“this paganism is …deliberately agnostic about final things, what awaits beyond the shores of this world, and it is skeptical of the idea that there exists some ascetic, world-denying moral standard to which we should aspire.” — Douthat buff.ly/2C8e98H

You’d better believe that it is “skeptical “, because “some ascetic, world-denying moral standard” is a dualism that is not found in Scripture, save through that aforementioned gnostic eisegesis.

The “world denying” to which we are called is to reject “the way of the world” (ideology and loyalties)  and not the rejection of the “place” and the “home” for some “future and perfected world”. The story is redemption,  not annihilation and “all new stuff”.  But many dualistic Christians insist that the world is going to be “burned up”