As described in Part 3 of this series, Wolfgang Palaver was influential in introducing the Biblical notion of the katechton into Girardian thought. Girard himself cites Palaver at the end of
I See Satan Fall Like Lightning.
The Colloquium on Violence & Religion was established in 1991 to explore, critique, and develop the ideas of Girard. And in the February 2025 COV&R Bulletin, Palaver shares thoughts about the katechon given the recent attention Peter Thiel has brought to Palaver's work on this topic. The title of Palaver's article is "Desacralize the Katechon, Do Not Create Empires!" which is a follow-up to a 2024 article Palaver wrote entitled "On the Dangers of a Return to Constantinianism."
If you've been following this series, Palaver's point is easily stated. As mimetic rivalry and violence escalate in society and the world, given how the Gospels have deprived us of the cathartic and unifying power of archaic religion, we will be tempted to create a new sacred order to save us. The old sacred order, archaic religion, will be replaced with a new sacred order. And given that Christianity replaced the old sacred order, the new sacred order will be Christian. Palaver argues that Constantinianism became that new sacred order.
I expect most know the basic plot point of this history, how, with the Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in the 4th century AD, the Christian church increasingly became fused with political power, culminating in the Holy Roman Empire that ruled over Latin Christendom. According to Palaver, by baptizing the empire scapegoating violence was resacralized. This allowed the Holy Roman Empire to maintain religious and political cohesiveness and control through continued practices of sacred violence. Simply put, instead of conversion, the West chose scapegoating. The church had a choice between Christ and Constantine, and it picked Constantine.
Palaver uses Fyodor Dostoevsky's parable of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov to illustrate this choice of Constantine over Christ. To recap, if you haven't read the book: in the parable, Christ returns to earth during the Spanish Inquisition, performs miracles, and is promptly arrested by the Church. That night, the Grand Inquisitor visits Christ in prison and delivers a long speech explaining that the Church no longer needs Christ. Humanity, he says, cannot bear the freedom Christ offered and instead desires authority, miracle, and security. The Church, therefore, has allied itself with worldly power to rule over people for their own good. And yet, in doing so, the Church betrays the way of Christ.
Here's where we can turn back toward the katechon. In the parable of the Grand Inquisitor, the masses are witless sheep, so the Church steps in to guide them. But in modern times, the concerns of the people will focus upon social chaos, dissolution, and violence. In the face of that threat, the Constantinian state steps in as katechonic savior. The Constantinian state thus becomes the new sacred order and uses scapegoating violence to bind society together. And this is where Palaver and Peter Thiel start to part ways. Palaver sees the sacralization of the state, like we see in Christian nationalism and Catholic integralism, as the Church opting for the Grand Inquisitor over Christ. Thiel, by contrast, seen in his support for J.D. Vance, seems supportive of these right-wing political projects. Notice, again, just how slippery the Antichrist and the katechon are. Thiel supports the Christian nationalists because they reject globalization, which for Thiel is the Antichrist. As I pointed out in the last post, the Christian nationalists are playing katechon, holding back the Antichrist's global takeover. And yet, in promising to hold back the Antichrist, the Christian state becomes the Antichrist, the new sacred order, the Grand Inquisitor, that binds the nation together by identifying national scapegoats.
As a historical example, recall how Hitler promised to play katechon for Germany. That's how Carl Schmitt saw Hitler and used his rise to power to introduce the biblical image of the katechon to modern political theory. The German Christians sacralized the katechon. They lined up behind the Christian nationalist project. And they unified the nation by ganging up on the identified scapegoats, the Jews especially.
This is, argues Palaver, the temptation now facing the West. Christian nationalism is on the rise because we're looking for the katechonic savior. There is a longing for Constantinianism, the Christian prince who will restore our Christian nation by holding back and restraining the darkness. A new sacred order is established, built upon scapegoating.
This is why Palaver calls upon us to "desacralize the katechon." Borrowing from John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas, Palaver asks the Church to turn away from Constantine and back toward Christ. As Palaver writes:
The katechon is nothing divine or holy but results from the human creation of the sacred...It needs to be desacralized so that its immanent nature becomes obvious. It is the task of the Church to desacralize the katechon by living as a communion of saints.
In short: Be converted! Do not create a new sacred order—a restored Christendom—built upon scapegoating violence. Of course, it is true that the state exists to be the katechon. That is the biblical view. As Paul writes in Romans:
For [the ruling power] is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.
You'll recall how the church fathers believed that the katechon in 2 Thessalonians was the Roman Empire. So there is something positive at work in the state, from this katechonic perspective. And yet, Rome is also the empire described as the Antichrist of Revelation. Once again we see the big point of this series, how the katechon and the Antichrist are doppelgängers.
Summarizing, while the state does serve a legitimate katechonic function, we must not sacralize that function. Do not equate the state with the Church. Do not baptize the empire. We must resist the Constantinian temptation. Simply put, when the Church sacralizes the katechon, it becomes the Antichrist.
Stated positively, the Church views the state with bifocal vision. Through one lens, the state is katechon. In that regard, it should be obeyed. Through the other lens, the state is the Antichrist. In that regard, the Church is called to “come out” from the sacred violence of Babylon.
The Constantinian temptation loses this bifocal vision. It begins to identify the katechon, not with the Antichrist, but with Christ. That is what is happening with the Christian nationalists. In longing for a Christian prince to hold back the darkness, they sacralize the katechon. They choose the Grand Inquisitor over Christ.
