In Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, Nikolai Petrovich makes an astonishing discovery about his son Arkady. In the late afternoon sun, Nikolai, the devoted father, waits for his son to return from college. He sits on a bench and hopes for what many fathers do: a close friend and a helper to manage the family estate. Nikolai soon discovers his son has returned from his studies a nihilist, having abandoned much of what he once believed. Nikolai laments, “I’ve fallen behind and he’s gone ahead and so we can’t understand each other.”
Turgenev’s 1862 Russian novel artfully chronicles how successive generations adapt to changes in the world as time goes by. The story beautifully captures a father coming to terms with a world that seems to be passing him by.
Attentiveness to the rapidly changing world is also at the core of Joseph Minich’s Bulwarks of Unbelief: Atheism and Divine Absence in a Secular Age. Minich, founding editor of Ad Fontes, enters into conversation with Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age. He begins with what Taylor calls “bulwarks of belief,” or “those background features of medieval Christian culture that (both consciously and subconsciously) rendered belief in God all but inevitable” (9).
Minich flips Taylor’s paradigm, seeking to discern modern “bulwarks of unbelief,” or “those features of the modern world that render unbelief as at least plausible” (9). The result is an intriguing analysis of modernity and its relationship to the Christian faith, with prescriptions to help overcome those bulwarks.
Divine Absence
Minich credits the rise of unbelief to the phenomenon of divine absence—a feeling that even theists experience as part of everyday life (consider Ps. 88). He explains, “Whatever one believes propositionally about the question of God, God’s existence is not felt to be obvious in the same way that, for instance, the fact that you are reading this right now seems obvious” (5).
He says divine absence is heavily influenced by the rise of modern “technoculture.” For Minich, the discussion of technoculture isn’t about technology in and of itself. It’s about the ways technologies have shifted our understanding of the world and our relationships with ourselves, others, and the material world. Resonance with Taylor’s work abounds.
Minich wrestles with the question of belief and unbelief through the mundane and commonplace human experience of the world rather than as a purely academic exercise. Seen from this angle, technoculture has alienated us and taken away a sense that “one belongs to, and is caught up in, a history that transcends one” (6). This is what Taylor calls the “immanent frame,” which is characteristic of our age.
Recognize Change
The journey from presumed belief to unbelief as a starting point for discussions of the world has progressed unevenly throughout history. Minich associates the 1860s with a rapidly growing discourse of divine absence and atheism, sending shock waves through the political, academic, and religious world.
Technoculture has alienated us and taken away a sense that ‘one belongs to, and is caught up in, a history that transcends one.’
Fathers and Sons was written during that decade. This is, perhaps, why it serves as a helpful illustration of Minich’s thesis. To remain involved in the public discourse of their day, Turgenev’s characters are repeatedly faced with the choice to recognize change, leading to a wide range of responses including comprehensive acceptance, apprehensiveness, and fierce resistance. This is a pattern we see repeated in our culture.
Arguments and rebuttals are a natural approach in the face of cultural change. For most of human history, belief in God was almost inevitable. Yet sometimes challenges that cause us to carefully evaluate our assumptions are a blessing. Minich urges “those who want to maintain orthodox religious faith . . . to be at least somewhat thankful for rather than threatened by the modern condition” (180). When we have to evaluate and defend our presuppositions, it refines and sharpens our faith.
Minich argues against attempts to roll back the clock to a premodern age. Knowing what we now know, to return to a theistic Middle Ages would come “at the cost of intellectual honesty” (236). This “emergency exit” from the modern condition prohibits those seeking to maintain orthodox religious faith from asking of the present moment, “What might God be up to?” (230). We need not affirm the shifts in culture, but he encourages looking forward rather than backward as we formulate our responses.
Embrace Essential Continuity
Turgenev’s Nikolai recognizes change is inevitable, but he doesn’t allow this reality to crush him. We don’t find him reacting against his son or his newfound ideals but instead extending hospitality, patience, and a listening ear to the younger generation.
Although Arkady rejects traditional understandings of religion and society for most of the narrative, he slowly realizes many of these sentiments are simply unnatural to him. He admits, “I’m no longer looking for my ideals where I sought them before. They now seem to me much . . . much closer” (176). In the closing chapter of Fathers and Sons, Arkady is eager to restore his relationship with his father and manage the family farm. It seems Nikolai found an effective apologetic approach.
When we have to evaluate and defend our presuppositions, it refines and sharpens our faith.
Bulwarks of Unbelief is at once a critique, praise, and furthering of Taylor’s A Secular Age. Minich rightly points out the lasting significance of Taylor’s ability to identify not simply belief trends but also personal conditions of belief. Since Minich believes that Taylor only “narrows the gap” toward the possibility of atheism (60), he fills out Taylor’s work by linking the experience of divine absence to the plausibility of atheism in our age.
Since Minich ties divine absence to felt experience in the book, one might hope he’d make an argument that engages the whole self. At times, however, Minich’s earnest argumentation comes across as dizzying and cerebral as his well-supported claims betray the book’s promised simplicity. The book is hard to get into because of its dense prose and the number of voices invited into the conversation. While Bulwarks of Unbelief may prove to be a challenging read, its insights apply to academics and laypeople, Christians and non-Christians.
It’s foolish to ignore that the world is changing. Minich acknowledges that “what passes through the historical flame of modernity are nevertheless the essential things of God and his word” (241). Christians don’t need to fear the rapidly changing world, and yet we need not be ashamed of the gospel and its saving power for Jews and Greeks, medievals and moderns (Rom. 1:16).
