Thought's New Regime

February 19, 2014 by James Faulconer

Continued from Page 1

Like Ricci responding to Chinese culture and translating Christianity into Chinese terms, contemporary Christians must "respond to what in [contemporary culture] already reflects the life of God and to the doors that have been closed against this life" ("A Catholic Modernity" 37). That is not easy, no easier than it was for Ricci.

We cannot go backward. We cannot reverse things and return to the world of transcendence as it was. We must find a way to return transcendence to the world, and Taylor says that we can do so in part by bringing Christian agape once again to the fore. That is an essential movement for Christianity, a movement that is both a return to Christian roots and a reinterpretation of the Christian tradition.

But Taylor recognizes that is not enough. Making durable meaning possible again is a more difficult part of what must be done ("A Place for Transcendence" 10).

Without transcendence is meaning possible? A number of contemporary philosophers argue that it is (e.g., Jean-Luc Ferry and Giorgio Agamben), but the question remains, and it is particularly pressing for theists. How is meaning possible in thought's new regime? In particular, how is God meaningful in that regime?

Without the traditional notion of transcendence, how do we continue to understand God? How do we continue to find meaning in the world? How do we translate Christianity for the world in which transcendence makes no sense? For every Christian thinker that constellation of questions is the pressing question.

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12/2/2022 9:09:21 PM

Mormon

Speaking Silence

Atheism

Culture

History

Nietzsche

Transcendence

Mormonism

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About James Faulconer

James Faulconer is a Richard L. Evans Professor of Religious Understanding at Brigham Young University, where he has taught philosophy since 1975.

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