Neither the New Testament nor the words of Christ can be cited as evidence for the idea that with the passing of time the moral predicament of fallen humanity would improve and the world’s resistance to Christ and the Church would diminish. The scriptural evidence, on the contrary  is that history consists – in the words of Hans Urs von Balthasar – of the mutual intensification of the Yes and the No to Christ, a view made anthropologically cogent by René Girard’s extraordinary insights into history and culture. In part 1 of this series Gil Bailie situates the challenges facing contemporary Christianity within the context of this scriptural, Balthasarian and Girardian view of the human predicament.