“It’s no secret that among the many forces that have affected the church…perhaps none has been more jolting and disorienting than the conversation surrounding personal identity and self-understanding.” With these words, Covenant Theological Seminary President Tom Gibbs introduced the Lifetimes of Ministry Conference on Nov. 3, 2023, marking the resumption of the annual conference after a hiatus. The particular topic of this conference was, “The Changing Self and the Challenge of Ministry.” Enlisted to address these issues were Carl Trueman, professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College, and Robbie Griggs, chair of CTS’s Department of Systematic Theology.
In the opening session, Trueman began the conversation on personal identity and self-understanding by presenting a broad historical framework. This overview, which traced the ideological evolution over centuries, informed and framed subsequent lectures.
He began using as an example the phrase, “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body.” He explained that 100 years ago, a doctor would see that as a problem of the mind needing to be brought back into conformity with the body. A doctor today would be expected, and perhaps legally obligated, to consider that a problem of the body needing to be brought into conformity with the mind. He summed up that transition over the course of 100 years as: “The body has lost its authority, and the feelings and physiological state have gained tremendous authority.”
Why? There is no single answer, according to Trueman, but these shifts have been a long time in the making.
Trueman asked attendees to imagine living in a Gloucestershire village in 1200. So many of the questions and issues that arise today would not be relevant. Livelihood, spouse, and living situation would all have been largely predetermined by birth. The concept of time itself was dictated by the seasons and the agrarian calendar.
The Reformation and Renaissance in the 16th century, brought about significant shifts not only in the movement away from rigid adherence to the agrarian timeframe, but to a more individualistic paradigm. Literature and even theology emphasized the individual.
The combination of individualism and elevation of feelings has brought about a new cultural value: that of authenticity: “The real me is my inner feelings … .”
This trajectory intensified with the emergence of writers like Montaigne — who statistically used the word “I” more than any other writer prior to him — and philosopher Descartes.
“As the external anchors of certainty start to disappear,” Trueman explained, “Decartes moves inward. ‘What can I be certain of? If the church is fractured, where can I find certainty? If the world seems to be entering a period of flux, where can I find that continuous point of certainty?’ Descartes finds that certainty in his own intellective activity.”
In the 18th and 19th century, feelings began to take center stage along with the individual. Quoting Karl Marx, “All that is solid melts into air,” Trueman described the emerging shift: “What does it mean to be a human being? Increasingly it’s what I feel inside. Who am I? I am my feelings.”
The combination of individualism and elevation of feelings has brought about a new cultural value: that of authenticity, which Trueman summed up: “The real me is my inner feelings, and therefore to be authentic requires me to act out on my inner feelings.”
This evolving sentiment gives birth to what Trueman called “expressive individualism,” explaining, “Expressive individualism really requires that you manifest outwardly that which you feel inwardly, and it will give birth to a very different set of social ethics.”
How does this apply to issues of gender and sexuality? Trueman stepped back into his historical framework, pointing to the work of Sigmund Frued, who developed an entire taxonomy of human development in terms of sexuality. “By making every stage of human existence one that one can understand in terms of sexual desire, what Freud does is make sexual desire of the essence of what it means to be human. Sexual desire becomes something that we are instead of something that we do.”
Thus the old adage “love the sinner, hate the sin” no longer works in the current philosophical climate. People are no longer struggling merely with temptations towards various acts, but with a deep sense of who they are.
We Minister to Flesh and Blood People, Not Data
Griggs’ first lecture focused on ministering to “digital selves.” “In order to minister faithfully to modern selves today we need to pay careful attention to the ways that our lives are increasingly, and in some cases habitually, mediated through the use of digital technology,” Griggs said.
He noted trends of growing rates of anxiety and depression that have emerged from lives spent online and digitally available to others at all times. So much of the way we interact with the world has been reduced to data. Ultimately, the digital default reduces humans to information.
He also discussed how digital selves are globalized and networked, but we were not designed to handle so much information. “If we increasingly live our lives through digital mediation, we are stretched and oversaturated. We can’t possibly make sense of the amount of information we take in. People are not surfaces, people are depth. A human person is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be contemplated.”
The concept has significant implications for ministry. Digital selves value information over the time-consuming work of living in community. Ministry requires inviting people to embrace the inefficiency of a local congregation.
The life of ministry and proclaiming the Word is not a content or information-sharing business. In a society where global information exists at our fingertips, Griggs concludes, the church should draw people’s attention to the places they live, their fellow disciples, and the God they worship.
These first two lectures served as the framework and groundwork for their subsequent two lectures.
What Does it Mean to be Human?
In his third session, Trueman identified what he considers the central issue of our time: anthropology, or what it means to be human. In preface to his comments, he noted that he would be discussing transgenderism and that nothing he said should ever be taken to belittle the very real struggles of those facing gender dysphoria. He instead addressed the philosophies and cultural assumptions that have made these beliefs plausible, and categorized his remarks not as pastoral, but as cultural analysis.
He highlighted several contemporary cultural philosophies, beginning with various strains of feminism and attempts to rectify biological inequality. Next he brought up gender theory, which deems all gender to be a construct, regardless of biology. Citing some of Griggs’s earlier remarks, he noted that technology makes these ideas more plausible through things like hormone treatment and surgeries. Finally he mentioned transhumanism as well, and the idea that “technology allows us to transcend our bodily human forms.”
How should the church act in the face of these cultural philosophies?
First, through teaching, particularly on the body and what it means to be human. “So many of the key issues of our day you won’t be able to think clearly about them if you don’t have a proper understanding of human personhood as embodied,” says Trueman.
Second, cultivate an awareness of the impact of technology. He admits that it’s easier to identify the problem than to pose a solution, as it is a complex issue that requires much reflection and wisdom.
Finally the church needs to be a place of real friendships. Ultimately the battle is in the cultural imagination, he concludes, “that is best grasped through real embodied communities marked through real love and real friendship.”
The Internet and the Debasement of Sex
Griggs’s second lecture focused in on the topic “Sex and the Digital Individual.” He spoke first about the increasingly blurred lines between a person and the presence presented online. Whereas it may have once been easier to separate avatar from human, social media increasingly blurs the lines between. “If I invest more of myself in this online space, I feel more like myself in this space and so the experiences in this space are not abstracted from me.”
He also spoke about the globalized and commodified aspects of the internet. “We don’t just have access to the world, the world has access to us.” The ubiquitous access to sexual content has devastating implications not merely for the individual, but for the society as whole.
“In putting a core aspect and activity of human life meant to be safeguarded by the privacy of marriage and the marriage bed, and putting that activity on public display in the form of consumable information, by reducing it to information, we have not celebrated or honored it. We have cheapened it. We have debased it.”
Prioritizing human interaction and in-person relationships is an important strategy for disrupting this cultural trajectory.
“We need more experience of personal presence, more attunement to others in person who have names and faces and families.”
In addition to these core lectures, the speakers took part in a Q &A session and panel discussion. For those wishing to learn more, the lectures are available for purchase through Covenant Theological Seminary.
Next year’s Lifetimes of Ministry Conference will take place Oct. 16-17, 2024 on the topic “Deepening Ministry Resilience.”