Nancy Pearcey
396 pages
John Ortberg in his book The Life You’ve Always Wanted described in one paragraph what it took Pearcey 95 pages to say—there is no such thing as the spiritual life, life is life and the “spiritual life” is wholly integrated into everything that we do. Religion is holistic.
Not only were Pearcey’s first 95 pages bloated but she fails on a crucial point. She is trying to counteract a new form of Gnosticism within the church, but instead of attacking this ideology within the church she attacks the world instead and blames the world for putting us in this Gnostic place and holding us captive. This is not a healthy view of the world nor of the church. This will only result in more vitriolic fervor in the church as we seek to rage against the world instead of coming in peace and love as the gospel suggests.
Total Truth is the exact same book as Colson’s How Now Shall We Live? and Francis Shaeffer’s book How Should We Then Live?. However, Pearcey’s version comes a little too late in the collapsing modern era to be of use. This book (Total Truth) tries to explain the “postmodern dilemma” from a modernist perspective, but falls embarrassingly short. Pearcey attempts to place the grid work of Creation, Fall, and Redemption over postmodernity. This approach is problematic since Postmodernity defies categorization. Postmodernity, like an amoeba, is constantly shifting and changing based upon the environment in which it is found. Much like an amoeba, to place a grid over it is to miss the point of its characteristics and it’s function.
Pearcey’s goal in this book is to reclaim a modern worldview for Christianity that is tweaked to encounter some of today’s challenges. However, to do so will not liberate Christianity from our cultural captivity but instead will keep us contained in our own separate sphere of influence that affects only the church. It’s unfortunate that Pearcey will not regard modernism in the same vein that other philosophers do: a failed experiment.
I was excited to pick up this book, expecting something in the vain of Dick Staub’s Too Christian, Too Pagan but with a more philosophical bent—however what I found instead was an apologetic for Intelligent Design (ID) veiled as a book on truth while elevating the notion of ID as an essential, foundational element for anything that claims to be truth. Pearcey maintains a faulty premise within the book that Creation is the foundational principle upon which all truth comes forth. However, this cannot and must not be the case! Pearcey’s assertion that creation is the foundational principle is irresponsible to the gospel because according to the gospel narratives everything rises and falls on Jesus’ resurrection! Resurrection is the foundational principle upon which truth comes forth, for without the resurrection there could certainly be neither truth, nor hope upon which to rest for God would indeed be dead.
Pearcey’s assertion that Creation is the foundational principle comes from her modernistic viewpoint and linear thinking, which does in fact make sense for modernism, but not in today’s postmodern world. Pearcey’s apologetic is decades late.
Pearcey seems to be attempting to scientifically prove, 100%, the existence of God, just like Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron of Way of the Master, by debunking everything else. However, doing so completely takes faith out of the equation—a rather large theme and essential throughout Scripture. Pearcy sets up a cosmic battle between Darwinism (“the universal acid” from which all of the evils in the world spurn forth) and Intelligent Design. Pearcey elevates ID to such a level that it has become the savior that returns Christianity to culture. A knee-jerk reaction to this, and rightfully so, is “NO! ID cannot and must not be our savior!” Doing so, pins our hopes on ID instead of the gospel of Jesus.
Instead of embracing the reality that postmodernity is here to stay, Pearcey appears to believe that we can somehow revert back to modernism (the chosen, God ordained worldview) as a culture if we would defeat the “universal acid” of Darwinism and instead realize Intelligent Design to be our liberator.
Darwin’s theory of evolution is a modernistic, linear theory; therefore it will probably be debunked at some point because of its philosophical origins. (It stands opposed to the now postmodern mindset that revolves around narratives.) There will be nothing that ultimately brings about the demise of evolution except for the under girding philosophy upon which it is based. As postmodernism continues to develop, change, and reinvent itself, evolution as “truth” and as a “belief” will simply fall away as yet another myth of the modern past.
Needless to say, this may have been one of the worst books I have ever read…
Related posts:
- measuring truth.
- how (not) to speak of God [a review]
- Judas and the Gospel of Jesus (a review)
- survivor (a review)
- evil and the justice of God (a review)
Wow. Incidentally, Pearcy actually wrote the vast majority of Colson’s book, but they had a falling out because among other things, he received all the credit.
that’s actually very interesting… no wonder it read a lot like colson’s book (a rehashing of the same material). i almost went so far as to say it sounded plagarized, but didn’t… now it makes sense why i would’ve felt that way.