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Carl R. Trueman

Carl R. Trueman (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College. He is an esteemed church historian and previously served as the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life at Princeton University. Trueman is a member of The Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Protestant church in America

Protestant Futures and Friendships

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The challenges Protestants face are serious. But if we have the humility to learn from others, we will find that there are models and resources readily available to help us think through how we might respond to our cultural moment.
the globe

Ideology and Religion

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If the purpose is to change the world, not merely to describe it, as Marx’s famous eleventh thesis on Feuerbach claims, then here we see something of what that means: the critique of religion is not simply for the purpose of demystifying or disenchanting the world. Rather, it is part of changing the world, of tearing down the illusions by which men and women shield themselves from having to face reality.
photo of Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor, Psychological Selfhood, and Disenchantment

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While the medieval world was enchanted, the modern world in which we dwell is disenchanted. A disenchanted age is not necessarily characterized by complete repudiation of the supernatural. Rather, it is characterized by a fundamental shift in the function of the supernatural. At the heart of this disenchantment for Charles Taylor is not the traditional science-versus-religion narrative. Instead, he sees the key as being a transformation in the way in which the self is understood.
Abstract blurry portrait of a depressed man with mental personality disorders

Apocalyptic Politics: Christianity and the New World Order

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As our dependence on technology reshapes the moral imagination of our culture to see human beings as psychological wills that need not respect material limitations, so the old order that was built upon the vision of human beings as both body and soul will become increasingly implausible. The things that make Christianity stand out from the wider culture—belief in the incarnation, the resurrection, and embodied human nature as a real, universal thing with moral consequences—are antithetical to the terms of membership in the emerging world order.
Plastic Mannequin

Our Plastic World—And Plastic Selves

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The collapse of traditional, external anchors of identity—perhaps most obviously those of religion, nation, and family—explains the attraction of the turn inward. The rise of technology feeds the notion that we can bend nature to our will, that the world is just so much raw, plastic material from which we can make whatever meaning or reality we choose. We no longer think of ourselves as subject to the world’s fixed nature, or of it as having an objective authority or meaning. We are the ones with power, and we are the ones who give the world significance.

Are Women Still Human?

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The issue of abortion cannot be reduced to the narrow question of the status of the child in the womb. The answers rest upon broader assumptions about what it means to be human. If we are to believe those who defend a right to abortion, it is nothing less than the power to end the life of her unborn child that guarantees a woman her humanity—that is, the autonomy befitting her status as man’s equal. That is a denial of what really makes us human: our natural dependence upon, and obligations towards, one another.
Crucifix

The Impact of Psychological Man—and How to Respond

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Only by modeling true community, oriented towards the transcendent, can the church show a rapidly destabilizing world of expressive individuals that there is something greater, more solid, and more lasting than the immediate satisfaction of personal desires. The second in a two-part essay.
Psychology

The Rise of “Psychological Man”

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The notions that human flourishing is found primarily in an inner sense of wellbeing, that authenticity is found by being able to act outwardly as one feels inwardly, and that who we are is largely a matter of personal choice not external imposition have become common intuitions that lie at the heart of our society’s many ills. The first of a two-part essay.

The West is a Third World Country: The Relevance of Philip Rieff

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Cultural conservatives face a time when it is not simply a question of debating the nature of our culture on some commonly agreed foundation. It is a time when we face the complete transformation of our culture into an anti-culture.

A Protestant Look at the Dogmatic Timidity of the Current Roman Catholic Synod

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Instrumentum Laboris points to a church that seems to be losing sight of sin, redemption, grace, faith, the sacraments, and eternal destiny. The Catholic Church could well be exchanging her theological birthright for a Mass of sociological potage.

Thomas Aquinas: Not Just for Catholics Any More

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A new collection of essays, Aquinas Among the Protestants, demonstrates the impact that Thomas Aquinas has had on Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed thinkers and explores the ways in which contemporary Protestant Christianity could benefit from Aquinas’s insights, particularly regarding natural law and virtue ethics.

Understanding Generation Snowflake: “I Find That Offensive!”

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Claire Fox’s book, “I Find That Offensive!” is a well-written, important, even brilliant contribution towards understanding the significance of current campus conflicts for society as a whole. Sadly, the picture she paints is bleaker than Fox herself realizes.
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