That's My Church!

The latest Carnival of the Anglican Implosion is up over at the CaNN WebElf Report. Click n' scroll for updates on all the fires.

Some people at my own church have asked me, "Tom, where do I start learning about the issues?" Well, this is exactly the sort of place to do so. Look around - both conservative and liberal viewpoints are represented. Click through to other sites as well. Explore. You may not agree with everything said, but that's okay. The important point is that resources like this - are you ready for it? - help expand one's thinking on the many issues confronting the Church. Of course, you should be reading both the Communion and the ECUSA's own sites as well, but remember that you're only going to get the Party Line from them.

One of the links in this edition that I found particularly apropos given the ECUSA's Lenten emphasis on the U.N.'s Millenium Development Goals is an old G-File from 2002 in which Goldberg riffs on immanentizing the eschaton.

SIDEBAR: Who else out there would love to thwack Jonah over the head with a flying monkey every time he starts his "I've moved beyond the couch-quoting-French-bashing-Star-Trek-worshipping-humor stage of my life?" Bring back the old G-File! Dance, clown! Dance, I say!

Anyhoo, Jonah has this to say about attempts to bring heaven to earth:

In modern parlance, the phrase was coined by the late, great Eric Voegelin in The New Science of Politics in 1952. Voegelin doesn't make for easy reading, and if you can get through The New Science of Politics you probably think I'm an idiot and aren't reading this column anyway. One small example: Voegelin writes, "The problem of an eidos in history, hence, arises only when a Christian transcendental fulfillment becomes immanentized. Such an immanentist hypostasis of the eschaton, however, is a theoretical fallacy." Now, if you can understand that the first time through, you probably need a tan.

Anyway, Voegelin believed that Western civilization took a wrong turn under those damnable Gnostics. Gnostics are small furry creatures with opposable thumbs and who tend to get into your garbage cans. Oh, wait. Sorry. Those are raccoons (whom Cosmo considers to be Gnostics — very long story there).

Gnostics were pre-Christian, early Christian, and various Jewish sects who believed that if you stood on one foot while saying the alphabet backwards, or some other silliness, you could release your soul from material constraints while you were still alive.

Actually, that may not be exactly right either. The problem is that Gnosticism took many forms, in many places, over many distinct periods (sort of like bell-bottom pants). The central thing to keep in mind is that Gnostics believed that personal enlightenment — or revelation to a specific truth or viewpoint — liberated you from the need to find salvation in the afterlife or through any conventional, institutional means. Instead of going to salvation, they brought salvation to them (a Muslim Gnostic, I assume, could have his 72 virgins delivered to his home — which, if true, would make Islamic Gnosticism the fastest-growing religion in the world, for men). It's not surprising, then, that the Catholic Church was constantly putting out Gnostic fires through most of its history.

Because the Gnostics believed they — and they alone — had figured out God's plan in the here and now, they tended to be very, very smug and more than a little annoying (except when they were on the rack, which tended to make them a lot less smirky). It also inclined Gnostics to argue that heaven could be established here on earth, that through material or political means they could perfect the inherently imperfectible.

If that sounds shockingly like Hillary Clinton to you, you deserve a door prize ("But I don't need a door!" my couch just heckled). Voegelin believed that Gnosticism flourished in the liberal, leftist, Nazi, and Communist minds. These folks were hell-bent (heh, heh) on creating heaven on earth. According to Voegelin's perspective, Ralph Nader is a direct descendant of — I am not making this up — such 9th-century crypto-Gnostic thinkers as Scotus Eriugena (if you are tempted to write me saying, "Eriugena was a pantheist, not a Gnostic," I bet you need a tan too).

So: Immanentize means to make part of the here and now. Eschaton, like eschatology, relates to the branch of theology which deals with humanity's destiny. You know, the end times, when all of that wacky, end-timey, Seventh-Seal stuff happens (oceans boil, the righteous ascend to heaven, Carrot Top is funny, etc). Hence "immanentizing the eschaton" means, in effect, trying to make what is reserved for the next life part of the here and now. You can see why all sorts of cults, heretical sects, Scientologists, and various flavors of Mother Jones readers — including the Fighting Illuminati — would be accused of doing precisely that.

In the words of Ted "Theodore" Logan, "That's us, dude!"

Lent is supposed to be a season of penitence. But this penitence is supposed to be directed to God, a recognition of and apology for our personal sins and the weaknesses in our relationship with Him, a cleansing of our individual souls, a spiritual exercise. The MDG project is a worldly endeavor. At least if you believe the literature, it's an exercise in creating heaven on earth, a giant, politically co-ordinated wealth transfer designed to abolish the nasty, brutish and short nature of most people's existence and at the same time bring us closer to our own salvation via our checkbooks. Of course, this makes sense from the Jesus as Social Worker angle of theology, one whose influence has been waxing in the Church for some time now. Indeed, I am firmly of the opinion that large chunks of the Left - including the PB herself - don't really believe in Man's fallen state, sin and redemption, Christ as our sole mediator and advocate, or even in God, Heaven or the afterlife (at least not as we traditionally think of them). To them, these concepts are mere tools to be used to get us to work for Good (as defined by the Church) in the here and now.

Given this, I have taken it upon myself to spend time rereading C.S. Lewis and N.T. Wright (as well as the Bible) this season. And I find this exercise to be far more spiritually - what? - purging than the O-fficial course charted by the Church.

And before you accuse me of being a heartless thug, let me also say that of course, the Church ought to be doing all it can to aid the poor, the sick, the hungry, etc. After all, charity is supposed to flow from spirituality. However, it is not supposed to be a substitute for or the source of such spirituality. By pounding the MDG theme, I'm concerned that this is exactly what the Church is allowing to pressing to happen.

I'll gladly toss in what I can in aid of relief. But to the extent that such is supposed to serve as a Lenten observance or an exercise in a wider theology of putting works before faith, I ask the Church to keep its immanentization off my eschaton.