In Depth:  Carl Trueman

If there is a vice or characteristic that is often regarded as typical of the modern Western world, it is apathy: that lazy, couldn’t-care-less indifference which marks out the couch potato, MTV world in which we live from previous generations.

Whether it is low voter turn-out at election time, or the seeming impossibility of raising public consciousness on big issues such as world poverty, apathy, it would seem, rules the day.

If it is not self-referentially incoherent to make the claim, then one thing in the West today is certain; that doubt is regarded nearly everywhere as a virtue, a sign of modesty, sensitivity and intelligence.

To be certain about almost anything else is a sign of arrogance, of bull-headed ignorance and bigotry. Such is simply not the stuff of a secularised pluralism.

When one asks the most influential thinkers in the modern evangelical church are, one might find names such as Jim Packer, John Stott, and Don Carson.

Carl Trueman gave a lecture for the Evangelical Library West on the US theologian J. Gresham Machen and his disputes with theological liberalism. Many of Machen's concerns are relevant today . . .

The first thing Machen seeks to demonstrate in his work is the importance of doctrine, that is, of the church's verbal declaration of what it actually believes to be true. Indeed, while this topic occupies the first chapter, it is without doubt the underlying theme and presupposition of the entire work without which the rest really makes no sense at all.

As Alice was walking down the road through the forest, she saw, sitting high up on a fence, a strange-looking creature rather like an egg.

'How curious you look,' she called up to the creature. 'What kind of person are you?' 'My name', said the egg, 'is Humpty Dumpty. And what, pray, is yours?'

The evangelical church stands on the brink of a real crisis. Modern culture, with its 'soundbite' ideology, its consumerism, and its emphasis on 'feeling good' rather than thinking correctly, is making massive inroads into a church eager to attract people from the outside.

The result is, in many quarters, an uncritical abandonment of doctrinal emphases, of hard-headed theological thinking, and of historical evangelical identity, for an emphasis on experience over doctrine, and the 'feel-good factor' over thoughtfulness. In such a climate, theologians should have a key part to play in calling the church back to the Bible, and in helping it to think critically about its practices and agenda.

In the US recently, I found myself 'channel-hopping' in an effort to locate a serious programme.

Eventually, I came across one that seemed to be what I was looking for: three newsreaders giving an oversweep on the week's world events. However, the longer I watched, the clearer it became that this programme was not quite what I had expected.

Why do we need to remember our Protestant heritage?

It is frequently argued from both within and without the church that it is about time that we stopped fighting the battles of the Reformation. Indeed, the events of this year's marching season in Ulster have once again brought such views to the fore, focusing public attention on the tragic consequences of the Catholic-Protestant divide.