The Gospel Coalition and the Postmodern Self
A Denouement
If you haven’t already read my last piece “The Gospel Coalition and The Modern Self” I recommend that you read it as it will provide the context for this article.
Canceled
When retractions just aren’t enough and you need to “Do better.”, then start the public apologies. Now I’m not opposed to public apologies and I don’t even think this is a bad one. Here is the apology from The Gospel Coalition at length:
Dear Readers,
Thank you for your feedback on the Keller Center’s book excerpt from Joshua Butler posted on March 1, 2023. And thank you for your patience while we took the time to listen to our critics and the serious objections from concerned fellows, as well as discuss this matter with our Board of Directors and care for our friend Josh.
Earlier this week, we accepted Josh’s resignation as a Keller Center fellow. He will no longer lead an online cohort with the center nor speak at TGC23. While he will no longer participate in these events, Josh remains a beloved brother and friend whom we respect and care deeply about.
To our fellows and our readers, please forgive us. The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics is a new effort by TGC, and we are still learning how to work with our directors and our fellows to produce content that will serve our readers in a way that is trusted and wise. To ensure greater accountability with our fellows, we will develop better review systems for our work together. We will also review our publication processes more broadly at TGC and develop plans to ensure greater accountability to you, our readers.
Again, thank you for your patience with us. At TGC, we want to provide a venue for healthy dialogue and robust debate on important matters that affect us all. We want to model grace-filled conversations, and we want to learn from one another. In this case, we failed you and hurt many friends. Thank you in advance for your continued prayers.
For Christ and his gospel,
Julius Kim
President
The Gospel Coalitionhttps://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/sex-wont-save-you/
The article in question caused enough controversy that Josh got canceled. To be fair, he canceled himself by resigning from the Keller Center. However, it’s not that he resigned, or that he was canceled. I’m not even for canceling or cancel culture. In fact, I’d much rather TGC had left the article up. Why? Because it accurately reflects who they are and what the larger Reformedish culture has become.
In my last article, I argued that this whole ordeal was a reflection of the modern sexualized self becoming the locus identity. The article was simply operating under the presuppositions of that modern ideal. However, both the apology here and the response to it points to a different set of sensibilities, the postmodern self.
Sorry…I made you feel icky
Yes, you did, TGC…yes you did.
Listen, the sentiment here is nice. And the article was really uncomfortable. But what is TGC really apologizing for? Go ahead and read the apology again…I’ll distill it for you. “We apologize that you really didn’t like it. So we took it down.” Is there really more content to the apology? Is there any discussion about what was wrong with the article theologically? I don’t see it. It’d be sufficient if they even said, “That came out overtly sexualized in a way we feel is inappropriate.” But that’s not what’s in view. Look again:
To our fellows and our readers, please forgive us. The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics is a new effort by TGC, and we are still learning how to work with our directors and our fellows to produce content that will serve our readers in a way that is trusted and wise.
…
At TGC, we want to provide a venue for healthy dialogue and robust debate on important matters that affect us all. We want to model grace-filled conversations, and we want to learn from one another. In this case, we failed you and hurt many friends.
That last clause is the lynchpin of the apology. “…we…hurt many friends.” In essence, “Sorry that Josh made you feel icky. We’re not apologizing because we object to what he said, we’re apologizing because we didn’t police our content to not offend.”
We should be careful with our words. And we should not offend when unnecessary. Josh’s words were unnecessarily offensive, but more importantly, they sexualized the gospel in a way that scripture does not. That’s an incredibly simple thing to own up to. And I don’t think that TGC doesn’t believe that the gospel was improperly sexualized, but…the greater sin, the one in need of public repentance? Hurt feelings.
M’Lady
The irony of a response to someone else's response to an apology is not lost on me. Alas1, there is yet another way in which this article has revealed something about the state of our great western Christendom. See a series of tweets from a contributor to TGC:
Please tell us your concerns!
I want to give her credit. She noted that, theologically, there are issues. This is better than the apology from TGC. But what the heck does that second part mean, “it seems to locate a woman’s “very self” in her reproductive organs”? I definitely didn’t think so.
On the surface, it may seem like she’s actually speaking out against the “Modern Self” that we talked about before. Namely, that identity is sexual. But I’m not convinced that’s what’s in view. People are incarnational beings. And I don’t think Rebecca likes that.
What do I mean by this? I mean that the very definition of what it means to be human is laid out for us in scripture:
“So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”
Genesis 1:27
God created man in His image. And He did so with stark distinction…male and female. That is what you are through and through. Those distinctions are not arbitrary or bad. They were part of design before the fall. Thus, they are not to be overcome, but rather, embraced. And what is arguably the most distinctive physical difference between the sexes? Reproduction. Both are equally important. Yet they play completely different parts.
The desire to not be identified by such things reveals a desire to escape them. This androgynous enterprise usurps the incarnational reality that God called “very good”. In reality, it seeks to divorce the “self” from the physical realities and put them on a “higher level” of being, somewhere in the immaterial.
And this is why I call this “The Postmodern Self”. Because postmodernism seeks to divorce truth from reality. The Christian form of this seeks to obscure the physical by placing reality on a different plane than the physical creation and forgetting that God created “the heavens and the earth.” The spiritual world is also created and sustained by God and is therefore inseparably linked to the material cosmos.
When Christians seek to elevate the locus of truth to one or other side of creation then we begin to disbelieve in the importance of the other. So we are offended when we are reminded of the sexual realities of being a man or woman because they should bear no weight in “who I really am.” We can even spiritualize it and put it in terms like, “My identity is in Christ.” In fact, spiritualizing is a perfect term for what it is. Taking a physical reality and kicking it over to the unseen when it doesn’t suit my ambitions.
Spiritualizing verb: Taking a physical reality and kicking it over to the unseen when it doesn’t suit my ambitions.
It’s understandable that Christians, being inundated with materialist secularism for decades, yet fearful of paganism, mysticism, and all of the scary “Spiritual” darkness out there (and it is really out there) would desire to split the difference. But splitting the difference doesn’t get you the gospel. It doesn’t get you biblical truth. It gets you Gnosticism2.
I cannot say or hear “Alas” without pausing and saying “Earwax” out loud or in my head. Dumbledore!!!
For a much wider discussion about Androgyny as Paganism and gnostic tendencies, see the following: