Abstract: This paper recovers a vertical, celestial understanding of the Kingdom of God rooted in patristic
cosmology: a dynamic theo-drama within the divine mind, populated by angelic and demonic beings whose patterns are
imperfectly mirrored in earthly history. Against modern socio-political flattening, it argues that the Kingdom is
transcendent yet knowable through dramatic participation, whereby creatures share in divine narratives rather than
divine substance.
The study reinterprets key Christian doctrines within this framework. Christ’s work appears as cosmic
disenchantment, breaking the sacral order on which demonic powers depended and completing the spiritual trajectory
begun in the Fall. The Church assumes a protective-therapeutic role rather than sacramental-ontological one, while
the Eucharist represents an accommodation to humanity’s need for material mediation. This reframing critiques
modern ressourcement projects and nouvelle théologie that seek to reintroduce sacramental ontology,
proposing instead that dramatic participation preserves the Kingdom’s transcendence while transcending both
sacral enchantment and secular nihilism.
Keywords: kingdom of God, unilateral contradiction, disenchantment, dramatic participation, eucharistic
theology, atonement, trickster, Christus Victor, sacramental ontology, second fall, Michael Welker,
Constantin Noica, Hans Boersma.
Introduction
My previous paper ‘Albertus Magnus and the Mythological Kingdom: Divine Mind as Ontological Reality’
(2025) develops Albert the Great’s thesis that the Kingdom of God exists within the divine mind. Conceived as
a ‘theo-drama’ authored by God, this Kingdom possesses ontological reality and serves as the dwelling
place of both angels and demons. While this concept raises certain theological questions, I address these concerns
below. The following is a summary.
Rather than viewing God’s Kingdom as a future earthly utopia or mere ethical ideal, I argue that it
represents the mythological patterns and eternal dramas playing out within divine consciousness, which then
manifest in the earthly realm through participation. The article challenges the traditional philosophical view of
divine Forms as static, frozen blueprints. If Forms exist in divine Mind (Nous), they must be inherently
dynamic — not photographs but living dramas. This stems from a critique of Greek
philosophy’s equation of perfection with stasis, inherited from Parmenides and crystallized in Plato.
God’s self-knowledge consists not in contemplating static concepts but in experiencing eternal narratives of
creation, fall, and redemption as perpetually active within divine consciousness. This explains why Scripture
presents truth through dramatic narratives rather than philosophical abstractions.
The article draws support from several key thinkers. Eriugena’s concept of primordial causes existing
eternally in the Word reinforces the idea that all reality preexists dynamically in divine consciousness.
Coleridge’s reformulation of Platonic Ideas as God’s creative acts emphasizes their living, productive
nature and introduces the crucial concept of symbols as participatory realities that unite history and myth.
Von Balthasar’s theo-drama, while limited by Aristotelian metaphysics, provides theoretical foundations
for understanding existence as inherently dramatic rather than conceptual.
This framework illuminates Paul’s spiritual warfare language and the New Testament’s proliferation of
spiritual beings. Patterns in divine consciousness possess greater ontological reality than their earthly
manifestations. Thus, Paul’s understanding of God’s Kingdom reveals true spiritual realities rather
than speaking in mere metaphors. The relationship between spiritual and material realms operates through
participation (methexis) rather than direct causation — earthly events imperfectly mirror
transcendent patterns like iron filings aligning with invisible magnetic fields.
Gustaf Aulén’s revival of the Christus Victor theory supports viewing salvation as mythological drama rather
than rational transaction. His emphasis on symbol as “the mother tongue of faith” and his preservation
of the Kingdom perspective despite modern rationalistic theology proves crucial.
Mircea Eliade’s work substantially strengthens the framework. His concepts of sacred time, eternal return,
and hierophany provide phenomenological evidence for the article’s theological claims. Eliade’s
distinction between cosmic and historical Christianity illuminates why modern theology struggles with the Kingdom
as mythological reality. His insistence that myths reveal ontological realities rather than primitive explanations
supports viewing mythology as essential to understanding divine-human relations.
The article addresses divine guidance as emerging from God’s creative deployment of mythological themes
within the conflicted Kingdom. Rather than imposing rigid moral laws, God guides through narrative patterns and
dramatic themes. Biblical events like the Exodus and Christ’s Passion are not historical accidents but
mythological themes God employs to communicate purpose. This explains why Jesus and Paul emphasized the Law’s
secondary importance — narrative transcends legalism.
This theological framework promises to preserve biblical narrative integrity while avoiding both literalist
fundamentalism and reductive modernism. The Kingdom of God emerges as the mythological realm of divine mind where
eternal dramas perpetually unfold, accessible to human participation through faith understood as mythological
consciousness.
Crucially, Albert’s understanding of divine intellect offers a profound synthesis between mythic theology and
divine aseity. We need not choose between God’s transcendence and his mythological engagement. The mythic
drama constitutes the content of God’s eternal self-contemplation, preserving divine self-sufficiency while
affirming God’s genuine involvement in conflict and suffering.
Unilateral Contradiction
The Kingdom model assumes that angelic beings and the Kingdom of God are “semi-autonomous” in relation
to the divine mind. While the Kingdom of God exists within God’s mind, as Albertus maintained, its
inhabitants experience themselves as free agents, unaware of any dependency. God operates as the director of this
celestial drama from behind the scenes. As Michael Welker explains, God’s presence in heaven serves not
as a display of superiority from above, but rather as a necessary ordering force:
Against this background “God’s being in heaven” takes on a totally different quality from that of a “one-upsmanship from above.” Instead, God’s creatively ruling and ordering action is necessary in order to keep the powers of the realms of transcendence — that is, transcendent relative to the earth — from raging in unforeseeable ways. Thanks to “God’s dwelling in heaven,” thanks to this creative presence, the powers of heaven cannot possess the bizarreness of hobgoblins or the arbitrariness of fate. (Welker, 1999, p. 37)
This separation between God and the heavenly realm mirrors the fundamental tension in Neoplatonic thought, which
later Neoplatonists struggled to resolve. The core challenge lies in explaining how the One can maintain its
essential nature (simple and undifferentiated) while generating multiplicity. If Nous (Mind) is truly distinct from
the One, then the One becomes limited, defined by what it is not (the One minus Nous). Thus, we would want to
bridge the gap between monism (all is one) and dualism (creator/creature are distinct) by introducing a dialectical
asymmetry. How can Nous be simultaneously identical with and distinct from the One?
A parallel dilemma emerges in the mind-brain relationship. From our subjective experience, the mind appears free
and distinct from the brain, yet neuroscience suggests their unity. Rather than choosing between these
perspectives, we might need to embrace both, viewing the mind, like Nous, as semi-autonomous. The mind’s
experience of autonomy isn’t simply an illusion to be dismissed, but rather reflects the genuine asymmetry of
the relationship.
Constantin Noica (2009) introduces the concept of ‘unilateral contradiction,’ challenging the
Aristotelian assumption that contradiction must be reciprocal. In this model, while B contradicts A, A does not
reciprocate this contradiction. The secondary reality B (whether Angels, Mind, or the Manifold) establishes its
identity by differentiating itself from the primary reality A (God, Body, or the One). To achieve specific
existence, B must declare “I am not A.” However, the primary reality A serves as the fundamental ground
of being and encompasses B within itself. From God’s (A’s) perspective, the Angel (B) is not an
external “other” that imposes limitations on divine infinity; rather, the Angel exists as an internal
manifestation or creation within God’s mind.
Applied theologically, this insight resolves the tension between divine immanence and transcendence. The
angels’ experience of being distinct created beings is real from their perspective, while
simultaneously God’s experience of unity with them is equally real from the divine perspective.
Neither perspective invalidates the other — they exist in this unilateral contradiction.
The Neoplatonic problem, how emanated hypostases like Nous and Psyche can be both derived from and distinct from
the One, finds a solution here. Rather than forcing a choice between complete autonomy or complete absorption,
semi-autonomy preserves both the genuine otherness experienced by the emanation and the unity experienced by the
source. Noica illustrates this principle through several examples:
Perhaps the clearest illustration of this principle is the relationship between white light and the colours of
the rainbow. While red stands in contrast to white, white encompasses red since it contains all colours within its
spectrum. This relationship demonstrates red’s partial independence: from its own perspective, red appears
autonomous, yet from white’s viewpoint, red is merely one of many colours it can incorporate.
Artists are well familiar with this principle: a white surface readily reflects any colour; during sunset, for
instance, it takes on a reddish tinge. White can reflect red while maintaining its essential nature, even as red
maintains its distinct identity. This exemplifies the unilateral nature of the contradiction: red distinguishes
itself from white, but white does not need to distinguish itself from red.
This analogy perfectly captures the relationship between God and the Kingdom of God: God is like white light, while
the Kingdom of God resembles the spectrum of rainbow colours, with each distinct hue representing an angelic being.
Just as white light contains and transcends all colours while allowing each to manifest its unique identity, God
encompasses and sustains the entire angelic realm while permitting each being its distinct expression.
This perspective allows us to reconcile two seemingly contradictory truths: that the Kingdom of God exists within
the divine mind, while simultaneously acknowledging the experiential autonomy of angelic beings from their own
perspective. Just as each colour maintains its distinct identity while remaining fundamentally contained within
white light, angels can experience genuine autonomy while remaining within God’s all-encompassing
consciousness.
Tolkien’s The Silmarillion presents a cosmogonic myth that perfectly illustrates unilateral
contradiction in “The Music of the Ainur” (abbreviated version):
Before the world’s creation, Ilúvatar (God) brought forth the Ainur (angels, also known as Valar) from his thought. He gathered them and proclaimed a mighty theme, directing them to weave it into a Great Music, enriched by their own thoughts and powers. As the Ainur began to sing, their harmonious music filled the Void.
Melkor, the most powerful of the Ainur, grew proud and impatient, seeking to magnify his own glory. He introduced his discordant thoughts into the Music, creating a clash of sounds that disturbed and confused the other singers. The original melodies became lost in a tumult of chaotic noise.
Ilúvatar’s response was remarkable: rather than attempting to suppress Melkor’s loud, prideful music, he introduced new themes that incorporated Melkor’s most triumphant notes into their own solemn pattern. Finally, Ilúvatar concluded the music with a single, powerful chord and declared that all the Ainur had sung would be manifested in a new world, Arda. He revealed to Melkor that no theme could truly oppose his will, for anyone attempting to do so would unwittingly become an instrument in creating things more wonderful than they had imagined. Instead of resisting discordance (evil), Ilúvatar encompassed it within his greater design.
The Ainur can assert their independence and even opposition, yet Ilúvatar doesn’t need to contradict or
oppose them in return. Like colours in white light, they maintain their distinct identity while being contained
within a greater whole. Although the Ainur experience genuine creative freedom and feel autonomous from their
perspective, everything they create ultimately exists within Ilúvatar’s thought, as he encompasses and
transforms their attempts at opposition into part of his greater theme. When Melkor thinks he is creating something
outside Ilúvatar’s design, his very opposition becomes an instrument of Ilúvatar’s greater purpose.
This mirrors how finite reality can oppose the infinite, but the infinite simply encompasses that opposition.
One evening, composer Béla Bartók was sitting in a café when two violinists began performing a duet. Though they
played out of tune with each other, creating a dissonant, buzzing friction instead of a clean melodic line, Bartók
was intrigued. To his ears, the discord captured the raw, gritty reality of village life. The mistuned strings
produced a rustic intensity that perfect unison could never achieve. He later famously observed that a
“wrong” note played with genuine spirit could be more musical than a perfect note played without soul.
This experience inspired him to incorporate this effect into his String Quartet No. 5.
In Goethe’s Faust, Mephistopheles defines himself as “the Spirit that denies.” His entire
existence is a unilateral contradiction of Creation. Mephistopheles believes he is working against God. God,
however, views Mephistopheles as a necessary function of the divine economy — the friction that
keeps human consciousness awake. The Devil is semi-autonomous. He is “part of that power which eternally
wills evil and eternally works good.”
In many myths, the trickster figure serves a demiurgical role alongside the creator god. A Romanian earth-diver
myth illustrates this: the trickster retrieves a tiny amount of soil from the cosmic ocean’s depths, which
the creator uses to form a small island where they both might rest. Throughout the night, the trickster repeatedly
pushes the creator into the water, hoping to claim the island for himself. By morning, the land had expanded under
the creator to its present size (Afloroaei, 2009).
The creator simply absorbs the trickster’s negativity and transforms it into something beneficial. A similar
pattern appears across Native American creation myths, where a trickster figure modifies the benevolent
creator’s original work. In several tribal traditions, including the Iroquois and some Plateau peoples, the
creator initially designed rivers to flow in both directions for convenient travel and created fish without bones.
The trickster then altered this design, making rivers flow in only one direction and adding bones to fish. While
the creator made bushes with delicious berries, the trickster responded by adding thorns to them (Murtagh,
‘Iroquois Creation Myth’).
The pattern suggests an initial, ideal heavenly creation that the trickster transforms into a material
reality — where, for instance, rivers cannot defy physics by flowing in both directions. The
trickster’s disruption of divine perfection, while appearing destructive, actually facilitates the transition
to physical creation. This would represent a felix culpa, or “fortunate fall,” where apparent
corruption serves a greater purpose. A similar theme appears in Genesis. According to Maximus the Confessor, Adam
had failed to regard creation spiritually, instead looking at nature in line with his passions, thereby reducing
creation to a purely material reality (Boersma, p. 32).
To the Pythagoreans, integers held sacred status. Today we see the rational numbers (integers and quotients of
integers) as merely a subset of a more comprehensive system: real numbers, which include irrationals. While
rational numbers appear to contradict real numbers, real numbers simply encompass rationals within their broader
framework.
According to legend, Hippasus of Metapontum discovered the square root of 2, proving the existence of irrational
numbers and challenging the Pythagorean belief that all numbers could be expressed as ratios of integers. This
discovery threatened their fundamental worldview that “all is number” — by which
they meant rational numbers.
In the most dramatic version of the tale, Pythagoras or his followers, so disturbed by this revelation, drowned
Hippasus at sea. Some accounts describe him being thrown overboard, while others suggest exile followed by
drowning. From the Pythagorean perspective, Hippasus played the role of trickster, initiating a fall from
mathematical perfection.
History offers another example in Luther, the trickster-monk whose novel ideas the Catholic Church failed to
absorb. Had the Church followed Ilúvatar’s example and integrated this dissonant voice into its harmony, it
might have been better prepared for modernity. Instead, the Catholic Church preserved its institutional wholeness
but lost vitality, while Lutheranism achieved vital reform but lacked sacramental fullness.
The Celestial Kingdom
The Kingdom model is grounded in understanding God’s Kingdom as a celestial reality. Although modern theology
has largely abandoned this perspective, it was widely embraced by the Church Fathers. In De Civitate Dei,
Augustine describes the Kingdom of God as divine governance manifested in the City of God — a
realm both ideal and historical, existing simultaneously in heaven and on earth, encompassing both angels and
humans. The earthly church, insofar as it reflects its heavenly counterpart, functions as a temporal manifestation
of God’s Kingdom.
It would be inaccurate to claim that Augustine simply equated the church with God’s Kingdom. While he
emphasized both the earthly perspective and the eschatological Kingdom, he maintained the distinction between
heaven and earth: “Still, compared with that heaven of heavens, even the heaven of our own earth is only
earth. Indeed, it is not absurd to call each of those two great bodies ‘earth’ in comparison with that
ineffable heaven which is the Lord’s, and not for the sons of men” (Augustine, Confessions,
12:2).
The earthly Kingdom is indeed the lesser Kingdom, though many theologians often overlook this vital distinction
when presenting church history. Cyprian, whom Augustine particularly admired, explicitly states this
differentiation between heavenly and earthly Kingdoms (Cyprian, Treatise IV: 13).
Herrick (1903, p. 17) notes that early patristic sources clearly distinguished between Church and Kingdom.
The Martyrdom of Polycarp and the Epistle to Diognetus present the Kingdom as distinctly celestial,
existing in heaven while awaiting eschatological fulfillment (p. 19). Irenaeus recognized both heavenly and
earthly Kingdoms of Christ (p. 22). The apocryphal Martyrdom of Bartholomew locates God’s
Kingdom in heaven (p. 30), while the Liturgies of James, Mark, and the Apostles predominantly equate
the Kingdom with heaven (p. 35). Hegesippus in The Relatives of Christ maintains this celestial
understanding.
The minor Greek Fathers offered various interpretations, but predominantly viewed the Kingdom as heavenly.
Eusebius, who opposed millennialism, primarily equated the Kingdom with heaven (Herrick, 1903, p. 46).
Theodoret consistently viewed the Kingdom as heaven (p. 48). Athanasius shared this celestial view, never
portraying the Kingdom as an earthly society (p. 49). Ephrem the Syrian maintained a celestial interpretation
without millennial elements (p. 52), while Basil emphasized both celestial and inner spiritual aspects.
Chrysostom typically equated the Kingdom with heaven (Herrick, 1903, p. 61), though his preaching sometimes
took a more modern, evangelical tone: “Realize the Kingdom here! Make the earth a heaven!” This social
view of the Kingdom as an earthly redeemed society represents, I contend, a significant misunderstanding.
Jerome primarily conceived the Kingdom as the celestial abode, while also acknowledging God’s reign in the
world and soul (Herrick, 1903, p. 74). Rufinus viewed the Kingdom as eschatological, celestial, and eternal.
Leo the Great (p. 96) and Gregory the Great (p. 97) predominantly referenced the Kingdom in celestial
terms, with Gregory consistently using “heavenly Kingdom.”
Herrick concludes that the celestial understanding of the Kingdom appears prominently throughout patristic
literature, particularly in the apostolic Fathers, the Liturgies, and writers like Cyril, Eusebius, and Gregory the
Great (Herrick, 1903, p. 104).
The Earthly Kingdom
In the New Testament, the Kingdom appears as a layered concept, shifting between personal and social dimensions,
often with eschatological overtones. Like the doctrine of the Trinity at this early stage, the concept of
God’s Kingdom remains in a nascent, underdeveloped form. This explains why Jesus compares the Kingdom to
leaven — a tiny, invisible force that gradually transforms the whole from within. The metaphor
illustrates participation: how earthly reality becomes infused with spiritual force through its connection to the
celestial Kingdom. The earthly Kingdom cannot exist without its heavenly prototype. Thus, abandoning the celestial
vision proves self-defeating: rejecting the concept of heaven diminishes rather than enhances human flourishing and
Christian virtue.
Herrick points out that while the earthly Kingdom is often interpreted as the community of believers, its primary
domain is the individual soul. Origen was the first to articulate this abstract concept of the Kingdom as
God’s reign within the soul, an idea that became prevalent among subsequent Church Fathers. The social and
internal dimensions are inherently interconnected, which likely explains why there remains ambiguity in
Jesus’s statement about whether the Kingdom of God is “among you” or “within you.”
Before the Christian society is possible, souls must be renewed.
On the other hand, a materially perfect society cannot exist on earth. As D. B. Farrow (2011,
pp. 96-98) explains, since evil parasitically depends on good, greater good creates greater potential for
evil. Thus, evil only continues to grow in the fertile soil of the good. We must therefore relinquish the dream of
creating a perfect Christian society, one where everyone enjoys fulfilling lives, stimulating work, healthy
marriages, and material prosperity.
How, then, should we understand the earthly Kingdom that manifests primarily within the soul?
J. B. Priestley accounts for noteworthy dreams sent to him by his readers. We might designate this dream
“The Ramshackle Saloon”:
“Here is a dream experience which I have had four times during my 31 years: at somewhere around 7, then at 16 and 20 and a few years ago at 28.” This dream always takes him into a rough saloon bar, beneath a loft in some wooden shack-type of building. He has seen the surrounding countryside, which is flat, poorly cultivated farmland, showing plenty of rickety fences, tumbledown barns, sagging lengths of barbed wire. Outside the saloon bar is a pile of litter — a large rusty oil drum, broken boxes, tin cans, coils of rope. There is nothing picturesque and romantic either outside or inside this bar. The dreamer does not know where he is — the setting suggests one of the less prosperous regions of the United States, Canada, or Australia.
But each time he has found himself inside that shack he has felt wonderfully content: “I have never experienced such happiness in any life situation so far. It is as if I have arrived at where I wanted to be. I do not speak to anyone, but they know I am there and that is sufficient. They do not worry about anything or try to be friendly or pleasant as it is unnecessary. They, like myself, belong there. They care about everything without actually caring about anything.” He feels strongly that the place exists or has at some time existed, and as he has already visited it at the ages of seven, 16, 20, and 28 — incidentally, ages very different in their outlooks and ideas of wish-fulfillment — it is not for us to say he has been making it all up. (Why invent exactly the same scene at such different ages?) I should like to think that somewhere this very modest version of a Great Good Place is waiting for him. (Priestley, 1964, p. 230)
This powerfully depicts the earthly Kingdom. The milieu’s decrepitude reflects a profound realization: this world holds no intrinsic meaning, no worthy goals to pursue. When this truth dawns, it opens the heart to the Holy Spirit. As Augustine says, we are mere pilgrims in a world where we do not belong. The dream portrays a community where all have reached this understanding, like contemplative monks embracing poverty. True meaning resides only in the celestial Kingdom, yet its light illuminates the hearts of those who recognize their destitution. This realization is equal to salvation. Some time ago I had a dream on the same theme, “The Colossal Christ”:
I sat at a coffee table behind a large window in a shopping mall. The sky was grey, with the sun barely penetrating the clouds. “Is that supposed to be the sun?” I thought ironically. But the light grew stronger, transforming into a figure — a colossal, half-naked, corpulent man, hundreds of meters tall. He shot through the air like a train, head first, resembling both Buddha and a sumo wrestler in his appearance.
I knew it was Christ. As he entered the shopping mall, he transformed — now of average height, dressed in simple clothes, with thinning black hair, and he was somewhat obese. He walked past me, seemingly unaware of my presence, radiating contentment and joy.
The shopping mall represents our modern paradise, promising purchasable happiness and
pleasure — yet I had lost all desire for these. From my vantage point, the world appeared grey,
with only a dim light piercing the sky. In this state of detachment, Christ arrives like a comet from above. In the
heavens, he appeared majestic and powerful, a true deity still belonging to the celestial realm. But upon reaching
earth, he became ordinary — now representing the earthly Kingdom rather than its grandiose
heavenly counterpart.
Though he passed by without noticing me, what mattered was my awareness of his
presence — something the other mall visitors, I suspect, failed to perceive. The scene echoes
Scripture’s warning that we must stay vigilant, for he comes like a thief in the night.
What did the Buddha reference signify? Buddhism addresses the inherent dissatisfaction of conditioned existence.
Life entails suffering through birth, aging, sickness, death, and separation. We respond by clinging to pleasure
and avoiding pain, creating endless mental reactivity. Augustine and Buddha share common ground in their
phenomenological understanding: both offer similar insights about how humans experience reality and how we should
respond to these experiences. They serve as physicians of the soul, diagnosing a fundamental human ailment.
Augustine’s concept of concupiscence parallels the Buddhist notion of tanha (craving).
Augustine describes concupiscence as “disordered desire,” stemming from Original
Sin — the will’s turn from the higher good (God) towards the lower good (flesh/ego),
essentially an addiction to the temporal. Similarly, Buddha identifies tanha as the “thirst” for
sensual pleasure, existence, and non-existence — the force driving the wheel of samsara. In
Buddhism, recognizing emptiness leads to liberation from attachment. In Augustinian thought, recognizing the
world’s emptiness leads to seeking fulfillment in God. While both traditions counsel detachment from worldly
desires, they differ in their metaphysical understanding of ultimate reality — Buddhism pointing
to non-dual emptiness, Augustine to divine fullness. Both traditions emphasize contemplative
practice — prayer in Christianity, meditation in Buddhism.
The Buddhist theme in the dream reflects how we in the West undervalue the crucial insight that recognizing the
world’s emptiness liberates us from attachment. This understanding points to the earthly Kingdom’s
primary domain: the individual soul. As Clement of Alexandria writes: “Abandon the alien possessions that are
in thy soul, that, becoming pure in heart, thou mayest see God, which is another way of saying: Enter into the
Kingdom of heaven” (Quis Dives, 31 and 19; Herrick, p. 25). Similarly, Peter of Alexandria in
Canon 5 identifies the Kingdom with the soul’s new life (Herrick, p. 36).
The Flattening of Christian Cosmology
The celestial and earthly Kingdoms exist in unilateral contradiction: while the earthly resists the celestial, the
celestial does not reject the earthly. Modern theology has failed to grasp this absorption of the lesser Kingdom
into the greater. Having largely forgotten the celestial realm, it misinterprets the earthly Kingdom in merely
socio-political terms.
The Christian faith finds its foundation not primarily in Scripture but in heaven, where Christ reigns in
God’s Kingdom. Excessive focus on the Bible (“bibliolatry”) has produced theological chaos, as
Scripture, like any text, can be manipulated to support almost any interpretation. Take
M. J. Borg’s The God We Never Knew, where he advocates panentheism, claiming God both
permeates and transcends the universe. Yet his interpretation reduces Jesus’s message to mere social reform,
arguing that Jesus primarily advocated economic redistribution and non-hierarchical society (Chapter 6). His
theology ultimately devolves into a contradictory fusion of socialist and pseudo-Gnostic ideas, where divinity
becomes indistinguishable from material existence.
The vertical dimension of religious understanding has all but vanished from modern theology, which has effectively
discarded heaven itself. Supernatural beings, such as angels and demons, are now treated as mere metaphors. This
poses a fundamental question: How can such readings emerge when the Bible’s references to heaven are so
explicit? Scripture clearly presents a cosmic hierarchy and distinguishes heavenly from earthly reality. These
modern interpretations, which ignore or flatten clear textual elements, reveal more about contemporary ideological
commitments than faithful engagement with Scripture.
The Bible itself bears the marks of human imperfection, being a worldly document created in a fallen world by
fallible human authors. Yet it floats in the troubled waters of our imperfect world like a life raft, buoyed up by
the Holy Spirit, offering us something to grasp onto. When we read the Bible, we “see through a glass
darkly.” The heavenly Bible, by contrast, exists in glory. This concept of celestial sacred texts appears
throughout patristic literature, where Church Fathers referenced “heavenly tablets” and celestial
books, drawing from biblical imagery like the “book of life” and Jewish traditions of heavenly
texts.
The Book of Jubilees represents exactly the kind of vertical cosmology that modern theology tends to flatten. Its
widespread acceptance among early Church Fathers suggests its vital role in forming Christian thought. Origen
developed this idea most fully, describing earthly scripture as an image of its heavenly archetype. Augustine
similarly spoke of eternal truth inscribed in heaven. These concepts aligned with Platonic understanding of
heavenly forms casting earthly shadows. The Church Fathers extended this pattern to worship, viewing earthly
liturgy as participation in celestial worship, following the Jewish understanding that the earthly Temple mirrored
its heavenly counterpart. Thus, we study only the shadow of heavenly scripture and glimpse only the reflection of
divine law.
What needs to change is modern theology’s immanentist worldview. Luther viewed the Kingdom of God as a purely
earthly community comprising believers who are “in Christ and under Christ” (LW 45:88). This reduction
has stripped the Kingdom of God of its transcendent appeal. In Luther’s theology, the distinction between
sacred and profane dissolves, as he sees God’s presence permeating all creation equally. Consequently, heaven
loses its traditional significance.
Contrary to Paul’s teaching, Luther insisted that resurrection occurs in our physical bodies of flesh and
blood, vessels inherently unsuited for heaven and incompatible with the angelic realm. Instead, he proposed that
these bodies would receive miraculous capacities while remaining earthbound, reducing spiritual transformation to
material empowerment (Winther, 2024).
Such materialistic theology must be abandoned, having fostered secularization beneath a veneer of worldly pietism.
Modern Christianity thus manifests as sanctified worldliness. Restoring the distinction between sacred and profane,
a differentiation recognized across human cultures, becomes essential. This collapse of sacred distinction explains
why Protestants, like Muslims, insist on their sacred texts’ perfection, though they remain an earthly
reflection of divine truth. Having lost sight of the celestial dimension, they lack awareness of transcendent
reality that gives religious experience its depth and meaning.
The flattening of spiritual reality into purely material terms has impoverished theology and limited its ability to
engage with the transcendent aspects of Christian faith. Augustine’s Christian Neoplatonism is different. In
On Christian Doctrine, Augustine argues that the literal reading serves primarily as a signpost pointing
toward heavenly or allegorical meanings. The interpreter should pursue these higher, celestial interpretations
because they offer glimpses into the divine meaning originally intended when God inspired the text. He developed a
sophisticated theology of divine ideas and eternal archetypes existing within God’s mind, paralleling the
concept of heavenly tablets found in the Book of Jubilees and other ancient texts. These eternal exemplars in the
divine mind serve as a celestial blueprint or heavenly “Bible” — a transcendent
pattern of divine truth and law that both precedes and provides the foundation for all earthly reality and
revelation.
The vertical orientation of Augustinian cosmology sharply contrasts with Protestantism’s flattened worldview.
While evangelical theology tends to compress everything into the material plane, Augustine’s model preserves
the crucial distinction between temporal and eternal realms. This layered understanding of reality, distinguishing
between celestial and earthly spheres, offers a richer theological vision than modern theology’s reduction of
divine reality to earthly manifestations.
Christians would benefit from studying pagan mythological worldviews, which maintained a vertical
cosmology — a hierarchical understanding of reality that contrasts sharply with
Protestantism’s flattened worldview. The works of Mircea Eliade provide excellent insight into these
traditional perspectives. Traditional worldviews preserved crucial distinctions between different levels of
reality, unlike modern theology’s tendency to collapse everything into the material plane. Their conception
of sacred mountains, celestial realms, and divine hierarchies reflected a vertical dimension of existence that
theology has largely abandoned.
This suggestion isn’t about adopting pagan beliefs, but rather acknowledging that pre-modern peoples,
including pagans, often possessed a more sophisticated understanding of reality’s sacred dimensions than
modern immanentist theology allows. Their vertical cosmologies could offer valuable insights for reformulating
theology and recovering its lost transcendent dimension.
Despite its centrality in patristic thought and Jesus’s own teaching, the present heavenly Kingdom finds no
explicit mention in major ecumenical creeds. The Nicene formulation addresses only Christ’s eschatological
reign. Reformation confessions (e.g., Augsburg Confession, Westminster Confession) speak of Christ’s reign,
but in eschatological or ecclesial terms, not explicitly of a present heavenly Kingdom. Christian cosmology has
undergone progressive reduction, manifesting as dimensional flattening.
Participation
The Kingdom model interprets participation (methexis, koinonia) as taking part in the divine drama
that unfolds within God’s celestial Kingdom. This reinterprets the concept as it appears in the medieval
Christian-Platonic synthesis, which builds on both ontological participation and predicamental participation (how
individual things share in properties of transcendental forms). Though reframed, it remains fundamentally Platonic,
as earthly beings participate in dramatic forms within the celestial Kingdom.
Dramatic participation replaces both ontological and predicamental participation, which are now considered
obsolete. At the fundamental level, today’s ontological reality consists of protons, neutrons, and other
subatomic particles. There are no distinct essences for cats and dogs; they are ontologically identical. The
characteristics that distinguish different species emerged through autonomous processes, reflecting
creation’s self-organizing nature. Nevertheless, as celestial beings, cats and dogs can participate in the
divine drama, along with with unicorns and dragons.
As Welker observes, traditional creation doctrine preserves a fundamental power dynamic: creation’s absolute
dependence on a transcendent power as ultimate and sole creative force (Welker, 1999, p. 8). However, viewing
creation merely as an ultimate process produced by and completely dependent upon a transcendent reality is
unsustainable. A close reading of Genesis 1 and 2 reveals that such dominant conceptions of creation are false
abstractions. Welker observes that these texts actually describe creation as having its own agency and productive
capacity, and the creature’s activity is woven into and participates in the creative process. God’s
rule is shared: the lights in the heavenly vault “rule over day and night and separate light from
darkness” (Gen. 1:14). God’s creative power is distributed: the earth is empowered to “bring
forth living creatures” (Gen. 1:24-25).
The earth functions not merely as a receptacle but as an active, empowering agent that generates life through
interconnected processes of self-reproduction within a cooperative environment of diverse biological systems. Yet,
according to Welker, theology has retreated into models of divine causation and dependence, driven by fears about
granting too much autonomy to created beings (p. 11).
The richness and diversity of human culture clearly demonstrates its origins in human creativity rather than divine
imposition. However, Luther, particularly in his 1525 work The Bondage of the Will, argues for complete
divine determination of all existence, presenting one of Christianity’s most uncompromising views of divine
sovereignty. His theological determinism asserts that God necessarily governs all reality: nothing occurs by chance
or contingency, and even evil actions, including those attributed to Satan, occur within divinely determined
boundaries.
This theological anxiety, which seeks divine certainty and control, can be analyzed through the laws of
contradiction. While autonomous creation might appear to oppose and alienate God, potentially creating reciprocal
contradiction, the divine law of unilateral contradiction suggests otherwise. God encompasses autonomous creation
rather than opposing it, similar to how divine creativity transforms the trickster’s disruptive actions into
something more magnificent.
The divine embrace of earth’s creatures and independent creations emerges as a recurring mythological theme.
In Greek mythology, Zeus transported the Trojan prince Ganymede to Mount Olympus, granting him immortality and
eternal youth as the gods’ cupbearer. Similarly, in Mesopotamian tradition, the flood hero Utnapishtim and
his wife received immortality from the gods and were transported to a paradisiacal realm beyond mortal lands.
Orion’s hunting dogs joined their master in the celestial sphere, with Sirius, the “Dog Star,”
becoming the brightest star in the night sky as part of Canis Major. After throwing off Bellerophon, Pegasus
ascended to Olympus and became immortalized among the stars. Similarly, earthly objects achieved heavenly status:
Chiron’s bow became the constellation Sagittarius, while Ariadne’s crown was transformed into Corona
Borealis. In Genesis 5:24, Enoch was taken directly to heaven without experiencing death. Elijah ascended to heaven
in a whirlwind, as recorded in 2 Kings 2:11.
The motif of heavenly ascension appears across world cultures. Even in Australian Aboriginal mythology, the Man of
Sorrows ascended to the celestial realm while encased in a tree, becoming the constellation known as the Southern
Cross (Langloh Parker, 1973, pp. 9f). Divine power appropriates independently created earthly forms and
establishes them in the celestial realm. This upward movement, largely overlooked in theological discourse,
reflects the principle of autonomous creation existing outside divine control yet ultimately encompassed by God
through the law of unilateral contradiction. God’s creative act lies not in making each and every individual
thing, but in establishing the comprehensive order that unites all things in harmonious interaction.
The Great Tradition
While participation flows in both directions between heaven and earth, downward participation manifests only in
dramatic form. Hans Boersma (2011) advocates for the ressourcement (retrieval) of the medieval
Christian-Platonic synthesis, following the nouvelle théologie movement of twentieth-century French Catholic
renewal, represented by theologians like Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, and Jean Daniélou.
However, this derives from a medieval perspective that relied on now-outdated concepts of ontological and
predicamental participation, while arguably offering a selective and distorted reading of Augustine’s
thought.
What Boersma terms “the Great Tradition” represents a sacred cosmos where nature was infused with
supernatural presence. However, theological developments, from the 12th century onward, gradually accommodated a
naturalized worldview, wherein the sacramental and divine character of authority receded. This shift marked a
departure from a Platonic universe of heavenly exemplars, ultimately leading to a desacralized cosmos and a
radically autonomous natural realm.
According to the Great Tradition, earthly realities existed not merely for themselves but served a higher purpose.
Their participatory or sacramental ontology enabled the treatment of material creation as a sacred eucharistic
offering to God. However, the dissolution of the Platonic-Christian synthesis led to the loss of sacramental
ontology. Earthly objects no longer received their reality (res) from divine being as sacramental signs
(sacramentum). Instead, they possessed autonomous existence, and life proceeded based on the pursuit of
goods associated solely with the natural order.
Created existence no longer derives its being solely through participation. Instead, the created order claims
radical autonomy, becoming what Boersma calls “a discrete, secular order.” The Platonic-Christian
understanding, where creation sacramentally participates in and depends entirely on divine being, yields to a
separation between created order and divine fullness. Truth, goodness, and beauty no longer emanate from the divine
Word but claim independence from their former christological foundation in the celestial realm. Gradually, the
infinite mystery of God recedes before a concrete, comprehensible, and malleable concept of being
(p. 76).
The emerging concept of autonomous secondary causes gradually led to a view of nature as self-sufficient, operating
without divine intervention. As modernity abandoned the participatory or sacramental worldview, the created order
became detached from its divine origin, leaving the material cosmos adrift in nihilistic currents. This
transformation fundamentally altered the understanding of truth itself: while sacramental symbolism had conceived
truth as participation in divine mystery, rationalist dialectics redefined it as the complete rational
comprehension of propositional statements (p. 159).
Although this historical analysis is compelling, the proposed ressourcement appears profoundly unrealistic.
The notion of modern society returning to a worldview where divine being inhabits natural objects seems
particularly implausible. The call for ressourcement shares the same impracticality as New Age attempts to
revive enchanted worldviews or reinstate animistic perspectives.
Nevertheless, Boersma correctly identifies heavenly participation as central to Christian faith, justifying a
certain contemptus mundi (contempt of the world). Since temporal existence points to greater, eternal
realities in which it participates, earthly concerns should not be elevated to ultimate status. However, heavenly
participation transforms earthly life through dramatic rather than ontological participation. Although
modernity’s separation from the divine and assertion of autonomous will has led to profound destruction, we
must recognize that autonomy itself belongs within the divine plan. A return to pre-modern consciousness is neither
possible nor desirable.
The medieval Great Tradition maintained partial continuity with pagan cosmology. Boersma argues that its
sacramental ontology prevented independent valuation of the created order. Since creation’s qualities and the
transcendentals (being, goodness, truth, and beauty) were understood as merely derivative, attributing ultimate
value to them would represent idolatrous elevation of creation over Creator (p. 52).
In fact, their preoccupation with idolatry stemmed from an inherent risk: divine endowment of being, goodness,
truth, and beauty naturally invites worship. In pagan cultures, divine favour was thought to manifest in human
beauty or success, explaining elevated social status. The doctrine of participation in transcendentals maintains
continuity with this pagan perspective. The theological challenge persists: if divine beauty manifests in human
form, what prevents its worship, given that such manifestation necessarily implies the assignment of ultimate value
to the object?
According to Boersma, every created object participates sacramentally in Christ’s celestial reality. The
material world fulfills a eucharistic function, with the entire cosmos constituting a universal eucharist and
humanity serving as its ordained priesthood (p. 8). Modernity’s erasure of the Creator-creature
distinction, coupled with its insistence on creation’s autonomous possession of truth, goodness, and beauty,
has resulted in the idolization of the created order (p. 31).
However, interpreting the entire material world as eucharistic, as partaking in divine substance, appears to
represent an extreme form of the very idolatry Boersma critiques. Moreover, his claim about modernity’s
idolization of the created order lacks compelling evidence. Modern society’s willingness to destroy even
ancient sequoias, California’s towering millennial trees, suggests quite the opposite tendency.
While Christian tradition recognizes varying degrees of sacred presence in creation (vestigia Dei), it
traditionally maintains a clear hierarchical distinction between general divine presence in nature and the
specific, substantial presence in the Eucharist. Boersma’s sacramental ontology risks collapsing this crucial
theological distinction.
Far from participating in divine being, created reality demonstrates resistance to divine authority by asserting
its autonomy and by itself being productive. The material world manifests a fundamental defiance of divine
sovereignty. Various mythological traditions attribute this resistance to a demiurgic or trickster figure in
creation. The Great Tradition’s weakness lies in its unilateral power dynamic: creation exists in absolute
dependence on transcendent power as the sole creative force. This paradigm, emphasizing production and dependence,
reduces creation to mere passive recipient of divine action. As Welker says:
Where the conventional guiding conceptions focus upon one-sided hierarchical arrangement and absolute dependence, the classical creation accounts emphasize the connectedness and cooperation of creator and that which is creaturely. In no way do the creation accounts of Genesis offer only the picture of the sheer dependence of all creatures on an agent who somehow brings forth all of them. God’s creative action does not confront that which is created with completely finished facts. The creature’s own activity as a constitutive element in the process of creation is seen in harmony with God’s action. (Welker, 1999, p. 13)
Welker’s emphasis on connectedness and cooperation finds striking parallels in pagan mythological
traditions. These mythological systems consistently portray creation as an active participant rather than a passive
recipient of divine action. Even in traditions where a supreme deity exists, creation often manifests through
cooperation, struggle, or dialogue between divine and created forces, rather than through unilateral divine
imposition.
Jesus the Trickster
Participation extends to the Fall itself: the angelic rebellion preceded and influenced Adam’s transgression,
and humanity remains engaged in this primordial catastrophe’s ongoing manifestation. This pattern of cosmic
disruption aligns with the mythological archetype of the trickster. While Adam and Satan represent negative
manifestations of this archetype, with Christ as their divine counterpoint, Christ himself manifests trickster
characteristics. Mythological traditions frequently present dual trickster figures, benevolent and malevolent, with
Christ embodying the redemptive trickster archetype.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas portrays the child Jesus manifesting trickster traits. In these apocryphal narratives,
the child Jesus demonstrates unpredictable power, disruption of social norms, and transformative actions that
simultaneously create and destroy. The concept of divine deception represents the earliest interpretation of
Christ’s incarnation and passion. In its classical formulation, this theory of atonement presents Christ
employing the devil’s own strategies of concealment and misdirection, ultimately defeating the adversary
through his own methods. This interpretation dominated patristic thought, particularly in the works of Gregory of
Nyssa, Origen and Gregory the Great.
According to Ashley (1982), Christ and Satan represent divergent manifestations of an original sacred mediator
archetype. However, in folk mythology, the ambivalent nature traditionally ascribed to mythological trickster
figures aligns more closely with Christ’s role than with Satan’s. Christ’s incarnational
mediation between divine and human realms establishes him as the archetypal trickster. This theme pervaded medieval
European culture, particularly through mystery plays and liturgical drama that formed the foundation of urban
ceremonial calendars (Ashley, 1982; Cox, 1989, ch. 7). Babcock-Abrahams discusses
trickster duality:
The characteristic duality which has given interpreters the greatest difficulty and has engendered the most debate is the coincidence of a trickster and a culture-hero or the merging of the human or animal and the divine, the secular and the sacred in a single figure, particularly in the tribal mythology of North American Indians. While in some societies both attributes are, as mentioned, combined in a single figure, in some there is a division into pure culture-hero and purely secular trickster; and in others such as the Winnebago there are two figures, both of whom have trickster attributes, but one of whom is more predominantly a culture-hero and the other more a trickster who performs but few beneficent acts for mankind. [The trickster] is always conceived of as more or less than human, and usually the former despite his animal-like attributes. In fact, he may be portrayed as an ignoble, secular character in tribal narrative and yet be ascribed a sacred status and central importance in the rituals of the same group. (Babcock-Abrahams, 1975)
The bifurcation of trickster figures into light and dark manifestations emerges in more developed cultural
systems. Aztec mythology exemplifies this through Tezcatlipoca (“Smoking Mirror”) and Quetzalcoatl
(“Plumed Serpent”), who embody opposing yet complementary cosmic forces. Though their attributes
overlap, Tezcatlipoca governs night, war, destruction, rulership, and magic, while Quetzalcoatl presides over day,
wind, learning, self-sacrifice, priesthood, and civilization. As Olivier explains: “Tezcatlipoca and
Quetzalcoatl cooperated during the first part of their mythical existence, only to later fight against each other
during the great cosmological cycles. First we find them closely associated with the creation of the earth and
heaven from the rending of the primordial deity, Tlalteotl” (Olivier, 2014, p. 71).
Trickster figures function not as original creators but as demiurgic agents who transform primordial creation,
often inadvertently enabling human flourishing through their modifications. In Aztec mythology, this pattern
manifests when Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl collaborate to bisect the Earth Goddess Tlalteotl, thereby
establishing the separation between heaven and earth. The primordial epoch of unified heaven and earth, a recurrent
theme in world mythology, corresponds to Eden’s paradisal state. Our present bifurcated creation emerged from
their subsequent separation, which Christian theology identifies with the Fall.
The demiurgic nature of Christ emerges in Paul’s declaration that “in Him all things were
created” (Col. 1:16). Satan, as dark trickster, initiated the primordial Fall, resulting in creation’s
partial alienation from divine nature. Tatian observes that this fall subjected mankind to Satan and his demons,
who sought to separate humanity from God, thereby causing us to serve them rather than the divine (Tatian,
Address to the Greeks, ch. VII). This incomplete descent reflected Satan’s paradoxical ambition:
to achieve divine-like dominion over creation while preserving its diminished yet persistent divine qualities. His
ambition required creation’s incomplete fall; a total descent into pure materiality would have
thwarted his aims.
How did Christ, as redemptive trickster, transform the cosmic order? Following trickster patterns, he subverted
Satan’s dominion by initiating a Second Fall that culminated in cosmic disenchantment. Paradoxically,
salvation emerges through the completion of this descent. The ramshackle saloon dream symbolizes total
disenchantment, appearing “neither picturesque nor romantic inside or out.” This thoroughly
desacralized world, stripped of divine immanence, becomes the paradoxical site of grace as Christ’s spirit
encounters the young man.
Paul’s theology furthers cosmic desacralization by negating pagan divinity. He declares that “an idol
is nothing at all in the world” (1 Cor. 8:4) and that “gods made with hands are not gods”
(Acts 19:26), culminating in his categorical rejection of pagan deities’ divine status in Galatians 4:8.
Paul’s theology thus advances Christ’s initiated dismantling of Satan’s cosmic order.
This pattern emerges in Egyptian mythology, where the paradisal epoch is located in the reign of Osiris. The cosmic
fall manifests in Osiris’s overthrow by Seth, the dark trickster, who subsequently established dominion over
Egypt. The emergence of Horus, as redemptive trickster, transforms this conflict: unable to defeat Seth through
direct confrontation, he ultimately prevails through cunning. This victory prefigures Egypt’s movement away
from traditional polytheism under Akhenaten’s monotheistic reforms, though Seth’s influence reemerged
after Akhenaten’s death. The final triumph belongs to Horus (“the Remote One”), completing the
cycle of cosmic transformation. Norse mythology articulates this pattern with greater intensity, as Ragnarök
manifests the pantheon’s extinction as prerequisite for cosmic renewal.
Linking the Trinity’s second person with the trickster archetype, and establishing his mythological parallel
with Satan, the dark trickster, might seem to challenge orthodox theology. However, this framework emerges directly
from Kingdom mythology, revealing the living dynamics of divine sovereignty. This paradigm of sacred myth (Eliade)
finds biblical resonance in Hebrews’ depiction of Christ as eternal High Priest, whose celestial ministry
manifests in perpetual intercession at God’s right hand.
Atonement
This reframed atonement theory proposes an unexpected mechanism: Christ undermines Satan’s dominion by
intensifying creation’s fall, thereby dissolving the residual enchantment through which demonic powers
maintain their influence. Jesus demonstrates full awareness of his teaching’s transformative power. Though
offering salvation, his message would “bring fire on the earth” (Luke 12:49), for he “did not
come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34-36; Luke 12:51-53). His stark warning continues: “Anyone
who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed” (Matt. 21:44).
Boersma accurately identifies the destructive consequences of Western cultural disenchantment. Yet this dissolution
aligns with divine providence, wherein salvation manifests for a remnant. In the fully disenchanted world, while
the majority succumb to corruption, a faithful minority attains salvation through singular devotion to the
celestial Kingdom, the sole remaining locus of divine value.
Jesus, as redemptive trickster, brings the Fall to completion. The Incarnation constitutes this descent, reflecting
the mythological pattern wherein incarnation signifies divine death (as in the deities Tammuz, Adonis, Osiris,
Dionysus, and Narcissus). Christ’s experience reaches its nadir in complete divine abandonment on the cross:
“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” This represents not merely Jesus identifying with
Psalm 22 in faithfulness, but the moment when divine abandonment becomes cosmically real. Paradoxically, this
complete acceptance of disenchantment culminates in resurrection, as divine economy incorporates the work of both
rebels, Jesus and Satan, through the law of unilateral contradiction.
Christ’s death plunged his disciples into existential despair, a total disillusion where reality lost all
sacred significance. Into this desacralized void descended the Spirit at Pentecost. This atonement theory relates
to the classical fishhook interpretation of the Christus Victor model, wherein Satan forfeits dominion through
deception, and to Aulén’s symbolic reframing of Christ’s cosmic triumph over evil powers. The theory
illuminates the paradox of the cross where apparent defeat conceals ultimate victory. Satan’s fatal
miscalculation lay in failing to recognize how the god-man’s death and its consequent cosmic disenchantment
would undermine demonic authority.
This framework extends beyond mythology by recasting apocalypse in existential terms: disenchantment itself and
cosmic alienation constitute the catastrophe. The Second Fall, manifesting as material reality’s withdrawal
from divine immanence, paradoxically enables liberation. This soteriological pattern reflects psychological
development, wherein separation establishes the possibility of mature relationship.
It illuminates theology’s inclusivism/exclusivism dilemma regarding pre-Christian salvation. While most of
humanity lived and died within an enchanted world under Satan’s presumed dominion, alienated individuals
existed in every epoch, for whom the Kingdom’s door stood open. This explains Jesus’s persistent
attention to human destitution in all its forms — the dispossessed will inherit the Kingdom.
However, saving grace does not operate through the mere disruption of cultural-religious systems. Rather, the
enchanted order’s existence, in whatever form, proves necessary to generate its outsiders. These are the
sinners that Jesus has come to save.
The enchanted order provides both the context for alienation and the symbolic resources for its expression.
Existential awareness requires established meanings to negate, as authentic individuality emerges through
separation from collective identity. Such cultural innovation originates with those who inhabit the borderlands
between sacred and profane, institution and wilderness, tradition and rupture: the trickster figure.
Through descent into death, Christ shattered the dominion of “principalities and powers” (Eph. 6:12).
Our disenchanted world, where demons and angels no longer visibly govern, where magic doesn’t work, where the
cosmos operates by impersonal laws, represents not divine abandonment but liberation from spiritual tyranny.
Christ’s Second Fall dismantles the sacred order on which Satan parasitically depended for his governance of
humanity. The Temple veil tears, sacrifices cease, ritual purity loses authority. The world becomes secular
precisely because Christ liberates it from the amoral sacralization that held humanity in bondage.
Christ bridges this metaphysical gulf, not abolishing separation but establishing a conduit through which divine
meaning flows into disenchanted reality. This participatory soteriology envisions salvation not as escape from
creation but as renewed engagement with divine consciousness within it. The contemplative mind becomes the nexus
where heaven and earth converge, where divine narrative intersects human experience. This conception aligns with
Romantic thinkers like Coleridge, who understood imagination as humanity’s capacity to perceive divine
meaning within material existence.
We inhabit a liminal space between transcendence and damnation — an ontologically
‘empty’ world awaiting meaning through dramatic participation. This threshold existence unfolds
perilously close to the infernal depths. Angels and demons now occupy only transcendent realms, leaving our world
evacuated yet open to meaning. Participation confers neither value nor being but meaning itself through engagement
in divine drama, a cosmic narrative that originates not in human exile but in Lucifer’s celestial rebellion.
In modernity, disenchantment reaches completion, leaving humanity, bereft of enchanted mediation, to descend
through nihilism into corruption.
We must inhabit the disenchanted material realm while maintaining conscious connection to transcendent reality.
Most fail to sustain this dual consciousness. In our disenchanted world, they either surrender to materialism,
declining into nihilism, hedonism, and despair, or seek re-enchantment through ideology, neo-pagan immanentism, or
corrupted Christianity that reduces faith to prosperity magic. This leads back to satanic mediation. The challenge
lies in sustaining tension between realms without surrendering to either pole, a discipline requiring spiritual
maturity.
The Church
Throughout secularization, the Church protected humanity from residual demonic forces, even as this process
gradually undermined ecclesiastical authority. The Church historically served as bulwark against false
sacralization, yet its declining spiritual authority now leaves humanity vulnerable to ideological and political
pseudo-religions. Churches today increasingly participate in amoral sacralization that binds humanity. Contemporary
Protestant churches are particularly susceptible to ideological intrusions that corrupt Christian truth,
manifesting a vulnerability to satanic mediation that echoes throughout history.
Beyond its protective function, the Church serves a therapeutic role. Reed (1970) identifies society’s
movement between structured daily relationships and undifferentiated ritual relationships. Religious practice
facilitates essential regression to dependence, enabling renewed social participation. The Church thereby mediates
fundamental dependency needs. Psychological research demonstrates that mature autonomy requires foundational
security, necessitating alternation between recuperative dependence and active engagement.
In thirteenth-century Sweden, Bishop Brynolf Algotsson of Skara (c. 1240 – 1317) developed
a distinctive sacramental theology in Historia de Spinea Corona and Sanguis Sanat, presenting the
Eucharist as pharmacon (medicine) for the afflicted sinner. His theological emphasis on the healing blood
(Sanguis Sanat) portrayed the Eucharist not merely as sacrificial offering but as therapeutic medicine for
soul and body.
The Church has been conceived as hospitium peccatorum (hospital for sinners) rather than sanctuary of saints
or society of the perfect. Ambrose argues against those who would reject repentance, noting that this stance
implies a Church only for the spiritually whole. He contrasts this with Christ’s teaching that he came as
physician for the sick rather than the healthy (Concerning Repentance, I:6, 29). Augustine characterized
original sin’s consequence as spiritual sickness, weakness, or wounding. This framework presented Christ as
Christus Medicus (Divine Physician) and the Church as healing sanctuary where sinners receive sacramental
medicine, particularly through Baptism and Eucharist (Arbesmann, 1954).
The Church serves as protective and therapeutic sanctuary but holds no essential salvific role. The spiritually
mature Christian transcends ecclesiastical participation, achieving direct communion with the Kingdom of
God — a position equally unacceptable to Protestant and Catholic churches, as both reject any
new revelation. Though developing believers may benefit from church membership, uncorrupted congregations grow
increasingly scarce, largely due to the pervasive influence of Christian humanism. As Alister McGrath
says:
It is time for Christianity to break free from the social and cultural prison in which it has been for so long a secret prisoner, and return to that primal event of faith, to discover in it a liberating, radical and critical faith, charged with a vitality far exceeding the insipid endorsement of liberal cultural values which passes as ‘Christianity’ in much of the western world. (McGrath, 1988, p. 22)
This pervasive lukewarmness proves more detrimental than outright opposition would be. Contemporary churches
offer no resistance to Islamic expansion, instead extending welcome. Organizations unwilling to defend Western
civilization effectively align themselves with demonic forces.
Holy Communion
The eucharistic meal exemplifies material enchantment: matter itself transformed into divine substance. The host
becomes a sacred object with inherent divine power, contradicting disenchantment. The Eucharist thus re-enchants
matter, restoring the very immanent divine presence that was supposed to be dissolved. This returns salvation to
horizontal mediation.
If Christ initiated the Second Fall, why would he institute a ritual with clear pagan connotations? The parallels
to pagan sacred meals, involving theophagy (eating the god) for divine union, cannot be denied. In Dionysian
worship, though true theophagy was omophagia (eating raw flesh), wine was explicitly identified as Dionysus’s
blood (essence), and drinking it meant participating in the god.
During the Aztec holy month of Panquetzaliztli, priests mixed toasted amaranth grain with honey to form tzoalli
dough. This substance was shaped into idols of Huitzilopochtli and other divinities, which were paraded through
streets and displayed in temples before being ‘sacrificed’ — broken into tiny pieces
and distributed among the crowd for consumption. Some Spanish priests believed the Gospel had somehow already
reached and influenced indigenous peoples. Others maintained that Aztec communion rituals represented diabolic
mimicry (Elferink & Flores Farfán).
Significantly, Paul himself confirms the existence of Eucharist-like rituals dedicated to other divinities, warning
his audience: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the
Lord’s table and the table of demons” (1 Cor. 10:21). In context, the “cup of demons”
and “table of demons” must refer to similar pagan ritual meals.
If Christ’s work separated divine presence from material reality, how can bread contain divinity? The answer
lies in its therapeutic and protective function. The Eucharist represents the sole instance of ontological
participation in the divine, the last remnant of the pagan cosmos within Christianity. Humans are hardwired for
material-spiritual mediation, as evidenced by radical Protestants’ retention of this archaic thinking.
The Eucharist functions like a vaccine. The disease is pagan theophagy: humanity’s deep drive to achieve
ontological union with divinity through material consumption, magical transformation, and horizontal mediation. The
Eucharist satisfies this drive without allowing it to devolve into actual paganism. It redirects it towards the
true God rather than demons and idols. While contained within specific boundaries, it teaches spiritual truth
through the very form people crave. This builds immunity to the real disease, supporting Paul’s position that
Holy Communion supplants pagan festivals.
Divine accommodation of human weakness through temporary provisions represents a significant biblical pattern.
Jesus himself notes that Moses permitted divorce “because of the hardness of your hearts” (Matt. 19:8).
Similarly, in Galatians 3:23-25 and 4:1-5, Paul describes the law as a “guardian” or
“pedagogue” (paidagōgos) for humanity’s spiritual immaturity. The law provided
temporary supervision during humanity’s “childhood,” until its coming of age through
Christ — not as final goal but as protective and disciplinary measure.
The Eucharist, likewise, was instituted to facilitate transition from enchanted to disenchanted worldview. People
raised in enchanted paradigms remained psychologically dependent on material mediation, and without controlled
alternative, they remained vulnerable to pagan relapse. The Eucharist served as transitional protection during the
disenchantment process.
The Eucharist thus functions as strategic inoculation against paganism and pedagogical aid for the immature,
pointing towards Kingdom reality. It neither mediates grace automatically nor magically transforms matter. As
therapeutic accommodation, it provides neither exclusive access to Christ nor necessary path to salvation.
Medieval Christianity succumbed to the pagan tendencies it sought to prevent, resulting in widespread
re-enchantment among the populace. The Reformers acknowledged this therapeutic failure. While Luther preserved the
Holy Supper’s protective function by removing magical accretions, Zwinglian memorialism eliminated its
therapeutic elements entirely. Contemporary mature believers, having transcended the need for material mediation,
access the Kingdom directly.
The Eucharist represents Christianity’s most effective protective measure. Its genius lies in clear
demarcation: divine participation occurs at appointed times and places, not universally. The broader world remains
disenchanted. Matter holds no inherent sanctity; bread and wine retain their natural substance.
The ressourcement interpretation of the material world as eucharistic and partaking in divine substance
would undermine Christianity’s foundational goals. Such re-enchantment of matter would reverse the very
disenchantment Christianity sought to achieve. While the Eucharist serves as controlled therapeutic accommodation,
extending eucharistic presence to all matter would recreate precisely the pagan cosmology Christianity intended to
overcome. This universal sacralization would reestablish the horizontal mediation of divine presence that
Christianity aimed to dissolve.
Rather than containing pagan tendencies through limited ritual accommodation, this interpretation would legitimize
unrestricted material mediation. It would transform Christianity’s therapeutic containment of pagan impulses
into wholesale validation of pagan metaphysics. The strategic and limited role of the Eucharist would expand into a
comprehensive re-enchantment of reality, effectively undoing Christianity’s work of spiritual maturation.
© Mats Winther, 2025.
References
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