When I was preaching week by week to the same congregation, one of my fundamental convictions was that I needed to keep politics out of the pulpit. Perhaps I should express that more precisely: I needed to keep party politics out of the pulpit. I was—and still am—convinced that how an individual votes at the […]
Friday, 30 July, 2021 by Carl R. Trueman
Timon Cline interviewed Professor Carl Trueman on his latest book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Crossway, 2020), which includes a foreword by Rod Dreher. TC: Although there’s a lot packed into The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self—and it’s not short—could […]
Monday, 01 March, 2021 by Carl R. Trueman, Timon Cline
The last two hundred years have seen a revolution (and not a happy one) in how God is understood. The God of the classical creeds and confessions—impassible and immutable—has been replaced by a God who changes in relation to his creation, dynamic and reciprocal in how he relates to his creatures. There are numerous reasons […]
Tuesday, 01 December, 2020 by Carl R. Trueman, Thomas Weinandy
There’s a lot packed into this book—and it’s not short—but can you provide a brief thesis or synopsis? It is a study of how the conditions have emerged in our society that allow people to regard the statement ‘I am a woman trapped in a man’s body’ as coherent and to see its positive affirmation […]
Friday, 27 November, 2020 by Carl R. Trueman, Timon Cline
However complicated the genealogy of modern morals might be, it seems a sad but unavoidable conclusion that all the nuances and subtleties of thousands of years of ethical reflection on the human condition have culminated in a morality that increasingly operates in terms of two simple categories: love, and its antithesis, hate. Front yards are […]
Monday, 09 November, 2020 by Carl R. Trueman
Most teachers are familiar with the kind of student question which begins “What do think will happen if/when….?” History teachers like myself have the perfect answer: “I am paid to explain the past, not to predict the future. The latter is the preserve of lunatics, con artists, and those who think far too much of […]
Monday, 10 February, 2020 by Carl R. Trueman
Christ the Heart of Creation By Rowan Williams Bloomsbury, 2018 304 pages (hardcover), $35.00 I have always had a somewhat ambivalent attitude to Rowan Williams. I find his own positive theology to be of the banal liberal variety that causes damage to the church. His time as archbishop of Canterbury was, in a sense, the […]
Friday, 01 November, 2019 by Carl R. Trueman
In Book Three of his work, The Gay Science, Nietzsche begins with a legend of how, years after the Buddha’s death, his shadow, large and terrifying, appeared on the wall of a cave for all to see. He uses his now notorious phrase: God is dead. So begins the series of aphorisms which demolish both […]
Monday, 25 February, 2019 by Carl R. Trueman
The Enlightenment, if not quite dead on arrival, began to fall apart very shortly thereafter. The French Revolution offered a bloody testimony to the limits of reason as a foundation for building a new society. The Romantics pointed to the ineradicable importance of the deeper longings of the human heart. Hegel identified a key flaw […]
Monday, 14 January, 2019 by Carl R. Trueman
Two particular events have shaped my approach to writing: the first was a lecture I attended as a schoolboy in the early 1980s, given by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. The topic was not dead parrots or the unexpected nature of the Spanish Inquisition but Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale” on which he had just published […]
Tuesday, 04 December, 2018 by Carl R. Trueman
For nearly three decades, Camille Paglia, Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, has been one of America’s most controversial and consistent public intellectuals. Her writings have covered topics ranging from Aeschylus to Madonna; from Baroque art to liberal Presbyterian attitudes to human sexuality. A truly independent thinker, […]
Monday, 03 December, 2018 by Camille Paglia, Carl R. Trueman
Debates about the distinctions between male and female lie at the heart of much political discussion in the USA today, so it is not surprising to find that John Piper was recently asked whether gender roles apply outside of marriage. Many pastors will have faced the same; and it was disappointing to read his answer, […]
Monday, 26 November, 2018 by Carl R. Trueman