THE SECULAR AS AN ORDERING OF THE SACRED?

On May 22th 2008 Bronislaw Szerszynski held his Van Riessen Memorial Lecture at the Delft University of Technology. In this lecture Szerszynski presented his own view on the relation between religion and the modern technological condition, which shows some striking parallels with the way in which Reformational Philosophy sees it. Szerszynski wanted to show that the sacred and the profane/secular are not just opposites excluding each other, but that the profane/secular itself must be understood in religious terms. In the first part of this article the background, presuppositions and trends of this debate will be sketched and in the second part the parallels and differences between Szerszynski and Reformational Philosophy will be delineated.