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Carl Trueman Posts

• November 2, 2010 by Jason Hood

  SAET Interviews in Politics and Theology #9: Carl Trueman

  “ . . . the tight link which often exists in American culture between conservative (very conservative!) politics and conservative theology is neither necessary nor desirable …”

  “[O]ur understanding of the kingdom of God should keep us from a naïve belief that political processes and action will bring about heaven on earth, and thereby lead us to understand that good politics is about good stewardship, not some form of utopianism.”

  Carl Trueman is Professor of Historical Theology and Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary.  He blogs at Reformation 21.  Trueman refers often to the fact that he is British, so much so that one wonders that he does not burn the American flag publicly and be done with it.  An interview with him can be found here; Trueman has a fair bit of audio available at the WTS website for free (provided one signs up).

  1. For those who are not familiar with your work, can you describe your contribution to the question of how the individual Christian and the Church relates to the State?

  CT:  My scholarly interests lie in the development of sixteenth and seventh century Reformed theology, so I am very much an amateur in the field of Christianity and politics.  I recently wrote a short book, Republocrat: Confessions of a Liberal Conservative, which is a series of reflections on the current state of Christian attitudes to politics, at a popular level, in the USA.  The basic burden of the book is to show that the tight link which often exists in American culture between conservative (very conservative!) politics and conservative theology is neither necessary nor desirable.   It is also an attempt to model a type of critical engagement with the current political culture in the Christian world in which I operate (confessional Reformed).  For this reason, I asked my good friend (and boss) Peter Lillback, a self-proclaimed ‘conservative’s conservative,’ to write the introduction, in an attempt to show that Christians of radically different political persuasion can engage each other.

  2.  Richard Mouw and Carl F. H. Henry have suggested that the Church’s role is not coterminous with the responsibility possessed by individual believers.  Do you agree or disagree?

  CT:  I agree.  The church’s task is to preach the gospel and, while the gospel may well have political implications, those implications are not, in and of themselves, the gospel.  The church is to teach her people to be good citizens, to be engaged in the political sphere as citizens, but it is not to engage directly in electoral politics.

  3.  Please identify for our readers two influential thinkers or political concepts to which you often respond (perhaps one positive, one negative)?

  CT:  George Orwell has been a huge influence on me.   His anti-totalitarian works, 1984 and, even more, Animal Farm, profoundly shaped my thinking when I was younger and made the whole notion of freedom of speech central to my thinking about what constitutes a free society.  Then, his work, The Road to Wigan Pier, part narrative, part political analysis, is rather dated now, but it brought home to me both the hopelessness of real, abject poverty, and the bankruptcy of radical leftist politics.

  On the opposite side, I find the blithe confidence exhibited by many conservatives in the connection between capitalism, property and liberty to be not only naïve but increasingly far-fetched, at least if one wishes to maintain a close connection between liberty and democracy.  It is a staple of conservative thinking, at both popular and sophisticated levels, but the phenomenon of China, with its authoritarian capitalism, raises very serious questions about the necessity of the connection and rather calls into doubt blithe and naïve assertions in this area.

  4. How would you summarize the political responsibilities of the average American in the pew—that is, someone with voting rights, but little political capital, and little or no economic capital for political action?

  CT:  The average American Christian should make every effort to be as well-informed on the key issues – moral, economic, social – which face society, and then vote according to their informed consciences.   They should also realize that politics is not limited to, nor does it terminate at, the ballot box.  There are many ways in which citizens can and should be politically engaged.

  5.  How does Romans 13 help us understand the limits placed on the church and/or the individual believer in our engagement with political matters?

  CT:  In this passage, Paul clearly teaches that civil government is established by God and that Christians are required to honour it as such.  In a modern democratic state, this does not mean that we have to simply sit back and take anything that the government throws at us; but it does mean that any protests we make must be done in a manner that respects law, civil order, and the status of the magistrate as appointed by God.  That means we should not be parading around with pictures of the President mocked up as Adolf Hitler, or inciting violence against the state.

  6.  How do biblical books such as Deuteronomy and Proverbs help us to understand God’s perspective on politics?  Does the fact that they share political and ethical insights with other Ancient Near Eastern cultures (or that they offer critiques of those cultures and their political systems) influence your view of their relevance?

  CT:  I do not think that Deuteronomy speaks directly to how the state should be organized today.  Its role in redemptive history is specifically connected to ancient Israel. Of course, the law reflects the character of God, and, to the extent that these parallel codes in other ancient cultures, I believe they reflect a certain common ground among human beings (whether one roots that in common grace or in natural law).  Thus, the basic moral principles articulated there should shape Christian ethical thinking which, in turn, will impact the political convictions of Christians as they operate in the civil sphere.

  Proverbs is, of course, one of the more difficult books to interpret in the Old Testament.  One thing its very form teaches, however, is that the act of thinking through a whole host of issues is complicated, takes time, and, given the complex nature of most specific instances, requires the untangling, and the balancing, of various moral imperatives.   Life is complicated; we should not always expect easy answers.

  Both books address issues of justice, however, and on this point as well deserve careful attention from Christians.

  7.  Some political theologians note that Daniel simultaneously models service, critique, and a message of divine judgment.  Are all three of these to be implemented by believers?  Are they postures we should always exhibit, or are they more appropriate at some times than others?

  CT:  Daniel is an important paradigmatic figure for Christians.  He is an exile in a foreign land which is hostile to his faith.  That is the kind of language one finds in the New Testament applied to believers.

  The example of Daniel teaches that Christians should always respect and serve the civil authorities as good members of society.  Yet he did not seek to ‘Judaise’ the society.  I do not believe that we should seek to ‘Christianise’ the societies in which we find ourselves.  That is not our calling as Christians.

  Further, our understanding of the kingdom of God should keep us from a naïve belief that political processes and action will bring about heaven on earth, and thereby lead us to understand that good politics is about good stewardship, not some form of utopianism.   That inevitably involves a constant critical evaluation of the claims of politicians, and demands that the church preach the gospel, pointing individuals beyond this world and its agendas to the kingdom that is to come.  I think Daniel embodies all three.

  8.  If a young church planter says to you, “In my social and cultural context, I need to avoid political topics.  This enables me to address the gospel without any baggage and has helped our church create a community of diverse perspectives centered on Christ and his work.  But am I doing the right thing?  Should I be bolder?”  How would you respond?  Which passages would you use as a resource for guiding his or her thinking?

  CT:  I think the basic instinct here is right.  The church should not be setting up more-or-less arbitrary political criteria for membership or fellowship.  Of course, church planters are also a member of civil society; in that realm, of course they have a role to play.  If your neighbourhood needs cleaning up, be involved; if your neighbours need help, then help them.  Galatians 6:10.

  9.  What is the best article or essay a young pastor could read on politics, political interpretation of Scripture, or political theology?  The best book?

  CT: The classic is, of course, Augustine’s City of God. Of more recent works, I have found Francis Beckwith’s  Politics for Christians: Statecraft as Soulcraft and David VanDrunen’s Living in God’s Two Kingdoms to be stimulating, well-written and helpful.

  Categories: Carl Trueman | General | Interviews on Politics and Theology | Jason Hood | Political Theology

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• January 13, 2010 by Gerald Hiestand

  Carl Trueman on “The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind”

  Carl Trueman has a piece over at 9Marks that resonates with much of what the SAET stands for regarding ecclesial theology. Trueman’s basic point is that there is tendency among (some) evangelical academics to pander to the fancies of the secular establishment, and that such pandering is harmful to the church and her theology. I used to push this message more ardently in the early days of the SAET, but have since concluded that stones can be thrown with more precision and care when thrown from the inside. Trueman, an academic himself (WTS), knows of what he speaks, and has earned the right to offer this insider’s critique.

  …There would seem to be a pervasive evangelical inferiority complex. This means that, while we do not wish to exclude anybody, we dread being excluded ourselves. Indeed, for the evangelical academic, in a world so ill-defined, it is always tempting to cut just a few more corners, or keep shtum [is shtum British slang?] on just a couple of rather embarrassing doctrinal commitments, in order to have just that little bit more influence, that slightly bigger platform, in the outside world. This is particularly the temptation of evangelical biblical scholars and systematicians whose wider guilds are so utterly unsympathetic to the kind of supernaturalism and old-fashioned truth claims upon which their church constituencies are largely built. In so doing, we kid ourselves that we are doing the Lord’s work, that, somehow, because we have articles published in this journal or by that press, we are really making real headway into the unbelieving culture of the theological academy. Not that these things are not good and worthy—I do such things myself—but we must be careful that we do not confuse professional academic achievement with building up the saints or scoring a point for the kingdom.

  It remains true (as James Barr pointed out years ago) that evangelical academics are generally respected in the academy only at precisely those points where they are least evangelical. There is a difference between academic or scholarly respectability and intellectual integrity. For a Christian, the latter depends upon the approval of God and is rooted in fidelity to his revealed Word; it does not always mean the same thing as playing by the rules of scholarly guild.

  He concludes,

  Years ago, Mark Noll wrote a book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, in which he argued that the scandal was that there was no such thing. When it comes to evangelical scholars and scholarship, I disagree: the scandal is not that there is no mind; it is that these days there is precious little evangel.

  On a related note, have you read George Marsden’s, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Unbelief, or his shorter follow-up, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship? I’m not quite done with either, but I can already confidently recommend them to anyone interested in understanding how the academic scene in North America got to where it is today.

  Categories: Academic Theology | Carl Trueman | Ecclesial Theology | George Marsden

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