Scott Cowdell

“And with this, there is something that I have not formulated clearly enough up to now: Christ is our scapegoat, but—and here I am in complete agreement with you—the positive effect doesn’t come any more from the fact that once more we have found a scapegoat; the positive effect only comes from the fact that Christ transforms violence and hatred and falsehood into love, and that he sends us the Spirit of Truth and Love. The sacrificial mechanism, as such, no longer has any positive effect! But the overcoming of sacrifice does not begin outside of the sacred. For a start, Christ completely accepts [Le Christ accepte d’abord totalement] “the old game,” in an acceptance that is not merely a game, but very real. The death of Christ has a salvific effect only in the sense that it transforms and reverses the sacrificial mechanism, but by entering totally into this mechanism, or by allowing himself to be captured by the mechanism!”
― Scott Cowdell, René Girard and Raymund Schwager: Correspondence 1974-1991

“You say that men are utterly incapable of renouncing violence, and, in this fact, that Christ is not involved in this violence, you see the proof of his divinity. I find that to be very true. But the question remains: how are men able to renounce violence? The answer is: the Spirit slowly transforms the hearts of men and renders them capable of this renunciation. By the Spirit we are able to understand that we have transferred our violence onto Christ when we were still blind (and we continue to do this to the extent that we remain blind). Therefore the cross is the source of life in a double sense. (1) Christ remained faithful to the message of the Father, even when the whole of humanity projected its violence onto him. He bore this violence and did not react against it with counterviolence. (2) The Father reacted against the violence by sending the Spirit. Here I add another theme that I don’t find in your text: prayer. This is a very important theme in all the NT writings. In the final analysis, prayer is always a prayer about the coming of the Spirit. And the Spirit is the Spirit of liberty, love and peace, as Paul very often tells us. Peace between men finally becomes possible through the gift of the Spirit.”
― Scott Cowdell, René Girard and Raymund Schwager: Correspondence 1974-1991