2026 Austin Lecture: Prometheus Ashamed
University Ave. Church of Christ, Austin, 1903 University Ave, Austin, TX 78705
First Things, in partnership with the Center for Christian Studies, is pleased to announce Carl R. Trueman will present this year’s 2026 Austin Lecture “Prometheus Ashamed: Technological Humiliation and the Human Condition” on Monday, August 31 at 7 p.m. at the University Avenue Church of Christ.
Man’s exceptional technological ability has at its heart a strange paradox: the greater his achievements, the smaller he becomes in his own eyes. Indeed, his Promethean aspirations promise to make him into a god and yet have in the last century served to make him often less powerful, less exceptional—perhaps less human—than he has ever been. This strange phenomenon, dubbed “Promethean shame,” now looks set to reach its apex in the advent of AI. How should we understand this and is it an unavoidable part of the technological human condition?
Carl R. Trueman is a graduate of the Universities of Cambridge (MA, Classics) and Aberdeen (PhD, Church History). He has taught at the Universities of Nottingham, Aberdeen, and Westminster Theological Seminary. In 2017–18 he was the William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in Religion and Public Life in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. Since 2018, he has served as a professor at Grove City College in the Calderwood School of Arts and Humanities. He is a contributing editor at First Things and Touchstone, an opinion columnist at WORLD magazine, and a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
His most recent books are The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity (Sentinel) and Crisis of Confidence: Reclaiming the Historic Faith in a Culture Consumed with Individualism and Identity (Crossway). His writing has appeared in Deseret Journal, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, American Mind, Claremont Review of Books, and Public Discourse. He and his wife Catriona have two adult sons and one granddaughter.
To read Trueman’s articles in First Things, please click here.
Please register here on the Center for Christian Studies website.
This lecture is free, but we appreciate your support. Consider making a donation of $20 or more.
