"The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self" by Carl Trueman is an eye-opening journey into how we see ourselves today. Trueman's main idea is that our understanding of who we are has changed a lot over time. He shows how in the past, people saw themselves as part of a bigger picture, like a family or a community. But now, many of us think of ourselves as individuals with our own unique feelings and desires. This shift, Trueman argues, has big consequences for how we think about things like love, happiness, and even what's real.

As I read the book, I was struck by how our modern ideas about self-expression and identity have deep roots in history. Trueman explains how thinkers from long ago, like Rousseau and Freud, influenced the way we see ourselves today. He also talks about how the rise of social media and the focus on personal choice have shaped our beliefs about who we are. It made me realize that our views about ourselves aren't just personal – they're shaped by the world around us.

I recommend "The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self" to anyone curious about why we think the way we do. If you've ever wondered why ideas about gender, relationships, and even truth itself have become so different, this book is for you. Trueman's writing is clear and easy to understand, even if you're not familiar with philosophy or history. Whether you're a student trying to make sense of the world or just someone who likes exploring big ideas, this book will give you a new perspective on the modern self and how it shapes our lives.

Does it seem that too many things that is trending in our post-2020 world seems rather crazy? This book is an important work that explore how some of the pathologies we are currently seeing in society and culture today is the result of the modern view of the self. Christian historian Carl Trueman authored this important and phenomenal work that have the attention of others as well in regards to its significance, with this book having received The Gospel Coalition Book Award for 2020 and as of today in April 27th, 2021 it remains the number one Best Seller in Religion & Philosophy on Amazon, which is incredible given that this is six months after the book was published. I felt this book is similar to Francis Schaeffer’s How Then Shall We Live? with how the book present readers a penetrating analysis of cultural development of how we got to where we are now from the past although it is with much more academic rigor and footnotes to make the case for the book’s thesis than Schaeffer’s classic. I felt this book is probably Trueman’s best work thus far.
The discussion of the modern view of self can take many directions and the author in the book acknowledges that. The subtitle of the book indicate the book’s flow: “Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution.” In the introduction Trueman explains that the heart of the book lies with the question of what social and cultural changes has taken place that today the statement “I am a woman trapped within a man’s body” makes sense when just a generation ago such a claim would be seen as nonsensical. The author made the point clear that this book isn’t primarily about transgender nor is it about the sexual revolution per se but about something of a deeper undercurrent, namely the change that has shifted in the modern view of self. The sexual revolution is more the symptom of a greater seismic shift that is causing other cultural pathologies. It is this exploration of how the view of the self has developed in Western thought the last five hundred years that is most profound and insightful from the book. I immensely appreciate the breadth and scope of this book with the multi-discipline look in tracking how the modern view of self has changed historically in which we have chapters looking at philosophers, scientists, psychologists, economists, poets and other literary writers and cultural influencers such as social scientists, cultural icons and entertainers and the Supreme Court. Chronologically Trueman began his analysis first with the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and then looks at many other important figures and their contribution towards a view of self that is no longer grounded in what God says man should be but rather the basis is now inwards.
I appreciated how in the beginning of the book Trueman talks about how some will say explaining where we are at now is because of man’s sinfulness and therefore no other analysis is required. He rebuts this by giving an example of how inadequate that can be with the illustration of asking the question “Why did the Twin Towers fell on September 11th?” It is true that it is because of gravity but to only say it is because of gravity might be missing other things such as its significance that makes it such as tragedy. While the universal law of gravity explains why everything in general fall yet there are more specifics about what in particular also shape the fall the way things fell; that is, it is true sin has impacted negatively modern man’s view of self but we ask further why do people in the West have a particular view of self that is different than those who are in another country or people of another time?
Trueman’s analysis is in debt to the insights of three individuals: philosopher Charles Taylor, Philip Rieff and Alasdair MacIntyre. The author does a good job explaining to readers their framework and observations which provide the analytical tools for what Trueman would explore in the rest of the chapters in the book. As a general summary all three scholars note how man today no longer believes in the transcendent that defines the self objectively but now meaning and significance is understood in our cultural as something that is based upon our individual subjective self as the basis. Trueman’s work as a historian and also as a student of other disciplines and thinkers is commendable and is an example for us all to always be learning and be in conversations with others from other disciplines to deepen our analysis of things.
Each chapter I read I found extremely helpful and I took many notes. The chapters that stood out to me was the chapter on the 1800s thinkers Nietzsche, Marx and Dawin and also the chapter on the New Left which infused Marx and Freud that also gave rise to Critical Theory.
The insight from this book is helpful for many other applications besides what was explored in the book. For example Trueman explicitly states one can explore the topic of the political landscape with the breakdown of the importance of national state identity, patriotism, etc. While the work in writing this book started before the post-2020 discussion about Critical Race Theory and Antifa, I think the book is insightful for those areas as well though of course the author doesn’t talk about them.
In terms of diagnosing the problem Trueman has given us his important contribution. Sadly I do think the solution offered is probably the weakest part of the book. For starters it was rather short and lacks the rigor one see Truman is capable of with when he looked at the problems. He gives only three thoughts for the Church for the future and I was surprised that he didn’t mention going back to the Scriptures as one of them. Furthermore he wrote statements that his fellow Calvinistic Protestant would cringe at theologically. For instance Trueman wrote: “Christianity, as both Martin Luther and John Henry Newman knew, is dogmatic, doctrinal, assertive.” I wonder how much both men he mentioned would have saw each other’s Christianity were legitimate, given their doctrinal stance. It is an interesting Ecumenical streak I didn’t expect from a minister from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In discussing one of the solutions Trueman also said “Connected to this, of course, is the importance of the body. Protestantism, with its emphasis on the preached word grasped by faith, is perhaps peculiarly vulnerable to downplaying the importance of the physical.” I don’t see how it logically follow that an emphasis of the Word of God grasped by faith would mean the physical and the bodily would be downplayed when in fact Scripture itself has a high view of the body and the physical, being created by God. Furthermore it is strange to see him single out Protestants as I have my run-ins with those who are Catholics and Eastern Orthodox that can downplay the physical and the bodily in which some I wonder if they are more Christian Platonists than biblical. But for the insight of culture, society and the descent of the modern view of self Trueman is worth reading.
NOTE: This book was provided to me free by Crossway and Net Galley without any obligation for a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.

“I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body.” Just two generations ago, such a statement would have been taken as either incoherent or the start of a joke. Today, however, such a statement is taken as a profound, personal revelation that must be treated with sensitivity and affirmation. How did such a seismic shift in occur so quickly? How is possible that in less than a lifetime, culture has moved from being scandalized by the coming out of a celebrity like Ellen DeGeneres to giving a celebratory magazine cover to Caitlyn Jenner? This is the question Carl R. Trueman seeks to answer in his The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.

Trueman divides his book into four parts. In part one, he utilizes the insights of three figures: Charles Taylor (philosophy) , Philip Rieff (psychology), and Alasdair McIntyre (ethics) as lens for understanding our present culture. In this section he introduces concepts like “expressive individualism,” “social imaginary,” “psychological man,” and “triumph therapeutic.” These concepts will act as organizing categories to give shape to historical development of the concept of self that follows.

In part two, Trueman turns to consider the fountainheads of our modern concept of self. He considers men such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the poets Wordsworth, Shelley, and Blake, and finally, Friedrich Nietzche, Karl Marx, and Charles Darwin. Through the influence of these figures, we see the psychologicalizing of personhood – the concept that the interior life of feelings and desires as the most definitive to personhood. We are introduced to the idea of “authentic self.”

In part three, Trueman highlights how the concept of self is not simply understood in psychological terms but explicitly sexual and political terms through the work and influence of Freud, Reich, and Marcuse. From Freud, identity became wrapped up in sexuality. A person no longer has sexual desires, instead a person is their sexual desires. In other words, to be your authentic self is to be your sexual self.

This is taken a step further by the disciples of Freud through Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse who incorporated Freud’s theory of sexual repression into a Marxist framework of oppression and liberation. To be truly free is to be free to your own authentic, sexual self. The concept of self has gone from being psychologized, to sexualized, to now politicized.

Part four examines the fruit of this long, quiet revolution. Her Trueman considers the ethics of Peter Singer, the reasoning of the Supreme Court, and the meteoric rise of transgender ideology.

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is a significant contribution to our understanding of the present cultural moment. Through Trueman’s analysis, readers gain conceptual tools to better understand the history and trajectory of a society that has radically redefined personhood and understanding of self. By no means is the book perfect, the structure and prose of the book is tightly wound and will prove difficult to follow in places. Furthermore, while Trueman is careful not claim too much, I struggle to see his connection between Wordsworth, Shelley, and Blake to the expressions of transgendered individuals.

Nevertheless, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is well worth reading slowly and pondering deeply. As, no doubt, the revolution of selfhood will continue.

https://apolotheo.wordpress.com/2020/11/25/how-did-it-come-to-this-how-our-world-got-to-the-place-where-the-statement-i-am-a-woman-trapped-in-a-mans-body-makes-sense/?fbclid=IwAR1JJkbbdLay5CzveDtynf8LpexqhE5uGyF1s747_FrqTQXrUF1gmyQn7eQ

How Did It Come to This?:
How our world got to the place where the statement, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” makes sense

Moments before his seemingly impregnable fortress is overrun by dark forces, Theoden, King of Rohan, in shock at the brutality and swift advance of the enemy, murmurs to himself, “Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like wind in the meadow. The days have come down in the West behind the hills into shadow. How did it come to this?”

How did it come to this?

Many Christians are murmuring to themselves, “How did it come to this?” How, in the span of just a few decades, have the moral foundations of western society crumbled to dust, such that gender is divorced from biological sex, public libraries host drag queen story time, children are chemically and surgically castrated and rendered sterile because of momentary confusion, and opposition to any of this is now considered menacing to the public good?

In Carl Trueman’s latest book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution, he traces the philosophical, cultural, and psychological progression of the internal moral rot of the West. This is one of those books that gets down into the details of how, little by little, people in the West began to give up the biblical understanding of man as made in God’s image for the purpose of glorifying him. As Romans 1 reminds us, those who suppress the knowledge of God exchange the truth of God for a life.

Trueman tells his readers plainly, “At the heart of this book lies a basic conviction: the so-called sexual revolution of the last sixty years, culminating in its latest triumph—the normalization of transgenderism—cannot be properly understood until it is set within a much broader transformation in how society understands the nature of human selfhood.”

The body of the book is an explanation of the progression, beginning with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Romanticism through Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Wilhelm Reich up to the impact of the 2015 Supreme Court Obergefell v. Hodges decision to legalize gay marriage and the triumph of transgenderism. It is a tour de force of insight into the erosion of a biblical idea of human nature and selfhood into what philosophers of the modern condition call expressive individualism. He expands on the works of Charles Taylor, Philip Rieff, and Alasdair MacIntyre and their concepts of the triumph of the therapeutic, psychological man, the anticulture, and deathworks.

Although these concepts are not familiar to most, they describe the inward turn of people to consider their feelings and sense of happiness to be their true, authentic selves, even if it means the destruction of morals, society, institutions, and anything else that would limit the expression of their desires.

Nietzsche and Marx taught that “the history of society is a history of power and oppression and that even notions such as human nature are constructs designed to reinforce and perpetuate” that oppression. With Darwin, they dealt a blow to the idea that human beings have any special significance or essence that determines how they ought to behave or were created with an end in mind. Morality, then, becomes a matter of mere taste and manipulative power games. From Freud we learn that humans, “from infancy onward, are at core sexual beings.” Our sexual desires determine who we are. The New Left has taught us that oppression is fundamentally psychological and any attempt to limit sexual expression is oppressive, dehumanizing, and dangerous.

In a word, Trueman shows us, step by step, how we got to the place we are today where something as nonsensical half a century ago, like the statement, “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” can be coherent. By doing so, we see that the task of shining the light of truth on this dark world is more complicated and necessary than we might think. As he has said in interviews, this book is an attempt to explain the world in which we live now to the church. If Christians don’t understand the world as it is, we will miss the mark in our attempts to serve as salt and light.

This book is critical to our understanding of how it came to this, and even more, where we go from here.

This book sounded really interesting and needed. We, as a culture, have dome to accept many things that are complete lies and unbiblical.

This is more of a scholarly book (at least for me) then I normally read, therefore, I did have some trouble connecting with it. But if you connect with that type of book this is a book full of good content, it’s not really a devotional type read, more for information.


A copy of this book was given to me through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

I docked a star, not because I disagreed with any of the content but because it's a fairly long book that was a bit more academic than I thought it would be. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are going to fail to finish it even though there is a lot of important information to be had in these pages. (Maybe my review can convince you to still give it a chance. or at least read the quotes I posted below) Carl Trueman is a historian and this book is him identifying historical figures and ideologies that have led to and influenced how people today view the 'self' and how that in turn has been expressed by the sexual revolution we see in today's culture.

Regardless of your views on how sexual identity should take form, I still believe this book is worth your time because it helps us identify areas of our thinking that are being influenced historically, culturally, emotionally, psychologically, and politically. And ironically, in a culture where the individual is king, our personal thinking is heavily influenced, rather- manipulated, by the masses. I don't know about you, but I'd like to do my own thinking and Trueman's book will at the very least help you become more aware of the potential 'why' you think the things you do.

I'd say one of the main points of the book is this: <i> "The rise of the sexual revolution was predicated on fundamental changes in how the self is understood. The self must first be psychologized; psychology must then be sexualized; and sex must be politicized." </i> And this is the path his book takes, following figures such as Augustine, Charles Taylor, Paul Rieff, Marx, Rousseau, Freud, Nietzsche, Charles Darwin etc.

It follows: The uninfluenced self is inherently good and society is what corrupts a person or impedes their ability to be their pure selves (driven by feelings) by imposing their traditions, ethics, or the like. Sexual gratification and fulfillment is central to pleasure and what it means to be human. Religious constructs that limit sexual freedom cause repression of people's true identities. The traditional family unit is oppressive. Oppression is less about economics and legal standing and more about psychological victimhood- hate speech, microaggressions, etc which is more subjective.

The sexual revolution he is referring to is <i> "the radical and ongoing transformation of sexual attitudes and behaviors that has occurred in the West since the early 1960s." </i> For example: the normalizing of homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, pornography, and transgenderism.

Why is this important? Well, first and foremost, as Christians, it matters to us because sexual immorality has no place in a life devoted to the Lord and the things listed above go against what the Bible teaches us about sex, self, and natural law. Secondly, it matters because the politicization of normalizing these behaviors has spurred the heavy policing of language and the labeling of dissenters as irrational, hateful bigots- and if it hasn't affected your life yet, it will soon. It could affect your ability to do business or find a job, or infringe on your rights to free speech (could not using the 'proper' gender pronoun be considered a hate crime?). We've seen this just recently as Target removed from its shelves "Irreversible Damage," a book discussing the trend of transgenderism in young girls, because a few people said they were offended by it. It was not a hateful book, but we're seeing more and more the 'canceling' of anything contrary to the highly politicized narrative pushed in our culture today.

Even though Trueman is a Christian, this book is not a study in theology on the issue and isn't even necessarily a persuasion against homosexuality or transgenderism. Per the title, it's tracing the rise and acceptance of how we view the self which directly affects the role of 'sexual identity' within that construct. The very last chapter of this long book addresses Christians, but most of the book is an objective, academic, and historical discourse. And frankly, he does not give Christians a 'pass' on all things sexual- he is very critical of the no-fault divorce law, pornography, and sexual promiscuity that Christians are not immune from.

So what does it mean to be a 'self'? Trueman states that it involves the purpose or meaning of your life and <i> "what constitutes the good life" </i> as well as how you understand yourself in relation to others around you. Today, where does one derive the meaning and happiness from their life?

To answer this question, Trueman references Charles Taylor and his term expressive individualism, meaning <i> "that each of us finds our meaning by giving expression to our own feelings and desires." </i> There has been a shift to making our feelings the ultimate authority. There has been a divorcing of morality and identity from a moral structure/authority- or historically speaking what Trueman calls a 'sacred order.' This creates the view that institutions, religions, culture, and even parents are inhibiting people's ability to be their "authentic" selves: <i> "That which hinders my outward expression of my inner feelings—that which challenges or attempts to falsify my psychological beliefs about myself and thus to disturb my sense of inner wellbeing—is  by definition harmful and to be rejected. And that means that traditional institutions must be transformed to conform to the psychological self, not vice versa." </i> The term 'therapeutic morality' applies here. Do whatever feels right; live your own truth, what's true for you isn't true for someone else etc. He also talks about the philosophy of Nietzsche that says we are to create ourselves and invent our own meaning.

Sex is another thing that has become centralized to 'self.' He writes: <i> "While sex may be presented today as little more than a recreational activity, sexuality is presented as that which lies at the very heart of what it means to be an authentic person. </i>" This can be traced back to Freud, even though much of his work is largely discredited, this ideology has still woven it's way through the years into our culture.

I found interesting his point that recognition is also an integral point of identity. It is not enough to just know in our minds who we are- we desire to be publicly recognized in the way we see ourselves. He applies this to the LGBTQ+ movement in their seeking for full equality under the law and full recognition to the extent that, for example, they must be able to not just buy a wedding cake from somewhere, but they must be able to buy a wedding cake at every possible baker in order to feel like their identity is fully legitimized. It was also interesting to recognize that the LGBTQ movement as a whole can't reconcile with the ideology of feminism.

Issues of identity are wrapped up in ideas of authenticity, language, recognition, value, and belonging- which are inextricably linked to one's interaction with the community around them. There is much to be unpacked within each of these concepts and Trueman acknowledges that a lot of this discussion goes beyond the scope of his book, but I think he does an excellent job giving a somewhat bird's eye view of this historical context of the modern self.

I hope you read it for yourself. Trueman makes some really interesting connections. If you choose to dive it, I would highly recommend reading the kindle version. There is a lot of jargon and I was very thankful I had it on kindle so I could highlight words and get the definitions of words I didn't know (i.e. Social imaginary, individual expressivism, emotivism, metaphysical, polemic, poiesis, mimesis, etc.) The downside of the kindle version was navigating through all the footnotes. I was reading an advanced reader's copy so I would assume the formatting would be corrected in the published version but for me the footnotes were printed within the text, usually even interrupting mid-sentence. And it was only printed in a slightly smaller font size so it was really tough differentiating where the footnotes stopped. Hopefully the published version makes the footnote numbers hyperlinks to the footnote at the end of the book because there are A LOT of them- it was a highly researched book. Another note on reading it- I mentioned before that it's pretty dense and sometimes I found myself skipping sections because I wasn't willing to concentrate hard enough to figure out what point he was trying to make. Don't read while you're tired! But to his credit, he does include a 'conclusion' at the end of each chapter that sums up what he just covered and those were easier to follow. And though I highly encourage you read it all, if you just absolutely can't handle it, at the very least, just skip ahead to the last 30% or so. The writing gets a bit more accessible.

Because another review included some quotes (some out of context) I'd like to also share some snippets from the book. There is a lot to mull over here:

<i> "Few, if any of us, are likely to argue that our own moral views are simply based on our emotional preferences. But... seems today to offer a good way of understanding how most people actually live their lives. “It just feels right,”...and... once the basis for such discussion lacks any agreed metaphysical or metanarratival framework, it is doomed to degenerate into nothing more than the assertion of incommensurable opinions and preferences...When it comes to moral arguments, the tendency of the present age is to assert our moral convictions as normative and correct by rejecting those with which we disagree as irrational prejudice rooted in personal, emotional preference. That is precisely what underlies the ever-increasing number of words ending in -phobia... " </i>

<i> "we need to understand that our sense of selfhood, of who we are, is both intuitive and deeply intertwined with the expectations, ethical and otherwise, of the society in which we are placed. The desire to be recognized, to be accepted, to belong is a deep and perennial human need, and no individual sets the terms of that recognition or belonging all by himself. To be a self is to be in a dialogical relationship with other selves and thus with the wider social context." </i>

<i> "The intuitive moral structure of our modern social imaginary prioritizes victimhood, sees selfhood in psychological terms, regards traditional sexual codes as oppressive and life denying, and places a premium on the individual’s right to define his or her own existence." <i>

<i> "This is an important point: culture directs individuals outward. It is greater than, prior to, and formative of the individual. We learn who we are by learning how to conform ourselves to the purposes of the larger community to which we belong." </i>

<i> "That it is the inner voice, freed from any and all external influences—even from chromosomes and the primary sexual characteristics of the physical body—that shapes identity for the transgender person is a position consistent with Rousseau’s idea that personal authenticity is rooted in the notion that nature, free from heteronomous cultural constraints, and selfhood, conceived of as inner psychological conviction, are the real guides to true identity." </i>

<i> "the refusal by any individual to recognize an identity that society at large recognizes as legitimate is [deemed] a moral offense, not simply a matter of indifference. The question of identity in the modern world is a question of dignity." </i>

<i> "...dignity is itself an inference from the Christian teaching that all human beings are made in the image of God. But in our current climate, this universal dignity has come to be psychologized, and the granting of dignity has come to be equated with the affirmation of those psychologized identities that enjoy special status in our culture." </i>

<i> "[Reich's definition of abuse] is a psychological one, specifically one rooted in a highly sexualized psychology. Freud has here been used to transform the classic understanding of oppression, one understood in material terms regarding the well-being of the body, to one that really focuses on the well-being of the mind. And once oppression becomes primarily psychological, it also becomes somewhat arbitrary and subjective...This affects everything, from reasoning in Supreme Court cases to ethics to campus politics and beyond." </i>

<i> "Sexual identity politics might be a good example, whereby sex outside the ideal of monogamous heterosexual marriage has always occurred but has only recently become much easier to transact... The way this occurred is fairly simple to discern: first, there was the promiscuous behavior; then there was the technology to facilitate it, in the form of contraception and antibiotics; and, as technology enabled the sexually promiscuous to avoid the natural consequences of their actions (unwanted pregnancies, disease), so those rationales that justified the behavior became more plausible (and arguments against it became less so), and therefore the behavior itself became more acceptable." </i>

<i> "the sexual revolution ultimately has one great goal, the destruction of the family. It makes sense, of course, for the family is the primary means by which values are transmitted from generation to generation. " </i>

<i> "Setting aside the question of its origins and “sourcing,” we should also note that pornography has deeper social significance. From this perspective, the question whether depicted in pornographic pictures and films have consented to such things is irrelevant to the message that is being communicated. Fantasy worlds left unchecked have a habit of impinging on reality and remaking it in their own image. And that applies as much, if not more, in the realm of sexuality as it does in any other area. " </i>

<i> "Raymond’s feminist concern here is that transgenderism essentially depoliticizes the matter of being a woman.41 Being a woman is now something that can be produced by a technique—literally prescribed by a doctor. The pain, the struggle, and the history of oppression that shape what it means to be a woman in society are thus trivialized and rendered irrelevant. More to the point, this depoliticization is clear from the fact that transgenderism still operates within the gender stereotypes generated by patriarchal society." </i>

<i> "What might seem to be a unified community (LGBTQ) to those on the outside is actually a phenomenon that is the product more of its various constituent elements sharing common ideological and political enemies than of any strong internal coherence. It is also clear that its drive to inclusion ironically involves significant elements of exclusion—for example, those who affirm the normative nature of heterosexuality and those feminists who consider the female body to be decisive for their identity." </i>

Dr. Carl Trueman may have written the most important book of the year. Certainly, he provides the most valuable book in 2020 for Christians who desire to intellectually engage with the Western world. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self traces the underlying intellectual thought leading to what Charles Taylor calls “expressive individualism” in our present day. The sexual revolution of the 20th and 21st centuries is ultimately just one “manifestation of the larger revolution of the self that has taken place in the West.” The author sets out to provide historical context to the transformation of the nature of the self.

Dr. Trueman begins with the work of three philosophers. Philip Rieff provides helpful concepts such as the triumph of the therapeutic and psychological man. With Charles Taylor, he utilizes his expressive individualism and the modern notion of the self. Lastly, he works through Alasdair MacIntyre’s understanding of our ethical discourse, or our inability to have such discussions. We have beliefs and assumptions about the nature of society, and because there is no longer a consensus on the end goal of human existence, “modern ethical discourse is chaotic.” These concepts are critical because the author frequently refers to and uses them to frame aspects throughout the rest of the book.

For many, this would be quite an intellectual undertaking, but Trueman persists. In part 2, he starts looking at historical developments. He begins with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Romantics. He notes a change in the understanding of the self, also sometimes phrased as “human selfhood.” An individual’s essence is not tied to the society in which they live but by their inner psychological life. Society is, in turn, the cause of issues as it imposes on the individual and does not allow them to be their authentic selves. Perhaps the most important social influence is Christian sexual ethics, which is deemed oppressive to the individual’s happiness. In concluding part 2, Trueman turns to the contributions of Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin. They each contribute to the death of ideas such as “nature has an intrinsic meaning and that human beings have special significance or an essence that determines how they should behave.” Today, we no longer have an innate purpose.

Rise and Triumph’s part 2 describes the inward shift of the self, and the self is now psychologized. Part 3 works through the idea that Freud (primarily), Reich and Marcuse have sexualized psychology and politicized the self. Perhaps the best summary is this: “To follow Rousseau is to make identity psychological. To follow Freud is to make psychology, and thus identity, sexual. To mesh this combination with Marx is to make identity—and therefore sex—political.”

If the reader is unconvinced of the intellectual trajectory, part 4 demonstrates the cultural appropriation of the trends in parts 2 and 3. For brevity, Dr. Truman only focuses on the rise of the erotic, therapeutic, and transgenderism. These are areas in which the concepts of parts 2 and 3 have significantly transformed.

Dr. Trueman concludes with a few actions for the church.

The church needs to reflect upon and be able to articulate the “connection between aesthetics and her core beliefs and practices.”
The church must function as a community.
The church, Protestants particularly, needs to “recover both natural law and a high view of the physical body.”

Those that have read Dr. Trueman before know he is an orthodox Christian. Yet Rise and Triumph is an outstanding accomplishment. While reading, I was surprised by the restraint of the author to not provide a Christian worldview analysis with every section. Dr. Trueman does identify the moderns trends as pathologies, offers some logical critiques, and provides the church a direction forward. However, by all accounts, this volume is a historical account, and Trueman does an astounding job. He purposely limits his task to historically demonstrating the ideas undergirding the cultural revolution, and he sticks to this task!

If you want to understand our current society, you need to understand the threads of intellectual thought and cultural movements leading up to it. Dr. Trueman provides an essential book to start engaging. I expect there to be critics of this book. I will be interested in seeing how much of the criticism is engaging, and how much of it is dismissive because of being offended.

I received a complimentary digital copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley for review purposes. Comments are my own.

Wow, what an amazing book! Everything Trueman writes is amazing, but this book goes beyond. I expect this to be an important book for years to come. The author goes through many important influences to our current culture, including people that we might not think crucial but who were, such as JJR, among others. He presents a balanced view of these past influences and successfully shows how they have managed to shape the current deconstructed society.