The Dangerous Vision of Paradise
by Fr. Stephen Freeman, Glory to God for All Things, November 24, 2015
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Edward Hicks. The Peaceable Kingdom. 1833
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A utopian vision gave birth to America. The “pilgrims” who came to New England in the 17th century, imagined an ideal state, defined by their radical “purification” of society and the Christian Church. Their dreams of a new world were constantly thwarted in England by the reluctance of the greater body of Protestants to embrace their extreme vision. England’s Reformation fell far short of their imaginings. In 1640, the English cousins of the American pilgrims managed to take control of Parliament. In short order, they began a radical reform of England, including the execution of King Charles. They sought to do for England what the Puritans in the New World were doing for “New England.” The English land endured 10 years of Oliver Cromwell’s reign of purifying terror. It’s disfiguring marks have never been erased. Such extremism with its attending violence is not an isolated phenomenon. It has been a recurring hallmark of the modern period. Paradise haunts the modern world, both as promise and as threat. Modern people do not live – they dream. And their dreams sometimes become nightmares.
There is something inherently utopian within Christianity: we look for the coming of the Kingdom of God. Christ began His ministry, preaching the coming of the Kingdom. And He acknowledged, “If my kingdom were of this world, then my disciples would fight.” Modernity, in many respects, is simply the secularizing of the Christian vision. The Kingdom that is “not of this world” must, in modernity, become “of this world.” Every dream of a better world, every hint of progress is a modern echo of the preaching of the Kingdom. Of course, the Kingdom no longer needs a king, much less the King of Creation. But the modern imagination is always turned towards a future. Our dreams are inherently eschatological (directed towards the end).
This orientation is the engine behind the constant improvement and development in technology and science. At the most fundamental level, we think we are building towards something. It is uniquely Western, inasmuch as the modern West is built on a Judeo/Christian foundation. The religions of the East (Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) lack this eschatological vision. It’s not that there are no visions of a Buddhist or Hindu paradise, but that those visions are very much “not of this world,” indeed, this world is not even of this world.
Islam has to be seen as belonging to the Judeo-Christian world, regardless of how foreign it might seem. The Fathers, contemporary to early Islam, all judged it to be a form of Christian heresy. I think this is quite accurate and important to our understanding. For though Mohammed makes many changes in the Jesus Story, and modifies most of the elements of Christianity, he, nevertheless, still works with Judeo-Christian elements. There is an expectation of paradise – and, more ominously, the notion of a pure state established under Sharia Law.
Historically, Islam has occasionally been content to live within the borders of its religious vision. But there always lurks the haunting figure of a righteous world. Our most recent experiences with ISIS have been a modern outbreak of a drive to “restore the Caliphate,” an eschatological vision of a purified state – a Muslim paradise on earth.
