Rating: 
Summary: Guinness identifies some of the symptoms but not the cure
Review: A friend of mine gave me this book to read over the Christmas holidays in 2001. I had some hope that Guinness would be more daring in questioning the evangelical establishment in how they've drifted further from Biblical truth over the last 50 years. Although I'm not entirely dissatisfied with the contents, there are a few problems. First of all, in Chapter 8, Guinness unjustly attacks premillennial thought as a hindrance to intellectual thought. I only need to refer the author and the reader to works written by Dr. Lewis Chafer, Dr. John Walvoord, Dr. J. Dwight Pentecost, Dr. Robert Lightner, and Dr. Charles Ryrie as examples of excellent premillennial intellectual thought. Furthermore, it has been my own experience that the more premillennial a church or organization is, the more doctrinally sound it is in other areas of theology and practice. Second, Guinness fails to even mention the establisment of new evangelicalism in the 1940s and 1950s by men such as Harold Ockenga, Edward Carnell, and Billy Graham. New evangelcialism has had a profound negative impact upon the ability of the average Christian to think about doctrine. If evengelical church leaders were to teach doctrine to the average Christian, then they would learn about the differences between the various denominations, thereby undermining the ecumenical efforts of the new evangelical establishment. Therefore, Guinness fails to recognize that the evangelical establishment does not want their followers to think too much lest they question their philosophies. Third, Guinness seems to think that a movement away from the Puritanical mindset is to blame for the lack of intelectualism among evangelicals. But this view does not hold under a critical view of early American history. The Puritans were notorious for torturing and even murdering those whom they did not agree with. Clearly, the Puritans did not provide an atmosphere for intellectual thought in early Massachusetts. On the positive side, Guinness deserves some credit for warning the reader about the dangerous anti-intellectualism of the Word of Faith and charismatic movements. For a better explanation of the current sorry state of evengelicalism, read Dr. Robert Lightner's Neo-Evangelicalism Today, if you can find a copy.
Rating: 
Summary: How we think
Review: After reading the statement on page 146, midway through the second paragraph: "But anyone who studies the biblical understanding of knowledge and knowing soon realizes that God determines how we think as well as what we think," I wonder why the need for the rest of the book. And it does seem to contradict the book's title. "How we think" and "what we think" is the total of who we are. Fat minds determined by God? Interesting reading - somewhat negative until the closing pages - but well worth my time.
Rating: 
Summary: Relevant Diagnosis of A Severe Problem
Review: As an evangelical pastor, I agree with the author's theme that many believers hold the mind in contempt; people want to feel, not think. Yet the emphasis of Scripture is that lives are transformed as minds are renewed (Rom.12:2).
The evangelical world is in trouble: we have a higher divorce rate and a higher bankruptcy rate than society at large. Few will address this problem seriously because few will acknowledge that there really is a problem--at least a serious one.
Guiness has hit the nail on the head. Our churches are dumbed-down and we have a long history of contempt for thinking. This book is a must for all who recognize that all is not well within evangelicalism.
There are times the author is unfair, as, for example, in his chapter about premillennialists. When many amillennial seminaries were denying the faith, it was the premillennial movement that became the bastion for solid doctrine. Among the non-feeling oriented premillennialists, doctrine and truth are often quite valued.
Despite some pet aggravations the author mishandles, this book is a MUST and should serve as a blueprint for changing course into a better direction. We must no longer applaud ignorance and view thinking as "heartless." Read this book!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Moss-backed fundamentalist
Review: Good book that shows how temporal distractions can distract us from those eternal things that should be our focus. It is a quick read, broken down into short chapters. In perhaps one of the most convincing proofs for the necessity of the book, I actually found it in the "diet & exercise" section of my local Christian bookstore.
Rating:
Summary: An honest critique
Review: I enjoyed this book greatly. Guiness encourages us not to "bow down" to the unintellectual age which has hindered Christian scholasticism. He does this in two parts. The first part of the book explains how the American religious consciousness has moved away from knowledge and even claims to be the enemy of knowledge. The second part of the book describes the current postmodern situation in America in which even nonreligious people are anti-intellectual, and how the church is simply becoming one with the secular world. The power of this book is that Guiness reminds us that we as Christians are to "love the Lord with all our mind" as well. The one critique (and therefore the loss of a star) is that Guiness does not investigate the postmodern philosophy of religion movement, which is returning to an academic approach to religious thinking, especially the writings of John D. Caputo and Merold Westphal. Of course, Guiness is not a philosopher, so he should not have to be accountable on philosophical terms. However, by ignoring the theistic postmoderns he has given an improper picture of religion in the postmodern world. However, as an overall book, it is a must read for all religious thinkers and religious nonthinkers alike. He will make you think about how you think about religion.
Rating:
Summary: An honest critique
Review: I enjoyed this book greatly. Guiness encourages us not to "bow down" to the unintellectual age which has hindered Christian scholasticism. He does this in two parts. The first part of the book explains how the American religious consciousness has moved away from knowledge and even claims to be the enemy of knowledge. The second part of the book describes the current postmodern situation in America in which even nonreligious people are anti-intellectual, and how the church is simply becoming one with the secular world. The power of this book is that Guiness reminds us that we as Christians are to "love the Lord with all our mind" as well. The one critique (and therefore the loss of a star) is that Guiness does not investigate the postmodern philosophy of religion movement, which is returning to an academic approach to religious thinking, especially the writings of John D. Caputo and Merold Westphal. Of course, Guiness is not a philosopher, so he should not have to be accountable on philosophical terms. However, by ignoring the theistic postmoderns he has given an improper picture of religion in the postmodern world. However, as an overall book, it is a must read for all religious thinkers and religious nonthinkers alike. He will make you think about how you think about religion.
Rating:
Summary: A Wake-Up Call With No Real Solution.
Review: In FIT BODIES FAT MINDS, Os Guinness makes the point that American evangelical Christians have failed to "love the Lord your God with all . . . mind". He claims that this is the biggest sin that the American Church is guilty. In the book, Guinness explores the issues that led to a decline in Christian thought and issues that are currently keeping Christians from truly using their minds. I mostly agree with Guinness' claims. Evangelical Christians in America have not used our minds. We have left them atrophy to the point where, like the rest of America, we are addicted to mediocrity. We need to relcaim the intellect for Christ and take every thought captive to His obedience. However, Guiness doesn't really offer any solutions to the problem. Therefore, FIT BODIES FAT MINDS is more of a wake-up call than a plan of action.
Rating:
Summary: A Wake-Up Call With No Real Solution.
Review: In FIT BODIES FAT MINDS, Os Guinness makes the point that American evangelical Christians have failed to "love the Lord your God with all . . . mind". He claims that this is the biggest sin that the American Church is guilty. In the book, Guinness explores the issues that led to a decline in Christian thought and issues that are currently keeping Christians from truly using their minds. I mostly agree with Guinness' claims. Evangelical Christians in America have not used our minds. We have left them atrophy to the point where, like the rest of America, we are addicted to mediocrity. We need to relcaim the intellect for Christ and take every thought captive to His obedience. However, Guiness doesn't really offer any solutions to the problem. Therefore, FIT BODIES FAT MINDS is more of a wake-up call than a plan of action.
Rating:
Summary: A corrective to evangelicalism
Review: In this book, Dr. Guiness sets out to show the decline of the Christian mind in America in the past 200 years. He also reflects on the importance of the decline of Christian thought in American evangelicalism and its impact on Christian effectiveness in society. Guiness sketches eight different ways in which the "high point" of the Puritan Christian mind has declined; Polarization, Pietism, Primitivism, Populism, Pluralism, Pragmatism, Philistinism and Premillenialism. While I would generally agree with much of his analysis here, I wondered how Arminianism (in contrast to Calvinism) has contributed to the decline. It was a very interesting idea; the Arminian-Calvinist issue is one I'm currently exploring in my own study. His section on eschatology (the doctrine of last things; Christ's return, Rapture etc..) was also strange; eschatology is not a field that I have studied. I would agree that an excessive preoccupation with "end-times" can distract Christians from acting in the present (which seems to be his point) but otherwise I don't really see the significance of this point. One idea that came up several times in this section is the degradation of belief, theology and doctrine; a shift that has severely affected American evangelicalism. One of the memorable quotes in the Pluralism chapter from G.K. Chesterton, "Tolerance is the virtue of those who don't believe anything." Chesterton and Guiness were no doubt referring to the philosophical position of tolerance (i.e. regarding all propositions as true) rather than the idea of simply peacefully co-existing. This is personified in such quotes from Billy Sunday as, "I do not know any more about theology than a jack-rabbit knew about pin-pong." However, each chapter is very short (4-6 pages) and I would have appreciated more documentation and evidence of what he was trying to show. To me, it seems that these small chapters could have quite comfortably been enlarged to 25-30 pages. His next section is about various secular influences on Christian thought (esp. the media, television and advertising). Again, his analysis seems too brief. His discussion of the contemporary image-centered culture versus the Christian word-centered (see John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word.."). I think this contrast was very insightful and it is a reminder that the means or medium, which is used to communicate, also says something (e.g. short, shallow, emotional commercials valued over slow, deep, thoughtful and propositional debate). Or as Marshall McLuhan said, "The medium is the message." Guiness' last section discusses what it means to, "think Christianly" and what steps can be taken to recover evangelical preeminence in American culture. In sum, I would have appreciated this book to be double its actual length. I had the feel that ideas were being mentioned in an almost passing manner and that much more could have been said.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Primer on Evangelical Anti-Intellectualism
Review: Os Guinness, Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum and one of the few conservative popular Western Angelicans, book is a good little primer on Western scosiety's, especially American society's in general and Evangelicals in particular, lack of interest in intellectual matters and almost complete ingorance of where many of current evangelical ideals have srung from. Religion he asserts was once the road to knowledge in America. He quickly shows the two phases of ideas that helped shaped American's anti-intellectual (1700-Civil War and Civil War to the present). Of course, most who read the book will be more familar with the more contempory arguements. The book is an easy read but does suffer from being to short. The chapters are not very long and the arguements are not quite laid out well enough. Although I agree with him, I think he should ahve written a more detialed book; however, I may be wrong in assuming too much. It may be that he was just writing a quick primer for a culture knee deep in intellectual mediocrity, and anything else may loose their attention.
|
