In this episode we explore with Charles Taylor some of the felt dissatisfactions that begin to arise with the emergence of the buffered identity.

In the realm of resonance, these include i) the notion that Deism is too tame and that we must take love seriously, ii) a revulsion at goodness being only at the level of self-interest, and iii) the feeling that life within the immanent order is too easily reduced to a code.

In the realm of the romantic, these include i) the felt alienation of the self from the senses, ii) the felt alienation of the self from others, iii) the felt alienation of the self from nature. and iv) the felt sense of division between humanity and nature.

In the realm of tragedy, these include i) the sense that pain and suffering are too easily denied, ii) the loss of the heroic, iii) the rejection of a flat and levelled down sense of happiness, and iv) the lack of a place for death in the immanent frame.

References:

-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (310-321)

In this episode we look at the objections of the Modern Moral Order to Orthodox Christianity:

i) it offends reason by holding a place for mystery

ii) it is authoritarian by holding an Almighty above us, offending both reason and freedom

iii) it poses impossible problems of theodicy

iv) it threatens the order of mutual benefit.

Of these, we take a particular look at theodicy, and the range of responses people might take.

References:

-Pages of A Secular Age, Charles Taylor: (304-310)

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