Another book suggestion? Sure. “Minority Report” by Carl Trueman

Posted by Rod Hamilton on Oct 12 2009

I bought a few great books a week or so ago from one of my favorite sources, Monergism.com. While I’m currently reading a couple of them, I wanted to go ahead and recommend this one right now: “Minority Report” by Carl Trueman.

Trueman is a professor and Dean of Faculty at Westminster Theological Seminary. The book, as the subtitle reads, addresses “unpopular thoughts on everything from ancient Christianity to zen-Calivinism.” It’s a thought provoking, vocabulary developing read. I particularly appreciate Trueman’s thoughts on postmodernism as it relates to church and on the necessity of church history and doctrine, despite the current railings against each of these.

Here’s an excerpt that, I believe, does a great job of identifying a poor attempt on the part of some to cater to a style that has no substance:

“Now, when one approaches the major texts of postmodern evangelicalism and asks what they are saying, the answer is exciting: they claim they are opening up radical new directions for theology; but when one approaches the same texts and asks what they are doing, the answer is somewhat more prosaic. Far from pointing to new ways of doing theology, these texts are on the whole appropriating an admittedly new idiom, that of postmodernism, in order to accomplish a very traditional and time-honored task: they are articulating a doctrinally minimal, anti-metaphysical “mere Christianity.” Like pouting teenagers in pre-torn designer jeans and Che Guevera tee-shirts, they look angry and radical but are really as culturally conformist and conservative as a tall latte from Starbuck’s.”

That is an amazing passage to me, but it won’t strike everyone that way. If postmodernism is simply a matter of personal taste and attire, we’re going to find ourselves bending to the constantly shifting sands of culture, even as it sifts right through our fingers. I appreciate good writing by smart people, but I appreciate so much more the perfect word of God written through men who were inspired by God’s Spirit - perfect and infallible. Isaiah 55:10-11 says “"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

I’m am so very grateful to God that despite my best efforts to sing and speak to bring glory to Him, it is His word that will always be that which does the work!