Don't Immanentize the Eschaton!

Immanentize the Eschaton (try saying that ten times fast). This ridiculous sounding phrase has changed my life considerably since the first time I heard it used in Dr. Gamble's Intellectual History of the United States. I knew right then and there that I was way over my head. But there was meaning behind the expression, and the past few years (and a few more semesters with Dr. Gamble) helped me see why immanentizing the eschaton is a very bad thing....


This intense looking fellow, Eric Voegelin, is the one who coined this fanciful sounding way of saying "bringing the kingdom of God to earth." "Eschaton" is a theological term referring to the kingdom of God and to "immanentize" something is to make it happen immediately. What is wrong with bringing the kingdom of God to earth? Isn't that what Christ came to do, and what we are commanded to do by the Great Commission, and what we ask in the Lord's prayer? Understanding the fault in immanentizing the eschaton requires a better understanding of Voegelin.

For centuries Christians have understood St. Augustine's famous work, The City of God, to be the best understanding of the relationship between our life in heaven and our life on earth. John Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress also plays on this theme reminding the Christian that we are pilgrims, living in a world that is not our eternal home. Our final resting place is in heaven, where there is true perfection and true happiness. These things can never be attained on earth for we are inherently sinful human beings. St. Augustine describes the City of God as heaven and the City of Man as the world we live in. This dichotomy is helpful in understanding the tensions between living here on earth in the temporary and seeking what is in permanent in heaven.

Eric Voegelin was a strict Augustinian in his understanding of the two cities. A harsh critic of modernity and liberalism, Voegelin suggests that the drive by many within modern times to create perfection on earth was a violation of Augustine's dichotomy. Indeed all ideology is an attempt by man to bring to earth what cannot be brought to earth. Many other thinkers agree. C.S. Lewis warns about making the "earthly" into something "transcendent." Similarly Russell Kirk criticizes those who try to create"earthly paradises" always resulting in "terrestrial hells." The 20th century, as stated in the previous post, has been the century of terrestrial hell. According to Voegelin, ideologues were men who confused what belonged in the City of God as something to be obtained in the City of Man.

Voegelin accuses modernists of stealing the symbols and myths of Christiainity. By breaking down the sacred and the secular, Christian teachings like the City of God and the City of Man mean nothing to those who have no respect for orthodox Christianity. Thus, those who immanentize the eschaton, do so with secularized assumptions. Whatever original meaning bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth once possessed, has been robed by those who think nothing of the things of God. Those who seek to immanentize the eschaton look different depending on the situation. They might be harmless utopians or tyrannical dictators. Regardless, all of them as T.S. Eliot writes, "Dream of systems so perfect, man will no longer need to be good."

For the Christian we understood that there are things that are permanent and timeless that occur on earth, but they never manifest in an ideology. Christians know the kingdom of God is something realized in a spiritual sense, not politically or materially. And only the King Himself is able to bring about that which He wills, not what man desires to make. A proper understanding of orthodox Christian theology is the surest safeguard to attempting to immanentize the eschaton.