The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self

Carl R. Trueman

I grew up in 70's and 80's evangelicalism, with "Christian education" through my second year in College. But unlike many of my Christian friends, I wanted to understand my world in deeper terms than what I could get in Sunday school and Bible classes.  I was interested in philosophy, art, history and how it can relate to us.  I was drawn to the world of big ideas.  It was exciting to contemplate how ideas can shape us, and make us what we are.  I tried to go to the best writers in Christianity I could find.   As a lover of literature and philosophy I found the Christian imaginative intellectualism of C.S. Lewis enchanting, and I enjoyed his works immensely.   But it was Francis Schaeffer who really opened the world of ideas for me.   Through his writings, I was introduced to the ideas that moved Western history, philosophy, art, all curated through the lens of Schaeffer--and my Christian School teachers who carefully orchestrated how I should regard the likes of Freud, Nietzsche, Darwin etc.

Later in my late teens as my Christian faith waned and a skepticism grew, I left Schaeffer behind, and began to read Freud, Nietzsche etc. on my own.   As I got to know the writers I discovered how Schaeffer had been subtly unfair in the ways he had portrayed many of them.  Schaeffer's preuppositional-ism was a kind of self fulfilling prophecy, that didn't really describe what these writers were saying at all.  Furthermore the framing was such that a Christian School student could doubt what the writer was saying because the writer--lets say for instance Darwin, had the wrong World View.   Left to a Godless universe of chance--or so the student of Schaeffer would presuppose--Darwin could only arrive at a Godless view of nature full of chance--a question begging fallacy.   The actual reader of Darwin won't get this impression at all!  Darwin's universe is full of surprise, wonder, detail and evidence with stunning insight into how nature works--like natural selection which belie a universe of random chance.  

Schaeffer's portrayal of secular writers was constantly question begging the non-truth of other worldviews, while simultaneously question begging the truth of Christianity; pigeon-holing the non Christian writers into men of straw--non existent caricatures of the great writers who have contributed to modern society.  I had many Christian friends who would read Schaeffer.  But none of them had ever undertaken Nietzsche or Freud.   A few read snippets of Darwin.  It dawned on me that Schaeffer's writings--while vivid, often perceptive, and inventive--also had the effect of being a kind of intellectual gate keeper for the rest of the Evangelicals that would read him.   You don't need to read Darwin.  Schaeffer will read him for you, and here is what you should think about it, and this is why things are what they are!

Writers like Schaeffer could open the door for some students to venture further reading and education--and in his best moments he seems to encourage that--while dogmatic, insistent, and preachy in his worst moments. While for other students Schaeffer is a door closer--reading the work, curating it down to cliffnotes--or a two sentence synopsis of how the student should think about it, so he can close the book and rest knowing he plays for the correct team.   From what I witnessed, the intellectualism of writers like Schaeffer seemingly had the effect of encouraging un-intellectualism in the lay reader. Schaeffer's synthesis of "worldview," "presuppositionalism," "relativism" even his definitions of "darwinism" become definitive for a narrow reading that excludes possibility.  The result was nothing but an empty false dichotomy that doesn't really describe anything, but offers the Christian a pseudo language to contemplate, and comprehend an increasingly secular world without actually needing to engage it.  There were dozens of books I read which followed this pattern.  Challenge of Postmodernism: An Evangelical Engagement (David Dockery) Ancient Future Faith (Robert Weber) to name just a couple. 

This tradition of  Evangelical gatekeeping using secular terminology continues on to this day with Carl Trueman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.  Trueman is at pains not to follow the exacting preachy path of writers like Schaeffer or Weber, he avoids their terms and dogma and replaces it with  a new more nuanced terminology--that he will even veer from himself at times as "not quite right," or "overly general," but this reader can't help but think it's the same kind of bait and switch.  He is at pains to state that his book is "neither a lament nor a polemic."  But over and over and over he can't seem to help himself from coming across lamentful and polemical.   Even if Trueman is being honest here, this reader can't help but extrapolate lamentation and polemics from his argument.   The villains haven't changed from Schaeffer, it's still Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, and Darwin; with some new ones like the Romantic poets and Rousseau who have wrought our "Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution."   The good guys are the Christians--Trueman's readers--the humble suffering anti-gays, and anti-transgenders who feel bowled over by the changes of widespread acceptance of LGBT, embattled by cake sellers, Gays getting married, and unisex bathrooms.

  This book is written for the self possessed Christian who is searching for language and historical context to deal with the terrifying (for them) prospect of LGBT acceptance--but what Trueman polemically calls "LGBT dominance in our society."  The "Cultural pathology" he insists of our current tolerances are the result of a "plastic people" bogged down in a "social imaginary;" a borrowed formulation Trueman describes as an act of self actualization of identity, subject to the unconscious intellectual forces of "poiesis" the  process where an individual creates meaning of self out of raw material.  These are useful words and they may even describe authentic cultural forces to a certain extent, and Trueman outlines them well through the help of a few modern observers (Philip Rieff, Charles Taylor, Alasidir MacIntyre).   The upshot of these concepts is--via Trueman--the rise of individualism and the so called 'sexual revolution.'  But the danger is that this terminology can easily become polemical, especially when tied to LGBT issues.   Where earlier Evangelicals had used words like "relativist" and "post-modern" to rhetorically beat their secular opponents, Trueman offers the Christian gatekeepers a new sexualized vocabulary, that is vaguely Freudian.  "Social Imaginary" for instance is a concept easily reversed on Christians, as Freud had used "illusion" as a kind of useful fiction for religion.  One could just as easily ignore the rhetorical finger Trueman is pointing at secular society, and take note of the 3 fingers pointing back at him and his readers.  Aren't Christians too now subject to the same forces of individualism, the Poiesis, and social imaginary, and "cultural pathology"  Trueman is lamenting?  He doesn't have much to say about that.  Who's to say that the cultural forces of Nietzsche, Freud and Marx, and the Romantic poets haven't also created the prerequisites for Evangelicalism as we now see it in it's nearly universal acceptance of Trump, non vaccines, and false claims of election fraud.  As I write, a year ago a crowd of mostly Christians invaded our capital.  January 6th 2022.  Trueman is silent on such things.

Trueman's premise is partly based upon the false idea that LGBT is a homogenized group.  It simply isn't.  To his credit he acknowledges showing how the T differs from the G in significant ways.  But where he is nuanced he still wanders into dogma far too often.  He offers no concept of transgender experience, Which he likes to refer to as "self determined."   It's not.   His premise is that the sentence "I'm a man trapped in a woman's body" has wide acceptance, and the book is an attempt to explain why.  But it's false because it's far from a universal phrase among trans.  In fact it's fallen into disrepute among some of them, and it's a false qualifier, imperfect to describe the experience of gender dysphoria (more on that in a minute):  https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/do-you-still-use-the-phrase-born-in-the-wrong-body/

 Trueman begins the book discussing how his grandfather who died in 1994 had he heard the phrase would have "burst out laughing and think of it as incoherent gibberish."  One wonders would his grandfather have been cognizant of his laughter's affect on the countless trans people in 94 undergoing gender dysphoria,  struggling to be understood, with suicidal thoughts, wanting acceptance but not knowing how to communicate it?  Trueman is barely sensitive to their plea, but like his grandfather,  Trueman isn't interested in LGBT experience, only the ideology that could lead to it's acceptance and application.  But that's missing the point. LGBT aren't LGBT because of some linguistic fusion of Freud and Marx and and the rest of cultural ideology Trueman asserts.  Gender as a concept is a human created notion, but from time to time animals display homosexual behavior, and even take on the characteristics of the other sex.   It's as ridiculous as arguing that the cultural fusion of Marx and Freud allows some Marsh Harrier (A bird)  males to tolerate their birdlike cohorts to take on female characteristics as they often do.  https://daily.jstor.org/transgender-proclivities-in-animals/.   Witnessing the natural processes of humans and animals are what convinced many of us toward LGBT acceptance, not some unconscious philosophical conditioning of leftward writers shaping narrow ideology of an individual self!  https://www.vice.com/en/article/8x8bez/yes-there-are-trans-animals

But Trueman's focus on Marx and Freud is interesting.   Trueman follows Wilhelm Reich in showing how if Freud's point is "sex is showing who we are" (A dubious notion that Trueman polemically asserts all his opponents assert!)  and Marx's construction of economic and social reality are fused, you get political freedom associated with sexual freedom.   Trueman may not be wrong about this.  But why just Marx?   It could also just as easily be Adam Smith?  Or both?   Capitalistic and Democratic elements also contribute to our notions of sexual equality.   Trueman's focus is on the noisy Marxist activists of the 70's but he is missing many smart cultural critics who noticed that critical theory didn't have much to do with gay acceptance.  https://www.cato.org/commentary/capitalism-not-socialism-led-gay-rights.  It's not just Herbert Marcus.  It's Ayn Rand too!   The majority of gays I know are libertarian!  Trueman may or may not quibble with this (I don't know) but by focusing on the typical boogie men of the Right, he again comes across polemical.  

It would be hard to argue with Trueman that  LGBT tolerance is mostly a western phenomenon.  But there are exceptions, Taiwan for instance and South Korea.  Furthermore, there is no way to discount the effect of eastern writers on the west in the past 100 years, nor the effect of women.   Trueman--like Schaeffer and the other Christian gatekeepers hands our society woes to a few influential white men, and leaves out the rest.  

  The so called 'sexual revolution' Trueman views as our society's obsession isn't exactly right either.  He is over-stating it.  Has he checked the numbers lately?  Sex is down!  People are having less of it.   https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-have-been-having-less-sex-whether-theyre-teenagers-or-40-somethings/.   Trueman writes as if LGBT activism is seeking to invade Christian convictions, but in general it's not.  Much of LGBT that I'm aware of feel as if they have won the battle they wanted to win, they have a general acceptance of society and it's time to move on.  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/battle-gay-rights-over/592645/. 

It's Right leaning Christians who are still embattled, seeking to reverse progress for LGBT rights, which of course feeds LGBT activism and the vicious circle goes on and on.

  While I enjoyed reading and disagreeing (I blinked in nearly every page) with Trueman I certainly admire his scholarship and applaud what he is attempting.  The last chapter of the book is conciliatory, and there may well be another volume he will write which may better flesh out his point.  He may be right generally (but not specifically) on how we got to where we are, but he leaves out far too much of the story, and his language incites quick judgements.  There is much more to Marx and Freud--and the rest than the argument he is making.  My hope would be that the Christians who read Trueman will follow the kind of path I did, with Schaeffer, and not stop reading.