The solution to the material-spiritual dilemma is to realize that we can attain Godhood directly within nature and material evolution

“From an Augustinian perspective, the kingdom of God is not “of this world” but exists in the hearts and minds of believers while gaining coherence in a transcendent, mystical body—the church. Conversely, the political realm is merely a means for achieving a measure of order and peace in a world dominated by sin...The difference between the church and the state lowers hopes for enacting justice in this world and raises them for the world to come, the eschaton. But evangelicals typically immanentize the eschaton. That is, they try to realize the ideals of the world to come in the here-and-now. Politics becomes a means for doing so ” (D. G. Hart, Moden Age Winter 2020)

The solution to the material-spiritual dilemma is to realize that we can attain Godhood directly within nature and material evolution when we affirm that material evolution moves inevitably in a pattern, even though it has its random elements, and the pattern has a discernible direction, in spite of instances of stagnation and retreat, toward higher and higher more effective living forms, all the way toward ascending levels of Godhood---religion and science can help it along the way. But this means cutting the Gordian Knot of Augustinian (and Buddhist, Hindu etc.) insistence that there is non-material spiritual world.

There is only the material world evolving toward the supermaterial world and toward ascending levels of Godhood with starts and stops along the way. In theological materialism religion and science can legitimately unite with evolutionary politics, such as forming an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, as often affirmed in this blog. We can indeed immanentize the eschaton.