I wrote Reviving Old Scratch in 2016 during my early years of prison ministry. As you can tell from the subtitle of the book--"Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted"--Reviving Old Scratch was a "Devil for Doubters" sort of book.

I wrote the book for myself, given that I thought the book would have a limited audience. Conservative Christians don't doubt the existence of the Devil. So why would they need the book? Progressive Christians, by contrast, have deconstructed (if they are ex-evangelicals) or demythologized (if they are mainline) themselves out of any belief about the Devil. Consequently, who was going to read this Devil for Doubters book? 

But Reviving Old Scratch found its audience.  Alongside Unclean, Reviving Old Scratch has been my most rated and most highly rated book on Amazon and Goodreads. In retrospect, this makes sense. For the very reasons I felt I had to write the book. True, a lot of modern Christians might have trouble believing in a literal Devil. But evil is a real thing, which even the most disenchanted Christians will admit. Especially given how much of progressive Christianity is devoted to social justice. (To fight against evil, it seems, you need to believe in evil.) Plus, a lot of Christians who deconstructed started to realize that deconstruction is a dead end. Faith just dissipates into a spiritual-but-not-religious haze. Reconstruction, putting some ontological conviction back into the faith, became a pressing need and desire. So, Reviving Old Scratch, my "Devil for Doubters" book, became a good companion for many on that journey, especially how to think afresh about Satan, demons, and spiritual warfare. 

One of the moves I make in Reviving Old Scratch is how there are trans-personal forces at work in the world that influence human actions, pulling us into the darkness. We are products of our time and place and the forces at work have a profound moral influence upon us. We aren't as free and independent as we imagine ourselves. We are, rather, pulled into the tides of culture and history. Pawns in a game we only dimly apprehend. As N.T. Wright has observed, "there is such a thing as a dark force that seems to take over people, movements, and sometimes whole countries, a force or (as it sometimes seems) a set of forces that can make people do things they would never normally do." Wright goes on to elucidate:

You might have thought the history of the twentieth century would provide plenty of examples of this, but many still choose to resist the conclusion--despite the increasing use in public life of the language of "force" (economic "forces," political "forces," peer "pressure," and so on). 

Now, how are we to imagine these forces? The enchanted view is that these forces are malevolent angelic agents. Demons. But again, I was writing Reviving Old Scratch for skeptics. So, the argument I made wasn't enchantment but emergence, using ants and weather as examples. Here's a bit from Reviving Old Scratch:

We don’t have to get overly spooky when we think of these forces. All we need to recognize now is that there are unseen, impersonal forces in the world that can’t be located in time or space, forces that are perpetually pulling us into darkness, forces prowling the world like a lion looking for someone to devour. And if you’re still struggling to get your head around that notion, let me share two metaphors that might help. Think of an ant colony. No single ant has the blueprint of the ant colony in its head. No one ant is running the show, directing the ants to forage, build, or defend the colony—all these things happen with no one running the show or calling the shots. What we observe from on high, looking down at the ant colony as a whole, is order and pattern, an order and pattern that, once established, has causal effects upon the individual ants, directing and organizing their behaviors. A pattern emerges from the parts and then exerts a downward force upon those parts. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

But this causal force can’t be located in or reduced to any of the parts being affected. If you could ask the ants, “Who’s in charge here?” they’d be stumped. No single ant is the Wizard of Oz running the show behind a curtain. Instead, the Wizard is everywhere, an unseen force at work in every microscopic interaction between the ants, organizing and directing their behavior. And the Wizard of Oz is much older than the ants. As the lives of ants begin and end, the pattern organizing them persists, outliving the individual ants.

The ants die. But the Wizard lives on.

Or think of a cloud. A cloud is a structure that emerges from a collection of individual water molecules. Clouds can’t be reduced to those water molecules, but clouds, once they exist, start bossing around those water molecules, throwing them around in thunderstorms and hurricanes.

Similar things happen with human beings and societies, forces that sweep through human history on large and small scales. Like water molecules, people are sucked into a dark vortex, a moral tempest, a thunderstorm.

Again, what I'm describing here is what is called emergence. There is "upward causation" from smaller, constituent parts at the micro-level that create a larger, patterned, macro-level structure. Then, once that macro-level structure "emerges," like an ant colony or a hurricane system, it begins to exert "downward causation" upon the smaller, constituent parts. One of the things I suggest in Reviving Old Scratch is that if you're having trouble thinking of the dark forces and powers at work in the world as literal demons you can think of them, instead, as emergent forces that exert downward causation upon human behavior. "Spiritual warfare," in this view, is battling against these impersonal and trans-personal moral forces in the world. Instead of demonizing individual persons--battling against "flesh and blood"--we focus our collective efforts upon extracting ourselves and others from the dark vortex dragging us all under the water.

Given this use of emergence to describe demonic powers in Reviving Old Scratch, I expect you can see how Valentin Tomberg's description of egregores in Meditations on the Tarot would have caught my attention. Egregores manifest and behave like emergent systems. The process begins at the micro-level, in the upward causation of the individuals within the group. Once the egregore emerges, it exerts downward causation, shaping and directing the group in return. Also, like all emergent systems, the egregore is bounded and dependent upon the group. That is, the egregore cannot act or display powers beyond the group’s own potentialities. Yet as a demonic power alive within the group, the egregore shows a potency not predictable from its individual members alone, appearing as more than the sum of its parts. The egregore has come to "possess" the group as it exerts its dark moral effect. 

Given this picture, we can define what might be called “egregoric possession” or “emergent possession.” Egregoric/emergent possession is the condition in which individuals within a group come under the influence of an egregore, an emergent property of the collective. In egregoric/emergent possession, the egregore exerts downward causation upon its members, shaping their perceptions, emotions, and actions. Unlike traditional demonic possession, which is imagined as an external spirit invading the self, egregoric/emergent possession arises endogenously from the group itself. Instead of an individual being “possessed” by an alien entity, a community finds itself controlled by the collective spirit it has generated and set loose within itself.

In the last post I described how the egregore is identified as a demonic power holding sway over a group. And while that isn't how we typically think about demonic possession, there is a biblical background for this idea.

In Deuteronomy 32 we are told that when God created the world He assigned a "son of God" to rule over and watch over each nation:

When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,
when he divided all mankind,
he set up boundaries for the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.

In some ancient texts, these regional deities and territorial spirits are described as the "angels of the nations." We find these regional deities in Psalm 82 as members of the Divine Council:

God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. 

As mentioned in the last post, these angelic rulers are described in Psalm 82 as the cause of injustice and oppression upon earth:

“How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked?
Provide justice for the needy and the fatherless;
uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute.
Rescue the poor and needy;
save them from the power of the wicked.”

We also find rebellious territorial spirits at work in the drama of Daniel 10. Daniel has been praying to the Lord for three weeks. Eventually, an angelic messenger arrives explaining that his three week delay was caused by a territorial spirit, the "prince of Persia." Daniel's messenger was only able to break free when Michael, the angelic protector of Israel, came to his assistance:

A hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees. He said, "Daniel, you who are highly esteemed, consider carefully the words I am about to speak to you, and stand up, for I have now been sent to you." And when he said this to me, I stood up trembling.

Then he continued, "Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come."

Before the angelic messenger leaves Daniel, he anticipates meeting additional resistance from a second territorial spirit. The "prince of Greece" will join "the prince of Persia":

"Now I must return to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I am through with him, the prince of Greece will come. But I am to tell you what is inscribed in the book of truth. There is no one with me who contends against these princes except Michael, your prince."

What I want to highlight in all this is how, in the biblical imagination, demonic activity is described as being associated with nations and groups. As I've mentioned, this tends to cut across how we typically conceive of demonic activity. Most of us think of the movie The Exorcist when we think of demon possession, a demon inhabiting an individual. But in the Old Testament, demonic activity was regional and territorial, associated with nations and populations. 

Relevant to our reflections upon the egregore, demonic influence over a group, even a whole nation, is a very biblical idea.

I've mentioned how I encountered Valentin Tomberg's Meditations on the Tarot, his exploration of Christian Hermeticism. And while I don't think many readers would tolerate a deep dive into the book, there are topics within the book that I think would be intriguing to explore. 

One of those topics is Tomberg's discussion of egregores. 

Personally, I had never heard of egregores. I had to go look it up. When I did look it up I was intrigued. Egregores sounded like things I describe in Reviving Old Scratch. But egregores are also controversial in Christian spaces. So, this is a series devoted to sorting it all out.

Let's start with some history. 

The Greek word ἐγρήγοροι (egrēgoroi) comes from the Book of Enoch and literally means “watchers.” The Book of Enoch is a Jewish apocryphal text from around the the 3rd–1st centuries BCE, and was an influence upon Second Temple Jewish and Christian thought. In the Book of Enoch, the “Watchers” are fallen angels. These are identified as the "sons of god" in Genesis 6.1-4 who descended to earth, interbred with humans, and gave birth to the Nephilim, which Enoch describes as the "giants." This Enochian tradition influenced later Christian demonology. Specifically, when Noah's flood destroyed the bodies of the giants their disembodied spirits continued to haunt the earth as the "unclean spirits" we encounter in the gospel accounts. 

Early Christian thought was heavily influenced by Neoplatonic philosophy and its view of celestial and angelic mediation. For example, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite described a "celestial hierarchy" of angelic powers connecting heaven and earth. According to Pseudo-Dionysius, the nine ranks of the celestial hierarchy are Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. In the Biblical imagination, the world suffers under these divine powers, the fallen and rebellious "principalities and powers." The Enochian tradition describing the Watchers was later taken to be an example of this angelic rebellion. Consequently, the Watchers come to be associated with fallen angelic and demonic powers in medieval Christian thought.

This theological background laid the conceptual foundation for the egregore in Western esotericism, the concept described by Tomberg in Meditations on the Tarot. The major development occurred in the 19th century, when the egregore came to be understood as a “collective spirit” or “collective consciousness” generated by a group. Drawing on the notion of powerful spiritual forces influencing human affairs, like the Watchers and the principalities and powers of biblical and medieval thought, these collective spirits could be angelic or demonic, benevolent or malevolent. Once the egregore manifested, it was believed to take on a quasi-autonomous agency, exerting influence over the group while remaining dependent on their energy and devotion. 

In Tomberg's view, as a Christian esotericist, egregores are demonic and come to "possess" groups, large and small, maintaining and directing their behavior toward bad ends. For our purposes, there are two things that are distinctive about the egregore in relation to more traditional Christian demonology. First, the egregore results from a "bottom-up" process rather than a "top-down" view like what we see Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's celestial hierarchy. This is an intriguing reversal, and it opens up the idea of viewing the egregore as an emergent phenomenon. But the "bottom-up" creation of the egregore is also where most of the controversy exists. Second, in contrast to traditional views of demonic activity and possession, what is unique about egregores is the focus upon groups rather than upon individuals. The egregore/demon is a product of the group and operates within and upon the group. 

That's what interesting about the egregore, the demonic possession of groups.

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.

"Mary"

Toil over.
Weary twilight comes.
Silence and rest.
And she, unaware,
of the cosmic singularity
that is herself.
Eternity soon to intrude
at the fulcrum of her assent.

She bears no weight.
Seconds have fallen lightly, gently.
Her days unfreighted
by intimations of destiny
or portents of glory.
The lightest of miracles.
A most ordinary election.
All her recommendation
escaping our gaze,
until heaven announces 
her unseen worth.

Discussion

"my soul is like a weaned child"

The short Psalm 131 is built around a single image, a weaned child resting with his or her mother:

Lord, my heart is not proud;
my eyes are not haughty.
I do not get involved with things
too great or too wondrous for me.
Instead, I have calmed and quieted my soul
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like a weaned child.

The image of a weaned child, rather than a nursing child, is interesting. We're further along the developmental trajectory. Not a newborn infant, but a toddler who is walking around, talking, and eating solid food. The metaphor is less about dependency than trust. What we see in Psalm 131 is what psychologists would call a "secure attachment." The weaned child experiences their mother as a secure base and a haven of safety. 

The Psalm connects this trust with humility: "My heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty." There's also an experience of inner peace and tranquility: "I have calmed and quieted my soul." As I describe in The Shape of Joy Psalm 131 is depicting a "quiet ego." 

The story I tell in The Shape of Joy is how transcendence is good for you. The modern self has collapsed in upon itself, becoming introverted, ruminating, self-referential, and morbidly self-absorbed. We are incurvatus in se, as Augustine put it. Curved in upon ourselves. And there are mental health consequences of this curvature. Instead of quiet, the ego is loud, agitated, unstable, and reactive. 

Consequently, we need to make an "outward turn" to become excurvatus ex se, curved outward to make contact with a reality bigger and other than our own. The science of awe, humility, gratitude, meaning in life, and spirituality, in their relation to mental health and well-being, all converge upon this story. Joy has a shape.

And that's the shape we see in the metaphor of Psalm 131. Humility and inner quietude flow out of a relation of trust. That's the key. The story I share in The Shape of Joy is largely descriptive, connecting the correlational dots of positive psychology to bring its main, and often unstated, conclusion into view. Because a clear story has emerged. Trouble is, if you read a book on the science of gratitude, the research on awe, or the effectiveness of humble leadership, you can miss the forest for the trees. You won't see how all these disparate research literatures, along with their outward facing self-improvement podcasts and books, reach the same conclusion. Transcendence is good for you.  It's like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, each one touching a different part of an elephant and arguing about what the creature is, since each describes only the piece he feels—the trunk is a snake, the tusk is a spear, the leg is a tree. Each holds a bit of the truth but can't see the unified whole. The research on gratitude, humility, awe, and meaning in life is like this, each book and podcast a blind man describing only a part of the whole. We fail to see the elephant—transcendence—because we consume the science bit by bit. The goal of The Shape of Joy is the bring the elephant into view.

Still, as I said, that was largely a descriptive task. It doesn't really answer the question about why transcendence is good for us. That's an explanatory, rather than descriptive, question. And since I didn't want to get too preachy in The Shape of Joy I didn't push too hard in this direction. But the explanation is the one we find in Psalm 131. Specifically, the self is inherently relational. There is no isolated ego or self. We exist only in relation. Thus, I can only come to know, define, and explore myself through relation. Self-help, self-exploration, and self-actualization are, at root, delusional, resting upon a false ontology and anthropology. Consequently, it stands to reason that when the self cuts itself off from relation, and tries to explore, define, and know itself in isolation, it will become disordered and hallucinatory. Just look around at the world. That’s what we see at the heart of our modern mental health crisis—disordered, hallucinatory selves.

Transcendence is good for us because it restores relation. And at the heart of the Christian vision of reality is the confession that this relation is, ontologically, personal. As Martin Buber put it, our relation to reality is not I-It, but I-Thou. But actually, object-relations theory and Psalm 131 would reverse this. Thou precedes I. The relation is Thou-I. Relation is prior to the self. The child only comes to know herself in relation to the mother. Self-definition assumes relation. The Thou, the maternal relation, is prior to the development of the self, the I. 

That is the explanation about why transcendence is good for us. Our flourishing flows out of a trusting relation with reality. Our I comes into being in relation to a prior, parental Thou. And in trusting this relation our souls become like a weaned child, peaceful, quiet and at rest. 

As I mentioned, my explorations into Girardian thinking regarding the katechon were kicked off by my colleague David sharing a recent Wired article about the tech billionaire Peter Thiel. I didn’t know much of anything about Thiel at the time, and I typically don’t care what tech billionaires are up to or thinking. But I was struck by how Thiel had been going around giving lectures about the Antichrist and that his ideas were based upon his readings of René Girard. The article was also my first introduction to how the biblical reference to the katechon had been put to use in Girardian thought and modern political theology. I’d read Girard’s I See Satan Fall Like Lightning but missed his reference to the katechon and the work of Wolfgang Palaver at the end of the book.

So, what is Peter Thiel saying about the katechon and the Antichrist?

The most Girardian aspect of Thiel’s thinking concerns the coming Apocalypse. We’ve discussed this over the last two posts. Since the Gospel accounts have demythologized the sacred violence at the heart of archaic religion, modern societies have lost the ability to handle, direct, and discharge rising mimetic violence. Slowly, a war of all against all begins to tear the world apart. All this is foretold in the book of Revelation.

Revelation also foretells the coming of the Antichrist, a power that rises to global dominance. From Revelation 13:

The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to blaspheme God and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.

The Beast in Revelation is “given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation,” and “all the inhabitants of the earth” will come to worship the Beast. With the rise of modern dispensationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries, these lines from Revelation 13 were taken as prophecies about the coming of a global power ruled by an autocratic dictator. Because of this, Christians subscribing to dispensationalism have often been suspicious of “one world governments” and, in more recent times, anything related to “globalism.”

Here’s where Thiel’s ideas show up. According to Thiel, how does the Antichrist rise to global power? As the world faces increasing chaos and violence, it will look for a savior. The world will look for a katechon, a power with global reach that can hold back, contain, and restrain the enveloping darkness. The Antichrist will offer itself to the world as the katechonic solution to social dissolution and escalating bloodshed. As the katechon, the Antichrist will restore safety, peace, and prosperity. And so, the world makes a deal with the Devil. The Antichrist is given global power and authority to play the role of katechonic savior.

Those are the dominoes that fall. The world worsens and the Apocalypse looms. The world clamors for a katechonic savior, a power that can hold back and restrain the coming disaster. The Antichrist promises to be that savior but needs global power to do so. The world cedes that global power to the Antichrist. And that is how the Antichrist comes to rule the world.

I’m describing all this in biblical and apocalyptic imagery, which makes it seem occult and supernatural. But for Thiel, this is a straightforward material and political analysis. Liberty and freedom are ceded to centralizing governmental and economic forces that arrogate power for themselves by incessantly banging the drum about looming catastrophes—from global warming to AI to nuclear war to terrorism to economic inequality. Stated that way, one starts to see how Thiel leverages this suite of ideas to justify his support of right-wing politicians who decry globalization.

The pithy way Thiel has summarized his theories about the Antichrist is “Don’t immanentize the katechon.” This is a play on the political-theological maxim, “Don’t immanentize the eschaton.” An “immanentized eschatology” is a utopian vision of bringing heaven to earth, that the kingdom of God can be achieved by human effort from within history. Marxism, for example, has been criticized for trying to immanentize the eschaton by claiming it could establish a worker’s paradise on earth. You can see here Thiel’s (serious) joke about immanentizing the katechon. According to Thiel, it would be disastrous if we ceded our freedoms to a global power promising peace and security. It would be a catastrophe if the katechonic savior were realized upon earth.

Personally, I do find this bit of Thiel’s thinking worth pondering. In the past, political visions like Marxism were utopian. They promised heaven on earth. The political saviors of today, by contrast, present themselves more grimly and realistically. Today’s political saviors don’t promise heaven on earth. Rather, they promise to be strong enough to protect you from outside threats. They promise to be your katechon. They promise to fight for you and defend you. The salvation political saviors promise today isn’t utopian but katechonic.

And here, once again, we observe just how slippery all this is, how the katechon doesn’t hold back the Antichrist, as described in 2 Thessalonians, but becomes the Antichrist. The crux of Thiel’s theory is how the Antichrist gains power by promising to be the katechon. In biblical language, Satan is being used to cast out Satan. Satan prowls the earth, causing a rise in mimetic violence. Then we turn toward Satan to restrain that violence. 

Which brings us to the katechonic irony of Peter Thiel. In Ross Douthat’s interview with Thiel, he asks Thiel a sharp question. (Douthat starts his question around the 55:30 mark.) Douthat asks whether all the stuff Thiel’s developing—from AI to military tech to surveillance tech—in order to prevent the Antichrist from taking over the world might contribute to facilitating that arrival. As observers of the interview have noted, it’s a question that seems to put Thiel on his heels, giving him pause and making him visibly uncomfortable.

That’s the irony, isn’t it? Thiel is playing katechon. Thiel is trying to prevent the coming of the Antichrist, to restrain its coming. That’s his agenda. And to accomplish that goal—notice this—he’s banging the catastrophic drum. Thiel then steps in as katechonic savior to prevent the Apocalypse.

And isn’t that precisely what Peter Thiel says the Antichrist would do?

As mentioned in the last post, Wolfgang Palaver's 1995 article "Hobbes and the Katéchon: The Secularization of Sacrificial Christianity" in the journal Contagion: Journal of Violence Mimesis and Culture was influential in putting the political idea of the katechon on the radar screen of Girardians.

In the article, Palaver points to the work of the German political theorist Carl Schmitt (1888–1985). Schmitt is of interest to this story for two reasons. First, Schmitt was noteworthy for deploying the biblical allusion to the katechon, the “restrainer” that holds back chaos and the unveiling of the Antichrist, within modern political theory. Second, and notoriously, Schmitt invoked the notion of the katechon to defend Hitler’s rise to power. During the early years of National Socialism, Schmitt argued that while there was much to object to in Hitler and his political vision, Hitler’s strong leadership provided the katechontic medicine the Weimar Republic desperately needed. As events unfolded, however, Schmitt’s katechontic defense of Hitler was revealed to be a world-historic and catastrophic mistake. Yet Schmitt’s tragic error illustrates one of the central points of this series: how the katechon can become the Antichrist. Or how the Antichrist can come to power by claiming to be the katechon.

Back to Palaver.

The heart of Palaver's argument is that Thomas Hobbes' vision of the secular state in Leviathan is that of a Girardian ketechton. 

Recall how, according to Girard, the demise of archaic religion threatens to unloose social violence. Satan has been thrown out of heaven and now prowls the earth. The archaic religious scapegoating mechanism, where all (the community) were against one (the scapegoat), has returned to the primordial all against all. As a result, social dissolution threatens. There is no cathartic outlet for rising mimetic violence

Thomas Hobbes saw the looming catastrophe that was emerging in modernity. Witnessing the wars of religion that had resulted from the fracturing of the sacred order due to the Protestant Reformation, Hobbes argued that the secular state had to step into repress the escalating mimetic violence that was emerging between religions and individuals. As Palaver observes:

Hobbes's solution to the religious and political crisis of his time was the proposal to establish an absolute power that could prevent the outbreak of civil war. According to Hobbes, the civil sovereign should be the ruler of both politics and religion; he should be civil sovereign as well as head of the Church and sole interpreter of Scripture. If we study Hobbes's political philosophy carefully, we will realize that his state functions like a katéchon: it provides for the permanent prevention of chaos and violence...The aim of Hobbes's state is the restraining of the apocalyptic state of war.

Simply put, the secular nation state functions as the katechon to prevent the contagious outbreak of widespread mimetic violence. The key difference here is the secularization of the katechon. Where ancient societies relied upon sacred violence, the secular state is a demythologized power and can perform its katechontic function only if stands over and above religion. As Palaver writes:

Hobbes's political concept, the powerful state, resembles his image of God in many ways. Just as the [Biblical] God of the final speeches of Job or the [Egyptian] God Horus have to restrain the chaotic monsters, Hobbes's state has to prevent the outbreak of chaos or civil war. As Carl Schmitt notes, the purpose of Hobbes's state—which originates in the war of all against all—is the permanent prevention of that war. The analogy between Hobbes's image of God and his concept of the state and of sovereignty is an example of secularization...

Basically, the state becomes the new God of modernity, the national God who stands above the fractious gods of the Christian denominations. But notice what has happened here. A bait and switch has just occurred. By stepping in to prevent the Apocalypse, the state takes over the role of justifying violence. The scapegoating once hidden by archaic religion is now masked by a new sacred order, the violence of the secular state. Palaver makes the observation: 

Hobbes’s transfer of the theological concept of the katéchon to the secular realm of politics, for instance, is not a secularization of the true spirit of the Gospel. It is the secularization of a sacrificial theology. 

Here’s the question: How will the world be saved? We face, again, the choice between conversion and the katechon, a choice between “the true spirit of the Gospel” and the modern state’s katechonic “secularization of a sacrificial theology.” Modernity has chosen the state. And Christians have chosen the state! We apprehend threats all around us and run to the state as savior, the katechonic Restrainer who will hold back the chaos. And as our new God, the state preserves the social order just as the old archaic religions once did: through scapegoating violence. And that’s the Devil’s greatest trick. Through the state, as our katechonic savior, we use Satan to cast out “Satan,” the innocent scapegoat. Mimetic violence is directed toward the scapegoats identified by the state which secures national solidarity and peace. 

The tragedy of Carl Schmitt is repeated. The katechonic savior is, once again, revealed to be the Antichrist.

I mentioned in the last post that Peter Thiel is a follower of René Girard and connects his ideas about the Antichrist and katechon to Girard's vision of the Apocalypse.

I discussed Girard's thoughts about the Apocalypse in my most recent series about moral influence and the atonement. But a quick recap for anyone new and jumping in with this series. 

First, mimetic desire and mimetic rivalry. Humans imitate each other. When we imitate the desires of others, we come to desire the same things. This draws us into competition and rivalry. As rivalry spreads through mimetic contagion, the threat of collective violence and social dissolution grows. 

Second, archaic religion, sacred violence, and the scapegoat. Ancient religions solved the problem of mimetic rivalry by identifying a scapegoat. The violence of the group could be directed and discharged toward a single individual. The scapegoat is killed, and a collective catharsis is achieved. Over time, the power of the scapegoat to bring about peace is ritualized and mythologized. Sacrificial violence binds the community together. 

Third, the gospel unmasking of sacrificial violence. In the New Testament gospel accounts, for the first time in history, we see the dynamics of scapegoating and sacrificial violence from within, from the perspective of the innocent victim--Jesus of Nazareth. We see how communal peace is achieved through the scapegoating and killing of an innocent victim. The Gospels expose the violent and unjust roots of archaic religion and the sacred foundations of ancient civilization. Christianity calls both civilizations and individuals away from this sacrificial, scapegoating violence. Like Paul on the road to Damascus, we are saved when we stand in solidarity with those we have been victimizing. 

Fourth, the modern world and the coming apocalypse. Having had the illegitimacy of archaic religion and the catharsis provided by sacred violence exposed by the Gospels, modern society has been deprived of a release valve for its mimetic rivalry. Scapegoating still occurs, but this violence lacks sacred, universal legitimacy and therefore cannot generate the binding and unifying power archaic religion once provided. Consequently, rivalry and violence escalate. As humanity moves closer to social catastrophe and destruction, we face a stark choice: be converted or suffer the apocalypse. The book of Revelation predicts that while a few will be converted to the way of Jesus, most will reject his call and succumb to the power of the Antichrist. Armageddon is coming.

Here's some things I'd like to underline for the purposes of this series. 

What the gospel accounts provide us with is an apocalypse, an exposure and unveiling. The dynamics of history have been brought into the light. As Jesus said, things hidden from the foundation of the world have been brought into view. This unveiling provides us with moral clarity, and that clarity presents us with a choice. We can follow Jesus into the peaceable kingdom of God or walk the highway to hell. And as predicted by both Jesus and the book of Revelation, most people will walk the road to doom. As Jesus says (NLT translation): "The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it."

In this view, the gospel "saves" us by providing us a clear view and a clear choice. That choice is now up to us.  And this is, by the way, why I describe Girard's theory as a moral influence view of the atonement. Salvation is a choice we make.

In the conclusion of his book I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Girard reflects upon Jesus' statement in the gospels, "I see satan fall like lightning from heaven." As we've described above, divine and heavenly legitimacy has been stripped away from justifying satanic, scapegoating violence. Satan has been thrown out of heaven. And yet, as Girard observes, while thrown out of heaven Satan now prowls the earth. Scapegoating violence continues but the sacrificial mechanisms that once corralled and channeled this violence have been dismantled. And this creates a new set of problems. Girard:

By revealing the secret of the prince of this world, the Passion accounts subvert the primordial source of human order. The darkness of Satan is no longer thick enough to conceal the innocence of victims who become, at the same time, less and less "cathartic." It is no longer possible really to "purge" or "purify" communities of their violence. Satan can no longer expel Satan. We should not conclude from this that humans are going to be immediately rid of their now fallen prince.

In the Gospel of Luke Christ sees Satan "fall like lightning from heaven" (10:18). Evidently he falls to earth, and he will not remain inactive. Jesus does not announce the immediate end of Satan, not yet at least. It is rather the end of his false transcendence, his power to restore order through his false transcendence, the end of scapegoating...

Christianity expands the range of human freedom, which individuals and communities make use of as they please, sometimes in a good way but often in a bad way. A bad use of freedom contradicts, of course, what Jesus intends for humanity. But if God did not respect the freedom of human beings, if he imposed his will on them by force or even by his prestige, which would mean by mimetic contagion, then he would not be different from Satan.

Jesus is not the one who rejects the kingdom of God; it's human beings who do so...

So, with Satan now prowling the earth and humans increasingly misusing their freedom what is keeping the satanic escalation at bay? What is holding back the final arrival of the Antichrist?

Here Girard turns to make one of his few references to the image of the katechon in 2 Thessalonians. Girard:

What delays the "unbinding of Satan"? St. Paul, in the letter to the Thessalonians, defines it as a katechon, as that which constrains the Apocalypse in the twofold sense of the word as noted by J.P. Dupuy: to have within itself and to hold within certain limits. This "containing" is made up of a set of qualities that contradict one another, and in particular the force stemming from the inertia of the powers of this world, their inability to understand the Revelation of Christ in spite of their worldly intelligence and adaptability. 

In his work Girard did not discuss the katechon at length, but here he gestures toward the idea before turning toward his favored approach to address the threat of societal violence: the non-violent way of Jesus. Girard prefers conversion over the katechon. Regardless, Girard acknowledges that "the powers of the world," through their contradictory inertia, can delay societal collapse. These powers, however, lack an understanding of the Gospels and, while they may postpone the Apocalypse, they cannot prevent its eventual arrival. 

In making this point about the katechon in I See Satan Fall Like Lightning Girard footnotes the work of Wolfgang Palaver. In the Wired article I cited in the last post, Palaver is presented as a rival to Peter Thiel, albeit a respectful and friendly one, in how best to interpret Girard on the Apocalypse. Palaver is with Girard in calling for conversion to the way of Jesus. Thiel, by contrast, is more interested in the katechon. (More precisely, Thiel is concerned with how the Antichrist will put the katechon to satanic use. But that's getting ahead of ourselves...) For the purposes of this series, Palaver was one of the thinkers who elevated the idea of the katechon in Girardian studies. 

We'll turn to his work next.

Recently, my colleague David McAnulty sent me this Wired essay about Peter Thiel's theories concerning the Antichrist and how those relate to Girardian thought concerning the Apocalypse. Some of Thiel's beliefs concerning the Antichrist also showed up in his interview with Ross Douthat.

I had a vague notion about who Thiel was, a tech billionaire who has supported Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. What I didn't know, until reading the Wired essay, was that Thiel describes himself as a committed Girardian, and uses Girard to defend his beliefs about the rise of the Antichrist. Of particular interest to me was the role of the katechon in Thiel's political theology. All this sent me down a rabbit hole exploring how the katechon plays out in Girardian thought, and how these ideas are entering the political mainstream through people like Peter Thiel.

Also, since I just finished a series on René Girard where I discussed his vision of the Apocalypse I felt this would be a good follow-up series.

So, to start, what is the katechon? And what is the relation of the katechon to the Antichrist?

In 2 Thessalonians 2 there is an enigmatic discussion about the coming of the "the man of lawlessness":

Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.

A few verses later, Paul describe how the man of lawlessness will rise to power:

The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

The man of lawlessness is not explicitly called the Antichrist in 2 Thessalonians, but throughout church history the two figures have been closely associated. The man of lawlessness appears before the return of the Lord, leading a great rebellion against God. He deceives the world. He exalts himself in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be divine. These descriptions echo the Beast in Revelation, a figure marked by mass deception, global dominion, and open war against God. 

In describing the man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul turns to mention a second mysterious figure:

Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is holding him back (τὸ κατέχον), so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back (ὁ κατέχων) will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. 

At present, Paul says, something or someone is "holding back" the man of lawlessness. Something is "restraining" the Antichrist. This enigmatic "restrainer" Paul calls τὸ κατέχον (katechon), the "restraining thing" or "the one who restrains."

Okay, who is this Restrainer? Who is holding back the Antichrist?

This is where we take a turn toward political theology. For most of church history, the katechon was believed to be the power of the empire to prevent social chaos and dissolution. For example, some of the early church fathers felt that the Roman Empire was the katechon. Rome certainly wasn't good, but the civil order Rome provided did prevent the global rise of the Antichrist. Later, during the Medieval period, the Holy Roman Empire was believed to be the restraining power that prevented social unrest and upheaval. In short, up until the Protestant Reformation the katechon was believed to be legitimate political power to preserve the social order.

With the Reformation, however, the meaning of the katechon became deeply contested, a development that, as we’ll see, has relevance to contemporary debates surrounding Peter Thiel. Specifically, rather than viewing the political power of the Catholic Church, embodied in the Holy Roman Empire, as the katechon, the Reformers began to argue that the Church itself was the Antichrist. 

The upshot of this development is simply put: Your katechon might be my Antichrist. One person views a political power as holding back the chaos, while another sees that power as the Antichrist itself. Take Donald Trump as an example: Katechon or Antichrist? 

The katechon explains much of the attraction evangelicals have for Trump, an attraction that has puzzled progressive Christians. Morally speaking, Trump is not a Christian exemplar. Similar to Caesar, Trump isn't "a good person." But like the Roman empire, Trump is a katechon. Trump uses political power to "restrain" the darkness, as evangelicals understand that darkness. 

And yet, it's precisely here, with evangelical capitulation to strong-man authoritarianism, where progressive Christians see evangelicals falling prey to the powerful delusions and lies of the Antichrist. Trump is the man of lawlessness who is setting himself up as a divine authority and evangelicals are "believing the lie."

Again, one person's katechon is another person's Antichrist. And the slipperiness here is the theme of this series.

"Exile"

Hope cracks dry
underfoot,
tinder for despair.
Dreams sweaty,
fevered, tossed.
Chewed stories stale in the mouth.
Waiting souring
in curdled expectation.
A promise fatigued.

This is the brittle season.

Burnt eyes
scanning the horizon
for a dawn long delayed.
We wait in the city
of the dead.

"I wait for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning"

What a line right before Advent. Waiting for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning. 

An Advent tradition of mine is sharing a poem online on each of the four Sundays of Advent. A few years ago I collected those into a PDF booklet entitled "Glory Here in Straw and Blood."  The first part of the collection is entitled "Exile" and in the Introduction I describe those poems this way:

In the poems collected under “Exile” we are often a young person sitting around the campfire listening to old timers tell stories from Israel’s past. As we listen to these stories, we experience the Advent themes of longing and waiting. There is an impatience and irritation in these poems as the stories of God seem old and worn out. Hope is wearing thin.

The poem I'm sharing this coming Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, expresses these exilic themes. And the final lines of Sunday's poem use the image of Psalm 130, that of a watchman scanning the horizon looking for dawn. Trouble is, it's a dawn too long delayed. And because of this, hope is wearing thin.

This waiting is hard for us. Years ago, at my church, the very first song on the first Sunday of Advent was "Joy to the World." "Too soon!" I thought to myself. A proper Advent hymn places us in the experience of exilic longing, like O Come, O Come Emmanuel:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear

The plaintive plea of Advent, as we mourn in lonely exile, is "Come!" Some churches, to make the point plain, do not place the Christ child in the nativity scene before Christmas. With no child to gaze at, you're forced to use Advent for waiting.

So, my poem this Sunday isn't full of Hallmark Christmas cheer. It's an exilic lament about the pain of waiting. We begin Advent sitting in the dark, like a watchman, scanning the horizon waiting for the dawn.

So, what does it matter if, in the end, René Girard's theory is a moral influence view of the atonement?

Let me end this series by answering that question.

First, let's circle back to Girard's own pessimistic conclusion, that Christianity predicts its own failure. Or, more simply put, if it's up to us to save ourselves then things aren't looking very good. We're reminded again of the famous assessment J.R.R. Tolkien once shared in a correspondence:

Actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’— though it contains (and in legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.

One of the limitations of moral influence viewpoints is utopianism, the belief that humans can save themselves from within history. But the Christian vision of salvation is, to borrow again from Tolkien, eucatastrophic. We can only be saved from beyond and outside of history. Salvation is eschatological. 

Relatedly, human moral performance does nothing to solve the fundamental human predicament: Death. And this has implications for Girard's theory. Recall in this series how I put survival-based fears alongside mimetic desire as a source of scapegoating. If that is true, then our ability to step away from sacred violence demands a metaphysics of hope. As the book of Hebrews says, the fear of death is the power of the devil in our lives and Christ was raised from the dead to destroy that power. Our ability to step into the moral vision of Girard's theory, standing in solidarity with the victim, requires the ontological assurance provided by the resurrection. Otherwise, survival-based fears will continue to drive us toward self-interest. Recall, again, my example of lifeboats on the Titanic. A capacity for giving away my life for others is created by the conviction that sacrificial acts of love will be eschatologically vindicated. If not, well, every man for himself. 

Simply put, while important and necessary, salvation cannot be reduced to human moral performance. History will prove to be a long defeat. In the final analysis, salvation is eschatological and ontological. We will not be able to save ourselves. We await the eucatastrophe. 

There was a time when I considered René Girard's theory of atonement to be a species of Christus Victor rather than moral influence.

Specifically, the mechanisms and dynamics of sacred violence and scapegoating are satanic. Satan is, after all, the diablos, the Accuser. And accusation is what kicks off the scapegoating violence. We point the finger at the innocent victim. In coming to stand in solidarity with the victim we turn away from accusation. This entire dynamic is powerfully illustrated in the story of Jesus and the woman caught in the act of adultery. The men come as accusers, as diabolos, with stones in their hands. But by end of the story the stones are dropped. Jesus says to the woman, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, Lord,” she replies. This is the salvation Jesus brings us. We drop the stones in our hands. We turn away from accusation. We refuse to play diabolos. 

When we witness how Girard's reading of the gospels calls us to step away from a satanic social matrix, we are tempted to view his theory of atonement as a type of Christus Victor. For that is what Christus Victor atonement involves, liberation from malevolent spiritual powers. The social dynamics of mimetic desire, rivalry, sacred violence, and scapegoating can be viewed as a "principality and power" that we need to be rescued from. An exorcism is at work.

And we do need to be rescued. We need this exorcism. But over time I've come to view René Girard's theory as less Christus Victor and more a moral influence view of salvation. Why? Because while God acts within history to unmask and expose the satanic foundations of human civilization, at the end of the day our response to that exposure is one of human moral choice and effort. I have to read the gospel accounts and respond with metanoia. I must turn and repent. I must drop the stones in my hand. That is the moral demand. 

And to be clear--I feel I must keep repeating this--our turning does save us. So I'm not, for a moment, trying to discount how our repenting of scapegoating violence isn't a critical aspect of our salvation. What I'm trying to highlight is how, in Girard's theory, salvation is wholly reduced to human moral action. We are saved when we drop the stones.

In short, while God does act to expose the satanic matrix of society, the moment of liberation is effected by human effort. And this is why, I believe, Girard's theory is best understood as a example of the moral influence view of atonement.

Let me make the point sharper, though this will risk giving offense. What if, after hearing a long lecture about René Girard's theories, from the nuances of mimetic desire to the social dynamics of scapegoating to the unmasking of sacred violence we behold in the gospels, the person sums it all up and says, "So what you're telling me is to love everyone?" I think the honest answer would be, "Yeah, what I'm telling you is to love everyone." Now, of course, the Girardian is going to jump in here to offer some clarifications: "By loving everyone we mean stop scapegoating, stand in solidarity with your victims and the victims of your society and nation, drop the stones in your hands, stop playing the accuser, stop using God to justify your violence, imitate Jesus as the forgiving victim." To which the person would nod along and say again, "So what you're telling me is that I should love everyone?" 

My point is that, if we love everyone--and I do mean everyone--you end up precisely where Girard's theory wants you to land. If you want, you can sidestep Girard's theory and just obey the Sermon on the Mount. Job done.

If this is so, if love is the answer, then why are we messing around with René Girard? Recall, again, the point I've made in this series. What René Girard's theory was saving people from was penal substitutionary atonement. That's what the excitement was all about, being liberated from a bad theory of atonement. The victory wasn't moral, it was hermeneutical. For love is and will always be the answer. Girard's theory did nothing to change that story. What Girard's theory gave us was a new way of reading the Bible and thinking about the death of Jesus. To be sure, Girard's theory is prophetically helpful in exposing how violent readings of the atonement create violent Christians and violent Christian nations. Girard exposed how bad hermeneutics can undermine love. Christian failures of love become a lot more clear after Girard. But Girard didn't finally or uniquely bring Jesus' commandment to love everyone into human consciousness. Girard simply exposed why we fail, and continue to fail, at love.

And so this is why Girard's theory is a moral influence view. Girard's theory is profound, prophetic, and revelatory, but its moral imperative is the same one we get from all moral influence views of the atonement: 

Love everyone.