You are probably a liberal if you reject the idea of the secular
In the introduction to his landmark study The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (1976), William R. Hutchison, the late professor of religious history at Harvard University, described the theological modernism (or liberalism) of a century ago in terms of three basic commitments. First, modernism sought to adapt religious ideas to modern culture. Second, modernism believed that God is immanent in and revealed through human cultural progress. Third, modernism was committed to a belief that society is progressively moving toward the realization of the kingdom of God.
All of this is standard fare for those familiar with Protestant liberalism, but Hutchison went on to note that the foundation of the modernist commitment to these three points was its rejection of the classic Christian distinction “between sacred and secular, between a starting point in revelation and a starting point in reason or in science” (8). As Hutchison put it, liberals “ordinarily refused to make automatic moral distinctions between church and world, or even between the religious and the secular” (9).
Hutchison argued that the experience of two world wars, the Great Depression, and the Cold War pretty much decimated liberalism’s confidence that the kingdom of God is being realized in the progress of society. But he pointed out that the most important emphasis of liberalism continued to endure in the theology of his day: “the attempt … to renounce long-standing categories of ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ probably constitutes the most important claim that modernism makes as a movement reaching beyond the needs and illusions of the time in which it flourished” (11).
Commenting on Hutchison’s book almost four decades later, I would note that this emphasis has won significant ground among Evangelical and even among confessional Reformed Christians. Even in the most conservative denominations Reformed theologians seeking to recover a healthy recognition of the difference between the kingdom of God and secular life (i.e., life in the present age) are subject to widespread criticism. Indeed, liberalism has been around for so long that many now regard its basic commitments as conservative Christianity, and speak freely about their fear that those trying to recover the old ideas are radicals at best, and liberals at worst. There is a lot of confusion out there. A lot of work needs to be done.
Posted on July 9, 2012, in Liberalism, The Secular and tagged modernism, Protestant liberalism, the secular, William R. Hutchison. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
When speaking of a distinction between sacred and secular, are you speaking of a qualitative or separable difference between the two?
On one level, it’s easy to see a distinction between the work of the visible church and the work of a humble carpenter, but an over-emphasis on the sacred/secular (i.e. a Catholic chain of being-type distinction) would also tell the carpenter that his work means less to God than the mediatorial work of a priest. One of the purposes of the liberal trend is to obliterate this conceit.
At the same time, there is the insight that humans are religious beings. In the sense of religious activity, it permeates all our life, so that we don’t live religious lives on a Sunday and secular lives the rest of the week. In fact, using two kingdoms reasoning, even though I do work in the common realm of education, as a member of the covenant community, I am bound by the rule of Scripture in all I do. That is, there is a religious orientation to everything I do. In this way, it seems like making sacred/secular too distinct also poses problems.
I also see your point though. There are some Reformed folks I know who have been so bold as to say that the work they do IS their devotions. There is still something fundamentally different about the work I do and spending time in meditation on God’s Word. Likewise, we should not fool ourselves into thinking that a microfinance project to combat poverty in Africa is the same thing as sending a missionary there.
I therefore find myself both affirming and denying the distinction.. any thoughts on resolving that problem, or should we cry antinomy and sidle up to both notions?
Donald, thanks for your comment. I think it would help to clarify that when I talk about the secular I am referring to the things of this age. The would secular comes from the Latin word saeculum which simply means age. When Jesus distinguishes between the present age and the age to come (i.e., Luke 20, discussing marriage) he is invoking the idea of the secular, and contrasting it to what is eternal, or to what pertains to the kingdom of God (which is eternal). Paul is dealing with the exact same thing in 1 Corinthians 7, when he indicates that things like marriage, property, power, etc. are secular. The point is that they are passing away.
It is this distinction between the kingdom that is future, that will transform all things, and that is entirely encompassed in Christ (Colossians 1:15-20), and the passing present age, that liberalism sought to eliminate as part of the social gospel. Liberation theology makes the same move, as do the more radical versions of neo-Calvinism.
I don’t think distinguishing between the secular and the eternal (which is a better contrast than between the secular and the sacred, I would agree) means that only certain things in life are religious, while others are not. All of life is religious, it is all to be done as unto the Lord and under the authority of Scripture, and in that sense even all of life is our “spiritual act of worship.” As Christians we do everything as unto the Lord and that means subjectively everything has kingdom significance. In everything we do we point to our eternal hope. But that doesn’t make our secular activities any less secular.
Does that help? Make sense?
For what it’s worth, I try to clarify a lot of this exegetically in my two kingdoms lecture (see the audio link on this blog). But please let me know if I’m somehow missing what your concern is here. I appreciate your constructive engagement on this.
That clarifies things. Most of my concerns are born from importation of on-going discussions here at Dordt. Your short post (fairly) did not define things like religious or secular, and so I imported definitions from other discussions. I do think that a passing/eternal distinction makes some sense.
Just to be provocative though… would this mean rejecting the notion that “all life is sacred?”
Donald, can you clarify: do you mean to ask whether all human life (i.e., life as opposed to death) is sacred, or are you asking if every area of life is sacred?
As a preliminary answer, I would say the sacred does not necessary equal the eschatological. I haven’t nailed down my views on this (i.e., does the Bible have a concrete definition of the sacred?), but I suspect there are things we can say are “sacred” in a certain sense, even if they are secular in the sense I have defined it here. For instance, I think Calvin would have been comfortable saying magisterial power is sacred, as well as something like marriage, and perhaps life. But the sacred/secular distinction should be distinguished from the eternal/secular distinction, I think, and the word sacred as it is being used with reference to the examples I give here is therefore not the opposite of the proper meaning of the term secular. Thoughts?
I was mostly just baiting by reference to an oft-repeated maxim. I had no particular agenda.
That said, perhaps the proper approach (rather than create both a sacred/secular and eternal/secular distinction, which is confusing) would be to speak of certain things as special gifts from God. That is, the fact that God suffers sinful man a (usually) long and healthy life is a precious gift from Him which gives us a foretaste of the true life that He offers us. Likewise marriage, as a foretaste of true union with Christ, or father/motherhood, as an insight into the love the Father bears for us. The visible church would also be a blessing and visible foretaste of fellowship to come.
I would hesitate to call them particular blessings, because each of these gifts, if rejected or perverted, only multiply the condemnation of the reprobate. How does that work as a way to avoid the confusion of another secular distinction while preserving the undeniable reality that there is a particularly blessed sweetness in some of God’s gifts which seems different from other gifts that He gives?
Donald, I think I’m generally on board with what you are saying here. Some would say that simply using the word dignity is not sufficient to speak to the “sanctity” of life or marriage, and I am quite sympathetic with that, as long as sanctity in this sense simply means inviolable, or worthy of the highest honor. I admit I need to do some more thinking about this sort of language, and at the moment I would only say that I am flexible on the matter.
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