ATHEISM AND DIVINE ABSENCE IN A SECULAR AGE
JOSEPH MINICH
Bulwarks of Unbelief: Atheism and Divine Absence in a Secular Age
Copyright 2023 Joseph Minich
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Print ISBN 9781683596752
Digital ISBN 9781683596769
Library of Congress Control Number 2022944271
Lexham Editorial: Todd Hains, Tim Perry, Andrew Sheffield, Katrina Smith, Mandi Newell
Cover Design: Joshua Hunt; Brittany Schrock
For Οὖτις, my mentor and friend
Foreword by Carl R. Trueman
Modern Atheism as a Technocultural Phenomenon I: Correlation
Modern Atheism as a Technocultural Phenomenon II: Causation
Orthodox Protestantism in a World Come of Age
The Desire of the Nations in an Age of Pluralism
Charles Taylor notes in A Secular Age that, while one can today believe in the same things as a Christian in the year 1500 (e.g., the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection), one cannot believe them in the same way. In 1500, such belief was intuitive, resting upon bulwarks of belief that made denial of Christianity, if not strictly impossible, really very difficult. Today, however, the opposite applies: one chooses to believe in the Christian faith, and one does so in the face of a culture where the bulwarks, so to speak, are in favor of unbelief. This is why so many Christians even feel their own hearts often to be battlegrounds, not simply between righteousness and unrighteousness but between faith and atheism.
How this change has taken place has been subject to many forms of analysis. Numerous culprits have been suggested over the years: a decadent late medieval theology; the crisis of institutional authority that flows (and keeps flowing) from the ecclesiastical disruptions at the Reformation; the rise of capitalism; the development of modern science. All have surely played their part. But at the heart of the human experience of the conflict between belief and unbelief lies the way in which individuals intuitively relate to the world around them. Their way of being in the world is central to how they understand and navigate that world.
In this book, Joseph Minich offers an account of the bulwarks of unbelief that ascribes a central role to technology. Martin Heidegger famously commented that the threat from technology to humanity did not come primarily from the ability it gave to destroy the human race through what we now call weapons of ...
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About Bulwarks of Unbelief: Atheism and Divine Absence in a Secular AgeHow modernity creates atheists. 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. |
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