Friday, November 19, 2010
Reviewing Nancy Pearcey's Total Truth
Nancy Pearcey, former scholar for worldview studies at Philadelphia Biblical University's Center for University Studies, wrote Total Truth in 2004. The 512-page Study Guide edition was published the next year and won a Christianity Today Award of Merit and the ECPA Gold Medallion Book Award in the Christian and Society category. Total Truth is one of seven additional books you must choose from to read in order to complete the ACSI Christian Philosophy of Education requirements. It is a book that helps the reader understand how to develop a Biblical worldview and is a follow-up book dealing with the worldview themes in How Now Shall We Live?. Pearcey shows us that there are many, including Christian educators, who are dividing matters into sacred and secular. This is even happening at Christian universities across the United States. Many Christians fail to see that all truth is God's truth. Christianity is not just religious truth, but total truth. I have met in small groups on a couple different occasions to discuss the contents of this book, and more meetings are planned for the future. Total Truth is not light reading and much can be taken from it. I found the last two sections to be more enjoyable than the first two sections primarily because I found the first two sections to contain a lot of information that I have already read. Despite that, I benefited greatly from reading Total Truth and would recommend it to others.
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Interesting review, Wick. I have a question after reading a lot of Inclusivist Missions literature. Inclusivists would say that the work of Christ is ontologically necessary, but not necessary for someone to know epistemologically for faith. Thus, for many Inclusivists (e.g. Clark Pinnock, Brian McLaren and others), they would believe "truth" in other religions points to the one and only true God. They often quote the above phrase--"all truth is God's truth"--in support of this.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, they think, Christians should affirm "true" statements about God in pagan religions as truly true. This then communicates the idea that pagans in other religions can know true things about God correctly, even perhaps worship Him through elements in their own religions, though they perhaps do not know, or even, in some cases, outrightly reject Christ. They therefore hold to a quantitative distinction of truth, i.e. revelation about Christ (special revelation) is only more full revelation of God (general revelation), but not of a different sort.
I think Exclusivists would say pagan "truth" is secular truth (general revelation), but is qualitatively different than sacred truth (special revelation). However, it seems that this author rejects such a distinction between secular and sacred truth. Does this author deal with this question in her book?
Nancy's Pearcey's theology is nothing like that of Clark Pinnock and Brian McLaren. Check out these reviews to learn more about Nancy Pearcey and her book, Total Truth: http://www.challies.com/book-reviews/book-review-total-truth?quicktabs_1=2 and http://www.albertmohler.com/2006/03/17/total-truth-a-bold-manifesto-for-the-christian-worldview/. I also recommend reading R.C. Sproul's article titled, All Truth is God's Truth: http: //www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/all-truth-gods-truth-sproul/.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting those links, Wick. I wasn't equating Pearcey with Pinnock and McLaren, but I was seeing the interesting similarity in the usage of the phrase, and wondered how Pearcey dealt with it in contrast to those. I will take a look at the links when I get a chance. In the meantime, if you have an opportunity, what would be your answers regarding the questions I posed, after having read the book?
ReplyDeleteI think it's great that you took the time to really make a review out of this. Thanks for sharing this.
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I'm glad you found it beneficial.
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