"Total Truth" by Nancy Pearcey: a review

This review was written in partnership with Mind and Media.

Reading this book was like going on a journey. I had vague direction of where I was going and I knew where the end of the road was but the trick was getting through of all of the twists and turns in the middle. It started off super slow and I was wondering whether or I’d ever actually finish it but when it was over I felt like it was worth the read. “Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity” by Nancy Pearcey is well worth the read by both the most ardent Christians as well as the most defiant secularist.

Pearcey’s premise is that at least since the day Darwinian naturalism planted itself firmly in the arena of ideas, religion, and especially Christianity, has been relegated to the province of private life and personal choice. We all seem to view the world through a naturalistic lens, which at first glance would appear to be normal. Most people today would frame their entire world outlook on what we have learned through the sciences rather than an “unproven” philosophical outlook. In “Total Truth” Pearcey says nuts to that! What she is suggesting is that we as a society need to employ a Christian worldview and accept a biblical framework as divine design. Now if you are an atheist you’ve probably stopped reading by this point but as I stated above, the woman makes a compelling argument throughout the book that at least needs to be weighed against our current commonly held beliefs.

The book is broken up into four sections. In the first section, Pearcey lays out the foundation of her argument and introduces the reader to what she refers to as the two tier split. She writes, “The first step in forming a Christian worldview is to overcome this sharp divide between “heart” and “brain.” We have to reject the division of life into a secular realm that includes science, politics, economics, and the rest of the public arena. This dichotomy in our own minds is the greatest barrier to liberating the power of the gospel across the whole of culture today.

Moreover, it is reinforced by a much broader division rending the entire fabric of modern society-what sociologists call the public/private split.”

The book is filled with examples of the two-tier split and she employs it to frame a number of commonly held beliefs both in “science” and in “faith.” The tier looks like this:


PRIVATE SPHERE
Personal Preferences/Nonrational, Noncognitive
____________________________________________________
PUBLIC SPHERE
Scientific Knowledge/Rational, Verifiable

What anchors her narrative is the idea that religion has been forced into the private sphere while science/politics/business etc. are in the public sphere. Pearcey spends the rest of the book systematically disarming the two-tier methodology and putting forth the argument that faith and science are actually one in the same.

The first section of the book is very high on college level philosophy. She spends a great deal of time examining everyone from Aristotle to Rousseau and 100’s of “ism’s” that have cluttered the arena of ideas. I personally found this part of the book the hardest to get through. Not only is she dealing with the kind of subject material one should be arguing about in a college dorm at 3:00 AM in the morning but she also keeps hearkening back to how all of these philosophical tracts pale in comparison to the “truth” that is Christianity. It all makes wonderful sense if you go into the book being a believer but it’s bit a top heavy when you’re a pagan unbeliever trying to make it to at least the next chapter.

Where “Total Truth” really becomes interesting is in the next two sections. Section 2 deals exclusively with establishing Darwinian science as just as much a belief as Intelligent Design. Here Pearcey doesn’t use any demagoguery to try and convince the reader that Darwinian science is flawed but rather seems to be relying on actual science itself. She methodically debunks natural selection by referring to gaps in the scientific literature itself. She also points out that many of the most ardent defenders of Darwinian science do so out of philosophical necessity rather than unshakable science. In the end she makes a compelling argument that both Darwinian naturalism and Intelligent Design are both matters of faith.

The next section featured probably the best reason to read this book even if you are Bill Maher and would never consider Christianity to be anything more than a security blanket for the weak-minded. Section 3 is about the history evangelicalism in America. Pearcey lays out its foundation and underlying history with the understanding that evangelicalism did a tremendous amount to relegate Christianity to the private sphere of people’s lives. According to Pearcey, evangelicalism is ripe with a history of anti-intellectualism, thus it reinforced the idea that Christianity as a belief system could not compete with any intellectual worldview. This chapter was the most illuminating part of the entire 400 + page book.

“Total Truth,” is both chauvinistic and fascinating all at the same time. The author is obviously biased in favor of Christianity as being the one true religion, which of course colors all of her arguments no matter how rational they may actually be. As a reader, if you can forgive her for her bias and read this with an open mind then I think you will be pleasantly surprised with what you will learn about the roots of our modern intellectual/philosophical divide.