ABSTRACT
Charles Taylor's book A Secular Age has reinvigorated scholarly debate about the role of movements of reform within Western Christendom in creating the conditions that led to the rise of the modern secular world. In a wide-ranging, complex, and controversial argument Taylor has sought to give an account of how the "conditions of secularity" have come to shape both religious belief and unbelief in the modern age. Martin Luther's sacramental understanding of "real presence" draws upon a long tradition of theological conceptions of God's hiddenness. Like Gregory of Nyssa in The Life of Moses Luther claims that can only know God sub contrario, under God's opposite, for to see God face-to-face is to be overwhelmed by God's holiness. Bellini, the son of a great Venetian master, was the leading artist of Venice during his lifetime. Lucas Cranach the Elder identified Bellini as one of the most important influences on his own art.
