Transforming the Sacred into Saintliness
Reflecting on Violence and Religion with René Girard

Debates about violence and religion will gain from taking Girard's distinction between the sacred and the holy into account.

Wolfgang Palaver (Author)

9781108728225, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 4 February 2021

75 pages
17.6 x 12.6 x 0.6 cm, 0.09 kg

'[This study's] strength is found in offering normative concepts, select critical interventions, and suggestive connections for scholars working in the area of religion and violence.' Brian D. Robinette, Modern Theology

Studies into religion and violence often put religion first. René Girard started with violence in his book Violence and the Sacred and used the Durkheimian term 'sacred' as its correlate in his study of early religions. During the unfolding of his theory, he more and more distinguished the sacred from saintliness to address the break that the biblical revelation represented in comparison to early religions. This distinction between the sacred and saintliness resembles Henri Bergson's complementing Emile Durkheim's identification of the sacred and society with a dynamic religion that relies on individual mystics. Girard's distinction also relates to the insights of thinkers like Jacques Maritain, Simone Weil, and Emmanuel Levinas. This element explores some of Girard's main features of saintliness. Girard pleaded for the transformation of the sacred into holy, not their separation.

1. Introduction
2. Why violence precedes religion and not the other way around
3. Violence and the Sacred
4. The biblical difference
5. From the sacred to saintliness in France
6. Dimensions of Saintliness.

Subject Areas: Christian life & practice [HRCV], Biblical studies & exegesis [HRCG], Christianity [HRC], History of religion [HRAX], Religion: general [HRA]