The Turn to Transcendence: The Role of Religion in the Twenty-First Century by Glenn Olsen (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 324 of the object of the human act, I wonder if the texts of Aquinas are open, legitimately open, to a variety of plausible interpretations which—though incompatible with each other—are reasonably credible readings of the Angelic Doctor. CHRISTOPHER KACZOR Loyola Marymount Los Angeles, California The Turn to Transcendence: The Role of Religion in the Twenty-First Century. By GLENN OLSEN. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010. Pp. 404. $50.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-8132-1740-6. Scholarly analysis of the nature and origin of modernity has exploded in recent years with a vast array of works devoted to unpacking the intellectual genealogy of how we got to where we are now. One of the common themes that has emerged from much of the best Christian theological analysis of modernity is that the putative “neutrality” of secular Liberalism toward all metaphysical and theological claims is deeply problematic. From John Milbank to David Schindler to Charles Taylor, the pretensions of modern secularity to metaphysical and theological neutrality are exposed as a colossal ruse, meant to mask, under such code words as “diversity” and “inclusiveness” and “pluralism,” a deep commitment to a set of metaphysical/theological values that are directly opposed to the Christian world view. Furthermore, the so-called neutrality of modern secularity toward metaphysical claims is an absolutely essential aspect of the Liberal project, since to admit that it does, indeed, contain metaphysical/ theological entailments undercuts the very foundations of its historical justification as the preferred political arrangement for a pluralistic world. Thus, and by extension, the contemporary scholarship devoted to exposing the falsity of these pretensions is some of the most important Christian intellectual work being carried out today. Glenn Olsen’s new book on this topic fits nicely into this genre. Olsen is a historian, and a good one, and the text is a vast labyrinth of thickly descriptive expositions of an amazingly wide collection of thinkers. But Olsen is not content simply to exposit the thought of others, and he moves easily from exposition to analysis to application in a deft and masterful manner. The reader is often left rather breathless at the sheer scope of Olsen’s ownership of the sources that he has marshaled to make his argument. And as befits the historical approach he adopts, the analysis of modernity emerges out of the dialectical interplay of competing ideas, some approved of, some rejected, some left hanging suspended, BOOK REVIEWS 325 but always with an eye toward the main line of his argument. For impatient readers this can be daunting as one must walk Olsen’s path with him, drinking deeply from the authors he discusses, and waiting for the argument to emerge from the organic development of competing ideas held in tension. But it is a walk well worth taking. The main theme of Olsen’s text is that human beings are constitutively oriented toward some kind of Transcendence and, therefore, that all cultures too instinctively seek justification and grounding in a Transcendent reference point. All cultures seek this constitutive grounding in Transcendence and encode this foundation in all of the embodied institutions, myths, rituals, codes, and moral customs of society. Olsen does not attempt to “prove” through philosophical, theological, or scientific analysis that human beings have such an orientation. Rather, as a historian, he allows the evidence for the universal quest for Transcendence that one finds in all cultures to speak for itself as a powerful testimony to the existential impossibility of avoiding the question. What becomes clear in his analysis is that it is only a deeply ingrained modern prejudice against theological and metaphysical claims that can account for modernity’s continuing insistence upon the unimportance of such issues for a truly modern, Liberal democracy. Indeed, the “Big Lie” inherent in the modern project is that the question of society’s relationship to Transcendence is not only irrelevant, but dangerous, since it raises a series of questions that cannot be resolved in a universally agreeable fashion by the Esperanto of secular, technocratic reason. As Olsen shows, this is a dangerous and naïve conceit, since the question of Transcendence is unavoidable and thus to...