The key, here, is “immanentize”, which does not mean, as I had been assumming “to make imminent”. To “imminentize the eschaton” is to start World War III, unlock the Armageddon achievement, and thus force God’s hand in initiating the day of judgement and the final peace on earth when the lion will lie down with the lamb etc. People who imminentize the eschaton are barking mad.
However, “immanent” actually is an an antonym for trancendent-- existing in the physical world. To make the eschaton immanent is to implement the utopian promise of peace and justice in the real world. Not really a bad thing, except to a conservative. Thus, readers of the National Review sometimes wore swag containing the phrase “Don’t Immanantize the Eschaton” as an homage to Buckley’s characteristic vocabulary, and a statement of the conservative belief that change in the social order is dangerous.
Have you read By the Bomb’s Early Light by Paul Boyer… something of a history of the fear of the bomb found in American intellectual culture in the early 50s.
As I understand it, ‘immanent’ means inherent in God’s will or plan. From the human perspective, “making” something immanent is deliberately bringing about God’s plan, though you really had nothing to do with it, because it was God’s plan in any case. Sort of a “devil made me do it”, but with God on your side.
Maybe ‘immanent’ doesn’t mean what anyone thinks it means.
So I bid farewell.
No more good times or bad times, no more heaven no more hell.
Now brace yourself for impact it’s a half hour to twelve
Complete in total darkness empty space is where you’re left to dwell.
And all you had to do was live today for your tomorrow
But now it’s over and you’re drowning deep inside your sorrow
You could’ve led but instead you confirmed and chose to follow
So once again I bid farewell
There’s only seconds left, you’d like to second guess
But through your foolish ways you’ve literally beckoned death
So just don’t say you gave it all if you ain’t gave it all
Just fade it in the hazy purple twilight
No more time I tried to warn you all it’s now approaching midnight
I always thought the derivation without the invocation of god was more effective. But, when I hear ‘eschaton’, I think of McKenna’s transcendental attractor at the end of time, which draws us through eventful novelty toward it. Admittedly, he did develop his concepts from de Chardin’s Omega point, so the ideation comes from a religious person.
IMO, the really juicy ideas (memes) self-assemble into complexes more readily if one leaves traditional conceptions of god and religion well out.
