A Response to my Commentators

In this article I address my commentators' questions about the implications of the thesis set out in Some New World. I suggest that the book is not just another decline narrative, since on my view secular modernity is attended by gains and losses, and that in any case what counts as decline is in the eye of the beholder. The response also explores whether Christianity has some enduring essence that serves as a clear criterion for which of its historical manifestations are to be regarded as legitimate. In response to the question of whether we need a non-naturalistic science, I argue that the present conduct of science is fine, provided that we limit our expectations of what it can deliver and realise that its putative naturalism can be re-described as a particular version of theism. At the same time, I suggest that there may be a way forward that »overcomes« the present and historically contingent binary between natural and supernatural that provides the basis for modern naturalism (and to some extent, denials of naturalism, too). This, however, would involve something like a Hegelian 'sublation' or a paradigmatic revolution.