I’ve been working my way ever so slowly through Charles Taylor’s big book A Secular Age. There are parts that I fully agree with, and other parts that I don’t. The primary thing I agree with him on is his take on secularity, and how that has developed in the history of ideas (which of course he has masterfully, and even originally been developing). I want to highlight a theme from him that is also a theme in other related studies, in regard to the development of modernity (such as Michael Gillespie’s book The Theological Origins of Modernity), that has to do with what Taylor identifies as the ‘immanent frame.’ What he is describing, from a canonical background, finds corollary with what Moses penned in Genesis 3:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

This divinely breathed narrative account of things remains the case today; indeed, modernity reflects this attitude of self-divinity in living color. Charles Taylor writes:

There is another facet of this narrative of secularity which it is worth mentioning here, because of its ubiquity and importance in the “closed” spin on immanence. The story line here is this: once human beings took their norms, their goods, their standards of ultimate value from an authority outside of themselves; from God, or the gods, or the nature of Being or the cosmos. But then they came to see that these higher authorities were their own fictions, and they realized that they had to establish their norms and values for themselves, on their own authority. This is a radicalization of the coming to adulthood story as it figures in the science-driven argument for materialism. It is not just that freed from illusion, humans come to establish true facts about the world. It is also that they come to dictate the ultimate values by which they live.1

We read of a similar ‘come of age’ story in Samuel:

When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. 2 The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in Beersheba. 3 Yet his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after gain. They took bribes and perverted justice. 4 Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah 5 and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” 6 But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the Lord. 7 And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8 According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. 9 Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.” —I Samuel 8:1-9

Modern humanity believes it has evolved past the primitive humanity, in their come of age story, as that shapes modernity (and thus a form of secularity). And yet, instead, it fits into the narrative frame we have described for us in Genesis 3, and played out, in this instance, in the Samuel narrative. The human heart has never changed. The human heart is just as primitive as it was the moment Eve and Adam believed the Serpent’s word over God’s Word. Enlightened humanity is just as darkened as the day that Jesus took it to the cross with Him.

I think the thing that stands out to me most starkly, with reference to Taylor, is how modern humanity is shaped by the idea that they in fact were God all along. That being enlightened in the immanent frame entails the idea that being enlightened is the simple recognition that humanity had really been worshipping a prop of their own projection; and that to recognize this, and then collapse that prop (or the classical divine attributes) into their own composition as human beings, is the true way forward for humanity. But this move is simply mimicking something like what the Israelites did under Samuel’s leadership. It is a move to displace God, and replace Him with the ‘kingship’ of humanity’s own lights. But this only gets us back to the original proto-aevangelium of the Serpent’s “good news” about the inner divinity of humanity. The ‘teacher’ has said ‘there is nothing new under the sun.’ The teacher is right!

1 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, 580 kindle.