frequency, has thought his way tonpenetrating answers.nJoseph Baldacchino, author ofnEconomics and the Moral Order, isnassociate editor of Human Eventsnand president of the NationalnHumanities Institute.nThe Terrestrial Godnby Thomas MolnarnSacralizing the Secular: ThenRenaissance Origins of Modernitynby Stephen A. McKnightnBaton Rouge: Louisiana StatenUniversity Press;n131 pp., $25.00nIt all depends on what .we mean byn”sacralizing” and “sacred,” and to anlesser extent by “secular.” The fact thatnProfessor McKnight is a student of EricnVoegelin should not be left unmentionednin this regard, because for thenrecently deceased great scholar, “sa-nLIBERAL ARTSnAT LEAST IT AIN’TnMAPPLETHORPEnAn ant farm with thousands of residentsnwill be installed at Austin’s RobertnMueller Municipal Airport as part of anpublic art program.nTexas leaf cutter ants will live in thenglass-contained farm, the $48,000-plusncenterpiece of a $200,000 Art in PublicnPlaces program by Minneapolis artistnRichard Posner.nDuring last week’s city council meeting,n’the farm’s lone council critic. MayornLee Cooke, fiddled with a beautifullynrendered, tiny black plastic ant.nCooke squeezed his palm around thencritter and mused, “I don’t like the art.”n—from the Houston Chronicle,nAugust 13, 1989n44/CHRONICLESncred” remained an elusive term. Thenword certainly referred to a dimensionnof man that differed from the secularnand the profane, but it is not necessarilynsynonymous with what the monotheisticnreligions mean by it. To Voegelin,nEliade, Jung, Campbell, Rudolf Otto,nand others, sacred meant the territory ofnawe, of numinous intervention, of participationnin the cosmos and its forces.nIn other words, for these scholarsn(and McKnight), the sacred is a tremendousnworldview perfectiy compatiblenwith paganism, and to which Christianitynhas added a sui generis dimensionnbut by no means annexed. We shouldnkeep these things in mind as we readnMcKnight’s book.nThrough his analyses of importantnRenaissance figures, McKnight tries tonshow why the Renaissance is falselyncredited with the intention of secularizingnthe Middle Ages, when in fact itnhad tried to resacralize the just openingnsecular world and woridview. Not surprisingly,nquestions arise immediately.nFirst, what was secular in the course ofnthe Renaissance? The Humanists (Petrarch,nErasmus) formed only a modestncorner, enlarged only in retrospect byntoday’s modernists. Almost any Renaissancenfigure that scholars like ChariesnNauert and Francis Yates studied wasnat least tainted by esoteric and occultninterests and practices, whethernAlbrecht Diirer at one end or FrancisnBacon at the other. Yates even bringsnShakespeare in, and D.P. Walker ofnthe Warburg Institute augments the listnwith many more names. In short, thenline of demarcation between “secularizers”nand “sacralizers” is becomingnblurred.nBut let us grant that the Renaissancenwas by and large a secular movement.nIn what sense did the men studied bynMcKnight sacralize it? True, they referrednto an enormous ancient traditionnof a basic wisdom, a prisca theologia,nof a religion whose teachers were supposednto have taught Plato as well asnMoses; their documents were obviouslynlater fabrications, but accepted inngood faith; their content was Pythagoreanngeometry, the Jewish Cabala, thenGnostic systems, and much more. Thenmain objective was to redefine man,nfrom Christian to magus, ultimately anterrestrial god in whose hands knowledgenand power are equated. Thisnmuch McKnight readily acknowledgesnnnand illustrates with appropriate quotationsnand discussion.nMy question is: where is thensacralizing process in all this? Would itnnot be easier to set up another thesis? Itncould be briefly formulated. All thosenwhom the author mentions were eithernloyal to the Christian religion or harboringnother beliefs. A Marsilio Ficinonand a Diirer fall in the first category,nmost of the rest in the second. Tbenlatter’s objective was to demonstrate itsnincompatibility with the imminentlyndominant worldview ruled by sciencen(and power). In order to pursue thisndesign they had very litde at theirndisposal, and certainly not the conceptualnedifice by which they could havenpromoted it. Hence they resorted to annancient, half-mythical occult practiceninimical to conceptualization. Butnwhat counts is their intention, which (Inrepeat) was purely secular.nBy the 17th century, they had arrivednat their goal. Science was bornncarrying an overload of secularistic philosophy.nOur history books are correct:nthe great initiators were Bacon andnDescartes; both (especially the latter)nmade tabula rasa of the oldnAristotelian/Scholastic concepts andnformulated an entirely new conceptualnreference system. Had FrancisconGiorgi, the early 16th-century Venetiannmonk, possessed the algebraic languagenthat Descartes elaborated a centurynlater, we would celebrate himntoday instead of Father Mersenne’snfriend. The conclusion is thatnMcKnight’s “sacralizers” did not intendnto sacralize the secular. Theynwere groping for a science, a secularnone (if words have a meaning), fornwhich they had neither a terminologynnor instruments; and with Descartesnand Galileo, or rather their successors,nthey entered into the possession ofnboth.nMcKnight renders himself evennmore vulnerable when he bringsnComte and Marx into the debate asnmore modern sacralizers of the secular.nIt may be argued that a process ofnsacralization or resacralization hasnbeen going on, with Voegelin andnMcKnight as its chroniclers. But it is nonmere pedantry, I think, to point outnthat the process can be subsumednunder the category of secularization.nLeszek Kolakowski pointed out in an1973 essay that all the profane mani-n