[…]Redeeming Sociology – ReformedForum.org[…]…

I somewhat sympathize with this assessment of the general tone of these works – although I haven’t seen the one on sociology yet. I wrestled with Poythress’ approach for some time, but I have become convinced that he writes for the pews and for the average Christian who does not have the resources – time or academic curiosity – to get into the fine polemical points of these debates as they crawl forward – and backward – in academic journals or among scholars and specialists. What I think Poythress recognizes is the fact that all the average Christian needs, or is able to make use of, or is even interested in, is a basic framework from which to view the anti-Christian charges launched in these fields, or from which to be able to detect the anti-Christian packaging or bias with which this material is consistently presented. Let me try putting it another way – Poythress’ books, at least these, are not a direct polemic against the skeptic or against skeptical views, which may disappoint apologetically inclined and theologically trained readers, who cut their teeth reading polemical literature from a polemical point of view, but they aim to provide the greater body of the church a sense of confidence in their respective areas. Christians are so very vulnerable because there simply are no resources out there to provide them with biblically and theological solid but also scientifically informed views – public level views – of the areas most often and very effectively hijacked by skeptics.

One thing that is very frustrating is that so very much of anti-Christian-theistic thinking and even overt atheistic thought goes unchallenged. It goes unchallenged in grade school classrooms, it goes unchallenged in the universities, in all forms of entertainment (TV, movies, radio, news, literature and commentary, and so on). And at the same time, the best of Christian responses are so narrow – pin-point precise, highly technical, or exhausted by in-house debates among apologists themselves, and in the end unhelpful to the greater body of the church. Poythress has avoided those traps and continues to produce readable and valuable literature which, I believe, will be of great service to the church, to the great numbers of unequipped Christian people, who will never take a seminary course, who are pastored by misguided and uninformed clergy, and who are otherwise left very much to the mercy of our educational culture and media culture.

I was struck recently as I pondered the vastness of the effect of modernism on the Christian mind of past generations, and then of postmodernism on more recent generations of Christians. I am truly afraid to think of the numbers who followed the seductive call of science, or of language philosophy, and wandered from the church. For these reasons I am very grateful for Poythress’ work.