Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism [Paperback]

Douglas Groothuis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 9, 2000

A 2001 Award of Merit winner!

The concept of truth as absolute, objective and universal has undergone serious deterioration in recent years. No longer is it a goal for all to pursue. Rather postmodernism sees truth as inseparable from culture, psychology, race and gender. Ultimately, truth is what we make it to be.

What factors have accelarated this decay of truth? Why are people willing to embrace such a devalued concept? How does this new view compare and contrast with a Christian understanding?

While postmodernism contains some truthful insights (despite its attempt to dethrone truth), Douglas Groothuis sees its basic tenets as intellectually flawed and hostile to Christian views. In this spirited presentation of a solid, biblical and logical perspective, Groothuis unveils how truth has come under attack and how it can be defended in the vital areas of theology, apologetics, ethics and the arts.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Groothuis offers a fascinating and intellectually rigorous work on truth and its implications in postmodern society and personal life. -- CBA Marketplace, June 2000

About the Author

Douglas Groothuis (Ph.D., University of Oregon) is associate professor of philosophy at Denver Seminary. He is also the author of The Soul in Cyberspace and Unmasking the New Age.

Product Details

• Paperback: 303 pages
• Publisher: IVP Books (May 9, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0830822283
• ISBN-13: 978-0830822287
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #416,924 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am a philosopher who serves as Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary and as an Affiliate Faculty at Metropolitan State College of Denver. I have authored two dozen academic papers published in journals such as Religious Studies, Inquiry, Sophia, Philosophia Christi, Think, and Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. I have also published dozens of articles in magazines such as Christianity Today, Books and Culture, The Christian Research Journal, and many others.

I am the author of eleven books:

1. Unmasking the New Age (InterVarsity Press, 1986)
2. Confronting the New Age (InterVarsity Press, 1988)
3. Revealing the New Age Jesus (InterVarsity Press, 1990)
4. Christianity That Counts (Baker Books, 1994)
5. Deceived by the Light (Harvest House, 1995)
6. Jesus in an Age of Controversy (Harvest House, 1996)
7. The Soul in Cyberspace (Baker Books, 1997)
8. Truth Decay (InterVarsity Press, 2000)
9. On Jesus (Wadsworth, 2003)
10. On Pascal (Wadsworth, 2003)
11. Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (InterVarsity Press, 2011)

I also co-edited the volume, In Defense of Natural Theology: A Post-Humean Assessment (InterVarsity Press, 2005) with James Sennett.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 42 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars For the Most Part, Excellent December 21, 2001

By J. F Foster

Format:Paperback

Groothuis has done a good job in this book of profiling postmodernism and discrediting it in light of its devastating theories on truth and living. In the process, he does a good job of affirming the reality of universal truth and showing how Christianity's worldview best honors absolute truth in comparison to other worldviews, most notably postmodernism.

This book is an attempt to touch on various aspects of the postmodernist issue. Groothuis spends a good deal of time deconstructing the postmodernist objection to universal truth and its embrace of 'cultural truths', along with the worldview's inability to provide any basis for the many presuppositions it makes. He also analyzes the massive internal inconsistencies prevalent throughout postmodern thought and eloquently demonstrates that many adherents to postmodernism tend to be first in line to fail the litmus tests of their own worldview. He also analyzes the issue of whether language can express truths beyond itself, which is a common assertion among prominent postmodernists. Groothuis also spends a chapter looking at the dangerous apologetics that some prominent Christians have developed which resemble postmodernist thinking. In many of these areas, Groothuis's analysis is thorough and excellent, with an emphasis on heavy quotation from those he is critiquing.

Although somewhat minor, I must also say that I thought the cover of the paperback was outstanding. The cover depicts a barren landscape, almost a wasteland. This illustration is very applicable to the postmodern worldview. After reading this book, I think quite a few readers will rightly conclude that postmodernism is an extremely depressing and hopeless way of thinking about the world and its inhabitants.... In many ways, the impression I got from Groothuis's book is that postmodernism is really on a quest to devalue almost everything under the guise that we don't really know anything. Groothuis's quote from Dorothy Sayers about halfway through the book is one of the best quotes I've ever heard about the futility of the postmodernist outlook on life and truth. Utterly devastating.

I debated whether to give the book 4 or 5 stars. I opted for 5, but I will note a couple of regrets I have about the book that do not diminish the overall rating but are regrets nonetheless. First, Groothuis's analysis of postmodernism appears pretty confined to the atheistic/agnostic wing of postmodernism. And while I certainly appreciated his appraisal in this area, I think Groothuis would have really hit a homerun if he had also taken some time to analyze the spiritual postmodernism that is rampant as well. In many ways, the spirituality aspect of postmodernism is more important than the non-spiritual aspect. New Age spirituality draws heavily from postmodernism and this phenomenon is more prevalent than atheistic postmodernism, at least in America. But this is an area that Groothuis does not explore. Lastly, Groothuis's defense of egalitarianism against the charge of postmodernism is highly subjective in a way that the rest of the book is not. Groothuis and his wife are well known advocates of egalitarianism, and this advocacy is clearly prominent in this section. This would have been okay had Groothuis's analysis of this issue been as honest as the rest of the book. But whereas Groothuis quotes extensively from postmodernists throughout the rest of the book, he does not quote at all from the traditionalist school within Christianity while trying to advance the school of egalitarianism. Ultimately, Groothuis does not present a fair depiction of the traditionalist school of thought (he goes so far as to summarize that traditionalism, in his opinion, is based on prejudices that are outdated, which is ad hominem and inaccurate), and this is regretable since such an approach tends to resemble postmodernism in its superficiality.

But given that these two points are minor enough that the book still stands on its own as a solid critique of postmodernism, I give the book 5 stars and recommend it to anyone who is struggling with the meaning of truth, whether truth can be authoritative and universal, and what this means to daily living. Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars a compendium of postmodern ideas March 1, 2012

By Kaiser

Format:Paperback

Truth Decay provides a much needed Christian critique of Postmodernism. There is a lot philosophical technical jargon that the reader maybe unfamiliar with. The average reader may find the subject matter boring, but I urge any sincere Christian to read this book. Panning for gold is an arduous task, but the work is well worth it once the gold is found. The same analogy holds true for Truth Decay. There are many precious nuggets of knowledge related to absolute truth and how the individual can know what truth is and how it impacts the life of the Christian believer.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Valuable July 17, 2012

By S. Grotzke

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

"A venerable old Russian proverb claims that `one word of truth outweighs the world.'" (Kindle Location 101).
Point: Postmodernism has corrupted any foundation upon which man may stand. This must be evaluated, critiqued, and challenged in a thoughtful and biblical manner.

Path: Groothuis leads the reader through the barren landscape of modernism to postmodernism. He stops along the way to explain a biblical view of truth and how postmodernism has undermined it. He writes on ethics, race, gender, and beauty. He concludes with a short appendix on the medium of television.

Sources: Francis Schaeffer, C. S. Lewis, etc. He challenges men such as Rorty and others.

Agreement: Groothuis offers a helpful overview of the postmodern mindset and the predicament that thinkers find themselves in today. He references a wide group of authors and intellectuals, and helps to categorize their ideologies.

Disagreement: I would have liked to see more interaction with the afore mentioned authors. He quotes others, but does not spend much time wrestling with their ideas. This leads to a second frustration, that of the plethora of quoted material. One gets a sense of what Groothuis thinks, but must read between the "quoted" lines.

Personal App: There is a proper way to evaluate, critique, and challenge the postmodern worldview - it is through the base of Scripture.

Favorite Quote: "If there is no beauty beyond the eye of the beholder, art becomes merely a tool for social influence, political power and personal expression; the category of obscenity is as obsolete as the ideal of beauty." (Kindle Locations 200-201).

It would be worth another read and I would recommend it....

Suggested reading:
Culture and Anarchy (Oxford World's Classics) by Matthew Arnold (there is a free kindle version)
The Culture We Deserve : A Critique of Disenlightenment by Jacques Barzun
An Experiment in Criticism (Canto) by C.S. Lewis
Manalive by G.K. Chesterton Read more ›

15 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best discussion of evangelical uses of postmodernism June 14, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Everyone who is interested in a Christian approach to postmodernism with applications for theology must read this book. Groothuis is the first author to provide a useful overview of postmodernism from a Christian perspective while at the same time dealing substantively with theological issues. What we have here is a nuanced evangelicalism that sees evangelical theology's recognition of the objective and propositional nature of revelatory truth in scripture, not as a sad side effect of an Enlightenment Modernist ethos, but as a traditional, indeed pre-modern viewpoint that has viability in the contemporary context. While Groothuis is not naive about the way much evangelical evidentialism has relied too heavily on Modernist categories, he manages to avoid the broad strokes painted by authors like Grenz and McGrath, who at times seem to think that the very concept of scriptural infallibility itself is an Enlightenment construct, rather than the premodern notion that it is.

This book is the first to reply to Stanley Grenz and Alister McGrath in a way that does not fall prey to naive ultra-foundationalism (rather to more of a "modest foundationalism" like that of Alvin Plantinga) but at the same time does not run tail-tucked from pomo fads that evangelical theologians seem to be more scared of than anyone else (as Alan Jacobs rightly noted in his recent article in Atlantic Monthly). Unlike Grenz and McGrath (and their popular counterpart Chuck Smith, Jr.), Groothuis achieves a balance: he recognizes the importance of understanding the postmodern condition and even learning from it, without selling out to it....

One only hopes that Groothuis's next project will be his own book along the lines of Grenz's Renewing the Center, in which Groothuis will offer a more extensive version of the chapter that deals with the approaches of Grenz, McGrath, et al., and show that there is a credible way to be an evangelical in the postmodern era without scrapping the last 250 years of evangelical theological wisdom. Read more ›