The Politics of the Cross: Insights from Girard, Ellacuría, and Lonergan

René Girard and Bernard Lonergan both offer theologies of the Cross that recognize God as having definitively marked history through the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus. For Girard, the Cross reveals God as fundamentally the God of the innocent victim, as well as own tendency to scapegoat and create victims. Lonergan notes that the Cross and the redemption that emerges from it has resulted in a “change for the better” in history. Despite the claims of Girard and Lonergan, the scandal of social sin on a grand scale persists. How can this be? And what does this failure to see mean for politics - our shared social life - today? This paper offers tentative insights into this problematic by placing Girard and Lonergan in dialogue with Ignacio Ellacuría and his political theology of the "crucified people."  Taken together, these authors offer important principles for a Christian political praxis rooted in love.