Just scanning the St. Joan's link brought something to mind which I read recently and, alas, cannot place - which I think is symptomatic of the opposite of the reading disorder you chide in your post, but I digress.
Anyway, the thing was the importance of Christ as God's Word. Words are not the same as images. God came as Word, even to a pre-literate society, for a reason. Images give impressions; they lend themselves to a vague, impressionistic brand of reasoning, if it can be called that. Words, by contrast, rely on definitions and present arguments. Especially in God's hands, words are decisive - this is true, that is not.
For all the St. Joan's writer's focus on rejecting old images of childhood, what he's really doing is rejecting the Word and substituting the vague images of "today's world."
Unsurprisingly, today's world is a culture that relies on television images for most of its knowledge.
Well, I've gone and ordered the book - and after I'd sworn off new books till the holidays were over. However, the two links posted were so annoying. I'm so tired of everyone (starting with Elaine Pagels) knowing more than the Bible. Maybe if I read this book I'll be a little better prepared to argue back - or at least point people to the origins of their zany ideas.
Funny that the sidebar on the interview with Pagels neglected to quote this little gem from the Gospel of Thomas:
114. Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life."
Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven."
Mark Shea pointed me to this post, since my own views may be similar to what's being called the New Religious Synthesis. Interesting concept for a book, but I'm leery of any analysis that says there are two kinds of people in this world and... Sounds like the Revealed Word Tradition v. New Religious Synthesis may be just another way of updating and dressing the traditional Barth / Schleirmacher polarity in religious thought.
From what little I know about Schleiermacher v. Barth (and 't'ain't much, to be honest), I think that their dispute was much more intramural than what Herrick is advancing. In essence, and oversimplifying by several orders of magnitude, S v. B really boils down to evidential/experiential arguments vs. a form of presuppositionalism within a recognizably Christian framework. There are some common points, from what I can tell--Schleiermacher's emphasis on personal experience, for one.
But Herrick looks more at the influence of non-Christian popular thought spawned by the Renaissance/Enlightment, including such figures as Voltaire, Erasmus Darwin (rather more than grandson Charles, interestingly enough), and (in our time), Elaine Pagels, Deepak Chopra, ACIM, etc. As a result, it truly is more "inter-religious," for lack of a better term.
Religion is what connects us to God.
Religion doesn't confuse the natural
and the supernatural.
The new spirituality in denying God or misdefining God, is confusion itself.
Catholicism when it centers on "experience" or self is moving towards new spirituality. Christ and the Cross needs to be at the center of all things Catholic.
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