Telegram to WFB from the editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
“Dear Bill, just what the hell does `immanentize the eschaton’ mean?”
;^)
Edward de Vere to Encyclopedia Britannica... my dear perfidious albion,
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
or something to that effect ;-)
The “eschaton” is the end times. “Immanence” is God’s real presence in this world. To immanentize the eschaton is to bring about the end times in the here and now.
It is most aptly applied to millenarians, like the heretics of the Middle Ages described in Norman Cohn’s “The Pursuit of the Millenium.” The phrase was popularized by conservative American philosopher Eric Voegelin in books like “The New Science of Politics.” He sees gnostics (or “knowers,” meaning those aware of God’s presence in the world, and as opposed to agnostics) as forerunners of modern utopian revolutionaries, for instance Marx.