Saturday, August 26, 2006

Worldview - God in a box?

The vicar of the local church lent my son a copy of Answers, a magazine published by an organization called Answers in Genesis which promotes a belief that the earth was created somewhere around 4000BC in seven literal days.

There is an article in the magazine taken from John MacArthur's book Think Biblically! entitled What's your Worldview?. The article starts by defining worldviews and offers this as a working model for a Christian worldview:
The Christian worldview sees and understands God the Creator and His creation - i.e., man and the world - primarily through the lens of God's special revelation, the Holy Scriptures, and secondarily through God's natural revalation in creation as interpreted by human reason and reconciled by and with Scripture, for the purpose of believing and behaving in accord with God's will and, thereby, glorifying God with one's mind and life, both now and in eternity.
The definition of the Christian worldview comes from MacArthur's worldview and many Christians would hold a radically different perception. I was kind of horrified as it puts God in a box and I believe He is bigger than that. The constrain God to His written word gives all sorts of logical problems, like what happened before it was a written word, did followers of Jesus have some kind of stunted relationship with God? Then followwers a modernist definition of 'creation interpreted by human reason'.

He then goes on to suggest a purpose for all this of following a works orientation to relationship with God by 'behaving in accord with God's will'. Of course, MacArthur appears to be from the sola scriptura school:
... its is true that the Bible alone contains all that Christians need to know about their spiritual life and glodliness through a knowledge of the one true God, which is the highest and most important level of knowledge

For this he references 2 Peter 1:2-4, which actually says:
(2) Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. (3) His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. (4) Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
So in reality MacArthur in interpets Scripture through his worldview to make his statement. Hmmm... doesn't this mean that he really from the prima scriptura school? He does admit:
Also while it does not exhaustively address every field, when Scripture speaks in any subject area, it speaks authoritatively
Yes, agreed, but... how you interpret Scripture speaking authoritatively is the question isn't it!

What he really seems to miss is the the spoken word of God of which the written word of God is a record. Yes, the God speaks through the Bible today but He continues to speak directly to human beings. It's called 'having a relationship' and is what God wanted in the first place!

It was the Pharisees who changed it into a set of written rules. What I see around the church today is that many are reverting to a Pharisee like approach to the Bible. I think Jesus is upset with them today as he was with the Pharisees 2000 years ago.

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