Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth, a popular work on Christian worldview, the Academy, and culture, is a thought-provoking book, broad in its sweep through history and the academy, yet practical in its application to the Christian life. Pearcey, who was influenced early on by Francis Schaeffer and studied at his L’Abri Institute in Switzerland, has written the How Should We Then Live? tome for the 21st Century.
Following Schaeffer’s “upper story/lower story” paradigm for the fact/value dichotomy, Pearcey traces this dichotomy in the history of philosophy, science, theology, and other academic disciplines, and shows how it has had a detrimental effect on Western culture, including the Church. She also emphasizes the practicality of a coherent worldview for walking with God, the necessity of living consistently with a worldview as a test of its authenticity, as well as the need for evangelicalism to embrace the life of the mind. The practical emphasis on worldview and how it affects the spiritual life is one of the main strengths of the book.
However, there are aspects of the book that are in some ways irritating. Since Pearcey is writing intellectual history in such broad strokes, she must oversimplify the concepts, which can lead to misleading conclusions. For example, when she speaks of Plato’s realism and Augustine’s later embrace of it, she says in an endnote she is actually discussing neo-platonism, which came to fruition with Plotinus and was arguably a distortion of Plato’s original views. The unwary reader is led to believe that Plato himself was the beginning of the fact/value dichotomy, which is not really the case.
In addition, her critique of Darwinism in the middle section of the book follows closely the thought of Phillip Johnson, the law professor at Berkeley who has spear-headed the Intelligent Design movement. Her arguments have all of the flaws (and a few of the strengths) of Johnson’s own. But the reader is not allowed to discover such flaws and strengths for himself, since only a summary of Johnson’s positions is offered.
In spite of these weaknesses, Pearcey’s book is a must-have for those interested in studying worldview, Christian thought, and culture. It is quite unique, comprehensive, and a fascinating read. It would be a fine introduction to worldview topics for someone who desires to delve into them for the first time.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Forward by Phlllip Johnson
What’s in a Worldview?
1. Breaking out of the Grid
2. Rediscovering Joy
3. Keeping Religion in its Place
4. Surviving the Spiritual Wasteland
Starting at the Beginning
5. Darwin Meets the Berenstain Bears
6. The Science of Common Sense
7. Today Biology, Tomorrow the World
8. Darwins of the Mind
How We Lost our Minds
9. What’s So Good about Evangelicalism?
10. When America Met Christianity—Guess Who Won?
11. Evangelicals’ Two-Story Truth
12. How Women Started the Culture War
What Next? Living it Out
13. True Spirituality and Christian Worldview
Appendices
Appendix 1: How American Politics Became Secularized
Appendix 2: Modern Islam and the New Age Movement
Appendix 3: The Long War between Materialism and Christianity
Appendix 4: Isms on the Run: Practical Apologetics at L’Abri
End Notes
Reviewed by: Mark Hansard
