Theologian Carl Trueman Previews His New Book; Yale Students on Faith on Campus

On the newest episode of Pod and Man at Yale, Christian theologian and Grove City College Professor Carl Trueman breaks down the central question and broader implications of his new book, The Desecration of Man (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/729796/the-desecration-of-man-by-carl-r-trueman/) :

• “If you ask somebody, who are you? That question is incredibly complicated today in a way that it wouldn’t have been, say, six or seven hundred years ago.”
• “If you want to shock people, you have to smash the orthodoxy of the previous generation. And there is no more powerful orthodoxy politically than thinking that Hitler was an evil and bad person. So, the emergence of a Fuentes doesn’t surprise me. What’s fascinating about Fuentes is, of course, is that he really has nothing positive to say…It is a purely flame throwing exercise which absolutely conforms to this pattern of desecration.”
• “The best way to make somebody realize they’re a human being is to treat them as a human being.”
• “I would say one of the key applications or key uses of technology, if you like, would be, that which restores those things that as humans, we should have, but which we've lost is good. Example: if a child is born with one leg and somebody develops a way of, you know, allowing that child to grow the leg that they're missing, I would not see that as an obnoxious use of technology. It's restoring what should be there. It's getting rid of a privation.”
• “Practical advice I might give to somebody who says, ‘well I did this and my friend took real exception’... Even if you find their views obnoxious, listen to what they have to say because the mere act of listening will indicate that you’re taking them seriously as a human being.”

For the student panel, Brett Mellul ’29 and Jack Ehlert ’29 discussed their experiences navigating faith on campus:

• Ehlert: “I think conversations about religion happen in a way at Yale that honestly, maybe they didn't even happen between friends in high school and grade school…I've had a lot of really great conversations with people of the Jewish faith or like non-Catholic Christians or atheists and things—the sort of conversations that I didn’t really have as much before.”
• Ehlert: “I think I've really been forced to sort of hold myself accountable and take my faith responsibility into my own hands, which has been really a great experience, honestly.”
• Mellul: “From a mindset perspective, I don’t view it as, oh, I have to keep the Sabbath and therefore I don’t get to study or go to the football game or do whatever it is. I view it as the opposite. I get to keep the Sabbath, and I try to find all the beauty and meaning and connection that there is in the things that I already do.”
• Mellul: “I think that I’ve had a lot of opportunities on campus, to be an ambassador, so to speak, for particularly Orthodox Judaism. And, so, whether that’s just having lunch with a friend who is not an Orthodox Jew or not Jewish at all, or that’s the way that I answer a question in a class or even just the way that I comport myself while walking to a class on campus, I think is an opportunity to positively, make an impact.”

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