Trueman engages the question of “What is man?” and demonstrates how contemporary definitions of mankind result in the dehumanizing of our neighbor.
“What great doctrinal issue does the modern church face?” So asks John Warwick Montgomery in the opening of his Crisis in Lutheran Theology. Citing the church historian James Orr, Montgomery says, “the Christian Church, in each great epoch of its history has been forced to come to grips with one particular doctrine of crucial significance both for that day and for the subsequent history of the Church.” [1] Whether it’s the nature of the trinity, the two natures of Christ, the nature of the atonement, righteousness before God, or the authority of Scripture, each age finds God calling the church to confess his truth against the devil’s lies.
According to Dr. Carl Trueman, “Today, the struggle is over anthropology.” [2] In his wonderful new book The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity, Trueman engages the question of “What is man?” and demonstrates how contemporary definitions of mankind result in the dehumanizing of our neighbor.
As the subtitle suggests, Trueman contends that when a society such as our own operates as if there is no God, we will inevitably desecrate humanity. Using the language of Charles Taylor, he argues that our “social imaginary” [3] operates as if there is no God. We live in the era of Nietzsche’s Madman. [4] Trueman calls back to Nietzsche’s parable where a madman runs through the streets populated by enlightenment philosophers searching for God. As unbelievers, they mock the madman. But the madman stares them all down:
“Whither is God?” He cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this?...What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?” [5]
Nietzsche argues that the thinking of the enlightenment has eliminated a need for us to believe in God. And yet though many denied the need for God, they still operated as though the world was set up according to the old, God-ordained rules. The madman is the only one with enough guts to point out this reality. He’s the only one with the courage to voice what we truly desire: we’ve killed God and now it is up to us to become gods and create a new world:
“Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us—for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.” [6]
The madman is met with silence. He realizes the world is not ready for such courageous thought. “I have come too early,” he says; “My time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way.” [7]
Trueman argues that we have entered the time of that “tremendous event.” We are now in the age where we live as if God were dead and it is up to us to become gods and create a world of our own.
In the wake of this, Trueman’s contention is that our social imaginary now operates upon the clear objective to desecrate all that is sacred. His first chapter lays out what it means to be human from a Christian perspective and sets the stage for the consequences of losing that perspective. Man is a creature of God, created as God’s image bearers to the rest of creation. Humanity’s existence is the result of a free act of creation on the part of the triune God. His creation has a purpose and structure. As creatures who bear God’s image, humanity has been given the role as vice-regents over God’s creation. This role comes with limits the Creator has laid out and has a goal, namely, “the enjoyment of God in eternity, often referred to as the Beatific Vision.” [8]
[H]uman beings are created by God with a given set of dependencies and obligations, limits and ends. We are rational, dependent, limited, and teleological beings. And the ways we formalize these traits are the moral codes that define what it means to be human. [9]
These obligations, limits, and ends are all considered sacred as they are given by God. What the madman announces is that, in the killing of God, we now must shake off such obligations, limits, and ends. That is to say, people must desecrate what was once viewed as sacred in order to be truly human. Where, once, institutions such as family or church were given as an arena of love, binding me to my neighbor, now, in order to express my true self, I must break free from such confines. Where my body used to be seen as a gift where God has “given me all my members,” and thus limited me to certain definitions (say, my gender), now my inner feelings triumph over my embodied existence and I can use technology to recreate myself. My body is raw material for self-definition, not a gift, created and given, by God with a given telos. Finally, where life used to be lived towards an end or a goal, now, my own personal feelings are all that matter and my life is lived in pursuit of whatever makes me happy.
How did we get here? Trueman spends the second and third chapters tracing the genealogy of the madman and what it means to live in the hour of the madman. He shows the philosophical trajectory that arrives at a telos where our true selves are the authentic inner person and how technology enables us to break free from the body that limits my authentic self.
Under such circumstances, we assume the world we live in can now be completely redefined. In chapters four, five, and six, Trueman shows how this desecration is exemplified in those key areas of life that used to be held sacred due to the divine limits placed upon them, namely sex, birth, and death. The emphasis on the inner life has turned sexual feelings into key identity markers that are to be celebrated. Technology has enabled us to change our bodies to match these sexual identity markers. It has also enabled us to separate sex from birth so that sex can be free of its nature-imposed limits. Babies are viewed as products and are given the purposes and ends their new creators deem fit. Even death, that unavoidable reality that limits our existence, is placed under our control by technological means and sanitized with “medical procedures” that enable you kill yourself without suffering.
My far too brief summary of these chapters only scratches the surface of Trueman’s masterful treatment of the desecration of sex, birth, and death. Trueman gives a sobering, if not frightening, diagnosis of how these historically sacred parts of life have been completely defaced.
God is in the business of consecrating the desecrated and redefining raw material with purpose and meaning.
So, what is the answer? In the last chapter, Trueman points out how many lead thinkers, such as Roger Scruton and even some atheists like Richard Dawkins, have seen the usefulness of returning to a sort of cultural Christianity to combat the advancement of the madman. However, Trueman argues, this isn’t enough. Such cultural Christianity is only another form of nihilism. Only faith in the true God will save us. The church’s job, then, is to point us to this God and shape our imaginations according to His Word and will.
Trueman says, rather than seeking quick fixes to the desecration of humanity, the church has the responsibility to play the long game of recapturing the imagination of our people by reconsecrating life. How does this happen? By recovering the gifts of Trueman’s three “C’s”: Creed, Cult, and Code:
“Christianity is a religion that has at least three dimensions, all of which are important to the social imaginary: creed, cult, and code… “Creed” refers to the set of beliefs that define the faith… “Cult” refers to the worship practices of the church… “Code” refers to the moral habits and practices of life that are expected of Christians.” [10]
The creedal life of the church shapes how we view God and our relation to him. A faithful confession of faith grounds us in reality as creatures loved and guided by a gracious God. The cult of worship embodies what is confessed in the creed. Not only our worship services, but our lives, are given a liturgical shape centered on the reality of who God is for us. This will then produce a morality guided by love, meaning, and purpose. To throw in another “C,” these three are not meant to operate in isolation from each other, but each needs the other through a sort of communion.
This final chapter is worth its weight in gold. It strikes me that we in the Lutheran church should have been catechized for such a time as this. Both Martin Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms, though not in Trueman’s ordering, lay out the Christian life in terms of code (the 10 Commandments/Table of Duties), creed (The Apostles’ Creed), and cult (The Lord’s Prayer/the sacraments). What is more, when teaching us what it means to confess God as our creator, Luther gives a picture of humanity shaped by the concept of gift: “I believe God has made me and all creatures and has given me…all I have.” Our obligations, limits, and ends are gifts given to be received through faith and exercised in love. What is more, they are given by a God who has put on a body in order to forgive me for how I’ve desecrated mine. He is in the business of consecrating the desecrated and redefining raw material with purpose and meaning.
I cannot recommend this book enough. This is the fourth book by Trueman that I have read in the past five years. I believe his is some of the most important work for the church to be reading in these dark days. I have found his analysis to be clear, eye-opening, and in many ways, convicting. If you want to understand what is taking place in this “hour of the madman,” take and read everything Trueman has to offer. But, I suggest, begin with The Desecration of Man.
[1] John Warwick Montgomery, Crisis in Lutheran Theology: vol. 1: The Validity and Relevance of Historic Lutheranism vs. Its Contemporary Rivals (1517 Publishing, 2017), 15.
[2] Carl R. Trueman, The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity (Sentinel, 2026), 193.
[3] Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (The Belknap Press of Harvard Press, 2007). Taylor defines the social imaginary as “the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations.” (171). So, for our purposes here, the way we live our every day lives, our major decisions, our social interactions are carried out as though they depend very little on God.
[4] Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Parable of the Madman” in The Gay Science (1882). https://s3.amazonaws.com/saylordotorg-resources/wwwresources/site/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/PHIL304-4.3.2-ParableoftheMadman.pdf.
[5] Nietzsche, “The Parable of the Madman.”
[6] Nietzsche, “The Parable of the Madman.”
[7] Nietzsche, “The Parable of the Madman.”
[8] Trueman, 15.
[9] Trueman, 12.
[10] Trueman, 187-188.
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