Once again, you are not showing anything in relation to Gnoticism. Indeed, no one is saying through politics “one can accomplish only what God’s law can achieve,” on the conrary – and Christians engaging politics through their faith know this already. But again, even if someone was saying this — what has this to do with Gnosticism?!?!?! Gnosticism is not about anything this worldly! What you are mentioning are people trying to affect this world — Gnostics deny this is possible ENTIRELY. Seems like you.

Second, your arguments have not even been Augustinian when it comes to worldly affairs– Augustine was incarnational and didn’t deny the connection between the sacred and the secular (look to his arguments on the Donatists which demand such connection; of couse, he was wrong in application, but in fundamentals, he was not in this respect). “Augustinianism” however has LONG been a place where Gnostic dualists have abused the name of Augustine, using the traces of his Gnostic background to do what you do here — split the two sphere apart, and indeed, this LEADS to practical atheism (see Lubac). What you have is not Augustine, but the corrupted misrepresentation of him called.. Jansenism! Indeed, this is quite clear. That Christians can have many options and ways to engage the world for its betterment is not an argument, btw, against such incarnational theology. Indeed, as I keep saying, your responses all show your Gnosticism and you really don’t understand Christ BECAME MAN because such Gnosticism cannot!

You’ll find no arguement from me about any of that. But there are a whole lot of “ifs” there.

This is the problem. There is no such thing as Christian politics. There are Christian goals like: improve education for the poor.

Well, how? With charter schools? With aid to private non-profits? With increased federal funding for public schools? With better central coordination and nation-wide standards? With a dismantling of the Department of Education?

Which of those positions is the Christian one? Well, any of them may be.

Immanentizing the eschaton is gnostic because it involves we human beings claiming that we, through our man made laws, can accomplish what only God’s law can acheive.

I am not a gnostic or a secular atheist by the way. I am an Augustinian.

18. Thus the empire of our Redeemer embraces all men. To use the words of Our immortal predecessor, Pope Leo XIII: “His empire includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ.”[28] Nor is there any difference in this matter between the individual and the family or the State; for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ. In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society. “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved.”[29] He is the author of happiness and true prosperity for every man and for every nation. “For a nation is happy when its citizens are happy. What else is a nation but a number of men living in concord?”[30] If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ. What We said at the beginning of Our Pontificate concerning the decline of public authority, and the lack of respect for the same, is equally true at the present day. “With God and Jesus Christ,” we said, “excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation.”[31]

19. When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. Our Lord’s regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance; it ennobles the citizen’s duty of obedience. It is for this reason that St. Paul, while bidding wives revere Christ in their husbands, and slaves respect Christ in their masters, warns them to give obedience to them not as men, but as the vicegerents of Christ; for it is not meet that men redeemed by Christ should serve their fellow-men. “You are bought with a price; be not made the bond-slaves of men.”[32] If princes and magistrates duly elected are filled with the persuasion that they rule, not by their own right, but by the mandate and in the place of the Divine King, they will exercise their authority piously and wisely, and they will make laws and administer them, having in view the common good and also the human dignity of their subjects. The result will be a stable peace and tranquillity, for there will be no longer any cause of discontent. Men will see in their king or in their rulers men like themselves, perhaps unworthy or open to criticism, but they will not on that account refuse obedience if they see reflected in them the authority of Christ God and Man. Peace and harmony, too, will result; for with the spread and the universal extent of the kingdom of Christ men will become more and more conscious of the link that binds them together, and thus many conflicts will be either prevented entirely or at least their bitterness will be diminished.

20. If the kingdom of Christ, then, receives, as it should, all nations under its way, there seems no reason why we should despair of seeing that peace which the King of Peace came to bring on earth — he who came to reconcile all things, who came not to be ministered unto but to minister, who, though Lord of all, gave himself to us as a model of humility, and with his principal law united the precept of charity; who said also: “My yoke is sweet and my burden light.” Oh, what happiness would be Ours if all men, individuals, families, and nations, would but let themselves be governed by Christ! “Then at length,” to use the words addressed by our predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, twenty-five years ago to the bishops of the Universal Church, “then at length will many evils be cured; then will the law regain its former authority; peace with all its blessings be restored. Men will sheathe their swords and lay down their arms when all freely acknowledge and obey the authority of Christ, and every tongue confesses that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.”[33]

You have not answered how “immanentizing the eschaton” is Gnostic; second, and more important, you have yet to show or justify the absolute dualism you support. Who is “going” again but you? It’s quite clear, you don’t think within the context of the Christian faith, but an atheistic secularism which tries to tell Christ “get out of here.”

Here, the part you might want to start with.

I’m with Irenaeus and the Christian faith on this. I’m with the belief that the incarnation is real, is valid, and has real authority on this earth. Voegelin CLAIMED Gnostics “immanentized the eschaton,” which is the most ABSURD claim to make. In doing so, anyone who follows him in the lunacy show full well THEY are the gnostics, THEY are the dualists.

Recommendation: Mystery of the Supertnatural by Henri de Lubac. You need it. Or, read my series on Gnosticism. Seriously, Voegelin and those who follow him on this are the Gnostics and really show the secular-dualism which rejects the world from being influenced by Christ. No wonder they always say “don’t immanentize the eschaton” when someone does the work of Christ!

I think “immanentizing the eschaton” has more to do with the mixing of Christianity with earth bound political faiths, whether as in the moral majority on the right or the liberation theologians on the left … this is the syncretism that has to be resisted.

I knew what you said was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I also think there was something valid with it, even with the joke. Sometimes I speak about my experiences which is not always the normal experience of others — and I need to be careful with that.

Nonetheless, you are right — this is one of the most needed messages of Christianity today and any day– that the incarnation has real meaning and value to our earthly/worldly lives. Gnosticism itself was the continuation of a pre-Christian dualism, to be sure, but with its incorporation of Christian thought, it influenced Christianity — and I’m afraid, it’s an influence which will probably be with us for a long, long time to come. St Augustine is not the only source of it, but he has been a major power behind this — he was such a great intellectual influence on the development of Christian thought that his mistakes made way for this kind of problem. In the modern age, it has I think been enhanced — and our culture continues with divisions which make no sense to Christian thought, but does to Enlightenment ideologies which influence us all.

I do wish a viewpoint like yours (which I would identify with the mainstream Catholic tradition) would get to the ordinary people in the pews, and the unchurched too for that matter.

Perhaps under the influence of Protestantism, or a gnosticism that has somehow survived over many centuries (in the Church and out), or as an artifact of the science/religion feud, there is a powerful popular notion that Christianity is anti-physical, anti-world, ethereal, unrelated to matters of daily life, not at alll practical, and so on–in short, very lofty and no fun at all.

I wish, for one thing, that something of your analysis, and the passion that goes with it, would get into more Catholic homilies.