One of the reasons why many people say we should not “immanentize the eschaton,” is that we should not absolutize politics. There are many problems with this response. Of course it is to be said that Voegelin and Buckley suggested that this phrase is to be seen and interpreted along these lines, suggesting that those who do not agree with them therefore are looking to turn the political realm into the absolute. What is wrong with this line of reasoning?
First, the logical connection between the two has not been established. When the eschaton is immanent, this is not to be seen as if the eschaton is identified with the world it has entered. Rather, it points out that there is a relationship between the two: the transcendent is immanent while remaining transcendent; that is to say, the immanent is not the transcendent. This means any idea of something within the world itself, such as politics, as being absolutized by the immanenation of the eschaton is erroneous. On the other hand, the rejection of this immanence closes off the immanent world from the transcendent, turning it into a realm of itself – a fallen realm in which either the transcendent becomes meaningless (leading to practical atheism, as Henri de Lubac has shown) or the immanent world becomes meaningless (and is therefore to be transcended as per the Gnostics). Indeed, it is the second aspect which tends to be the way this idea is used, to deny the value of this world, and to reject works done in this world because they are not absolute. This is the tradition we see within Reformation Protestantism, be it Luther or Calvin: they tell us that our works are worthless, that our lives here are worthless, and all that is in this world is worthy of destruction. Karl Barth continued this tradition in his rejection of the analogia entis (analogy of being), and the otherwise valuable writings of Jacques Ellul find themselves turned around and in error in following this Protestant root. Ellul indeed offers as a good, concise presentation of where this line of thought leads:
But just as repentance has always to be renewed in the Christian life, just as we have ever anew to find ourselves under judgment, just as Christ is crucified to the end of the world, just so the ‘No’ pronounced by God over man and his works and his history, is a ‘No’ which is total, radical and ever present.
[…]
The work of man is always under the ‘No,’ which is absolutely real. The death of Jesus Christ, the judgment of the Father on the Son, the ‘My God, why?’, these are terrible realities, absolutely devastating to us. Likewise our death and our judgment are real, serious and terrible.
So also the annihilation of works and of history is a genuine and total annihilation. We cannot minimize it by saying: ‘Yes, but afterward . . .’, for it is God who pronounces that afterward, and not we. [1]
Here we see what happens when the world is seen as radically separate from the eschaton. While Ellul, it must be noted, wanted to show how the Church could bring the presence of the kingdom into the world, he nonetheless followed through with the dualism which pervades Gnostic, Protestant, and some forms of Catholic thought and showed us where it ends: in annihilationism, which is exactly what one should expect if there is no communion between the world and the eschaton.
What Hans Urs von Balthasar said in his criticism of Karl Barth is valid here. Here the question of the analogia entis is important. This is the teaching that there is a relationship between God and creation, and that an analogy between God and humanity can be made—the similarity between the two allows for rational, natural theology to form a proper (though deficient) conception of God. It also means that there must be something within humanity which is positive. The difference between the two forever makes sure that there is no identification between God and creation. For Barth, the analogia entis was “the doctrine of the Anti-Christ” because it gave too positive a value to humanity. Indeed for Barth, this was the foundational difference between Catholicism and Protestantism: Catholicism can find positive value in the world through the analogia entis, while Protestants think any such value is a Satanic assertion trying to bridge the gulf between creation and God.[2] Balthasar, in his reading of Barth, notes Barth was to somewhat modify this criticism, though substantially the problem remained the same: without the analogia entis, Christology ends up perverted, because there is no way to preserve the positive value of Christ’s humanity. Indeed, this explains why within the Reformation, and so also in Barth’s theology, humanity becomes mere puppets to the will of God. There can be no real value to free will; either one ends up with double predestination or universalism. For Barth, the eschatological map of egress-regress became an absolute principle which all things follow.[3] To be consistent with this, Barth moved on from the dualism between God and creation to an eschatological monism: the only way God could reconcile the world to himself is through a monistic enterprise which gives creatures no true sense of freedom as they encounter the absolute in God![4] The analogy of being prevents this monism – for it leaves room for the creature, and gives to it, its own interdependent existence. “Rightly understood, the analogy of being is the destruction of every system in favor of a totally objective availability of the creature for God and for the divine measure of the creature.”[5]
This is exactly the point when we understand the relationship of the eschaton to the world in Christ: the two are not divided and separate, but they are able to be in communion with each other, so that the world can indeed have positive values and not to be rejected, while not making the world the absolute. The eschaton engages the world, and brings it grace, allowing nature to be engraced. Because grace engages nature, there must be something there, something real, which embraces that grace, which is why the analogy of being is important: for it keeps the integrity of creaturely being. “Grace is something for a nature and in a nature. And thus it presupposes a nature, logically if not necessarily chronologically.”[6] And that nature must, in its own right, be open to God; it exists only in and through God’s grace, not of itself; and so it cannot be seen as something independent and pure in and of itself.[7]
Now the second problem with Voegelin’s and Buckley’s ideology (even if they did not see it as such) is that many assume that if one agrees with their conclusion, you must accept their premise, and if you deny their premise, you accept their conclusion. The problem with this is simple: one can have the right conclusion even if one’s arguments are invalid. Those who understand the work of Christ as immanentizing the eschaton in the world are not looking for the absolute in politics; indeed, there is a general agreement all around that politics and its limited sphere should not be absolutized and identified with the transcendent. When Ellul writes, “The fact that Jesus Christ is truly the Lord of the world in no way guarantees that the works performed by man in this world are expressions of that lordship, or that they are entirely dedicated to salvation, and therefore that we can participate in them wholeheartedly and without reservation,”[8] Christians can stand in agreement. Indeed, Christians should know that the political realm is a minor realm indeed, and should not be the focus of our concern. But neither should it be ignored and seen as entirely outside of the Christian life, that we can’t use it as long as we understand its relative value. The Christian must always make use of the things of the world without being trapped by them. That is exactly the point when we see that the eschaton has been immanentized: we are shown that there is more than what lies within the world, and that we can and do have access to the kingdom of God which transcends the world despite living in that world.
Footnotes
[1] Jacques Ellul, False Presence of the Kingdom. Trans. C. Edward Hopkins (New York: The Seabury Press, 1972), 23 – 4.
[2] See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth: Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie. 4th ed. (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1976). English translation: Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 47 [henceforth, KB] where Balthasar traces Barth’s interest to the work of Erich Przwara.
[3]Thus he understands Barth’s following of Reformation Predestination is understandable within the dictates of egress-regress, and it leads to a declaration of the end which should be beyond our view: “The schema of egress and regress dominates Barth’s doctrine of predestination, so much so, as we have seen, that one is in danger of somehow getting ‘behind’ the curtain of God’s judgment and sneaking a peek at the cards in the Judge’s hand,” Balthasar, KB, 259.
[4] In Barth, the supernatural necessarily overpowers nature; but, to be sure, this is not surprising coming from a Reformed theologian.
[5] Balthasar, KB, 255. [ Sie ist Destruktion jedes Systems zugunsten einer restlosen objektiven Verfügbarkeit des Geschöpfs zu Gott und zum göttlichen Maß hin., 267].
[6] Balthasar, KB, 281. [Gnade ist Gnade für eine Nature und an einer Natur. Und insofern setzt sie im logischen [nicht notwendig im zeitlichen] Sinn eine Natur voraus, 291-2]
[7] Henri de Lubac rightfully points out, however, this must not be seen as if we have any claim to God, that we can demand grace from him – grace has to be the free gift of God to us: “God is not governed by our desire. The relationship between the two things must be in fact the opposite one: it is the free will of the giver which awakens the desire. This is incontestable. There can be no question of anything due to the creature. But, one may perhaps say, it remains true none the less that once such a desire exists in the creature it becomes sign, not merely of a possible gift from God, but of a certain gift. It is the evidence of a promise, inscribed and recognized in the being’s very self. Is one not then right to conclude from the existence of that desire to the effective reality of the gift? St. Thomas certainly seems to reason this way. But if so, then man is surely arriving by the use of his natural reason alone at the knowledge that he is made for the vision of God, which seems to make the effective supernatural become the object of natural knowledge,” Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural. Trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998), 207-8.
[8] Ellul, False Presence of the Kingdom, 16.
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