{"id":29390,"date":"2022-11-05T05:33:21","date_gmt":"2022-11-05T12:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=29390"},"modified":"2022-11-05T05:33:21","modified_gmt":"2022-11-05T12:33:21","slug":"what-all-has-the-reformation-set-into-motion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/what-all-has-the-reformation-set-into-motion\/","title":{"rendered":"What All Has the Reformation Set into Motion?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I found myself thinking again of a constellation of readings from our spring 2022 term as I read \u201cThe Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution\u201d by Carl R. Trueman:<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a> \u201cEvangelicalism in Modern Britain\u201d by David W. Bebbington,<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a> \u201cThe Protestant Work Ethic and the \u2018Spirit\u2019 of Capitalism\u201d Max Weber,<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a> and &#8220;Evangelicalism and Capitalism: A Reparative Account and Diagnosis of Pathogeneses in the Relationship&#8221; by Jason Paul Clark.<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a> Trueman\u2019s \u201c\u2026aim is to explain how and why a certain notion of the self has come to dominate the culture of the West, why this self finds its most obvious manifestation in the transformation of sexual mores, and what the wider implications of this transformation are and may well be in the future.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a> To do this, Trueman sets out to trace the historical, philosophical, psychological, and political development of the self, starting in the eighteenth century with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and onwards. He writes, \u201c\u2026my task as a historian is first to explain an action, an idea, or an event in context. Only when that hard work has been done can the teacher move to any kind of critique\u2026I have therefore tried to be as careful and dispassionate as possible.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn6\" name=\"_ftnref6\">[6]<\/a> I emphasize this point because he is writing about a topic that elicits anything but dispassion in most circles these days. And though Trueman gives dispassion his best shot, his personal viewpoint comes through when he adds unnecessary parentheticals like \u201c\u2026however obnoxious one may consider [one\u2019s opponent\u2019s viewpoints to be]\u201d in the same sentence as his belief that dispassion is especially needed \u201c\u2026in our age of cheap Twitter insults and casual slanders.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn7\" name=\"_ftnref7\">[7]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, Trueman puts forth his argument in four parts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Part One covers the basic ideas and terminology that are a part of his overall argument, specifically utilizing Charles Taylor\u2019s philosophical concept of social imaginary<a href=\"#_ftn8\" name=\"_ftnref8\">[8]<\/a> and his concepts of mimesis and poiesis<a href=\"#_ftn9\" name=\"_ftnref9\">[9]<\/a> to articulate how it is that today\u2019s understandings about sexuality and gender in the western world have emerged through the paradigm of expressive individualism and the development of a concept of self. He adds to this sociologist\u2019s Philip Rieff\u2019s understandings of culture as articulated through his seminal work, \u201cThe Triumph of the Therapeutic.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn10\" name=\"_ftnref10\">[10]<\/a> Rieff\u2019s work draws on the power of implicitly understood cultural understandings that are developed over generations<a href=\"#_ftn11\" name=\"_ftnref11\">[11]<\/a>\u2014another manifestation of Polanyi\u2019s tacit knowing.<a href=\"#_ftn12\" name=\"_ftnref12\">[12]<\/a> Trueman explores Rieff\u2019s work in detail in order to draw on his arch of human history leading to the \u201cpsychological man\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn13\" name=\"_ftnref13\">[13]<\/a> and build support for his argument that the self is now primarily shaped from within, subjectively, rather than through communal forces and an objective, external framework of morality and ethics. Part One concludes with a discussion again based on Rieff, but this time from his trilogy, \u201cSacred Order\/Social Order.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn14\" name=\"_ftnref14\">[14]<\/a> The idea of \u201cfirst worlds,\u201d \u201csecond worlds,\u201d and \u201cthird worlds\u201d is developed by Rieff and employed by Trueman in his argument, along with Rieff\u2019s concept of \u201canti-culture.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn15\" name=\"_ftnref15\">[15]<\/a> Essentially, Trueman concludes that the West is currently in a third world space where morality and ethics are rooted solely in the individual and nothing sacred above themselves. It is a space where an anti-cultural mindset has developed that understands external moral frameworks (the pillars of first and second worlds) to be oppressive and restrictive of personal freedom and therefore these must be destroyed through \u201cdeathworks\u201d that cynically denigrate external moral frameworks as silly and even dangerous.<a href=\"#_ftn16\" name=\"_ftnref16\">[16]<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Part Two further develops Trueman\u2019s argument as he examines the contributions of philosophers, poets, and scientists from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the above framework\u2014especially Rousseau, Blake, Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin and their impact on psychologizing the self.<\/li>\n<li>Part Three focuses especially on Freud and his influence on sexualizing psychology. In addition, Trueman explores the ways in which sex has then been politicized through the work of Marxist thinkers like Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse. He postulates, \u201cThe New Left that emerges from this synthesis sees oppression as a fundamentally psychological category and sexual codes as its primary instruments.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn17\" name=\"_ftnref17\">[17]<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Part Four then explores and engages current-day conversations and legal decisions in light of the historical framework he has developed. He also offers in his conclusions some thoughts on the future and encouragements to what some reviewers reference as the \u201cfaithful\u201d church<a href=\"#_ftn18\" name=\"_ftnref18\">[18]<\/a> on how to navigate a period in history where \u201cwe are all expressive individuals now.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn19\" name=\"_ftnref19\">[19]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Trueman has given me a lot to ponder. I appreciate one of his concluding comments: \u201cWhen we start to think about sexual morality today, we need to understand that we are actually thinking about what it means to be human\u2026On that point, the thinkers of the New Left are correct\u2026one must give them credit for understanding that when we address matters of sexual morality, we are actually addressing questions about the nature and purpose of human beings, the definition of happiness, and the relationship between the individual and wider society and between men and women.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn20\" name=\"_ftnref20\">[20]<\/a> Trueman has given us one historically and philosophically based rendition of how we have arrived to where we are today. He made particular choices about whose work he leaned upon. It has merit and needs to be thoughtfully engaged.<\/p>\n<p>When I have more time, I want to read further on how other historians would trace this development in order to develop a more consilient map\u2014especially those who integrate this history with the development of how prophetic work against oppression has been and is currently understood. My sense from conversations in my own denomination is that the conversation is more complex than Trueman states\u2026it is more than a psychological category. And if that is the case, then what other aspects of Trueman\u2019s historical development of his argument might have more dimensions to it?<\/p>\n<p>I started my blog with how reading Trueman recalled earlier readings on our DLGP journey. I am wondering how the roots for the expressive individualism we experience today might actually be found in the Reformation. Jason Paul Clark writes: \u201cProtestant reformers, having left behind doctrines of assurance, suffered resultant anxieties about their personal salvation. If the church was no longer able to dispense an assurance of salvation, how did someone know they were saved? There was a paucity to life before the industrial revolution, where salvation was a compensation for the sufferings of life. That assurance was now removed. We might understand that Protestants now stood on their own as a kind of \u2018naked self\u2019, determining their own salvation before God with much \u2018fear and trembling\u2019.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn21\" name=\"_ftnref21\">[21]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>How might that dynamic of experiencing the anxiety of standing on one\u2019s own before God have also contributed to the development of expressive individualism? And if our own historic roots have contributed to this development (and not just the philosophers and scientists named by Trueman) AND has fueled an activism \u201cdistinct to Evangelicals,\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn22\" name=\"_ftnref22\">[22]<\/a> a dimension of what Bebbington describes as \u201c\u2026a quadrilateral of priorities that is the basis of Evangelicalism,\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn23\" name=\"_ftnref23\">[23]<\/a> how might this conversation about human sexuality be taken up by different parts of the Protestant family in a way that challenges all of us to listen with fresh ears for the implications the dimensions of the quadrilateral might have for this conversation? Is there room for humility to listen with fresh ears to what those we disagree with might have to say and acknowledge that none of us may fully understand the complexities and mysteries facing us in this conversation about the nature and purpose of human beings, let alone all of how God may view this?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Trueman, Carl R. 2020. <em>The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution<\/em>. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> Bebbington, David. 2005. <em>Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s<\/em>. Transferred to digital printing. London: Routledge.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref3\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> Weber, Max, Peter Baehr, and Gordon C. Wells. 2002. <em>The Protestant Ethic and the \u201cSpirit\u201d of Capitalism and Other Writings<\/em>. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. New York: Penguin Books.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> Clark, Jason Paul, &#8220;Evangelicalism and Capitalism: A Reparative Account and Diagnosis of Pathogeneses in the Relationship&#8221; (2018). Faculty Publications &#8211; Portland Seminary. \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/digitalcommons.georgefox.edu\/gfes\/132\">https:\/\/digitalcommons.georgefox.edu\/gfes\/132<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref5\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> Trueman, 31.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref6\" name=\"_ftn6\">[6]<\/a> Ibid. 30.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref7\" name=\"_ftn7\">[7]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref8\" name=\"_ftn8\">[8]<\/a> Ibid., 36-39.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref9\" name=\"_ftn9\">[9]<\/a> Ibid., 39-42.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref10\" name=\"_ftn10\">[10]<\/a> Rieff, Philip. 2006. <em>The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud<\/em>. 40th anniversary ed. Wilmington, Del: ISI Books.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref11\" name=\"_ftn11\">[11]<\/a> Trueman, 42-43.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref12\" name=\"_ftn12\">[12]<\/a> Polanyi, Michael, and Amartya Sen. 1966. <em>The Tacit Dimension<\/em>. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref13\" name=\"_ftn13\">[13]<\/a> Trueman, 44-50.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref14\" name=\"_ftn14\">[14]<\/a> Three volumes: Rieff, Philip, Kenneth S. Piver, and Philip Rieff. 2006. <em>My Life among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority<\/em>. Sacred Order\/Social Order, v. 1. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press; Rieff, Philip, and Alan Woolfolk. 2007. <em>The Crisis of the Officer Class: The Decline of the Tragic Sensibility<\/em>. Sacred Order-Social Order, volume 2. Charlottesville: University of Virginia press; Rieff, Philip, Arnold M. Eisen, and Gideon Lewis-Kraus. 2008. <em>The Jew of Culture: Freud, Moses, and Modernity<\/em>. Sacred Order\/Social Order, v. 3. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref15\" name=\"_ftn15\">[15]<\/a> Trueman, Chapter 2, 73ff.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref16\" name=\"_ftn16\">[16]<\/a> Ibid., 96-100.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref17\" name=\"_ftn17\">[17]<\/a> Trueman, 28.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref18\" name=\"_ftn18\">[18]<\/a> \u201cSummary of Carl Trueman\u2019s, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution.\u201d March 18, 2022. 9Marks. Accessed November 1, 2022. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.9marks.org\/article\/summary-of-carl-truemans-the-rise-and-triumph-of-the-modern-self-cultural-amnesia-expressive-individualism-and-the-road-to-sexual-revolution\/\">https:\/\/www.9marks.org\/article\/summary-of-carl-truemans-the-rise-and-triumph-of-the-modern-self-cultural-amnesia-expressive-individualism-and-the-road-to-sexual-revolution\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref19\" name=\"_ftn19\">[19]<\/a> Truman, 25.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref20\" name=\"_ftn20\">[20]<\/a> Ibid., 264.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref21\" name=\"_ftn21\">[21]<\/a> Clark, 64.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref22\" name=\"_ftn22\">[22]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref23\" name=\"_ftn23\">[23]<\/a> Bebbington, 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found myself thinking again of a constellation of readings from our spring 2022 term as I read \u201cThe Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution\u201d by Carl R. Trueman:[1] \u201cEvangelicalism in Modern Britain\u201d by David W. Bebbington,[2] \u201cThe Protestant Work Ethic and the \u2018Spirit\u2019 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2408,12,467,2435,1486,2427,11],"class_list":["post-29390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-m-polanyi","tag-bebbington","tag-clark","tag-human-personhood","tag-human-sexuality","tag-trueman","tag-weber","cohort-lgp11"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29391,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29390\/revisions\/29391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}