Abstract: This article develops Progressive Disenchantment Atonement (PDA), a novel theory integrating multiple soteriological models through the concept of cosmic disenchantment and synthesizing Christ’s redemptive work with secularization’s historical trajectory. The framework proposes that Christ’s work initiates a deliberate process of disenchantment that breaks Satan’s dominion over creation — a dominion maintained through an enchanted “sacred order” where spiritual forces visibly governed reality. Through the Incarnation, Christ dissolves this enchantment, paradoxically achieving salvation by bringing the Fall to completion rather than reversing it.
The article establishes theoretical foundations through engagement with Jean-Luc Nancy’s argument that monotheism constitutes atheism, Karl Barth’s critique of religion as unbelief, and Marcel Gauchet’s analysis of Christianity as “a religion for departing from religion.” As PDA locates divine reality in a transcendent celestial Kingdom, accessible through vertical participation rather than material mediation, disenchantment does not conclude in nihilism or divine disappearance.
Contemporary theodramatic approaches (Vanhoozer, Moes), emphasizing worldly divine drama and immanent participation, are examined. Drawing on conceptual metaphor theory and analyses of participatory consciousness, the article distinguishes between horizontal participation in material enchantment and vertical participation in transcendent reality. Christianity’s distinctive achievement lies in providing structured accommodation for humanity’s inherent participatory needs through sacramental practice while maintaining theological boundaries between earthly and celestial realms. The article concludes that proper theological understanding enables secularization to function as liberation rather than nihilism, channeling re-enchantment impulses toward their proper transcendent end.
Keywords: atonement theory, disenchantment, secularization, participation, Barth, Nancy, Gauchet, theodrama, transcendence, Kingdom of God.
A previous article (Winther, 2025) proposed a novel atonement theory in which Christ functions as a “redemptive trickster,” defeating Satan through paradox and cunning rather than brute force. This theory suggests that Satan’s initial Fall left creation partially enchanted under demonic control. Through the Incarnation, Christ initiates a “Second Fall” culminating in his cry of divine abandonment on the cross. Paradoxically, salvation emerges not from reversing this Fall but from bringing it to completion.
Satan maintained dominion through an enchanted “sacred order” where spiritual forces visibly governed creation. Christ’s work dissolves this enchantment, thereby breaking demonic authority. Satan’s fatal miscalculation lay in failing to anticipate how the God-man’s death, by triggering cosmic disenchantment, would undermine the foundations of demonic power. As physical laws superseded spiritual forces in governing the world, divine abandonment became our liberation from spiritual dominion. Christ’s ascension to heaven marked the apparent withdrawal of divine presence from earth.
Secularization emerges directly from Christ’s liberation of humanity from the bondage of amoral sacralization. Divine connection now occurs through “dramatic participation” in God’s Kingdom within the divine mind, surpassing earlier forms of material mediation. This framework validates secularization as integral to salvation history while maintaining divine transcendence and avoiding both magical thinking and nihilistic materialism. Yet the erosion of religious frameworks eliminates crucial protective and therapeutic functions, risking harmful consequences.
Theological debate over traditional atonement theories has intensified in recent decades. This discourse reflects not uniform discontent but active engagement, with significant voices questioning whether any single theory adequately captures the biblical witness. Non-Western theologians particularly find Western theories insufficient, noting their overreliance on legal and juridical categories that lack universal resonance.
Critics argue that penal substitutionary atonement risks portraying God as wrathful or violent, while potentially glorifying suffering. Contemporary scholarship increasingly views atonement through multiple lenses rather than insisting on a single “correct” theory. Theologians like Hans Boersma, Scot McKnight, and N. T. Wright advocate a “kaleidoscopic” view, suggesting different atonement theories illuminate distinct aspects of Christ’s work rather than competing for exclusive validity.
Although plural perspectives enrich theology, a kaleidoscopic posture risks avoiding decisive answers: claiming that all conflicting accounts are somehow true can amount to an evasion of critical scrutiny. If God requires penal satisfaction, this fundamentally shapes our understanding of divine justice. If He does not, this proves equally significant. Such core questions cannot be sidestepped through appeals to mystery.
Different theories generate distinct spiritualities and ethical frameworks, potentially shaping Christian life in divergent ways. Treating all theories as equally valid obscures what the cross actually demands of believers. If New Testament authors consistently present Christ’s death through specific dominant metaphors, a kaleidoscopic approach that equalizes all theories may flatten rather than honour the biblical witness. Conservative critics often view this approach as capitulating to postmodern relativism by substituting substantive truth claims with an “everyone’s right” pluralism.
Progressive Disenchantment Atonement (alternatively termed Cosmic Disenchantment Theory) offers a promising resolution to these tensions. If humanity’s fundamental sin involves participation in Satan’s illicit enchanted order, disenchantment becomes the fitting penal consequence. Christ bears this punishment substitutionally, experiencing total divine abandonment on the cross as the ultimate disenchantment.
This framework is substitutionary because Christ assumes the rebel’s role, bearing punishment for humanity’s participation in false enchantment. Yet it is simultaneously victorious, as that very punishment of disenchantment dismantles the enchanted order sustaining Satan’s dominion. Just as the sin involved seeking divine presence through material mediation (idolatry), the penalty entails the removal of mediated presence. The punishment perfectly fits the crime.
Christ’s cry of dereliction (“My God, why have you forsaken me?”) represents genuine penal suffering (the substitutionary element), while the experiential reality of cosmic disillusion becomes the precise moment when Satan’s enchanted cosmos collapses (the victorious element). Divine alienation is not an alternative to punishment — it is the punishment. Christ does not evade divine justice through trickery but endures it fully. The trickster element lies in how this punishment simultaneously accomplishes Satan’s defeat.
This theory creates an integrated atonement framework that resolves the kaleidoscopic problem by incorporating multiple traditional models. The moral influence dimension operates through imitation: Christ’s loss of sacred presence establishes the pattern mature believers follow. Recognizing the world’s emptiness opens the heart to the Holy Spirit. Contemptus mundi (contempt of the world) functions as spiritual discipline. Christ’s suffering of divine alienation accomplishes something objective while demonstrating the subjective path. For the spiritually mature, salvation means following Christ into complete disenchantment, achieving direct access to the celestial Kingdom without material mediation.
The governmental dimension addresses ordinary believers. Christ’s suffering of divine alienation satisfies divine justice regarding humanity’s participation in false enchantment, enabling God to forgive those unable or unwilling to undergo complete loss of sacred presence themselves. This preserves the Church’s therapeutic function for the spiritually immature and validates the Eucharist as accommodation to humanity’s need for material mediation — a protective framework for those not yet prepared to abandon enchanted structures.
What theoretical foundations support this interpretation? We turn now to key theological and philosophical perspectives on religious disenchantment and secularization.
A continuous process of desacralization can be traced throughout history, beginning with theism’s establishment. As Jean-Luc Nancy observes, “the invention of ‘atheism’ is contemporaneous and correlative with the invention of ‘theism’ ” (Nancy, 2008, p. 15). In Plato’s concept of theos (god), traditional deities fade from view. Though Plato occasionally mentions gods in plural form shortly after referring to a singular god, this marks a fundamental shift. The older worldview, which saw the universe as inherently alive, structured, and divinely given, begins to break down. Later thinkers would label this older view “mythology” and replace it with scientific explanations of nature and cosmos. The ancient stories and divine figures were no longer seen as valid ways to understand reality but as mere fictional tales. Through this transformation, the gods retreat into the realm of myth (ibid.).
This logical structure replaced mythical storytelling: it established both fundamental separation (where god and humans no longer share the same world) and connecting relationship (where humans are drawn towards God). “God” represents the starting point or principle of an assumed totality, grounded in unity and necessity. Throughout this concept, the term “God” simply names the self-referential completeness of this presupposed unified whole. Christianity thus essentially represents the demand to create an alterity or unconditional alienation within this world (p. 10). It ultimately leads to the simultaneous disappearance of divine presence and power, leaving only a principle that retains the label “divine” in name alone — a name stripped of personality and even the possibility of being spoken. From this perspective, the entire history of the Western “God” reveals itself as nothing less than the unfolding of atheism (p. 21). Nancy argues:
It is thus abundantly clear that monotheism will have constituted, all in all, (a)theism’s second condition of possibility. The unicity of the god of monotheism must not be set into a numeric relationship with the plurality of gods in what we have called “polytheism.” Rather, unicity displaces or converts divinity. From a present power or person, it changes divinity into a principle, a basis, and/or a law, always by definition absent or withdrawn in the depths of being. Deus absconditum: we might as well say a “god” that draws into the “one” the entirety of its numen inasmuch as it tends to dissolve that nomen “god,” which, precisely, had never been a divine name! (p. 22)
God functions as a tautology because the monotheistic god merely repeats his unchanging nature, and monotheism serves as the religious face of atheism. Christianity thus transformed itself into humanism, atheism, and nihilism (p. 23). Nancy states: “Let us therefore, very simply but very firmly, posit that any analysis that pretends to find a deviation of the modern world from Christian reference forgets or denies that the modern world is itself the unfolding of Christianity” (p. 143).
Nancy argues that monotheism fundamentally constitutes atheism. Monotheism differs from polytheism in ways more fundamental than the number of deities. In polytheism, multiple gods manifest actual presence (in nature, images, or possessed minds), creating relationships of power, threat, and aid, which religion structures through myths and rituals. The single god of monotheism, however, signifies withdrawal from both presence and power. While Israel’s God is omnipotent, this power differs fundamentally from polytheistic deities’ interactive powers. This God demands only unconditional covenant loyalty.
Christ’s appearance marks the abandonment of divine power and presence. This renunciation becomes God’s defining act, manifesting in his incarnation as human. The withdrawn or “emptied” god, as Paul describes, is not a hidden deity concealed within absence or void (deus absconditus). His withdrawal creates no depths or hiding places. Rather, his very absence constitutes divinity — or more precisely, this divine void represents the actual truth.
Monotheism as “the clerical side of atheism” fundamentally dismantles theism: the presence of a power that unifies the world and guarantees its meaning. This renders the term ‘god’ fundamentally problematic and meaningless, stripping it of power to provide certainty. Christian certainty can exist only through a category opposite to religious belief: “faith,” meaning loyalty to an absence and conviction in this loyalty despite lacking assurance. Paradoxically, an atheist who firmly rejects all comforting or redemptive certainty stands closer to faith than a “believer.” Thus atheism, which now shapes Western thought and existence, represents Christianity’s full realization (pp. 35-36).
Christianity’s self-understanding has evolved through a history of self-interpretation, becoming progressively less religious in terms of mythology (stories and representations of divine beings and actions). It has shifted from interpreting itself through foundational narratives (Genesis, Moses, Jesus, the Resurrection) to understanding itself through symbolic readings of human experience (reason, freedom, dignity, and relationships with others). Christianity tends to remove traditional religious markers and sacred elements in favour of what Kant called a “religion within the limits of reason alone.” This tendency aligns with Feuerbach’s view that belief in God represents humanity’s belief in its own infinite essence, particularly its highest ideals of love, reason, and will, projected as an infinite being. Christianity’s lasting legacy has become the democratic ethics of human rights and solidarity, alongside questions about humanism’s goals and humanity’s pursuit of its own destiny (p. 37).
While Nancy contends that Christianity finds its fulfilment in and as nihilism (p. 147), a more optimistic interpretation emerges: though Nancy correctly observes the gods’ withdrawal into the mythological realm, they persist as angels and demons within God’s consciousness, in the divine kingdom. Pseudo-Dionysius demonstrates this principle clearly. As a Christian, he rejects earthly deities yet establishes, in The Celestial Hierarchy, a celestial plurality of angels. The world becomes emptied of divine presence (except for the Eucharist), yielding to a heavenly “polytheism.”
In On Religion: The Revelation of God as the Sublimation of Religion (2006; CD I/2 §17), Karl Barth, the titan of modern theology, argues that revelation unmasks religion as futile human effort to grasp God, lacking intrinsic power for salvation. He defines religion not as response to God but as arbitrary human creation. Yet, mirroring the justification of the sinner, religion is “sublimated” (aufgehoben). While remaining a sinful act of unbelief, it undergoes transformation through God’s electing grace into “true religion.”
Barth rescues religion through the principle of “unilateral contradiction” (Winther, 2025). In this view, sublimation means God’s revelation penetrates human religion, judging it as idolatrous while simultaneously claiming it as a vessel for divine witness. Religion becomes “true” only through divine elevation. Rather than humanity adopting God’s religion, God adopts humanity’s. This distinguishes Christian religion as the true religion (p. 86). (Barth’s intricate theological reasoning presents significant interpretive challenges, which may have contributed to the relative neglect of his philosophy of religion in contemporary scholarship.)
Barth’s assertion that “religion is faithlessness” (Unglaube; ‘unbelief’) offers a radical theological indictment of all human religious striving, including Christianity (ch. 2). Quoting Calvin, Barth views the human mind as a “factory of idols.” Religion represents humanity’s attempt to visualize, conceive, and grasp God on human terms. Humans construct conceptual and ritualistic ladders to heaven. By placing human-made images (whether statues or philosophical concepts) in God’s place, religion becomes revelation’s substitute.
Religion functions as self-defense against divine grace: “Because it is this grasping [after God], religion is the contradiction to revelation, the concentrated expression of the human lack of faith, that is, the attitude and activity directly opposed to faith” (p. 58). Because humans seek self-justification and sanctification through their works (rites, morals, dogmas), they resist the message of their helplessness and sole dependence on divine grace. Barth thus identifies religion’s core as “works-righteousness”: the desire to architect one’s own salvation. This opposes faith, which passively accepts God’s work.
Barth argues that religion represents humanity’s rejection of revelation’s judgment and grace. Religion thus becomes humanity’s attempt at self-justification, directly opposing God’s self-revelation. All religious practice amounts to idolatry and salvation-by-works unless justified externally through Christ. It constitutes the concern of godless humanity (p. 55).
Nancy positions faith “precisely at the point of an altogether consequent atheism” (Nancy, 2008, p. 25). For Barth, faith responds to Revelation, which descends “vertically from above.” Faith emerges only when truth (God) approaches humanity, not when humans seek truth (Barth, 2006, p. 57). Barth rejects “direct revelation” in the sense of mysticism. Instead, faith means “obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ,” manifesting as trust in and obedience to the New Testament message (p. 71).
Idolatry fixates on and worships the object itself — whether statue, emotion, or text. True faith uses the object (Scripture) as a lens to see its referent: Jesus Christ. Scripture serves its purpose only as window or pointing finger, directing attention from itself towards the living God (p. 122). From Nancy’s perspective, this “living God” to which Scripture points represents merely a name (nomen), marking Christianity’s culmination as “atheism.”
In The Disenchantment of the World (1997), Marcel Gauchet argues that primitive religious consciousness situated humans within a social and cosmic order permanently established in a foundational past era. Each person occupied a fixed, predetermined role in this order beyond challenge or change. This religious worldview effectively suppressed humanity’s inherent capacities for self-reflection and transformative action. Gauchet terms this ‘dispossession’: an unconscious renunciation of human potential that avoided the uncertainty of individual meaning-seeking while establishing a stable sense of reality (p. 12). This characterization aligns closely with Mircea Eliade’s analysis of pre-modern religious worldviews.
In primitive societies, all roles and social positions derived meaning from their relationship to the whole, established in primordial times. According to Gauchet, subsequent human history represents the gradual dissolution of this unified social order. The emergence of state power, exemplified by Egyptian Pharaohs and Mesopotamian God’s Stewards, shattered this equilibrium. Social hierarchies developed wherein certain individuals or classes claimed proximity to the divine order. The divine king or God’s Steward mediated between divine and human realms, channeling supernatural power through society’s hierarchical levels.
From this point, political power and divine authority became mutually entangled. When earthly sovereigns claimed power to reorganize the visible world, fundamental reassessment of the divine became inevitable. Yet paradoxically, political domination — by drawing gods into historical processes — ultimately served as the mechanism liberating humanity from religious consciousness. The emergence of state order contained within itself two profound transformations: dissolution of cosmic unity and separation between earthly and divine realms. The dynamic interplay between earthly political power and divine legitimation — between actual authority and its transcendent source — gradually transformed religion from timeless force into historical phenomenon. This historical process displaced the gods from the world into the transcendent domain (pp. 36-38).
The radical innovation of a transcendent realm beyond the visible world fundamentally reshaped religion through multiple interconnected transformations. Most significantly, the sacred escaped its confinement in an irretrievable mythical past, now becoming accessible through divine revelation or philosophical contemplation. This marked a crucial shift: relationship to the past lost its absolute primacy.
Later historical developments witnessed individuality’s dramatic emergence as principle — a transformation far more profound than the earlier fusion of personal identity and official function manifest in great monarchs. Eventually, certain religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity, emerged to paradoxically guide humanity’s departure from religion itself. These traditions fostered disenchantment by challenging immanent sacred powers within nature and emptying the cosmos of divine qualities, confining the sacred exclusively to a transcendent God. A conception of the supernatural as fundamentally separate from the world emerged, even as it continued functioning within historical development (pp. 65-66).
According to Gauchet, the modern Western world’s radical uniqueness lies in its fundamental transformation of the sacred. While the sacred previously ordered human society from an external position, it became internally incorporated into human relationships and activities. Although this transformation emerged from within religion, it ultimately broke free from and inverted its religious origins. Gauchet characterizes Christianity as “a religion for departing from religion”:
The so-called “major religions” or “universal religions,” far from being the quintessential embodiment of religion, are in fact just so many stages of its abatement and disintegration. The greatest and most universal of them, our own, the rational religion of the one god, is precisely the one that allows a departure from religion. So we must change our perspective. When dealing with religion, what appears to be an advance is actually a retreat. Fully developed religion existed before the bifurcation which, somewhere around 3000 BC in Mesopotamia and Egypt, plunged us into another religious world, one capable of existing without religion — our own. (pp. 9-10)
Gauchet maintains that secular understanding of reality and social relations emerged paradoxically from within religious thought. Secular consciousness developed not opposing religion but transforming traditional religious truth, drawing on sources that shaped official worship and ecclesiastical doctrine (pp. 59-60). As divine transcendence evolved and the gulf between heavenly and earthly realms widened, religious interiority gained force sufficient to challenge traditional hierarchical authority. The heightened emphasis on God’s infinite nature and distance from humanity transformed divine-human relationships into increasingly personal ones, ultimately rendering institutional mediation obsolete. Divine subjectivity’s absolutization meant its only legitimate earthly manifestation resided in individual inner experience. The initial development of religious interiority thus led directly to the emergence of religious individualism (p. 65).
Monotheistic belief became destabilizing only when conceiving the otherworld in opposition to earthly existence, particularly regarding salvation doctrine. This new understanding of salvation entailed estrangement from and rejection of the material world, reorienting human existence towards the otherworld. Unlike their previous cosmic integration, believers became alienated from sensible reality. Humanity acquired unique status among creation, distinguished by its capacity to respond to transcendent calling (pp. 74-75).
Divine incarnation traditionally demonstrated continuity between earthly and celestial hierarchies, but Christian revelation transformed this into evidence of their separation. While Akhenaton’s monotheism failed through entrapment in the sovereign’s dual human-divine nature, Jesus represented radical departure from this pattern. By locating divine incarnation in an ordinary man rather than ruler, Christianity inverted traditional symbolism. Instead of affirming divine proximity through hierarchical power, Christ’s incarnation paradoxically signified God’s absolute otherness. The god-man concept remained but functioned inversely: rather than establishing divine presence through hierarchical being culminating in sovereignty, it emphasized divine otherness through identification with powerlessness. This marked transition from hierarchical mediation to radical transcendence. Rather than fulfilling messianic expectations, Jesus embodied their radical inversion (pp. 119-20).
These authors, like much modern thought on disenchantment, prematurely assume divine dissolution. As Gauchet argues: “The gods have survived, but their power is fading. However untroubled and prosperous they may appear, their real source has irretrievably dried up” (Gauchet, 1997, p. 4). Yet this analysis overlooks a crucial possibility: rather than disappearing, the divine may have withdrawn into transcendence to continue its existence. The absence of divine projections onto the physical world need not indicate humanity’s diminished capacity for religious experience. The source of religious consciousness remains vital, though its expression has transformed.
As these theorists reduce the divine to mere transcendental signifier, interpreting it as pure absence or as the foundation of biblical faith, they neglect the rich conception of celestial reality developed by early Christians and Patristic writers. Our inability to empirically verify divine consciousness does not justify concluding its absence — a point paralleling the philosophical “problem of other minds,” which acknowledges that inability to directly access other consciousnesses does not negate their existence.
The problem of other minds represents a fundamental philosophical dilemma: how can we justify our conviction that others possess conscious experiences, thoughts, and feelings similar to our own? While we access our consciousness directly, we cannot directly observe or verify others’ mental states. We remain limited to inferring their consciousness from external behaviour and expressions — an inference potentially mistaken if encountering sophisticated automatons rather than conscious beings. Given this epistemological barrier, we reasonably infer comparable mental states in others based on behavioural patterns and physical characteristics resembling our own.
Consciousness transcends the boundaries of empirical investigation. Just as science cannot definitively prove other minds’ existence beyond individual consciousness, it cannot conclusively demonstrate or refute divine consciousness. This epistemological limitation negates neither human consciousness in others nor divine mental life.
Modern theological reservations about heaven derive primarily from its resonance with Gnostic conceptions of divine mind (Pleroma) and attendant dualistic implications. Yet we should consider whether Gnostic thought accurately captured this particular theological insight. The Kingdom model and Progressive Disenchantment Atonement (PDA) share significant features with Gnostic cosmology while remaining distinctly Christian.
Gnosticism and the Kingdom model share structural parallels in cosmic vision. In Gnostic thought, Ialdabaoth, the Demiurge, creates and rules material reality, entrapping humanity in physicality. Similarly, in PDA, Satan establishes dominion through “enchanted order,” ruling through “principalities and powers” (Ephesians 6:12). Both frameworks present material creation under subordinate, antagonistic powers rather than direct divine governance. While Gnosticism views matter itself as imprisonment, PDA identifies the enchanted material order as satanic bondage, with disenchantment achieving liberation through dissolution of the material world’s spurious claims to divine presence.
The Kingdom model, however, diverges fundamentally from Gnosticism: it positions the negative trickster (Satan) as co-creator rather than primary creator, and locates salvation in spiritual liberation through disenchantment rather than esoteric knowledge (gnosis). This distinction preserves orthodox Christian theology while acknowledging Gnostic insights regarding cosmic powers and spiritual emancipation.
Both systems present hierarchical spiritual intermediaries between divine and human realms. Gnostic Archons govern different spheres of reality, while in the Kingdom model, angels and demons inhabit heavenly mind. These angelic and demonic powers historically governed the “enchanted world” through participatory presence rather than direct causation.
Paul’s theology systematically challenges paganism’s enchanted sacred order. In Acts 19:26 and Galatians 4:8, he critiques idols or spiritual powers that are falsely regarded as divine. In 2 Corinthians 4:4, he identifies a “god of this world” blinding unbelievers, while in 1 Corinthians 8:4-6, he dismisses pagan idols as fabrications, declaring “an idol is nothing at all in the world” and affirming monotheistic truth: “there is no God but one.” In 1 Corinthians 10:19-21, he reveals idol worship as demonic sacrifice rather than authentic divine worship. This theological framework delegitimizes antiquity’s enchanted sacred order.
Pauline theology exhibits patterns paralleling Gnostic cosmological structures, which explains persistent efforts across mainstream Christian traditions to neutralize Paul’s radical elements. Neither Catholic nor Protestant theology fully embraces Paul’s complete theological vision. Catholic doctrine historically balanced his emphasis on justification by faith with works and sacraments, while Protestant theology, despite claims to Pauline fidelity, struggles to fully integrate his thought.
Paul’s writings present stark dualism between flesh and spirit (particularly in Romans and Galatians) and employ anti-cosmic language that mainstream theologians typically moderate or reinterpret. His pronounced flesh/spirit dichotomy becomes reconceived as moral rather than metaphysical. Similarly, his references to “the god of this world” and “principalities and powers” receive interpretations more conservative than literal readings suggest. His mystical experiences and allusions to “secret wisdom” undergo domestication within institutional theological frameworks. The Kingdom model and Progressive Disenchantment Atonement framework, however, integrate Pauline theological concepts without requiring reinterpretation.
While superficial parallels exist with pagan and Gnostic thought, this framework locates fulfilment in the earthly Kingdom through participation in celestial reality coinciding with personal realization of disenchantment. This position diverges fundamentally from Gnosticism’s view of materiality as corrupt or imprisoning. Rather than characterizing the world as flawed or evil, it adopts Buddhism’s conception of “emptiness.” This perspective aligns with traditional Christian emphasis on worldly detachment. Significantly, the New Testament typically employs gnosis (γνῶσις) positively — particularly regarding knowledge of God, Christ, and moral life — with several passages presenting gnosis as a gift of grace or a mark of spiritual maturity.
Following von Balthasar, several theologians adopt dramatic approaches to Christian theology. However, rather than maintaining Christianity’s traditional transcendent and celestial orientation, they align with contemporary theological movements emphasizing divine immanence. Vanhoozer (2010) argues that mythos illuminates divine communicative action within worldly reality, focusing on temporal rather than celestial events (p. 5): a position contradicting the celestial kingdom model.
Vanhoozer challenges Bultmann’s demythologization, proposing ‘remythologization’: “We participate in God as we actively image God — as we dramatize theos” (p. 283). This requires both ‘communicative ontology’ and theodramatic metaphysics, as “remythologizing is a matter of rendering explicit the implicit ‘metaphysics’ of the biblical mythos” (p. 183).
This framework imposes substantial demands on believers, who must both participate in divine drama and develop sophisticated theological understanding, moving from narrative comprehension (theo-mythos) to rational theological discourse (theo-logos) (p. 479). Such complex theological requirements raise questions of accessibility for ordinary believers.
By locating divine drama within worldly rather than celestial spheres, this approach aligns with panentheistic theology, which posits divine presence both immanent within and transcendent beyond material world. Vanhoozer’s depiction of divine self-manifestation as communicative action enacted worldly (p. 227), combined with his ontological construal of biblical anthropomorphism through dramatic categories, inadvertently reproduces structures reminiscent of ritualized pagan accounts of divine presence.
Moes (2024) similarly portrays the world as the arena of God’s unfolding drama, in which Christians act under trinitarian direction. At the heart of this theodramatic vision lies ontological participation in the divine life, which he identifies as the framework’s unifying center (p. 114). Within this paradigm, believers bear responsibility as participants in God’s drama, with Christian doctrine serving as script orienting faithful enactment of divine narrative. Such framework demands cultivation of hermeneutical and mystagogical capacities, inviting readers towards theodramatic imagination that rereads Scripture as dramatic instruction — an exercise requiring both solitary contemplation and sustained, prayerful dialogue (p. 443).
This framework appears impracticable for everyday Christian life. Moes’s assertion that effective gospel communication requires presenting creation as “enchanted and suffused with the presence of God and angels” (p. 422) stands at odds with contemporary consciousness.
Interpreting dramatic performance as ontological participation in divine reality rather than mimetic representation lacks theological grounding. The framework imposes spiritual and intellectual demands contradicting Christianity’s commitment to grace and accessibility. By privileging temporal reality and divine immanence over transcendence, it mirrors pagan cosmology more than Christian tradition, which has historically emphasized divine transcendence. This approach marks significant departure from orthodox theology.
The theological emphasis on worldly drama reconstructs pagan metaphysics, a critique extending to this entire school of thought. The concept of symbols ontologically participating in their referents, originating in Schelling’s philosophy and developing through Coleridge’s work, has gained widespread theological acceptance. Despite engaging Platonic thought, Coleridge never fully transcended the philosophical constraints of Romantic Idealism.
Schelling’s influence proved particularly decisive in Paul Tillich’s philosophical and theological development, leading to Tillich’s assertion that symbols participate in the reality they symbolize. Similarly, the Nouvelle Théologie movement (including Henri de Lubac, Jean Daniélou, and Yves Congar) embraced what Boersma terms “sacramental ontology,” maintaining that earthly objects derive their reality from divine being (Winther, 2025).
This philosophical lineage manifests in theodramatic metaphysics, which seeks to establish divine immanence through dramatic participation. Such an approach contradicts traditional Christian doctrine, which reserves ontological participation exclusively for the Eucharistic mystery. This approach marks a regression to essentially pagan metaphysical structures, superficially maintained within Christian mythological elements.
Ancient pagan cultures understood reality as being infused with divine essence, a worldview that manifested distinctly across various societies. In Roman Britain, Emperor Claudius received divine worship during his lifetime, marked by the establishment of a magnificent temple in Camulodunum (Colchester). Greek tradition traced Dionysus’s Mediterranean journeys as he established his cult throughout the region. Egyptian theology developed perhaps the most sophisticated system of divine embodiment, wherein Pharaohs functioned as living manifestations of Horus, transforming into Osiris after death while maintaining divine authority and intercessory power. During coronation rituals, a specific divine force, the royal Ka, effected the transformation of mortal prince into divine Pharaoh-Horus (Bell, 1985).
Egyptian religious practice exemplified divine immanence through elaborate cultic rituals. During the “opening of the mouth” ceremony, priests consecrated temple statues, ritually animating them as vessels of divine presence. These statues served not as mere representations but as actual divine embodiments through which deities engaged with the material world. Priests maintained these sacred vessels through daily ablutions, dressing them in linen and presenting offerings (Wiki: ‘Ka statue’).
Temple ceremonies centered on elaborate dramatic performances featuring masks, dance, and music. Through ritual recitation, masked priests embodied specific deities and articulated sacred narratives. Priestesses, particularly in mourning ceremonies, assumed the roles of goddesses such as Isis and Nephthys. The complete ritual complex encompassed dancers, musicians, and singers who both entertained and manifested divine presence through masked performances and ceremonial attire (O’Rourke, 2001). The Amun cult extended these practices to include symbolic sexual rites performed by the high priestess, known as “The God’s Wife” (Mark, 2017).
Christian theology emerged in explicit opposition to pagan immanentism, anchored in its doctrine of unique divine incarnation. By asserting Jesus Christ as the singular God-man in history, the only begotten Son of God, Christianity fundamentally challenged pagan concepts of distributed divine presence. This theological exclusivity rejected any notion that material objects or ritual artifacts could contain divine essence.
The ontological symbolism inherent in theodramatic immanentism, despite its Christian theological framework, ultimately reproduces patterns characteristic of Egyptian cultic practice. Our spiritual foundation rests not on worldly divine drama but on heavenly revelation. As Chenu emphasizes regarding the supernatural character of faith: “First of all, on the level of the theological life, there is faith. Faith is our participation, as minimal as it may seem, in God’s self-knowledge. It is seeing with the eye of God” (Potworowski, 2001, p. 22).
Why does this archaic thinking persist — the belief that the divine is embodied in matter? According to Lakoff and Johnson (1999), our thought processes are governed by “conceptual metaphors” operating beneath conscious awareness (p. 10). Our philosophical edifices, and many scientific ones, have been constructed on foundational metaphors that reveal nothing about reality itself (p. 133).
These metaphors, ingrained in our psychology since time immemorial, relate to our bodily functions, everyday activities, family relations, and “folk theories” of time, space, causality, and other basic concepts. They remain inaccessible yet firmly embedded in our psychology through our brain’s neurological structure. We cannot think differently because our mind is embodied — not soaring freely among abstract forms, as one popular folk theory suggests. Our brain and body fundamentally shape our reasoning.
Thus, everything becomes metaphorized and our concepts are “embodied.” While metaphors cannot constitute objective features of the world, this does not necessarily invalidate the theories they generate (p. 224). Such theories can remain highly functional. However, assumptions derived from folk theories underlie Western philosophy, leading its key thinkers (notably Descartes and Kant) into transcendental speculation based on “disembodied reason.”
The Folk Theory of Essence plays a crucial role, building on the archaic notion that every particular thing belongs to a kind. Each entity possesses an “essence” or “nature” that determines its identity — an oak has oak essence. Thus, kinds exist and are defined by essences. A category exists that encompasses all things; the Folk Theory of Essences posits that this all-inclusive category must have an essence, while the Folk Theory of Intelligibility maintains that such essence is, in principle, knowable. This all-inclusive category is called Being, and its essence is termed the Essence of Being (p. 349). Ontological participation builds on the metaphor that everything derives its being from Being itself, Esse Ipsum — God.
Lakoff and Johnson argue that failing to recognize the unconscious and metaphorical nature of most thought enslaves us to the cognitive unconscious. Paradoxically, the traditional assumption of radically autonomous rationality restricts our rational autonomy, condemning us to cognitive slavery: an unaware and uncritical dependence on unconscious metaphors. To maximize conceptual freedom, we must transcend philosophies that deny the existence of an embodied cognitive unconscious governing most mental processes (pp. 537-38). While metaphorical language remains indispensable, it must not constrain theological understanding.
This insight bears directly on eucharistic theology. The Lord’s Supper represents an accommodation to humanity’s deep, constitutional longing for material mediation. In this respect, it parallels the ancient practice of theophagy — the eating of a god. Its function is to delimit divine presence to specific occasions and locations, thereby countering the pervasive immanentism characteristic of pagan religiosity (Winther, 2025). Though an ingenious construct, it implies that “real presence” ultimately reflects a stage of spiritual development. All people exhibit pagan inclinations, shaped by unconscious conceptual metaphors embedded in human psychology since time immemorial. Consequently, those with stronger pagan dispositions tend to apprehend real presence in more concretely material terms.
We may therefore conclude that the Lord’s Supper legitimately encompasses three dimensions: it embodies real presence, conveys symbolic presence, and functions as a memorial. Protestant churches have no compelling reason to divide over this question or to require adherence to any single eucharistic doctrine.
In everyday language, the word ‘symbol’ has deteriorated to denote merely something unimportant or unreal. However, attempts to restore its meaning by claiming that a symbol manifests the reality it represents remain misguided. A modern person cannot accept that a statue of Amun literally embodies the god.
Chauvet (2001, ch. 4) illustrates symbolic meaning through the Berlin Wall. People understood that this wall was Berlin, was the Cold War, was the communist regimes of Eastern Europe. To symbolize (from Greek symbállein) means “to put together” — a process exemplified when viewing a piece of the Berlin Wall prompts mental reconnection with its complete historical structure. Through this symbolic transformation, a mere fragment of concrete becomes charged with meaning, representing both the Cold War and communist oppression. Yet these associations exist only within their cultural context; the concrete itself contains no intrinsic communist ideology.
A symbol derives significance not from its material properties but from its relationship to the larger whole it represents. Its power emerges not from literally being what it represents, but from its capacity to represent reality through established distance. This distance enables reality’s presence to manifest in new forms. Thus, the Berlin Wall symbolically “is” communist dictatorship. Unlike conventional signs, symbols possess a poetic quality, evoking entire worlds of meaning. Yet claiming a symbol’s identity with its referent undermines the complex web of relationships it creates with the signified whole.
Chauvet argues that symbolization requires difference. The symbol of Church and Christ’s indissoluble “marriage” gains relevance only through mutual relationship. Their symbolization becomes possible precisely because Christ and Church maintain distinct identities. The Church exists solely through obedience to Christ as Lord, never substituting itself for God. As Christ and Church must remain distinct, their sacramental symbolization demonstrates that meaning emerges only through mutual relationship (pp. 85-86).
A symbol’s representation of reality necessarily creates distance from that reality. This principle explains why the ritual sign of peace must remain understated — it should not substitute for actual peace, which requires practice throughout daily life. A symbol’s effectiveness derives not from material value or quantity but from its restraint: a few water drops can symbolize complete immersion into Christ’s death in baptism, while a small portion of bread and wine suffices to represent both the eucharistic feast and the totality of creation and human labour (pp. 101-102).
This inherent modesty of symbols reveals their paradoxical relationship to reality: while they merely represent rather than embody reality, they become real to consciousness by making reality present through fragments. As a curiosity, small, display-mounted fragments of the Berlin Wall typically sell today for about €40–€100, while larger or more visually striking pieces can range from €150 up to €300 or more.
The Axial Period (approximately 800-200 BCE) marked a fundamental transition in human consciousness when civilizations underwent profound philosophical, religious, and cultural transformations. This era marked humanity’s departure from primitive participatory consciousness, characterized by cultic devotion to manufactured images, thereby initiating the long process of disenchantment. Psalm 115 offers a powerful critique of idol worship:
Their idols are merely things of silver and gold,
shaped by human hands.
They have mouths but cannot speak,
and eyes but cannot see.
They have ears but cannot hear,
and noses but cannot smell.
They have hands but cannot feel,
and feet but cannot walk,
and throats but cannot make a sound.
And those who make idols are just like them,
as are all who trust in them.
Plato similarly rejected image worship, developing instead, through the Republic, Phaedrus, and Symposium, a conception of participation as the soul’s active orientation towards intelligible reality. His vocabulary for this process encompasses méthexis (sharing), koinonía (communion), mímesis (imitation), and anámnesis (recollection). The soul participates through movement towards its object of love. In the Timaeus, participation assumes cosmic dimensions as the Demiurge contemplates the Forms while shaping becoming. This transcends mere particular “sharing” in Forms — the entire cosmos engages in continuous participatory becoming.
Platonic participation extends beyond ontological sharing to encompass movement, eros, conversion, cosmic creativity, the interweaving of intelligible structures, and the soul’s dramatic ascent towards the Good. Later Platonists (Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus) and Christian Platonists (Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor) emphasized this dynamic dimension, interpreting participation as energetic, transformative, and teleological. Yet antiquity understood creativity as exclusively divine, restricting human creative activity to mimesis.
Participation functions as a fundamental theological metaphor, whereas causality remains foreign to theological discourse. The Reformers erred in shifting the metaphysical grammar of Christian discourse in ways that made causality, volition, and determinism far more central than in the ancient participatory tradition.
The concepts of participatio and participare suffuse Aquinas’s work, reflecting his dynamic participatory understanding of substances and their divine ground. For Aquinas, participation manifests inherently dynamic qualities, as every agent reproduces its likeness. He conceives God not as static form but as dynamic actus essendi (act of being). This vision of substance as activity aligns with contemporary physics. Yet while Aquinas grants creatures genuine participatory agency as secondary causes, his creation account remains hierarchical, precluding creaturely co-creation (ST I, Q.44–45).
Piaget’s research establishes participation as fundamental to early cognitive development, confirming its role as a primary conceptual metaphor (Piaget, 1997). Lévy-Bruhl’s analysis of primitive thought concludes that “to be is to participate” (1975, p. 18). His examination of primitive cognitive patterns reveals the underlying unity of human consciousness across cultural and temporal boundaries. Though archaic and modern minds differ in orientation, their fundamental nature remains constant: participation persists as an essential mental process, operating to varying degrees in all human cognition.
Participation constitutes Christianity’s essential theological framework, finding its clearest expression in Paul’s doctrine of corporate solidarity. His theological architecture centers on two representative figures, Adam and Christ, through whom humanity participates respectively in death and life (Romans 5:12-21). The fundamental Pauline concept of being “in Christ” (en Christo) establishes Christian existence as inherently participatory, manifesting through corporate identification with Christ’s death and resurrection (Romans 6:1-11).
The First Letter of John opens by proclaiming the new koinonia inaugurated in Christ, establishing both communion with and participation in divine life. Through the Holy Spirit’s gift, Christ inaugurates a new form of divine participation, mediating this communion to those united with him through faith: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). This participatory union, actualized through sacramental practice, defines salvation more fundamentally than external declaration.
The early Church understood salvation primarily through participation in Christ’s body. Later Western theology shifted towards juridical interpretations centered on Christ’s satisfactory atonement, largely eclipsing the traditional dimension of koinonia. Contemporary theological discourse has recovered multiple soteriological models and renewed appreciation for participatory frameworks.
German Idealism attempted to philosophically justify what the Romantics experienced poetically: the restoration of divine immanence. In Roubiczek’s (1947) analysis, this movement generated ominous political consequences that shaped subsequent centuries. The Romantics advanced reactionary and dictatorial demands to accelerate their revolutionary aims. This approach proved particularly dangerous in its glorification of national character; the Romantics found beauty in all they deemed distinctively German. As Roubiczek observes:
The Romantics are so intoxicated by their discovery of the omnipotence of the mind that, in other respects too, they will have nothing to do with reality. It is not only that in their philosophical writings they ignore the existing world, but that they always build up in their imaginations a world as it should be, without considering in the least whether this world of the imagination can be translated into reality. “Imagination is the highest and most original faculty of man, and everything else only reflection upon it.” In all the writings of the Romantics the images of a Golden Age of the past and of the future continually recur, and they settle down in a cloud-cuckoo-land from which they can look down upon the real world with contempt. (pp. 69-70)
Intellectual overvaluation and retreat into extreme individualism provoke an equally extreme materialistic reaction. Against this materialism, radical Romanticism presents itself as humanity’s sole spiritual refuge. The Romantics’ errors thus generate both materialistic excess and the spirit’s withdrawal into sentimental fantasy. The sequence unfolds dialectically: Romanticism’s flight from reality enables materialism’s ascendance, as neglected reality asserts itself with unrestrained force, culminating in the deification of material personality and the hero cult (p. 81).
The dark potential of collective participation, rooted in demonic influence, reached its destructive apex in totalitarian movements, particularly National Socialism’s distortion of participatory consciousness. Nazi ideology exploited humanity’s participatory inclination through mass ritual, mythological unity, and collective identification with the Führer. This dark participation materialized in the Volksgemeinschaft concept, dissolving individual identity into collective racial consciousness — creating what scholars term ‘participation mystique,’ a regressive fusion of individual consciousness with collective myth. Nuremberg rallies exemplified orchestrated participation, merging individual will into collective experience through synchronized movement, shared symbols, and ritual performance. Hitler’s leadership cult transcended political authority to function as pseudo-sacramental presence through ritual acclamation, mass synchronized response, and collective emotional identification.
This distorted participation demonstrates how participatory consciousness, divorced from ethical and rational constraints, dissolves individual moral responsibility, suspends critical faculties, and enables collective regression to primitive consciousness. Soviet communism similarly exploited religious psychological patterns, transforming political leadership into pseudo-divine presence. Berdyaev (1961) analyzes Marxism as an inverted religious system, characterizing it as “religious psychology turned inside-out” (p. 44). He interprets communism’s destructive force as misappropriated religious energy, accumulated spiritual power manifesting in secular form (p. 56), ultimately expressing demonic religiosity. Berdyaev reveals Marxism not as scientific materialism but as idealistic doctrine in which ideas reign supreme. While consciousness transforms, the unconscious religious substrate persists. The “dialectics of the material process lead infallibly to the Kingdom of God on earth (but without God), to the realm of freedom, justice and power” (p. 63).
This framework exploits Christianity’s psychological formation, specifically its cultivated predisposition toward faith and self-sacrifice, while appropriating humanity’s inherent recognition of original sin, recasting it as systemic class oppression. Berdyaev maintains that only Christian renewal can counter materialistic religion’s advance. Contemporary postmodern cultural Marxism exhibits similar quasi-religious characteristics, though less dependent on discredited economic foundations. Authentic participation in Christ emerges as the necessary counter to demonic participatory movements.
Modern thinkers have reimagined participation. Owen Barfield (1957) argued that “participation as an actual experience is only to be won to-day by special exertion; that it is a matter, not of theorizing, but of imagination in the genial or creative sense. A systematic approach towards final participation may therefore be expected to be an attempt to use imagination systematically” (p. 137). Though not Barfield’s term, poiesis (from Greek for “making” or “creating”) aptly describes consciousness’s creative participation in bringing meaning and reality into being. This transcends mere artistic creation, revealing how human consciousness actively shapes rather than passively observes the world. Barfield rejected consciousness as spectator of independent, pre-existing reality, arguing instead for its creative role in manifesting phenomena (p. 160).
Barfield (1928) argues that language, especially metaphor, does not merely describe pre-existing things but actively creates new meanings and relationships. Poetry represents this poietic power in concentrated form, though all language use involves such creative activity. In Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry (1957), he traces consciousness’s evolution from “original participation” (ancient, unreflective unity with nature) through our current alienated state towards “final participation” — a conscious, willed poiesis in which humans knowingly participate in the creation of meaning (p. 137).
This conception contrasts with classical notions of mimesis (imitation or representation); where mimesis implies copying, poiesis emphasizes making and bringing forth: the poet does not copy reality but participates in its ongoing creation.
Ferrer and Sherman (2008) propose a “participatory turn” that conceptualizes spiritual knowing as ontologically real, embodied, and transformative. This knowing transcends both passive representation of external reality and purely subjective mental construction, manifesting instead as participatory enaction (p. 34). Spiritual worlds and truths emerge through co-creation — an interaction between human multidimensional cognition and the undetermined generative power of Mystery (or Spirit). Rather than merely discovering spiritual reality, humans actively co-create it through participatory engagement (p. 137). The traditional dualism between interpretive framework and underlying reality has lost credibility:
From a participatory perspective the perceived presence of a religious event in the world can be seen as neither a purely objective discovery nor a merely human construction. As is the case with the cocreated nature of a rainbow, an ontologically rich religious event emerges in the world precisely through human perceptual and cognitive participation. […] It is crucial to realize that since the overcoming of this dualism implies not only dropping ideas about conceptual frameworks, but also the concept of an uninterpreted reality, these ‘objects’ can no longer be taken to mean the pregiven objects of positivism, empiricism, or naive realism. On the contrary, giving up this dualism calls us to move beyond objectivism and subjectivism, and thus to redeem our participatory, connected, and direct relationship with reality as the source of our being. (pp. 28-29)
The modern linguistic paradigm remains embedded in Cartesian-Kantian assumptions. The participatory framework challenges both linguistic constructivism, which sees all experience as culturally mediated, and perennialism, which posits a single objective truth underlying all religions. Different religious traditions instead enact distinct spiritual ultimates. These multiple spiritual truths constitute not conflicting descriptions of one reality but distinct co-created realities, enabled by Mystery/Spirit’s responsiveness to varied forms of human participation. Their value stems from pragmatic and transformative criteria — their capacity to foster wholeness and liberate practitioners from self-centeredness (p. 151).
The authors note that denying extra-linguistic reality to religious phenomena “is to make a metaphysical claim, even if a negative one — a claim that arguably undermines the professed postmetaphysical status of these versions of the linguistic paradigm” (p. 26). Participatory approaches provide epistemological foundations for contextually sensitive religious pluralism while preserving religious ontology against linguistic reduction. This framework liberates religious discourse from Cartesian-Kantian assumptions about a single pregiven ultimate reality that generate reductionist or exclusivist formulations (p. 39).
By moving beyond framework-reality dualism and recognizing spiritual cognition’s creative role, multiple metaphysical religious worlds become necessary rather than merely possible. Reality’s radical openness enables infinite possible self-disclosures through participatory enaction, manifesting diverse metaphysical worlds. These worlds remain dynamic, transformed through human visionary imagination and religious interpretation (pp. 145ff). Rather than promoting relativism, this recognition of co-created religious worlds demands more rigorous discernment of their differences and merits. Since humans participate as co-creators rather than passive observers, religious engagement necessarily involves ethical and cosmopolitical choices (p. 32).
Beyond textual and historical concerns, Ferrer and Sherman’s framework emphasizes bodily and erotic dimensions of mystical practice (p. 12):
[H]uman spirituality has been characterized by an overriding impulse toward a liberation of consciousness that has too often taken place at the cost of the underdevelopment, subordination, or control of essential human attributes such as the body or sexuality. […] In contrast, when our somatic and vital worlds are invited to participate in our spiritual lives, making our sense of identity permeable to not only transcendent awareness but also immanent spiritual energies, then body and world become spiritually significant realities that are recognized as crucial for human and cosmic spiritual fruition. (pp. 41-42)
For Ferrer, developing the epistemic competence of diverse human attributes — somatic, vital, sexual, emotional, and mental — proves crucial both for individual wholeness and interpersonal flourishing, and for accessing more complete, unimpaired spiritual knowledge (p. 152).
The valorization of embodied spirituality and material enchantment challenges traditional Christian distinctions between divine and worldly realms. Ferrer and Sherman’s “participatory turn,” despite its merits, risks reproducing theodramatic immanentism’s conflation of transcendence with worldly manifestation. Like Radical Orthodoxy and Nouvelle Théologie before it, this framework overextends sacramental theology into comprehensive metaphysics.
Final participation, in Barfield’s framework, represents the deliberate reconnection of autonomous, self-conscious mind with nature as divinely endowed, employing systematic imagination to apprehend spiritual reality within phenomena (Barfield, 1957, chs. XX-XXI). Barfield warns that failing to restore horizontal participation in conscious form means we “have done nothing less than to eliminate all meaning and all coherence from the cosmos” (p. 144).
This vision, with its distinctly panentheistic implications, reflects Romantic rather than Christian metaphysical and soteriological commitments. The opposite holds true: nature’s disenchantment through withdrawn horizontal participation creates necessary space for authentic vertical participation in divine reality. Meaning originates not in the cosmos itself but descends from divine transcendence, manifesting through subjective experience. In this recognition, we apprehend the fundamental emptiness of natural objects. Authentic Christian love arises only when directed towards objects recognized as inherently empty; otherwise, it remains mere enchantment.
Human excellence, whether manifested in exceptional physical beauty or in the artistic innovations of Picasso, Braque, and Matisse, requires no divine explanation. Such achievements stand as autonomous expressions of human capability — the creative power inherent in created beings. God has bestowed autonomy on creation, enabling it to manifest distinct excellence in natural beauty and functional order while remaining integrated within the divine economy. Neither nature nor human creation requires divine attribution; their potential divinity depends solely on God’s sovereign appropriation.
Christianity traditionally emphasizes vertical participation oriented toward divine transcendence, while paganism prioritizes horizontal participation in immanent reality. In late antiquity, as paganism faced both philosophical critique and Christianity’s expansion, the Neoplatonist Iamblichus proposed synthesizing these orientations, where “the horizontal striving of living beings becomes identified with vertical striving” (Remes, 2008, p. 8).
In place of Plotinus’s purely vertical anabasis (ascension to the One), Iamblichus proposed theurgy — practices aimed at the individual’s divine transformation. It encompasses ritualistic and devotional practices intended to invoke divine powers (p. 171). Through his participatory and sacramental ontology, Iamblichus elevated material creation to the status of eucharistic worship.
Like an underground river repeatedly surfacing, re-enchantment manifests as a recurring heretical tendency throughout Western intellectual history. From medieval alchemists seeking spiritual transformation through material processes to Romantic poets discovering divine presence in nature, from nineteenth-century spiritualists to modern neo-pagans, these movements share the impulse to re-sacralize the material world.
As Nancy observes, Christianity essentially designates nothing other “than the demand to open in this world an alterity or an unconditional alienation” (Nancy, 2008, p. 10). Yet Christianity also provides, through faith, a Noah’s Ark for navigating the waters of divine abandonment, thus preventing regression to worldly numinosity.
However, despite Christianity’s fundamental work of cosmic disenchantment, the human psyche remains inherently drawn towards re-sacralizing the material world. Participatory consciousness represents humanity’s default cognitive mode, manifesting in the persistent tendency to attribute agency and spiritual presence to material objects — a tendency emerging early in development and persisting unconsciously despite rational education.
This psychological pattern suggests that complete withdrawal of numinosity proves unsustainable for most individuals. Christianity’s distinctive achievement lies in providing controlled accommodation for these psychological needs while maintaining clear theological boundaries, satisfying participatory impulses without descending into paganism. However, in modernity, this “underground river” of re-enchantment has surfaced within Christianity itself: through sacramental ontology movements, theodramatic immanentism, prosperity theology, and political Christianity conflating earthly and heavenly kingdoms.
Viewing the world as divinely saturated represents a regressive attempt to recapture the immediate divine presence characteristic of pre-Christian paganism. This tension generates an ongoing dialectic between transcendent spirituality and immanent enchantment. Medieval Christianity’s partial accommodation of popular enchantment, through relics, shrines, and sacramentals, represents attempts to manage this tension. The Reformation’s more radical demystification created a vacuum that alternative enchantments rushed to fill.
These conditions have allowed the underground river to emerge in increasingly problematic forms: conspiracy theories attributing agency to impersonal forces, political movements assuming quasi-religious character, New Age spirituality explicitly opposing demystification, and technological utopianism seeking salvation through material means.
The theological challenge lies not in suppressing these impulses but in properly channeling them. The Kingdom model provides a framework: acknowledging legitimate spiritual realities while locating them in their proper transcendent sphere, rather than projecting them onto material existence.
This approach enables a more nuanced understanding of the re-enchantment impulse. Rather than mere condemnation, Progressive Disenchantment recognizes its partial validity while redirecting it towards authentic spiritual participation instead of material enchantment. Rather than damming this underground river, we must direct it towards its true end: the celestial Kingdom, not the realm of matter or society.
Without theological understanding, secularization generates nihilism and corruption instead of genuine liberation. The New Atheists, particularly Dawkins and Harris, fundamentally misapprehend the deeper implications of their critique of Christianity. Scientific thinking originates in denying inherent spiritual power in material objects, exemplified by Paul’s declaration that “an idol is nothing at all in the world.” Dawkins’ materialism extends this insight while failing to recognize its theological origins. Scientific atheism thus becomes an unwitting ally in Christianity’s historical project, even as it undermines the structures needed to manage desacralization’s consequences.
These critics fundamentally misapprehend their own position. Rather than recognizing Christianity as the source of systematic desupernaturalization, they position it as the primary obstacle to rational inquiry, creating a false opposition between science and faith. Properly understood, both serve to liberate nature from magical thinking. Authentic Christianity provides not an obstacle but the theological foundation for rational inquiry. A more productive approach would acknowledge Christianity’s historical achievement while preserving its therapeutic function.
By treating religious language as failed science, Dawkins precludes the symbolic sophistication necessary for Christianity to fulfil its proper function. Mythological consciousness, properly understood, cures rather than causes superstition. As Aulén observes, “Symbol language is the mother tongue of faith.” Dawkins’ literalistic reading of religious language misunderstands how symbols function participatively rather than descriptively — when Christians speak of heaven, resurrection, or divine action, they engage with transcendent narrative patterns rather than making primitive cosmological claims.
The atheist critique of sacramental practice eliminates psychological safety valves without offering alternatives — a critical oversight given humanity’s inherent need for material-spiritual mediation. By dismantling Christianity without providing adequate substitutes, these critics create conditions where re-enchantment emerges in more problematic forms. The collapse of legitimate spiritual frameworks leads not to rational materialism but to alternative enchantments: political religions and ideological substitutes that inevitably become instruments of power. These movements often accurately identify Christianity as the source of Western alienation from nature and spiritual immediacy.
The Church historically functioned as a “hospital for sinners,” offering structured accommodation for humanity’s participatory needs, as exemplified by figures like Newton and Boyle. The atheists’ aggressive critique provokes defensive reactions that push some Christians toward literalistic readings or enchanted interpretations. This dynamic threatens to subvert Christianity’s historical achievement, inadvertently promoting the very material enchantment Christianity helped transcend. Maintaining transcendent orientation while containing participatory needs within appropriate boundaries would serve both scientific rationality and spiritual development more effectively than wholesale rejection of religious consciousness.
The underground river will continue to emerge regardless. The question remains whether it flows through controlled channels serving human flourishing or breaks out in destructive ways serving neither reason nor authentic spirituality.
© Mats Winther, 2026.
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