Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, c2004, 479 pp
Description
Is God a public figure? Does Christianity have a legitimate role to play in the public realm of politics, business, law, and education? Or are secularists right when they relegate religion to the strictly private realm of faith and feelings? In Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey offers a razor-sharp analysis of the split between public and private, fact and feelings. She reveals the strategies of secularist gatekeepers who use this division to banish biblical principles from the cultural mainstream, stripping Christianity of its power to challenge and redeem the whole of culture. How can this divide be overcome? How to unify fragmented lives and recover authentic spirituality? With compelling examples from the struggles of real people, Pearcey shows how to liberate Christianity from its cultural captivity. She walks listeners through practical, hands-on steps for developing a full-orbed Christian worldview. Finally, she makes a passionate case that Christianity is not just religious truth but truth about total reality. It is total truth.… (more)
Media reviews
Back cover
Seldom does one find a book with serious content, historical depth, and Christian integrity that is also easy to read. If you feel lost in the fog of today's cultural confusions, read this book.
Back cover
A mind like a jewel...."Total Truth" is brilliant.
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The most serious undertaking on Christian worldview to date - from one of the finest writers in America.
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With marvelous clarity of thought and prose, Pearcey explains how modern science reinforces Christianity - and why more Christians should be aware of it.
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Pearcey is firing on all pistons. I love her stubborn and intelligent insistence on the gospel's truth and relevance to all of life.
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"Total Truth" exhibits the depth of research and breadth of coverage we have come to expect from Nancy Pearcey.
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One of the most profound writers today. Pearcey makes complex issues clear as no one else has.
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A unique combination of apologetics, worldview analysis, social commentary, and instruction manual. Pearcey's knowledge, insight, and faith place her among the top handful of relevant Christian thinkers of our time.
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Pearcey takes us into truer and worthier witness in our increasingly secularized world. All will profit mightily from what is written here.
back of book
"Total Truth" is amazing, both in the depth of its worldview analysis and in its superbly crafted writing style. The best work of cultural analysis from a Christian standpoint available today.
Inside of book
With the passion of an advocate and the skill of a surgeon, Nancy Pearcey sets forth the elements of a Christian worldview and then makes a persuasive case for Christian involvement in society.
Inside of book
I like the way Nancy Pearcey tells personal stories that help to incarnate the issues and make them come alive. I appreciate her clear, concrete, lively writing style. This message should get a wide hearing.
Inside of book
A fascinating study! The perspective is fresh, helpful, moving, and challenging. "Total Truth" is simple yet profound, passion-filled without being "preachy," broad in scope and centered on fundamental issues.
Inside of book
The important point Nancy Pearcey makes in her excellent and well-documented book is that Christians must not check their worldviews on the way out the church door. Christians need to do more than slap a veneer of Christianity over their work, hobbies, and studies. They need to fully integrate
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their faith with all of life. Show Less
Inside of book
"Total Truth" is well written, clear, and insightful. The prose is extremely easy to read, even though Pearcey is often dealing with heady philosophical subjects....a great book.
Inside of book
Nancy Pearcey takes the analysis of worldviews to another level, in the mos insightful applications since Francis Schaeffer.
Inside of book
In an easy-to-read, well-documented, sometimes provocative text, Nancy Pearcey has provided a superb worldview lens through which we can see things more clearly. All who read it will live their lives differently.
Inside of book
It doesn't matter how many Christians gain positions of influence in the cultural gatekeeping institutions if we don't permit our worldview to shape what we do. "Total Truth" recovers the biblical admonition to live all of life to God's glory.
Inside of book
Nancy Pearcey is a gifted writer and thinker. She offers clarity and insight in the midst of a cacophony of cultural trends and competing political and philosophical points of view.
Inside of book
Nancy Pearcey has written a book that spans intersections of secular thought and Christian orientation over a wide cultural horizon. While Francis Schaeffer gave a whole generation a credible framework in Christianity for the flow of ideas and their consequences, Pearcey goes more into the text
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and demonstrates how correct Schaeffer was in his analysis. Show Less
Inside of book
Anybody who has read Nancy Pearcey knows to expect a careful review of the literature, a keen discussion of the issues, and a creative analysis of the way ahead - all expressed in a clear and lively way. "Total Truth" does not disappoint: it addresses the most important issue facing the Christian
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church today. Show Less
Inside of book
"Total Truth" is marked by Nancy Pearcy's signature clarity, readability, and intellectual depth. It presents a passionate case for an integral and culturally relevant biblical worldview. It is rare to find a book of such religious and intellectual integrity which is at the same time so
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accessible and enjoyable. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member seoulful
A well-researched, well-written book by a scholar who was influenced by the theologian, Francis Schaeffer, to search for truth. She explains clearly what is a worldview and argues passionately that in keeping religion within our private walls, we have lost our ability to influence the culture.
LibraryThing member rbclibrary
Unless you've been living under a bridge in Norway eating billy goats, you've heard the word worldview bandied about lately. We've all got one, you know. What is your worldview? How did you get it? How do you evaluate a worldview? How do you apply your worldview practically and personally? These
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are all questions that this book will help you answer. Show Less
LibraryThing member Steve777
Very good revision of Schaeffer's historical and philosophical overview of Western culture as an explanation of the Christian worldview. The end of the book was a disappointment, as the author appeared to be using her book to try to settle some personal grievances.
LibraryThing member SamTekoa
"Total Truth, is a strange title for a homosapien book. Even the great Apostle Paul saw through a glass dimly. Not so with Ms. Nancy Pearcey. She has not a grid, but the grid. Maybe that is where I’m just too wary to fully join her. Ms. Pearcy has the grid. So somehow if you don’t use her grid
Her roots are with Francis Schaffer but somehow things come presented all packaged with little challenge on how evangelicals ought really to love one another. Loving Catholics isn’t even in the equation. In one particularly annoying segment she tells evangelicals to stop beating each other up over our understanding of creation as presented in the Genesis account and to go after the evolutionist. I guess after we impale them then we can get back to eviscerating one another. The book is not a total waste I only wish she had put more of her mental energies in how the love of Christ should look for us as thinking Christians."
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your Christianity is just not up to snuff, especially as a thinking Christian. She is just a little too confident in her assertions. It is a ‘we (thinking Evangelicals) have the total truth’ and all we really need do is convince the world of it and we pretty much rid the world of most of its problems. In the last chapter of her book she talks about our need to love one another and states that possibly the last chapter should have been the first. I fully agree with her here and wish that she had spent more time in really looking how we Christians should relate to one another in the love of Christ.Her roots are with Francis Schaffer but somehow things come presented all packaged with little challenge on how evangelicals ought really to love one another. Loving Catholics isn’t even in the equation. In one particularly annoying segment she tells evangelicals to stop beating each other up over our understanding of creation as presented in the Genesis account and to go after the evolutionist. I guess after we impale them then we can get back to eviscerating one another. The book is not a total waste I only wish she had put more of her mental energies in how the love of Christ should look for us as thinking Christians."
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LibraryThing member delenburg
Great book, and I not only gave it five stars but would also give Pearcey's other work "Soul of Science" coauthored with Charles Thaxton the highest rating possible. These are must read books for any serious truth seeker.
LibraryThing member WaterMillChurch
Truth is seen through our world view. Understanding our world views is like tying to see the lens of our own eye. False beliefs lead to false world views. Historical movements of thinking are discussed. These help explain how we have gotten to the point we are now. Total truth doesn't just come
Take your time reading this book. It will be worth your time but it requires effort and thought.
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from study, but from submitting our minds to Christ. We have to be willing to talk to people about the real basis of belief - the Bible. Take your time reading this book. It will be worth your time but it requires effort and thought.
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LibraryThing member thedenathome
Published 20 years ago, it was thought of as an instant classic then: I heartily agree with that assessment. Pearcey is a trenchant thinker and writer. Total Truth is filled with piercing analyses, exhibits wide reading and study, and is worth re-reading on a regular basis until the subject has
As a Christian philosopher, she takes pains to integrate theology into her work...and it is a practical theology that should make a difference in how one leads one's life. She is unsparing in her denunciation of the fact-value split in modern thought and shows how Christians have contributed to this false kind of dichotomy that ultimately relegates our faith to a secondary, pious role in a second storey that is irrelevant to "the real world" when it is factually, provably, the ground of all truth.
Yes, I am convinced of her thesis and believe that this book will change the direction of your life, if you will apply it appropriately, carefully, thoughtfully. That is my personal intention.
Oh, I do not agree with every word she writes, but the overall direction is solid, sound and unimpeachable.
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enabled you to develop your own worldview. She is an evangelical but does not hesitate to refer to atheists, agnostics, Catholics and others from a wide variety of backgrounds. Whether she is commending or critiquing, her ideas have weight and substance. As a Christian philosopher, she takes pains to integrate theology into her work...and it is a practical theology that should make a difference in how one leads one's life. She is unsparing in her denunciation of the fact-value split in modern thought and shows how Christians have contributed to this false kind of dichotomy that ultimately relegates our faith to a secondary, pious role in a second storey that is irrelevant to "the real world" when it is factually, provably, the ground of all truth.
Yes, I am convinced of her thesis and believe that this book will change the direction of your life, if you will apply it appropriately, carefully, thoughtfully. That is my personal intention.
Oh, I do not agree with every word she writes, but the overall direction is solid, sound and unimpeachable.
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Awards
Christian Book Award (Winner — 2005)
Language
Original publication date
2004
Physical description
479 p.; 24 cm
ISBN
1581344589 / 9781581344585