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from The Collected Works
Deformations of Faith
Eric Voegelin delivered a lecture at Hillsdale College in 1977 as part of a symposium entitled "Between Nothingness and Paradise: Faith." Hillsdale College recorded the lecture and the recording of the lecture was transcribed and annotated by Professor Charles Embry. Voegelin never prepared the lecture for publication, perhaps because portions of it are drawn from his earlier essays. It is presented here in three parts.
What Do We Mean by "Faith?"
Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for your kind introduction. Ladies and gentlemen.
The subject matter of these lectures is supposed to be "Deformations of Faith." The general topic of this meeting here is "On Faith." It was selected as a topic–not as a problem in any particular science. I shall try to stick as closely as possible to the topical implications of the problems of faith and deformations of faith.
Of course, when one speaks about deformations of faith one has first to determine what is meant by faith.
Again, adhering to the topical content, I should say the definition in the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 1–"Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the proof [evidence] of things unseen [not seen]”1–is the central formulation from the New Testament which has always been the basis of the theological and metaphysical examinations of what faith is–all through the Middle Ages right into the present. And we will start simply from there.
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from The Collected Works
Montesquieu
The Elements of Political Liberty
The Climate in 18th Century England and France
The French revolt paralleling Hume's critique of reason came through Montesquieu [Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu–ed] (1689-1755).
Again a new set of problems was opened that could not be covered by the Myth of Reason or the contract theory of government. But here the parallel ends, for the approach of Montesquieu differs as widely from that of Hume as the French political situation differed from the English.
Hume was the philosopher of a settled society that had passed through a revolution. A splenetic humor is creeping up, tempered in Hume by a natural complacency; but through the veneer of his conformism and skepticism one can sense other possibilities: the century of Hume is the century of Beckford and his Vathek.
The France of Montesquieu is full of unrest presaging a revolution; the expectancy of movement, the smell of unknown horizons, is as characteristic of Montesquieu as a certain musty smell of stagnation is peculiar to Hume.
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from The Collected Works
David Hume
Spokesman for the Comfortable Class
While the new order [the secular settlements following the religious upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries–ed] appeared roseate in the "Myth of Reason and Nature" to Hugo Grotius and John Locke, their greater contemporaries were not happy.
. . . . [Unfortunately the great] work of Giambattista Vico did not become effective in England and France; the resistance had to develop independently out of the forces of those societies. While the results are modest compared with the work of Vico, the change of sentiment that makes them possible merits our attention, at least in some outstanding examples.
In England the decisive break came through David Hume (1711-1776). The Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740)1 brings the attack on Reason with the purpose of revealing the true foundation of morals and politics in the sphere of sentiment.
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from The Collected Works
Gnosticism
A Brief Introduction –Part 2
The Anxieties that Lead to Gnosticism
The collapse of the ancient empires of the East,1 the loss of independence for Israel and the Hellenic and Phoenician city-states, the population shifts, the deportations and enslavements, and the interpenetration of cultures reduce men who exercise no control over the proceedings of history to an extreme state of forlornness in the turmoil of the world, of intellectual disorientation, of material and spiritual insecurity.
The loss of meaning that results from the breakdown of institutions, civilizations, and ethnic cohesion evokes attempts to regain an understanding of the meaning of human existence in the given conditions of the world.
Among these efforts, which vary widely in depth of insight and substantive truth, are to be found: the Stoic reinterpretation of man (to whom the polis had become meaningless) as the polites (citizen) of the cosmos; the Polybian vision of a pragmatic ecumene destined to be created by Rome; the mystery religions; the Heliopolitan slave cults; the Hebrew apocalyptic; Christianity; and Manichaeism. And in this sequence, as one of the most grandiose of the new formulations of the meaning of existence, belongs Gnosticism.
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from The Collected Works
Gnosticism
A Brief Introduction –Part 1
The Immanentization of the Christian Eschaton
The fallacious character of an eidos of history [the belief that the whole course of history can be known–ed] has been shown on principle–but the analysis can and must be carried one step further into certain details.
The Christian symbolism of supernatural destination has in itself a theoretical structure, and this structure is continued into the variants of immanentization. The pilgrim's progress, the sanctification of life, is a movement toward a telos, a goal; and this goal, the Beatific Vision, is a state of perfection.
Hence, in the Christian symbolism one can distinguish the movement–as its teleological component, from a state of highest value–as the axiological component.1 The two components reappear in the variants of immanentization; and they can accordingly be classified as variants that either accentuate the teleological or the axiological component or combine them both in their symbolism.
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