The New Apologetic Mood

As Charles Taylor would summarize, we live in a haunted age. What he meant by this is that we, as a Western society, live and operate with an odd tension of trying to distance ourselves from a transcendental-cosmological framework while at the same time trying to cleave to transcendental ideas. In simpler terms: we want to simultaneously claim that the spiritual realm is fake while at the same time cleaving to spiritual ideas, such as goodness, as being absolutely real. 

Recently, it has been noticed that this haunting of the Western mind is beginning to make masses rethink their entire frameworks of thought. It was once presumed, by the secularists, that history is linear and that the technological progress of humanity would lead people further and further away from transcendental ideas. What we are beginning to notice, however, is the opposite. The secular framework, a material world without meaning, is beginning to collapse in on itself. Like a building without a frame, its walls could only ascend so high until the whispers of the haunted past began to make them sway and tumble. People are increasingly rejecting the notion that this world is material and meaningless, recognizing that there is a transcendental order that acts as the invisible framework for all that is visible. 

This is both good news and bad news. It is good news because we, as Christians, do reject the claims of the secularists that the cosmos are nothing else but lifeless atoms interacting with each other at random. We believe in a cosmos that is both physical and spiritual, a cosmos whereas the two of these interact and intersect in ways beyond understanding. However, the emergence of a transcendental understanding of the cosmos is bad news as well. It is bad news because, as we see in Scripture, there are a countless variety of spiritual falsities competing for our attention. Because of this, the Western return to religiosity has brought about the good as well as the bad. 

People like Rod Dreher have been putting forth much work in this rising phenomenon and warning us this: opening the box of religiosity (again) to the Western mind exposes it to both the spiritually good and the spiritually bad. Just walk onto a college campus (ironically, of all places) and one will see the following: Christians gathered for worship in a campus building, tarot cards being read in the dining facility, wiccans meeting together on a lawn, and Norse gods being prayed to in a dorm room. There is a rise of religiosity - both in good ways and in bad. This is the emergence of a modern paganism. 

For the past few centuries, the secular climate has made the Christian apologetic primarily focused on defending and upholding spiritual notions against the claims of a lifeless cosmos. This apologetic, however, is beginning to wane. We are now, increasingly, finding ourselves having to dialogue with people who are of a much more similar mindset with whom the Apostle Paul preached to: pagans. In other words, our apologetic discourse is increasingly happening with people who accept the reality of the spiritual but embrace it in all sorts of evil ways. We are finding ourselves living and interacting in a Western culture returning to its pagan roots.

Because of this, a new Christian apologetic mood is emerging. One that is not so much focused on upholding various arguments for the existence of God, but rather one that is concerned about addressing the emerging modern paganism in meaningful ways rather than dismissing it as mere stupidity. This emerging mood seeks to address these modern pagans in such a way that recognizes the legitimacy behind whatever it is that they are worshiping, while presenting the conviction that such things are evil and that people must flee from them to Christ. 

This emerging apologetic mood, for what goodness it is bringing, is also bringing with it bad baggage. From what I am observing, young Christian people are seeking avenues to address the emerging modern paganism in a Christian context that does not shy away. Unfortunately, what this is culminating in is masses of young Christians heading towards Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, or (in worse case scenarios) esoteric Christian falsities. Without going into much detail here, what each of these, seemingly, provide are mystical ways of understanding the cosmos. Young Christians are trying to engage with the emerging evil mysticism of the world with, what they perceive as, a good Christian mysticism.

This, for a variety of reasons, is an error and it is an error that must be pointed out if we are to address it properly. As the new age of paganism dawns on us, we need to recognize that a new apologetic is emerging as well. This new apologetic demands that we return to a biblical understanding of the cosmos - an understanding that has increasingly become foreign to us as secularism has increased in the past few generations. However, with secularism on the decline, and paganism on the incline, the time is now for us to put forth the hard work in reconstructing a biblical understanding of the mystical cosmos we inhabit and to form a new apologetic for the new paganism at large. Failure to do so will have two results. The first is that we will fail to understand how to evangelize to the growing pagan culture and miss out on the Great Commission. The second is that more and more young Christians will continue to flock to Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and so forth as a way of pursuing a biblical understanding of the cosmos - even though these traditions hold incorrect assessments.