Dust of Death: A Critique of the Establishment and the Counter and the Proposal for a Third Way

In this book, Os Guinness lays out the history of humanist philosophy from its early beginnings with Greek philosophers in 500 B.C. and resurgence with the Renaissance, held in check for four centuries by the Reformation, its influence during the Enlightenment and continuing progression up to the time the book was written in 1973. With advancements in technology and machines, man forgot about God culturally. The result being that God was declared dead, and it is from the dust of that so-called death that Guinness writes. He critiques Western culture's failed attempts to replace God via revolutionary counter-culture. It isn't only the counter-culture with which he finds fault, however, as he is also critical of the establishment with its materialistic ideals and demands for conformity where there is a lack of authenticity and alienation of the individual. The author certainly did his homework and gives a lot of information in this thick book. In more than one hundred sections with provocative chapter titles such as "The Striptease of Humanism," "The Twilight of Western Thought," "The Importance of Futurology," "The Angry Young Men," "The Psychedelics and God," and "Constructive Christian Radicalism," Guinness attempts a wide-ranging analysis of modern culture. Guinness also details the influx of Eastern religion and thought in the West and how the weaknesses of Western Christianity contributed to the cultural climate that gravitated toward the East. Three vital points of weakness which Guinness targets are (1) a compromised, deficient understanding of revelation due to a lack of biblical historicity and veracity (2) the modern Christian is weak in unmediated, personal, experiential knowledge of God, and (3) the church is focused on being a social club. Guinness advocates a third way involving re-formation.