I’m about halfway through Nancy Pearcy’s “Total Truth” and wanted to share a few thoughts about it. Judging by the blurbs on the book jacket and some of the reviews it’s received on Amazon and in the blogsphere, it seems that Pearcy has struck a nerve among thinking Evangelicals. And “Total Truth” is an excellent book. Pearcy does an admirable job demonstrating why we must never separate life into “sacred” and “secular” domains. All truth is God’s truth, and genuine Christianity claims to speak to all of life (hence the title “Total Truth”).
Yet, there are many ways in which I think this book could have been much better. What I’d like to explore in this post is Pearcy’s description of her own conversion and what it says about the nature of faith.
Of course, I don’t question the genuineness of Pearcy’s conversion, and perhaps she leaves many details about it out of the book, but her description seems like something Mr. Spock would say if missionaries visited the Vulcans: “The only step that remained was to acknowlege that I had been persuaded — and then give my life to the Lord of Truth. So, at about four-thirty that morning, I quietly admitted that God had won the argument.”
I would be the last person to suggest that a conversion must be “emotional” or “dramatic.” Yet, the suggestion that conversion can be a matter of “God winning the argument” deeply troubles me. What if, at some point further along the journey, you face a question that isn’t answered by the arguments you’ve already heard? What if God seems unwilling to argue for a while or to speak at all? What if some of those “worldview” arguments that seemed so persuasive years ago lose some of their lustre when they get banged up against the pain of real life?
We can’t put our faith in arguments, and even less so can we put our faith in our own ability to weigh the final merits of any arguments. Arguments and reason can support a faith commitment, but they can’t comprise a faith commitment.
This may seem like a small point, but I think it has significant implications for how we posture the “Christian Worldview.” Is our main task to help God “win the argument?” Do we presume to serve as proxy arbiters of who “wins?” Or are we called to something more organic and relational, where arguments are only one small part of a continually growing relationship?
6 replies on “Pearcy's "Total Truth" and the Nature of Conversion”
You seem to be of the opinion that faith is illogical or unreasonable.
I think the point that people like Nancy Pearcy, Francis Schaeffer, others in the ID community are trying to make is that faith IS logical and reasonable. It is so, because God is logical and reasonable. By supposing that faith must be illogical you are separating reality into the “two-story” view that she mentions in her book. Supernatural does not imply irrational.
We are not trying to help God “win the argument”, as you say. Nor do we need to presume to server as proxy arbiters of who “wins”. This is because the point is precisely that God has already won the argument by being the Creator – there is no argument, in fact. He created reality, there are knowable truths about Himself and His creation. This is not open for debate! This is the truth. Either you accept this, or you accept the alternative, which is that truth is relative, etc, or however you would like to state the alternative in any of the myriad ways which all are rephrasing s of the same thoughts.
What could possibly be more organic and relational than to help others understand God, His creation, and our relationship to Him in a way that makes sense? That is the relationship Nancy is trying to describe. You can evangelize all you want, but if the people you bring to the Lord do not have a clear understanding of what the Biblical Truth means to their entire worldview, stretching all the way down to its foundations, then they will be ineffectual Christians in the world around them.
B. Youmans, thanks for your comment. I don’t think the Christian faith is irrational. I think there are excellent reasons to believe in the Christian faith, ranging from the historicity of the Resurrection to the nature of the moral sense in human beings, and many more.
I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest, however, that everything in the Christian faith is “logical.” The Trinity isn’t “logical,” nor is the Biblical tension between God’s soveriegnty and human free will. These are matters beyond human logic, which we must accept on faith based on the authority of God’s revelation to us. God Himself tells us this in Isaiah 55: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
I would agree with you as well that there are knowable truths about God and his creation. But to say there are knowable truths is not the same as saying we can know and express such truths so fully and completely that we can logically argue all the way to the Christian faith. Logic and reason support our faith, but ultimately our faith is based on presuppositions that are not completely matters of faith and logic. I suppose I’m echoing Van Til here a bit.
Finally, as to Pearcy’s “two-tier” concept, I think it’s useful but not fully adequate, and I don’t think that’s what I’m doing, but I hope to follow up on that in a later post.
Thanks for the conversation.
Therapy through Sunglasses
Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 1Corinthians 12v13. There is someone
David,
thanks for taking the time to read and respond to my comment thoughtfully. If possible, I’d like to continue the conversation. Please note that I’m very much aware of my own ignorance theologically and philosophically, but these are matters I do think a lot about, and this seems like a good time and place to engage in some friendly debate that might, perhaps, help one or the both of us in our inner thought. I also tend to be pretty poor at debate, so I apologize for my amateur attempts up front.
I want to question you about your conception that the things you listed are not “logical”. Obviously, definitions would be helpful here; but without getting too deep, I would like to say that I think those things ARE logical.
What is it that you think is illogical about the Trinity? That one God has 3 persons? How is that illogical? Is it also illogical to say that you have a body, a mind, and a spirit? I am not saying that the notion of the trinity is the exact same relationship as the tri-fold nature of a man; but I do think that if you can accept one, you can surely accept the other. The relationships are similar without being exact. Just because something is a mystery (or currently unknown) to our limited, finite understanding does not mean it is ultimately illogical. Have you ever heard the illustration of the Trinity as it relates to the conception of Time? Past, present, and future are all Time and interrelate with each other “mysteriously” in the sense that time ever-flows from the future, etc, but no one thinks of it as being illogical. Time is very much logical; we use it everyday in our lives.
And that really is the point that I am getting at. From the point of view of God, His mind as Creator of all things, how can anything that is NOT be logical? For it to be created by Him, it almost by definition MUST be logical – it must flow orderly and consistently from who He is, from His character.
Perhaps things look illogical, unknowable, and unfathomable to us from our perspective – but does that necessarilly mean that they are from God’s perspective? I would use the exact same scripture you used to make my point – God’s ways ARE above man’s ways. His logic and ability to lay out the logical argument for anything He does is perfect and may not be attainable to us here – but by His own nature, it must be logical and ordered, because He is logical and orderly, and He never changes.
Where does logic come from in the first place? Who created it? Sure, you can perhaps name some human beings throughout history who have “discovered” and “formulated” rules which together we study in school as “formal logic” – but what is the true origin of it?
You say our faith is based on presuppositions that are not matters of logic. What are some of these presuppositions? While we as humans may not be able to prove the truth of certain premises or presuppositions, that does not mean that arguments using them are not logical. And can we not inductively accept that the premises are likely true in light of other inquiry (intelligent design) and by process of refuting the alternatives?
B. Youmans, thanks for the further conversation. I suppose you’re right that a definition of “logic” would be in order. I’m probably not being as clear as I should be, partly because I’m still formulating and wrestling with some of these thoughts myself.
Logic, I think, is a set of criteria by which human beings evaluate the validity of arguments. (See, e.g., the Wikipedia definition here. Part of that set of criteria are the formal rules of logic. I think what I mean to say is that some things I believe as a Christian don’t satisfy the formal rules of logic.
The Trinity is one example. As to the nature of the Trinity, I don’t think any of your illustrations even come close to capturing it. Body, mind and spirit may be three aspects of the human person (I’m not even sure that those distinctions are valid), but they don’t represent three unique, individual persons. There is one person with three aspects. Nor do past, present and future represent three unique, individual “times”. There is one “time,” and different words we use to describe different points along the timeline. (Actually, there’s a whole other interesting discussion about whether “present” has any meaning, given that any particular moment referred to as “present” is already “past” by the time the reference is made, or whether “future” has any meaning apart from God’s soveriegn councils).
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in contrast to the different aspects of human persons or the different points along a timeline, are both three unique individuals and one God. It seems to me this violates the logical rule that something cannot be “x and not x” at the same time. It’s a mathematical rule: 3 is 3 and 1 is 1. 3 does not equal 1. Yet in the person of the Trinity this rule doesn’t apply.
Similarly, the statements “God is absolutely sovereign” and “man has free will” seem to me to violate the principle of non-contradiction. Both statements cannot be true. Yet they are.
You are correct, I think, to point out that these are matters seem illogical because they beyond human comprehension, and that they somehow must “make sense” because they are true. Precisely because they are beyond human comprehension, however, I don’t think we can speak of them as “logical,” since “logic” by definition is a set of rules human beings use to evaluate the validity of arguments. I don’t think understanding the Trinity is a matter of thnking that if we had enough information, we’d see that God isn’t really 3 or that He is’t really 1. He really is both 3 and 1, and we must presuppose that based on faith.
RE: Nancy Pearcy’s Total Truth. I don’t argue that we must live out our Christianity in the world. However, I find it ironic that Ms. Pearcy says that Descarte was a genuine Christian…and her hermeneutics in the second paragraph on page 47 leads us to conclude that the “birds of the air” and the “fish of the sea” were commanded by God to develop a social world…see Genesis 1:20-22. The same words, with the same meaning are applied to birds and fish that are applied to mankind…”Be fruitful and multiply”. We beg for Ms. Pearcy to spend more time in the Word. ae