Great Book - Total Truth

I read this amazing book for my Seminary class involving Christian worldview. This book is about 400 pages and it is not a quick read. If you are someone who is interested in the development of thought through history - this is the book for you.

Here is my complete book review. (If you are interested.)

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Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity

By Nancy Pearcey

Crossway Books

This book tells the story of the development of predominant Christian thought throughout the centuries. Pearcy covers the origins of worldview thinking from Aristotle to the modern thought process in today’s evangelical churches. In this one book there is a comprehensive journal of the evolution of thought and philosophy that is valuable for every person whom considers himself or herself a Christian. Pearcy gives us a fascinating formula for looking at the world around us and trying to bring everything to unison. Simply put, there is a reason that people think like they do. Pearcy takes the time to show us that in this book.

The matter of the book is to tell the tale of Christian thought. Pearcy takes this to mean all of thought (religion, science, medicine, ethics, etc) needs to be put through the Christian world view. She states that people, as far back as Aristotle, tried to rip reality and worldview into two parts. This book was written to battle that thought and try to create a more holistic thinking.

Pearcy takes on the Biblical view that the fear of God is the beginning of all knowledge. From this platform one must then take a look at how God has shaped the human story. The human story, and thus all knowledge, goes from creation to the fall and finally into redemption. She then runs the major philosophical standpoints throughout history through this set of rules to see where the popular philosophy of the day leads us in seeing the world or forming our world view.

This book is written so that anyone can understand it. That’s a good thing because she addresses this book to the common person. She explains the history of thought. She shows us the predominant world views and how they came to be. She takes us right up to the present and gives us her opinion on how we can cut through trends to develop a Christian worldview.

The book is written in a narrative form weaving all the history together in one long story. It is fascinating to see how she interacts with writers and thinkers from the areas of philosophy, science, and religion. She proves her point well by making it all one narrative and not breaking it up into different parts with different players and different outcomes. She does a good job of running everything through the same paradigm that she created. She doesn’t belabor any points yet takes the time to explain everything she brings up so that people don’t have to have a degree in one of the major sciences just to get what she is writing about.

The book itself could not come at a better time in history. When would it be a bad time to get perspective on why things are the way that we are? There are to many things that are just assumed to be true. We, even Christians, don’t take the time to question some of the “common” knowledge that we just accept as fact. The fact that the Berenstein Bears are teaching us a world view was enough for me, as a parent of three, to take a sharp eye to what my kids are viewing. It is obvious that Pearcy is a Christian and it is fitting that she shares her personal journey of world view development. Every college student should get the privilege of reading and interacting with this book and the thoughts laid out in it. I have already told two of my friends and my wife that they need to read this book. It would be a good book to study in a group.

I would suggest this book to anyone who has recently made a decision to follow Christ or anyone that states that they are interested in following Him but don’t really know why. The history and time line of thought presented in this book need to be taught to young people so that their faith has a foundation that will carry them once their parents faith cannot.