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How modernity creates atheists—and what the church must do about it. Millions of people in the West identify as atheists. Christians often respond to this reality with proofs of God's existence, as though rational arguments for atheism were the root cause of unbelief. In Bulwarks of Unbelief, Joseph Minich argues that a felt absence of God, as experienced by the modern individual, offers a better explanation for the rise in atheism. Recent technological and cultural shifts in the modern West have produced a perceived challenge to God's existence. As modern technoculture reshapes our awareness of reality and belief in the invisible, it in turn amplifies God's apparent silence. In this new context, atheism is a natural result. And absent of meaning from without, we have turned within. Christians cannot escape this aspect of modern life. Minich argues that we must consciously and actively return to reality. If we reattune ourselves to God's story, reintegrate the whole person, and reinhabit the world, faith can thrive in this age of unbelief.
How modernity creates atheists--and what the church must do about it. Millions of people in the West identify as atheists. Christians often respond to this reality with proofs of God's existence, as though rational arguments for atheism were the root cause of unbelief. In Bulwarks of Unbelief, Joseph Minich argues that a felt absence of God, as experienced by the modern individual, offers a better explanation for the rise in atheism. Recent technological and cultural shifts in the modern West have produced a perceived challenge to God's existence. As modern technoculture reshapes our awareness of reality and belief in the invisible, it in turn amplifies God's apparent silence. In this new context, atheism is a natural result. And absent of meaning from without, we have turned within. Christians cannot escape this aspect of modern life. Minich argues that we must consciously and actively return to reality. If we reattune ourselves to God's story, reintegrate the whole person, and reinhabit the world, faith can thrive in this age of unbelief.
Today, millions of people in the modern West identify as atheists. And even for believers, the intellectual and spiritual temptations to deny the existence of God seem greater than ever. Too often we respond to this pressure by seeking more and more rational proofs of God's existence, but what if a lack of reason to believe is not our main problem? In this volume, Joseph Minich argues that our real challenge is existential and imaginative-a felt absence of God that is more visceral in our modern world than for most generations past, and the sense that if God cannot be sensed, He cannot be there. Why are we so haunted and disoriented today by this sense of God's absence? And how can we learn to sustain and strengthen our faith in the face of it? In these pages, Minich charts a way back to a renewal of our hearts and imaginations that can enable us to embrace the challenge of finding and being found by the hidden God.
In this dissertation, I attempt to account for the fact that God’s absence or invisibility has, since at least the middle of the 19th century, been seen as plausibly accounted for by the fact that God does not exist. That is, rather than a mere item of theodicy (i.e. Where is God when I am suffering?), divine absence has become part of a philosophical arsenal in support of God’s non-existence as such. Granting that, for most theists, God has presumably always been (for the most part) invisible, this more recent association between divine invisibility and divine non-existence, in my judgment, reflects a shifting plausibility structure during the above period until the present – a still-occurring shift in which all late modern persons are caught up. In Chapter 1 of my dissertation, I situate my own argument in the context of recent scholarship concerning the emergence of atheism and secularization, the so-called disenchantment of the world, and the nature of whatever we term “modernity.” Therein, I argue that the accounts on offer (both those that emphasize intellectual and those that emphasize practical causes) need supplementation. Specifically, I argue that the emergent plausibility of atheism or materialism is related to the development of what I term modern “technoculture,” the world as conceived in the mirror of modern labor-systems, technological artifice, and their inter-relationship. In Chapter 2, I show that there is enough circumstantial linkage between the rise of atheism on the one hand, and the rise of this modern technoculture on the other hand, to at least make the case that these two phenomena are strongly correlated. In Chapter 3, I go on to argue that the latter has a causal relationship to the former. In dialogue with philosophers of technology and labor, I argue that the relationship between technology and culture has always shaped human perception of the basic structures of reality, and I attempt to show how their modern arrangement has attuned us to the world in such a way that it manifests as devoid of inherent meaning or agency. Therefore, discourse which would speak of “God in the mirror of the world” or anything mind-like behind all phenomena, increasingly feels implausible to modern persons whose “lived world” renders such discourse tacitly foreign. Having accounted for this shift in plausibility structures, I conclude that I have offered a deflationary argument with respect to the veracity of modern atheism because it renders the latter relative to historical circumstance (rather than being a warranted intellectual default). Nevertheless, objectifying our plausibility structures does not eradicate them. As such, in Chapter 4, I attempt to speak from within and towards practitioners of my own orthodox Protestantism, offering (in conversation especially with Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer) suggestions about what it might mean to find religious orientation in this historical moment. A proper response to modern atheism, I argue, requires a proper response to those features of the world that render it plausible in the first place (per the argument of Chapters 2-3). I claim that, despite its temptations (from my perspective), there are many good things about the modern order, and that it presents us with an opportunity to unite our intellectual and affective capacities (mediated by our will) in order to achieve disciplined attunement to those realities that we confess. Toward this end, I address the problems of modern alienation from labor, technological anxiety, and (what is under-estimated) our alienation from the history to which we nevertheless always belong. Finally, in the conclusion – after summarizing the argument – I address the elephant in the room of modern pluralism. Recognizing that my evaluative reflections irreducibly possess what many have called “the scandal of particularity,” I attempt a final act of rhetorical calibration in order to assuage (but also redirect) these concerns while clarifying the immediate and most basic calling of the human being relative to them.
The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.
Surveys twentieth century theologies of work, contrasting differing approaches to consider the “problem of labor” from a theological perspective. Aimed at theologians concerned with how Christianity might engage in social criticism, as well those who are interested in the connection between Marxist and Christian traditions Explores debates about labor under capitalism and considers the relationship between divine and human work Through a thorough reading of Weber’s Protestant Work Ethic, argues that the triumph of the "spirit of utility" is crucial to understanding modern notions of work Draws on the work of various twentieth century Catholic thinkers, including Josef Pieper, Jacques Maritain, Eric Gill, and David Jones Published in the new and prestigious Illuminations series.
What is an evangelical . . . and has he lost his mind? Carl Trueman wrestles with those two provocative questions and concludes that modern evangelicals emphasize experience and activism at the expense of theology. Their minds go fuzzy as they downplay doctrine. The result is “a world in which everyone from Joel Osteen to Brian McLaren to John MacArthur may be called an evangelical.” Fifteen years ago in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, historian Mark Noll warned that evangelical Christians had abandoned the intellectual aspects of their faith. Christians were neither prepared nor inclined to enter into intellectual debates, and had become culturally marginalized. Trueman argues that today “religious beliefs are more scandalous than they have been for many years”—but for different reasons than Noll foresaw. In fact, the real problem now is exactly the opposite of what Noll diagnosed: evangelicals don’t lack a mind, but rather an agreed upon evangel. Although known as gospel people, evangelicals no longer share any consensus on the gospel’s meaning. Provocative and persuasive, Trueman’s indictment of evangelicalism also suggests a better way forward for those theologically conservative Protestants famously known as evangelicals.
In this classic work praised by Pope Pius IX himself, Fr. Nicolas J. Laforet lays out the spiritual causes of unbelief, and shows the antidotes necessary to remedy each. Noting that unbelief is not a particularly modern phenomenon (after all, many people refused to believe in Jesus even after having witnessed his miracles), Fr. Laforet explains that unbelief is not merely a matter of the intellect; on the contrary, where unbelief prevails we almost always find its source in a person’s will. From the fruits of his spiritual and psychological analysis, Fr. LaForet then crafts a simple but powerful remedy — one that is sure to bring to Christ any reasonable person who honestly employs it. No wonder the great Cardinal James Gibbons treasured this book, writing: “I consider its value beyond price, and highly recommend it to all, especially in these days of doubt and denial.” Among the things you will learn here are: The spiritual roots of unbelief, and the main form it takes todayIf you can’t make yourself believe, why does the Church consider unbelief a vice?Why Christianity could conquer the brutal Roman Empire, but suffer even more defeats in our dayFaith and reason: learn how Christian faith purifies reason, strengthens it, extends it, and even elevates itTrue faith: why it isn’t blind — and can never beThe one thing that always opens the gates of faith — even to those who live in darknessDiscover the two forms of materialism — practical and dogmatic— and how each corrodes faith “This book will be a powerful aid to souls, helping them reject error and gain free access to truth.” Blessed Pope Pius IX