AP

Review of Carl R. Trueman, The Desecration of Man: how the rejection of God degrades our Humanity, Sentinel, an Imprint of Penguin Random House, New York 2026, 

This is an important book, and time is taken to carefully review it on a chapter-by-chapter basis, extensively quoting the author.

Carl Trueman, an Englishman, currently Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, has proved to be a prolific author covering Reformation history, theology and now more recently has written with well-grounded authority on contemporary cultural issues. His first foray in this direction was the widely acclaimed, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. This explains how, in modern culture, the sense of self has involved the rejection of the impact of religion, tradition, and community in favour of the elevation, indeed glorification of individualism, emotion, and sexuality.

The Desecration of Man is a book rich in illustrative material for preachers anxious to relate Biblical material in meaningful ways into the lives of their people; indeed, for Christians generally to have a better understanding of the world they inhabit. As an encouragement, it is an easier book to read than The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self!

In The Desecration of Man, Trueman describes this move to desecration as a self-inflicted and seriously punitive action, not just in relation to God, but to us, as well. Trueman illustrates this desecration in three areas: sexual morality and behaviour; technology and reproduction; and death as the final enemy.

In the first chapter, “What is man?” he begins with humankind, as God’s image bearer which leads to certain understandings: human beings are exceptional, free and intentional; they are persons, not things; human beings have God-given capabilities that connect to natural responsibilities and ends – such as to reproduce, enjoy friendships, serve our neighbours, work and care for the creation. As embodied beings we cannot separate our bodies from who we are.

Transgression of the Sacred is Exhilarating

In contrast, rejection of the belief of humankind as God’s image bearer means an end to limits, obligations, dependencies, ends. We are born free. We decide the limits and ends as autonomous, unencumbered self-creators. Authenticity is the key personal virtue. And so “(our world) often seems to revel in an ecstatic destruction of all that was once considered sacred … this modern society glories in transgression and the point is transgression is exhilarating.”

Transgression of the sacred, “is exhilarating precisely because it makes us feel like gods, the creators of our own meanings and our own selves. All we need to do is cross lines previously enforced by the idea of God and we thereby assume the role of being gods.”

Trueman defines three characteristics of desecration: the denial of human exceptionalism; treating another human being as a thing or an object; and the belief that human beings are capable of creating their own ends in any absolute or final sense.

Nineteenth Century Context for the Desecration of Man

Before spelling out his three chosen areas illustrating man’s self-desecration, Trueman provides some historical context in noting the decisive impact of the Enlightenment, Darwinism, Marx and communism and the psychological movement led by Freud and others, in the move away from Christian values and churches as important cultural institutions. The initial impact of these factors was more by way of undermining Christian foundations without particularly affecting how people ordered their lives. At this point Trueman introduces the Madman in Friedrich Nietzsche’s, The Gay Science, “where a lunatic runs into a town square and harangues the atheists gathered there, accusing them of not seeing the cultural and moral significance of their atheism. They do not realise that having disposed of God – having killed him to use Nietzsche’s phrase – they must now become gods themselves forging their own values and their own meaning.”

The point being made here neatly dovetails with Nietzsche’s observation concerning the nineteenth century English novelist and atheist, George Eliot, found in Twilight of the Idols.

G. Eliot. – they are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality. That is an English consistency; we do not wish to hold it against little moralistic females à la Elliot. In England one must rehabilitate oneself after every little emancipation from theology by showing in a veritably all inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there.

Well, there may have been a time lag for George Eliot, but the slow fading away of belief in Christian doctrine under the impact of Darwin, Freud, Marx, and others has in the past sixty years led to a dramatic collapse in morality.

Role of Technology

In advancing to his discussions of sex, technology and reproduction and death as the final barrier, Trueman has an extended treatment of the role of technology in not only facilitating change but in giving a sense of power, in speeding up time to accomplish things as well as the disruption it causes to settled patterns of life – think the advent of the steam engine, and now artificial intelligence. Technology promises, if not enables us “to become our own all powerful gods to create our own meaning, to determine our own ends, and to constantly transcend the limits of what it has traditionally meant to be human.”

The chapters on sex, reproduction and death are comprehensive, thought-provoking, and well done.

1960s Sexual Revolution

Trueman singles out the 1960s sexual revolution, more than any other single thing, as that which “has served to shatter traditional religion. It is in sexual morality and behaviour that desecration is most obvious. The desecration of sex is key to the modern, desecrated world in which we live…… The sacred order of the Christian vision guaranteed our existence as persons, not things, as subjects, not objects. The sexual revolution has not only destroyed traditional, sacred sexual codes but it has also objectified us all.”

“When someone says they are gay, bi, lesbian, or even straight, this indicates the depth to which the notion of sexual desire as central to what it means to be human has been internalised by our culture. Sex is now something we are before it is something we do.”

Here, technology has a part to play.

The notion of choice facilitated by modern technology developments, principally contraception, antibiotics and legalised abortion, have resulted in a society marked by expressive individualism. “Having liberated us from the natural consequences of sex, technology has allowed the expressive individual to become the sexually defined individual. The most important feelings that modern men and women consider themselves to have are sexual ones. This is what makes for an authentic human being.”

There is of course a downside to this, as Trueman explains:

“When sex is about what we can get out of it, then the other person is instrumentalised. My partner is significant to me to the extent that she (he) gives me the experience that I want. I am therefore treating the other person as an object. The sting in the tail, of course, is that my own sense of self-worth depends largely on being treated as a person by another person. When I objectify that person and thus diminish their value, the recognition they then give me is debased and worthless. Worse – when they objectify me, I end up thinking of myself as an object too. I cease to be a person even in my own eyes. No wonder sex as recreation finds its endpoint in pornography where sex is entirely detached from a relationship.”

Reproduction

In chapter 5 dealing with technology and reproduction, Trueman highlights the downside of the desire to help well intentioned couples to achieve pregnancy through IVF treatment. “The imaginative impulse in a world of IVF and surrogacy is surely toward seeing children as objects, as things to be purchased rather than given. This is certainly the case with surrogacy, and along with IVF treatments there are issues of the destruction of unwanted embryos, of women forced to consider termination in the event of all or at least some of the multiple fertilised eggs implanted in the womb beginning to develop.

Beyond IVF treatments to secure the birth of a child, lie opportunities for gene editing. “If children are commodities and the client is paying good money, why should the client (or the society at large) not demand a child made to his stated specification? And if society decides that less than perfect children are an undesirable burden, why should it not intervene to make sure that such defective specimens never come to term?”  

Death as the final Enemy

Chapter 6, entitled ‘The final enemy’, highlights death as the inescapable fact of life and the unbearable nature of it, “haunting the modern world of the self-expressive individual – the one thing that remains stubbornly outside of our ultimate control that impinges so pointedly upon our sense of identity”. The way people distract themselves from death is found in the focus on trivial entertainment and sport at levels way beyond any other period of history, with euthanasia being one last effort to reassert control: the timing of one’s own death.

Consecration as the Answer to Desecration

So, what is the answer to desecration?

Here Trueman clearly has the Christian in mind, not unmindful that the Christian is not exempt from the allure of the expressive self in seeking satisfaction in sex, even pornography, while also succumbing to the diversion of trivial entertainment, and perhaps seeking a child through IVF, oblivious to the downside of moral hazard associated with IVF.

Trueman’s prescription of a threefold concerted and unified investment in consecration is not surprising.

“This consecration must capture not simply the intellect but the imagination as a whole. The truth of Christianity must reshape our intuition so that our moral limits, our obligations, and our ends dictate how we relate to our bodies, our loved ones, our neighbours, our communities, and the world around us, near and far.”

To the question “what are the things necessary to reshape our imaginations in order to make such consecration a reality?” Trueman responds: “Christianity is a religion that has at least three dimensions, all of which are important to the social imaginary: creed, cult and code. The reassertion of our limits, obligations, and ends is the result of all three.

“Creed” refers to the set of beliefs that define the faith; “Cult” refers to the worship practices of the church; while “Code” refers to the moral habits and practices that are expected of Christians – charity, chastity, honesty, a good work ethic, the giving of hospitality and so on. All three elements are interconnected and cannot be separated from one another without significant loss.

As someone who in the period 2004 – 2016 was intimately involved  in engaging politically at both State and Federal level against many of the changes to the law relating to many of the issues raised by Trueman, I found The Desecration of Man a coherent, credible, well-argued case for identifying the moral disaster modern society has become, while at the same time fully endorsing his plan for (re)consecration, not least by the Christian church. At times, Trueman may appear harsh and not always appreciative of the heartaches that technology can potentially and helpfully address, but that does not take away from the importance of his analysis and proposed solution for people of Christian faith finding difficulty navigating the modern world.

As an aside, surely as the Holy Trinity and the two-fold nature of Christ required the work of the early Church Fathers and soteriology and ecclesiology that of the Reformers, so today the great challenge for the church is anthropology.

David Palmer once served as a member both of the Church and Nation Committee of the Presbyterian Church and the Ad Hoc Inter-faith Committee chaired by Dr. Nicholas Tonti Filippini, both committees linked with the Australian Christian Lobby.