Conservative religious figures routinely warn against the
dangers of secularization, just as proponents of the modern secular
state decry the theocratic tendencies of religion. Both sides
assume that the sacred and the secular are diametrically opposed.
Gabriel Vahanian rightly calls such misbegotten assumptions into
question. The problem lies elsewhere. In the light of the biblical
dialectic of holiness and the secular, "Praise of the Secular"
deftly "vindicates" the secular, weaving together philosophy,
history, and theology in fine Derridean, yet reinforced,
deconstructionist fashion.
Vahanian argues that religion, far from being opposed to the
secular, finds its fulfillment in the secular world. Armed with a
compelling interpretation of Christ's incarnation, he claims that
"we have not grasped John's notion of the word become flesh, even
of God as wording, until or unless we realize it must so expand as
to demand the worlding of that very word, extending it into secular
relevance." In other words the holy, if not the sacred, demands its
own secularization.
In this poetically written and profoundly life-affirming work,
Vahanian reinvigorates the secular against the claims of
fundamentalism, which makes the relative absolute, and against the
ideology of a kind of atheism ("secularism" is his term), which
makes the absolute relative.
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