Girard laments the fact that a theology of the apocalypse, (or rather a _____ (fill in the blank ology) of the apocalypse has slipped out of most conversations. My first thought was, “What? I hear about it all the time.” But alas, it is usually a “mythological conception” of the end.
The only Christians who still talk about the apocalypse are fundamentalists, but they have a completely mythological conception of it. They think that the violence of the end of time will come from God himself. They cannot do without a cruel God. Strangely, they do not see that the violence we ourselves are in the process of amassing and that is looming over our own heads is entirely sufficient to trigger the worst. They have no sense of humor.
-Rene Girard, Battling to the End, p.xvi
Girard’s view of God insists that there is no violence in the trinity. Violence comes from man and our rivalry. I think most of the Bible can be read this way with only some shift of perspective, but there are some sticky spots. I haven’t processed this whole idea myself. It depends on a particular definition of violence. For example, the flood isn’t what we are talking about. The commands to kill the pagans in Canaan don’t count either. Through the lens of Girard’s “Escalation to Extremes” though, the idea that God needs to intervene directly at the end of time to cause lots of nasty stuff to happen to man doesn’t fit at all. We have everything we need to make a big mess right at our disposal already.