Reading a description of the mental changes involved in the shift from Latin Christianity to Reform Christianity, I feel as though some things have become clear for the first time.
The ancient sense of being was that of being subject to the influence and activity of the world around, by means of what could be called magic, although was often called religion. For Catholics, such magic included relics and the Eucharist, and rituals meant to minimise consequence of sins. The reformers held that God was too great to be limited in His acts, and to think that mere earthly objects could hold powers that stemmed from God was idolatry. This demystified the natural world in many ways, and opened up the possibility of using it in any way humans saw fit, as God clearly willed the flourishing of His creatures.
What's more, if nothing in particular is sacred, then everything is sacred when associated with a person who is blessed of God. So even trivial possessions and actions gain moral significance. And daily life can become a constant testing of one's position in the sight of God. A person is obliged to flourish, but only while ceasing to worry whether they do - focus on God's will ought to bring the flourishing.
But there is a tension between flourishing and complacency, as doing well can indicate that God's blessing is upon a person, or that they are too focussed on the present and not enough on eternity. And there is also a danger that having removed the essence of sanctity from the externals of life, it is not too difficult to move beyond that and discard it entirely to concentrate fully on the flourishing as an end in itself.
I feel as though the brethren are quite recognisable from all this. In a way, they have reversed the usual pattern, and have fixed on an ideology in which human gain is pursued and held to be God's will in its own right.
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Keep 'em coming! I've been visiting a third world country where any net activity more than simple e-mail is difficult, but am enjoying what you wrote while I was away.
A Secular Age, by Charles Taylor, seems to get some rave reviews, (see
http://www.amazon.com/Secular-Age-Charles-Taylor/dp/0674026764) but it is a hefty tome at 896 pages. Wouldn’t it be useful if someone would sum it up for us in a few paragraphs?
On the retreat of religion from many areas of Western thought, I think most of us already have some ideas about what has been gained and/or lost by the process, but I am in considerable doubt about why it happened. Was it a general striving for personal autonomy, and freedom from authoritarian control? Was it the advances of Science that made God redundant as an explanation for planetary motion, weather, pestilence, and a hundred other phenomena? Was economic growth a major factor? Or was it something entirely different from all of these?
Don't expect a pithy summary any time soon. With the amount of time I get to read these days, this should keep me going for some while. Still, I'll bear it in mind.
As for the "why"s, that's what the tome is all about. Obviously it takes nearly nine hundred pages to get to grips with the mystery.
Oh, and thanks for the encouragement. I don't exactly blog for my readers, but it's nice to be appreciated.
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