Raymund Schwager (1935–2004) was a Swiss Roman Catholic priest and theologian, and member of the Society of Jesus. Life Schwager was born on 11 November 1935 in Balterswil into a Swiss farming family as the second of seven children. After primary and secondary school he joined the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in 1955. Following Jesuit custom, he studied philosophy (1957–1960 in Pullach near Munich, Germany) and theology (1963–1967 in Lyon-Fourvière, France), separated by educational work as a prefect in a Jesuit boarding school (1960–1963, "Stella Matutina" in Feldkrich, Austria). Schwager was ordained a priest on 31 July 1966 and completed his formal education with a doctorate in theology (1967–1969 in Fribourg, Switzerland). During those years he also spent some time in Spain, the home country of the Jesuits' Basque founder, Ignatius of Loyola, on whom he wrote his thesis. For seven years (1970–1977) Schwager was a member of the editors of the journal Orientierung in Zurich and travelled, giving speeches and presentations. In 1977 he became Professor of Dogmatic and Ecumenical Theology at the Faculty of Catholic Theology in Innsbruck, Austria. From 1985 to 1987, and again from 1999 to 2003, he was dean of that faculty. He was a co-founder of the Colloquium on Violence & Religion (1991), its first president (1991–1995) and an honorary member of its advisory board from 1999 until his unexpected death on 27 February 2004. Theology Schwager's thinking was above all inspired by three sources: First, his deep Christian faith and spirituality in the tradition of Ignatius of Loyola and nourished by the biblical writings; second: a mode of arguing he called "dramatic", a term he took from Hans Urs von Balthasar but to which he gave new meaning in his theology; third: mimetic theory and the friendship he sustained with its author, René Girard. In theology, Schwager took up controversial questions like sacrifice and substitution and relentlessly worked to clarify the way we are to conceive of God. By tackling questions that others tried to avoid, Schwager advanced theological thinking and facilitated solutions that previously had not been thought of. He reached these goals via his hallmark "Dramatic Theology": The history of revelation, as it has been recorded in the biblical writings, is not linear. Divine revelation, therefore, is not like a theoretical treatise. History is made up of a web of different interdependent actions – initiatives and responses – by different