Monergism Books

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Description:In postmodern society, truth no longer exists in any objective or absolute sense. At best, truth is considered relative. At worst, it is a matter of human convention. But, as Os Guinness points out in this book, truth is a vital requirement for freedom and a good life.Time for Truth urges readers to seek the truth, speak the truth, and live the truth. Guinness shows that becoming free and truthful people is the deepest secret of integrity and the highest form of taking responsibility for ourselves and our lives. Now in paperback, this engaging book will interest Os Guinness fans, thoughtful readers, and those concerned with moral, political, and cultural issues.

One word of truth outweighs the entire world. So said Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the former Soviet Unions one-man dissident movement whose courageous stand for truth helped topple his countrys machinery of propaganda, deception, and terror. But in the West today it appears that truth in any objective form is dead. At best it is relative and at worst it is created. Where does this leave us?

In Time for Truth Os Guinness argues that truth is far from dead. Not only is it alive and well, but it is undeniable and far from inconsequential. Truth matters supremely, he says, because without truth there is no freedom. In fact, truth is freedom, and the only way to live a free life is to become a person of truth.

Guinness examines the crisis of truth and explores the personal, practical, and public considerations of becoming people of truth. Living in truth has consequences on many areas of life, including politics, scholarship, and business. But it begins and ends with the personalwith each of us as who we really are.

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.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard
Os Guinness is surely our most penetrating critic of modern culture. And in Time for Truth he cuts to the heart of a problem that threatens America and the West more than any armed enemythe decline of truth as a guiding principle in our lives

Michael Novak, American Enterprise Institute
Os Guinness has done it once again, this time with a much needed meditation on truth. The idea of truth has been undermined in our generation, yet no idea is as crucial to liberty. The distinctions Guinness makes are indispensable in defending it. This book is timely and important