Contra Theological Collectivism

Taylor, Trueman, and Transgender Ideology?

An Old Polemic Against Protestantism

In a recent episode of the CrossPolitic podcast,¹ one of the hosts made the asinine claim that Baptist theology leads to transgender ideology. Overall, the argument reduces to the same kind of reasoning found among Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologetes who blame the current state of affairs in the West on all Protestants² — Lutherans, Presbyterians (as well as those who subscribe to the Three Forms of Unity³), and Particular Baptists. That fallacious reasoning is contained in scholarly garb in Charles Taylor’s magnum opus A Secular Age, and it goes something like this —

1. In the Medieval Era, Christians rightly understood that there was a natural order to the classes of society.

2. However, sinful men began to deviate from the metaphysical beliefs of the Roman church, as well as engage in obvious sinful behaviors no self-respecting Christian could condone.

3. As a result of this, there arose different “r”eformers of the ecclesiastical class who sought to clean things up. This was good and necessary.

4. However, some men took this too far and, armed with their newly accepted anti-Romanist metaphysic, began to attack the Roman church by questioning her magisterial authority. Although there were several predecessors to Martin Luther — e.g. Jan Hus, Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe, etc — it was he who really messed things up by nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenburg. It was Luther who led the newly formed, well-intentioned but foolish and “unorthodox” “R”eformers.

5. Luther was supposedly a nominalist — one who believes that universals and abstractions are merely words which do not correspond to any actual ontological reality — and so rejected the Medievalist view of the world as being imbued with non-empirical realities and properties. This was passed down to his progeny among the Lutherans and Reformed, and subsequently to those influenced by their teaching who would defect from the church and become secular leaders in the Enlightenment and Renaissance.

6. Luther was also an individualist who thought that he, on his own, could challenge the traditions, rulings, and authority of the church on the basis of sound reason and the Scriptures.

7. Thus, Luther not only disenchanted the world by supposedly rejecting the metaphysical realism of the church, but also encouraged rebellion by acting as a “radical individualist” whose sole authorities were sound reason and the Scriptures.

8. This kind of thinking, as mentioned in pt.5, led to the promotion, therefore, of individualism and rationalism. Two philosophical ideas which became the driving force behind various anti-monarchist and anti-traditionalist socio-political movements following the Continental Reformers (Lutheran and non-Lutheran).

9. Since Luther and his offspring came onto the scene, everything has been falling apart. Because of the influence of individualism and nominalism, the West is marked by moral decomposition, specifically in the form of “hyper-individualism” now iterated as “expressive” individualism.

For the Romanist and Eastern Orthodoxist, the current decomposition of the West is due to the Protestant Reformation. Ergo, individualism and nominalism are key philosophical problems that must be confronted and addressed if we are to restore any kind of order and sanity to the world.

Trueman & Co.

If you have read Carl R. Trueman’s book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, or my 7 part series examining the book and its true message and goal,⁴ this probably all sounds familiar to you. Of course, there is one change to the Taylorian apologetic for Romanism. That change is this: Trueman professes to be a Protestant, so he does not blame Protestantism for the destruction of the West. Rather, he blames individualism, psychologism (here I mean the belief that a man is not his body but is, instead, his soul/pscyhe), and consumerism (which is, according to Trueman, the fruit of individualism and psychologism). Scott Aniol explains —

…as Jared Longshore notes, linking individualism with the modern transhumanist issues is essentially the argument Carl Trueman makes in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Indeed, extreme individualism is at the root of many of the problems rising quickly in our culture today.

[…]

The Enlightenment shifted western civilization from a focus on transcendent ideas and communal structures to individual self expression, leading to the Romanticism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Trueman masterfully demonstrates these much older roots of individualism in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. “The seeds of today’s moral anarchy,” Trueman argues, “where personal emotional preferences are constantly confused with moral absolutes, is thus to be found in the nineteenth century.” The individualism that gave rise to transhumanism was conceived in the Enlightenment and birthed in Darwinism.⁵

Thus, the real root of the problems we see in society today is individualism. Even Darwinism is connected to individualism — despite the fact that Darwinism actually provided the basis for “social Darwinism,” eugenics,⁶ and racism (all of which are collectivist social and pseudo-scientific views), was criticized by Friedrich Nietzsche for its overemphasis on “the herd” over and against the individual (the “true” evolutionary change agent),⁷ and eventually served as the pseudo-scientific justification of Hitler’s racial thought.⁸

Trueman’s work has been very warmly received by Romanists, which is unsurprising given that, as Aniol correctly notes in the same article, “many Roman Catholics blame the Protestant Reformation on the decay of western civilization and the rise of individualism.”⁹ It's influence, however, is also being felt in the wider sphere of confessional Christianity, including those who would call themselves Reformed Baptists. For demonstration of this consider Exhibit A: Aniol's article defending Baptists against the charge that we are individualistic.

This is a large part of the reason why I have opposed Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. It is a text that not only gives credence to the widespread misunderstanding of Luther and Wycliffe, along with their progeny, as metaphysical nominalists,¹⁰ and contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture regarding what it means to be a human self,¹¹ but also promotes the foolish and palpably false contention that our age’s plight is rooted in its commitment to individualism.

Whose Worldview Is It Anyway?

What the current debacle started by the CrossPolitic speaker has brought to the surface is not the underlying opposition to Baptistic theology held by the CREC. Rather, it has brought to the surface the depth of collectivism’s influence on the thinking of paedobaptists and credobaptists alike. It has made it clear that many professedly Reformed men and women are blissfully unaware of the danger of their adulterous flirtations with abominable ideas like communitarianism, socialism, social justice activism, Hegelianism, and anthropological constructivism.

Focusing our attention on the divide between paedobaptists and credobaptists is not completely unhelpful, but it fails to address the real issue that has come to the surface — Many today who believe they are promoting a biblical worldview, indeed those who are at the forefront of many prominent publications aimed at propagating that worldview, are, in fact, advocating a view of man and society that has more in common with Karl Marx, Klaus Schwab, and the World Economic Forum than it does with the Lord Jesus Christ.

—h.

1. For the episode, see “BACKSTAGE: The Failure of Baptist Theology w/ Jason Farley,” YouTube.

2. For a detailed refutation of this old polemic against Protestantism, see Moots, Glenn A. “Was the Protestant Reformation a Radical Revolution?”, Law and Liberty, Oct 29. 2021, https://lawliberty.org/was-the-protestant-reformation-a-radical-revolution/.

3. For more on the three forms of unity, see “Three Forms of Unity,” United Reformed Churches in North America, https://www.urcna.org/threeforms.

4. If you have not read my articles, please consider doing so. The reads are kind of long, but that is because I have tried to be as thorough as possible. Trueman’s book is not the great resource many are making it out to be; it is a trojan horse for the kind of “Narrative” being promoted by the World Economic Forum. You can start my series of articles here —

The "Modern" or "Modernist" Self?

5. “Did Baptist Theology Cause Transgenderism? — A Friendly Response to CrossPolitic”, G3 Ministries, Aug 22, 2022, https://g3min.org/did-baptist-theology-cause-transgenderism-a-friendly-response-to-crosspolitic/?fbclid=IwAR3krH0akK20qSZ-c2ZullgLHPK5lCey4EvOGo5WzAgK1ldyZHX3HdRPuYU. (emphasis added)

6. See Hefland, Jessica. “Darwin, Expression and the Lasting Legacy of Eugenics,” Scientific American, Aug 13, 2020, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/darwin-expression-and-the-lasting-legacy-of-eugenics/.

7. See Birx, H. James. “Nietzsche & Evolution,” Philosophy Now, https://philosophynow.org/issues/29/Nietzsche_and_Evolution.

8. See Wiekart, Richard. “The Role of Darwinism in Nazi Racial Thought” in German Studies Review 36: 3 (2013), 537-556. [https://www.csustan.edu/sites/default/files/History/Faculty/Weikart/Darwinism-in-Nazi-Racial-Thought.pdf]

9. Did Baptist Theology Cause Transgenderism?

10. Regarding Luther’s supposed nominalism, the story is much more complex. Luther accepted some nominalist ideas but cannot properly be identified as a nominalist. This is a matter that requires a bit of study, but the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry “Luther, Aristotle, and Nominalism” (as well its corresponding bibliography) is a good and succinct starting point. Regarding Wycliffe’s supposed nominalism, this is also wrong. Wycliffe was, in reality, a realist. For more on this, see Lahey, Stephen E. John Wyclif (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

11. See —

Cancelling the Trueman Show