Religion and society modern: modernity unrealized and immanence of the gnosis

    💫Abstract: This article aims to present two notions that are not well known in the religion sciences and in theology: “unrealized modernity” and “immanence of gnosis”, by Bruno Latour and Eric Voegelin. What theoretical contributions do these two ideas give to the understanding of the religious phenomenon in modern contemporary society? As a general hypothesis, this article defends that both notions are useful conceptual tools to comprehend the status of being religious in the complex-modern society. In order to give an answer to such problem, the article is based on the partial bibliographic review methodology.

    Hybridizations and Complexities in Contemporary Societies:

    One of the challenges of the analysis of religion in contemporary societies is the understanding of religion, its implications and its understanding of the religious, its implications and its relations with other cognitive and social systems involved in the and social systems that are involved in the coexistence between men and institutions. The plurality of value, political and religious systems is the basic characteristic of modern societies. Thus, the analysis of the religious phenomenon in complex societies is a hermeneutic challenge. Complex societies is a hermeneutical challenge for the analysis of theologies and the sciences of religion .

    Theologies and the sciences of religion:

     Some would argue that they are hybrids in fact and in law. Therefore, religion seems to emerge from within the very forms and languages of modernity, becoming a hybrid.      

    The dimensions of religion are multiple, plural and not subject to unidirectional regulation by theologies and the sciences of religion unidirectional regulation by political, economic and other dimensions

    Therefore The relationship between Modernity, secularization, secularization of the state, religious plurality privatization and deprivatization of religion, although already much discussed, still causes dissent.

    Therefore, in complex societies, where a plurality of worlds and systems coexist in the same space, religious plurality, privatization and de-privatization of religion, although coexist in the same space-time, religion has become a conceptual and methodological challenge.

    In the current context of interactions between religious and non-religious systems, however, the boundaries are strained. From these uncertain details  uncertain, hybrid forms emerge and proliferate without barriers.

    In this sense, the present article suggests that the notions of Modernity unrealized or unrealized Modernity and the immanence of gnosis, based in the thought of Bruno Latour and Eric Voegelin could contribute to the broadening of the comprehensive theologies and sciences of religion. These contributions will be explained and applied to the proposal of thinking new approaches to the study of religion in modern-contemporary society. The objective is to discuss two little known theoretical notions that could be useful tools of interpretation for future research and useful tools of interpretation for future research and studies on the relation between modernity and religion in the Modernity and religion in the fields of theology and the sciences of religion.

    Latour, at the beginning of his work writing about the "proliferation of hybrids", quotes newspaper reports which mixed, on the same page, news about chemical reactions, political actions, political actions, religious sciences, etc., on the same page.

    On chemical reactions, political actions, new technologies, everyday violence and religious conflicts.  This, we find the multiplication of hybrid entities of science, politics, economics, science, politics, economics and religion, religion, fiction and Hybrids, according to Latour, are events, facts, movements, groups, persons, trajectories, objects11 that are difficult to classify because it is impossible to categorize them as nature or culture, science, ideology, religion or non-religion; they cannot be reduced to one or the other dimension, since they are to one or another dimension, because they are located, at the same time, in multiple dimensions.

    They represent an epistemological and methodological problem for theology, the sciences of religion and the social sciences.

    The list of hybrids is endless; for example, religious leaders of the Assembly of God Church, in their preaching, in order to justify the Assembly of God, in their preaching, in order to justify the bill on homophobia, resort to the use of homophobia bill, they resort to conservative philosophers; Catholics resort to "science-based" explanations to oppose the explanations of "scientific basis" to oppose abortion; evangelical musical groups compose songs and musical songs and musical styles similar to those of famous rock groups; in urban environments, fairs are promoted in Christian marketing fairs and new age festivals are promoted in urban settings, in which quantum healing methods are quantum healing methods are articulated with the theories of physics (quantum physics) and rituals of healing and wellness.

    In the virtual environment, there is a lot of techno-religious consumption, with religious communities and electronic gnosis .

    Religious communities and electronic gnosis. Authors such as Jim Pinkoski write books of Christian science fiction (a genre of literary inspiration).

    Fiction (a literary genre inspired by biblical prophecies). One of the one of the latest best sellers in that branch is called Glorious Appearance, a fiction in which the Antichrist is incarnated in the Antichrist is incarnated in the secretary-general of the UN, creates a one-world government, with a single religion, and a one-world government, with a single religion, and establishes its capital in biblical Babylon (today Baghdad). These would be the signs that the apocalypse is near and the true Christ would return to Earth as a warrior.

    Christ would return to Earth as a raging warrior in holy violence.

    All these examples are related to the diverse structuring processes that delimit the field in which the delimit the field in which religion (in its various expressions, institutional or subjective) relates to modern-contemporary structures (market,state, public spheres, aesthetics, sexuality, art, science, etc.). It is possible to say that there is a broad academic consensus on the interrelationship between modern-contemporary society, individualism and secularizing processes, although the concept of secularization, polysemic and multidimensional, is still the subject of much discussion.

    According to Berger, the secularization of the West has its roots in the Old Testament: the historicism and anti-magical attitude of the Jewish people continue in Christianity. Although the divine incarnation promotes remitologization and re-enchantment, in Catholicism, the ecclesiastical monopoly of the sacred polarized the sacred and the profane, leaving the latter the possibility of secularization. However, in this article, secularization is understood from five basic ideas:

1. As an institutional differentiation18 between the spheres of values of the modern world (religion, art, science, politics, sex, etc.), whose initial motives are found within the Western Christian religious system.

2. As rationalization and disenchantment of the world (distancing from magic and religion as foundations of the image of the world and of man) and their representation as systems or a segment in interaction with other systems (politics, science, etc.).

3. As a misalignment of the religious, religious market and distancing of the normative-institutional powers before individualism as a way of life.

4. As a weakening of metaphysics and ontology and the reactions of that process (nostalgia for a past identity and related to an idealized past).

5. As secularization of the public and state sphere (and secularization), that is, the loss of religious control over public and state structures, even though the churches, generally 

    Christian, try to maintain influence in manycountries on public-legal structures (against abortion and “gay marriage”, for example). By following this theoretical design of the modern-complex society, the thoughts of Durkheim and Weber can help us to reflect on the misadventures of religion in modern-contemporary times. In a Durkheimian perspective, the sacred is the result of the immanence of the social and of collective enthusiasm. Societies seek, through rites and myths, to extend the initial moment of the sacred, charged with collective emotion. This process is related to the division of social labor, and constitutes an almost evolutionary logic: it starts from the mechanical solidarity of primitive tribal societies, with little structural-social differentiation and much collectivism (religion was all social, there was no space for individualism, emotion was collective), and the organic solidarity of complex societies is reached, with a lot of structural-social differentiation and individualism. The individual and his rights would express the sacred dimension of modern-contemporary society, and are paradoxically legitimized by that society. Hence, Durkheim has thought about adaptation platforms of the "sacred savage" since his irruption towards the institutional administration of the symbolic goods of salvation (institutional rationality, dogmas, sacred literature, hierarchies, etc.).

    According to Weber, the original emotion (immediate possession of the divine) associated with charisma is extraordinary and has little effect on group and individual attitudes and behaviors in the long term. The important thing would be the historical-cultural processes that allow the possession of the divine to become permanent or daily. In human history, these processes develop in a contingent, non-deterministic way and fluctuate between the materiality of facts, signs, structures, groups and people, ideality of values, symbols and meanings. For Weber, religion (especially the great world religions) contains the germs of the processes that make the sacred routine, and the most important of these is rationalization, that is, the regulation between means and ends of social action. On the other hand, rationalization, present in the principles of the Christian religion, has reached its strongest expression in Calvinist-Puritan religiosity, characterized by the ethical search for the permanent possession of the divine that maintained affinities with the structuring of the way of life. capitalist production between the 16th and 18th centuries. Christian religious rationality and capitalism maintained a deep affinity until rational world images became autonomous from religious orders and spread through the structures of the world.

    Western world: State, legislation, market, work, art, sex, science, etc. Therefore, the modern Western capitalist world is the result of extensive and permanent legal rational processes. This leads Weber to his famous irony, the iron cage, which interrupts charismatic irruptions in the history of the Western world.

    On the other hand, the advance of modernization would bring –according to some– secularization; but historical processes are not prophecies or structures that evolve in a single direction. Theorists no longer understand it that way because secularization, among other examples, can trigger or coexist with processes emergency of religion and the religious. Thus, from the second half of the 20th century, a concern settled in intellectual and political circles: the promise of broad emancipation of individuals made by science and progress was not fulfilled; the subsequent failure of socialism put the promise of social emancipation in crisis. The collapse of those ideals reached reason and its models of explanation and action in and on reality; But only in the 1990s did the study of religions and religiosity begin to relativize the paradigm of secularization.

    Often today, religion can operate in three directions: (1) privatization or public influence, as religious commitments, institutionalized or not, are invoked against globalization; (2) the dispersion of topics religious in the unofficial public spheres (the structures of communication, market and consumption) and on the contrary, religion can incorporate themes originating in the public and media sphere; (3) the reappropriation of religious content by society in general and by the popular, with specific consumption. It is said that structural differentiation would give rise to a plurality of worldviews, values and norms, and would destroy the religious monopoly and religion as a right that is offered in a market formed by consumers of sensations, by people who claim their freedom of choice. Despite this plurality, we can perceive a lot of diversity, from more closed, dogmatic and regulatory groups, to more open groups, without the need for rigid commitments, such as Pentecostal groups and New Age spirituality groups. 

    The communitarian, cultural, institutional and emotional dimensions of religion, more clustered in other epochs and historical contexts, become independent in Modernity with different logics, and leave the picture of religion more ambivalent and complex in modern-Western societies. in Modernity with different logics and leave the picture of religion more ambivalent and complex in modern-Western societies. Inherited religious identities cease to exist inherited religious identities cease to exist, religious emotion dissociates from institutional control, and religious belief becomes diversified and reterritorialized.

    What is the relationship between these structures discussed here, albeit briefly, with the ideas of aporia? briefly, with the ideas of the aporia of Modernity and the immanence of gnosis? Without However, in this text, Voegelin's and Latour's reflections on these questions will be highlighted. questions. Let us speak, now, of Voegelin and his reflections on the origin of modern times and the presence of gnosis.

    Modern-complex societies,

    Modernity and gnosis features

    In this second part we focus on the process by which the Gnostic ideas opposed to Christianity (monotheistic religions system) have Christianity (monotheistic religions system), in the long duration of history, have become the almost invisible valuational foundation of modern institutions the almost invisible valuational foundation of modern institutions.

    Some fundamental historical points will be discussed in order that we may reflect on the immanence of gnosis, although the article recognizes that it is a broad and complex subject a broad and complex subject.

    We can say that "gnostic" or "gnosis" are very flexible terms that are also used to describe sects and religious manifestations of the eastern regions of the Roman Empire in the first centuries of Christianity. In fact, there are many systems of gnosis: Simon Magus, the gospel of Marcion and the creation of the world by angels; Hermes Trimigestus; the Valentinian movement; the method of Mani and others.

    Jonas describes the Gnostic world as a great religion, heir to Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek influences (in short, East and West), with various small groups or sects and movements, whose influences on the Western world will continue in time and space. Concretely, the Gnostic religion gains form from its conflicts and interactions with the Christian communities (from the 1st to the 5th century).

    However, in terms of our argumentation, we need to go back to the victory of Christianity after the defeat of the Roman Empire; especially when Emperor Constantine, in 313 A.D., lowered the letter of recognition in which he equated the Christian religion and the Greco-Roman religion, and when Emperor Theodosius chose the Christian religion as the official religion (380 A.D.) and banned the Greco-Roman religion, Eastern cults and other religions. When Emperor Theodosius chose the Christian religion as the official religion (380 A.D.) and forbade the Greco-Roman religion, Eastern cults and other religions. The victory of Christian religiosity in the face of the fall of the Roman Empire imposed on the Western world the Augustinian conception of truth, resulting in a double and clear representation of society by means of spiritual and temporal powers.

    In the ancient Gnostic heresies, the image of Jesus Christ is confused with the image of the good demiurge and the redemptive mission is seen as the messianic journey to rescue men from the clutches of the evil demiurge, who would keep minds and hearts in ignorance and slavery, a journey that is seen as an intramundane personal action.

    The incorporation of Revelation into the biblical canon is one of those moments and source of many interpretations, chiasms and messianisms throughout hundreds of years in the West, resurfaced under a secular and immanent form in some political movements of the left and right. Incorporated into both the Catholic and Protestant canon, the book of Revelation is Gnostic, and derives - in its distant roots - from the mystical traditions of the from the Jewish mystical traditions in contact with the religious culture of the Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations.

    For Vogelin, there would be an ancient and medieval gnosis, whose most common ideas would be the dualism between body and spirit, the struggle between the principle of good (divine demiurge) and the principle of evil (evil demiurge) and the immanent action of man, seen as like that of the demiurges. Salvation from evil and pain, obtained by group initiatory knowledge (liturgical or ritualistic) by the human action realized by freedom and the search for reason are also fundamental ideas; and, finally, the "deification" of the initiates and the struggle against the limitations imposed on man by the limitations imposed on man by the demiurge (evil one), the great enemy of human freedom.

    In general, the common forms of Gnosticism are presented as an effective and communicable discourse and practice, capable of allowing the enlightenment and happiness of the initiates. This claim to "scientism" also appears in various species of mysticism and esotericism derived from ancient gnosis. The attainment of "knowledge" (gnosis), secret and reserved for followers, was the main objective of many gnostic practices throughout history. In this context, Modernity is culturally outlined by the growth and immanentization of Gnosticism, whose classification is complex and very large.

    For Voegelin, a line of development that connects the gnosis of the ancient world (Hellenic-Platonic) to the modern world (Gnostic-immanent-positivist) would be configured by passing through diverse peoples, civilizations and groups that incorporate the basic Gnostic ideas but have changed their senses and meanings. The revealed monotheistic religion (Christianity) would oppose the Gnostic religion; but Gnostic influences have penetrated the cultural fabric of Modernity, even in the very structure of modern Christianity. Modern gnosis takes up the themes of ancient and medieval gnosis, but modifies them profoundly, focusing on action in the world (intramundane), the deity or divinity of man and, consequently, the belief in a demiurgic, creative and salvific action.

    The great line of development between the gnosis and the modern world is not seen by Voegelin as evolutionary, direct and continuous, since there were ruptures in what refers, for example, to the Manichaean dualism, which was transferred from the transcendental plan (good god/bad god) to the immanence of the actions of modern institutions, such as the political militancy of totalitarian ideologies. In this sense, the modernity would have as one of its origins the influences of ancient gnosis and its historical consequences (medieval and modern) on the cultural and religious processes that have resulted in the modern western world.

    The Christian message of salvation (the infinite divine transcendence that redeems man from his finite and cruel immanence) contained elements of anguish and uncertainty (who can guarantee that one is safe?); and, as it spread throughout the West, it has brought heresies as "shadows", an inseparable part of the new contexts of the expansion of Christianity. The crises of the expansion of this message allowed the entry - in Modernity - of the Gnostic concept of redemption through knowledge (soteriology of immanence). The meaning of the soteriology of immanence can be found in the Romantic conservative and libertarian movements, among others. In fact, the perceptions and symbols used in the history of secular social movements are coupled with beliefs related to the magical, mythical and religious. Thus, Voegelin "reframed the question of science, in the political case, in the deepest strata of being"; but, in his idea of a science, there is a "transcendental vector that deploys a triple representation of the notion of truth (psychic, political and cosmic)". 

    For Voegelin, modern Gnostic speculation overcame the uncertainty introduced into the core of the Christian faith, distancing itself from transcendence and giving back to man an intra-mundane action clothed in the sense of eschatological fulfillment. Beginning mainly in the 13th century, the "Gnostic" expansion accelerated the immanentization of Christian symbols, particularly those related to soteriology or salvation, expressed, among others, in the famous elaboration of the Catholic monk Joachim of Fiore, in the 13th century, on the three epochs (the era of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit). From then on, gnosis was installed in the cultural structures of Modernity. This meaning can be found not only in communist revolutionary communist revolutionary movements and in totalitarian Nazi-fascist regimes.

    Voegelin identifies three types of Gnostic immanentization occurring in the Western world, which are the basis of the contemporary world: the teleological (Marx and Hegel), the axiological (Protestant Reformation) and the activist (militant socialist and Marxist-Stalinist), considered the left side of Gnosticism. In these three types of immanentization, two mechanisms emerge, one based on the idea of the inauguration of truth, and the other on voluntary censorship (the rejection of any other information considered a threat to the movement or the adopted belief). In a process that lasted from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, from the scientistic philosophies of the 19th century to the technological promises of the 21st century (techno-religion), immanentization smuggled concepts of religious origin into the structures of reflection and social practices of Modernity.

    Voegelin points out that scientism remains one of the powerful gnostic movements in Western society and the immanentist pride in science is so strong that, even in special branches of science, there are tangible traces in the variants of "salvation" through physics, economics, biology and psychology.

    The problem of the immanence of gnosis is also the problem of the search for gods. of gods, and from it arises the most terrible part of Western Modernity: mass genocides, eugenics (racial improvement by rational-scientific means disassociated from any morality), fanatical religious groups and terrorists (absolute and total violence, "sacral"), etc.

    Of traditional places, the divine transcendence for the immanence of the action of political, scientific and religious man.

    Gnosis as forma mentis is also an immanentization of the divine principle, the transposition of the idea of divinity to the interior of the subject.

    And the horizon of human experiences. In this way, every form of gnosis and esotericism can, in some aspect esotericism can, in some aspect, be described as a "technology of the spirit"; but, in the contemporary epoch, gnosis manifests itself in a diffuse form in everything and, therefore, would be the product of a "spirit of the age". The 1960s would mark the most important the most important point of the new path to be followed: that of the presence of gnosis in what would constitute an extreme change in the cultural paradigm of the Western culture, the one we cohabit, is characterized by this appreciation of the "new", as opposed to the "past" or "traditional ". The "new" has been associated to the individual, to his or her actions, emotions, choices and abilities, as opposed to the "old", associated with the "old" and the "new", the "old", associated with rules, institutions and norms. If before the institution had the power to order the cosmos, now it is the individual who is born with this power. It is important, in this context, to make reference to the tradition that gives value to the lived present and allows for the incautiousness value to the lived present and allows the seizure of novelty. Hence the methodological need to work with the concept of "restored tradition " in order to understand how these cultures cope with an internal phenomenon.

    Cultures cope with an internal or external phenomenon that provokes radical changes, since the newness changes, since the established novelty, in order to be legitimized, must be considered as a return to an ancient past.

    Tradition can be understood -among other ways- for example, as a set of sentiments, values, ideas, symbols and behaviors, which, because of the notion of total truth, repetition over time and social memory, have acquired the power to present themselves as the (determinant article) true nature of society, man or religion.

    It is important to say that there are levels of articulation between traditional and modern dimensions. Thus, Modernity has put the forces of tradition in permanent questioning, so that the crisis is also a crisis of tradition when it is not compatible with individual choice.

    Is not compatible with individual choice and the process of modern institutionalization and socialization. The Western modus operandi would engender, in its radicalization, "Postmodernity" (late Modernity, high Modernity and other similar categories).

    But we note that there is not, in itself, a Modernity; there is always a Modernity in relation to another, ancient, atavistic time. There is only Modernity, understood as a relationship, when the present is inaugurated with its own value, that is, as a new era. The idea of Modernity, therefore, assumes an appreciation: time and the appreciation: time and the apprehension of the ascending historical movement, a value of scale, which goes from the past to the present, that is to say, as a new era.

    However, tradition, which was self-evident in the ancient and medieval world, has been questioned in the modern Western world , brought to defend itself from criticism and to represent itself, paradoxically, as tradition by modern means (from the individual and his or her (starting from the individual and his choices, from the media, from political representation in the framework of representative-liberal democracy, from consumption and spectacle, etc.    However, in Western society, the idea of the individual as a decision-making center and cornerstone of social life gave primacy to liberal points of view and to democracies.

    All social aesthetics is strewn with metaphors that place the person as the radiating center of social relations and their organizations, but what is the individual, a homogeneous unit? Individualism is a social construction, like tradition.

    Little by little, economic processes (financial and cultural globalization),social and cultural processes begin to liquefy the solid Modernity, the cultural industry is transmitted, the means of communication and transportation are developedand the means of communication and transportation are developed. New theologies are reborn and the past and current heresies confirm the universal imperative of personal choice. On the contrary, the old and the new coexist and are in permanent exchange.

    In the transition from Modernity to Postmodernity there were significant changes in aesthetics, politics, philosophy, social sciences and in the political and business world.

    The grand narratives and utopias lost all importance. The great cultural consensus of Modernity lost credibility and plurality was established in the field of religion.The mass and electronic media, the technologies of biotechnology production and control, of consumption, of social reengineering and the change of ethos have collaborated with socioeconomic changes that drive trends and restructure life, both in religious and cultural terms.

    In this context, the spread of gnosis or an "Eastern theodicy" - as Campbell argues - is not does not happen without the consolidated and stable religious traditions undergoing considerable reformulations.

    For example, the emergence of prosperity theology within Pentecostalism, whose origin is gnostic: defying God with offerings and sacrifices and sacrifices of money so that he has to give the faithful material goods, prosperity and happiness.

    Another point of enlargement of the theoretical framework in theology and the sciences of religions is the possibility of bringing closer religions is the possibility of bringing gnosis closer to technology, science and cyberculture. For example, for Martins, some of the trends in cybercultural thought, such as the cyborg techno-feminist project, revitalize the gnostic dream of transcending technology, science and cyberculture.

    Gnostic dream of transcending the diaspora of beings. Davis113 , on the other hand, believes in a techno-gnosis and establishes it as a techno-gnosis and establishes it as a secret history of the "mystical impulses" that

    The Western world's obsession with technology114 , especially with its communication technologies.

    Perhaps it is possible to speak of a "technological gnosticism" as an imaginary overcoming of the corporeal, of human finitude and its existential limitations, or even of sacred technologies of the self .

    New forms of mysticism, magic and worship, characteristic of the contemporary cultural horizon.

    And God said: let there be hybrids.... and the hybrids were created In this sense, religion has not diminished, but it has been diluted in the imaginary and in the culture of the western world, and its spread has culture of the Western world, and its propagation in new directions has expanded the boundaries borders, which exhausted them, while at the same time provoking a renewed effort to restore the old territories.. This is due, perhaps, to the origin of Modernity, to both religious movements (such as Puritanism) and secular movements (such as positivism or Marxist militancy), which share similar ideas and fundamental meanings.

    The problem is that some forms of questioning about religion, in Modernity, their permanence or resurgence continue to be ways of separating, ontologically, boundaries that exist only in terms of the political strategies of modern identity, or at least what is believed to be modern. Casanova writes that "it is the need to recognize that the borders themselves are open and need to be open to questioning, redefining, and redefining. to questioning, redefinition, renegotiation and discursive legitimization " .

    In general, it can be affirmed that secularization was an invention of the modern project, to recreate the frontiers and to project, to recreate frontiers and establish new social and cultural parameters; however, it ended up becoming a hostage of immanentization operated by the expansion of gnosis, an artificial frontier. In fact, there was no Modern and Modernity as fixed and essentialist ontological identities.

    Thus, Latour examines the central phenomenon of the West, the current project - the one that would distinguish it from other non-Western peoples - with all its variations and epistemological and linguistic strategies. The key characteristic of the West, defended and theorized, would be its modern modernity (rational, disenchanted, enlightened, with the hegemony of positivist science and technology in the service of the liberation of humanity), which is realized based on its historical hegemony, the Occidental difference in relation to other peoples, civilizations, and cultures. Internally and externally to the cultural boundaries of modern modernity, a double strategy of differentiation was constructed: internally, attempts were made to keep the religious and scientific dyads, subjective and objective, nature and culture separate; externally, other dyads were established: savage and civilized, for example.

    For Latour, by not fulfilling the "ordinations" foreseen in the modern constitution - whose main goal was to separate and divide, establish new epistemological hierarchies, and rearrange social reality - modernity has not gone beyond being an unrealized and defective project in its essence. The moderns became victims of their own success ... everything happens as if the breadth of collective mobilization had ended up multiplying hybrids to the point where the constitutional framework that denies but allows their existence could no longer hold them in place. The modern constitution collapsed under its own weight, suffocated by the hybrids whose experimentation it permitted because it concealed their consequences for the fabric of society.

The modern illusion of separating and isolating the domains of nature (the innate), politics (human action), and culture (discourses, symbols, religions) was undone. In this sense, that illusion has fueled the immanentization of gnosis. This article, by proposing the articulation of ideas from Latour and Voegelin, argues that the widespread acceptance of immanent gnostic forms - in much of contemporary science, art, politics, and institutionalized religion - has only been possible because modernity has become entangled in an aporia, that is, in its own unrealized state.

    During the 20th and 21st centuries, the proliferation of hybrids and the constant movement of boundaries have called into question the effectiveness of modern strategies of methodological demarcation. It can be said that almost all sciences have sanctified these strategies, and only a few thinkers have transcended such boundaries. Regarded as "ontological territories," boundaries have turned into "walls" and have scrutinized various aspects of Western knowledge, including the broad discourse of the West: scientific production.

    The idea that human beings and non-human agents are constantly interconnected in a social network of elements (material and immaterial) is emphasized by Latour. Actor-network theory is established from a constructivist perspective based on concepts and principles drawn from the philosopher and sociologist David Bloor. These concepts and principles are divided into translation and network (communication and interconnection among all factors and agents) and the principle of symmetry (the same types of causes explain true and false beliefs). Subsequently, the new concept of "symmetrical anthropology" has emerged, advocated by Latour.

    The notion of incommensurability (also applied to the relationship between religion and society and between the natural and social world) is deconstructed. Therefore, it is possible to apply a "symmetrical anthropology" to religion and the social world to bring out the essence of their differences and elevate them to the level of semantic plurivocity, instead of subjecting them to a priori epistemological canons.

    In this case, Latour's critique also affects the division of hegemonic intellectual tasks in modernity because the word "modern" designates two different sets of practices that are no longer separate. These two sets of social practices (carried out by groups, institutions, and individuals), upheld by the immanentization of gnosis, have been jointly created and presented by defenders and critics of modernity as separate and distinct sets.

However, the boundaries between nature, politics, and discourse, imposed by scientists, politicians, and religious figures as if they were uncommunicative territories, have hindered the understanding of constant exchanges between these systems and dimensions. In other words, in contemporary society, three agendas have been developed to discuss the world and its relationships with religion, politics, and science: naturalization, socialization, and deconstruction, which do not engage in dialogue with one another.

The naturalistic argument defends the existence of inherent, timeless natures, such as the "brain" or "genetic" locus of human spirituality. Socialization intends to exclude the natural and subject it to the idea of absolute construction, for example, the human body or individual emotions are purely social constructions. Deconstruction transforms everything (facts and discourses) into fiction, meaning that nature and society are social conventions, lacking any inherent reality, they are not concrete but allusive, metaphorical, and allegorical.

On the other hand, a quick observation reveals the impossibility of the modern project fulfilling its promises of emancipation, individualization, and rationalization without generating chaos and boundary confusion. The more the modern project was sought, defended, and legitimized in all social systems, the more disorder was generated.

At the outset, critics of Latour's proposal raise questions about the foundations of scientific production in modernity. Latour finds these foundations starting from the 17th century, through the analysis of a historical controversy between philosopher Thomas Hobbes and scientist Robert Boyle, in which both defended the boundaries between nature and culture, to the roots of different politics: scientific politics and the science of politics.

This is one of the most famous divisions, but there are others, such as that between the researcher and the native, which are classical foundations of anthropology. Within these divisions, the "scientists" sought to create methods and tools that could maintain fixed and fully operational boundaries, including textual forms of description, legitimized by certain hermeneutic approaches. In the intricacies of this distinction, since the 19th century, religion and the religious were enclosed alongside the object and the native, capable of dissection, observation, and definition, but not as producers of knowledge.    

    Latour proposes a productive methodological approach in analyzing the social actors involved in knowledge production, regimes of truth, and religious practices. In the field of religious studies, classical study has turned the religious subject-interlocutor into a religious object, whether this object is the essence of religion, a movement, or a phenomenon. Asymmetrical anthropology can be an alternative path of understanding that avoids ontologizing the phenomenon within rigid theoretical frameworks or dissolving it in the growing and infinite empirical mass of social reality.

Asymmetrical anthropology as a method could collaborate with theology and religious sciences to understand why conservative Catholic and Protestant religious groups, as well as extreme feminist and black groups, diametrically opposed in ideological terms, rely on biological-genetic arguments to justify their actions in the public-state sphere against same-sex marriage or to substantiate their social rights, identities, and worldview.

Therefore, according to Latour, the divisions between humans and non-humans, antirepresentationalists and representationalists, function more as producers of hybrids than as seekers of truth. The key lies in investigating the ongoing processes of subjectivization when scholars approach the study of the religious phenomenon and initiate an interaction.

It is possible to understand the construction of the religious subject and the subject-object as dimensions of a process that has transformed grammatical subjects (the self, individual action, Modernity, the Church, religion, and politics) into given ontological subjects, naturally since always. This transformation has been paradoxically carried out during Modernity. This text argues that the paradox of this "ontologization" operation is due to the modern aporia inscribed in the constitution of Modernity, which has separated dimensions of reality and established the sets of "translation" and "purification" as mediators.

But they are not two separate sets or independent structures. The first set is created through "translation," which is the blending of genres of new beings, hybrids of nature and culture. The second set is created through "purification," which gives rise to two distinct ontological zones, one for humans and one for non-humans. Each set depends on the other. If these two sets of practices are considered separately, there is Modernity, meaning there is adherence to the project of purification or translation developed through the proliferation of hybrids. In that sense, the more hybrids are prohibited from being thought of, the more their intersection becomes possible, which is the paradox of the moderns.

In this context, Latour presents three critical currents of thought: that of the moderns (believers in the proposals of modernity) who defend the modern constitution, that of the anti-moderns (non-believers in modern proposals) who are reactionary and nostalgic for the old world, which is impossible to recreate, and that of the postmoderns, skeptics who reject the previous two positions and remain in a state of doubt and belief. All of these currents fail because, as the title of Latour's book states, "we have never been modern," there has never been modernity.

Therefore, Latour aims to reduce the space of incommensurability between the dimensions of social or natural reality by asserting that we do not live in a modern society because, unlike all the others, we would finally be free from the hell of collective relations, the "obscurantism" of religion (in the classical Enlightenment view), and the tyranny of politics, but rather because, like all the others, responsibilities are redistributed, replacing a (legal, collective, social) cause with a scientific cause, not a social one.

Latour considers that, in order to overcome the proliferation of hybrids without wearing out social ties, new forms of political representation and democracy would need to be thought of, capable of translating between hybrids and actors. From this critique, one can think about the boundaries of humanism and the need to extend the sphere of rights (to life, respect, etc.) to animals and nature, considering them as new subjects of rights. This implies shifting and decentralizing the anthropocentric axis of culture, economy, and politics, and grounding it on a new cosmocentric foundation.

Final considerations

The structure of modern-contemporary society is aporetic, meaning that modernity is an unrealizable project in its essence and in the immanentization of gnosis, understood as the process by which important institutions of modernity (in the fields of science, politics, and religion) have absorbed gnostic ideas. It can be suspected that modernity itself, among other origins, has emerged from the process of immanentizing gnosis in the social-historical structure of the Western world and that the development of this gnostic immanence has brought about an insoluble contradiction: the non-inclusion of hybrids in the democratic system of governance.

Given that religion is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, it can only be understood by adopting an integral perspective that takes into account various approaches. Thus, it is possible to conclude, among other ideas, that the constitution of modernity and all its scientific and technological force is not an absolute rupture with other religious and cultural orders. It is possible, therefore, to argue that there are affinities between ideas of religious dislocation, individualism, and secularization (as a distancing from religious institutions and their ordering power) and certain gnostic ideas such as the "deification" of human action (man as demiurge). Both Voegelin and Latour criticize modernity and its projects, its problems, and its unfulfilled promises. These are two powerful but distinct criticisms.

Voegelin's criticism speaks of a process of loss of transcendence. In this process, the cosmic and the historical are not in harmony but in a process of mutual destruction. It is necessary to return to a new epistemological reading and a new social action that constructs or reconstructs a bridge between the cosmic and the historical, under the light of transcendence. Only then can contemporary society reconnect with its origins and reconcile with its pains and wounds.

The second criticism, that of Latour, accuses modernity of non-realization: modernity is not realized in its essence and, therefore, remains hidden behind numerous mechanisms of hybridization between beings of nature and society, and we can also say, between religion and culture. There is a hybridization that can only be understood through a new constitution that recognizes the identity of all hybrids. We never had that clear and dichotomous system that modernity promised. The Latourian idea is to generate a space in which hybrids can be analyzed from their very genesis to the progressive cooling that naturalized them.

Therefore, to investigate the scope of religion in complex-modern societies, it is necessary to "undichotomize," "deessentialize," and suspend formulations

Theoretical perspectives, such as those advocating for greater or lesser privatization of religion in Modernity; or reaffirming the primacy of traditional canonical limits of scientific knowledge in the face of the incessant multiplication of hybrids; or the defense of arrogant propositions from a science isolated from social issues, justice, and social equality. In this way, it is possible to undertake the difficult task of understanding the religion without being struck by the "object-subjects" or "subject-objects" of the experiences, structures, and processes that will be investigated.

JOSE SERNA DE SILVER.E Religión y sociedad moderna: la Modernidad no realizada y la inmanencia de la gnosis. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.scielo.org.co/pdf/thxa/v68n185/0120-3649-thxa-68-185-00207.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjSwKrly5D_AhVJR7gEHXLMDP0QFnoECA8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw0F1XuxRcNCt87TQkftzuVW.