Nancy Pearcey is one of those authors the breadth and depth of whose
research is simply astounding. It would take me five lifetimes to
read the books and authors she cites in Finding Truth.
The
modern evangelical church (in general—there are exceptions) has not
done well in dealing with the honest skepticism of young adults.
Rather than being eager to
field tough questions and face intellectual challenges, it seems we
have become fearful of them—perhaps
even intolerant of hearing them. Nancy Pearcey shows us how to
recover the honest
intellectual punch that Christianity actually possesses to
interact fruitfully with
non-Christian worldviews and belief systems.
Pearcey
assembles a methodology in five principles by which alternate
worldviews can be examined and then respectfully but firmly
repudiated. The first principle is Identify
the Idol. All
non-biblical worldviews have some sort of starting point—some
faith-based assumption on which the rest of their worldview is built.
Some God-substitute (inevitably,
a limited part of creation)
is elevated to ultimate or divine status.
The
second principle is Identify
the Idol’s Reductionism,
and it is based on the fact that “when an idol absolutizes some
part of creation, everything else must be explained in terms of that
one limited part” [98]. The result dehumanizes people. “When we
define God as a something
instead of a Someone,
we will tend to treat humans as somethings
too” [98, emphasis original]
Principle
three is to Test the
Idol: Does It Contradict What We Know about the World?
I once heard Dr. Bill Edgar (Westminster Seminary) describe a similar
approach as climbing
inside someone else’s worldview and taking it out for a spin, to
see if it works.
News Flash: it won’t. No one can live consistently with an
idolatrous worldview—at some point their life will contradict their
professed belief.
The
next principle is more philosophical: Test
the Idol: Does It Contradict Itself.
Pearcey walks through a number of worldviews and unmasks the fact
that they are internally inconsistent and
self-refuting.
For instance, she takes aim at logical positivism:
What happened, though, when the test of logical positivism was applied to itself? Its central claim was that statements are meaningful only if they are empirically testable. But is that statement empirically testable? Of course not. It is not an empirical observation. It is a metaphysical rule—an arbitrary definition of what qualifies as knowledge. Thus when the criterion of logical positivism was applied to itself, it was discredited. It stood self-condemned. [185]
The
final step is Replace
the Idol: Make the Case for Christianity.
One of the ways she makes the case is to help people understand that
other worldviews are free-loading on Christian principles, most
frequently Christian morals. They are assuming Christian principles,
but have no logical support from their own worldview to do so. In her
words, “You might say they function as
if
Christianity is true” [220, emphasis original]. Her point is to
gently confront the individual by showing them their ethics cannot
arise out of their worldview, but only out of a Christian one.
The
clarity of Pearcey’s writing, the extensive
use
she makes of the books and statements of non-Christian thinkers,
and the
comprehensive documentation of all her points and citations makes
this book
an
invaluable resource. Highly recommended—five stars.
