For most of my adult life – actually most of my life – I’ve had an interest in eschatology. The church in which I now serve, was for most of its history, especially its earliest years, driven by a strong belief in the imminent return of Christ.
I do not think that is still the case. In all honesty, I’m not sure that is a wholly bad thing; it’s hard to lead a productive life when every earthquake and every war is a potential sign of the rise of the antichrist. It is all too easy for an anticipation of Christ’s return to degenerate into speculation about the signs of the times and a preoccupation with what the enemy might be about to do on the world stage.
The eschatological engine
The engine that drove that belief was what is known as premillennialism. In short, Christ returned to set up an earthly kingdom for one thousand years. After one thousand years of peace Satan rebelled and was defeated in a final battle. The last judgment then takes place and the new heavens and new earth are ushered in. The end.
As I am sure you will appreciate, this was not a mainstream belief in the wider church never mind the world that I grew up in. It’s probably even less the case now.
Discovering Gray
About eighteen months ago I came across a book by John Gray, former professor of European thought at London School of Economics and visiting professor at Harvard and Yale. The book was entitled “Seven Faces of Atheism”. In one of those moments where you feel as though you are onto something new, I purchased a number of Gray’s other publications, amongst them Heresies and Black Mass.
What I found astonished me. Gray set out very clearly the case that one cannot understand Western politics unless one understands premillennialism (Gray uses the term millenarianism, which is a synonym for the same phenomenon).[1] Western politics, whether in its liberal expression or in its more extreme expressions, is effectively a quest for the kingdom of God without God.
Gray, it should be noted, is not a Christian. He is an atheist.[2] It should also be noted that he is not a new atheist. Some of his most withering criticism is reserved for the new atheists, more severe than anything I have read by a Christian apologist. In his view the new atheism is based every bit as much on beliefs that cannot be substantiated, as religion.[3]
Munster: 1533-34: Millenarian belief at its most extreme
Although acknowledging that millenarian belief has been around as long as Christianity itself, Gray’s starting point are the events in the city of Munster between 1534-35.
Munster had become the focal point for apocalyptic expectation when Anabaptist prophet, Jan Matthijszoon declared that the Kingdom of God would appear in Munster in 1533.[4] Matthijszoon perished in a reckless military caper to defeat the forces of the authorities whom he had ousted.
Into this cauldron of eschatological expectation arrived another Anabaptist leader, Jan Bockelson, or John of Leyden as he came to be known, in autumn of 1534. The mantle of leadership passed to Bockelson who declared himself a messianic king.
What unfolded in those months in which Bockelson had control of the city, serves to illustrate Gray’s larger point that the pursuit of an earthly utopia by human means is not just futile but highly destructive to human life and relationships. Beheadings were not unusual in the “messiah’s” attempt to make people conform to the rules he laid down.
In some ways Munster became like a prototype of a communist state. Property was confiscated, apparently in service of the common good. Polygamy became the order of the day.
The whole thing came to a disastrous end when forces loyal to the church stormed the city after months of siege. Bockelson was captured and put to death.
In the coming years there would be a handful of further Munster like scenarios, most notably in Wetsphalia. The rest were mainly local proclamations of a New Jerusalem that took place in 1535.
Gray comments:
“But the attempt to take the heavens by storm died out among Christian believers by the end of the sixteenth century. Thereafter, apocalyptic myths renewed themselves in explicitly political forms, most of them militantly secular.”[5]
The myth of progress
The idea that we can make the world a better place is at the heart of most political ideologies and philosophical systems. In some, it is not just the idea of progress that drives the system, it is the promise of utopia.
Marxism, for example, holds out the idea of a perfect world, cleansed of capitalism and the bourgeoisie.
Gray argues that the idea of progress is a myth – in both senses of that word. It’s a myth in the sense that it is an overarching story providing meaning. It is also, in his opinion a myth, in the sense that it is just not true: there is no progress in history. The world is not a better place today than it was, say, three hundred years ago. One might counter that of course the world is a better place and that we are much more civilized. Gray, no doubt, would cite the history of the twentieth century as compelling evidence that progress cannot be used to describe the course of history.
For Gray, the idea of progress is an inheritance from Christianity. History, before Christianity, was considered cyclical rather than linear. The Jewish faith might have had a similar conception of history to that of Christianity, but it was a localized faith rather than a world faith.
A linear conception of history is an inheritance from Christianity, a conception that underlies the idea that history is progressing. Hence the conclusion that the European enlightenment of the eighteenth century, which produced the philosophical systems and political ideologies of the last three hundred or so years.
Gray accepts progress in science as fact. He has no quibble with that. He does not accept that it follows that there has been progress in ethics or politics. The belief in progress is just that – a belief. And it’s a belief that we have developed to help us manage our fear of the future.[6]
Gray’s rather damning description of this belief is in terms of a drug:
“Belief in progress is the Prozac of the thinking classes”[7]
The dangerous absence of original sin
Uncomfortable as that relationship between Christianity and the enlightenment might seem for those who want to distance themselves from faith, it would be surprising if the ideas that came to shape European society had no connection whatsoever with the dominant ideas in European thought that predated them.
Gray, however, is not seeking simply to point out a much-overlooked connection. He highlights a concern.
His concern is not simply that atheists or agnostics ignore this relationship with Christianity. His concern is that utopian philosophy or politics do not have the in-built braking system that Christianity has.
He points out two aspects of Christianity that set it apart from its enlightenment offspring.
Those two aspects are original sin and the Christian belief that the Kingdom of God ultimately is brought about by God Himself. It comes about supernaturally. It is not brought about by human beings.
Original sin, argues Gray, acknowledges the flaws in human beings in a way that secular philosophy or ideology does not. And when we begin to believe that we can bring about the secular equivalent of the kingdom of God, we have entered dangerous territory. [8]
The results are only too clear to be seen: millions of people slaughtered in the twentieth century in the pursuit of the utopian dreams promulgated by political ideologues:
“In traditional Christianity the apocalyptic impulse was restrained by the insight that human beings are ineradicably flawed. In the secular religions that flowed from Christianity, this insight was lost. The result has been a form of tyranny, new in history, that commits vast crimes in the pursuit of heaven on earth.”[9]
Gray’s conclusion is that contemporary politics is essentially religious in nature:
“Modern politics is a chapter in the history of religious myth”[10]
And again:
“When Christianity was rejected, its eschatological hopes did not disappear. They were repressed, only to return as universal projects of emancipation.”[11]
This, in Gray’s view, marks a dangerous reimagining of traditional Christian eschatology, for the simple reason that the dreamt of future is not brought about by divine intervention, but by human beings:
“Modern revolutionary movements are continuations of medieval millenarianism. The myth that the human world can be remade in a cataclysmic upheaval has not died. Only the author of this world-transforming end-time has changed. In olden times, it was God. Now it is ‘humanity’”.[12]
Conclusion
I have offered a very brief overview of some of Gray’s key ideas. His approach to contemporary politics and its connections with Christianity, provides us with some fruitful opportunities for developing conversations with people who have a secular outlook. It should be said that Gray is not breaking new ground entirely. He himself acknowledges the work of Norman Cohn and Erich Voegelin[13].
His ideas also, I think, underline the importance of eschatology in our attempts to communicate with twenty-first Western society in particular. Much of what is unfolding around us has the hallmarks of a quest for the kingdom of God, without God. Those dynamics can be found in social justice movements, climate change protest groups, like Extinction Rebellion and in the “Woke” phenomenon in general.
On a more personal level, I cannot help feeling a little bit of satisfaction in discovering the central importance of premillennialism in European thought. It astonishes me that a view that throughout my life was sincerely held by fellow believers, yet rejected within and without the church, turns out to be the key to understanding the Western world – or so it seems.
[1] See the article Millennialism in Britannica online: https://www.britannica.com/topic/millennialism
[2] See Michael Ramsden’s critique in John Piper and David Mathis, Finish The Mission, Wheaton:2012, pp74-79
[3] John Gray, Seven Types of Atheism, London:2018, pp9-23
[4] Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700, London: 2003, pp. 204-207 provides good coverage. The 1533 prediction of the arrival of the kingdom of God was originally made by another Dutch Anabaptist prophet, Melchior Hoffmann.
[5] Gray, Seven Types of Atheism, p.78
[6] This is a recurring theme. In fact, it is pretty much fundamental to understanding Grays’s pessimism concerning politics. A good overview of the idea can be found in John Gray, Heresies, London: 2004, pp1-14
[7] Gray, ibid., p3
[8] Gray references Erich Voegelin’s work on Gnosticism. Voegelin maintained that secular political philosophy was “gnostic” in that it, amongst other things it put the onus on human beings to bring about the perfect world. See Gray, Seven Types of Atheism, p74
[9] Gray, Heresies, London: 2004, p44
[10] John Gray, Black Mass, London: 2007, p1.
[11] Ibid.p26
[12] Gray, Seven Types of Atheism, p73
[13] Ibid, pp73-74
James Glass 