Trueman: What To Do With Dead Sinners Redux?

Cancel culture shows no signs of abatement. The Spectator in Britain ended the year speculating on whether comedy itself will now be a thing of the past. Cancel culture is incompatible with comedy and humor. Meanwhile, the venomous reactions to those who dare to affirm the importance of biological sex, such as J.K. Rowling, continue unabated. Even the word “mother” is under attack from the highest levels of government. It is hard to imagine that a society can survive long term that denies reality and reinforces its lunacy with an adamant refusal to laugh at itself.

Yet there is a form of cancel culture emerging within the ranks of Christians. It operates with selective pieties drawn from the wider woke culture and reflects, whether by accident or design, the same self-righteousness that marks the secular world. Two obvious examples are current attitudes toward Martin Luther and Jonathan Edwards.

…The question—and it is a very legitimate question—is whether we should continue to take seriously such men who failed so signally to conform to moral positions that we now regard as self-evident and, indeed, a consistent application of the Christianity into which they both had such signal insights. Should we cancel them? Read more»

Carl Trueman | “Shall We Cancel The Theologians?” | January 13, 2022

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One comment

  1. 2Co 5:10 (ESV) For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

    Let us all imagine ourselves standing before the Lord and the world, having our every thought, word, and deed revealed before all. And most importantly, before our own consciences, uncluttered by our many defense mechanisms and convenient fog of forgetfulness. In all seriousness, who will stand? It’s not the bar of man’s 21st Century morality that will matter. Are we truly surprised that Edwards or Luther were flawed? Any truth and good in their writings is of God’s grace.

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