A Secular Age: Charles W Taylor

https://www.amazon.com/Secular-Age-Charles-Taylor/dp/0674026764/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

As I traversed this massive nearly 900 page work, I sometimes wondered; "Why does one undertake such a thing?". I had previously read "How to Not Be Secular", a "cliff notes summary", so I had the general ideas:

• 500 years ago we lived in an enchanted, embedded, hierarchical world, while today we live in a disenchanted, disembedded, flat world.
• The "standard story" of the secularists is a "subtraction story" -- "science" made it "impossible to believe" in more than matter. Taylor finds the "subtraction story" utterly lacking -- we still believe in love, beauty, justice, consciousness (spirit), and "good" ... none of which can be measured, so therefore do not exist to science. There are lots of other reasons that "subtraction" falls short.
• We live as a "Buffered Self" that is cut off from God, family, other people, the past, having "a place" ... again, a LONG list. However we are "buffeted" or "haunted" by our mortality and a sense of "something more" ... "fullness" that tugs at our hearts / souls ????
• Many are radically unhappy in this world to the point of suicide. They have FAR more "stuff" than even the kings, lords and popes of 500 years ago, yet their lives are arid -- often to the point of not being worth living. "Stuff" does not seem to be enough. 

I'll call those "the biggies" for now. My sense is that the reading of such a book vs "reviews" ... by me or others,  is a bit like the difference between being told of mountains, the ocean, falling in love, having children, grandchildren, etc and of EXPERIENCING those things. Certainly, good wordsmiths, poets, musicians, movie makers, etc can all convey significant parts of those experiences, however I doubt that any person that has experienced one of those or thousands of other things would say "I wish that I never did the real thing, I liked the descriptions of it much better"! 

Late in the millenium prior to Christ, there were a number of "higher religions" that began to replace paganism -- this is sometimes referred to as "The Axial Age" (Karl Jaspers) meaning "pivital age" because the idea of transcendence was so important to changing human thought. "More than mere matter". 

It is tempting for me to head off to read 5-10 referenced works that put even more flesh on the bones of how we have returned to essentially a pre-axial pagan view -- to make the obvious Lennon modification ... "nothing to live or die for, and no religion too ..." 

In the words of Evelyn Waugh quoted in the book ....

I think one has to look deeper before one will find the reason why in England today the Roman Church is recruiting so many men and women who are not notably gullible, dim-witted or eccentric.

It seems to me that in the present phase of European history the essential issue is no longer between Catholicism, on one side, and Protestantism, on the other, but between Christianity and Chaos… 

Today we can see [the loss of Christian faith]…as the active negation of all that western culture has stood for. Civilization – and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food, nor even surgery and hygienic houses, but the whole moral and artistic organization of Europe – has not in itself the power of survival. It came into being through Christianity, and without it has no significance or power to command allegiance. The loss of faith in Christianity and the consequential lack of confidence in moral and social standards have become embodied in the ideal of a materialistic, mechanized state… It is no longer possible, as it was in the time of Gibbon, to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it rests… 

That is the first discovery, that Christianity is essential to civilization and that it is in greater need of combative strength than it has been for centuries.

Christianity held out in the US for longer than it did in Europe, but we have descended into chaos as well -- pick what date you want, but few deny it today. Yes, the dominant culture still believes that the chaos of Obama was better than the chaos of Trump, however in a world driven only by raw power with no controlling theological, philosophical, constitutional or legal authority, secular life is  just a constant scrum for power by any means possible.

My purpose in reading works like this is to "experience the ocean" of a great mind creating a great work. The experience is one of being made both smaller and larger -- like seeing the ocean or the mountains. It isn't really about snapping a few pictures and putting down a few words. There is some minor similarity of why it is critical for a Christian to daily read their Bible -- cover to cover, then maybe just start again, or give the New Testament a second pass before going back to Genesis -- it becomes the constant EXPERIENCE of the Bible. Not "a text", but a connection to the vastness of God much larger than mere text.

Certainly, "Secular Age" pales in comparison, it is but a "shadow" as compared to the Bible -- like comparing going to Lake Mille Lacs with going to see the Pacific Ocean.

The link to "How to Not Be Secular" above, or another highly rated review of "Secular Age" will give you the "talking points", but in my view, not the "gestalt". Secular Age is clearly a labor of love for Taylor to create -- and at least a labor of "deep like" to read. It was worth it for me, and I hesitate to advise anyone else, other than to say that I would expect that anyone will be changed by the experience.

Heresy, History, Theology

This is not a common topic for me, but I was recently exposed to "Rightly Dividing the Gospel" through a friend. Although I'm what might be called "well read", and have a varied background in Christian religion, this was new.

Raised as a Fundamentalist Baptist in a small association called "The General Association of Regular Baptists" in N Wisconsin; doing a good deal of study on the history of world religions during and after college; eventually finding a home in Lutheranism (although Catholicism might well be even closer to my thoughts); being exposed to a small sect called "Apostolic Christian" which has something on the order of 30K members in the US, ... plus reading a lot of books, and articles on religion, but I'd never run into the "rightly divided gospel" slant.

My first reaction when I see something like this -- in religion, in "get rich quick schemes", in "did you know that xxxx is a huge conspiracy"?, etc, etc is to try to be gentle. All humans want to be "special", and to have "special knowledge" -- Birthers, Truthers (9-11 was an inside job), Pierre Salinger Flight 800, The Da Vinci Code, etc, etc ad nauseum. Most all of us have been taken in by more than one, and have some sympathy for some others. Human nature LOVES "special knowledge", and while REAL "special knowledge" is very hard to get, taking years of study and effort, the kind we all like is ALWAYS easy -- "everyone else just missed it!". (that is a big clue to falseness)

There is a special name for special knowledge related to Christianity "Gnosticism" ...the specific version where the physical world is created by a "demiurge" is only one example. The concept of "special knowledge" permeates Zoroastrianism, Neoplatonism and everything up through Mormonism and New Age cults. Folks have been at this a LONG time.

So the first test is "is this REALLY something that has been around a LONG time (stood the test of time), and who are the smartest people that support it?". Who founded it? When did they do that? What is/was their character? What were their credentials? etc.

So now I'll be a bit flip -- since I have acknowledged that we all have this weakness.

....and Christ said“Upon this Brock (Robert C Brock)I will found my Church … in 1985,  and here is it’s “Vatican”… or for MO Synod, “Holy City” (St. Louis).

Not all that impressive. Google and "Street View" take some of the cachet out of such things. The "core" of this "faith" is that God sent Paul to Gentiles and Jesus to the Jews, so "Gentiles" can just listen to Paul. This is more than a bit hard to take seriously right off the bat -- so did Christ die only for the Jews? Even for God,  big time actions are pretty hard to ignore -- like dying for the sins of ALL. I could spend time going through each of the verses they take out of context to attempt to make their case, but I'm not wasting my time. A cursory search of the web didn't show that anyone with any stature has even found this blip worthy of rebuttal, so I'm not inclined to tilt at the windmill Don Quixote style.

Humans love fixation. Lutherans tend to be fixated on "Grace" -- if there is anything that is required of them for salvation they get testy. Taking regular communion, darkening the church door, forgiving little of others since MUCH has been forgiven for them, any sort of "work", etc, they balk -- it must ALL be GRACE! Thus saith Luther -- but not Christ IMHO.

Baptists are all decisions and don'ts  (don't drink, don't smoke, don't play cards, don't go to movies, don't dance ... it varies, but ye shall know them cuz they don't!

Catholics are just Catholic -- you are or you aren't. They have the "one true church founded on Peter" verse to lean on, and as someone who cares about history, their claim resonates with me.

But -- Christ resonates more. I'm never going to be a "Paulist", I'm a CHRISTIAN!!! Christ not only spoke and speaks to me, he DIED for ME (and I'm not a Jew). The actions of almighty God seep through time and space -- as well as his words. TO ME!

Paul is great -- he has his problems with women, getting married and of course "his thorn". He is fine, but he isn't GOD, and certainly not the SAVIOR!

Heresy is an old and new problem just like other temptation, and it always be as long as some guy in the corner hands out a pamphlet giving you "the secret knowledge". So we have the  the Apostles Creed (180 or so), the Nicene Creed (325), and the Athanasian Creed (6th century, But mostly from St Augustine, "On the Trinity" from 415). Not exactly "new knowledge".

We Lutherans may have gotten fixated on Grace (a very good thing in general), but at least we have not forgotten the creeds of the church that leads all the way back to the seminal moments of history where Jesus dies on the Cross and RISES from the dead! In case someone missed that, Paul didn't do that -- nor did he remotely claim to do so. Nor did he say "upon this rock (or even this "Brock")  I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Heresies, especially Gnostic types, are a dime a dozen. We can all feel that little pang of "I've NEVER heard about THIS before, MAYBE it is true and changes everything"! When we feel it, it is a good time to read a couple creeds and get over it -- maybe with a glass of OLD Scotch .. possibly older than the new "revelation" in some cases.

It is the siren song of the latest and greatest product, the newest "study" and "progressivism" itself, the leading snake oil of our time. It's new, but it is a very old story!

Don't be fooled -- wisdom is always old and eternity is always long.

Ideas Have Consequences Again

This book was visited before and it will be visited in the future. I like to highlight my books, but I may as well not highlight this one, or come up with a new standard, because it is almost all highlighted now. I'd love to start just putting in great quotes here, but there are so many that it isn't really worth even starting.

The bottom message that can't be stated too often or too well is that the "ultimate decision" is; "Is this all there is"? Meaning: is the material universe all there is, or is there something more? That something more can be named "perfect forms", "spirit", "God", "intellect" or a number of other names, but at the core, it is the "heroic assertion", "wishful thinking", or "prayerful acceptance" that there is truth beyond particles and bits that is the genesis point of departure for the ultimate cleavage of world view.

While Weaver doesn't directly say this (probably because he would find it beneath him to say), when man continued his rebellion against God and Religion in the enlightenment and set science on the throne, he threw "the baby out with the bathwater". Philosophy went out with Religion, and at least western man was left with no "unifying story".

It would be interesting to see how Weaver would see the current Islamic / Western culture clash. Is a bad transcendent idea better than no transcendent idea? My belief is that Weaver might say "yes", but I'm just putting words in his mouth. The decision is one for Theology and Philosophy, and our culture is so lacking in both that the number of minds available to help us answer such questions of ultimate truth are very small. We have also lost the cultural context to even respect the answer, were it to be presented.

I am again awed, and left in somewhat the same state as a primitive that has wandered in the ruins of a great city by this book and others. Thousands of years of thinking on the state of man in the universe has been cast aside and but a tiny remnant of humanity is even interested in discovering concepts like meaning and truth. The vast majority would rather focus on the firing of 8 attorneys under one political party while having had no concern over the firing of 93 others by the opposite political party 14 years earlier. They are perfectly willing to let "truth" be all in context of time and party.

99% of the population is completely unaware of the consequences of making those decisions as to the loss of meaning, direction, value, and understanding created by such a willingness to flee principle and consistency. Our limited reason can only find purchase in the context of consistency against some standard not fluid in time and application. Science provides no meaning, only data. Correlated data relative to physical perception at times, but no values in any sense. So we continue to drift, hoping that "bigger, better, faster, easier, more comfortable" will provide happiness, or at least comfort.

Why ARE we so fascinated with Anna Nichole? Could it be that she is a bit of a blond "canary in the coal mine"? She seems to be a worthy symbol of the direction of our general culture.