Last November I had the pleasure of welcoming René Girard’s son, Martin, to a conference at the Catholic University of America which was titled NOVITATE, taking its name from a line in scripture, Paul’s letter to the Romans:
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (in the Latin vulgate: “Et nolite conformari huic sæculo, sed reformamini in novitate sensus vestri”).
How might we renew our senses in our time? That is the question I was interested in exploring. I felt that René Girard might provide the foundation, or at least the seed, for answering it. We need new models.
The old models, from crumbling academic institutions to media formats to longstanding political assumptions, seemed to be passing away.
The Czech theologian and survivor of totalitarianism, Josef Zvěřina, wrote about the conversion that leads away from destructive imitation and conformity to the world and towards a kind of continual conversion based on grace that is not reliant on any one particular worldly model:
“Do not conform! Me syschematizesthe! How well this expression reveals the perennial root of the verb: schema. In a nutshell, all schemas, all exterior models are empty. We have to want more, the apostle makes it our duty, ‘change your way of thinking, reshape your minds’—metamorfousthe te anakainosei tou noos. Paul’s Greek is so expressive and concrete! He opposes schema or morphe—permanent form, to metamorphe—change in the creature. One is not to change according to any model that in any case is always out of fashion, but it is a total newness with all its wealth (anakainosei).”
In the full video, available to paying subscribers, you’ll find an opening intro from me and some closing remarks.
