Books that shaped him

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. 

It's time now for our occasional feature we're calling Quest, conversations with thoughtful leaders about the books that shaped their thinking. 

WORLD’s Lindsay Mast joins us with this month’s radio edition.

LINDSAY MAST: Thanks, Myrna. 

Today we welcome Carl Trueman. Trueman is a professor of biblical and theological studies at Grove City College, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and an author himself, most recently of The Desecration of Man. 

Carl, good morning.

TRUEMAN: Good morning.

MAST: Carl, let's start just with a bit of backstory here. I'm curious as to when you first realized that books could shape the way you think.

TRUEMAN: Well, I grew up in a home where neither of my parents had been to college, but my dad was very bookish and loved books, and taught me to love reading. So I really can't remember the first time I fell in love with reading, but it was probably when I was six or seven and I've been a big reader ever since.

MAST: I want to start with your first choice here, Augustine's Confessions. I'm curious, what do you think Augustine gets right about human nature that modern thinking gets wrong?

TRUEMAN: He brings out beautifully the role of love, that we're motivated, we're driven by the things that we love. And he also brings out the conflict that human beings feel within the heart. Really, Solzhenitsyn will later comment about the line between good and evil runs through the middle of every human heart. That's Paul's position, that's Augustine's position.

The internal psychological battle that Christians engage in is very important. Where Augustine is very good though, is that he realizes you can't stay inside, you have to look outward to God. The whole book is cast as a prayer. 

So it's this beautiful balance between the internal struggle and the outward resolution of all things in God.

MAST: Why is dependence on God so central to being human?

TRUEMAN: We're made in God's image. It's very clear from Genesis that we are unique among creatures being made in His image. And that image reflects not only the fact that we are His creatures and dependent upon Him for our existence and for the guidance we have in this life. But also dependence upon Him for things like our ends. You know, we have been created with a certain purpose, made in His image, we are to freely pursue those ends, but they are ends that are utterly dependent upon God's creative and sustaining activity of us.

MAST: Well, your next influences are grouped together: Erika Bachiochi’s, The Rights of Women, and O. Carter Snead’s, What It Means To Be Human. What did you find that these writers recover about the body and human dependence?

TRUEMAN: I think what both Erica and Carter do in their books is bring out the fact that our bodies are not problems; they're an integral part of who we are. Erica is engaged in reconfiguring women's rights—not as we typically think of them relative to feminism, a woman's right is the right to overcome the natural functions of her body because the capacity to get pregnant is a disadvantage. 

Erica is saying no. Women's rights really need to be seen as legal moves that enable women to fulfill the obligations that their bodies bring. So the ability to be a mother, because motherhood is part of the telos of what it means to be a woman. So she's doing something very clever with women's rights and the rhetoric of women's rights. 

Carter is bringing out the importance of embodiment for, we call bioethics. He's talking about the importance of gestation, the importance of care for the elderly as our bodies get weak. And at the heart of his thinking is the idea that human beings, we're not autonomous. We are dependent and obliged to each other. What makes us dependent and obliged to each other? By and large, it's our bodies. Why are children dependent upon their parents and parents obliged to children? Because they have tiny little bodies and aren't able to look after themselves. 

And the same applies to elderly people. Why is it that we have an obligation towards elderly people? Because they become weak and frail. And as we were once dependent upon them, so they are now dependent upon us. And our bodies, if you like, their very constitution carries with it moral obligations, moral structure.

MAST: Well, your last book is The Genesis of Gender by Abigail Favale. I want to talk a little bit about teleology or purpose. Why is that the missing category in so many modern discussions?

TRUEMAN: Yeah, well, the whole idea of end causality, that we're heading towards a certain place was once very important to understanding what it means to be human, but it ceased to be so. 

When you think about it, end causes shape everything. If I was to leave home today and drive to Pittsburgh, the last place I arrive, Pittsburgh, shapes every move of the wheel I make in the car from the word go. 

And what Abigail does in that book is argue that we need to understand our bodies as having a teleology, an end. And her argument is really that the woman's body has a teleology that is normatively pointed towards gestation. Now you might think that, "so why is that useful?" Well, think about it. 

The question, 'what is a woman?' has been so incredibly confusing to so many people. But if you think that a woman is somebody whose body is normatively tailored towards gestation, it becomes remarkably simple and easy to answer. 

So much of the confusion in our world lies in the fact that we see our natures, our natural bodies as problems. What Abigail does is say, no, no, our bodies are to be embraced and rejoiced in as who we are, and we're to understand that they have a particular purpose. And it's that particular purpose, that particular final cause that defines what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman.

MAST: Well, Carl Truman is a professor at Grove City College and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. 

Carl, thank you so much for joining us.

TRUEMAN: Thanks for having me on.

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