An Inconvenient Horizon: Apocalypse Versus the Cult of an Endless Tomorrow

"It should never be forgotten that Christianity entered human history not as a new creed or sapiential path or system of religious observances, but as apocalypse ... an urgent call to all persons to come out from the shelters of social, cultic, and political association into a condition of perilous and unprotected exposure, dwelling nowhere but in the singularity of this event – for the days are short."

That’s theologian and philosopher David Bentley Hart in a 2022 essay (adapted from his book Tradition and Apocalypse). In it, he argues that the figuring of Christianity as fundamentally apocalyptic is, and has maybe always been, foreign to "mainline" Christian experience – at least since the end of the Patristic era.

As the story goes, the earliest Christians – living beneath the crushing weight of oppressive empire – had little time for illusions about the spiritual and political conflict between "the Way" (ἡ ὁδός) and the Roman imperial ethos around them. The New Testament (especially Pauline) epistles drip with urgent eschatological exhortation – one that presumes not only the imminent return of Jesus Christ but also that his followers hold loosely to the things of this world. To be a Christian meant to untether from the structures of empire and to see the world as fleeting – to expect the present order, powers, and principalities to give way, imminently, to something new, and even to give up one's life in light, and for the sake, of this hope.

But as Christianity moved from society's margins to the centers of power, this apocalyptic consciousness dulled. By the time of Constantine, the Church had become a civil institution. Its leaders navigated political structures with an eye toward stability – not revolution. Christian spirituality, most properly marked by the raw immediacy that moved Jesus and his apostles to choose (even earnestly seek) an early death, took on a more measured and systematic form. Even monastic movements – begun as efforts to recapture the radicalism that characterized the early Church – often fell into their own rhythms of structure and control.

Apocalypse became more of a distant event – the "end" in a mostly-temporal sense – rather than an imminent reality. And aside from a small minority of Christians, maybe, this more tempered apocalyptic posture has remained mainstream ever since.

I'm no historian, but I believe Hart's story here is accurate enough. I can verify, at least, a sharp contrast between the impoverished apocalyptic consciousness in the Christian world I see around me and that demonstrated by the New Testament authors. But even if one disputes Hart's history and conclusions, is it so hard to believe that successive generations of Christians, ever distancing from the events of Jesus' life, would shed some urgency about the eschaton? Would the Apostles, in their wisdom, not have anticipated this waning enthusiasm if they'd known just how delayed would be the Parousia? Apocalypse – in Hart's framing, "an urgent call to ... come out from the shelters of social, cultic, and political association" because "the days are short" – is a difficult posture to maintain. Our very psychology, I think, is repelled by the idea of an uncertain future, let alone the end of all things as we know them. And I'm sure that living in light of apocalypse is harder, too, in proportion to our prosperity – according to how far removed is the specter of death, demise, and the universal poverty of our natural condition from our everyday life.

But of course, understood in its complex and (on the eschatological margin, at least) multivocal New Testament context, apocalypse isn't just about "the end." ἀποκάλυψις (apokálupsis) means "unveiling" – the sudden appearance of God, who had been previously shrouded, in our midst. As I've written before, this experience can, with some discipline and practice, be always imminent in one's spiritual life, even as the wheel of time continues to turn. According to Mircea Eliade, returning to primordial time (the "eternal return"), which brings man nearer to the sacred, is the very purpose of religious ritual.

But yes, insofar as we're engaged in something other than seeking this unveiling for ourselves, apocalypse is, indeed, yet to happen and does entail the sudden end of those other things – that is, whatever it is we're doing that does not have our eschatological horizon in view. This is because apocalypse doesn't wait for anyone or give advance warning to those who, in the words of Jesus, have buried their minas.

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”

Perhaps, then, it's uniquely difficult for busy, modern, "productive" people to live in light of apocalypse. We thrive on plans. We try to be "forward-thinking." We have schedules that presume so much about our future, and we spend much of our time thinking about tomorrow. To loosen our grip on what’s ahead – to abandon (the illusion of) control – is, for many, a terrifying prospect, and it's surely no common-sense way to manage an organization (say, the Church as a civic institution). And in light of that, perhaps forgiveness and charity (not frustration and angst) are the most appropriate responses to what we might consider a disordered orientation toward reality – one that takes no heed of any eschatological horizon. Life is hard. We live in a fragile tension between what could be and what might not be. Even as we cling to the temporal, we know, deep down, that it can all disappear in an instant. Those of us who believe that an apocalyptic purview is good to have might find solace in the fact that this truth about our precarious condition, unsettling though it may be for our more sentimental sensibilities, eventually forces itself upon most people, one way or another.

But in the wake of last January’s presidential inauguration, and given all the nuances of what kind of agenda, exactly, is assuming power, I worry about the further erosion of whatever apocalyptic consciousness remains at large among Christian people in America – let alone among the broader American public. In an age dominated by a renewed optimism about our economic future and the technology that promises to bring it about, those who call people back down into the dust – with humbling reminders of how little we know and how powerless we are – resemble voices "crying out in the wilderness" (that is, to virtually nobody). Worse still is when a Christian political majority itself dismisses or mocks such voices as obstructions to its grand project – a golden-bricked road toward some "friendlier" era – and apocalypse is not only neglected, but rendered obsolete. Whatever dire times may have hearkened "the end" a few years ago are no more, thanks to a new infusion of political power into the hands of the "right" kinds of people.

It's a cycle that repeats, probably, whenever enough people believe (as is the case surrounding, I think, most Presidential inaugurations) they are witnessing the commencement of a new era. With so much potential and so much on the line, who has time for the eschaton? The idea is a big wet blanket – a party-pooper. It only gets in the way.

Donald Trump, the billionaire President, embodies this vision in perhaps its crassest form. "We're going to win so much, you're going to be so sick and tired of winning," he says. "In four years ... we'll have it fixed so good, you're not gonna have to vote [again]." The promise is unbounded triumph – no upper limit, a new American "Golden Age," a future without decline. "We're going to become so rich – you're not going to know how to spend all that money." This is hyperbolic language, perhaps, but the "winner" ethos that surrounds it – that such language is designed to bring about – most definitely is not.

But Donald Trump aside, I think newly-minted "health" guru Bryan Johnson, famous (sensational, even) for his spectacularly grandiose Don’t die mantra, is an even more appropriate mascot for our anti-apocalyptic era. "We are at war with death and its causes," he says on his website. "We are building towards an infinite horizon. We are fighting for the freedom to exist as long as one chooses." If we just tweak the right variables, adjust the right biochemical metrics, and optimize our physiology, he promises (to many millions of social media followers and fellow-travelers), we can literally live forever. "If death is not inevitable," he said on Tucker Carlson's podcast last year, "we can extend our lifespans to some unknown horizon. The meaning-making games we have as a species all change. ... I'm trying to figure out how to create a new societal structure that has the sole objective, a nation state, of helping its citizens not die."

The mechanics of Johnson's biochemical program and the psychological paradigm it brings to bear are rather far-fetched, I know. My further thoughts on that are probably best saved for another essay. But a new and vigorous techno-nationalism is here right now, and I think to stay for some time. It's ascendant and, as nationalist fervor has done so often throughout history (first, I think, at בָּבֶל, or Babel/Babylon), it will inspire millions of people, both well- and ill-intentioned, to reach new heights of human achievement on many margins – yes, even some that were never before thought possible, like putting a man on Mars.

But all the while, I think it's important for people not hopelessly caught up in these nationalist tides (even if they don't outright reject everything about them) to at least try to believe – to remember – that nothing is gained when we discover a fresh identity in something, finally, that promises to make us "great (again)," and that nothing is lost if and when our social and political identities fall away in light of an exposure to our "inconvenient" eschatological horizon. For as St. Paul writes: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." These distinctions are not fundamental.

Now, abandoning these worldly distinctions in light of a spiritual and invisible reality can seem a stilted and unrealistic way to "model" the world. But apocalypse, like the prospect of our own death, is supposed to stop us in our tracks. It precludes and undermines any "modeling." And it's a non-negotiable pillar of Christian living. Illuminating the eschatological horizon through ritual, meditation, and, yes, even uncomfortable public implores to temper techno-nationalist fervors and new politico-economic distinctions in order to be realistic about what all is unchanged, and unchangeable, about our impoverished human condition will be at least as important as ever before.

There is only doom – bigotry, eugenics, and violence – at the end of any road that denies, on principle and with action (even if not with words), our eschatological horizon. This is true for any political movement, probably, and in proportion, I think, to the dismissing of apocalypse as a spiritual reality, or its relegation to something that happens only via the machinations of empirical time (by way of "current events," which we tend to believe are very much under our control). It is precisely because those who travel that seemingly rosier road believe their journey may possibly have no end – they believe, that is, in utopia – if only we can get things right. And when progress is believed to be limitless, the consequences of being wrong grow impossibly high – an allegedly infinite opportunity cost that permits no patience for dissent, no tolerance for slowness, and no room for the humility that apocalyptic consciousness demands. Even a whisper of caution becomes, in such a paradigm, an act of sabotage.

But being "right" and making "progress" is overrated. This is, in many ways, the foundation of Christian faith – a call not to certainty in our plans, but in God's immediate love. Even when political projects succeed and bring about real material abundance, their victories are fleeting. St. James puts it plainly:

"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and get gain' — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.' As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil."

The wisdom here does not decry action, but presumption. A Christian posture is not one of conquest, but of dependence – not triumph, but surrender. That's because, ultimately, there is only one thing real, and it is not our "cultic" associations or our national identity or anything we can control. There is no Jesus that calls us to build a "better future" or a greater nation or legacy. That Jesus is fiction because those ends are futile.

"If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?"

Instead of boasting in our plans, Jesus calls to us – in this Lenten season, especially – from the dust, where he was found by Simon of Cyrene in his most desperate moment of need. He calls us back down into it – to what Hart calls (quoted above) "a condition of perilous and unprotected exposure" – wherein he was buried and from whence we came. For it is from the dust that God forms life, and it is in the eyes of the broken where His Kingdom is found — not in strength, but in weakness; not in the future, but here and now; not in judgment, but in the cross.