Review of Apostate by Kevin Swanson

“The women had no more children, and the men lost reason and faith.” Richard Kipling

Apostate, Kevin Swanson’s latest book, is a chilling overview of the key players in our current cultural demise. Kevin systematically covers each apostate in turn, giving a brief, relevant, biographical synopsis along with their religious, philosophical, and social belief system. Then he helps the reader make the connections between the ideas of each man and the state of our current civilization.

“The crux of the worldview conflict which has ravaged the culture and entered the foyer of the Christian church in the third millennium A.D. is the denial of God’s right to be God, and the usurpation of that right by man. In a word, it is a life or death struggle over sovereignty. Who will be sovereign—man or God?”

His line of apostates includes:

1. Thomas Aquinas—Forming the Humanist Synthesis
2. Rene Descartes—Forming the Humanist Philosopher
3. John Locke—Forming the Humanist Theologian
4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau—Forming the Humanist Society
5. Jeremy Bentham—Forming the Humanist Ethic
6. Ralph Waldo Emerson—Forming the Humanist Person
7. Karl Marx—Forming the Humanist Political State
8. Charles Darwin—Forming the Humanist Scientist
9. Friedrich Nietzsche—Forming the Humanist Psychology
10. John Dewey—Forming the Humanist Education
11. Jean-Paul Sartre—Forming the Humanist Culture
12. William Shakespeare—(Macbeth: What’s the Metaphysic?)
13. Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter: Severing the Heritage)
14. Mark Twain (Huckleberry Finn: Rejecting the Faith)
15. Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck (Twentieth Century Literature)

The last two chapters deal with 1) our current influences in the form of music, and 2) what we can do to grow “gardens in the ashes.”

“If God fades away in the conception of reality, absolutes fade, everything fades. Humanists prefer this, but they end up with more than they bargain for. When God fades, truth fades, so why seek truth? When God fades, ethics fade, so why argue for any kind of moral imperative? Man’s reality fades, so why engage in the struggle for life at all? When humanist man arrives at full self-consistency, he loses any and all transcendent purpose for life. That is when post modern man and his societies will commit suicide.”

I like how he works through each apostate’s philosophy, exposing it for the ludicrous folly it is. Here’s one example:

[Sartre] writes,

“It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwords, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence.”

Sartre’s reasoning is not difficult to follow if you work it through carefully one proposition at a time. At first, man has not nature (or essence)—only existence. He shows up on the scene as an accident in a chance universe. Therefore he must define his own essence. As he begins to develop a plan and make his “choices,” he defines who he  is, what he is, what he is supposed to do (ethics), and where he is headed (purpose). There is only one small problem with all of this—Sartre begins with the assumption of man’s existence. How can he possibly assume the premise, “Man exists,” without the other important premise, “God exists?” Sartre has still failed to answer the original question. If God doesn’t exist, how can anything exist? Now you see that Mr. Sartre has not quite earned the title of a “good philosopher.”

This is a hefty, meaty book, but it is very accessible even to young people 13 and up. It is going on the “must read” list of books for my teens. I recommend it, too, for anyone who would like to have a grasp of the historical connections between the ideas of these men and the major problems we are facing in our world today as a result. Only by understanding WHY we are here, will we be able to find our way out.

“If culture is the living out of a worldview, then Christians will live as Christians only if they are well acquainted with their own worldview. Only then will they effectively express their worldview by way of culture—through music, movies, dress, language, etc. They must understand the antithesis and the points at which the Christian worldview opposes other worldviews (many of which are presented in this book.) When they set a good trajectory that best suits the Christian thesis in their music, art, education, economics, and media, they will transform the culture. As long as our families are immersed in the culture represented by other worldviews, their thinking and living will never conform to the Word of God.”

Book Trailer

Author Interview

Find out more about this book by listening to an interview with Kevin Swanson on Author Talks.