Utter the words “critical theory,” and you’ll elicit a variety of responses. Some people will stare blankly. Others will think you’re referring to “critical race theory,” the lingua franca of antiracist scholarship and progressive activism.
Few will recognize that the phrase was coined almost a century ago. Even fewer will be able to give a careful account of the complex and variegated thought of the men who formulated and promoted critical theory, first through the Frankfurt School in Germany and later in the United States.
In What Is Critical Theory? A Concise Christian Analysis, Bradley Green, professor of theological studies at Union University, addresses this knowledge gap. The book succinctly explains critical theory’s historical origins within the context of Marxism, elaborates on its key themes, and shows how it motivates activism against “hate speech.” Yet Green does more than simply inform; he also demonstrates that critical theory ultimately fails to make sense of reality and the human condition.
The Crucible of Marxism
Today, Karl Marx is primarily known as the father of Communism, but his ideas went far deeper than economics. Marx believed that all of human history could be understood as a class struggle between “oppressor and oppressed” (34). Moreover, humanity’s values, our religious beliefs, and even our consciousness aren’t just shaped by social and economic circumstances but determined by them.
Critical theory ultimately fails to make sense of reality and the human condition.
According to Marx, humanity doesn’t have a fixed and ineradicable nature; rather, we’re nearly infinitely malleable and can be transformed by restructuring society. Marx believed the world was on the cusp of a glorious revolution that would overthrow the ruling class and create a classless utopia.
Though critical theory is sometimes referred to as “cultural Marxism,” the label can be misleading. Undeniably, the men associated with the Frankfurt School—Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin—were deeply influenced by Marxism. But Green shows that critical theory was, in a significant sense, a product of their profound disappointment with Marx’s failed prophecies of an imminent Communist revolution.
Half a century after Marx’s death, the men of the Frankfurt School asked, “Why had the hoped-for Marxist revolution failed to emerge? . . . Why do so many people, given that they are (ostensibly) so severely oppressed by capitalism, fail to rise up and overthrow such a system?” (13). As they tried to answer these questions, the early critical theorists reevaluated Marxism. The resulting theories deemphasized his focus on economics and elaborated on his theory of false consciousness.
Sin and Civilization
According to Green, “A Christian response [to critical theory] must recognize that critical theory is in effect an alternative theology or religion and that it is helpful to understand critical theory as just such an alternative theology or religion” (8). In keeping with this thesis, Green’s analysis of critical theory is framed in terms of its views on creation, sin, and redemption.
Critical theory offers a negation of the Christian doctrine of creation, rather than merely an alternative. A Christian view of creation begins with God. God brings order out of chaos, imbues his universe with purpose, and—prior to the fall—declares his creation is very good. The universe has value because it is God’s creation.
In contrast, critical theory lacks any such grounding for this world in a transcendent God. For critical theorists, values are the product of the ruling class and function to justify its dominance. Borrowing heavily from Freud, they see the fundamental problem not as sin and rebellion against God but as civilization itself. Civilization—among other things—forces humans to repress their sexual urges for the sake of social stability.
For critical theorists, values are the product of the ruling class and function to justify its dominance.
For critical theorists, the problems in society aren’t due to sin’s disordering effects. Instead, they believe men and women are so brainwashed by capitalism and technology that they can’t even recognize their own oppression. Green observes, “Critical theory tends to see man as something of a cog in a vast machine [that] so shapes and controls and influences people that man has lost any real sense of freedom or individuality” (53). Consumerism and the mass media blind people to the problems they face.
Liberation Through Sexuality
If civilization represses individualism, particularly in how it polices sexuality, then the solution is a radical reconfiguration of sexual ethics. Like Marx, the early critical theorists viewed traditional marriage as patriarchal and oppressive—a seedbed of fascist ideology and an inhibitor of freedom. For example, “[Wilhelm] Reich lamented an ‘authoritarian patriarchy,’ ‘patriarchal marriage and family,’ and the ‘moral inhibition of the child’s natural sexuality’” (78).
Similarly, Marcuse looked forward to a “new kind of social order” that would be “highly sexualized” and that would “lead to a disintegration of . . . the monogamic and patriarchal family” (109). The impulse toward sexual pleasure would “[redefine] reason in his own terms” such that what’s “reasonable” would henceforth be “what sustains the order of [erotic] gratification” (110).
There’s something beyond empirical reasoning in this line of argumentation. Green observes, “Marcuse used religious imagery as he tried to cast his vision for the way forward to a better world, a new humanity, and a new reality principle.” In his work, he called for man to again commit the “original sin” of “eat[ing] from the tree of knowledge” by asking “what is good and what is evil” (108).
Marcuse recognized that the Christian view of sin and guilt was an obstacle to his utopian dreams. “With the triumph of Christian morality,” in Marcuse’s thinking, “the life instincts were perverted and constrained; bad conscience was linked with a ‘guilt against God’” (168).
For critical theorists, Christianity mustn’t be corrected or accommodated but subverted. Green’s chief lesson for readers is that any comprehensive worldview, like critical theory, inevitably opposes Christianity at a fundamental level, despite any elements of truth it contains.
Critical Theory and Wokeness
Tracing the genealogical relationships within intellectual histories is notoriously difficult. However, Green convincingly reveals the connections between the early critical theorists of the Frankfurt School and contemporary social activism.
The antifamily tendencies of #BlackLivesMatter, the gender subversion of the sexual revolution, and the increasing hostility to free speech among radicals all have roots in critical theory. Based on Green’s meticulous analysis of the primary sources, it seems undeniable that there are “forms of conceptual similarity and overlap between the critical theory of the 1920s–1960s and contemporary radicalism or progressivism, including what is today called ‘wokeism’” (14).
Yet, at its core, What Is Critical Theory? isn’t an attempt to fight contemporary culture wars. Green takes the scholarly approach of books like Carl Trueman’s To Change All Worlds rather than the more practical, lay-friendly approach of books like Thaddeus Williams’s Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth. Both strategies are crucial. In the age of ChatGPT and social media, we need more than 30-second TikTok videos and 280-character zingers.
Green presses us to think more deeply and more carefully, understanding 20th-century critical theorists on their own terms. Paradoxically, doing so helps readers more persuasively critique the bad ideas that increasingly shape our 21st-century culture.
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