THE VALUE OF CHARLES TAYLOR'S "A SECULAR AGE"

The Value Of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age

by Forrest W. Schultz

From writers such as Cornelius Van Til, Francis Schaeffer, and R. J. Rushdoony we learn of the presuppositions and consequences of Humanism and how antithetical they are to Christianity and we learn how the Christian influence upon Western Culture has been more and more supplanted by Humanistic thought and practice. What is actually involved in this is very detailed and enormously complex, which it has to be due to the enormous complexity of God and of man and of the relationship between God and man. The amount of detail provided by these three writers and other similar scholars varies but usually there is of necessity a certain amount of simplification that is necessary for a normal sized book. For anyone who wishes a more detailed discussion of some of the particulars, I would suggest reading Charles Taylor's 800 page magnum opus, A Secular Age. It is useful in clarifying exactly what some of the terms mean, such as disenchantment and secularization, and in avoiding some of the simplistic notions of the historical dynamics. I am not inclined at this time to write a summary or review of the book -- that would be very time consuming if done properly. I would encourage you to read it for the reasons noted but you should be advised that it has its own special style and that it does not have the kind of polemical force found in writers such as the three noted above. Its purpose is not to refute or denounce or deplore humanism, but to better understand it. It also aims to produce a better understanding of Christianity.

Taylor's book was published in 2007 by Harvard University Press.