About time to wrap up my application of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age to a current debate among the orthodox Reformed folks. Does Christ's redemptive rule from heaven entail a single Kingdom extending over all of human life, ecclesial and cultural? Or is the locus of Christ's work of redemption limited to his body, the Church, leaving human cultural activity subject to divinely-implanted creational norms/natural law with respect to which the idea of "redemption" is a category mistake, thus leaving us with Two Kingdoms. Parts 1, 2, and 3 are here, here, and here. I've argued that neither approach has much opportunity for traction in what Taylor calls the contemporary Age of Authenticity. More than being a bit out of step with the times (not necessarily a bad idea), both the 1K and 2K approaches are distinctly of other times.
The 1k'ers goal of bringing all of life under the Lordship of Christ run squarely against the interests of the radically individualized, hyper-sexualized, autonomous denizens of the Age of Authenticity. The relentlessly "authentic" among us are equally nonplussed by the 2K'ers belief in natural law or the like by which cultural life should be ordered.
Let's see how Taylor characterizes the social imaginary of the Age of Authenticity to see if there's any distinctly Christian approach that might seem plausible. The 60's social revolution emphasized four strands of thought and practice: (1) radicalization of the reaction against the denigration of sensuality and sexuality in the Disciplinary Age, (2) radicalization of the notion of the equality of the sexes, (3) "a widespread sense of Dionysian, even 'transgressive' sex as liberating," and (4) a new conceptualization of sexuality as part of one's authentic life. I guess we should leave drugs and rock and roll out of the trilogy of 60's vices, at least as far as Taylor sees it.
Taylor's suggestion is to give up, at least so far as the masses are concerned, and leave the practice of a sexually disciplined life to the neo-monastic elites. In other words, give up on reforming life at all. We should, he concludes, admit that reforming life through the application of natural law in the second Kingdom or by applying biblically-derived norms in a single Kingdom is a project which, after one thousand years of trying, was futile.
Futile? I don't think so. The years of reform that have characterized the West since the eleventh century have been the source of much good. The extraordinary reorganization of life in the West into gradually more disciplined circles has been a mitigated blessing. Whether the disciplined life can survive the move from a transcendent source of order to an immanent one and now to an internalized form remains to be seen. The extraordinary pain of the patent failure of the 60's vision of authenticity is apparent to many although numbed for most by the incessant and insatiable consumption of ever more. When the narcotic of consumption crumbles, as it will, I believe that the words and lives of those ordered by the power of the resurrected God-man will again find traction. The wheel of history turns very slowly and I don't expect my children to see the end of the current age. But end it will in a new vision of the reformed life or the end of life as we have come to know it.
The 1k'ers goal of bringing all of life under the Lordship of Christ run squarely against the interests of the radically individualized, hyper-sexualized, autonomous denizens of the Age of Authenticity. The relentlessly "authentic" among us are equally nonplussed by the 2K'ers belief in natural law or the like by which cultural life should be ordered.
Let's see how Taylor characterizes the social imaginary of the Age of Authenticity to see if there's any distinctly Christian approach that might seem plausible. The 60's social revolution emphasized four strands of thought and practice: (1) radicalization of the reaction against the denigration of sensuality and sexuality in the Disciplinary Age, (2) radicalization of the notion of the equality of the sexes, (3) "a widespread sense of Dionysian, even 'transgressive' sex as liberating," and (4) a new conceptualization of sexuality as part of one's authentic life. I guess we should leave drugs and rock and roll out of the trilogy of 60's vices, at least as far as Taylor sees it.
Taylor's suggestion is to give up, at least so far as the masses are concerned, and leave the practice of a sexually disciplined life to the neo-monastic elites. In other words, give up on reforming life at all. We should, he concludes, admit that reforming life through the application of natural law in the second Kingdom or by applying biblically-derived norms in a single Kingdom is a project which, after one thousand years of trying, was futile.
Futile? I don't think so. The years of reform that have characterized the West since the eleventh century have been the source of much good. The extraordinary reorganization of life in the West into gradually more disciplined circles has been a mitigated blessing. Whether the disciplined life can survive the move from a transcendent source of order to an immanent one and now to an internalized form remains to be seen. The extraordinary pain of the patent failure of the 60's vision of authenticity is apparent to many although numbed for most by the incessant and insatiable consumption of ever more. When the narcotic of consumption crumbles, as it will, I believe that the words and lives of those ordered by the power of the resurrected God-man will again find traction. The wheel of history turns very slowly and I don't expect my children to see the end of the current age. But end it will in a new vision of the reformed life or the end of life as we have come to know it.
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