In this episode we enter into the halls of Part III of A Secular Age - The Nova Effect. Once there is one viable option of unbelief, more and more become available and viable, as do ways of believing, as well as options at every point in between - an explosion of options for belief and unbelief.

Part III begins with Chapter 8 - The Malaises of Modernity, where Charles Taylor looks at what it feels like to be in a world so "progressed" and "free" but feeling like something isn't quite right.

We take time to note where we see the malaise in the world around us, and the response it draws out.

References:

-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (299-304)

In a world where freedom has become such a key value, and in many ways is aligned with human dignity, does believing in God offend our freedom, or does it in fact provide a foundation for it?

In this episode we explore the implications of "I think, there I am" both in terms of how we view what is and could be real, and how we understand our freedom. With the glorification of disengaged reason, we can be fooled into thinking our mind is the sole maker of meaning in the universe.

"Disengagement may be quite the wrong way to go about increasing understanding" (p. 285)

"The prestige of the stance begins to dictate what we can take in as reality" (p.286)

References:

-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (280-295)

In this episode we look at 6 tensions between classical Greek thought and Orthodox Christianity as they played out in the aftermath of the Enlightenment: i) the importance of the body, ii) what of our lives is important when we reach our ultimate end, iii) the sense of the individual in eternity, iv) the importance of contingency and the unfolding of history, (v) the importance of the emotions, and vi) the human person as one who is capable of divine communion.

For each of these, we've formulated a reflection question for you to think and/or discuss and/or pray about:

i) Is the body part of the highest good, or a hindrance to it?

ii) Is the whole story of ups and downs of someone's life important in the end, or just where you end up?

iii) Is the individual retained in the end or lost in the gathering of eternity?

iv) Has God pre-written the story, or does it unfold as different events and choices are made?

v) Does God have emotion? If we're moving towards being like God, what should be the place of our emotions?

vi) Are we created and saved to go to heaven, or to be in personal communion with the divine?

References:

-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (275-280)

With this episode we begin to look at the chapter 'The Impersonal Order'. As the exclusive authority of reason applied to the natural sciences starts to be applied to other fields, the communal image of God starts to shift. God is relegated to the sidelines with the Deist notion that he has set up the world and it is now left to humanity to make of it what we will.

Taylor claims that this movement was powered not only by reason, as some would posit, but an emerging distaste for 'old religion':

"The slide to Deism was not just the result of 'reason' and 'science', but reflected a deep-seated moral distaste for the old religion that sees God as an agent in history" (p. 274).

References:

-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (270-275)

In this episode we look at the point where the niche ideas of the elite expand into mainstream directives to such a degree that there is no going back. This is a turning point in the Western world.

We can't fully understand our own context until we appreciate the turn where rationality was no longer optional, and goods such as freedom, life, prosperity, peace, and mutual benefit start to be pursued for their own sake, no longer in reference to and increasingly in opposition to Orthodox Christianity.

References:

-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (259-269)

In this episode we look at the idea of goodness and how humanity has shifted its understanding of why we pursue it.

How did humanity come to accept goodness in the same movement as distancing themselves from God? How did agape love descend to a form of measured universal sympathy? Is this is natural progression of humanity once the structures of religion are removed? We explore these and other questions, and seek to address the issue of how to be a missionary in this space in today's world.

"They could find within their own human resources the motivation to universal beneficence and justice" (p248).

"The disengaged, disciplined agent, capable of remaking the self, who has discovered and thus released in himself the awesome power of control, is obviously one of the crucial supports of modern exclusive humanism" (p 257).

"Like all striking human achievement, there is something in it which resists reduction to these enabling conditions" (p258).

"The core of the subtraction story consists in this, that we only needed to get these perverse and illusory condemnations off our back, and the value of ordinary human desire shines out, in its true nature, as it has always been" (p253).

References:

-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (242-259)

Website:

-https://sites.google.com/contemplatingculture

In this episode we look at the development of the Modern Moral Order as expressed in "polite society", the power of this communally held notion, and the impact of this upon religion and people of faith. Polite society has bequeathed us tolerance, but is this really what we're called to?

References:

-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (234-242)

Website:

https://sites.google.com/contemplatingculture

In this episode we look at the 3 forces Charles Taylor proposes as fuelling the rise of deism:

-the success of the order project, the mentality that "we can do it on our own"

-continuation of the ideals of the reformation, the decline of the mysterious and heroic as the ordinary vocations are affirmed

-reaction against the 'juridicial-penal' model, where self-interest came to be accepted as good in a rejection of the "depraved humanity" of Jansenism

We discuss what was it may have been like for the individual and their life of faith living in this period of transition, as well as the response of theologians through theodicy (giving an account for God). Taylor sums up this response when he says "Now that we think we see how it all works... [people begin discussing divine justice] and the theologians begin to feel that this is the challenge they must meet to fight back the coming wave of unbelief" (p. 233).

References:

-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (226-234)

Website:

https://sites.google.com/contemplatingculture