0:00
LinkedIn is pretty great at a lot of things, like helping you tap into the latest trends
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and insights in your field.
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We cannot stop your co-worker from tapping her pencil.
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LinkedIn can help you find new jobs that align with your career goals.
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We cannot help you find the source of that weird smell in the office fridge.
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And while we can't stop your co-workers from bringing their hobbies into the office, LinkedIn
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can help you bring your career to the next level.
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LinkedIn is the network that works for you.
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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:53
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
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Let's get into it.
0:56
All right, guys.
0:57
We've got a special guest on the podcast today.
0:58
He is a return guest, and that is Carl Truman.
1:00
So he is a podcast alum.
1:01
He was on episode 347 of this podcast.
1:04
He is a Christian ecclesiastical historian, a professor, and an author.
1:08
He is the professor of religious studies at Grove City College, and he's also a fellow
1:12
at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributing editor at First Things.
1:17
So he is the best-selling author of an amazing book.
1:20
It's on the 100 books every modern Christian Man should read list that's on our website,
1:23
Undaunted.life/booklist, and that is the rise and triumph of the modern self.
1:28
And he also wrote a book called Strange New World, which is kind of a somewhat condensed
1:31
version of the rise and triumph of the modern self.
1:34
But he has a new book out right now, and it's called Crisis of Confidence, Reclaiming the
1:38
historic faith in a culture consumed with individualism and identity.
1:42
And so the thing with this interview today, we started out kind of talking about the rise
1:45
and triumph of the modern self, like, hey, when you were writing this book, did you think
1:48
you were going to write a book that was going to make this many waves and, you know, years
1:52
and years later, it would still be in print, people would still be consuming it, digging
1:56
through it, studying it.
1:57
He talked about recently, he was speaking about some of the things that he talked about in
2:01
that book with a couple of Muslim scholars and things like that.
2:04
And so the book has really taken him around the world, and that has really taken him by
2:07
surprise.
2:08
But in terms of the interview today, we spend the overwhelming majority of the time talking
2:11
about the new book, Crisis of Confidence, because this talks about the importance of
2:14
creeds and confessions, and how in modernity, we don't really look at creeds and confessions
2:18
as something that we really need to do.
2:21
It's churches, you're not reciting any creeds or confessions.
2:23
If your church does hold to one, you're probably not familiar with it.
2:27
It's maybe never been read or explained to you.
2:29
Maybe you've never studied it.
2:30
And we dig into a lot of the reasons as to why that's possibly the case.
2:34
But also he gives an argument for the people that are like, hey, I don't need creeds.
2:37
I just need the Bible and how in practice that doesn't really work out like maybe it
2:41
does in theory.
2:42
And we talk about how chronological, snobbery kind of works into this to where it's just
2:46
like, hey, these things are written, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, sometimes
2:49
over a thousand years ago.
2:50
What could they possibly have known that we don't know?
2:53
Because look, we have iPhones and we have modern dental tools.
2:56
So why in the world will we need something that somebody wrote this long ago?
2:59
But we talk about how God really communicates to us through language.
3:02
And so it's through language, we can be able to understand more about him.
3:06
We talk about how modern preaching style, kind of this TED talky style of preaching really
3:10
goes against what creeds and confessions would help us to be able to do.
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How these preachers preaching without elders is leading to some issues as well.
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And then which creeds and confessions are the good ones?
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Because there are a ton, how can we possibly know which ones we should be consuming.
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And then at the end, we talk a little bit about some of the stuff that he's working on that's
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coming up here soon.
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And I'm very excited for you to hear more about that.
3:31
And I'm excited, frankly, hear more about that as well.
3:33
So guys, really, really enjoy my time with Carl.
3:34
So without further ado, let's get into it.
3:37
Carl, welcome back to the show.
3:38
I just got to ask you right from the beginning, do you feel as good as you look because you
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look amazing?
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I feel old and tired.
3:45
So it looks to be very deceptive.
3:47
I don't believe that at all.
3:49
Well, hey, we got a very short time today.
3:50
So I want to go ahead and dig in.
3:51
But before we dig into the newest book, the last time you're on here, we'd spent the entire
3:56
time talking about the rise in triumph of the modern self.
3:58
It's an absolutely fantastic book.
4:00
It is just a freight train.
4:01
It's on the 100 books.
4:03
Every modern Christian man should read lists.
4:05
That's on our website.
4:06
We're so thankful for that book.
4:07
But talk to me a little bit like as you were writing it, do you think, did you think that
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you were writing a book that was going to be potentially, you know, staying in print and
4:15
going from one generation to the next and like, did you, can you imagine that it would
4:18
still be having the impact it's having in 2024 years and years after it was released?
4:23
No, it's been, you know, completely shocked.
4:27
I wrote it really because I think in print, so I wrote it to think through some issues
4:32
myself and I seem to have been thinking about the same things as everybody else.
4:38
In fact, I've just half an hour ago, I was meeting with a couple of Muslim academics
4:43
which believe who have been looking at the book and wanted to talk to me about the book.
4:49
So it's not even just Christians who are interested in.
4:53
I've been completely staggered, completely staggered by it.
4:56
Yeah, you've certainly struck a chord and I think as well as it's a very dense book.
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I mean, every page is thicker than a Snickers.
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And so it's like you can't really skim a book like that.
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So I think that's part of the reason why it's going to redound through time as well.
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But you have a new book out called Crisis of Confidence, Reclaiming the Historic Faith
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in a Culture Consumed with Individualism and Identity.
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Seems like same artwork or same people that do your artwork.
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So it's very consistent.
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I really, really enjoy the artwork.
5:23
But I want to read a quote from the introduction and we're going to base all my questions
5:26
today off of individual quotes from the book because I think that'll help us elucidate
5:29
what you're going for.
5:30
But here's a quote from the intro.
5:32
The burden that motivates my writing of this book is my belief that creeds and confessions
5:36
are vital to the present and future well-being of the church.
5:39
Such a statement may well jar evangelical ears that are used to the notion that scripture
5:43
alone is to be considered the soul supreme authority for Christian faith and practice.
5:49
So Carl, in a nutshell, just a very 30,000 foot view, we're going to dig in.
5:54
What's the book about?
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Why did you write it?
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What do you want readers to come away with?
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Let's just start generically.
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Well, the basic argument of the book is that church is the best served by having some clear
6:04
and fairly comprehensive statement of faith rooted in the historic faith of the Christian
6:09
church.
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The audience it's aimed for really is what I would describe as a broad evangelical audience
6:14
that can often be somewhat and understandably suspicious of the idea of creeds and confessions
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is somehow implying that scripture isn't enough or that there's a separate stream of revelation
6:28
that stands alongside or even above scripture.
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So the burden of the book is to make the case that creating confessions are important and
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actually the very things that evangelicals are generally most worried about.
6:39
For example, the unique authority of scripture are ironically counterintuitively best protected
6:46
through churches having creeds and confessions.
6:49
Okay.
6:50
So something that you talk about specifically in the book that I think helps us get into
6:54
this discussion.
6:55
Did you talk about creed, code, and cult?
6:58
And so here's the quote from the book.
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Christianity involves a creed, a code and a cult.
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No church and no Christian merely has a creed or a cult or a code or a cult.
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All three are inseparable facets of the one Christian faith.
7:13
So again, when we get into creed, some people are like, isn't that like a rock band from
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the early 2000s, which yes, it is, and they're they're they're back now.
7:20
They're going to be going on tour.
7:21
So good for all you guys.
7:22
But you know, we don't really think in creeds.
7:24
We don't really use that in our modern parlance.
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And we certainly don't think of it in terms of the, you know, creed, code and cult.
7:30
So help us kind of understand what you were going through and what you're wanting to
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teach us with that.
7:34
Yeah.
7:35
The distinction, really, I'm trying to capture their three aspects of, of, of life that will
7:40
characterize every church, to some extent.
7:43
Creed in when I'm talking creed, code and cult, I'm not specifically teaching thinking
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here of, say, the Apostles creed or the Nicene creed.
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I'm thinking of the fact that, you know, as Christians, we're committed to certain beliefs.
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Our creed is the set of beliefs that we hold.
7:58
So there's an intellectual component to Christianity in terms of there are assertions that we think
8:05
are true.
8:07
Jesus is God and man, Jesus rose from the dead, that kind of thing.
8:12
Code refers to the way of life that really Christians are meant to embody.
8:18
We love our neighbors.
8:19
We love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and night.
8:23
There's a code involved in being a Christian whereby our lives are meant to be ordered
8:29
distinctively by the beliefs we have.
8:33
And then cult.
8:34
Yeah.
8:35
So when they hear the word cult, think of your creepy brainwashing group, trying to take
8:39
your kids from you or something, what I mean in this is, is the way we worship.
8:44
Cult is one of the worship practices we have, the songs we sing, the place we ascribe to
8:49
the preach word, the prayers we pray, the rhythm of the service, church service to which
8:58
we belong.
8:59
And every Christian, if you like, is when we think about lives, yeah, there's going to
9:02
be stuff we believe, there's going to be stuff we do in terms of our everyday life because
9:08
we're Christians and there's going to be a way that we worship.
9:11
We all as Christians have a creed, a code and a cult.
9:14
When I think that helps because in the book, you also talk about the seeming implausibility
9:19
of creeds where like in our modern sense and our modern brain, we think like creeds are
9:24
maybe not necessary or they're just implausible in the current climate.
9:28
But then there's also this climate that you discuss, which is the tradition rather than
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the Bible people.
9:35
So this is like, you know, Protestants would use that as a jab at, you know, Orthodox or
9:38
Catholics because they're like, Hey, there's no creed, but the Bible, but I want to read
9:42
this quote from the book here.
9:44
A few moments of reflection, however, indicate how misleading and in fact, untrue is the
9:49
claim that Protestants have the Bible rather than tradition.
9:53
Thus, scripture alone, whatever else it means cannot mean scripture approached in a vacuum.
9:59
Now literally in the cut, you know, in the margin of the book, I wrote shots fired shots
10:03
fired.
10:04
Carl Truman, because you made a lot of Protestants mad just with that one line, but explain it
10:08
to us.
10:09
Yeah, there are various ways of explaining what I'm getting out there.
10:11
I mean, one thing to think about is, you know, no Christian just believes the Bible.
10:15
If I would say to you, Kyle, what do you believe and you would say to me, well, I just believe
10:20
the Bible.
10:21
That doesn't distinguish you from a Jehovah's Witness, to be quite honest.
10:26
You believe the Bible teaches something and you believe the Bible doesn't teach some other
10:32
things.
10:33
But whatever you believe the Bible teaches is your creed, is your confession.
10:38
There's an old Dutch saying that every heretic has his text, which is trying to get at the
10:44
fact that, you know, every deviant theologian points to the Bible as his or her authority.
10:50
And what I want to say in this is, no Christian just believes the Bible.
10:55
Every Christian believes the Bible means something.
10:58
And what you think it means, that's your creed, and there is great benefit to be had from writing
11:05
that down.
11:06
Apart from anything else, it means that you can be held accountable by other people.
11:10
If you've got a pastor who says, well, I have no creed, but the Bible.
11:14
One Sunday, he teaches that we can baptize the little infants of believers.
11:19
And the next Sunday, he teaches, you can only baptize people on profession of faith.
11:23
And the week after that, he teaches that we can baptize little infants again.
11:27
You've got to ask yourself, what's going on here?
11:30
And if each Sunday, he said, well, my position is just the position of the Bible.
11:34
You have to have some way to hold him to account.
11:38
And that's best done through actually having your church's position on baptism written
11:44
down.
11:45
And that is your creedal position on baptism.
11:48
When I think as you're even as you're talking through that, I didn't necessarily have the
11:52
thought while you were while I was reading the book, but it's, there is this insistence
11:56
when I speak to Catholics, they're like, dude, you're a Protestant.
11:59
There's like a thousand versions of you.
12:01
There's one version of our church, right?
12:03
And it's some do with a funny hat and Rome that basically tells us what to do.
12:06
It's more plausible than 17 different ways just to do worship.
12:10
And so I think it helps to kind of put things into a particular category.
12:13
But I do want to back up just, just a hair, because one thing that I wanted to get you
12:17
to talk about is really as it pertains to creeds of any kind, especially if they're,
12:23
they weren't written, you know, this century, right?
12:26
There's this chronological snobbery that we get that I think you talk about in the book.
12:30
So here's a short quote, numerous forces in modern culture serve to erode any notion that
12:35
the past might be useful source of wisdom, might be a useful source of wisdom.
12:40
And so Christians and non-Christians alike, Carl, they seem to believe this.
12:44
And I've gotten there too to where it's just like, Hey, dude, you were born in the 1900s,
12:49
which I was as well, but it's like, Hey, what, what do you have to tell me about something
12:53
and science goes into that technology goes into that.
12:56
We look at these people that were operating two or 3000 years ago is described in the
13:00
Bible being like, these were essentially knuckle dragging Neanderthals.
13:03
What could they possibly have to teach us?
13:05
So talk to us a little bit about that.
13:07
Yeah, my basic argument is, as you've already alluded to, really, the way we imagine the
13:12
world.
13:13
And I mean, as soon as you start to talk about the way people imagine and intuit the world,
13:16
you're getting into territory that can be rather difficult to tie down at points.
13:20
But the, but our typical instincts or intuitions are that we are wiser and better today than
13:25
we were 100 years ago.
13:26
And there's some good reason for thinking about it.
13:29
Yeah, if I've got cancer or I need a serious operation, I want a doctor who was trained
13:37
recently, not a doctor who was trained in the Middle Ages.
13:43
If I'm going to ask a doctor what medicine I should take from medical condition, I'm not
13:49
going to go back to the Middle Ages.
13:50
I'm not going to look at those medical manuals.
13:52
I'm going to ask somebody who's got the latest research on a thyroid condition or migraine
13:58
or whatever it happens to be.
14:01
The problem is that when we live in that kind of world, we can tend to assume that the same
14:06
rule applies to everything that we have, you know, that the past was uniformly more ignorant
14:13
in all the areas than we are.
14:16
And yet there's no reason why we should think that.
14:19
It works in some areas, technology, science, for example, but there's no reason why it
14:24
should work in the area of, say, moral philosophy or theology for that reason.
14:30
And then when you look at the Bible, the Bible talks, Paul talks about the tradition of the
14:36
teaching of the apostles, whole, faster, form of sound words, you know, pass down the faith
14:42
once for all delivered to the saints.
14:45
Paul is clearly operating in a world where something has been given that can be transmitted
14:52
down through the ages and shouldn't be tinkered with or changed because actually it's been
14:58
given in a definitive form.
15:01
So my burden at that point in the book is to say to the reader, don't allow the fact
15:06
that there are legitimate reasons for preferring the present to the past in some areas to become
15:13
a general rule of life where all areas of the past are regarded as inferior to all analogous
15:20
areas of the present.
15:22
Yeah, I certainly think that that's helpful because when people are like, if you could
15:24
go back and live in any era, when would it be?
15:27
And I'm like, earlier today, like, I don't know, like, I don't want to get dental work
15:30
done in 1920, are you out of your mind?
15:33
But the one caveat I would add to that is if I could go back 1500 years, I would certainly
15:40
be less distracted.
15:41
And so when you make the point about moral awareness, I guess you could say, well, I am
15:48
constantly stimulated, I'm surrounded by technology.
15:51
I have a super computer in my pocket to where I can listen to other people talk into a microphone
15:55
and then it hits my ears and I can do that no matter where I'm at, whether in the car
15:59
or sitting around the house or something like that.
16:01
And so I certainly think there's something to be said for these people that spent time
16:05
in deep prayer, deep meditation, deep self-reflection, because we don't we don't even get bored anymore.
16:10
And so like that was something that was just, you know, old hat for people that were existing
16:15
years and years and years before the technological revolution.
16:18
But also something that you talked about in the book, Carl, that was helpful for me.
16:21
It certainly was.
16:22
And it was kind of like an aha moment for me and it probably shouldn't have been.
16:26
But it was like, how did God choose to communicate to us in modernity?
16:30
And he did that using words.
16:32
So let me read a quote from this book, there are many theological implications of the identification
16:37
of God's speech as a special mode of his presence.
16:41
But the point I want to make here is simple.
16:43
These are the means God has chosen for his presence and therefore are by definition an
16:48
adequate means for that presence.
16:50
Now this is where it might get a little sticky for people to where it's like, yes, God is
16:54
communicating through words and his word is the Bible.
16:57
And the only correct one is the King James or the ESV or the the original Greek Hebrew
17:02
or Aramaic or something.
17:04
It's not this creed, which doesn't actually come from the Bible as it were.
17:09
It's not explicitly laid out, you know, on the Sermon on the Mount Jesus wasn't reading
17:12
the Nicene Creed.
17:13
You know what I mean?
17:14
So talk to me a little bit about the implications of those thoughts.
17:17
Yeah.
17:18
Well, I mean, there are a number of issues there to unpack.
17:21
The first thing is the general point I'm making is God's a speaking God.
17:26
And that's really against the background of the modern suspicion of words as an adequate
17:31
means of expressing truth.
17:33
We live in a culture now where our intuitions are such that we tend to think words are manipulative
17:39
and certainly words can be used manipulatively.
17:42
Listen to a speech made by almost any politician you can choose from either side of the political
17:46
divide, they're playing you to some extent.
17:49
They're using words to elicit a certain response or a certain effect from you.
17:55
So we are naturally predisposed to think that words come up short when it comes to transparent
18:03
communication and transparent relationships.
18:06
So there's that general point, then I think when we come to the Word of God, I'd want
18:11
to make a couple of distinctions certainly would say, you know, the Bible is the Word
18:15
of God in a unique sense.
18:17
It's the Word of God inspired and written down.
18:21
But I would say the content of the Bible, the doctrinal content that can be drawn from
18:26
it, can be adequately expressed using words that we have a speaking God.
18:33
Language has been sanctified by God on that front.
18:37
And therefore, we shouldn't think that the doctrinal formulas that we've inherited from
18:43
the Church are simply by virtue of that, they're linguistic, problematic.
18:49
Actually God's truth to use the old chestnut, you know, Christianity is not a set of doctrines.
18:54
It's a relationship.
18:55
Well, I'd want to say, yeah, most relationships involve words and most functional relationships
19:02
involve us being able to articulate certain objective facts in terms of words.
19:08
So I have a loving relationship with my wife, but I'm able to describe my wife in words,
19:15
such that, you know, when I, and I'm able to visualize my wife, I'm able to understand
19:20
the sound of her voice, there are things I can tell you about that are factual, such
19:26
that you would be able to recognize in a room of random women.
19:31
Does that mean my relationship is sort of faulty?
19:34
No, I would actually say that indicates the appropriateness of my relationship, on some
19:41
extent, in that if I couldn't describe my wife, you'd find that a bit odd.
19:45
I didn't know what the color of her hair was, what her height was, et cetera, et cetera.
19:50
So there's also that antithesis that can sometimes exist in our minds between relationship and
19:56
personal words, and I'm going to say, yes, at the heart of Christianity, God calls us
20:01
his friends and his children, we call him our loving father, but that doesn't mean that
20:09
we can't produce doctrinal statements, that the statement that God is our friend, God
20:16
is our loving father, doesn't presuppose, you know, there are things we can say about
20:21
a relationship that can be set forward in propositional form adequately using words.
20:27
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20:28
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He had been convinced that red meat was the devil and it was terrible for you.
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And then over time, as he was not having red meat in his diet, he was kind of suffering
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And so he is all in now.
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And so he's trying to go carnivore like I am, but he and I were both kind of lamenting
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That will be in the show notes.
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And we can get from the scripture, like the doctrine of the Trinity.
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Of course, it's a lot's been made about the well, the word Trinity is not in there, but
22:53
also you gave some other kind of colloquialisms within Christianity like, you know, I accepted
22:57
Jesus into my heart like we don't see that quote anywhere in scripture, but it's also
23:01
helpful for us to understand.
23:02
So if you were to try to describe color, the color of something to someone that's been
23:08
blind from birth, there's not that common set of knowledge that will allow you to be
23:12
able to do that effectively.
23:14
However, even though I can't fully express my love for my wife, I'm going to try to do
23:20
so using words.
23:21
And I'm going to try to do so using words in this language to people that are hearers
23:25
and understanders of this language to try to create some sort of common ground so that
23:31
I can elucidate my point to them about how much I care for my spouse.
23:34
Now with all that being said, this is all been leading to this moment, Carl, because
23:38
this is my favorite quote from the entire book.
23:40
And so hopefully you have some really smart headed things to say about it.
23:43
So let me read this quote here.
23:45
Far from being a staid piece of outmoded traditionalism, such a corporate action is a devastating
23:50
blow against a cultural conformity that demands the church be just like the world, except
23:55
the same criteria of relevance, truth, and aesthetics as the world and offer a gospel
24:00
that accommodates at least some of the claims of the world.
24:03
The recitation of a creed makes it very clear that whatever the attitude of heart of any
24:08
individual church member, the church as a whole looks to God as king, not some creaturely
24:14
pretender.
24:15
And so the thing I love about this is we currently live and I say this now they were doing this
24:19
in the first century church as well.
24:21
It's not just the gospel, it's the gospel and so maybe it's the gospel and works.
24:26
It's the gospel and social justice.
24:28
It's the gospel and wearing a particular robe, you know, behind the pulpit on a particular
24:33
time of the week or the month or something like that.
24:37
We want to add to it because I think inherently we believe that gracious can't be free.
24:43
This is way too good of a deal.
24:44
Like the free gift of gracious doesn't make any sense to us.
24:47
So take that quote wherever you want to go with it because for whatever reason that I
24:51
just kind of reread that quote over and over because it really hit me in the moment I was
24:54
working through.
24:55
Yeah, well, the point I'm making there is that in the gathered worship of the church,
24:59
if you recite an ancient creed, it's countercultural and a number of levels one, you are setting
25:05
yourself in a historical tradition and you're essentially saying history is important.
25:10
History has something to teach me.
25:11
And in fact, my identity in the present rests upon historical events, historical actions
25:18
and I can draw wisdom from the past in order to understand who I am.
25:23
Secondly, you're identifying yourself with other people saying, I'm not an individual.
25:28
I'm actually part of this great people, a people that stretches back through time.
25:32
And indeed, if you're saying something like the Apostles Creed on a Sunday, a people that
25:36
are represented across the globe simultaneously at this point in time.
25:41
Thirdly, you're acknowledging an external authority.
25:44
You're saying, the meaning of my life is not grounded in me and my feelings.
25:49
If anything, my feelings need to be set in the context of something much, much bigger
25:54
than myself.
25:55
So all of those things I think are countercultural at that point.
26:00
And one of these that play on in the book, obviously, it's getting people to think that
26:04
this is not conservative conformity today.
26:07
This is actually a form of rebellion against the kind of culture in which we find ourselves.
26:14
Well, it's the culture we find ourselves in, but it's also part of the milieu that's
26:17
been created by this modern kind of TED talky church because the TED talky church makes
26:22
you focus on you.
26:23
It's like, okay, the story of David and Goliath, I'm obviously David and Goliath is my problem
26:27
with my wife or my problem with my boss or some sort of thing.
26:30
And we keep finding ourselves in the narrative of scripture whenever it's not about us.
26:34
It may even be a letter that was written to a particular people group that is not our
26:37
people group in this day and age, but the preaching style certainly has an effect on
26:43
that.
26:44
And I want to read a quote from your book that'll help us discuss that.
26:46
In other contexts, preaching has been pushed completely aside for conversational discourse
26:51
where the authoritative voice of the preacher has been replaced by a more democratic dialogue.
26:57
And so I remember, I can't remember the guy's name, I got to submit it to memory, but there
27:01
was an older preacher.
27:03
He had a kind of an Eastern European accent.
27:05
He was probably in his late 80s and he was at the G3 conference here recently and he was
27:10
screaming that we don't have preachers anymore.
27:12
We have teachers, like we don't have people that are screaming at people begging them
27:17
to accept the good news of the gospel.
27:19
We have people that have gotten, you know, higher their own farts for so long and they're
27:22
like, I am so smart and I am so revolutionary.
27:25
So I'm going to write the next 10 ways to be the best, whatever, whatever today.
27:28
And then here's four ways that God can use your finances to bring you more joy or whatever
27:33
that type of thing.
27:34
And what it's done to us is it's allowed us to get closer to the self help movement of
27:39
maybe the 70s, 80s and 90s and further away from what you would say is credalism, which
27:44
comes directly and doctrine that is taken directly from scripture.
27:48
Go for it.
27:49
Yeah.
27:50
I think again, you're touching on a number of issues there.
27:52
First of all, I would say what the gentleman you described is touching on is what I would
27:57
call the instrumentalization of the gospel.
28:00
There has been a tendency to make the gospel into something that allows us to get something
28:04
here and now or in the near future.
28:07
It's the gospel is the technique or the gospel is the instrument by which I develop a problem
28:13
management style or I become wealthy or I become happy and content with my wife or
28:20
something like this, whereas the gospel, of course, is the gospel because it's true.
28:24
It may do all of those things.
28:26
I mean, praise God when alcoholics hear the gospel preached and it breaks their habit
28:32
of alcoholism.
28:33
Praise God that the gospel does things, but the gospel is not true because it does things.
28:39
It does things because it is true and the temptation to instrumentalize the gospel, I
28:44
think, can be very great and that's where creates and confessions are useful because
28:48
they focus upon God rather than upon us.
28:53
The second thing I think that the person might be alluding to is fact that, you know, what
28:59
does a preacher doing? Well, I would suggest that the real biblical lineage of the preacher
29:06
is the Old Testament prophet, that the preacher is not to engage in a dialogue.
29:14
The preacher's primary task, he put this very provogatively, the preacher's primary task
29:18
is not to help people understand the Bible better.
29:22
Praise God when he does that, but that's what his primary task, his primary task is
29:26
to bring the Word of God.
29:29
So there should be a thus Seth, the Lord dimension to preach it that characterizes both its content
29:35
and its style that I think can be lost in this more conversational approach.
29:41
And again, this connects to creating confessions because creating confessions keep your mind
29:48
focused upon the great truths of God and not the immediate needs or exigencies of the present
29:54
day.
29:55
Certainly something that would help that is if that preacher is submitted to the authority
30:00
of a group of elders, which is also something that we don't really see a lot in kind of
30:04
this modern mega church pastor growth movement.
30:07
So let me read a quote from the book here.
30:09
This is where I would suggest the input of good elders becomes crucial.
30:14
Listening to the minister each week, the elders should be well qualified to note imbalances
30:18
in the theology expressed in the public worship of God.
30:22
And I guess part of the thing is, Carl, is there's not a whole lot of theology being
30:26
expressed in a lot of these places.
30:27
Again, they're trying to build out their four to six week series.
30:32
And then they are going to kind of back in scripture to kind of like provide the secondary
30:37
scaffolding for the thing they want to talk about to begin with as opposed to expositing
30:42
the the scripture, you know, one verse at a time or one passage at a time or something
30:47
like that.
30:48
So again, this movement away from elders, I find it be just incredibly, not only maddening,
30:54
but very potentially damaging.
30:55
No.
30:56
Yeah, I agree with you.
30:57
I think you're good elders are critical for a balanced ministry.
31:01
As I said in the quotation, you quoted just then, you know, elders have a better perspective
31:07
on the minister's preaching generally than the minister himself does.
31:10
And I was certainly grateful when I was preaching regularly that on occasion, one of my elders
31:15
might say to me, you know, you've mentioned this a lot recently.
31:18
I think we got the point on, you know, you know, you actually, this is going on in the
31:23
congregation.
31:24
It would be good to make an application on this at some point.
31:28
If it's there in the text, don't hesitate to press this or even the times you'd hear,
31:36
you get reports that there are people in the congregation struggling and suffering.
31:39
And the elder one says, you know, you've been less than fully encouraging at points.
31:44
I think person X needs an encouraging note this week, if you could strike an encouraging
31:49
note.
31:50
So elders on that front are very, very useful.
31:53
I think you have to set that up though against the background of having a good concept or
31:59
the whole council of God is.
32:01
And again, this is where creeds and confessions are helpful because creeds and confessions,
32:06
they're not exhaustive statements, but I would say by and large, something like the Westminster
32:10
Confession of Faith or the second London Confession for Baptists, that they're not exhaustive
32:17
accounts of biblical teaching, but they give you all the main stuff and they provide you
32:22
with a good idea of the kind of things that you should be covering, not every week.
32:28
You can't cover everything every week.
32:29
But if you were to say, you know, every year or every two years, I need to have touched
32:34
upon all of the major bases.
32:36
I need to have made sure that my people have a good grasp of the doctrine of God.
32:40
Good grasp of salvation, good grasp of the significance of baptism.
32:44
All of these things, if I'm covering them, you know, on a year or every two years or
32:48
even every three years, making sure that in addition to having to address immediate things
32:54
that will bubble up always in every church, the broad framework and the major emphases
32:59
of my preaching are actually shaped by the time tested emphases of the church.
33:07
And what are the time tested emphases of the church where do we find those in the great
33:10
creeds and confessions?
33:12
Okay.
33:13
So you mentioned a couple of the confessions here.
33:14
So let's say somebody listens to this podcast today or they go and pick up a copy of Crisis
33:19
of Confidence, guys, it's in the show notes, and they're convinced.
33:22
They're like, that Carl Truman's got a point.
33:24
You know what?
33:25
We're going full creeds and confessions mode.
33:26
Now you do talk about a lot of those in the book.
33:29
So someone's convinced to use creeds and confessions, which ones?
33:33
Because there are some bad ones out there and there are some ones that we don't want people
33:36
really going through or memorizing.
33:37
So which ones are good?
33:38
Well, my first advice would always be what traditions you belong to?
33:42
Find out the creeds and confessions that shape your tradition.
33:45
Now, pretty much any Christian tradition worthy of its name will hold in high regard the apostles
33:51
creed and the Nicene creed.
33:53
So the ancient creeds are something that pretty much all Christians everywhere agree on.
33:58
When you get down to sort of Protestantism, well, really it's going to be, it gets a little
34:04
bit more fragmented at that point.
34:06
And I would say, find out the tradition to which your church intuitively belongs.
34:12
Probably if you're in an independent evangelical church, it will be baptistic, I baptizes people
34:19
on profession of faith.
34:20
Well, find out, get hold of, there are books out there of baptist confessions of faith.
34:26
If you're reformed or Presbyterian, you get hold of the Westminster Confession, get hold
34:30
of the Belgian Confession.
34:33
If you have, probably if you're in a Lutheran church that already have the Lutheran Confessions
34:36
up front and central, get hold of them and read them.
34:41
If you don't know where you stand on any of these things, and you're genuinely wanting
34:46
to wrestle with the big questions and find out where do I come down on baptism, the Lord's
34:52
Supper, predestination, get hold of something like, there's a great book from Crossway.
34:57
I think it's called entitled Creeds and Confessions of the Church, it's edited by my good friend
35:04
Chad Van Dixhorn.
35:06
It's a nice single hardback volume from Crossway, and it's got all of the big creeds and confessions
35:12
in there.
35:13
Everything from the Apostles' Creed through the Luther and Alex Borg confession, Westminster
35:17
Confession, et cetera.
35:18
That gives you in one volume, a great book, you could take you a couple of weeks to read
35:22
through it.
35:23
You spent half an hour a day reading through that book, and you'd probably find yourself
35:28
thinking, "Oh, wow, yeah, actually, this confession."
35:33
That pretty much captures where my church and I stand.
35:38
So I would say familiarize yourself with the Confessions, if you don't have a confessional
35:42
tradition, get hold of a good selection like Chad's book, and read that seaway you might
35:48
fit.
35:49
One, and as you would do with your own home preacher, your own home pastor, look at the
35:54
confession in Creed and don't look at it as gospel, or I mean that tongue in cheek.
36:01
Don't look at it as like, "Okay, I'm just going to believe every word of this," take
36:05
that to the Bible and try to figure out if the doctrine that you're getting from your
36:09
reading in the Bible matches that Creed, because just because someone else accepts it
36:13
doesn't mean that it is fully acceptable.
36:15
Now we are completely out of time, so I only have one question left for you, so I'm just
36:19
going to sneak this last one in there.
36:21
So you've got this book.
36:22
We've already talked about the rise in trying to the modern self, and I'm really, really
36:25
selfish.
36:26
I'm one of those guys that gets done bins watching a show that took people like five years to
36:29
make.
36:30
And I'm like, "When's season two?"
36:31
It's like you just finished it.
36:32
It just came out.
36:33
So what are you working on now?
36:34
What's next?
36:35
Two books.
36:36
One is completed and coming out this fall, which is entitled to Change All Worlds, which
36:41
is a look from a Christian perspective about the origins and rise of critical theory.
36:46
And the subtitle is Critical Theory from Mark to Mark User.
36:50
So it's really an attempt to help Christians understand what's going on in the broad school
36:56
of approaches known as critical theory.
37:00
Second book, which is coming out, it's almost finished, will be coming out a year this fall,
37:04
Fall of 2025, is looking at how desecration helps us understand modernity.
37:11
I did a lecture last year, which you can find online at firstthings.com entitled The
37:16
Desecration of Map.
37:17
And the book in some ways is an expansion and extension of my argument there, looking
37:22
at how we need to think of what's going on in the world, not just in terms of disenchantment,
37:28
et cetera, et cetera.
37:29
But there's a positive desecration of that, which is holy that is going on.
37:34
All right.
37:35
Well, it looks like we'll have to get you back on here this fall to talk about the new book,
37:37
about critical theory.
37:38
I'd love to come back.
37:39
I'll make sure that that absolutely.
37:40
But that's all for me.
37:41
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
37:42
No.
37:43
One that did occur in your penultimate questions, one way of thinking about creeds and confessions
37:47
is think of them as a map.
37:50
We use maps to help us get around.
37:53
That doesn't mean that maps always accurately present the terrain, but they're extremely
37:58
helpful in us finding our way around.
38:01
Think about a creed or a confession as a map that helps you read the Bible.
38:07
Ultimately, the terrain and the Bible are authoritative over the map or the confession.
38:12
But if you think about creeds and confessions in that term, I think that's a helpful way
38:17
of getting into seeing how they're useful.
38:20
All right.
38:21
Very good.
38:22
Well, Carl, until next time, we'll talk soon.
38:24
Great.
38:25
Thanks for having me on.
38:26
There you go, guys.
38:27
I hope you enjoyed the return appearance of Carl Truman on the show.
38:28
But before we let you go, we are going to deal quick resilience boost.
38:30
Add undaunted life, our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that
38:34
forges spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
38:36
So the links I've got for you today, I've got a link to where you can buy his book, Crisis
38:39
of Confidence, and also the rise in triumph of the modern self and strange new world.
38:43
I've got the appearance that he did on this show.
38:45
What was it?
38:46
A couple of years ago.
38:47
So that was episode 347 and also a link to the ethics and publicly public policy center
38:51
and first things.
38:52
So you can check all that out there.
38:54
Thank you for listening to this podcast.
38:55
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five
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If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, shoot me an email
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Just go to www.undonton.life and as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing
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I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
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