’
Correspondence to: Christoph Schmidt. Email: Christoph.Schmidt08@gmail.com

49
Ibid., p. 134.
50
Peterson, Was ist der Mensch? p. 134.
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