The Two Self-Denials
Why the Christian Life Threatens Modern “Progress”
The modern conflict between Christianity and the values of our contemporary culture can be understood in a number of ways. There is the obvious moral conflict between biblical sexual morality and that of our permissive and pornified age. There is the religious conflict between a faith predicated on a belief in divine revelation and a world that denies the existence of anything transcendent or immaterial. And there is the struggle between those who think of truth in terms of that which is objectively real and those who think of it in utilitarian terms. On each point, Christian orthodoxy finds itself in direct confrontation with this present age.
And yet I want to suggest that there is a further and more basic point of conflict between the two, which serves as a backdrop to these particular points of contention and which needs to be grasped in order to understand the nature of the problems that the Church faces. It is the issue of the nature and status of self-denial.
Modern Priorities & Destabilization
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Carl R. Trueman is Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. He earned an MA in Classics from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in Church History from the University of Aberdeen. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books, and is the co-host of the Mortification of Spin podcast.
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