EPS Interview with Biola Prof. Gregg Ten Elshof on Self Deception

Fascinating interview at the EPS blog with Biola professor of philosophy Gregg Ten Elshof on his recent book I Told Me So: Self-Deception and the Christian Life (Eerdmans, 2009).

We are pleased to have interviewed Gregg Ten Elshof about his latest book, I Told Me So: Self-Deception and the Christian Life (Eerdmans, 2009). Gregg is a professor of philosophy and the department chairperson of the undergraduate philosophy program at Biola University. He has also been a contributor to Philosophia Christi. Below is part one of a two part interview with Gregg.

How did this book come about for you?
I first took up an interest in self-deception as a graduate student at USC in the 90’s. I was just beginning to modify my approach to the Way of Jesus in response to the reading I had been doing about spiritual formation (from Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, etc.). I began to suspect that I had fallen prey to self-deception in significant ways and that my Christian brothers and sisters had too. But I found precious little in the contemporary literature on the Christian life that focused on self-deception. I devoted my doctoral research to defending a model of self-knowledge which made sense of self-deception with an eye toward writing this book at some point. In the ten years or so since, I’ve been reading and teaching courses about self-knowledge and self-deception. Finally, last year, I felt like I had enough to say to warrant the writing of a book. (continue)

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