Throughout his long and fruitful intellectual career, Eric Voegelin set out to show the ideological drift of modern and contemporary thought and highlight the religious aura that were gaining political movements. This is the main contribution of religions Policies (1938), the first of two essays in this issue. According to Voegelin, religious symbols configuration of political forces to rethink the process of secularization and to analyze the replacement of the transcendent by worldly ideologies.

From this new perspective, science, politics and gnosticism (1959), the second of the texts included in this volume, his well-known theory of Gnostic origin of the modern age is exposed. According to Voegelin, cultural and social expansion of gnosis he caused the "immanentization" of the saving hope and proved decisive for man and society take ownership of the features and the place traditionally reserved for transcendence.

Both studies are intended to highlight the consequences of the deification of immanent categories, but also seek to reverse, at least philosophically, the gnostic disturbing influence.