Word: seculare
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...historical function of civilizations to serve, by their downfalls, as steppingstones to a progressive process of the revelation of always deeper religious insight . . . civilizations will have fulfilled their function when once they have brought a mature higher religion to birth; and, on this showing, our own Western post-Christian secular civilization might at best be a superfluous repetition of the pre-Christian Graeco-Roman one, and at worst a pernicious backsliding from the path of spiritual progress. In our Western world of today, the worship of Leviathan-the self-worship of the tribe -is a religion to which...
...Spiritual Heir. "If this self-criticism is just, then we must revise the whole of our present conception of modern history.. . . Our present view of modern history focuses attention on the rise of our modern Western secular civilization as the latest great new event in the world. ... If we can bring ourselves to think of it, instead, as one of the vain repetitions of the Gentiles-an almost meaningless repetition of something that the Greeks and Romans did before us and did supremely well-then the greatest new event in the history of mankind will be seen...
...rigorously secular mind the total paradox must, like its parts, be "unto the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness." It is not irrational, but it is not the logic of two & two makes four. Theologically, it is the dialectical logic of that trinitarian oneness whose triunity is as much a necessity to the understanding of Godhead as higher mathematics is to the measurement of motion. Religiously, its logic, human beyond rationality, is the expression of a need epitomized in the paradox of Solon weeping for his dead son. "Why do you weep," asked a friend, "since...
Love, Mercy & Respect. Though retaining his Jewish faith and socialist belief, Gollancz has here written a fiery, almost transported plea for a return to the ways of the early Christians. Political salvation is possible, he thunders, only if based on a union of traditional religious ethics and the secular humanist tradition of the West. A way of life based on unswerving devotion to love, mercy and respect for human personality is the only vision that can save modern man from total destruction...
Disillusion & Despair. Meanwhile, secularism was on the rise. The Protestant reaction to this challenge, says Niebuhr, took two forms. "One section of the church, usually identified as 'fundamentalist,' has sought to preserve the Christian heritage by denying every achievement of science . . . and by wrapping the essential truths of the Christian faith in obscurantism. . . . The other section of the church, usually defined as 'liberal'. . . has been pathetically eager to relate itself creatively to the achievements of a secular age-so eager, in fact, that it . . . has been inclined to sacrifice every characteristic Christian insight if only...