From Publishers Weekly
Beloved Christian writer Guinness here bemoans current-day relativism and pleads with his readers to recognize the value of truth. We live in a new order, Guinness writes, in which "truth is dead and knowledge is only power." But this new creed will not bring about the utopia its postmodern boosters imagine. To the contrary, he contends, postmodernity, along with its cousin multiculturalism, may be the worst tragedy in all American history: if unchecked, it will end America's leadership of the West. (Clinton, "the first postmodern president," comes in for special opprobrium.) Guinness, however, is no fan of modernity, which, he says, relies too much on human reason. In place of either modernity or postmodernity, he encourages embracing the traditional religious worldview provided by Judaism and Christianity. Guinness is a lucid writer, and he presents his ideas without too much bombast (although his defense of faith is marred by a certain pro-American chauvinism). The ideas themselves are old news--which is precisely what Guinness likes about them. Unfortunately, he does not have the masterful gifts for apology of, say, G. K. Chesterton or Cornelius Van Til. In the end, even the reader who agrees with Guinness may feel that he sounds like an out-of-date grandfather arguing a case that has already been lost, with interlocutors who have already moved on to another conversation. (Feb.)
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Like Philip Yancey, another prolific and popular evangelical Christian writer, Guinness writes well, with plenty of appropriate citations of literary sources beyond the Bible. Intentionally producing a short book on a topic that could occupy volumes, he dissects the modern and postmodern presumptions about truth that have eventuated in such problematic outcomes of justice as the acquittals of O. J. Simpson and President Clinton. The modern presumption is that truth is historically, culturally, and even personally contingent, and the postmodern presumption is that truth is a function of power. He is not as successful in selling the Jewish and Christian view that truth is permanent and absolute. Seemingly assuming that he is addressing the already convinced and forensically adept, he explains but doesn't exemplify how to argue against either modern or postmodern relativism. For such modeling, religiously unconvinced readers piqued by Guinness' effort should turn to Peter Kreeft's excellent and entertaining
Refutation of Moral Relativism.
Ray Olson
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