Abstract: This article diagnoses a pervasive cultural and spiritual pathology dominating the contemporary
West: “goodness-narcissism” (or sentimental absolutism), a disposition that denies the foundational
truth that the good exists only in relation to the whole. In isolating virtue from divine order, it fosters the
illusion that moral impeccability is within human reach, prioritizing performative posture over truth, justice, and
practical judgment. Drawing on a multidisciplinary framework — including the insights of
Friedrich Nietzsche, René Girard, Ivan Illich, Søren Kierkegaard, Hannah Arendt,
C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and Carl Jung — the author demonstrates
how self-righteousness, once severed from divine order and self-awareness, functions as an oppressive mechanism of
power. Unconscious of its own internal darkness, the self-proclaimed “good” individual or institution
projects its shadow onto others, transforming Christian charity into “virtues gone mad” and weaponizing
moral law into an instrument of domination and institutional overreach.
Theologically, the paper traces this crisis to the abandonment of the doctrine of original sin and the classical
anthropology of the divided self (simul iustus et peccator), as articulated by Saint Paul,
St. Augustine, and Martin Luther. In contrast to modern psychological and utopian fantasies of a unified,
wholly good self, authentic Christian theology maintains that the human will remains conflicted in the temporal
order. Attempting to achieve moral perfection through human effort degenerates into Pelagian legalism: a
horizontal, self-referential “social-credit system” driven by egoic striving rather than divine grace
and spiritual maturation.
Finally, the article extends this critique to contemporary political theology, evaluating the secularization of
ecclesial rhetoric as exemplified in modern liberal humanism and documents such as the papal encyclical
Magnifica Humanitas. By removing Paul’s already–not yet paradigm
from its local, face-to-face context and applying it to global governance, state regulation, mass migration, and
multilateral policy, modern ecclesiastical discourse collapses Augustine’s Two Cities, resulting in what
Eric Voegelin termed the immanentization of the eschaton. Reaffirming classical Christology, the paper
concludes with a rigorous biblical exegesis: Jesus Christ already reigns from the Heavenly Jerusalem, leaving
physical geography, geopolitical states, and globalist political projects entirely devoid of eschatological
standing. True Christian liberation requires relinquishing both the compulsive pursuit of a self-manufactured ideal
of goodness and the project of utopian social engineering in favour of a sober, pilgrim faith anchored in the
transcendent reality of the Heavenly City.
Keywords: goodness-narcissism, political theology, Magnifica Humanitas, immanentization of the
eschaton, Augustine’s two cities, Pauline anthropology, simul iustus et peccator, liberal humanism,
already–not yet paradigm, shadow projection, heavenly Jerusalem.
Table of Contents
The Pathology of Sentimental Absolutism
There exists a certain type of mind whose moral imagination has ossified, whose once-living knowledge has
coagulated into a set of inert slogans. Such people, unable or unwilling to think beyond the surface of their own
sentiments, fail to grasp a simple but ancient truth: the self-identification with “pure goodness”
often blinds one to the consequences of the acts performed in its name. Thus they embrace policies whose immediate
emotional appeal eclipses their long-term effects. They champion indiscriminate leniency in the courts, not out of
a sober concern for justice, but out of a desire to perform benevolence. They support large-scale social
experiments, such as mass immigration, without attending to the burdens they impose on the vulnerable, because they
are enthralled by the moral theatre of appearing kind. In their haste to enact what feels good, they neglect what
is good.
We must seek to comprehend the self-inflicted unravelling of Western civilization not merely through the familiar
lenses of politics and ideology but in its deeper psychological and spiritual dimensions. At the heart of the
phenomenon, I contend, lies a narcissism of virtue, a collective self-enchantment in which moral impeccability is
imagined to be within human reach. This disposition, what one might call sentimental absolutism, a
narcissism of virtue, or goodness-narcissism, has destructive consequences for any society that permits
it to dominate public life. It is neither a modern invention nor an artifact of the ancient or medieval worlds. It
is a perennial human temptation: the urge to appear good rather than to do good, prioritizing moral posture over
tangible consequences. It is precisely this impulse that corrodes practical judgment, blinds people to real-world
outcomes, and leads them to embrace policies whose emotional appeal vastly outstrips their wisdom.
A civilization cannot endure if it loses the capacity to make difficult, even painful, decisions for the sake of
the common good. As Aristotle observed, “Any one can get angry, that is easy, or give or spend money; but to
do this to the right person, and to the right extent, and at the right time, and with the right motive, and in the
right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy; wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble”
(Nicomachean Ethics, II.9).
The same is true of severity: it must be exercised with discernment, but it must be exercised. We must therefore
retain the moral courage to act in ways that sentimentalists may denounce as harsh. Strength, firmness, and the
willingness to confront danger are not vices; they are the virtues that allow a people to survive in a world marked
by struggle. Even Scripture does not present Christ as a figure of unbroken softness: He overturns the tables of
the money-changers, rebukes hypocrisy with cutting force, and speaks of judgment with a clarity that admits no
evasions. His love is not the love of indulgence, but the love that protects, defends, and restores order.
If we relinquish these sterner virtues, and if we allow ourselves to be governed by those who mistake sentiment for
righteousness, we will soon discover that we have no place left in the world. To stand up for oneself, for
one’s community, and for one’s future sometimes requires decisions that the devotees of performative
goodness will condemn. Yet without such decisions, no society can endure, and no people can remain free.
Doing good deeds is not in itself a form of narcissism. Narcissism arises when one identifies oneself with
the good, when the self is fused with a presumed knowledge of what goodness is. At that moment, goodness ceases to
be a practice and becomes a self-congratulatory identity. The individual no longer seeks the good; he believes he
embodies it. This is the same spiritual pathology Jesus confronted in the radical Pharisees. They were
convinced that their understanding of the good was complete and authoritative, and they demanded that others submit
to their definition. They did not merely pursue goodness; they claimed ownership of it and used that claim to
police the moral lives of others. In doing so, they transformed themselves into what Jesus called a brood of
vipers: guardians of a goodness they did not possess, and enforcers of a righteousness that had become
indistinguishable from pride.
Moralism is not simply a mistaken form of goodness; it is a mechanism of power. When people believe they are acting
“for the good,” they become capable of extraordinary harm because their conscience feels clean. This is
precisely the danger Jesus and Paul confront: the moralistic spirit that weaponizes virtue, uses the Law to condemn
others, and disguises cruelty as righteousness. In this sense, moralism is not merely misguided; it is a
spiritually corrosive form of evil. Throughout Christian theology, the Law remains a central principle in this
drama. When used as a system of self-justification, legalistic striving transforms into a demonic force, which is
why Paul warns that relying on the Law for righteousness degenerates into a sphere of enslavement under hostile,
elemental spiritual powers (Gal 4:3, 9). Indeed, Paul’s words in Romans 10:3 define this pathology with
unmatched clarity: “Being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own,
they did not submit to God’s righteousness” (emphasis added).
Is not the pretence of moral virtue often the most effective disguise for evil? In recent history, states have
dropped bombs out of a sense of righteous necessity, just as contemporary institutions legitimize punitive cancel
culture through appeals to moral purity. Moralism is a destructive force, and both Jesus and Paul were relentless
in opposing it. Their target was never true goodness, but the moralistic spirit, exemplified by the legalist who
weaponizes moral law to dominate others. Their critique targeted goodness-as-power and goodness-as-self-exaltation.
In this sense, moralism is not merely a mistake; it is a profound spiritual pathology. The following thinkers each
demonstrate how moral righteousness can serve as a pretext for violence, exclusion, domination, and corruption.
Friedrich Nietzsche argues that moral righteousness often serves as a mask for resentment, domination, and cruelty.
Viewing moral frameworks as instruments of power, he claims that “morality [is] the idiosyncrasy of decadents
with the ulterior motive of taking revenge on life — and successfully” (Nietzsche, 2005,
p. 149; Ecce Homo, §7). He demonstrates how “goodness” becomes a convenient weapon for
punishing others while maintaining an aura of personal virtue. (Yet for many readers, this critique offers an
enticingly simple escape from inner conflict through the mere reversal of rejected moral categories. In doing so,
such a reversal risks repeating the very impulse Nietzsche criticized: the urge to resolve psychological tension by
identifying with “the good,” only under a different name.)
René Girard’s theory of scapegoating illustrates how communities expel individuals in the name of “the
good,” driven by a profound conviction of their own righteousness. As Girard observes, “persecutors
always believe in the excellence of their cause” (Girard, 1986, p. 103), casting the victim as an
intolerable threat to collective purity, unity, or virtue. Crucially, this mechanism relies on self-deception:
“A scapegoat remains effective as long as we believe in its guilt. Having a scapegoat means not knowing that
we have one” (Girard, 2010, p. xiv). Contemporary cancel culture follows this pattern with striking
precision. Regrettably, by attempting to explain the entire civilizational enterprise through a single mechanism,
Girard invites critics to dismiss his framework as an overly totalizing theory (cf. Winther, 2020).
Ivan Illich contends that institutions founded on moral ideals, such as healthcare, education, and welfare,
frequently produce outcomes directly opposed to their stated aims. The more “good” an institution
intends to deliver, the more destructive its unintended consequences become. Illich conceptualizes this phenomenon
as “paradoxical counterproductivity” (1995, p. 8), understood as the shadow side of
institutionalized virtue. In Deschooling Society (1970), he demonstrates how compulsory schooling stifles
curiosity and hinders genuine education, entrenching social inequality by reducing learning to a measurable
commodity. Similarly, in Limits to Medicine (1995), he asserts that modern institutional medicine ultimately
poses a major threat to public health: the medical apparatus generates new pathologies while eroding
individuals’ innate capacity to endure pain, heal, and care for themselves. Crucially, Illich observed a
self-reinforcing feedback loop: when these institutions fail to deliver on their promises, society rarely questions
their foundational premise. Instead, it responds by granting them greater funding, authority, and power to expand,
further intensifying their destructive side effects.
From the standpoint of institutional critique, the broad implementation of COVID-19 lockdowns can be examined as a
case study in institutional overreach. Illich’s work suggests that when centralized bureaucracies assume
total authority, the locus of responsibility shifts from individuals and local communities to state-level entities.
This shift demonstrates how modern institutions can eclipse local decision-making and individual autonomy,
replacing organic social problem-solving with standardized, top-down directives. In doing so, these systems
manifest the paradox of willing good, yet ultimately generating evil.
Sören Kierkegaard attacks the moralistic complacency of Christendom, where people believe themselves good simply
because they conform to social norms. He sees this as the most dangerous form of evil because it hides inside
virtue and therefore cannot be recognized as evil. It produces a false righteousness, a moral self-satisfaction
that has nothing to do with the inward, existential demand of the Gospel. It is precisely the evil Jesus confronts
in the Gospels. Kierkegaard anticipates the modern insight that evil is strongest when it hides inside the good.
For him, pride disguises itself as virtue, hypocrisy cloaks itself in piety, cowardice passes itself off as
politeness, and spiritual laziness settles comfortably into social conformity. This is why Christendom is so
dangerous. It becomes an enemy to itself by creating moralistic complacency and producing people who are
“good” in all the wrong ways. He wants to destroy the illusion that Christianity is a matter of
culture, habit, or social identity. It is a matter of becoming a single individual before God, stripped of all
protective layers of social morality. True Christianity requires inwardness, not social respectability
(Kierkegaard, 1991, pp. 201-20).
Hannah Arendt (2006), shows how bureaucrats commit atrocities not out of hatred but out of moral duty, obedience,
and the desire to “do the right thing.” Evil becomes banal when it is moralized. This is a secular
version of Paul’s critique of the Law. The drive to be an upstanding citizen is strong, and
Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer who organized the logistics of the Holocaust, presented himself as an
upstanding citizen, even a model one.
C. S. Lewis takes Augustine’s central insight that evil is not a substance but a corruption of the good, and
he develops it with his own imaginative clarity. The worst evils arise from the misuse of the best gifts. Lewis
writes in Mere Christianity that “badness is only spoiled goodness” (Lewis, 2001a, p. 44).
Evil cannot create; it can only twist. For Lewis, courage becomes recklessness, love becomes possessiveness, reason
becomes rationalization, pleasure becomes addiction, and authority becomes tyranny. Every evil is a good thing gone
wrong. In The Screwtape Letters (2001b), the senior demon Screwtape explains that devils cannot create a
single pleasure, virtue, or reality: they can only entice humans to take God’s original creations (like
natural pleasures or intellectual reason) and use them in forbidden, excessive, or warped ways.
The most destructive evils arise from the corruption of the noblest human capacities. In an essay titled The
Humanitarian Theory of Punishment (Lewis, 1970) Lewis warns, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely
exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” In this essay, Lewis argues against
replacing traditional concepts of justice (which punish people based on what they deserve) with a purely
“humanitarian” or therapeutic model (which treats criminals or citizens as sick patients to be
“cured” or “reeducated”). He observes that when the state acts under the banner of
retribution or law, its power has strict, defined limits. But when the state acts under the banner of
“curing” people or “acting for their own good,” those limits vanish, because the state
feels morally justified in imposing endless control, believing it is acting out of compassion.
This expresses Augustine’s insight that evil grows strongest when it hides inside goodness and feeds on it.
Lewis insists that the devil’s greatest triumph is not tempting people into obvious sins, but into
virtuous sins: spiritual pride, moral superiority, self-righteousness, and “doing good” in a way
that destroys others. Evil thrives where goodness is abundant but unconscious. Christian moral theology stresses
that sin is whatever defies God’s revealed will, including when one’s own “righteousness”
becomes self-willed or prideful. Augustine emphasizes that virtue becomes vice when detached from right order and
humility. His anthropology is razor-sharp: a virtue is only a virtue when ordered to caritas, the love of
God. When ordered to the self, it becomes vitium, a vice. Thus, “charity for its own sake” is
not charity but superbia, the primal sin, the self curving inward (incurvatus in se). This is why
Augustine contends that worldly virtues, not least those of pagan philosophy, are ultimately splendid vices:
radiant on the surface, yet corrupt at the root (Augustine, 1998).
The danger of “goodness and charity for their own sake” is not that goodness or charity are bad, but
that when detached from their proper form, end, and measure, they cease to be virtues at all. They become
perversions of virtue, what G. K. Chesterton calls “virtues gone mad” because they have been
isolated from the whole moral organism. A virtue is not a free-floating moral energy. It is a form, a participation
in divine order. When a virtue is severed from its proper end (such as God, truth, justice, or the good of the
other), it becomes self-referential, self-justifying, and spiritually destructive. This is why charity for its own
sake is not charity. It is narcissism disguised as benevolence. Chesterton’s line captures this perfectly:
when virtues wander alone, they “do more terrible damage” than vices:
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. For example, Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he is mad on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational virtue of charity. He has a strange idea that he will make it easier to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins to forgive. Mr. Blatchford is not only an early Christian, he is the only early Christian who ought really to have been eaten by lions. For in his case the pagan accusation is really true: his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really is the enemy of the human race — because he is so human. (Chesterton, 1908, chap. 3)
Chesterton’s diagnosis is that modernity is not too wicked but too good in the wrong way. It is full of
truth without mercy, mercy without truth, charity without justice, and kindness without courage. This is precisely
“goodness for its own sake”: a virtue detached from the whole, wandering alone, and becoming
destructive. Autonomous goodness and charity are sinful because they cease to be participations in God and instead
become self-willed moral projects. Detached from truth, justice, and divine order, they turn into pride,
sentimentality, or moral anarchy. Superficial humanistic morality consists of virtues gone
mad — virtues that have been severed from the whole. This is a crucial insight. When compassion
is isolated from truth, justice, and personal responsibility, it turns into a destructive, indulgent benevolence.
It becomes a virtue for an elite who can afford it, while those who actually sustain society are left to pay the
price.
The psychologist Carl Jung argues that “one of the toughest roots of all evil is unconsciousness”
(Jung, 1969, §291). He explains again and again that unconsciousness is the primary root of evil, the condition
that allows destructive forces to operate unchecked. This is why Jung insists that genuine moral effort must be
directed towards the expansion of consciousness rather than moralistic self-perfection. Evil thrives where people
refuse to know themselves. Jesus makes a similar demand for a union of moral clarity and strategic intelligence:
“Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16). The force of the saying is that Christian
action must hold both qualities together: moral uprightness without naivety, and shrewd discernment without malice.
It is not easy to combine a dove and a serpent. In fact, it is extraordinarily difficult to be a truly good person.
Innocence without awareness is no virtue, because naive people leave the door wide open for evil.
How can good become the engine of evil? Christian theology has long insisted, Augustine most clearly, that evil has
no independent substance. It is parasitic, feeding on the good that God has created. Deprived of that good, evil
collapses into its own chaos and incoherence. Its only power is borrowed power. For this reason, the greater the
good, the greater the possible distortion. Evil thrives only where goodness is abundant. It insinuates itself into
what is healthy, true, and life-giving, building upon those very gifts until it reaches the limit beyond which God
does not permit it to go. This is why we cannot imagine ourselves living in an age where evil is slowly
disappearing. The opposite is true. Wherever genuine goods flourish evil finds new hosts: in technological power,
moral zeal, political idealism, religious conviction. Evil is a leech, and our age is thick with leeches.
The Narcissism of Virtue and the Evaded Shadow
Observant critics of contemporary culture cannot help but notice the prevalence of a judgmental, self-righteous,
and morally presumptive ethos, a disposition by no means confined to those commonly labelled “woke.”
This widespread lack of moral self-awareness is deeply bound to the loss of the traditional doctrine of original
sin. Without an awareness of their own internal flaws, individuals naturally project their unacknowledged darkness
onto others. Seen in this light, a practice such as cancel culture reflects a moral outlook antithetical to
Christian theology, which insists that the human “moral compass” itself is corrupted by the Fall.
Ultimately, our unexamined moral instincts are precisely what we cannot uncritically trust. Carl Jung analysed
this dynamic with great clarity in his account of “shadow projection.” As
Laurens van der Post recollects
I clearly remember him saying to me that the individual who withdraws his shadow from his neighbour and finds it in himself and is reconciled to it as to an estranged brother is doing a task of great universal importance. He added quickly that the future of mankind depended on the speed and extent to which individuals learnt to withdraw their shadows from others and reintegrate them honourably within themselves. (van der Post, 1977, p. 238)
One need only spend time within organized Christian communities to observe how pervasively negative projections
circulate. Christians can be uniquely susceptible to this dynamic, not because they are inherently worse than
others, but because they often assume that holding a righteous moral framework guarantees personal goodness. This
presumption makes shadow projection more likely, not less: it fosters the illusion that one’s internal
darkness has already been overcome and must, therefore, belong entirely to someone else.
Paul articulates this dynamic with particular force in Romans 2, where he warns the moralist that the very sins he
condemns in others are present within himself: “For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself,
because you, the judge, do the very same things” (Romans 2:1). Here Paul exposes the universal human tendency
to project one’s own sin outward while remaining blind to it inwardly. His critique anticipates precisely the
pattern later analysed by Jung: the refusal to acknowledge one’s inner darkness inevitably leads to its
displacement onto others.
Whenever something genuinely good, intelligent, or life-giving appears, it is immediately seized upon and twisted
into a crude, self-constructed misrepresentation to fuel a parasitic counter-force. Shadow projections multiply,
and an adversarial energy awakens. This is the primary dynamic of evil: it does not create anything of its own, but
thrives on the corruption, inversion, and falsification of what is good. The more luminous the original insight,
the more energetically the shadow rushes in to deform it. Evil rarely confronts the good directly; instead, it
replaces the real with a counterfeit. Jesus names this mechanism succinctly when he identifies the adversary as
“a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
The inborn “moral compass” exists primarily to restrain the darker impulses of human nature. It does
not heal our corruption; it merely prevents our shadow side from breaking loose. Goodness-narcissists exploit this
instinct by appealing to whatever sounds morally uplifting, regardless of the consequences. They champion slogans
such as “we should share our riches with all the world’s citizens” or “compassion requires
open borders.” These are claims that flatter the moral instinct even when they produce destructive outcomes.
In this way, the moral compass becomes a potent instrument for societal unravelling.
Consider the simple act of a child sharing half her candy bar with a playmate who has none. This embodies Christian
morality at its core: love of the concrete neighbour. Yet Christian theology also cautions that assuming abstract,
humanistic obligations towards distant, anonymous masses can easily become a form of moral hubris. Christ alone
carries the cross of the world; we are called merely to bear our own. But the goodness-narcissist transfers
Christ’s cross onto the citizens, who already struggle under heavy burdens, and thus can no longer carry the
cross appointed to them. This evasion blinds them to the real neighbour before them, as the Good Samaritan story
illustrates. As Jesus says about the goodness-narcissists: “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay
them on people’s shoulders; but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger” (Matt
23:4).
Goodness-narcissism is precisely what Jesus condemns when he says, “And when you pray, do not be like the
hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by
others” (Matt 6:5). What Jesus teaches is essentially that the desire to appear good is itself a sin. One
should live as an upright citizen in a way that draws no attention, and one should be God-fearing without seeking
notice. This is the ideal. It is the path by which goodness-narcissism is overcome.
There is a persistent temptation built into the very ideal of walking the path of righteousness: the desire to
appear righteous, above all to oneself, rather than actually choosing the good. Genuine righteousness often
requires actions that look unrighteous to others, because they disturb the comfortable moral fictions that
communities build around themselves. The performance of virtue is always easier, always safer, and always more
socially rewarded than the costly integrity that overturns the tables in the temple. The danger is subtle. Once
righteousness becomes an identity one wishes to inhabit, the moral life shifts from discerning the good to curating
a self-image. One begins to prefer the glow of moral self-approval to the hard clarity of moral responsibility.
Because communities reward visible conformity far more than disruptive fidelity, the temptation grows: it is
simpler to be seen as good than to perform the good that threatens the social order.
Righteousness, then, is not merely a matter of choosing the right action: it is a matter of resisting the narcotic
of moral appearance. The one who overturns the tables may look unrighteous to the crowd, but the crowd’s
approval has never been the measure of righteousness. The deeper danger is when the crowd’s approval becomes
the measure one applies to oneself. In our present reality, “overturning the tables” might mean
speaking the truth about the damaging impact of Third World immigration, even at the cost of being branded a Nazi
or a racist by the crowd. Most Christians, I would argue, would never do this, preferring instead to walk a path of
outward virtue aligned with globalist liberal humanism.
The Divided Self and the Myth of Human Perfection
For centuries, Christianity cultivated a sober understanding of the human condition. It taught that our nature is
divided, frail, and incapable of unalloyed goodness. Christ himself declared that no one is good, reminding us of
the limits inscribed into our being (Mark 10:18). Yet in our present age, this humility has been displaced by the
extravagant belief that human beings can be wholly good, even perfect. This illusion now shapes the moral
psychology of the contemporary West.
According to Christian anthropology, the human being bears within himself two wills, and these wills frequently
stand in opposition within the divided interior of the self. Saint Paul describes this tension as the contrast
between the old self and the new, the one rooted in Adam and the other in Christ. He speaks of a painful inner
struggle in which the old self clings to him in ways he cannot escape, even as the new self in Christ summons him
toward renewal (Rom 7:19, 24). Yet Paul appears almost too sanguine when he exhorts believers to put off the old
self and put on the new, as though a simple change of garments could effect a new mode of being, as he writes in
Ephesians 4:22-24. In truth, we must continue to live with both.
Augustine teaches that the human self is intrinsically divided. Within the will reside two contrary impulses, one
oriented towards God and the other towards the world, as he maintains in Confessions, Book VIII. This
division is not a psychological aberration but a metaphysical condition that follows from our fallen nature. The
wholeness of the self, the perfect integration of its impulses, does not belong to this life but to the eschaton
alone. The inner person may grow in grace, yet the outer person is not annihilated while we remain in the temporal
order. Our duality endures, even if its tyranny can be broken. This is central to the Christian understanding of
the false and the true self. We must remain divided, and we must remain conscious of our divided nature; only
through such awareness can the soul be rightly ordered toward God.
According to Luther, the Christian remains simul iustus et peccator, at once righteous and a sinner, a
condition that endures throughout the whole of life. The old Adam is never abolished. Luther therefore subjects the
pursuit of “saintliness” to severe criticism, regarding it as an attempt to purify the will and achieve
a fictive wholeness of the self. The more a person strives to be holy, the more he entangles himself in sin. In his
commentary on Galatians he observes that the saints are sinners, and that their holiness resides not in themselves
but in Christ (Luther, 1963, p. 232). He adds in the Table Talk that God hates the saints fashioned by human
hands (cf. Luther, Table Talk, LW 54).
For Luther, psychological and spiritual health rests upon the recognition of our divided condition, which leads not
to self-mastery but to confession and forgiveness. The self is restored by being forgiven, not by being unified.
The believer does not become less sinful, but becomes more aware of sin and more dependent upon grace. In striking
contrast, the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott inverts this entire structure. For him, psychological health
requires the dissolution of dividedness and the emergence of a unified self endowed with perfect spontaneity. His
theory seeks an amalgamation of inner and outer worlds into a single field of experience, the so-called
transitional space (cf. Winther, 2003). In pursuing this fusion, he rejects the Christian understanding of the
human person. Where Christianity insists upon an enduring duality that can be redeemed but never abolished,
Winnicott posits a final integration that Christianity regards as impossible in this life.
Thus it is a distinctly modern conviction that we ought to strive for a unified self that is wholly good and
perfect, an aspiration Christian theology has consistently rejected as a sinful pursuit of self-salvation. For
Augustine, such an ambition is nothing other than pride, superbia, the ancient temptation to transcend our
creaturely condition by our own power. Yet Paul also speaks in 1 Timothy 6:17 of enjoying the goods of life, a
remark that may be understood as acknowledging the Adam within us who seeks earthly joy and satisfaction. Augustine
arrives at a similar conclusion. We are not called to abandon the world but to remain within it as pilgrims, using
its goods without becoming enslaved to them.
In Luther’s terms, avoiding the false ideal of saintliness means admitting that the sinner within us must at
times make use of the world’s gifts. In his famous letter to Melanchthon he writes, Sin boldly, but
believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly. The point is not license but lucidity: the self is not purified
by striving for perfection, but by acknowledging its divided nature and entrusting its healing to grace. Luther did
not, of course, encourage moral laxity. His admonition to Melanchthon was directed against the anxious pursuit of
purity and saintliness, and against the attempt to secure righteousness by an inner unification of the self. He
urged him to cease striving for moral perfection and to entrust himself instead to the righteousness of Christ
rather than to his own. In modern Luther scholarship, sin boldly is rightly understood as a rejection of
moral perfectionism and of the futile quest for inner wholeness. The priority belongs to the external righteousness
bestowed by Christ, not to any mystical project of self-healing. Luther forbids the attempt to eradicate sin, to
unify the self, or to purify the will, insisting that the Christian must acknowledge the enduring presence of the
old Adam and live by grace rather than by the illusion of inner sanctity.
We must still restrain the darker impulses within us, for without such vigilance society itself disintegrates. And
we are able to do this precisely because we acknowledge our divided nature and our imperfection. Those who
lack this awareness, and who imagine themselves ideal or spotless, often fall into destructive patterns of
falseness and moralism, and in doing so become capable of genuine evil. We injure ourselves if we are too sinful,
yet we also injure ourselves if we are too righteous.
Ecclesiastes 7:16 speaks with remarkable clarity: “Do not be overly righteous. Why should you destroy
yourself?” Rabbinic tradition interprets this as a warning against the “pious fool” whose
goodness harms others, the good inclination twisted into pride, and excessive piety that violates justice or truth.
“Goodness for its own sake” is sinful because it is goodness detached from God’s order, and
therefore a form of idolatry: worship of one’s own moral image. Self-manufactured righteousness is the futile
attempt to purify oneself, unify the divided self, or claim spiritual “arrival,” standing in direct
opposition to the tragic realism of scripture.
In our own time, many institutions in the Western world, including significant portions of the Christian church,
have succumbed to a form of moral absolutism that denies the divided nature of the human being. In doing so, they
risk reenacting precisely the pattern against which Ecclesiastes warns. The goodness-narcissists now dominate the
cultural imagination of the West, and their influence is hastening its self-destruction. The traditional awareness
of original sin, and the corresponding need for continual self-recognition of one’s sinful nature, has
largely vanished. In its absence, people become afflicted by a narcissism of goodness, which is the most dangerous
form of sinfulness. It fuels the impulse to dismantle civilization itself, condemning it as evil merely because it
survives through power: prisons, borders, labour systems, resource extraction, and even war. All these are now
interpreted as oppression, in accordance with postcolonial theory, critical race theory, identity politics, and
various forms of radicalism and antimilitarism. If holiness is the goal, civilization cannot endure.
Once identity politics established “Western civilization” as a symbol of power, dominance, and
privilege, criticism of the West ceased to be historical or political and became moral and existential.
Civilization itself became an obstacle to liberation, understood as the realization of Rousseau’s fantasy of
the perfectly good natural human being. Without a living insight into original sin and the permanently divided
nature of the human being, we lose the only antidote to moral absolutism. When humanity forgets its own dark
nature, it becomes dangerous precisely because it believes itself to be good. Ecclesiastes warns against this
self-destructive pursuit of over-righteousness. A civilization that denies its own inner ambivalence inevitably
repeats the same pattern: it strives to become purer than any human society can bear, and collapses beneath the
weight of its own supposed goodness.
From Ancient Apotheosis to Lutheran Tragic Realism
While the Platonic and Neoplatonic elevation of moral purity historically introduced a psychological desire to
align oneself with abstract “Goodness” at the expense of prudence and the tragic dimension of human
action, this temptation is by no means confined to antiquity. It resurfaces whenever moral aspiration becomes
detached from realism. The ancients did not aspire merely to “perfect goodness” in the modern
moralistic sense; their goal was far more ambitious. They sought divinization: to transcend mortality and
ultimately unite with the divine source itself. In the fifth century BC, Empedocles taught that all human beings
pre-existed as daimones and could re-ascend to their celestial station through purification. Indeed, he
claimed to have accomplished this ascent during his own lifetime, declaring, “I am an immortal god”
(Litwa, 2021, p. 38).
Maximus of Tyre similarly described human daimones as undergoing a progressive ascent towards godhood,
refining and expressing their distinctive virtues along the way (pp. 69-72). Plutarch maintained that the
virtuous are transformed first into daimones before attaining full divinity through further purification
(p. 67). Apuleius echoed this framework, teaching that while all human souls become daimones after
death, those of exceptional virtue ascend even further to become gods (p. 69). Writing within the early
Christian tradition, Origen expressed this same aspiration with striking clarity: “One must lay aside
everything human; it is necessary to be an angel already and a god” (p. 98).
For Plotinus and Porphyry, the ultimate aim of philosophy is explicitly stated: to become a god and achieve union
with the One. This ascent demands virtue understood not as mere moralistic niceness, but as a thoroughgoing
metaphysical transformation. The Neoplatonic quest was thus an effort to achieve ontological elevation through
moral and contemplative purification; its objective was not superficial goodness in a sentimental modern key, but
true apotheosis. Central to this vision is Plotinus’s doctrine that the highest part of the soul never fully
descends, remaining eternally within the divine Intellect (Nous). As he asserts in Ennead I.1.8,
human beings possess a dual nature, with one part anchored in the intelligible realm and the other bound to the
sensible world. Philosophical life is therefore a return to this higher origin: “So, since that which we seek
is one, and we are searching for the principle of all things, the Good, [one must] free oneself from all vice
inasmuch as one is aiming towards the Good. And one should ascend to the principle in oneself, and become one from
being many, if one is to be the spectator of a principle that is one” (Plotinus, Enneads, VI.9.3).
Platonists regarded humanity as only partially fallen, maintaining that the highest part of the soul remained
divine and uncorrupted. Although Christian authors preserved a version of this dual anthropology, seen most vividly
in Luther, they nevertheless insisted that human nature is entirely fallen. In this view, even the highest faculty
of the soul, the mind, is thoroughly corrupt. Lutheran theology thus reflects a Pauline anthropology that radically
deepens ancient concepts of human frailty. Within this framework, the charge that Lutheranism reduces good works to
a system of merit is fundamentally mistaken. Good works are the fruit of faith, not its cause; they flow from the
believer’s union with Christ rather than a desire to accumulate spiritual merit. In Lutheran thought, merit
is excluded precisely so that good works can be understood as genuine, uncalculating acts of love rather than
transactions aimed at securing a reward.
In his classic clash over free will with Martin Luther, the humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus asserted
that it is within the power of our freedom to turn our will toward grace or to turn away from it (De Libero
Arbitrio, 1524). In De Servo Arbitrio (On the Bondage of the Will), Luther delivered a crushing
refutation of this premise. Today, empirical neuroscience largely vindicates Luther’s insight. Modern brain
research demonstrates that before a decision even enters conscious awareness, the brain has already executed the
choice, guided by implicit neural mechanisms and pre-established pathways (Aflalo et al., 2022). Human beings
possess no unconditioned freedom even in trivial matters, such as choosing between beer and wine, despite our
stubborn attachment to the illusion of free agency. In reality, the will can be directed only through prior
habituation, by conditioning the mind in advance so that it naturally inclines toward good decisions. This
underscores the paramount importance of early moral formation, virtuous habit, and ethical instruction.
In a dream of my youth, I stood upon a high mountain peak where the air was thin and frigid, knowing I was destined
to fall. As I plummeted, I grabbed hold of a plank of weather-worn, grey timber and held it fast, intuitively
understanding that this wooden beam was my sole salvation. So too must we abandon the perilous heights of human
hubris and cling to the Cross. To take this plunge is to renounce our pretensions to divinity, to embrace the
tragic realities of existence, and to be crucified with Christ.
The Paradox of the Already–Not Yet
How did Christianity confront this central paradox: the generation of evil through the pursuit of good, the
corruption of righteousness into hypocrisy, and the hubris of utopian striving after the Good? Paul affirms that we
have been reconciled, but also that we will be saved (Romans 5:10) — two
statements that are true simultaneously. In this sense, reconciliation is a present reality for the believer and
the foundation of Christian life today. True righteousness therefore begins in the present, not merely at the
eschaton. This is the inaugurated dimension of salvation. Yet an unfulfilled, eschatological dimension persists.
Reconciliation is not fully realized because sin remains, the self is divided, the world is fallen, and full union
with God lies in the future. For this reason, Augustine maintains that the will remains divided until the end.
Grace heals, but does not perfect, in this life; reconciliation is real, but not complete. This tension is held in
balance by the already–not yet framework, which avoids Pelagianism,
antinomianism, moral perfectionism, and moral despair.
Forgiveness is foundational, yet it does not exhaust the scope of salvation. Reconciliation is a present reality,
though not yet fully realized. The believer is not yet perfected, nor are they left unchanged. Grace and
forgiveness are genuine, and the remaining presence of sin does not nullify reconciliation. However, a believer who
continues in unrepentant sin is not living out the reconciliation Paul describes. Persistent, wilful sin is not an
expression of faith, but a posture of resistance to grace. Faith is more than intellectual assent; it is a
transformative trust that yields inward renewal, however partial or incomplete in this life.
This is why the already–not yet paradigm is so crucial. Already, the believer is reconciled,
forgiven, and accepted. Yet salvation is also not yet, because the believer is still being healed, still
being sanctified, and still being summoned out of sin. Collapsing the “already” results in Pelagianism:
salvation by moral achievement. Collapsing the “not yet” results in antinomianism: salvation without
transformation. Paul holds both together. Grace does not perfect us in this life, but neither does it leave us
static. The believer may fall, but he cannot settle into sin as a permanent residence. Repentance is the sign of
life; complacency is the sign of death.
Paul, Augustine, and Luther all insist that we cannot perfect ourselves, yet we cannot remain complacent. We cannot
eradicate sin, yet we cannot make peace with it. We cannot attain complete wholeness, yet we can never cease
resisting the darkness within. We do not strive to become holy in order to save ourselves. We strive against sin
because we are already saved, and only because we are already saved do we possess the power to strive against sin
at all. The confusion this generated even among Paul’s early congregations dissolves once we distinguish
between two separate questions: (1) Can we overcome sin perfectly? (2) Can we resist sin
meaningfully? Once we distinguish perfection from growth, we realize that while we cannot attain perfect
holiness, we are still called to grow in our spiritual maturity and awareness of sin. This is not moralism. We
cannot overcome sin completely in this life: the divided self remains, the old Adam remains, and the human will
remains conflicted. Yet we can resist sin meaningfully, not through human effort or moral heroism, but solely by
grace, living out of the reconciliation already granted to us.
Within Paul’s already–not yet framework, true righteousness begins in the present as
relationship rather than achievement, as union rather than self-righteousness. Importantly, this framework governs
not only theological anthropology, but Kingdom theology as well. The Christian understanding of history itself
hinges on this delicate tension. Through Christ, the Kingdom of God has already broken into the present world,
demanding concrete expressions of love and grace. Yet its final fulfilment is not yet realized, leaving creation
still subject to human finitude and fallenness. Theological distortions arise whenever this tension is collapsed in
either direction. At one extreme, hyper-escapism ignores the “already,” reducing faith to a passive
retreat that abdicates responsibility for the world. At the other extreme, moralistic utopianism ignores the
“not yet,” attempting to enforce ultimate purity through human law, state power, and institutional
control. True eschatological faith resists both errors: it rejects apathy towards present reality while refusing
the hubris that mistakes human authority for the Kingdom of God.
Maturation versus Egoic Striving
This raises the question of whether the critique of “appearing righteous” implies that Christians
should abandon the pursuit of righteousness altogether. Authentic righteousness is not a self-curated moral
performance, but a transformation granted by God. Yet this very point reveals that we cannot strive for
righteousness through grace. Grace is received, not achieved; it is not an instrument for striving, but the end of
striving itself. The moment we attempt to grasp grace through striving, we forfeit it. The ego’s effort
remains bound to the horizontal plane, and when the horizontal dominates, the vertical dimension inevitably
collapses. As Gregory Palamas explains, the soul is deified by divine participation, not human effort.
What human effort can accomplish is obedience to civil law, the fulfilment of personal duty, and the payment
of taxes. These are commendable and necessary, but they do not weigh on the scale of divine righteousness, only on
the scale of societal righteousness. China has formalized precisely such a system, scoring citizens according to
their social conformity and utility. Those who excel in this system have already received their reward, as Jesus
noted. Their righteousness is horizontal, not vertical; civic, not divine; a matter of social credit rather than
spiritual transformation.
When Jesus confronts the Pharisees and Sadducees, or when he corrects his slow-witted disciples, we should not
imagine them as distant figures safely confined to history. Their spirit is alive in the hypocrisies and inanities
of modern Christian life. To read Scripture truthfully is to let it expose the realities of today, not merely to
rehearse the events of yesterday. We, the readers, are the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the dull-witted disciples.
If we think otherwise and treat them as the “enemy” or the “ignorant,” we are simply
projecting our own shadow and reenacting a familiar pattern of cancel culture, shutting out “the
others” who are not good Christians like us. Scripture is structured to lure the reader into self-righteous
complacency and shadow projection, encouraging us to reject the culprits and identify with the righteous, until the
jarring realization strikes that we are the very sinners being confronted.
Scripture functions as a winnowing fan, winnowing wheat from chaff. Many remain trapped in self-righteous
projection, failing to recognize that they are the very culprits confronted by Christ, blind to their peril until
awakened by the Spirit. Certain passages are particularly susceptible to moralistic misinterpretation, most notably
Luke 13:24: “Strive to enter through the narrow door.” This command appears almost designed to let the
self-assured wander astray. One cannot strive to enter the Kingdom through ordinary human exertion, given
that Christ has already achieved the decisive victory over death. Accordingly, the Fathers read
agōnízesthe not as self-generated effort, but as the soul’s dramatic synergy with divine grace.
From this Greek verb our English agonize derives; as Maximus the Confessor explains, the human will
“agonizes” precisely because the divine will is already at work within it.
The Patristic tradition never understood this agōn as an attempt to manufacture salvation. It is not
Pelagian striving but participatory ascent: an effort not to retreat from the grace already imparted. As
Chrysostom puts it, God opens the door; our struggle is not to flee from it (Chrysostom, ca. 391/1989, Homily 7).
Origen and Basil observe that the soul agonizes because its internal disorder renders the influx of grace painful;
the struggle is the therapeutic crisis of divine love. Origen famously remarks that the door is narrow because the
human soul is swollen with pride; the struggle is the painful mortification of the ego required for grace to enter.
This line of exegesis illuminates Philippians 2:12: “Work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling.” Fear and trembling are the inevitable accompaniment of the ego’s dismantling.
Paul emphasizes spiritual maturation over human striving. Growth is participation in the life of Christ;
transformation is the work of the Spirit; and maturity is the fruit of grace. Striving belongs to the realm of the
flesh (Gal 3:3; Rom 7:18-25), whereas maturation belongs to the Spirit (Gal 5:16-25). Spiritual growth is
God’s sovereign work, not an ego-driven project. For Paul, reliance on religious law belongs to this same
domain of the flesh and functions, in spiritual terms, no differently than a social-credit system. Yet this does
not render the law inherently evil; civic order and moral discipline remain necessary for worldly life. The law
operates as milk for spiritual infants not yet equipped to possess the mind of Christ (1 Cor 3:1-2; Gal
3:24-25; 4:1-3; Heb 5:12-14). Nevertheless, it secures no standing before God.
One could argue that the real problem is prideful self-righteousness, not the pursuit of righteousness
itself. Yet the moment one strives, the center of gravity shifts from grace to self-effort. It becomes the
spiritual equivalent of trying to “force oneself to relax.” Such an approach attempts to preserve human
agency through moral effort, self-examination, and personal progress. The ego insists on remaining the primary
author of righteousness, even while invoking grace, and as a result, grace is excluded. When the ego demands to be
the protagonist of its own sanctification, it inevitably produces the goodness-narcissism analysed here. This
occurs because striving is inherently self-referential: self-measuring, self-directed, and self-curating.
There would be nothing wrong with being a “good Christian,” were such a feat truly possible. The Law
itself is not inherently flawed; the danger emerges when the ego appropriates the Law’s standard of
righteousness to construct its own identity. When “being good” becomes a self-directed project,
goodness itself is co-opted into fuel for the parasitic shadow, exhuming the very evil it seeks to avoid. This
reveals the enduring relevance of Paul’s insight: Christian doctrine can easily be reduced to an external
“law,” providing fresh fodder for the ego seeking a badge of virtue. Strictly speaking, then, there is
no such thing as a “good Christian.”
Paul counters this dynamic by urging believers to abandon self-manufactured virtue: “If we live by the
Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit,” for “if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the
law” (Gal 5:18, 25). To be free from the Law is to be liberated from the ego’s endless project of being
“good.” Yet “walking by the Spirit” is far simpler to preach than to practice. This
difficulty is precisely why many commentators view Paul as a mystic. He was also, however, a highly educated
thinker with a formidable intellect. In the Platonic tradition, the soul’s ascent is fundamentally a process
of intellectual and spiritual maturation. Its highest faculty is the nous, a capacity distinct from the
self-serving ego. Far from inflating the ego, the cultivation of the nous humbles it, precisely because the
nous is oriented towards and receptive to the Holy Spirit.
Individuals of a less reflective temperament, much like the early disciples, often seek explicit rules to govern
their conduct — a demand Jesus satisfies reluctantly, and with only a few simple directives.
Conversely, those with a more cultivated intellect rely on fewer rigid directives, because they possess the
capacity to navigate the path independently. They do not claim to possess the truth; rather, they perceive the
direction towards it. This is why nous does not aggrandize the ego, and why the Platonic pursuit of wisdom
is spiritually fruitful, whereas merely “knowing the law” is not.
A striking example of this dynamic appears in research on empathy, a quality often regarded as the supreme hallmark
of goodness. Yet genuine empathy requires intellectual comprehension. Caring for an animal, for instance, requires
real cognitive effort to interpret its signals and understand its needs. Without this intellectual component,
empathy reduces to mere instinct, a trait animals possess just as well, if not better.
What we truly require is a passion of consciousness, as it provides the greatest safeguard against sin.
Since the sum total of all indulgences remains constant, it is best to direct that energy towards higher pursuits.
Above all, one should refrain from the attempt to make oneself “righteous and good.” As
Paul Hessert writes:
To be free is not to have our choice of possibilities, but to be released from the compulsion to remake everything and everyone (especially ourselves) in the evanescent image of an ideal. To be free is to live in the bond of peace (Eph. 4:3). (Hessert, 1993, p. 216)
The Parody of Liberal Humanism and the Immanentized Kingdom
Evil continually spreads by perverting the virtues proper to the Church. This often occurs through subtle,
deceptive parodies, much like a virus that mimics healthy cells to infect the body. Liberal humanism fits this
description perfectly, acting as a pathogen within global Christianity. Although it speaks fluently of dignity,
solidarity, and the common good, it lacks the essential theological grounding that makes these virtues real: a
fundamental orientation toward God. When the Church embraces this imitation, it forfeits its ability to oppose
evil. Replacing apostolic discipline with pastoral understanding, it shrinks from confronting systemic sin,
delivering platitudes instead of action and creating a vacuum in which evil can flourish. In the classical
Christian tradition, virtue is not an autonomous moral force. The virtues do not walk alone; they participate in
God’s order and form part of a whole. Augustine teaches that a virtue is a virtue only when it stands in
relation to the divine whole.
Viewed from this perspective, Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, becomes particularly
revealing. While the Vatican frames the document as a defence of the Imago Dei against technological
dehumanization, its structural and linguistic echo of Mary’s Magnificat leaves it vulnerable to
accusations of anthropocentric pride. For those who adhere to a strict, classical Christology, celebrating
“magnificent humanity” at a moment when the Church is already accused of dissolving into a secular
philanthropic enterprise feels less like a defence of the faith and more like a theological surrender.
The encyclical explicitly calls for “building a city founded on the common good” and “working
together to make the City of God a safe place for returning exiles.” In effect, humanity is summoned to
“rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence.” From a classical theological standpoint, this represents
a fatal conflation. The establishment of the Kingdom is Christ’s work, not ours. The Kingdom is given, not
engineered; it is eschatological, not historical. In attempting to reconcile liberal-humanitarian policy with
classical metaphysics, the document forces an impossible synthesis between two irreconcilable visions. Traditional
theology functions here as little more than an orthodox veneer, masking a core message of secularized humanism that
reduces the Kingdom of God to a monument of moral progress and human cooperation on a global scale.
Saturated with terms like “dignity,” “dialogue,” “common good,”
“solidarity,” “human rights,” and “multilateralism,” the language frames the
Kingdom as a collective human effort to build a better world through social engineering and moral
progress — as though declaring, “If we all work together, we can build the Kingdom.”
This vision carries an unmistakably globalist political dimension. The text explicitly urges readers to
“conceive of ways of cooperating and of more effective international institutions, capable of safeguarding
the global common good” (§64), while praising these bodies directly: “International organizations,
particularly the United Nations, are essential instruments for promoting a civilization of love” (§226).
Such examples demonstrate that the document’s vision extends far beyond individual spiritual conversion. By
issuing explicit directives on tax codes, legal migration routes, GDP alternatives, state-enforced AI regulation,
data socialization, and UN-led multilateral governance, the text anchors its theological reflection in concrete,
secular political programs.
At a time when the UK and France are falling apart because of their “goodness and generosity,” the Pope
warns against “identity-based and nationalistic reactions” and insists we respect the right to migrate,
claiming “migration can become an opportunity for encounter and mutual enrichment among peoples.” He
remains anchored in liberal principles, appending Christian theology as mere window dressing. Invoking “the
walls of Jerusalem” misapplies the biblical text: Nehemiah 2-6 recounts the restoration of a shattered local
community, not the engineering of a borderless global order built on universal solidarity. Israel and Jerusalem
stand under judgment, just like every other nation on earth. In classical Christian theology, Jesus Christ already
reigns from the throne of the heavenly Jerusalem. Consequently, the physical city plays no remaining eschatological
role.
Magnifica Humanitas represents the same secularized social vision that has long been adopted across much of modern
Christianity. In contrast, Augustine, in The City of God, rejects the notion of societal progress towards an
earthly Kingdom of God built on mutual understanding and humanitarian care. The Earthly City’s only true hope
is to maintain stability through the rule of law and the faithful discharge of civil authority. Any attempt to
build a perfect, humane society inevitably degenerates into a parody, a demonic counterfeit that ultimately feeds
the very evil it seeks to restrain. Herein lies the problem: rather than opposing evil, the Church increasingly
counsels moral compromise under the guise of pastoral understanding. Politically, this therapeutic posture
manifests in demands for the passive acceptance of mass migration. This process threatens Europe with social
dissolution, exposing underlying vulnerabilities that were starkly revealed by recent inquiries into the UK
grooming gang scandals. The papacy is similarly incapacitated when facing its own internal crises of corruption and
clerical abuse. Capable only of issuing empty platitudes, the institution consistently evades confronting systemic
evil. This passive stance directly contradicts the Apostle Paul, who explicitly admonished congregations to purge
the wicked from their midst (1 Cor 5:13).
This state of affairs is the logical culmination of a long-standing theological shift. When the historical reality
of the bodily Ascension is marginalized, the Church loses its anchor in a transcendent, heavenly reality.
Consequently, the Christian hope of a coming Kingdom is horizontalized, transformed from an eschatological
expectation of divine judgment into a secularized project of earthly progress and social optimization. As the very
title of Magnifica Humanitas betrays, the Church redefines salvation as a humanitarian enterprise, thereby
gradually relinquishing its role as a sign of contradiction to the world. By treating political integration and
social cohesion as the ultimate goods, the Church unwittingly prepares the ground for a simulation of the Kingdom,
a diabolical counterfeit of the divine order. In this light, the modern ecclesiastical preference for therapeutic
platitudes over moral confrontation is the inevitable outcome of an immanentized faith. Having abandoned the strict
discipline of the Eucharist, which simultaneously proclaims Christ’s real absence in the world and His real
presence at the altar, the Church becomes highly vulnerable to mimicking the very structures of the secular
state.
Where, exactly, does the Bible teach that mass immigration is harmless or that nations are morally bound to support
it? The biblical story points in the opposite direction. Scripture consistently affirms the legitimacy of distinct
peoples, borders, and inherited homelands, and it repeatedly warns against the political and spiritual dangers of
sprawling, multi-ethnic empires. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Rome are not held up as models of harmonious
diversity but as cautionary examples of what happens when imperial ambition dissolves the integrity of nations. The
Bible commands compassion for the stranger, yes, but it never collapses that duty into an endorsement of
demographic upheaval or the erasure of national identity. Its vision is one of ordered hospitality, not imperial
multiculturalism.
By extrapolating the already–not yet paradigm to encompass global governance, international law, and
multilateral policy, the encyclical shifts the concept away from its biblical and Pauline origins. In Paul’s
theology, the “already” is ecclesial and local, not geopolitical. It consists in the indwelling of the
Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, and personal conversion. As Paul writes, “If anyone is in Christ, he is
a new creation” (2 Cor 5:17). The visible manifestation of this “already” occurs within the
Christian worshiping community, where Jew and Gentile, slave and free, are reconciled into a single body (Gal 3:28;
Eph 2:14-16). Consequently, Pauline ethical exhortations focus on concrete, face-to-face relationships: bearing one
another’s burdens, practicing personal holiness, offering hospitality, and caring for the immediate
neighbour.
Paul nowhere suggests that the Roman Empire, or any modern multilateral political system, is the domain where the
“already” of the Kingdom is engineered. His view of earthly political power in Romans 13 is
fundamentally modest, not utopian or programmatic: the state exists merely to restrain evil and maintain basic
civic order. It is not an agent of redemptive history, nor is it tasked with “building the Kingdom.”
For Paul, secular authorities belong to a passing era (“this present evil age,” Gal 1:4), an order
subject to God’s providence, yet entirely distinct from the Body of Christ.
To apply the Pauline “already” to UN frameworks, state-enforced AI regulation, global tax
redistribution, or international treaties conflates the ecclesial community with the secular state, mistaking a
Spirit-filled body for a mere instrument of restraint. Inflating the “already” from local, neighbourly
love into global political management triggers a profound theological shift, producing what Eric Voegelin
famously termed “the immanentization of the eschaton” (Voegelin, 1987, chap. 4; see also Winther,
2024). Converting this eschatological reality into a blueprint for global integration and institutional engineering
severs it from its Pauline foundations, reducing a divine gift of grace to a program of secular political progress.
This error underscores the enduring necessity of St. Augustine’s distinction between the two cities. The
City of God participates in the “already” as a pilgrim community united by the love of God, awaiting
its ultimate home. The Earthly City, however, can aspire to nothing more than a temporary, provisional peace
(pax terrena) enforced by law.
Magnifica Humanitas uses Jerusalem as a humanitarian, allegorical, and Catholic social teaching image.
However, amid ongoing conflict in the Middle East, “Jerusalem” is far from an abstract symbol; it is a
physical, fiercely contested city. Employing rhetoric about “rebuilding Jerusalem” or “building
walls,” even as allegories for civic solidarity, risks appearing tone-deaf, partisan, or detached from
real-world territorial disputes. Moreover, popular eschatology in the West, especially within American
Evangelicalism, is deeply shaped by Dispensationalism. This theological tradition views the gathering of the Jewish
people, the re-establishment of physical Israel, and the rebuilding of the Temple as literal fulfilments of
prophecy required for the eschaton, when Christ will return to reign from Jerusalem. By invoking
“Jerusalem” and its “rebuilding,” the papal text inevitably invites misinterpretation, as
audiences naturally filter these terms through either a geopolitical or an apocalyptic lens.
Although Magnifica Humanitas employs Jerusalem in a classic Catholic typological sense, it inadvertently
feeds into the dispensationalist worldview by collapsing the heavenly and earthly dimensions of the Kingdom. To be
sure, dispensationalists and globalists view world governance through fundamentally incompatible
lenses — the former nationalist, hyper-literal, and apocalyptic; the latter multicultural and
institutional. Yet both paradigms share a commitment to immanentism. Thus, while the encyclical uses the image of
Jerusalem to advocate for global solidarity, it subtly echoes the structural logic of Dispensationalism and Zionism
by locating the ultimate realization of the Kingdom on the earthly plane.
The Heavenly Jerusalem and Christ’s Present Reign
Dispensational Premillennialism is a heresy that contradicts the foundational tenets of traditional Christian
theology. Developed in the nineteenth century by John Nelson Darby and popularized through the
Scofield Reference Bible and modern evangelical literature, it holds that the covenants made with Abraham
and David regarding physical land and an earthly throne in Jerusalem must be literally fulfilled, rather than
applied allegorically or spiritually to the Church. In this view, Christ will return bodily to sit on the physical
throne of David in Jerusalem, ruling the world from the earthly city for a literal thousand-year reign (the
Millennial Kingdom).
In contrast to this view, traditional Christian theology holds that because Scripture subjects all earthly nations
to divine judgment, no single state retains a privileged theological standing under the New Covenant. Consequently,
the modern State of Israel holds no unique theological significance within Christian dogmatics. True eschatological
weight belongs exclusively to the heavenly Jerusalem and spiritual Israel, the Augustinian City of God,
rather than to any temporal power in the Middle East. Whatever historical or political motivations attended the
founding of the modern Jewish state, its reality remains strictly within the realm of secular history.
Whereas the earthly Jerusalem remains temporal and subject to divine judgment, the heavenly Jerusalem is eternal
(Heb 12:22; Rev 21–22). In his teaching, Jesus speaks in terms of historical epochs rather than a geography of
salvation. Consequently, Luke 21:24 addresses temporal judgment rather than the permanent theological standing of
the physical city. Christ’s prophecy that Jerusalem will be “trampled on by the ” details
specific historical developments (such as the events of AD 70, the diaspora, and Gentile dominance) rather than
asserting an enduring eschatological role for physical geography.
Gabriel’s words to Mary (Luke 1:32) concern David’s dynasty, not a physical throne in Jerusalem. In
early Christian theology, the throne of David represents the kingdom of David, not a literal seat in a palace. The
Messiah inherits David’s kingdom through his exaltation rather than by returning to an earthly palace. The
New Testament thus teaches that Jesus already sits on David’s throne through his heavenly enthronement.
Acts 1:6-7 reveals that the disciples were still thinking in earthly terms, and Jesus corrects them. The disciples
hope that the time has come to restore the kingdom to Israel. However, this is a misconception, as they continue to
think in terms of a national, political, and geographic kingdom. Jesus dismisses their question and redirects them
outward from Jerusalem, commanding them to be his witnesses “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). In
other words, the Kingdom is no longer tied to a geographical location; it is spiritual, universal, and
heavenly.
Jesus frequently corrects misunderstandings through redirection rather than rebuke. Nicodemus inquires about
physical birth, yet Jesus speaks of the Spirit; the Samaritan woman speaks of physical water, yet Jesus speaks of
living water; the disciples ask about food, yet Jesus speaks of his divine calling; the disciples inquire about the
kingdom, yet Jesus directs them to the Spirit and the universal mission. He reorients their focus from Jerusalem to
“the ends of the earth.” This is a classic rabbinic correction: not by saying “you are
wrong,” but by redirecting focus to what is right. If Jesus had wanted to confirm an earthly kingdom for
Israel, this would have been the perfect opportunity. Instead, he speaks of something entirely different. This is
why the traditional Christian interpretation has always viewed Acts 1:6-8 as a correction, not a confirmation.
Luke himself repeatedly highlights the disciples’ persistent misunderstandings (Luke 9:45; 18:34). Even forty
days of post-resurrection instruction do not guarantee full comprehension; in Lukan theology, true spiritual
insight arrives only through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:45; Acts 2). For Luke, divine understanding
is a gift of the Spirit rather than a function of instructional duration. To insist that the disciples possessed
flawless theological clarity prior to Pentecost thus contradicts Luke’s fundamental narrative logic.
Luke 24:45 describes Jesus opening their minds specifically to comprehend his death and resurrection, which does
not imply that they had yet grasped the nature of the Kingdom. Nor does John 20:22 represent Pentecost or the full
gift of the Spirit; rather, as Christian tradition consistently attests, it constitutes a symbolic and preparatory
gift. The original Greek text demonstrates that Jesus says “Receive holy spirit” (labete pneuma
hagion). He does not say “labete to pneuma to hagion.” Consequently, “Receive the Holy
Spirit” is technically an inaccurate translation, despite appearing almost universally in modern Bible
versions. Nevertheless, the Revised English Version (REV) offers the correct rendering. Translating the phrase as
“Receive holy spirit” aligns with early translations and the historical exegesis of Church Fathers such
as Cyril of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, and Augustine. They recognized John 20:22 as a partial, preparatory
gift of divine breath, echoing God breathing life into Adam in Genesis 2:7, prior to the full outpouring of the
Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2).
Old Testament prophecies of return pertain not to 1948, but to the Babylonian exile. The prophets address the
historic return from Babylon, the rebuilding of the temple, and the restoration of cultic worship. Throughout the
New Testament, every promise undergoes a Christological reinterpretation: the Church is the true Israel (Rom 9:6;
Gal 6:16); the Jerusalem above is our mother (Gal 4:26); we have arrived at the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:22). The
New Testament provides no theological framework for a future Jewish state. For modern Christians to read the events
of 1948 into Old Testament prophecy represents a recent theological innovation rather than classical Christianity.
Such reasoning is widespread today: “Since we observe a Jewish state today, the prophecies must refer to
this.” However, this is not exegesis. It is eisegesis, the practice of reading meaning into a text that is
absent from it. The modern State of Israel may carry political significance, but it possesses no theological
significance.
© Mats Winther, 2026.
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