At long last I have finished Nancy Pearcey's book, Total Truth and am posting a review. This book was provided to me by Stacy Harp at Mind & Media and was provided to her by the generosity of the good folks at Crossway Publishing. And in the interest of full disclosure I will mention that I am receiving no remuneration for this, thus you can rest assured that I am not a bought and paid for lackey of some evil publishing conglomerate. There, how's that for establishing my unbiasedness (sp?)?
When biographies are written of famous or infamous people there are two broad categories those biographies can fall into. One is in the category of "hagiography." "Hagiography" comes from a greek word meaning "saint" or "holy," and another word meaning "writing." Thus, it is the kind of biography that makes a saint out of its subject. It focuses mainly on the subject's contributions and achievements and glosses over or ignores its flaws. A second type of biography is a critical biography which allegedly takes a dispassionate look at the subject and seeks to portray the subject, warts and all. Those who write critical biographies will often accuse the hagiographers of bias and pooh pooh their contribution to the understanding of the subject. Of course, these critics often ignore their own biases when writing.
I bring this up because the same thing often occurs in reviewing books. Some reviews gush and fawn over books and share how wonderful the books are, and how, well . . . great, and wonderful, and . . . you know, inspiring and wonderful, and life-changing, and well, . . . just how wonderful the book really is. Such reviews are simply wonderful to read. Others go just as overboard on the critical side. In either case, such reviews are only marginally helpful because they come off as puff pieces for or against the book and don't interact specifically with the book.
I will admit that I often fall into the gushing/criticizing camp when reviewing books and am trying to escape that and interact critically and sympathetically with books to make my reviews more helpful.
Having said that, let me begin by saying that Total Truth is a simply wonderful book! There I said it! Now that this is off my chest I'll try not to gush my way through the rest of the review and will proceed with what I hope will be a substantive review the rest of the way.
The premise of the book is actually quite simple, it is in the fleshing out of the this simple premise that the book makes it greatest impact.
The premise of the book is that Christianity is captive to the culture, and it is captive in a way you may not have considered. It is captive in that our world has bought into a two-tiered approach to reality where there is public truth and private truth. The realm of public truth is the realm of science and fact, and it purports to offer publicly verifiable truths which are binding on all. The realm of private truth is the realm of opinion and preference. This is the realm of "what's good for you is good for you, but not binding on me."
Christianity is captive to the culture in the sense that Christian belief has been shuffled off to the private realm. It is pictured as a matter of opinion and personal preference. Christianity is respected and it has a place in our world, but only as long as it is kept in a private place. Pearcey quotes H. L. Mencken on page 204 as follows:
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
Curiously, I am have been reading the book and writing this review as I have been catching up from vacation and today I came across the August 8 Time magazine which had a perfect example of this. Charles Krauthammer has an essay titled "Let's Have No More Monkey Trials." Krauthammer begins the column by announcing that all of the attempts over the last several decades to eradicate religion from the public sphere have run their course. But then, in true Mencken fashion, Krauthammer says:
Religion is back out of the closet.
But nothing could do more to undermine this most salutary restoration than the new and gratuitous attempts to invade science, and most particularly evolution, with religion.
He's talking about the Intelligent Design movement. He goes on:
Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology. Schönborn's proclamation that it cannot exist unguided--that it is driven by an intelligent designer pushing and pulling and planning and shaping the process along the way--is a perfectly legitimate statement of faith. If he and the Evangelicals just stopped there and asked that intelligent design be included in a religion curriculum, I would support them. The scandal is to teach this as science--to pretend, as does Schönborn, that his statement of faith is a defense of science . . .
. . . This conflict between faith and science had mercifully abated over the past four centuries as each grew to permit the other its own independent sphere. What we are witnessing now is a frontier violation by the forces of religion.
Finally, Krauthammer says:
Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square. But it has no place in science class.
In fairness to Krauthammer I will point out that he begins by welcoming religion to the public square. But for him there's this one important square within the public square where religion dare not invade - science. Indeed, Krauthammer is far more generous to religion in general than most, but his desire to put up this wall between religion and science is exactly what Pearcey is writing about.
She argues that even Christians have bought into this two-tiered approach, consigning their faith, a la Mencken and Krauthammer, to the private sphere. Drawing on her extensive involvement with Francis Schaeffer and the Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Dooyeweerd, she argues that Christianity is not a merely private faith which speaks only to religious matters. Rather, it is a total and all encompassing worldview.
Quoting Peter Berger on page 68, Pearcey says that the traditional task of religion was:
". . . the establishment of an integrated set of definitions of reality that could serve as a common universe of meaning for the members of a society."
Conversely,
". . . many evangelicals no longer think it is the task of religion to provide a 'common universe of meaning.' Today religion appeals almost solely to the needs of the private sphere - needs for personal meaning, social bonding, family support, emotional nurturing, practical living, and so on. . . . Whereas religion used to be connected to group identity and a sense of belonging, it is now almost solely a search for an authentic inner life."
In Jeremiah 5:31 the prophet speaks of our tendency to love those who lie to us and oppress us:
The prophets prophesy lies,
the priests rule by their own authority,
and my people love it this way.
But what will you do in the end?
The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 . Zondervan: Grand Rapids
Her point is that evangelicals have bought into the "privatization" notion and this has had many adverse effects. To combat this we must recover the notion that Christianity provides a total world and life view and that it is public truth. Hence, the title, Total Truth.
The book is divided into three main sections. The first explains, and gives many examples and explanations of the two-tier view of reality and the segregation of Christianity to the private.
The book encourages Christians to go public with their faith, in a sense. With that, it is worth pointing out that one of the main criticisms that has been leveled against Pearcey's prior work with Chuck Colson in the book "How Now Shall We Live?" is that this was simply a call to ecumenical political activism. Phil Johnson says:
"Engaging the culture" is Colson's pet euphemism for ecumenical political activism.
Granted, this criticism has been leveled most strongly at Colson because of his involvement in ECT and other ecumenical activities. I share some of Phil's concerns about ecumenism and also want to point out that Nancy Pearcey has not been the brunt of this criticism. But I bring it up because I know there is a segment of evangelicalism that hears calls likes Pearcey's to present the Christian faith as "public truth" or to "engage the culture" simply as calls to political activism.
There is a political dimension to the Christian faith, i.e. politics is encompassed under the "totality" of truth. But Pearcey begins the book very wisely and straightforwardly addressing the issue of politics. This is not a book about politics and the kind of "public truth" and "cultural engagement" she talks about here goes way beyond politics and in some sense de-ultimatizes politics. Speaking of Christians revived political activism over the last couple of decades she says:
This heightened activism has yielded good results in many areas of public life, yet the impact remains far less than most had hoped. Why? Because evangelicals often put all their eggs in one basket: They leaped into political activism as the quickest, surest way to make a difference in the public arena - failing to realize that politics tend to reflect a culture, not the other way around.
She goes on:
Today, battle-weary political warriors have grown more realistic about the limits of that strategy. We have learned that "politics is downstream from culture, not the other way around," says Bill Wichterman, policy advisor to senate majority leader Bill Frist. "Real change has to start with the culture, all we can do on Capitol Hill is try to find ways government can nurture healthy cultural trends.
And:
On a similar note a member of Congress once told me, "I got involved in politics after the 1973 abortion decision because I thought that was the fastest route to moral reform. Well, we've won some legislative victories, but we've lost the culture (italics hers)." The most effective work, he had come to realize, is done by ordinary Christians fulfilling God's calling to reform culture within their local spheres of influence - their families, churches, schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, professional organizations, and civic institutions.
This is what I mean by the "de-ultimization" of politics. Although Christians should not ignore the political realm, it doesn't carry the weight many of us think it does. Hence, the best thing Christians can do is to let the concept of Christianity as public truth influence their families, churches, schools, neighborhoods, etc..
Nancy also briefly revisits some of the ground covered in "How Now Shall We Live?" by talking about the three components of a Christian worldview - Creation, Fall and Redemption. In other words, every worldview addresses three fundamental questions - where did we come from? what has gone wrong? and how do we fix it?
In the second section of the book she deals primarily with the "creation" element of the Christian worldview, mainly dealing with Darwinism and it's challenge to Christianity. Getting back to Krauthammer, he portrays evolution, i.e. Darwinism, as pure science, and the Intelligent Design movement as pure religion, and the twain should never meet. Drawing on her extensive knowledge of science and philosophy, Pearcey demonstrates the scientific aspect of Intelligent Design and the religious aspect of Darwinism.
Pearcey cites ardent evolutionist and ex-Darwinist Michael Ruse on page 172, who says:
"I must admit that in this one complaint . . . the [biblical] literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today."
And, on page 173, she says:
"The so called warfare between science and religion," wrote historian Jacques Barzun, should really "be seen as the warfare between two philosophies and perhaps two faiths."
This is why I wish Charles Krauthammer had read this book before he wrote his Time column. He complains:
Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation.
Everything begins with first principles, including science. This notion that science can not or ought not to begin with first principles is built on the first principles of Francis Bacon and his inductive approach to Science. Speaking of Bacon, on page 299, Pearcey says:
. . . he taught that science must begin by clearing the decks - by liberating the mind from all metaphysical speculation, all received notions of truth, all the accumulated superstition of the ages. 'With minds washed clean from opinions' (in his words), we sit down before the facts 'as little children' and let the facts speak for themselves - then compile them inductively into a system.
Though Pearcey and Bacon spoke with a little more erudition and flair, this is basically what Krauthammer was arguing. Yet Krauthammer doesn't recognize that the self-defeating nature of his argument - he is arguing that the first principle of science is that it begins with no first principles. As Pearcey goes on to say on page 299:
"The very notion that facts can 'speak for themselves' would send contemporary philosophers about paradigm shifts and conceptual frameworks."
Indeed, Pearcey shows that Darwinism is indeed a religious/philosophical system and an imperialistic one at that. I assume that since Krauthammer wants us to keep our religion out of his evolution, he would agree that he should keep his evolution out of our religion. And though I think he probably would agree to this, there are Darwinians of many different stripes who are not willing to do so.
Many want us to keep faith inside the church, but Darwinists are not willing to keep Darwinism inside the lab or biology class. This is because Darwinism is a worldview, it is at heart a philosophy which provides a comprehensive view of reality. Darwinism at heart is philosophical naturalism which teaches that man was not created by any superior or supreme being and thus man is not accountable to said supreme being. With that as a starting point Darwinism is influencing all aspects of society, from education to sexuality to ethics.
And so the point of the second section is that, though many won't admit it, the playing field is far more level between Darwinism and Christianity than we realize. By saying the playing field is level, I don't mean that one is as plausible as the other, I mean that the Christian faith offers a worldview which impacts the scientific enterprise and that Darwinism is not mere science. Darwinism is built on a worldview just as Christianity is.
The third section of the book traces the history of how evangelicals and evangelical faith got shunted off to the private realm. This was the most interesting part of the book to me as I am a little more bent toward history than science. Relying a good deal on the work of Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, as well as Nathan Hatch, Pearcey gives a good summary of the rise and progress of religion in America in 150 pages or so.
It is her description of the effects of the first and second great awakenings that is especially helpful. One of the interesting things she shows is that, during the revolutionary era, religious adherence in America was at the lowest it has ever been. In 1776 about 17% of Americans attended church. Of course the numbers don't tell the whole story as there were far fewer ministers and churches then. But even giving that, religious adherence was very low during the founding era of our country.
The thing that changed all that was the first and second great awakenings. These led to the rise of Christianity in America but it was a particularly American and revolutionary style of Christianity. Pearcey describes a "defiant individualism" that animated the first great awakening. On page 270 she says:
Unlike the local pastor ministering to his own covenantal congregation, the revivalist often preached to crowds of people drawn together from across several congregations and denominations. This was a significant change, for it meant the individual was addressed as an individual, apart from his membership in a church. In fact, the revivalists often went further, explicitly urging people to leave their local churches to find ministers who were truly converted - an idea that was shocking in light of Puritan covenant theology.
To understand why this message was so unsettling, we have to realize that the seventeenth-century view of social order was highly communal and organic. A person simply did not conceive of himself apart from the family, church, local community and so on. When a pastor was called to a local parish, it was almost like a marriage proposal. He was expected to bond permanently with the congregation and stay there for life. By the same token, members were bound by a covenant to the local parish.
Thus it was a radical departure when the revivalists directed their message to individuals, exhorting them to make independent decisions in regard to religion - and to act on those decisions regardless of their effect on the larger society. "Piety was no longer something inextricably bound up with local community and corporate spirituality" explains Stout. "The emphasis shifted to a more individualistic and subjective sense of piety that found its quintessential expression in the internal, highly personal experience of the "New Birth."
It may seem odd that I would quote these words approvingly. After all, the revivalists were emphasizing the new birth and urging their hearers to leave churches where there were unconverted ministers. What could be wrong with that?
Truly, I do believe in the new birth and the necessity of a converted ministry, but the awakenings put a new spin on conversion that defined conversion in terms of a crisis experience. The new birth and conversion were defined on the basis of a crisis experience. And this crisis experience was largely defined in terms of emotions. And while there is no doubt there were deficiencies in the church before the awakenings (as there are deficiencies in the church in all eras), this does not mean that the emphasis on the crisis was the cure for what ailed the church.
As the Christian faith became more and more defined with an emotional crisis experience, anti-intellectualism set in. Pearcey makes a link between the revolutionary war and religious sentiments in colonial America. As "independence" moved to the forefront of American concerns, and possibly as a result of the headiness that came from defeating England, Christianity came to take on the characteristics of the revolution. Authority was suspect, and intellectual elites were the most suspect.
But while Christians become more and more anti-intellectual, the influence of the intellectuals didn't cease. I saw this for the first time while doing some reading several years ago, that our world is governed by elites. Granted, this is anathema to the populist sentiments of evangelicals, but it is true. As Christianity was reduced to the personal and private, Christians withdrew from the intellectual spheres which govern public life in America.
Evangelicals have shot themselves in the foot over the last two hundred years. Having withdrawn from positions of intellectual leadership, "secular" elites rushed in to fill the vacuum. The things that Christians are most bothered about and that we complain about the most have come from these secular elites. But again, the secular elites are simply playing on a field that we abandoned. The problem now is that these secular elites resist allowing us back on the playing field.
But therein lies the rub. If evangelicalism continues on the track of framing the Christian faith chiefly in terms of personal and private religious matters then we have no alternative to offer against secular intellectualism. This is the call that Pearcey makes in the book - to recover the public dimension of the Christian fait, and particularly the intellectual dimension.
In the first decade or so of my Christian life I went through pretty much all of the popular evangelistic training programs and read several books on witnessing. A common theme among many of them was that intellectual questions were red herrings designed to distract us from the real issue. Pearcey challenges such a mentality with her own story and the story of her mentor, Francis Schaeffer. She went through a period of agnosticism due to intellectual questions and came back to faith as Schaeffer, the folks at L'Abri and others answered her intellectual questions. Schaeffer himself had a similar crisis of faith. The thousands of people who have been influenced toward Christ by Schaeffer and his disciples, and L'Abri are testimony to the importance of the public, intellectual side of the Christian faith.
When I read a book like this I have my antennas up for a triumphalistic mindset. Some of these "engage the culture" books paint a picture to the effect that, if we will just do these things we will take back our culture.
Thanksfully, Pearcey didn't do this. There are some practical thoughts offered at the end of the book that discuss and define Christian faithfulness and the results we can expect from embracing the concept of total truth. She defines success in terms of being faithful to our callings and faithful to our worldview. She discusses the issue of suffering and how this is an important part of the Christian life.
I am glad she did this because it touches on the one issue that, if I had to complain about, I would. As I mentioned above, Nancy offers the three pronged worldview grid in this book, as she did in her prior book. The three elements of a Christian worldview are creation, fall, and redemption. She mentions that some folks also add "glorification" as a fourth element to this worldview grid.
I wish she had added this element, if not in this book, then in How Now Shall We Live? And, by the way, I will mention that this is the most minor of minor complaints. This book wasn't written for an in-depth explanation of the elements of a worldview, those were mentioned in service to the larger discussion of the public/private divide. So, I'm not griping too hard here.
But I think this is crucial in talking about worldviews because the subject of "glorification" helps set our expectations for our engagement with the world. It adds eschatology to the mix. It brings in the relationship between this heavens and earth and the new heavens and new earth.
Specifically, I am thinking of the fact that we live in a time that theologians call the "already-not yet," meaning that the kingdom of God is already present on the earth, but it is not yet present in its fullness.
Because the kingdom of God is present on the earth we can expect to see the effects of the fall reversed. Where we go from there depends upon the particulars of your eschatology - if you are a postmillennialist you will expect the effects of the fall to be substantially reversed, whereas if you are an amillennialist like me, you might not be quite as optimistic. But, even we amils should expect to at least see the growth of the wheat keeping pace with the growth of the tares.
But the bottom line is that we can and should expect to see the growth of the kingdom, but not the fullness of the kingdom on this earth. This keeps us from the errors of fatalism/pessimism which believe the world is simply going to get worse and worse before the time of Christ, and that of triumphalism, which assumes that man can, by his own efforts, usher in the kingdom of God.
This is why I was happy with the way Nancy concluded the book, encouraging us to pursue our cultural engagement while recognizing the existence of suffering and defining success in terms of faithfulness. But I still think that all worldview thinkers and writers ought to work "glorification" into their scheme to remind us that while we work for the advancement of the kingdom, we still await the consummation of the kingdom.
Let me mention one more item for follow-up. In the back of the book Nancy provides a reading list, and two of the books are favorites of mine - Creation Regaind by Al Wolters (reviewed here), and Heaven is Not My Home by Paul Marshall (reviewed here). I bring these up because these books raise the possibility of a great deal of continuity between this earth and the new heavens and new earth. They remind us that we are not destined for some kind of disembodied eternal existence, but rather an embodied existence on earth. Further, they raise the issue that the earth we will inhabit is not a replacement for this earth, rather this earth renovated. To get what I am saying you will have to look at their exegesis of II Peter 3:8-13 for the details.
But they raise the issue that there may be a great deal more continuity between this earth and the new earth than we think. The reason I bring this up in the context of this review is that evangelicals typically believe that the only things that will last for eternity are the souls of men and the Word of God. Thus, we are told that anything not directly related to witnessing or the teaching/preaching/meditation/memorization of the bible won't last for eternity. Thus, in the grand scheme of things all cultural engagement is ultimately temporary, and pretty near useless.
But this kind of eschatological understanding offers the possibility that everything we do matters and that in some mysterious way I can't explain, even the mundane things of life have eternal consequences.
So I offer that for your consideration and hope that Nancy will write on this in the future. Of course, Nancy has written all kinds of stuff that most of us have never seen so maybe it's out there. Nancy, when you read this review if you want to point us to anything on the subject please do.
And I'll also mention that Nancy has written a study guide which will be included in an updated edition of the book this fall. She was kind enough to send me an electronic copy and in looking at it I can assure you it is a study guide worth using. Lot's of study guides have all the substance of "what do you think the author meant on page 14 when he said the sky was blue?" This does have a good deal of questions dealing with definitions to help you understand what you are reading. But the real benefit of the study guide is that it includes lots of real-world examples to help you work out your understanding, similar to what I was doing with the Krauthammer article.
So, all in all this is a wonderful book that I recommend very highly.
A great book that I gave high marks on my own blog and on Amazon. Nancy was even kind enough to write me a kind thank you.
If there is any weakness in the book it is that it almost tries to accomplish too much and ends with too little help in knowing how to secure that holistic Christian worldview that not only comprehends the whole of Creation, Fall, and Redemption, but also inherently knows the weaknesses of other philosophies. That's a tough order and we don't get solid ideas on how to begin the whole process or where to go to get that kind of training outside L'Abri. Most Christian training does not operate off such a worldview--sadly--so it is hard the find even within the Church.
Still, a wonderful book that is approachable and necessary.
Posted by: DLE | August 16, 2005 at 02:09 AM
Creation, Fall, and Redemption ... and Restoration. Pearcy never tackles the fourth major element of a worldview -- the question of destiny + purpose, or "how now shall we live?"
I continue to wonder why she omitted that.
Phil Johnson's comment: namely, "Engaging the culture" is Colson's pet euphemism for ecumenical political activism demands a strong response ... a task I shall take up on my blog.
Posted by: Jeff | August 16, 2005 at 09:45 PM
I think it's a wonderful book too. Section 2 on Darwinism seemed a bit weaker than the others. She is really best at discussing the philosophy of science rather than the data I think.
Intelligent Design doesn't exclude evolution - but does exclude the philosophy of naturalism and of course posits a theistic creator. The ID umbrella encompasses those who are 6 day creationists, 6 stage creationists, and those who believe in evolution - all designed intelligently.
Posted by: Catez | August 19, 2005 at 09:13 AM
All "truth" is private truth, even science. Welcome to the postmodern world.
Posted by: pessimistic postmodern | September 23, 2005 at 05:01 PM
Again the reality of the being (humanity) is expressed very deeply and completely. The health of humanity begins in the whole before forms and functions separate.
thanks.
Posted by: K. Kays | July 07, 2007 at 02:46 PM
I quite agree, it is an excellent book, and this review is a pretty good assessment of it as well. There is only one minor quibble. The American Rebellion was against Britain, not England. The King was King of Great Britain and ireland - the nations now known as England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. The apparent complete inability of Americans to differentiate between England and britain is, in these days of the devolved nations, deeply irrit\ting to the English. It probably annoys the Welsh and Scots as well.
Having said that, I found Total Truth a truly challenging read.
John
Posted by: John Allen | November 25, 2008 at 02:45 PM
I know what you mean by "finally" finishing the book. It is a great intellectual work, but it certainly isn't like reading a Clancy novel. There is much digestion taking place as I work my way through Total Truth.
Posted by: Dave | December 03, 2008 at 11:22 AM