John MacArthur’s Truth War

i recently read a book called the truth war by john macarthur. he is a famous evangelical pastor who is the president of master’s seminary.

i was simultaneously very disappointed and frustrated with the book. here is one of the most influential men in america, and i dont think he really did justice to the topic which he intended to address. his main purpose, as i gathered it, was to discount the postmodern trend today that relativizes all truth. not only do i think he failed to prove his point, but i think he actually hurt the position for absolute Truth.

first of all, he spent the majority of his time building the case against “emerging church” leaders and the “emerging movement”. but in so doing, he almost exclusively quoted brian mclaren. personally, i am not in agreement with many of the things that brian says, and i know many self-proclaimed “emerging” members who dont agree with mclaren on major issues either. so to clump all of the emerging movement together and then argue against one individual isnt truly fair to the rest of the movement. it is using the fallacy of straw man. he makes a weak case for a certain position, and then destroys that position.

no wonder he can so easily do so, because he presents such a weak case for the emerging church.

i think macarthur short changes postmodernism and church history. for instance, with regard to philosophy, he wrongly labels various philosophers as “modern” philosophers, when they are really “postmodern”. but even with that aside, he takes one concept of the postmodern philosophy and takes it to an extreme and ignores much of what these philosophers wrote. his attention to veracity and lack of depth of reading just demonstrates that he is writing about something that he has heard about but not studied for himself. this is problematic as his primary argument against postmodernism is based upon a lack of understanding exactly what postmodernism is.

also, in regard to the church history bit, he sums the entire 2000 year history into a few key members, who are almost exclusively from within the Western half of the church. he points out that men like augustine held to absolute Truth (although he does no real analysis of their works, but merely sums up many of their main themes). he concludes that the “orthodox” church has always held to the ability to know such absolute Truth, and that anyone who has claimed otherwise has been labeled heretical. so what would he have to say to the Great Cappadocians? these men who embraced mystery and believed many things were concealed by God. anyway, i dont think he was very balanced with regard to church history, either. and this is even worse than the philosophy as he is supposed to be president of a seminary.

in summary, i think macarthur’s book uses two great fallacies: straw man and slippery slope. he creates weak cases for the position he opposes and then easily destroys that straw man. and he states that anything other than a strict adherence to the belief that we can know absolute Truth will drive us into ruin and sin and everything evil. so to make sure i myself am not straw manning his position, you are more than welcome to pick his book up for yourself. but if you are like me, you might be a little frustrated when you are finished.