In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Transzendenz und säkulare Welt: Lebensorientierung an letzter Gegenwart by Ingolf U. Dalferth
  • R. David Nelson
Transzendenz und säkulare Welt: Lebensorientierung an letzter Gegenwart. By Ingolf U. Dalferth. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015. vii + 293 pp.

One of the hallmarks of modern theology is the attentiveness given to the proper demarcation of the religious and the secular. [End Page 243] This distinction emerged during the Enlightenment and reflects the subsequent ascendency in Europe and North America of the values of the modern liberal project: the autonomy of the individual, democracy as the manifestation of free and reasonable government, the superiority of rational inquiry over appeals to traditional authorities for the advancement of the sciences, and so forth. Modernity has witnessed, albeit in various forms and expressions and to differing degrees, the steady marginalization of religion from the domains of public discourse and into spheres beneath the custodianship of the private conscience. Religion, long ago the dominant voice in political, intellectual, and economic affairs, is today typically viewed as contributing merely weak dissenting explanations for the nature of reality and the foundations of human society. As such, secularity does not in any way sheerly equate with irreligiousness or atheism. Rather, the modern shift to secularism has been marked by indifference to religion.

Modern theology has busied itself with properly charting the horizon between religion and secularism because much theological is at stake in the industry. In this penetrating and important book, Ingolf Dalferth, of Zürich and Claremont, works through a series of theological consequences of secularism, showing at all points how the claims of Christian theology reorient the discussion. Dalferth's approach is funded by an important distinction he draws in the first chapter between, as he puts it, the "horizontal," or sociological, and "vertical," or theological, models of the relation between the religious and the secular. Horizontally, this relation is mapped out by situating different spheres of influence and jurisdiction; for instance, between sacred and profane, ecclesial and political, and so forth. Vertically, the issue at play is the relation between God and the world, which is conceptualized as a tension between "transcendent" and "immanent" understandings of the nature of reality. Dalferth observes that modern philosophy and sociology have typically sought to address the problem of secularism by following a horizontal approach. But what is needed, he argues, is a more rigorously theological, vertical framework that takes seriously faith's belief in a transcendent God who is yet present in the world.

The main chapters guide the reader through this vertical reorientation of the problem by focusing in turn upon a series of subthemes. First (in chapter 'B'), Dalferth considers the phenomenological [End Page 244] distinction between things (Dinge) and events (Ereignisse), suggesting that the latter category is better suited for helping us understand our experiences of the world. He then explores further the ideas of transcendence and immanence, arguing that Christian theology posits the "possibilities" (Möglichkeiten, a word recurring throughout the text) of transcendence as available in the world sacramentally. Dalferth next turns to the putative mutual exclusivity of faith and reason, demonstrating that the two, in fact, inform each other. This discussion unfolds into a fascinating analysis of how free decisions are capable of unleashing new possibilities in the world. Chapters on the philosophical concept of negation (chapter 'F') and on the limits (Grenzen) of human experience (chapter 'G') set up the concluding unit, which reiterates Dalferth's argument that Christian faith upends the horizontal approach typically presupposed in philosophical and sociological accounts of secularism. To the contrary, faith––and not religion––holds that the coming of the transcendent God to the world occurs in events of presence in which new possibilities exceed the world's actualities.

While the book is best categorized as a work of philosophy of religion rather than confessional dogmatics, there is much to commend here for those interested in contemporary Lutheran theology. In particular, Dalferth makes the case that an ontology of justification can be employed in response to the challenge of secularism. By doing so, he shows that the distinction between religion and secularism is, in fact, a false alternative. Rather, faith alone properly orients human existence...

pdf

Share