A reflection on why the modern world is collapsing, and how Christians must recover the “places” where truth lives.
Introduction
We live in an age where everyone seems to have opinions, but almost no one knows where their opinions come from. People speak from instinct, impression, emotion, and ideology, yet the foundations beneath their certainty have cracked. Recently, I realised what the problem actually is.
We have lost our loci.
Not locations in space, but the places of truth, the structures where meaning, doctrine, and identity take shape. Loci are the categories that hold the world together. When they collapse, the world collapses with them.
What Are Loci? (And Why They Matter More Than Ever)
The word loci (singular: locus) has a long pedigree.
1. Classical Roots: The “Common Places” of Wisdom
In classical rhetoric, Aristotle spoke of topoi, the “common places,” from which all arguments emerge.¹ Cicero and Quintilian expanded this into a full system: organising thought into “places” where ideas could be stored, retrieved, and reasoned with.²
Loci were the mind’s architecture. The human ability to reason depended on where we stored truth.
Reformation Roots: Melanchthon’s Loci Communes
In 1521, Philip Melanchthon transformed the term into a theological masterpiece, Loci Communes, or “Common Places.”³
These were not merely topics; they were the pillars of Christian thought: sin, grace, Christ, justification, sanctification, the Church, and the last things.
John Calvin structured his Institutes around these loci, calling them “foundations” of doctrine.⁴
Humans Are Loci-Shaped Beings
James K. A. Smith argues we are “liturgical animals,” shaped by the formative places our hearts dwell in.⁵
Charles Taylor describes modernity’s crisis as the loss of “the shared social imaginary,” the collapse of common moral places.⁶
Without loci, identity dissolves.
Without loci, truth becomes mood.
Without loci, society implodes into noise.
And that is exactly what has happened.
Loci in Scripture: God’s Way of Ordering Reality
The Bible is structured around loci, places where God reveals truth, not as abstractions but as lived, embodied realities.
1. Torah → Locus of Divine Wisdom
Psalm 1 contrasts the righteous and the wicked by describing where they “stand,” “sit,” and “walk.” In biblical thought, your locus is your destiny.
2. Temple → Locus of God’s Presence
God’s glory does not diffuse; it dwells. Truth has a place.
3. Cross → Locus of Redemption
The centre of history is not an idea but a location: Golgotha.
4. Christ → Locus of Truth
Jesus does not merely teach truth, He is the place where truth exists.
“In Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” (Col. 1:19)
5. Spirit → Locus of Guidance
Truth is not merely read, it is indwelt.
John 16:13: “He will guide you into all truth.”
God has always revealed truth in loci, places, people, practices, covenants, and encounters. Modernity, by contrast, tries to float truth in mid-air, and wonders why everything collapses.
How Modernity Lost Its Loci (And Why We Lost Ourselves)
1. Enlightenment Shift: God → Reason
Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” made the human mind the locus of truth.⁷
From that moment on, the world stopped looking upward and started looking inward.
2. Postmodern Collapse: Reason → Nothing
Foucault said truth is power.⁸
Derrida said meaning dissolves endlessly.⁹
Judith Butler said identity is performance.¹⁰
Result: No shared truth, no shared self, and no shared reality.
Everything becomes a vibe.
Identity becomes an aesthetic.
People become self-authored hallucinations.
Without God as locus, the human person becomes a void shaped by noise.
Academia Pretends It Has Outgrown Loci — But Uses Them Every Day
Here is the irony academia never admits but constantly practices:
1. Every discipline runs on loci
Science uses laws, constants, categories. Psychology uses schemas, constructs, cognitive frameworks. Sociology uses norms, structures, institutions. Philosophy uses axioms and first principles. Law uses precedent, literally “places” where truth is stored.
Even the most secular worldview needs places where truth lives. It is impossible to think without loci.
2. Even atheism relies on stolen Christian loci
Atheists speak confidently of:
morality rationality human dignity justice meaning rights
…but none of these can be grounded without God.
Alvin Plantinga argues that reason itself presupposes a rational God.¹¹
C. S. Lewis said modern people cut down the tree of metaphysics and still expect to sit on its branches.¹²
Academia denies God but uses His tools.
Holiness Requires the Right Locus (A Crisis in Today’s Church)
We cannot know holiness if our locus is still the world.
Holiness is not a mood.
Holiness is not a moral vibe.
Holiness is not “being a good person.”
Holiness is the locus of God’s very being, utterly distinct, utterly pure, utterly real.
To speak of holiness without God is like speaking of light without the sun. It cannot be known except as revelation.
This is why the modern Christian struggles:
They want holiness but live from secular loci.
They want transformation but dwell in the wrong places.
They want truth but drink from the world’s wells.
You cannot live a holy life if your soul is standing in the wrong place.
Right Loci Heal Identity (The Heart of Identity Dysphoria)
1. Identity is conferred, a divine locus of personhood
The self is not constructed; it is received.
Meaning is not invented; it is bestowed.
2. Noceboic identity dysphoria emerges from false loci
When trauma becomes the locus, identity fractures.
When culture becomes the locus, identity thins.
When sexuality becomes the locus, identity shrinks.
When performance becomes the locus, identity inflates and implodes.
Only when God is locus does the human self stabilise.
3. Holiness reorients the soul into its rightful place
Holiness is the soul standing where truth lives:
under God’s Word,
in Christ’s grace,
within the Spirit’s presence.
This is identity restored.
This is personhood resurrected.
This is the mind renewed.
The Final Confrontation: Where Is Your Locus?
Everyone has a locus.
Everyone builds their life from somewhere.
Everyone holds truth from some place.
The question is never:
“Do you have a locus?”
The question is:
“Is your locus God?”
Jesus ends the Sermon on the Mount with a warning:
Whoever builds on sand collapses.
Whoever builds on the rock endures.
Loci decide destinies.
Practical Application
Reflect: What “places” are shaping your identity right now?
Ask: “Where does my truth live? In Scripture or in culture?”
Realign: Practise daily anchoring in God’s Word as your locus.
Disciple: Teach others that identity must come from divine conferral, not cultural construction.
Prayer
Lord,
Relocate my soul.
Take me out of the false places where I have stored my identity, my truth, and my worth.
Anchor me in the only true locus, Your Word, Your nature, Your holiness.
Let my mind dwell in the place where truth lives, and let my heart find rest in the place where You dwell.
In Your Holy Name Lord Jesus,
Amen.
TRACK TO ENJOY:
FOOTNOTES
1. Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. W. Rhys Roberts (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2004), 135–143.
2. Cicero, Topica, trans. H. M. Hubbell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1945), 383–395; Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, trans. H. E. Butler, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920–22), 2:273–310.
3. Philip Melanchthon, Loci Communes (1521), trans. J. A. O. Preus (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1992), 1–4; see also Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 29–54.
4. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 1.1–1.3; cf. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 83–105.
5. James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 23–45; see also Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004), 37–60.
6. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 171–203.
7. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Bxvi–Bxix.
8. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 109–133.
9. Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 1–27.
10. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 33–44.
11. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 225–240.
12. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 55–65.
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