The Consequences of Ideas

It seems unlikely to me that every progressive on the street today espousing things that sound like the early critical theorists are sitting around reading Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Herbert Marcuse (though if they are reading anyone, it is likely Marcuse). But ideas are funny things. They travel, and they get embedded in literature, in pop culture, in popular idioms, and elsewhere. They metastasize.

This is similar to what C. S. Lewis argued in The Abolition of Man. In that classic work, Lewis looked at a common English grammar book of his day, what Lewis called The Green Book. In this grammar book, the authors (almost as an aside) said that the statement “That waterfall is sublime” is not really saying anything about the waterfall. Rather, when someone says, “That waterfall is sublime,” that person is really simply saying something about one’s own feelings. Sadly, the school boy has no idea what is being done to him. He is being “conditioned” by a certain view of the world, a view of the world in which one is unable to come into meaningful contact with the world outside oneself and in which one is also unable to speak meaningfully about that world. This boy thinks he is simply being taught grammar, but really, the young boy is being catechized, in a sense, into a certain fundamental metaphysic and epistemology without knowing it. And this young boy becomes a man who twenty years later is voting a certain way and thinking a certain way and speaking a certain way. He has been—even if he thinks he is “autonomous”—conditioned to think, speak, and act in a particular way.

I turn to Lewis here simply as an illustration. The boy become man is most certainly influenced by The Green Book, even if he has not picked it up in several decades and even if he has not intentionally and seriously reflected on the worldview central to that dusty, old grammar book. But the philosophy of that book, the metaphysical and epistemological vision of the world communicated in that book, is very much alive and well in the mind of Lewis’s boy become man.

I want to argue something similar with the influence of critical theory. Ideas migrate, they travel, they change, and they metastasize. They do not necessarily remain the same. But they do get embedded in a culture, and they have ways of making it into the conscious (and subconscious) of people. It is easy to see conceptual similarity between the ideas of the early critical theorists and the actions and thoughts of certain progressives today. But a clear genealogical connection can be discerned as well—certain people have quite explicitly (and sometimes implicitly) carried the baton of the earlier critical theorists on to today.

So I want to try to articulate that the critical theorists (the early ones) do have an influence today, even if it is a circuitous route that is not always “clean” and easy to trace.

The strongest case for arguing that the influence of our four key and early critical theorists is alive and well today can first and foremost be seen in the influence of one of these men in particular: Herbert Marcuse. James Lindsay likes to say that we are now living in Marcuse’s world. I suspect Lindsay is very much correct. Particularly with Marcuse’s emphasis on sex and on (virtually) unfettered sexual freedom, expression, and experience, it is almost as if Marcuse wrote the script for what has been playing out in my entire lifetime (I was born in 1965).

If you are reading this, you grew up in a world in which traditionalists have often spoken of and lamented the “sexual revolution.” It is likely the case that at least some of these commentators did not read deeply in the works of Marcuse or in the other critical theorists. But nonetheless, the language of “sexual revolution” is accurate, even if traditionalists have not realized how accurate this language in fact is.

Marcuse was not simply wanting people to rid themselves of a traditional understanding of sexual restraint or to be able to have better and more frequent sexual experiences. Marcuse believed that the sexualization of more aspects of the human experience was central to the metaphysical and ontological revolution he was seeking to achieve. Marcuse’s goal was to bring about a “new reality principle”—to overcome the impasse that Freud was unable to overcome. If Copernicus had his own revelation in overturning a Ptolemaic universe, Marcuse wanted his own revolution—one in which a traditional and biblical sexual ethic was overturned. For only in the dismantling of the older and biblical understanding of things could man be truly free to become what he could be. And only in this metaphysical and ontological revolution could oppression be finally overcome.

But are the various progressives today really cognizant of all the deep philosophical commitments that undergirded the sexual revolution? I myself am skeptical that all that many progressives (whether in Marcuse’s time or ours) have really read deeply and digested the Marcusian worldview. But they nonetheless inhabit that world and live by its dogmas.

. . . Critical theory can be seen as having its own understanding of creation and reality, its own understanding of sin and the human dilemma, and its own understanding of redemption, history, and eschatology. This is not to say that critical theory is somehow covertly Christian. Rather, it is to suggest that critical theory is—like Marxism in general—parasitic on Christianity. Critical theory—again like traditional Marxism—is a kind of Christian heresy. It takes (even if at times somewhat unintentionally) Christian categories and realities and reshapes and reinterprets them—at times in quite perverse ways.

. . . If one is taking Scripture seriously in terms of one’s basic framework (epistemologically and otherwise), to read and interpret the critical theorists is to come to terms with a group of thinkers who are struggling with no way out—short of the gospel. From a Christian perspective, the critical theorists knew God, for God has revealed himself efficaciously in and through the created order (cf. Rom. 1:18–32). To be truly rational would be to bow the knee to God and honor him, including honoring God in each and every aspect of one’s thought, including one’s thoughts about society, history, and all else. The critical theorists did want justice at one level, but the very structure and commitments of their thought militated against the kinds of things (e.g., justice) they desired. They (here Horkheimer) could bump up against notions of “compensation” and the tragedy of societal “disorder” and the like. But real hope in this system was minimal. The critical theorists did not really grasp how desperate their situation was. Because they were pretending not to know what they knew (i.e., that they knew God, Rom. 1), they were engaging in a sustained project of self-deception. Yet eternity was set in their hearts (Eccl. 3:11). As children of Adam, they had an echo of having known a world before the fall. That is, even fallen people (and even people who will never come to faith) are nonetheless people who were created in God’s image, and they are descendants of Adam, who at one point was not a fallen creature.

The critical theorists thought, wrote, reasoned, and deliberated as God’s creatures, under God’s rule, living in God’s world. Again, they knew God but suppressed that knowledge. In a way they experienced—at a deep level—what has been called “cognitive dissonance.” In cognitive dissonance, people have one set of convictions or influences that are in a fundamentally dissonant relationship (tension) with another set of convictions or influences. Today, we might think of the traditional Christian young person. On the one hand, Mom, Dad, the pastor, and others are teaching basic biblical morality and practice. On the other hand, the youth (unless he or she is profoundly sheltered) is receiving a torrent of influences that cut in quite the opposite direction. This young person, even if he or she does not recognize it, is experiencing cognitive dissonance.

[These critical theorists] were image bearers. They had eternity set in their hearts (Eccl. 3:11). They knew God yet suppressed this knowledge (Rom. 1:18–32). They sought to understand the world—indeed, to change the world, as good Marxists would. As image bearers, as people held in being by the second person of the Trinity—the Logos—they could think and reason. Their thinking and reasoning were dependent on the very Logos they sought to displace. When faced with significant thinkers like the critical theorists, the Christian must simultaneously grasp the nature of such a powerful world of thought and bring the precious truths of the Christian faith to bear on such a world of thought.

— Bradley G. Green is professor of Philosophy and Christian Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and cofounder of Augustine School, a Christian liberal arts school in Jackson, Tennessee. He is the author of The Gospel and the Mind and What Is Critical Theory?

Image by Amore Seymour from Pixabay

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Excerpted from What Is Critical Theory?: A Concise Christian Analysis by Bradley G. Green (Crossway, 2026). Used by permission.

Critical theory was born over a century ago. Created to foster social transformation, this emerging theory would soon influence universities, politics, and pop culture across the globe and spark tense debates between groups across the sociopolitical spectrum. But what exactly lies at the heart of critical theory, and how should Christians engage with this controversial perspective? To answer these questions, we must examine the history, philosophy, and ideas of the thinkers who shaped its development.

This book offers a balanced and thoughtful analysis of the core principles and implications of critical theory, as well as the published works of its key philosophers and their views concerning biblical themes, including creation and reality; sin and the human dilemma; and redemption, history, and eschatology. Bradley G. Green helps readers articulate what critical theory is—a view of human nature in opposition to the gospel narrative.

“Brad Green’s Christian guide to one of the dominant issues of our day is a triumph of scholarship yet readily accessible to the general reader. For Christians who feel the need to learn what critical theory is and how to assess it, this is the book they should reach for. It is a compact, all-you-need source.”

— Leland Ryken, Professor Emeritus of English, Wheaton College

“I’ve read numerous articles and books on critical theory, but Brad Green’s What Is Critical Theory? is the most lucid, insightful, and penetrating treatment I’ve encountered. It will be my first recommendation for any Christian who wants to understand the challenge of critical theory and the ways in which it has infected Western culture.”

— James N. Anderson, Carl W. McMurray Professor of Theology and Philosophy and Academic Dean, Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte

Find What Is Critical Theory? at Crossway, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Christianbook.com, Books-A-Million, and Walmart.

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