10.02.09
post-secular
James Smith writes in “Inhabiting the Post-Secular,”
“What is it about Augustine that makes him such a crucial resource for a post-secular theology? In addition to the sheer genius of Augustine’s theological insight, several reasons exist for this retrieval. First, for a movement that wants to subvert theological allegiances to modernity, the (not uncritical) recovery of premodern sources provides a worldview not yet contaminated by the invention of the secular. In a basic sense, therefore, Augustine is important because he is not modern.
“Second, there is a sense in which Augustine’s cultural situation mirrors our own postmodern predicament. As Ward observes, “It seems to me we stand, culturally, in a certain relation to Augustine’s thinking…
..”Poised as he was on the threshold between radical pluralism (which he called paganism) and the rise of Christendom, we stand on the other side of that history: at the end of Christendom and the reemergence of radical (as distinct from liberal) pluralism.” Like Augustine, we are constructing theology and engaging in Christian witness in the shadow of both a dominant empire and a religious pluralism.
“Third, the substance of Augustine’s thought — in particular his epistemology, his cultural analysis, and his theological vision — resonates with the postfoundationalist project that rejects the autonomy of reason and hence also the autonomy of the sociopolitical sphere. In short, for Augustine there is no secular, non-religious sphere as construed by modernity; there is only paganism or true worship.”
From “Introducing Radical Orthodoxy”
NextReformation » random thoughts - spiritual formation at the close of Modernity said,
November 5, 2009 at 10:24 am
[...] We evangelicals are very fond of talking about spiritual formation. But it is as if this track runs parallel to belief, but never meets it. It may be that this new generation wil be different, however. We find ourselves entering something like a post-secular space, and while human nature has not changed, there is a readiness to embrace shared practices in community that has existed in only small pockets previously. The huge hunger for belonging may help us rediscover covenant structures and move beyond our western reading of “freedom.” [...]