A few months ago I listened to a fascinating series of lectures by Yale professor Carlos Eire entitled "A Brusque History of Eternity". In the three lectures he presents his "brusque" history focusing on both the philosophical and socio-cultural developments of the notion of eternity and its implications for the Western world. At the end of the second lecture, he discusses that a major change in the weltanschaunng after the Reformation is a distinct division between the realm of the eternal, infinite, and immortal with that of the physical and material conditions of our existence. He couched this in terms that Berger uses in The Sacred Canopy. I found the similarity to be rather uncanny. Here is Berger's quote:
At the risk of some simplification, it can be said that Protestantism divested itself as much as possible from the three most ancient and most powerful concomitants of the sacred – mystery, miracle, and magic. This process has been aptly caught in the phrase "disenchantment of the world". The Protestant believer no longer lives in a world ongoingly penetrated by sacred beings and forces. Reality is polarized between a radically transcendent divinity and a radically "fallen" humanity that, ipso facto, is devoid of sacred qualities. Between them lies an altogether "natural" universe, God's creation to be sure, but in itself bereft of numinosity. In other words, the radical trascendence of God confronts a universe of radical immanence, of "closedness" to the sacred. Religiously speaking, the world becomes very lonely indeed (pp. 111-112).
As Berger goes on to argue, this split between sacred and profane is a major source of secularization in modernity. With him, and Eire, I would venture an hypothesis that the analysis gives us a two-edged sword in how modernity develops from then on to today. On the one hand, this truly allows for the development of modern science since the cosmos can now be seen as as object that can be studied on its own right. There are no gods, as it were, to worry about when one investigates natural phenomena. On the other hand, by segregating the cosmos from God and eternity in such a radical way, the intimacy of God is eschewed because it is made to be less accessible than before. God's unknowability takes precedence to God's revelation in the created order. Hence the dissolution of the Book of Nature that we read in so many medieval spiritual texts like the Cloud of Unknowing. That is to say, via negativa mitigates the efficacy of via positiva to know God.
I should also note that Herbert Butterfield in his classic text The Origins of Modern Science argues this same phenomenon, although in rather different terms. Modern science as it developed in the late 19th Century would have not been possible had it not been for this clear distinction between world and God that Protestantism had introduced into the shape of modern Christianity. Following this, revivalism, spiritualism, romanticism, and the aesthetic nature not only of God, but of morality tried to inject this magic back into the popular ethos about God, truth, beauty, and goodness.
It is easy to see the connective tissue with our current debates between atheism and religion. One side would rather have this sense of magic and mystery forever excised for the good of humanity. The other side also sees its mission to re-inject that dimension of the cosmos for the good of humanity. But in a more specific context, I wonder how well Protestant churches give people a sense of the bridge that the church is here to construct between God's eternal, invisible, immortal hiding place and the raw stuff of our phenomenal experience? To drill this even further, those churches that are quite intentional about building this bridge, for whom are they building it and are they building it with the true intent of spreading the love of God and the love of neighbor to change the structures of how people understand the stuff of the world in which they live and so, transform the way that people inhabit it?
(This post follows quite circuitously starting here, followed by a direct reference to the post here).
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In reading your three meditations I wonder what connection can be made with Weber's thesis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirt of Capitalism. The idea that Protestantism created a strong distinction between the secular and the realm of the eternal, infinite, and immortal seems to reinforce the idea that the Protestant world view contributes to the materialist spirt of capitalism. However, he maintained that the Protestant ethic also supported wealth accumulation, which is not what was observed in the study that was discussed.
There are two ways to encourage material equality – encourage those who are less well off to be more materialistic and accumulative, AND to encourage those who are better well off to be LESS materialistic and more giving. It seemed like the first was suggested but the second ignored.
In reading your three meditations I wonder what connection can be made with Weber's thesis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirt of Capitalism. The idea that Protestantism created a strong distinction between the secular and the realm of the eternal, infinite, and immortal seems to reinforce the idea that the Protestant world view contributes to the materialist spirt of capitalism. However, he maintained that the Protestant ethic also supported wealth accumulation, which is not what was observed in the study that was discussed.
There are two ways to encourage material equality – encourage those who are less well off to be more materialistic and accumulative, AND to encourage those who are better well off to be LESS materialistic and more giving. It seemed like the first was suggested but the second ignored.
[...] followed by my development of this into an idea of the church as a sacrament here and here. My view of the church is that, as the Body of Christ, the people are the most important [...]