Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (edition 2004)

An excellent book in Francis Schaeffer tradition explaining in great detail what is a Christian worldview and how to share it with others. ( )

It is an excellent Christian apologetics book for upper high school level through adult. ( )

After reading reviews on Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth by Francis Beckwith, Tim Challies, and Al Mohler, writing my own seemed daunting. Al Mohler wrote, “In Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey offers a solid theological engagement with the critical intellectual issues of our times.” Such a bold statement is characteristic of thoughtful books reviews. In light of other reviews, my goal is to provide a concise analysis of Pearcey’s book, stating its main argument and identifying salient points.

It would be impossible to understand Total Truth apart from its connection to Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer himself was instrumental in Pearcey’s conversion to Christianity. The skeptical author first encountered this 20th century intellectual giant at the L’Abri community in the Swiss Alps. Perched on the side of a mountain, he influenced Pearcey and many others who were disillusioned with religion in the 60’s. Schaeffer’s scathing critique of modernism and its inability to answer the deep questions of the human soul led to Pearcey’s conversion, which resulted in a lifetime of intellectual work on behalf of the Christian faith.

This is Pearcey’s book though, not Schaeffer’s. She breezes through centuries of philosophical systems—deconstructing them as she goes—in order to show that the Christian worldview is the only one that can truly account for all of reality. The Christian worldview is total truth.

Why is developing a Christian worldview important? Postmodern America is awash in a “sea of secularism.” There are many ideologies competing for attention in today’s marketplace of ideas. However, are any of them capable of providing a comprehensive account of all of reality? This is the question Pearcey poses… and answers.

Pearcey’s thesis is that the majority of Christians have been subject to cultural captivity and must be set free, hence the title of the book, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity. We are in a state of intellectual bondage where a sharp divide has been drawn between the sacred and the secular. There has been a bifurcation between religion and reason, science and faith, that has inexorably driven Christians to retreat from the public sphere and succumb to the prevailing cultural norms and mores of their day.

Pearcey states her thesis in the introduction: “This book addresses that hunger [to have a Christian worldview] and offers new direction for advancing the worldview movement.” One of the reasons Christians have a truncated, lifeless worldview is because they’ve bought into the fact/value distortion which has permeated Western culture for centuries. The onslaught of the Enlightenment and the impact of revivalism within the sphere of the emerging Evangelical empire has created this distortion.

The fact-value distortion is described as a two-story way of looking at the world. In the “lower” story are facts, which are binding on everyone. The “lower” story of Science is built on empirical knowledge, rational thinking, and objective facts. In the “upper” story are values, which are based on individual preferences. A person’s religious beliefs would fit here. The “lower” story is what is universally accepted by the public and accepted as “objective” truth, whereas the “upper” story is both cursorily dismissed and not taken seriously by the public.

One of the strengths of this book is Pearcey’s ability to analyze and explain large strata of the intellectual, economic, and religious foundation of Western Culture. Schaeffer’s influence is certainly evident as she explains how the two-story divide has played out in the various strands of Western thought. For instance, postmodernism can be seen as the “upper” story in today’s prevailing worldview; it is subjective and relative to particular groups. The “lower” story, on the other hand, is modernism with its accompanying emphases on what is objective and universally valid.

This dichotomy, she explains, “is the single most potent weapon for delegitimizing the biblical perspective in the public square today.” Those who don’t believe in God have been able to subvert Christianity by relegating its tenets to that which belongs in the private sphere. Religion, particularly Christianity—which is what is professed by most Americans—is no longer taken seriously; not because it’s true, but because religion is seen as a matter of preference. Christianity opposed America and lost the fight.

There are four parts to this book. The first part explains how the secular/sacred split came into being. The second part “zeroes in on Creation, which is the foundational starting point for any world-view.” In this section she assesses Darwinism, which is the prevailing worldview today, and shows how this particular worldview fails to hold up when evaluated in light of recent scientific findings; it falls well short of providing a coherent, comprehensive worldview for all of life. The third part criticizes the author’s own tradition, Evangelicalism, and looks at how we arrived at where we’re at now. The fourth part shows how “submission of our whole selves to the Lordship of Christ” is the only way to develop a Christian worldview.

I even found Pearcey’s method for the development of a Christian worldview to be theologically supple. Her explication of suffering in context of a vibrant, lived-out faith is a much needed slice to the prideful, therapeutic, flabby Christianity that has developed over the years. She advances Martin Luther’s theology of the Cross as a means by which we die to ourselves and the idolatry of our hearts on a daily basis. She writes, “True knowledge of Christ comes only as we are willing to give up up our dreams of glory, praying to be identified with Him on the cross.” Ouch.

Furthermore, her incorporation of Schaeffer’s “Rejected, Slain, Raised” concept of sanctification shows that she’s not afraid to swim upstream against the currents of much of the Evangelical self-help chicanery. A slight criticism might be that Pearcey relies too heavily on Schaeffer here and the concept of “Rejected, Slain, Raised” doesn’t fully capture other means of grace, such as the importance of reading the Bible, prayer, and service, which serve to develop a full-orbed view of Christianity.

This book is a must-read for all young people heading off to college, pastors, lay leaders, and anyone interested in learning more about the Christian worldview. This is a primer on why a Christian worldview is important and how we should go about identifying competing worldviews while developing a solid, mature, biblically-informed one of our own. ( )

Recommended read for every Christian. It is a wake-up call for Christians at the ease with which our culture and its secular worldview is now taking over our schools and even our own way of looking at things. We have relegated the spiritual to a compartment of our lives instead of allowing it to integrate all facets of how we live.
Part of the book takes us through the historical aspects of how the church came to be what it is today. As well as how men and women's roles have changed through the years. Developing a worldview that is Biblical is essential in being able to interact with the world we live in. Otherwise we fall prey to the worldviews of those around us and become sucked into the naturalistic, materialistic way of living that is our American culture today.
The importance of teaching our youth is also emphasized so they have tools to challenge the views of those who are anti-biblical. Seeing how the secular humanistic worldview breaks down illogically helps them to cement the truths of Scripture in their own lives.

*I own this book ( )

Liberates Christianity from its cultural captivity.