Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Study Guide Edition)

I have often lamented the overuse of the term "life-changing" amongst Christians. It is not unusual to hear people walk away from a particularly captivating sermon or conference saying "that changed my life!" The real measure and test of life change is time, for only in time will we really know what has made a significant impact on our lives. Having established that I do not use the term lightly, I would like to suggest that Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey may just be a life-changing book. As believers we collectively spend millions of dollars and countless hours reading about Christian living - making our homes better, making our families better, making our lives better, discovering our purpose, rediscovering our masculine soul or our feminine soul and so on ad infinitum, ad nauseum. There are some who love to supplement with the study of theology or church history, and those are great pursuits. But if we buy so many books and read so much, why do we dedicate so little time to examining and studying worldview? I do not mean to indict the reader and clear my own name, for in all the reading I have done, this is the first book that deals predominantly with that topic. Total Truth is subtitled "Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity" and this is the task to which Pearcey dedicates the book. She shows how Christians have adopted a worldview that is bound and influenced by our culture, so that we now understand Christianity through a secular worldview. She teaches that the opposite needs to be true - that we need to see society through a distinctly Christian lens, allowing a Christian worldview to interpret all that we see, do and think. She says "This book will address [the hunger for a Christian worldview] and offers new direction for advancing the worldview movement. It will help you identify the secular/sacred divide that keeps your faith locked into the private sphere of 'religious truth.' It will walk you through practical, workable steps for crafting a Christian worldview in your own life and work. It will teach you how to apply a worldview grid to cut through the bewildering maze of ideas and ideologies we encounter in a postmodern world." (Page 17) In short, the purpose of the book is to help Christians free their faith from its cultural captivity and to see that Christianity is not merely religious truth, but is Total Truth - truth about the whole of reality. "The purpose of a worldview is to explain our experience of the world-and any philosophy can be judged by how well it succeeds in doing so. When Christianity is tested, we discover that it alone explains and makes sense of the most basic and universal human experiences." As a devotee of Francis Shaeffer, Pearcey borrows heavily from his writing and ideas. Most notably, she understands, as did Shaeffer, that Christians have mimicked the world in adopting a two-level worldview which she calls a fact/value split. It can be represented as follows: VALUES Individual Preferences --------------------- FACTS Binding on everyone In the upper level are values which are mere individual preferences and on the bottom level are facts which are binding on everyone. Facts represent knowledge drawn from and proven by science and in this way they are considered objective and rational. On the other hand, on the top level are values which are considered subjective and a product of tradition. Thus are not binding beyond the individual's conscience and are essentially irrational. They have little to say about reality. This split has pervaded all aspects of society. The thesis of this book is "the key to recovering joy and purpose turned out to be a new understanding of Christianity as total truth - an insight that broke open the dam and poured the restoring waters of the gospel into the parched areas of life." The first step in recovering a Christian worldview is to understand the bifurcated worldview which is inherent in our postmodern world. Having understood that we have made false disctinctions between secular and sacred, we can begin integrating our faith into every area of life so that we bear a consistent witness throughout. Politicians are beginning to come to the realization that politics is downstream from culture. In order to change the politics of our nations, we must first influence the culture, and to do that we must reclaim a Christian worldview. "Ordinary Christians working in business, industry, politics, factory work, and so on, are 'the Church's front-line troops' in the spiritual battle. Are we taking seriously our duty to support them in their warfare? The church is nothing less than a training ground for sending out laypeople who are equipped to speak the gospel to the world." That is the subject of the bulk of the book - training and sending laypeople who can share the Gospel with the world. Pearcey continually exposes those areas that have been polluted by a secular worldview and explains how Christians need to reclaim them. After Pearcey thoroughly deconstructed our society's postmodern worldview in the first few chapters of the book, I found I did not have as clear an idea as to how I could rebuild a Christian worldview. But perhaps this is because there are no easy answers - there is no happy W.O.R.L.D.V.I.E.W. acronym that will allow me to follow a 9-step program to worldview reconstruction. The key is to acknowledge the deficiency of holding a two-level worldview and by immersing myself in Scripture, allowing God to shape and mould me as He sees fit. A Christian worldview must necessarily flow from the study and application of God's Word. I need to understand and believe that Christian Truth is a unified whole, equally encompassing all of life. In reading books written by intellectuals, rather than pastors and teachers, I have often found that their theology is shaped more by the Catholic intellectuals of days past than by the Protestant theology. This is not the case for Pearcey. She strikes a good balance of praise and criticism in her presentation of Protestantism, generally defending the actions and motives of the Reformers and believers of history. Similarly she praises various Catholic scholars (such as Aquinas) for contributions they made, but is necessarily harsh when discussing their shortcomings. Throughout the book, the author maintains this important balance. It was wonderful to see that Pearcey presents significant, deep theology that clearly aligns with the Reformed understandings of the Scripture. I am in agreement with Al Mohler who said "Total Truth is one of the most promising books to emerge in evangelical publishing in many years. It belongs in every Christian home, and should quickly be put into the hands of every Christian young person. This important book should be part of the equipment for college or university study, and churches should use it as a textbook for Christian worldview development." Pearcey has crafted a masterpiece that is intellectually stimulating but still accessible and practical. It will challenge, motivate and change. I give it my hearty recommendation.

After reading reviews on Nancy Pearcey's Total Truth by Francis Beckwith, Tim Challies, and Al Mohler, writing my own seemed daunting. Al Mohler wrote, "In Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey offers a solid theological engagement with the critical intellectual issues of our times." Such a bold statement is characteristic of thoughtful books reviews. In light of other reviews, my goal is to provide a concise analysis of Pearcey's book, stating its main argument and identifying salient points. It would be impossible to understand Total Truth apart from its connection to Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer himself was instrumental in Pearcey's conversion to Christianity. The skeptical author first encountered this 20th century intellectual giant at the L'Abri community in the Swiss Alps. Perched on the side of a mountain, he influenced Pearcey and many others who were disillusioned with religion in the 60's. Schaeffer's scathing critique of modernism and its inability to answer the deep questions of the human soul led to Pearcey's conversion, which resulted in a lifetime of intellectual work on behalf of the Christian faith. This is Pearcey's book though, not Schaeffer's. She breezes through centuries of philosophical systems--deconstructing them as she goes--in order to show that the Christian worldview is the only one that can truly account for all of reality. The Christian worldview is total truth. Why is developing a Christian worldview important? Postmodern America is awash in a "sea of secularism." There are many ideologies competing for attention in today's marketplace of ideas. However, are any of them capable of providing a comprehensive account of all of reality? This is the question Pearcey poses... and answers. Pearcey's thesis is that the majority of Christians have been subject to cultural captivity and must be set free, hence the title of the book, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity. We are in a state of intellectual bondage where a sharp divide has been drawn between the sacred and the secular. There has been a bifurcation between religion and reason, science and faith, that has inexorably driven Christians to retreat from the public sphere and succumb to the prevailing cultural norms and mores of their day. Pearcey states her thesis in the introduction: "This book addresses that hunger [to have a Christian worldview] and offers new direction for advancing the worldview movement." One of the reasons Christians have a truncated, lifeless worldview is because they've bought into the fact/value distortion which has permeated Western culture for centuries. The onslaught of the Enlightenment and the impact of revivalism within the sphere of the emerging Evangelical empire has created this distortion. The fact-value distortion is described as a two-story way of looking at the world. In the "lower" story are facts, which are binding on everyone. The "lower" story of Science is built on empirical knowledge, rational thinking, and objective facts. In the "upper" story are values, which are based on individual preferences. A person's religious beliefs would fit here. The "lower" story is what is universally accepted by the public and accepted as "objective" truth, whereas the "upper" story is both cursorily dismissed and not taken seriously by the public. One of the strengths of this book is Pearcey's ability to analyze and explain large strata of the intellectual, economic, and religious foundation of Western Culture. Schaeffer's influence is certainly evident as she explains how the two-story divide has played out in the various strands of Western thought. For instance, postmodernism can be seen as the "upper" story in today's prevailing worldview; it is subjective and relative to particular groups. The "lower" story, on the other hand, is modernism with its accompanying emphases on what is objective and universally valid. This dichotomy, she explains, "is the single most potent weapon for delegitimizing the biblical perspective in the public square today." Those who don't believe in God have been able to subvert Christianity by relegating its tenets to that which belongs in the private sphere. Religion, particularly Christianity--which is what is professed by most Americans--is no longer taken seriously; not because it's true, but because religion is seen as a matter of preference. Christianity opposed America and lost the fight. There are four parts to this book. The first part explains how the secular/sacred split came into being. The second part "zeroes in on Creation, which is the foundational starting point for any world-view." In this section she assesses Darwinism, which is the prevailing worldview today, and shows how this particular worldview fails to hold up when evaluated in light of recent scientific findings; it falls well short of providing a coherent, comprehensive worldview for all of life. The third part criticizes the author's own tradition, Evangelicalism, and looks at how we arrived at where we're at now. The fourth part shows how "submission of our whole selves to the Lordship of Christ" is the only way to develop a Christian worldview. I even found Pearcey's method for the development of a Christian worldview to be theologically supple. Her explication of suffering in context of a vibrant, lived-out faith is a much needed slice to the prideful, therapeutic, flabby Christianity that has developed over the years. She advances Martin Luther's theology of the Cross as a means by which we die to ourselves and the idolatry of our hearts on a daily basis. She writes, "True knowledge of Christ comes only as we are willing to give up up our dreams of glory, praying to be identified with Him on the cross." Ouch. Furthermore, her incorporation of Schaeffer's "Rejected, Slain, Raised" concept of sanctification shows that she's not afraid to swim upstream against the currents of much of the Evangelical self-help chicanery. A slight criticism might be that Pearcey relies too heavily on Schaeffer here and the concept of "Rejected, Slain, Raised" doesn't fully capture other means of grace, such as the importance of reading the Bible, prayer, and service, which serve to develop a full-orbed view of Christianity. This book is a must-read for all young people heading off to college, pastors, lay leaders, and anyone interested in learning more about the Christian worldview. This is a primer on why a Christian worldview is important and how we should go about identifying competing worldviews while developing a solid, mature, biblically-informed one of our own.

Nancy Pearcey's easy-to-read book will tell people of faith, especially Christians, how to reframe the "debate" (as though it ever WAS a debate except in the minds of scientists) between science and faith vis a vis the origins of life. Pearcey goes into great and revealing detail about how people of faith automatically have their arguments about the origins of life disregarded as "values" instead of "facts". She does an excellent job of debunking the notion that evolution is fact-based, despite the general consensus of most scientists. (They are changing their minds in droves, by the way.) Incidentally, she is not the first to tackle this problem of dismissing Creation as "faith" or "values" rather than scientific fact. Michael Behe and MANY other scientists have done an excellent job, including Ken Ham of answersingenesis.org and Dr. Kent Hovind of drdino.com. There, you will find extensive lists of scientists who believe in the Creation of the Bible or in Intelligent Design and can back up their beliefs with hard science. Nancy Pearcey describes Intelligent Design quite well, but necessarily on a superficial level. It is too complex for a book directed to the layperson, which "Total Truth" is. The "editorial review" on Amazon laments that Pearcey doesn't give the "other side" of Intelligent Design from Christians. This criticism is not valid because the "other side" is ubiquitous and doesn't need its side addressed yet again in a book specifically designed to present the Christian side. It is we, the ID'ers and Creationists who need to know how to reframe the debate so as to logically and rationally debate evolutionists who claim that Creation belongs solely to the realm of faith or values. Pearcey tells the Believer how to do this and she does it very convincingly with reason and logic. When you learn about the frauds and hoaxes plaguing the scientific community for over a hundred years of evolutionary teaching, you see that Darwinian evolution is indeed a religion not based upon anything reproduceable, scientific or legitimately deduced from what "evidence" does present. (Fossils, for example, are NOT "links" to previous species. All we know about a fossil is that the creature died. That is all.) Evolution has never proved that any fossil is a link to another species. In other words, the Darwinian evolutionist has no evidence that man evolved from a lower animal, yet such things are still taught in schools as fact while disallowing anything which will go against their arguments. Pearcey's book will educate the reader on how to engage the evolutionist in a rational discussion of why their theory is based upon little more than faith. Better still, it teaches the Christian or person of faith that there are facts to support Biblical creationism. What Pearcey does is to remove Creation from the realm of SOLELY faith and values to science and she does a fine job of it. No one disputes "microevolution", that finch beaks change according to food supplies or that there are hundreds of different breeds of dogs. But they still remain finches or dogs. "Macroevolution" is where Darwinism, even from Darwin's own lips, breaks down. Macroevolution, the theory that all life evolved by chance over time from a single-celled animal, has not been proved. Not even close. Why? Because no links between species have ever been found. There are only huge gaps. There is no evidence for macroevolution. Yet the theory is accepted as fact, as much by faith as anything else. The Bible's account of creation and the flood is as much a reasonable explanation of how the myriad life on earth came about than every other theory presented to date. Yet it is dismissed as "values" rather than science. There is no reason for this situation to remain as is. Pearcey's book explains why that is. Highly recommended, especially for people new to Intelligent Design and to Christian apologetics.

Read this book. I wanted to make sure that this important message did not get lost in the remainder of my review, so let me say it again--read this book. Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity by Nancy Pearcey (2004) is an excellent, broad-sweeping, intellectual rich treatment of understanding Christian worldview. Pearcey has clearly been influenced by Francis Schaeffer, a former mentor of hers, as she discusses philosophy, science, and culture (though influences of Kuyper are present as well). She employs Schaeffer's upper story/lower story model for understanding culture. Although I was beginning to understand this information when I read Schaeffer's trilogy, I seem to understand it more deeply after reading Total Truth. Pearcey sets out to encourage Christians to step outside of their private faith and to engage with all of culture. She rightly points out that a fault of modern evangelicalism is the idea that we focus almost exclusively upon individual souls rather than also seeking to transform culture. Too often, in the modern Christian church, the Great Commission is about getting people to accept Christ without recognizing that the call to "make disciples" may involve more than indvidual assent to the truths of Christianity. Unfortunately, we are losing our young people in the process. In her introduction, Pearcey writes, "If all we give them is a 'heart' religion, it will not be strong enough to counter the lure of attractive but dangerous ideas. Young believers also need a 'brain' religion--training in worldview and apologetics--to equip them to analyze and critique the competing worldviews they will encounter when they leave home" (p. 19). Without a doubt, young people are leaving the church. Without a doubt, parents often feel ill-equipped to answer tough questions about the relevance of Christianity for the modern world. Yet I still discover that when I talk with fellow believers about the importance of developing the Christian mind, too many assume it will be too difficult or worse that it is unnecessary. Pearcey spends her time showing her readers how our views of science, religion, philosophy, and humanity have gradually morphed. Both theists and non-theists seem unaware of how subtle historic shifts are often the impetus for the culture we currently see. Her twelfth chapter, "How Women Started the Culture War" is an excellent example of how this change has taken place. She unfolds how during colonial times, families worked together. Fathers were involved in child rearing and mothers were involved in the family business. With the advent of the industrial revolution, things gradually began to change in the church and in the home. She identifies the root causes of the feminization of Christianity and the impact it has had upon men in the church. In other words, there are fewer and fewer men because of these 18th and 19th century culture shifts. She writes, "the truth is that men will be drawn back into family life only when they are convinced that being a good husband and father is a manly thing to do; that parental duty and sacrifice are masculine virtues; that marital love and fidelity are not female standards imposed upon men externally, but an integral part of the male character--something inherent and original, created by God" (p. 343). The way she presents this chapter does not degrade men or women, but seems to call us back to more of what God had intended. On the whole, I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. She addresses science, evolution, education, and a host of other topics with intellectual rigor and engaging prose. Everyone should read this book.

Total Truth is the best book I have read in terms of tracing the historical reasons for current American cultural thought and unveiling the assumptions that permeate how we view the world. Untangling our cultural and historical assumptions from a truly biblical worldview is a vital task for every Christian. I found Total Truth very helpful in shining a light on the worldly ideals that I have unknowingly incorporated into my theology. This one thing I have against it, however. In Nancy Pearcy's zeal to put forth a total biblical worldview I think she unfortunately falls into one of today's idealogical traps. She spends a great deal of the book promoting Intelligent Design as the single scientific theory that fits a biblical worldview. Sadly, ID fails to differentiate between philosophical naturalism (the natural world is all that exists), which should rightly be rejected by Christians, and methodological naturalism (the scientific approach of restricting explanation of natural phenomena to natural causes, i.e. modern science.) Thus she succumbs to the current "cultural truth" that mainstream science is inherently atheistic and we need to teach our children to shun it. I highly recommend this book, but I also strongly recommend caution and perhaps a bit of outside reading specifically on the topic of our Christian culture's difficulty with science, such as Francis Collin's "The Language of God" or John Walton's "The Lost World of Genesis One." The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate

"Christianity is not a series of truths in the plural, but rather truth spelled with a capital `T.' Truth about total reality, not just about religious things...Biblical Christianity is Truth concerning total reality - and the intellectual holding of that total Truth and then living in the light of that Truth." ~Francis Schaeffer, 1981 The book begins with an excellent quotation from Charles Spurgeon, "The gospel is like a caged lion. It does not need to be defended, it just needs to be let out of its cage." Nancy Pearcey's Total Truth shows how Christians have been quite content with letting the lion remain in the cage; in fact, we may be the ones who put it there in the first place. This 500-page tome reads like an American history of ideas and worldviews, and what the implications are for us today. Part I: What's in a Worldview? presents the idea of the two-story theory of truth, with "objective" truth on the bottom as foundational, and value-based truth on the top. Pearcey shows how this chasm blocks the religious worldview from entering into discussion in the public marketplace of ideas merely because it is religious. If Christianity is true, she argues, it is true for all issues and discussions, and not just ones related to values. It is a total Truth. She next tackles the Darwinian naturalism worldview in Part 2: Starting at the Beginning. This was not the usual evolution book that arguing from small pieces (e.g., the problem of the eye) against Darwin's theory; rather, she addresses the problems and results from the worldview in its entirety. If naturalism is true, how can we have free will, morals, altruism, love? While the smaller pieces in the argument are necessary when discussing this issue, seeing the bigger picture of the worldview is far more valuable to see the logical consequences of it. The third part titled How We Lost Our Minds is a history of American Evangelicalism, tracing modern churches to the First and Second Great Awakenings. While I enjoyed the history lessons and connecting two time periods, this book felt more like a textbook. One of the chapters, "How Women Started the Culture War," was a clear perspective of the advent of feminism, but it seemed out of place from the scope of the book. Throughout each chapter, Pearcey provides ample references and footnotes, some so fascinating that I wondered why they were not in the text itself. My only real criticism (and it is hardly that) is that she shows too much love for Francis Schaeffer. She cannot contain her giddiness in recanting her times at L'Abri in Switzerland. I appreciate Francis Schaeffer's contribution to Christian philosophy, apologetics, and interaction with culture, but Nancy Pearcey really, really loves Francis Schaeffer! Total Truth is one of those books that I know that I will read again, one that I feel that I must read again. It has a weight to it that I have not felt with other books lately, and I liked that. This is certainly not the book I'd recommend to one seeking to understand what Christians believe and why. There are other books I'd suggest for that (Tim Keller's The Reason for God is one). This is one for Christians who are interested in thinking rightly about worldviews, and who want to interact with the world around them. Christianity is not a fairy tale that needs manicuring and placating; instead, it is a vigorous system of beliefs that can hold its own in the marketplace. We Christians need merely to let it out of its cage so it can engage.

Faced with constant challenges to their fully credible faith, Christianity's defenders have too often been content to think about and discuss issues within guidelines established by the critics instead of bringing a Christian agenda of their own. Nancy Pearcey corrects this. Telling us that always playing defense is still a mistake, "Total Truth" prepares readers to stand on solid ground and even to take the offense in a practical and loving way. Pearcey ably introduces readers to some of Christendom's best worldview resources: Luther's sturdy soteriology, the Scotch Reformers' epistemological confidence, and a too unfamiliar ontology from the Dutch Reformed school of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Dooyeweerd that provides a better (than faith vs science) framework to fully appreciate the Intelligent Design work of Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, and William Dembski. She does not dig deeply for the Dutch treasures, but fully admits to them the debt of her approach. A well selected reading list at the end will guide readers who want to follow any of these threads beyond the last page. I agree with Nancy Pearcey. Francis Schaeffer is still a must-read for Christians in spite of some criticism for lacking academic rigor. He wasn't an academic. We'll benefit from his applied apologetic because its prophetic challenge to postmodernism becomes ever more useful with time. For the thirsty let me recommend Schaeffer's "The God who is There", "Escape from Reason", and "He is There and He is Not Silent". The last three contain his seminal thoughts. Readers will learn from them why worldviews are not empty ideas and words, they shape the way people live. Schaeffer's "The Mark of the Christian" is another small brilliant jewel. What makes "Total Truth" so useful is Pearcey's dead-on assertion that analyzing any worldview can reveal clearly what its ground motive really is. By using her analytical toolkit readers can dissect alternative worldviews and learn their real strengths and weaknesses. And Christians should not shrink from sharing this biblical ground motive: 1) God's CREATION, 2) the subsequent FALL that distorts the image God designed-in, and 3) His REDEMPTION of humans and eventual recreation of the entire cosmos in Christ. The Christian worldview explains all human experience and challenges other worldviews because it describes reality as it is. My complaints about "Total Truth" are minor in light of its immense scope and value. Allow me these: Few ancient Christian contributions are mentioned. One quote affirms that humans are icons of God, images of His being-in-relation. That's important! But Pearcey darkly glosses the motives of monasticism and gives un-nuanced critical treatment of neoplatonism that ignores entirely it's handling by the Cappadocian fathers and Maximus Confessor. [A fascinating side note is that Schaeffer's son, Frank, became an Orthodox Christian.] Finally, Pearcey says Hindu and Buddhist ideas were imported to the United States in the 1960s. In fact, Vivekananda successfully launched the Vedanta Society here in the 1890s to promote a renascent form of Indian spirituality as compatible with Western science. But enough small pickings. The book is outstanding. If you frequently pass up books about Christian ideas, get just this one, relax and give it some time. A few reviews here make it sound very technical. It's not. Pearcey takes readers on a first-class tour of ideas and historical movements that affect us all. If you want to think and act more like a Christian and less like the crowd you'll find "Total Truth" quite useful indeed.

In her book "Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity" author Nancy Pearcey discusses the way the modern mind has been fragmented into a split between the realm of facts and the realm of values. To be clear she believes that this development, which started with the emergence of Platonism, is an error which needs to be corrected so that Christian truth-claims can once again have a place at the table in the public arena. For the Christian, who is completely unaware of this problematic development, reading Pearcey's book will be both highly engaging and very enlightening. Her writing has both theological and philosophical depth, yet is written an accessible manner that both the scholar and the laymen can appreciate. Pearcey sheds a great deal of light on the precarious predicament modern Christendom is presently in. In her book she offers helpful suggestions on how Christianity can once again thrive despite its ongoing battle with Postmodernism. As mentioned above the overall theme of the book is the impact of what Pearcey calls the Fact-Value Split. Because of various philosophical developments throughout history, Western Civilization has determined that only what is deemed to be objective, factual information, such as scientific discovery, is appropriate for public discourse. On the other hand, anything that has to do with values or belief, such as morality and religion, is relegated to the private realm. This latter realm is thought not to have any objective basis and is, in fact, entirely subjective, having no factual foundation. It is easy to see how this is a problem for Christianity, since it is inevitably relegated to the subjective realm of faith and values. According to Pearcey, the results of this paradigm are far-reaching and largely destructive. Because of this way of thinking most Christians live as if they were suffering from split-personality disorder. On the one hand there is their professional life, which takes place in the public realm of facts. And then there are their Christian beliefs and values, which have no place in the public realm. Consequently, they leave their secular work place, go home to their families and churches, quietly practice their faith, and the two worlds never intersect in a meaningful way. Thus, the Gospel is restrained to the private sphere and is rarely permitted to venture into the public where chastisement awaits those who dare cross the line. Christians must break out of this mold by reclaiming Christianity's hold on the whole realm of truth. In our modern context this means challenging the naturalistic worldview that lies at the foundation of the Fact-Value Split. Christians must expose the weakness and error of Darwinism, which declares that we are nothing but biological machines created by blind, impersonal forces and that consequently we have neither freedom of the will nor the ability to know objective truth. If we can defend the Christian view of origins, namely that we were created by God, then much of battle is already won. Where we came from says a lot about where were going. If we were created by God then we have real value. Even though we fell from grace we have hope, because Jesus died and rose again to redeem mankind. It seems that one of the underlying purposes of Total Truth is to help create a cultural milieu in which the grand narrative of salvation history can again be viewed as intellectually viable. In order to accomplish this goal Pearcey recommends a blend of presuppositionalist and evidentialist apologetics. Christian's should appeal to people's common sense beliefs. This beliefs include among other things, that we can trust our everyday sense perceptions, that we have free will, and objective moral values and duties exist. These are our basic presuppositions. Then Christians can use various evidentialist arguments to demonstrate that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that can adequately account for these basic beliefs that everyone shares, if not in theory, at least on a practical level. Some people may deny that we can't trust our everyday sense perceptions, that we don't have free will, and that objective moral values and duties don't exist in theory, but in reality nobody lives life as if these basic beliefs were not true. This betrays the fact that their worldview is grossly inadequate. Christians can get their foot in the door by gently exposing such inconsistencies and offering Christianity as the only viable alternative. Readers who are willing to challenge their thinking and their behavior will benefit greatly from these and other insights offered in Total Truth. If the church would rise from its slumber and take on the poisonous worldviews that people are succumbing to, then great things could be accomplished for the Kingdom of God.

This book deserves to be widely read especially in the Christian community, although nonbelievers also have much relevant material here. It is particularly relevant if you have concerns about the way education, politics and science are headed - which I suppose ought to include everyone. It aims to take believers out of what is all to often an anti-intellectual ghetto when it comes to discussing the worldviews of others. Nancy Pearcey unashamedly follows in the footsteps of Francis Schaeffer whose work was instrumental in her own conversion to Christianity.

Wer ist Nancy Pearcey? Die 1952 geborene US-Amerikanerin zählt zu den wenigen weiblichen evangelikalen Intellektuellen. Pearcey zählt den zu geistlichen Erben von Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984). Der Besuch in schweizerischen L’abri anfangs der 1970er-Jahre hatte die damals agnostische junge Frau nachhaltig aufgerüttelt. Dies schildert sie denn auch in „Total Truth“. Heute leitet Pearcey zusammen mit ihrem Mann das „Francis Schaeffer Center for Worldview and Culture“ der Houston Baptist University. Um was geht es? Philipp E. Johnson, ein führender Kopf der Intelligent Design-Bewegung in den USA, schreibt im Vorwort: „Weltanschauung zu verstehen gleicht dem Versuch, die Linse des eigenen Auges zu sehen. Normalerweise sehen wir unsere eigene Weltsicht nicht, stattdessen sehen wir alles andere durch diesen Filter. Einfach gesagt ist die Weltanschauung das Fenster, durch das wir die Welt – oft unbewusst – wahrnehmen und (dann) entscheiden, was real und wichtig oder nicht real und unwichtig ist.“ Die Wahrnehmung für dieses „Fenster zur Welt“ zu schärfen, darum geht es Pearcey in diesem Buch.Wir sind es uns gewohnt, zwischen einem „wissenschaftlichen“, „wertefreien“ Bereich der öffentlichen Institutionen und einer privaten Sphäre der persönlichen Überzeugungen und Entscheidungen zu unterscheiden. Wie ist das Buch aufgebaut? Pearcey hat ihr Werk in vier Teile aufgeteilt: Im ersten Teil legt Pearcey die Grundlagen für einen biblisch-weltanschaulichen Grundrahmen. Dieser hängt an drei Fragen: Schöpfung: Wie hat alles begonnen? Fall: Was ist schief gegangen? Erlösung: Wie kann es wiederhergestellt werden? Der zweite Teil beschäftigt sich mit der Schöpfung, dem Startpunkt jeder Weltanschauung. Pearcey entfaltet darin ein engagiertes Plädoyer für den Intelligent Design-Ansatz. Wer sich bereits mit der evolutionistischen Weltanschauung abgefunden hat, reibt sich über diesen Seiten erstaunt die Augen. Der dritte Teil geht der Frage nach, warum die Evangelikalen keine Tradition der Verteidigung ihrer Weltanschauung entwickelt haben. Wo bleibt die Umsetzung? Das mögen sich einige gegen Schluss des Werkes fragen. Dafür hat sich Pearcey den vierten Teil vorbehalten. Der Rückgriff auf das wichtige Werk von Francis Schaeffer „Geistliches Leben – was ist das?“ hielt ich für angebracht. Vier Anhänge mit Vertiefungen über die Säkularisierung der US-amerikanischen Politik, den modernen Islam und die New Age-Bewegung, den Materialismus und die Apologetik, wie sie in L’abri betrieben wurde, runden die Lektüre ab. Eine ausführliche, kommentierte Leseliste sowie ein Studienführen beschliessen das über 400 Seiten starke Werk. Was faszinierte mich? Zumindest in meiner Lebensrealität halten wir – trotz Bekenntnis – die zwei Lebensbereiche privat und öffentlich bzw. säkular und geistlich fein säuberlich getrennt. So ging mir denn die Ermahnung Pearceys zu Herzen. Sie sagte: „Der erste Schritt zum bewussten Um- und Aufbau einer christlichen Weltanschauung besteht darin, auf die Suche nach den eigenen Götzen zu gehen.“ Besonders geblieben sind mir einzelne biographische Elemente des Buches, so etwa die Beschreibung ihres engagierten Vaters, der den Familientisch für manche Lektionen und Diskussionen nutzte. Dass sie mit ihren Söhnen frühzeitig weltanschauliche Themen dort bearbeitete, wo sie auftauchten – zum Beispiel in den Kinderbüchern -, fand ich nachahmenswert. Ebenso berührte mich Pearceys Schilderung ihrer Zeit, als sie ehrlich nach der Wahrheit suchte. Ebenso nahe ging mir der Abschnitt im vierten Teil, in dem sie über ihr Ringen um ihre Rolle als Mutter berichtet. Welche Stellen irritierten? Bisweilen fragte ich mich, ob ich den Ansprüchen „eine versöhnende Kraft in jedem Bereich der Kultur “ sein, verpflichtet bin. Ebenso bezweifle ich, exzellentere Lösungen als jeder Nichtchrist zustande bringen zu müssen. Wird hier nicht eine Erwartung aufgebaut, welche meine tief in mir wurzelnde Neigung zur Selbsterlösung stimuliert? Ein weiteres Thema, das ich nicht genügend beleuchtet finde, ist der Stellenwert der Gemeinde. Pearcey betont zwar deren Wichtigkeit, wenn sie schreibt, dass die Gemeinde der Plausibilitätstest für das Evangelium sei. Bei mir blieb eher ihr Beispiel hängen, als sie bei einem Probebesuch in einer neuen Gemeinde den Pastor gegen die kopflastigen Bibelschulen uns Seminare wettern hörte. Den einen oder anderen mag das dritte Kapitel, das die Geschichte der Evangelikalen in den USA beschreibt, dann doch gar amerikanisch anzumuten. Ich blieb dennoch sehr konzentriert, denn die Ausführungen werfen Licht auf den Anti-Intellektualismus, dem ich auch in unseren Gemeinden auf Schritt und Tritt begegne. Ich legte das Buch mit einem tiefen Seufzer zur Seite. Für mich notierte ich: „Durch dieses Buch bin ich satt geworden.“ Ich empfehle es jedem Leser, welcher der englischen Sprache mächtig ist. Und ich wünsche mir mehr solches Material in der deutschen Sprache.

Libro eccelente Preso perchè raccomandato e lo raccomando anche io. Accurato, chiaro e semplice da capire specialemente per chi e interesato come me a scoprire che cosa è la verita e la sua trasformatione o almeno la trasformazione del significato della parola e poi anche del contenuto, bello bello

Christians in North America tend to view their Christianity strictly in terms of their individual commitment to Jesus Christ, and they see their part in the Great Commission as sharing their faith and bringing others also into such a saving relationship. Yet they are frustrated by a feeling of having their hands tied, of unspoken assumptions which they may sense but not be able to put their finger on. More than in any other nation, professing American evangelicals make up a sizable percentage of the population, but in terms of cultural impact, they are almost invisible. Nancey Pearcey argues that this is because they have implicitly accepted a secular/sacred divide which keeps the power of the gospel locked up, like a caged lion. Her purpose is to give us the tools to recognize where and how this has happened, so that by liberating Christianity from its cultural captivity, it may become a redemptive force that really permeates our culture. The cultural captivity that Pearcey refers to is the banishment of Christian ideas to the private sphere of values and subjective feelings, and out of the public sphere of facts, objective knowledge, and science. This two-tiered division of truth that our culture (and many Christians) accepts results in both the truth claims of Christianity not being taken seriously since they are not seen as belonging to the realm of knowledge, and in Christians themselves not knowing how to integrate their faith to the whole of reality. Worse, evangelicals (conservative Bible-believing Christians) have gone from dominating the culture of the nineteenth century, to being completely marginalized today. And it is largely their own fault. Though they controlled all the cultural institutions at that time, nineteenth century evangelicals, as a result of the First and Second Great Awakenings, had come to view Christianity primarily in terms of non-cognitive categories of emotion and experience. Their religious beliefs were still an integral part of their "lower story" activities such as science, but because they did not view their Christianity as "total truth", a worldview which orders all of reality, they could not recognize the threat of competing worldviews which came along at that time. When the Baconian view of science that Enlightenment intellectuals had become intoxicated with, promised that knowledge could be based on bare empirical facts, unfiltered through any religious or philosophical grid, Christians were persuaded to set aside their own religious framework. But this view of science, or any other activity, as religiously neutral, is false, and so the withdrawal of Christian presuppositions created a vacuum that was quickly filled by alien philosophical frameworks, namely naturalism and empiricism. These were introduced under the banner of "objectivity" and "free inquiry" whereas Christian views were seen as biased. As a result Christian perspectives were driven out of the lower story to the upper, where they have remained to this day. "It is nothing less than tragic that Christians themselves were partly responsible for the privatizing of religion", Pearcey notes. Then and even today, many embraced as perfectly reasonable the subsequent principle of methodological naturalism, thinking that it was simply a refinement of scientific practice to limit the scope of investigation of the natural world to natural explanations. They did not recognize that this opened the door to metaphysical naturalism. "After all, if you can interpret the world perfectly well without reference to God, then His existence becomes a superfluous hypothesis." Historian George Marsden is quoted as saying that "the naturalistic definition of science was transformed from a methodology into a dominant academic worldview." All worldviews, Christian and non-Christian, seek to provide an overarching metanarrative that answer the questions of Creation, Fall, and Redemption. The worldview of naturalism, that the natural world is all there is, has been around since the ancient Greeks. But it never really caught on because it was not able to answer the fundamental question of Creation without smuggling in concepts from a theistic worldview. Darwinian evolution finally provided this creation myth and so laid the foundation for a century and a half of naturalism as the dominant worldview in our culture. If we understand this, we can understand why the biblical teaching of Creation is under such relentless attack today. What is at stake is the first principle of the Christian worldview; everything stands or falls with its teaching on ultimate origins. This concept is absolutely critical, and so Pearcey devotes a third of the book to discussing evolution. It was not just a mere scientific theory which sought to explain the facts of the natural world; its significance rather was that it signalled a revolution in what counts as knowledge. Christians, then and now, who do not know how to construct their own worldview and critique competing ones with the grid of Creation, Fall, and Redemption, have missed this clash of worldviews, and have either retreated into Fundamentalism, or have attempted to reconcile their theism with evolution, a move which, because of what is at stake, is very dangerous. When Christianity is articulated as a full fledged worldview, it is liberated from the two-story division that has reduced it to an upper-story private experience and is restored to the status of objective truth. We can then recognize the non-Christian assumptions and methods that have permeated our thinking. We will once again begin practicing theistic science (and economics, and law, etc.) because it will once again seem appropriate to consult all that we know when doing these activities. Intelligent Design is seeking to do just that in the realm of science, but is encountering resistance among Christians who don't yet recognize the conflict as one over competing worldviews. This resistance is even among Reformed Christians, where worldview thinking has a long and rich history. What this tells me is that the conflict runs deep, and that time, wisdom, and humility are needed before we can purge all worldly ways of thinking and take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.

Helps to offer a solid understanding of what shapes and makes a Christian worldview while helping us understand how our views have been shaped over the past 2000 years.