Joachim speaks of a papa angelico, an angelic pope – which is more a principle than a man. It is a pope who is not pope any more but only represents the presence of the Spirit without authority. The hierarchy will be transformed into monasticism and the lay world will be transformed into monasticism, and then the last period will have been reached. In this third stage there will be perfection (perfectio) , contemplation, liberty, Spirit. They will be in history. For Augustine the final end is only transcended; nothing new will happen in history any more. For Joachim the new is in history. He also calls it the “eternal Gospel,” and the eternal Gospel is not a book – the Gospel is the presence of the Divine Spirit in every individual, according to the prophecy of Joel – which is often used in this context. It is a simply intuitis veritatis, a simple intuition of truth which all can have without intermediate authority.
Freedom means the authority of the Divine Spirit in the individual. It is not rationalizing autonomy, but it is theonomy, theonomy which is filled with the presence of the Divine Spirit.
History produces freedom in the course of its progress. So it is also a progressivistic idea: the goal is ahead.
Now this of course was extremely revolutionary, and we understand that Thomas aquinas fought against it in the name of the Church. The Church has no classical period ahead but has it in the past. The classical period of the Church is the Apostolic period. The Church is based on history, history has brought the Church about, but the Church is itself/ not in history. The Church is beyond history because it is at the end of history.
All these ideas are, as you can see, extremely important, and they are important because in them something is present which was the dynamic, revolutionary, explosive power in the medieval as well as in the modern world. The extreme Franciscans used his prophecies and applied it to their own order, and from there they revolted against the Church. Many sectarian movements, the sects of the Reformation on which much American life is dependent, were indirectly and directly dependent on Joachim di Fiore. The Enlightened philosophers who spoke about a third period in history in which everybody will be taught directly by the inner light – the light of reason – are dependent on Joachim. The socialist movement is dependent on the same idea when in the classless society everybody will be directly responsible to the ultimate principles. Now I don’t mean that all these peoples knew exactly the name and the ideas of Joachim, but there is a tradition of revolution in Western Europe which goes on and on and in which fundamental ideas, first appearing in Joachim, are present and are changing reality.
