#1 The Disenchantment of the West

Show Notes

In this episode, we explore the concept of modernistic disenchantment and reenchantment in the postmodern world. The discussion revolves around the work of Christopher H. Partridge and his book "The Re-Enchantment of the West" from 2004. The speaker delves into different categories of secularization, including the disappearance thesis, differentiation thesis, de-intensification theory, and coexistence theory. Secularization is not solely driven by education but is influenced by social, political, and psychological factors. Additionally, we discuss the notion of secularization as a weapon and the role of feelings and desire in faith conversion.

Read These Books: https://www.anthonydelgado.net/read-these-books

Music: Good Night by FASSounds

Podcast Transcript

00:00:12 

This light, momentary affliction is preparing an eternal weight of glory for us. Beyond all comparison, as we look, not to the things that are seen but to the unseen. Second Corinthians 4:17 and 18, in a post materialistic world filled with immense spiritual noise. We're here to uncover the ancient near eastern context of the Bible to recover the truly mystical faith of our spiritual forefathers. Welcome to the biblical reenchantment podcast where we bridge the gap between the Ancient Hebrew story and modern insights. I'm Anthony Delgado, your host for this journey into the often overlooked mystical dimensions of the Bible. This is episode number one, the disenchantment of the West. In this episode, we're going to talk in two parts first about the secularization and the disenchantment of Western society.

00:01:03 

And then second, we're gonna go through seven myths about secularization. seven ideas that simply are not true that are perpetuated by society. All right.Since this is the first episode, I want to ask the question why this podcast in short, increased secularization, you could consider a synonym of secularization, disenchantment is coming out of the modern period into the post modern world that we live in.Materialism and metaphysics are seen for the first time, sort of as opposites. Historically, physics and metaphysics that is what is beyond the physical universe were seen to work together, not against each other. And now in modern times, they have been very much pitted against each other.

00:01:50 

Increased spirituality, re enchantment is indeed occurring in the world we live in, in the postmodern period. And that in some ways is a good thing and in some ways, not such a great thing, the world is re enchanting, but there are new mythologies.Their world is re enchanting in the wrong direction. So in this episode, we're going to engage the work of Christopher H Partridge in his book, The Re Enchantment of the West published in 2004. It's a little old by some people's standards.given the amount of scholarship that is produced all the time, but it is the best accessible work I've found with a Christian audience in mind. So I would highly commend to you Christopher H Partridge. The re enchantment of the West published 2004.I'll have a link in the show notes to some recommended books and you will find it in there with places to, to, to purchase it and read it. All right. Let's jump into part one secularization and the disenchantment of Western society.I wanna start by talking about categories of secularization. These come from Linda Woodhead and Paul, he book religion in modern times. These aren't probably the only four ways to think about secularization. There's also a little bit of crossover between them, which you'll see.

00:03:18 

But I think they're helpful in thinking about the way that secularization happens in different times and places. So the first category of is called the disappearance thesis. And this is the idea that religious understanding of the world is going to disappear entirely.And I think it's pretty obvious what that means. It means that frankly, religion will not exist as a societal value in any way, shape or form.Now, it doesn't mean that that people won't be personal, personally religious in any sort of way, at least in the sense that like you might have beliefs about how things work that engage with supernatural ideas in certain ways.It just means that personal theology or personal religion isn't going to affect the way that society functions. It's not gonna, we're not gonna ask religion in any way to influence a decision or a theory about societal function. OK.Now there's a, there's a, a second related one, it's called the differentiation. The, so in, in differentiation, it doesn't mean full disappearance.

00:04:24 

but it means that religion will become privatized and socially insignificant that, that if there's a difference between private life and social life, then religion belongs only to the private sector and not to the social sector.And so my faith is for my purposes, then there's no need for organized religion or any type of social function of religion to send around religious beliefs because it is only me and what I believe.And in these types of models, religious holidays like Christmas and Easter, they actually begin to serve absolutely no per purpose except maybe in the case of those two that I just mentioned, if they were completely secularized to the point that nobody knew that Christmas was about the incarnation or that Easter was about the resurrection.

00:05:12 

And do they just serve as holidays to celebrate maybe humanity and family and things like that? Then, then maybe they can still exist but they can have no religious purpose under differentiation thesis otherwise, that would be social interference of religion.And so you don't have churches or anything like that under the differentiation thesis. because you don't need a church.If it's purely privatized, the major difference between disappearance thesis and the differentiation thesis is, is really that religion can still exist under the differentiation thesis, but it is only private. it's only for the individuals under the disappearance thesis. Religion basically has completely disappeared.

00:06:00 

Now, there's two other theories and I think we see these two theories happening as well in our world today. The first is that the de intensification theory, religion will remain in society but only in a weakened or insubstantial form.It's been deintensified, I think in, in most of history and in many places in the world still today, religion is intense in the sense that religion highly influences certain things now in the western world that's been secularized, we're seeing at the very least de intensification that, that religion doesn't have a loud voice, so to speak, it doesn't have the ability to command social function.

00:06:44 

And so this means that either in a literal or figurative sense that there's no more Holy Wars. I remember like when I was a kid, I remember some Holy wars being fought over prayer in schools and the reading of the Bible in schools.And I think, I think what's really interesting is obviously, there's no classroom prayer in public schools today in the, in, in the western world anywhere.But I think like, so I'm a high school teacher and I frequently will see I could frequently might be an overstatement, but I will occasionally see a Christian student that has a Bible and that student will read it and free time in class or on, on their own time and things like that, the Bibles are allowed in school.

00:07:24 

We even have Bible as literature classes. Although the Bible is literature classes are kind of teaching a secularized view of what the Bible is teaching. It is merely a cultural document that has influenced various types of societies and throughout history.And so it's sort of a secularized view of it. And so this is what de intensification essentially means that there's no holy wars being fought anymore.Because even even the Christians, or maybe just more broadly, even religious people don't feel as though their perspectives stand up to the rationale if you will of secular society. The last one is the coexistence theory and the coexistence theory is probably the broadest of them.

00:08:13 

It's, it argues that religion and secularization both play important roles in social function, but it depends on the circumstance. So when do you go to rationale to the secular and when do you go to religion? Right.And so that's sort of the idea is like when you go one way or the other, and I think that many people are happy to live their lives sort of in the secular realm that, you know, letting, letting society and rationale order the way that they live and, and they try to have a good life and, but then they near the end of their life and there's questions that that the secular world can't answer about death and exactly what the experience of death is going to be like.

00:08:52 

And, and certainly not what happens after death.And so religion comes in at that time, to play an important role in sort of the transitioning from this life into either an afterlife, depending on what someone chooses to believe or into the nothingness but to, but religion becomes something to to facilitate that transference from this world to the next.

00:09:15 

The difference between coexistence theory and de intensification theory is that de intensification is, well, religion is good and whatever it is, but it's weak, it can't influence anything. Coexistence theory is like, no, it's good, but it's only good within its proper role.

00:09:35 

And so that's sort of the difference between the two there. And so Christmas can be celebrated and even get a public mention as a religious holiday under coexist in theory. But you know, that's about it.We're not pushing it on anybody else and that might be where we find ourselves today in most of the not maybe not the western world broadly. But I, I think definitely in the United States, at least for the moment.And here's some analysis that I think of this, I think of mass media.and I think mass media would have you to believe the disappearance, the disappearance thesis that often media portrays our society as completely irreligious, purely secularized, purely disenchanted religion is fading in the world because it's no longer helpful or necessary.

00:10:24 

That's what mass media would have you to believe. Now, socially goes beyond just what media is saying socially is like what society happens to believe collectively and society is asking for differentiation.They, they, they see they're sort of saying, look, we're not telling you not to believe in a religion but privatize it. Keep it to yourself. I have my religion. That's good for me. You have your, your religion that's good for you.And I think, you know, this, I kind of smell a rat in this. I sort of feel like it's a politically correct effort towards disappearance that broadly, um, the society is saying maybe disappearance would be better. Um, but we're not gonna tell especially Christians what to do.

00:11:05 

We're just gonna ask you to keep it out of the public sphere, keep it to yourself. And so I think it's sort of society is asking for differentiation.But really pushing towards disappearance, now there are parts of the United States, especially that are highly religious, at least in general beliefs. And so I think their de intensification and coexistence theories are a little bit more common.Some people don't see religion as necessarily influencing their po politics for an example, but maybe, maybe religion does order their day to day lives. And even among, among those who sort of do follow a religion, they do often see their religion as weak.so that, you know, a Christian person, for example, might say that they would love for their son or daughter to bring their Bible to school.But then they're also afraid that their son or daughter is going to be made fun of by other students and not have the, the tools to, to defend themselves or their positions.

00:12:08 

And so then maybe because of that weakness, they're not gonna send their child to school with the Bible, they're gonna have them leave that at home no matter what it is that they actually believe.And so often religion is sort of demoted in these models to a cultural value rather than an actual world view because religion is weak or religion only belie belongs in certain spheres.And so, you know, within a family unit or a church community, our, our religion is good for us, but we're not really good at pushing it outwards. And because we ultimately believe that it's too weak to be effective.And so that's my analysis of maybe two different ways that we're seeing these, these, these theories or the, the work out in the world today.And I think there's an optimistic way and a pessimistic way to look at these optimism sort of thinking that like, ok, wherever society is, maybe it's gonna be on an upswing, it's gonna, it's gonna come into, it's gonna, it's gonna come into a stronger sort of religious experience within the broader society.

00:13:09 

And then pessimist meaning, well, this is where we're at today and it used to be better, but it's gonna get worse. Now, Nietzsche is pessimistic. Nietzsche's pessimistic narrative of the West begins kind of with a primal myth and ends with the death of God.It's he, he kind of saw religion as something that was, that was developed out of human necessity, that he needed something to believe, to answer questions about reality.And so since they couldn't develop a world view, sort of in primal stages of human history that was founded on science and rationale, then they instead produced these mythologies that answer certain amount of questions about the way the world works.But Nietzsche sees sort of a trajectory of the development of religion that actually ends in the degredation of religion and ultimately in the death of God. And you've probably heard people say God is dead in reference to niche.Now, Nietzsche argued in his book, The Gay Science, which probably doesn't mean what you think it means. But he argued that the bull belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable.

00:14:17 

He says everything that was built upon this faith propped up by it grown into it, including the whole European morality is bound to collapse. And so he thinks that this whole societal system that in, in large part in European culture, we've already seen the collapse.But in the United States and, and other other, other westernized parts of the world where maybe Christianity is a little bit stronger or, or broadly Christian Catholicism and everything else is a little bit stronger.There might still be some propping up going on where, where, where some societal values are still standing on the on the Christian faith, but Nietzsche says, it's going, it's going to collapse. That's his pessimistic view of it.There's a religious trae trajectory from sort of undeveloped mythologies to developed religious systems, developed religious systems, produce systematic theologies and, you know, in other words, systematized ways of thinking about the world.And then now if we have a systematized way of thinking about the world about God, about humankind, about sort of the story of humankind, and what God is doing with humans, then that leads to a social influence where now our world view and our thinking about God and everything he's created influences the way that a society ought to function, the way that society ought to function.

00:15:40 

now develops into social structures, hospitals, governments, legal systems of all different kinds of all the different sort of cultural values that are held within locales and things of that sort. And so you get these pillars, these social structures that are developed.

00:15:57 

But now that you have that social structure, if you're Nietzsche, there, there really is no God behind that. It's just the development of the religion based on human needs. So now if you have the social structures, you don't need God anymore.And so now that we have the social structures, religion can die and thus religion degrades and degrades and degrades and society developing through through, through, you know, the coexistence and then to de intensification and then to differentiation until complete disappearance occurs and there is no longer any need for God, for religion, for a spiritual world, for the metaphysical and thus God is dead.

00:16:36 

Now, Christopher Partridge refers to Max Weber's work saying influential theory of the disenchantment of the world. So he refers to his, his book and Weber cites the protestant reformation as the pinnacle moment where secularization could take hold and disenchantment began. OK.

00:16:53 

What that means is that if the protestant reformation was a rational or logical reaction to issues that the reformers saw in the Catholic church, they were, they were reading the scriptures and they were using human rationale to discern sort of the grammar and the history and, and, and the situation of the text and to, to develop systematic theologies based on that.

00:17:17 

And then they didn't think that the Catholic church was lining up with all of those. And so what they sought out to do was actually to reform the Catholic church to correct the theology within the Catholic church.But since that theology couldn't be reject, couldn't, couldn't be done, then they, they began to protest to the Catholic church, they became Protestants. And so in the protestant reformation, now we get a new theological system that is developed, that is based on human rationale according to the scriptures.

00:17:44 

And so it's a meshing sort of if you will of the ideologies of the secular and the sacred, the ideologies of the secular world and sort of his historic Christian beliefs.And that's what happens at, at, at the reformation is that they bring in the, the, the rationalization of the Enlightenment period in order to speak against theological systems that they disagree with. And that becomes a pattern.And if you've ever wondered why there's so many theological systems today, so many different denominations of Christianity and everything else.It's because we've taken that very pattern and, and, and began to splinter off into more and more and more and more sex of Christianity because of this emphasis on on, on rationalistic thinking in the reformation period.Now, for all the good of the reformation, I'm not saying that nothing good came out of the reformation. I'm certainly not saying that good theology isn't important. It absolutely is.

00:18:39 

But for all of the good that came out of the reformation, the reformation is indeed founded on, on the rationalization and it steps into the aforementioned trajectory.So the reformation for again, for, for Max Weber is this tipping point where where society has been built up that the the structures have been put in place.And now from the reformation period, the degredation begins, begins until the point that in some places in the world today, God is virtually dead now in a sense, I or at least in that sense, I think that Weber is right, the rationalization of the scriptures as a system.

00:19:20 

Now it has, has produced problems and one of those problems is that it actually happens in, within Protestant Theology itself. Protestant theology birthed what we call liberalism. And liberalism is the idea that, hey, look, maybe even the scriptures are not supreme over human rationalization.

00:19:41 

And so liberalism is willing to engage the scriptures, at least Protestant Christian liberalism, willing to engage the scriptures, but actually holds human rationale as higher in authority than the scriptures themselves.Now, if human rationale is higher than the scriptures themselves, if you indeed cannot deny that two plus two equals four, and the, and, and the Bible says two plus two equals five, then by all means human wins.And so the human psyche becomes sort of the metric by which you can read and discern the truth of the scriptures. And that's an outpouring of really not that Calvin was doing this himself.Calvin was no liberal, but it's an outpouring of what Calvin and Luther were doing in the reformation, they were thinking critical critically about the scriptures in order to be conservative with the scriptures.But then that thinking critically is the very thing that leads to the demise to the demise of much good Protestant theology. as Protestant liberalism begins to spread throughout the various Christian theological systems.

00:20:45 

Now, you also have my, my, that's a really hard word to say that Christianity has been de mythologized. And, and I think because of social conformity to some degree or another.There have been, you know, stories and historic understandings of texts that are merely lost to history. But you have to ask the question, how do they become lost to history? Unless someone at some point in time chose not to teach a particular perspective on a text.And so we're beginning to uncover a lot of the mythology of the scriptures. A lot of the, the, the true historic and essence, the enchantment of the scriptures, if you will.And in a lot of fundamentalist or evangelical church movements, I should say fundamentalist and evangelical church movements, we're starting to see a, to see people come out of this de mythology. They're starting to see that that they had adopted some of that secularization.

00:21:45 

And so for me, you know, this has happened quite a few years ago as I started to become interested in orders of angels and you know, exactly what demons were, why don't they show up in the Old Testament much?And why are they so prominent in the gospels and starting to ask sort of enchantment type questions? Am I supposed to read the dragon in revelation purely as mythology or does, or, or, or as, as symbolism or should I see the dragon as an actual dragon?And I'm beginning to ask, you know, I started beginning over a decade ago to ask some of these types of questions and then was they're exposed to a number of different teachers, probably, most notably, Doctor Michael Heiser, who like, then I start to, then I start to see sort of the original narratives of the Bible, the way that they were understand, stood by the original audience in that ancient, near eastern culture.

00:22:35 

And, and for, and for the first time that, like Christian faith, like really came alive in a way that I had never seen it before. And, and, and that's what this podcast is really gonna be about. It's about getting away away from the, the social conformity.Getting away from the secularization that has leaked into the church, not just, not just because of liberalism, but also the, the de mythologizing of the scriptures that comes from just this social or secular conformity.We wanna get away from that and get back to the historic, the true Christian faith as we've seen it now.I wanna talk about optimism because I think that we actually can be optimistic about this that we don't need to agree with Nietzsche and Max Weber that there's this decline that ends with God is dead.Christopher Partridge said this Christianity from its beginning carried with it the dialectical tension between the sacred and the secular. What what he means is that Christianity is fundamentally a social religion.

00:23:38 

There has always been a conversation between sacred and secular because Christianity is not a world view that is, that is localized into a particular culture that Christianity was always AAA message of hope to the gentiles, even all the way back, we see that very clearly in the story of Abraham that through Abraham, the nations would be blessed, the ethnos, the the the cultures of the world would be blessed, right?

00:24:03 

And so it's all Christianity is intrinsically social. And so you can't have sacred without secular. When within Christianity, within Christianity, sacred and secular, go together. The problem is that when you engage the secular with the sacred, there's gonna be a tension between the two.

00:24:24 

They don't, they don't come together perfectly where we are at in human history right now, that we're not gonna have a society that functions exactly as God wants, wants it to function until sort of the ideal becomes the, the real, that the ideal becomes contemporary.So what I'm, what I'm talking about is eschatology. The, the ends times that when Christ returns and sort of the sheep are separated from the goats to use Jesus words.and, and, and it's, and, and the chaos is purely settled that there is no longer a wilderness but only the paradise of God.And that the Kingdom of God is on the earth, that in that eschatological reality, we will receive the idealized version of society where for the first time, the sacred and the secular can come together where, where, where truly mythology, the mythologies, the truth of the stories of the scripture in the unseen are very real.

00:25:19 

In short, I'm, what I'm saying is this, that modernization creates problems for religion. And that's the, those are actually Christopher Partridge's words.And so I might even say, say that the more thoughtful we are about what we know and believe the more the sacred comes under scrutiny of secular knowledge. OK.And so, so knowledge is important, rationale is important, but we need to make sure that our rationale is being used to protect the sacred. OK. But how do we do that?So there's, there's some questions that arise like, am I saying that we need to return to a caveman theology that we just reject everything that comes out of secular secular modernization altogether? Or do we let secularization destroy the Creek religion? Right?Because that seems to be the al alternative. Either either we embrace only the methodologies of the sacred and we start to believe in things that we know scientifically aren't true.

00:26:15 

And I'll use an illustration of that in a minute or we, because we believe science is true to at least to some degree, do we adopt everything that comes out of the rationale and let that end in the inevitable demise of the Christian faith and society broadly says, therefore, God is dead, which do, which way do we go?

00:26:33 

Well, I think there's another option. I do think there's another option or obviously I wouldn't even bother making this podcast, but I want you to think about how this play out.I find more and more people are starting to believe in, uh, sort of flatt earth types of ideologies. And I don't wanna, I don't wanna pick on, uh, sort of flat earthers here, but I, but I do want to kind of show where it comes from.See, the further secularization pushes against Christianity, the more Christians want to push science and secularization out of the sphere of religion altogether.And this is a baby out of the bath water, you know, out with the bathwater type of issue that, that, that when you say that secularization is hurting the sacred, that it's hurting Christianity.And therefore, we are rejecting everything, even science itself, even objective scientific discovery itself, we're gonna, we're gonna push that out and only believe what the Bible teaches. What you're actually gonna find is that the Bible, that first of all doesn't teach on a lot of things scientific, right?

00:27:35 

I'm not sure that, that there's one text in the Bible that is intended to be read scientifically. But if you're gonna force a scientific view on the scriptures, you're gonna walk away with things like the earth is flat.And in fact, if you're gonna broadly consider apocryphal, another 2nd, 2nd temple works to be scripture, you know, you know, recently I did some work on first enoch and like in first enoch, if I'm honest about what the earth looks like, I think it's more like a pizza box than it is a flat disc.

00:28:04 

And so, like, I don't even think that all of the different views of what the earth is like in the ancient world even agree with each other.But if you're going to reject secularization, you're gonna have to pick one of those, you're gonna have to decide the earth is shaped like a pizza box or you're gonna have to decide the earth is, you know, a flat disc or something like that.And I think Christianity is intended to engage with the social sphere. I think it's intended to be broadly social that we should be interfacing with secularization that, that there are yes, I'll be them tense. There are conversations that need to be had.So that we don't do that.So we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater so that we can be honest about what the scriptures teach and, and, and, and be in good conscience with where we allow science and and sort of the secular world to teach about things that are of the physical world, not of the metaphysical.

00:28:58 

Here's the problem, effectively, Christianity is intrinsically social. The secular cannot be pushed out that whatever you think Christianity is it has, it cannot reject the secular altogether.Rather the secular must be engaged from a re mythologized social standing, from a re mythologized social standing and, and, and re mythologizing is something that we're going to talk extensively about in this podcast broadly. So I'm not gonna get into it too much here.

00:29:31 

But this is the problem that I see is that Christianity is supposed to be social.And when we reject the secular, we reject the social with it and, and mythologizing the scriptures, re mythologizing the scriptures, putting, putting the scriptures back in their ancient near eastern context, believing what they teach about, not just the scene but the unseen world.

00:29:52 

It's gonna answer a lot of these questions about how to have this ongoing sacred secular conversation. OK. Welcome back to part two. Here. We're gonna talk about seven myths about secularization and I hope this brings a little bit of clarity to the conversation.We're gonna look at five things that secularization is not according to for Partridge. And then I'm going to interject my two additions that I think are really important to the conversation that we're gonna be having on this podcast as we get towards the end of this.So, the first one that Partridge brings up is that secularization is not predictable and maybe you didn't think it was predictable.But sort of in intellectual spheres, people will say that secularization is predictable that, that it's, that it's the inevitable outpouring think niche of a religious social structure that whenever religion builds a social structure that it will no longer be needed and it will inevitably come to demise.

00:31:21 

Now, I don't know if that's actually true because there's Islamic fundamentalists in various countries around the world that are not experiencing secularization, at least in the same predictable way as it is in the West. You know, it, it seems predictable in the West.If you look at the pattern of what happened in Europe, maybe even most, particularly in like Great Britain. And then we've seen it trickle down through some of the commonwealth countries. And now we're seeing the same patterns happening in the United States.And so sociologists say, see secularization is predictable because it's happened all throughout the West, but it's not true throughout the world.There's, there's other factors at play and there are Islamic countries where the, where the, where the Islam's religion is operating both in the sacred, sacred and secular hand kind of hand in hand and together.Now religion is deeply ingrained in social order in certain countries in the world. And so religion doesn't just die when it becomes thoughtful, sometimes religion thrives when it becomes thoughtful. So secularization is really not a predictable pattern.

00:32:28 

Secularization is affecting Islamic countries in different ways, for example, economically. but secularization is not a necessarily predictable pattern of demise. So that's one myth.And so we can't say about the United States culture that in every way it has to go exactly how it, how it has gone on in other Western countries. just because it's happened there, it has to happen here. That's actually a lie.And I think that that lie has, um, been perpetuated even in Christian circles and, and it brings a lot of discouragement that maybe even proves the lie true. Let's look at the second one.So the second myth is this, that secularization doesn't mean the inevitable decline of a religion. And that's a little bit different.Partridge argues that secularization does not have an even trajectory that as you look at different, even just different lows that, that you will see secularization affecting society different, that if you take a largely conservative population.

00:33:33 

you know, I I don't know that if you consider, if you, if you compare Dallas Texas to Austin, Texas, that although they both are largely filled with similar ideas around those cities, similar ways of thinking similar world views that would in those cities, there's not an even trajectory of the demise of religion or the decline of religion.

00:33:55 

Christianity is going to interface with society differently than ethno centralized religions or culturally distinctive religions because Christianity is indeed broadly social in nature. And so as you get into different different cultural settings, Christianity is going to interface differently.

00:34:16 

And so it's not ever going to follow an even or predictive patterning. Ok. So not only is secularization not predictable. but there is not even an inevitable decline that will happen just because secularization comes in and, and further secularization isn't linear.Now, Steve Bruce, in his book, The Charismatic Movement and the secularization thesis, he used the analogy of a wheel and he's imagining a wheel with spokes and all of the different spokes maybe represent something like different, different, maybe sectors of society.And so a wheel travels downhill with an inevitable trae trajectory. But as the wheel rotates as it's rolling down the hill, those spokes will go up and down and left and right as they rotate around the wheel.And so he uses this to say that there's variants that there's going to be an ebb and flow that where secularization may be winning in one area of society and may be losing in another.And that could even shift and overturn itself and stuff as the wheel kind of rolls down the hill.

00:35:18 

But the one thing that Steve Bruce knows is that there is an inevitable trajectory that there is a clean line that goes from the top of the hill to the bottom of the hill and the wheel will inevitably get there and it is highly predictable in that sense.Now Partridge says, I cannot feel that this is an example of a thesis driven by a secular ideology. Now realize what he's saying here, he's saying that that Bruce is putting the cart before the horse.Now Bruce does not believe in Christianity as as Partridge does, right? So when he says, when, when he refers to its inevitable trajectory, yeah, he's not seeing the same thing that Partridge is seeing, he's seeing the world differently.And so he thinks so, so Partridge thinks that Bruce is assuming his own ends without providing sufficient Chanel for his thesis, Bruce is, is, is thinking from the position of religion will be gone, that God is dead and then he's just arguing towards his thesis or actually not even arguing.

00:36:24 

But in this wheel analogy, he's ill frustrating towards his thesis without actually providing sufficient backup for his position. That's why I mean, he puts the cart before the horse, he assumes he assumes way too much in this illustration. And so secularization is not linear.

00:36:41 

The fourth one is that secularization does not necessitate a rise in explicit atheism. OK. Atheism assumes a position against religious belief. And, and this is actually important because secularization really breeds a subconscious agnosticism.And what I mean by that is that is that secularization is not always, I mean, I guess occasionally it is, but it's not decidedly anti religious. It is drive, it is a driving force in society that makes us subconsciously without thinking about it.It agnostic not knowing, it's not knowing or having context for a religious discussion. And if you live in a city, like I live not in a big city, but I live near the city of Los Angeles.And So I see a lot of this, I think California maybe just broadly, more secularized than a lot of other, uh, a lot of other states. And certainly the closer you get to California's major cities, the more secularization that you're gonna see.And I think that evangelical Christians have reduced the gospel to Jesus dying for the forgiveness of sins. And, and most people in our society, they don't even know what a sin is. They don't know why sin is a problem.

00:37:55 

Like, even if they sort of know what sin means, they don't even know why. That's exactly a problem that they don't have a religious context to even have that conversation.And that's what I mean by a subconscious agnosticism that people just don't know and they don't know what they don't know and they're not even thinking about what they don't know. That's not even a category for them.I've heard this described as not, it's not atheism, the belief that there is no God, which is an antagonistic perspective. Rather, it's apatheism that you're, they're just sort of apathetic. They never even think about whether there is or isn't to God.They don't have religious thoughts very often. Now, I'm working on a book right now because I think when we, when we reduce the gospel to Jesus died for the forgiveness of sins. And I think that introduces a lot of problems because there's no context.So I'm writing a book right now called the Gospel is bigger than you think. And it'll, it'll be out in a few months.

00:38:49 

But it's sort of this biblical theological look at the work of Christ that takes more seriously that the way that the gospel story interface is with the theological needs of societies across time and space.And so we're looking at a bigger picture of the gospel that answers bigger needs than just the minutia of, of sin or even of human sinfulness. And so that's the fourth one that secularization does not necessitate a rise in explicit atheism.It actually, it actually produces sort of a subconscious agnosticism or an apatheism towards religious thinking at all. The fifth, the fifth myth is that secularization is not the natural consequence of better education and a more sophisticated society.In other words, the more we learn, the less we need God. And, and a lot of people think that a lot of even religious groups think that, that they don't want to send that they don't want to send their Children to public schools.And they certainly don't want them college educated.

00:39:52 

because then as they learn more about science and the, and, and the way that the world works and they learn political philosophy and all these types of things as they're exposed to higher education, then, and more knowledge, then they're gonna walk away from their faith.

00:40:08 

And that's what people think, I don't know if that's true. Partridge says this, some of the most intelligent and sophisticated people I know are also some of the most conservative and committed Christians.I know and, and I would say that that's been true for me as well that there's a lot of people that I engage with, sort of in academic biblical studies discussions that are completely faithful in every way to Christ and knowledgeable highly knowledgeable about about the way that Christ and his kingdom interface with society broadly.

00:40:46 

So historically, we know that scientific in inquiry was actually a product of religious exploration. That the only reason we have science in the first place is because of the church. And so secular knowledge only exists because Christians developed it to answer religious questions.

00:41:02 

And there's always been an interplay. And so we cannot say that well, knowledge is what's gonna push God away.And so we pursue greater knowledge because it's in the pursuit of greater knowledge that we're actually going to be able to engage that tension between the sacred and the secular better.Further Partridge said that secularization is the product of a range of social, political and arguably psychological processes. And I think we could say much more about this.But, but what Partridge is saying is that secular secularization is not a project product of education, but it's, it's a product of the way that society broadly, argues for social, political and psychological means towards ends. And so it's, it's effectively, it's a secularization is a Hermana issue.

00:41:52 

It's a, it's not an issue of knowledge. It's, it's how are you interpreting data? It's how are you thinking about data? How are you farming data from the world and from the scriptures and from religious inquiry? maybe even more broadly.And so I would encourage in that to be better educated, know what, know what you believe, know how, what you believe engages society more broadly.And that's actually what's gonna help that we shouldn't be fearful of education as if education is gonna push us away from God. Now, I've got two editions. Those are partridges five, my first edition is this secularization is not a weapon to be wielded.Secularization is not a weapon to be wielded. What I mean by that is that there's not actually one person on the planet that we can point to and say, see, that's a super power, powerful person right there who's forcing secularization on the masses.And, and here's why I believe that, you know, forced secularization has a, has actually has a way of encouraging religious belief instead of diminishing it.

00:42:52 

And here's an example, the persecuted church in China has a zeal that the free church in the US just doesn't understand that, that under persecution, the gospel goes forward with power.It changes lives it, it in radical ways that whatever we think, you know, whatever revival that we pray for in churches here in the United States. And then, you know, as well as I do that never quite happens. Exactly. Like you envision it.Well, they're actually getting that sometimes in other parts of the world. because persecution has a way of making people settle with metaphysical ideas.And so they come to Christ and they believe Christ and they, and they're able to operate in the world in radical ways because of that. Now, you can look at North Korea versus South Korea and see this there too, that North Korea is anti Christian anti religion effectively.And South Korea, I believe in some ways in response to the way that the regime works in North Korea actually is a very Christianized place.

00:43:54 

And I don't mean everybody there is a Christian, but Christianity is not just broadly accepted, but it's encouraged and, and, and so there's a lot of faithful South Koreans where in North Korea, they're actually being persecuted for it. And so I think the one inspires the other.

00:44:11 

And so then I would just ask, like, are we afraid of secularization in the United States? Are we afraid that if secularization continues on its current trajectory, that Nietzsche is gonna be right? And we're gonna say, well, I guess God is dead. Well, I, I don't think so.Actually, the scriptures are very clear about this, that, that, that, that the church is going to be persecuted, that there's, that, that's going to happen, that people do hate the gospel of Jesus Christ.And, and so, as I, as I look at that, I think, well, you know, secularization in the United States might actually be the answer to our prayers for revival. And so I don't know, I'm not, I'm not gonna pray for further secular secular secularization.I'd love to see healthier conversations between the sacred and the secular that actually produce you know, some fruit and some godliness to increase in the world around us.But I also, I don't think I'm afraid of secularization as if that somehow means that I'm not gonna someday be allowed to practice my faith. I don't actually see that coming.

00:45:12 

So that's my first one, that secularization is not a weapon to be wielded and therefore we don't need to be afraid of it. Second, secularization does not come from feelings. But from rationale, that's an actual myth. You didn't hear me wrong.I believe that secu secularization plays off of people's feelings, not off of their actual clear thinking it happens through subconscious efforts.Partridge referencing Bruce again, says that there are too many examples of modern people believing the most dreadful nonsense to suppose that people change from one set of beliefs to another just because the second is a better set of ideas as a secularist Bruce is calling religion dreadful nonsense.

00:45:59 

But I think the inverse is still true. Um, no one will be rationalized out of their faith in Jesus.I don't, I don't think you can argue somebody out of their faith in Jesus that an atheist and a, and a Christian having a conversation, um, rarely is going to produce the Christian becoming an atheist.I'm not sure that actually ever happens that that's not the way that it works. And if you've ever had conversations with atheists, it's rarely a rational argument for the existence of God that believe brings people to faith.It usually happens out of some type of desire to have what the Bible promises, what Christianity promises to that atheist. It's, that's, it's usually that it's a feeling or subconsciously motivated conversion that takes place.And so nobody will be rationalized out of their faith in Jesus, but they can be tempted out. I want you to realize this, that they be tempted out if you make them desire the, the bright, the shiny, the succulent apple, right?

00:46:56 

They, we all know people who have walked away from their faith and I'm not gonna get into a theological argument over like, well, were they or were they ever a Christian before? This type of apostasy is demonstrated in the scripture and places.And so we'll leave the theological conversation about that for another day, but we've seen people walk away from their faith. How, why does that happen?Well, for the same reason that eve ate the fruit in the garden, she was tempted out of her faith because of the desire for something else. Something that was bright and shiny and succulent. And she wanted that she wanted the secular, she wanted to.So she wanted to push God out to form her own religious ideas. And so that said churches won't persevere their members without rationalism, that you gotta have some sort of rational, rational idea in there. That counter acts, right?That, that counter acts bad theology, but that's not what's gonna keep your people in the church, what's gonna keep your people in the church, what's gonna keep them in their faith is to have them be inspired by the story of the scriptures, right?

00:47:55 

And that means that means that we, we lay their eternal hope before them regularly. It means that we re mythologize the scripture that we stop talking about.The Bible is like a self help manual, but we actually let the, let the, let the mythology of the scripture and of the theology of the scriptures become alive and necessary for them.It's an, it's an inspiration to spiritual things and this is what this podcast is really about. It's about the need for myth, for enchantment, for legend.It's it's to respond to human needs on a level that is so so profound that only story can delve deep enough into the depths of the human psyche for them to believe it.And so I hope this has been a good introduction to sort of the re enchantment of the West and the need for re enchantment. I think that's enough for today. I think this episode was very theoretical in nature.

00:48:47 

You came here for the myth for the weird stuff for the giants, the dragons. And I get that and we're gonna get there future episodes. We're gonna dive into sort of the enchantment of the Bible. This is gonna become a very biblical podcast. As we explore different texts. We explore the lore of the Bible, the Hebrew folklore, the legends, the ancient near eastern mythology and other cultures, all that fun stuff. That's what we're gonna do. But we've got one more episode somewhat like this. I'm gonna call it.I, I'm gonna call it if this one is the disenchantment of the West. We're gonna call the next episode, the re enchantment of the West. OK? Because we're gonna look at the Western world and how in a postmodern world we are now re enchanting.That, that we're gonna, we're gonna tease out what it means that the world is re enchantment, chanting that it's getting away from purely secular ideals that flowed from the enlightenment and from modernity.We're gonna talk about the pros and cons of this because I, I believe that the world is reenchanting, but it's reenchanting in the wrong direction.

00:49:50 

And so at least if people are thinking mythological and they're thinking symbolically, at least we have something to latch on to. but then they're latching on to the wrong things. And so how do we engage those conversations? OK.So that's what we're gonna do in the next episode. Encourage you, subscribe, like share, do the things that, that you're supposed to do on media, blessings to you and I pray, pray that in everything that the Lord show himself to you. God bless him.