Talk show host Stephen Colbert, who has long been lauded as a devout Catholic, baffled Christians with a very anti-Christian claim about life after death on the penultimate episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
During an “orgy of self-worship” where a massive string of celebrity guests asked Colbert to answer questions about himself, comedian Jim Gaffigan entered the host’s chair and posed a query that Colbert himself has asked many times: “What do you think happens when we die?”
The comedic writer said this his view isn’t very concrete — “it’s more like a feeling, and the feeling is that when we die, I think there is some continuance of some kind. But it’s like a dispersion of the self into some other greater being. And I don’t have any other feelings beyond that.”
Gaffigan, also a professed Catholic, quipped back, “What you’re saying is: we become Febreze.”
“Yes. Right,” Colbert (who famously boasted “I teach Sunday school, motherf**ker!”) replied with a smile. “That’s exactly right.”
The interaction quickly sparked a flurry of conversation on social media, with this author remarking that Colbert’s view of the afterlife “sounds more like the Gnostic concept of the Pleroma than the Catholic doctrine of Heaven.”
The “pleroma” is a Greek word that ancient Gnostics, like the followers of Valentinus, used to communicate the mythology that all physical matter is splintered off from a perfect divine being, and it will eventually return to that Godhead, or “Fullness,” and the corruption known as the physical world will cease to exist.
According to Valentinian teaching, human beings (personified as Sophia) were originally part of the divine collectivity or Fullness (pleroma). The world originates when human beings fall into a state of suffering and deficiency. Physical existence is explicitly identified with this fallen state. Similarly, the dissolution of the world and restoration to Fullness takes place through gnosis.
…
The Valentinian initiation ritual included prayers for the ascent to the eighth heaven in which the person declared their origin from the “Pre-existent One” and renounced the authority of the Craftsman (Demiurge) and the lower powers. (Irenaeus Against Heresies 1:21:5 cf. First Apocalypse of James 32:29-36:1, Irenaeus Against Heresies 1:13:6).
While some commentators agreed Colbert’s take sounds quite Gnostic, others said this belief sounds like Buddhism or Hinduism. One user remarked, “Stephen Colbert chooses the Childhood’s End Overmind ending to nobody’s surprise,” referring to the Arthur C. Clarke novel where aliens who resemble Medieval depictions of demons trigger the extinction of humankind through transhumanist experimentation.
One reply suggested Colbert may be referring to the “Omega Point” theory espoused by Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, who finds an acolyte in fellow Jesuit (and unwavering subversive) James Martin. He and Colbert have a long relationship, where the latter declared the former the “official chaplain” of his Comedy Central show The Colbert Report. In the past year, each man interviewed the other on the broadcasts and podcasts that they host.
Several Catholic X users called the late-night host’s view “heretical” and a “disgrace to the Catholic faith.” Some labeled him a “Cafeteria Catholic” (a person who picks and chooses which doctrines of the church they accept) or “Catholic in Name Only.” Several people quoted the Apostles’ Creed, which Colbert would have to recite frequently at Mass, which states Christians believe in “the resurrection of the body” and “life everlasting.” Author Daniel Foster remarked: “Colbert was a serious Catholic once upon a time but let himself get midlifed and cohorted into the bland and vaguely eastern spiritualism of the celebrity class.”
A Baptist pastor replying to the clip articulated the orthodox Christian view of life after death — that believers will go into the presence of God but retain their identity and eventually undergo a bodily resurrection:
That is far closer to vague spiritual monism than historic Christianity. Scripture does not teach that we are “dispersed” into some greater impersonal being after death. Human beings remain personal, conscious, morally accountable, and either in the presence of Christ or under judgment.
Jesus did not speak of the afterlife as the loss of self, but as resurrection, eternal life, fellowship with God, and the redeemed dwelling with Him forever. Christianity is not absorption into the divine. It is reconciliation to the living God through Jesus Christ.
Spectator editor Damian Thompson got in a good joke about the end of The Late Show due to its reported unprofitable viewership. “Colbert’s version of the afterlife: vanishing into the ether like a cancelled talk show,” he wrote.
The final episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will air Thursday night.