The Question of Eric Voegelin's Faith (Or Atheism?): A Comment on Maben Poirier's Critique (Report‪)‬

I have been asked to comment on Maben Poirier's, 'Eric Voegelin's Immanentism: A Man At Odds With The Transcendent?' published in Appraisal, Vol. 7, Nos. 2 and 3 (Oct. 2008-March 2009), and I welcome the opportunity to do so, because the questions Poirier raises are interesting and important ones. My own approach to them will be rather different from his, but I think he articulates those questions in a way that opens up possibilities for discussing the topics of God, faith, and atheism that offer a welcome relief from the simplistic and shallow framework of discussion dictated by what is currently being called 'the new atheism.' To sum up his main points briefly, Professor Poirier says that although Voegelin is often interpreted 'as a classically based Christian thinker, and sometimes simply as a deeply spiritual person, who was critical of modernity,' he was in reality 'not only not a Christian in any sense of the term that is acceptable, but he was not a theist or even a deist.' Putting it more bluntly, he says, 'I argue rather that Voegelin was a modern thinker and an atheist,' because 'his seeming support for Christianity in his writings stemmed from his desire to use a modified or immanentised understanding of Christianity as the basis on which to erect a civil theology.' Christianity, that is, and belief in God were, for Voegelin, simply useful fictions. As evidence Poirier cites a conversation of Voegelin with his friend Robert Heilman: (1)