Abomination

Faith Zone, Sophia says. This is going to be good.

Faith in what? Driss asks. What is there left to have in faith in, on the Organisational Management campus? It’s nihilism itself, right? Disenchantment itself. Nothing remains of God but the void: that’s what this campus says.

Cicero would approve, Furio says.

Cicero would say that the campus shows things as they are, I say. Creation stripped to the bone. Naked … facticity. The whole creaturely realm, not as some holy gift – sorry, Io – not as some magic.

God isn’t revealed through the world, according to Cicero, I say. God and the world are antagonistic. We have to know the world as illuminated by nothing, by no meaning, by no direction.

And that’s the campus? Sophia asks.

That’s the test of the campus, Driss says. That’s what the campus is pushing us towards.

We have to hold onto the … nihilistic perception, I say. Have to hold on to what creatureliness shows us – that’s what Cicero would say. The worst the world becomes, the greater the chance for redemption.

For Cicero, there was a new faith … which is made from doubt and disbelief, I say. Which creates itself out of the void – the divine void. God has to spring anew from his nothingness.

And God will do so, I say. Because we demand the meaning of meaning. Because we shake the bars of this world – cry out. Because we know that what there is is horror.

No, Io says. No.

Can you find meaning in this campus, Io? Furio asks. Seriously? In the faith zone. In that tawdry half-built Millennium Dome thing?

This whole campus is nothing, Io says. It’s lost. It’s pushed God away. It’s left the realm of God – voluntarily. It’s renounced God. It can only be destroyed – that, I accept. But you want to burn up the world. You hate the whole world.

Be not conformed to the world: isn’t that what the Bible says, I say.

Don’t be conformed to the human world – sure, Io says. To the Organisational Management world. But that’s not all the world is.

The deepest nihilistic fall of the world: that’s what we need to know, I say. The whole of the Creation has to be allowed to fall into the night. God’s withdrawal from the world has to be complete. And that will be the revelation: a new form of revelation.

There’s still goodness in the world, Io says. Still beauty. Still truth.

I actually think Faith Zone is the deepest nihilistic fall of the world, Driss says. It really is tawdry.

It’s supposed to be for all faiths, according to the plaque, Furio says. It’s about the common core to all religion.

Organisational Management syncretism: that’s all we need, Driss says. Some cavitated temple, consecrated to fuck-all …

They want us to worship the void – their void, Io says. They want us to pray to the void they’ve created.

The Faith Zone is also a panicked reaction to the void that they’re creating, Driss says. They can’t face it – what they’ve opened up. The nihilistic fall of everything.

I thought the void was all about vastness and lawlessness and chaos, Sophie says. I thought it was on our side.

But Organisational Management wants to keep it under control, Driss says. Seize it for itself.

I’m confused, Sophia says. Is the void good or bad? How can you tell if it’s divine or not?

We have to become the antinomians, I say. The bearers of the alien fire. Waiting only to see the flash of the transcendent in the immanent. The apocalyptic fire of divine love.

What do you see, Fiver? What’s the Faith Zone about?

Abomination, Fiver whispers.

Something terrible’s going to happen here, I know it, Io says. Something vast – vaster than this campus. Something good – that will appear evil. Something merciful – that will appear merciless. Isn’t that right, Fiver?

Fiver, silent.