Review of Nancy Pearcey’s Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning

 Saving Leonardo is an extremely well written, heavily documented and illustrated exploration of how the dominant Christian, Western worldview of the Middle Ages evolved into contemporary Postmodernism. Pearcey’s thesis is that worldview drives culture and the artistic expressions of culture.

One of the foundational concepts of the book is the historical splintering of the concept of truth. The Western worldview for centuries viewed truth as unified; in other words, the material truths of the natural world pointed to equally certain spiritual truths. The design of nature revealed the moral intent of the Creator. The book of nature and the book of Scripture pointed to the same unified truths. But the Enlightenment began splitting the concept of truth: empirical, material facts versus religious/moral opinions and values. Facts are certain and objective; religious/moral values are subjective and therefore relative.

Pearcey demonstrates the beginning, widening, and final bifurcation of the fact/value split with numerous quotations from the preeminent philosophers of each age (Enlightenment, Romanticism, Modernism, Postmodernism). She then illustrates how the shifting worldviews were represented in art, providing examples of architecture, paintings, musical compositions, etc., and quotations from both the artists themselves and art critics.

In a word, Saving Leonardo is a virtual instruction manual for identifying the links between the spirit of the age, art (in all its forms) and the artist’s worldview. The book is heavily documented, which will be useful for researchers wishing for further exploration. Nancy Pearcey is one of the premier modern writers on the the philosophical concepts truth, worldview, and how they intersect with and drive culture. I’ve read Total Truth and Finding Truth and now Saving Leonardo, and found them all fascinating and instructive.

Note to the reader: if you are not already familiar with philosophical systems (materialism, existentialism, positivism, and a host of others), something that will greatly help as you read Saving Leonardo is to make a brief list of the various philosophical systems and their meanings when she initially defines them, because she will be referring back to them frequently throughout the book. There are so many it is easy to forget the salient points of each.

Saving Leonardo reminds me of Francis Schaeffer’s How ShouldWe Then Live: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture. Pearcey has been greatly influenced by Schaeffer’s thought, but she does a good job of moving the ball forward (I recommend both books highly).

Five stars—highly recommended.

Book Review of Nancy Pearcey’s Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

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.

Review of Story Craft, by John R. Erickson

Erickson is the author of the popular Hank the Cowdog books, of which I have read none. Yet. Now I want to. I became aware of Story Craft on the pages of World Magazine, and added it to my Christmas wish list, a wish happily fulfilled.

Part One is a fascinating memoir, detailing Erickson’s journey of becoming a writer. He developed a highly disciplined approach to writing daily, stuck with it through over a thousand rejections and some number of (still) unpublished novels, and finally found success submitting stories to magazines. Erickson then decided to self-publish in the days before print-on-demand and Createspace. What I drew from this section of the book is how unlikely it is that I will ever see financial success as an author. Those are just the cold, hard facts of the publishing world. This would have discouraged me—except for Part Two.

“Faith, Culture, and the Craft of Writing” is the title and subject matter of Part Two. This is the best part of the book. Erickson approaches culture, writing, and art from a straightforward, unadorned West Texas philosophical perspective. He examines what makes good art good (beauty, structure, content, justice, and often humor) and anchors his thinking in the Christian worldview. He is decidedly opinionated (and admits it), but I find his opinions decidedly biblical. It was in Part Two that I heard most clearly the call to keep writing, no matter whether I am ever “successful” at getting published. This section of the book contains tremendous encouragement for the Christian artist to be true to the call, the vocation, without getting overly caught up in the reception of his work—or lack thereof. Erickson’s basic message is that if God has gifted you to write, then write.

Erickson offers twenty specific tips on writing in Part Three, some of which you’ve heard before (don’t use too many adverbs, don’t write in the passive voice), some of which are practical (have a skill that will support you), and some of which are a plea for preserving the culture (don’t write anything that will shame your mother).

This is an excellent and encouraging book for aspiring writers. The most valuable part is his philosophy on art and culture expressed in the second section of the book. Highly recommended.

Book Review: Creation Regained

Wolters, Albert M. Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985.

   Wolters advocates building a worldview founded upon the three categories of Creation, Fall, and Redemption. All of reality can considered under one or more of those three rubrics. He concludes that Creation consists of creative acts in three realms, (1) the creation of the physical cosmos, (2) the creation of natural laws, (3) the creation of norms, or normal behavior within the various spheres of the creation. The Fall has corrupted creation in its three parts. Redemption redeems, not just man, but all of creation.

    Wolters then advocates that the Christian’s role is to promote redemption in all three of the realms of creation. He proposes doing this by looking at the world through the grid of “structure” and “direction”. Structure has to do with analyzing something to see what part of it is part of the original good creation. What part of it is creational? Direction has to do with trajectory, discerning how the Fall (or Redemption since the Fall) is influencing it.

    Wolters firmly believes that it is the job of the Christian not to wholly reject any portion of the creation, but to rather bring redemptive direction back to it, ie, to redeem it.

    His categories and analysis are fascinating and very provocative. Of particular note is his argument that there are “norms” in creation, norms which have been perverted and warped by the Fall. There are also a few weaknesses to the book: it really does not engage the cataclysmic destruction of the earth and world systems contained in Revelation. His eschatological view appears to be probably post-millennial or a-millennial; hence, in his viewpoint the kingdom just continues to advance. His view of spiritual gifts is a little weak (what part of miraculous healing, for example, is creational?). At a few points he contradicts himself (no one human institution is above another; but government creates laws to regulate business).

But these are minor issues; on the whole the book is excellent in providing a path to form the right questions (this is how Wolters puts it) to properly analyze modern cultural issues. I recommend it highly. At just 97 pages its probably the best-in-class short book on worldview out there.

Review of Worldview as Worship

Worldview as Worship, by Eddie Karl Baumann

Baumann is a Christian educator who desires to be thoroughly biblical in the way he approaches education, particularly surrounding the issue of how one integrates biblical faith with content, irrespective of the particular teaching discipline. His goal is that education would be properly transformative for the student, not merely informative.

In order to introduce his ideas to the reader, Bauman very creatively assembles a fictional faculty at a Christian high school, and uses the characters as a foil for building his case at the beginning of many of the chapters. This is especially effective as he presents the faculty as attending a series of conferences conducted by a specialist who is challenging them to develop a truly biblically transformative educational environment.

Baumann has several basic points he wants to get across. He makes a case that the common conception of worldview as a rationally qualified philosophy actually confuses philosophy with worldview. Baumann argues that worldview is in fact inculcated by culture and is, in that sense, pre-rational. He contends that a particular worldview can actually support several disparate philosophies.

Second, Baumann argues that worldview formation (and transformation) is more akin to an apprenticeship model than to an academic model. As he says at the end of his book, it is more caught than taught (312).

His conclusion is that a genuinely biblical integration of faith and content must take place in the context of a faith community that is actively obeying Christ, fulfilling His commands to love our neighbors as ourselves. Merely having the right answers to questions does not display a genuinely biblical worldview. Hence the title, Worldview as Worship.

It is a well-written, carefully-argued book. Not all of his thoughts do I agree with, especially when he veers into areas such as economics. His division of the varieties of biblical worldview into types is interesting (pp 216-240). I think it is a little more tied to one's eschatology than Baumann does, nonetheless it was provocative.

Strengths of the book: exhaustively researched, theologically astute, carefully argued, well illustrated with examples and scenarios. Some of his thinking I would characterize as profound. He does a wonderful job of assembling the biblical data and then interpreting it in a theologically accurate way, all the while using numerous quotes from other writers to buttress his own thinking.

Weaknesses of the book: it was almost too much. His argumentation was so close and so detailed that I was frequently losing the larger picture of the points he was seeking to advance. It would help the readability of the book to use more subheadings that would guide the reader through the labyrinth of his argument with single sentences. At times I also lost the sense of the progression of the argument. I have to admit, however, that this might be less of a problem for most readers, as it took me a long time to read the book (my fault, not Baumann's), and therefore I may have lost track of the argumentation simply because of my own slowness in reading.

Worldview as Worship is an excellent book for thinkers who are at least somewhat conversant with philosophy and philosophical terms, and who are solidly biblically literate. It is college-level material, if not graduate-level, in my opinion.