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This title presents works of Christopher Dawson. ""The Crisis of
Western Education"", originally published in 1961, served as a
capstone of Christopher Dawson's thought on the Western educational
system. Long out of print, the book has now been updated with a new
introduction by Glenn W. Olsen and is included in the ongoing
""Works of Christopher Dawson"" series. In all of his writings,
Dawson masterfully brings various disciplinary perspectives and
historical sources into a complex unity of expression and applies
them to concrete conditions of modern society. Dawson argued that
Western culture had become increasingly defined by a set of
economic and political preoccupations ultimately hostile to its
larger spiritual end. Inevitably, its educational systems also
became increasingly technological and pragmatic, undermining the
long standing emphasis on liberal learning and spiritual reflection
which were hallmarks of the Christian humanism that created it. In
this important work on the Western educational system, Dawson
traces the history of these developments and argues that Western
civilization can only be saved by redirecting its entire
educational system from its increasing vocationalism and
specialization. He insists that the Christian college must be the
cornerstone of such an educational reform. However, he argued that
this redirection would require a much more organic and
comprehensive study of the living Christian tradition than had been
attempted in the past. Dawson had reservations about educational
initiatives that had been developed in response to this crisis of
education. Among them, he expressed doubts about newly emerging
great books programs fearing that they would reduce the great
tradition of a living culture to a set of central texts or great
ideas. In contrast, he insisted that a Christian education had to
be concerned with 'how spiritual forces are transmitted and how
they change culture, often in unexpected ways'. This would require
an understanding of the living and vital character of culture. As
Dawson saw it, 'culture is essentially a network of relations, and
it is only by studying a number of personalities that you can trace
this network'. Dawson offers a diagnosis of modern education and
proposes the retrieval of an organic and living culture which alone
has the power to renew Western culture.
Supper at Emmaus traces various important intellectual topics from
the ancient world to the modern period. Generally, as in its
treatment of the question of whether the long-standing contrast
between cyclical and linear views of history is helpful, it
introduces important thinkers who have considered the question. A
preoccupation of the book is the appearance and reappearance across
the centuries of patterns used to organize temporal and cultural
experience. AYer an opening essay on transcendental truth and
cultural relativism, the second chapter traces a distinction,
common in historical writings during the past two centuries,
between an alleged ancient classical "cyclic" view of time and
history, used to describe the claimed repetitiveness of and
similaritiesbetween historical events ("nothing is new under the
sun"), and a contrasting Jewish-Christian linear view, sometimes
described as providential in that it moves through a series of
unique events to some end intended by God. In the latter, history
is "about something," the education of the human race or the
redemption of humankind. As in each of the remaining essays, the
book then attempts to draw out the limitations of what the current
consensus on this topic has become. It does this for such things as
our current understanding of religious toleration, humanism,
natural law, and teleology. Some of the essays, such as those on
debate about Augustine's understanding of marriage or the
concluding illustrated essay on the baroque city of Lecce, are
published for the first time. Others are based on previously
published contributions to the scholarly literature, though
generally each of these chapters concludes with a postscript that
engages with current scholarly debate on the subject.
Especially concerned with the public nature of religion, Glenn W.
Olsen sets forth an exhaustively researched and persuasive account
of how religion has been reshaped in the modern period. Though
ancient and medieval western writers used various metaphors to
express the idea that humans are aligned to the universe, they also
believed that humans are oriented toward something ""above"" or
transcending themselves. In recent centuries, however, the sense
that humans, while living in nature and history, are oriented to
transcendence has seemingly diminished. For many, God or the gods
have all but disappeared from secular life. In this important and
timely book, Olsen demonstrates with powerful insight that there
are alternatives, and that religion can and should play a role in
restoring a cultural openness to transcendence. He considers such
questions as how we should understand God's presence in the
universe, what form religion should take in the public square, what
role liturgy plays in orienting us toward God in the universe, and
what it means for religion to be in but not of the world. Olsen
examines proposals for recovering an adequate sense of
transcendence for the future. These range from an appreciation of
certain forms of contemporary art and music specifically concerned
with transcendence, through discussion of the forms of Christian
life and worship most likely to prosper in and shape the modern
world. He proposes a contemporary way of expressing the ideas that
God is to be found in all things and that all is to be done to the
Glory of God. Glenn W. Olsen is professor of medieval history at
the University of Utah, with a Ph.D. in the history of the Middle
Ages. He is a frequent contributor to journals such as Communio,
Logos, and Faith and Reason, and is the author of the book
Christian Marriage: A Historical Study.
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