"Then, turning to his mentor, the major 20th-century philosopher Eric Voegelin, Prof. Sandoz expounds his account of the underpinnings of reason, religion, and social order -- using Voegelin’s deep grasp of the re-emergence of Gnosticism in postmodern public life. For at the root of apparent “new-age” decadence, are very old heresies about the nature of man and God, which have again captured the imaginations of the fanciful, so many centuries after having been seemingly slain by the triumph of Catholic Christianity.

Finally, returning to the present, Prof. Sandoz begins to suggest that the very challenges to the old Western project -- of founding our liberty in religious truth -- are rekindling it. Under the pressure of events, including the unfolding of Islamic jihadism, men and women are recovering “public consciousness of truth about the transcendent divine Ground of our being”. (Unlike the Romans, we have something to fall back on.)"