Defending God's earth

This is a slightly revised version of an article published in Woman Alive in 1996.


Environmental issues are rarely out of the public eye. One that has caught the press attention recently is the Newbury bypass. The anti-bypass campaign has become a focus for civil rights as well as for environmental issues. There have been 720 arrests and it has cost the Highways Agency around £1.5 million in security.

However, compared with the States the campaign seems rather tame. There environmental groups are prepared to die and even kill in "defence of mother earth". Their motto is "Earth First!" They engage in ecoterrorism such as spiking trees, sabotaging roads, dismantling helicopters and destroying bulldozers. For them the real terrorists are the polluters and desecrators of nature.

All this raises important questions for Christians. Should we be involved in environmental action? If so, how far should we go? Should we be involved in civil disobedience?

Some Christians would say that we should not be involved in environmental care. Many reasons are given, but as we peel them back they seem to be no more than excuses:

Excuses for non-involvement

The problems are far too complex and too enormous for me to make a difference.
The size of the problems are irrelevant. We are not necessarily called to make a difference; God calls us to be faithful to him. He will look after the results.

"Going green" means being part of the New Age movement.
This is no more true than going door-knocking means being a Jehovah's Witness. New Agers do not have to have the monopoly on environmental care - after all the earth is the Lord's.

Jesus didn't get involved in environmental issues, so neither should we.
Jesus never wore trousers, does that mean we don't have to? Jesus was a person of his time; the environmental problems that we face today were not a major problem 2000 years ago in rural Palestine. Were he born in our time he would certainly have had things to say. He did get involved in his Father's world - his incarnation and resurrection are testimonies to that.

The Earth will get worse and worse there is nothing we can do about it, until Jesus returns and creates a new earth.
Such end-time fatalism is not supported by a careful reading of the Scriptures. The fate of the earth is not destruction but rather transformation. There will be a continuity between this earth and the new earth, in the same way as there is a continuity between our present bodies and our resurrected ones.


A Biblical Framework for Environmental Care

For Christians the guiding principles must be those of the Scriptures. The problem is that there are no obvious chapters or verses to quote. We need to discern the whole direction and tenor of the Scriptures. One way of doing this is to use the framework of creation, fall and redemption.

Creation
The Bible declares unambiguously: "The Earth is the Lord's" (Ps 24:1). It is this concept that is basic to a Christian environmental ethic. It is God's world: he created it, he loves and cares for it.

God commissioned humans, as his image bearers, to rule and subdue the earth. The language of subduing and ruling is very strong, in one place subdue is translated as rape (Esther 7:8). The meaning of these words must, however, be understood from their context. Subduing and ruling are to be done as image bearers of God, he is our role model: it is thus less exploitation and more specifically leadership as servanthood. It is God's earth, it is not ours to do with it as we see fit: we are stewards, as such we are accountable to God for our treatment of it. We are to serve the creation so that it can develop as God intends it. This involves caring and defending the earth as well as developing and cultivating it.

Fall
But then came sin. The first sin in some way affected the whole of creation. All environmental disasters can be traced back to the fall and to sin. Thus our stewardship becomes all the more difficult, it becomes a painful toil (Gen 3:16).

Human struggle with the earth is taken up in subsequent chapters in Genesis. Cain's murder of his brother means that the ground will no longer yield its crop (Gen 4:10-14). The prophet Hosea takes up the same theme: sin results in the land mourning (Hosea 4: 1-3).

Redemption
However, the fall is not the end. God, the author, enters his own story. Throughout the Old Testament we have in the flood story and in the Jubilee legislation glimpses of God working to redeem his creation. But it is ultimately in Jesus that redemption is accomplished.

Jesus' work on the cross redeemed the whole of creation. Nothing is exempt from the reconciling power of the cross. There is the potential of reconciliation for all of creation (Col 1:20). The work that Jesus began on the cross he will finish when he returns. The fate of the earth will not be one of destruction but of renewal, of transformation.

How far should we go?

Thus there seems to be a strong biblical basis for environmental care, it is part of our calling as stewards. God cares for it and so should we. But how far should we go in defence of God's earth?
1. Put our own house in order.
How can we live more benignly upon the earth? Recycle, reuse and repair where possible; and consume less. When tempted to consume ask yourself:

• Do I really need it?
• Why do I want it?
• Is it produced with just principles?
• How does it affect the environment:
• in the way it will be used and in the way it was produced?
• Will it promote responsible stewardship?

2. Get your local Church involved.
Consider joining with others to study what the scriptures say on environmental issues, pray, compile lists of resources, start a recycling scheme or encourage people to use it if one is already available.

3. Look broader
Educate yourself: but don't believe all that you see or read, every organisation has some axe to grind.

Use your democratic rights: vote in local and general elections, take up specific issues and lobby local government and MPs. The postage stamp is a powerful weapon.


Civil disobedience?

The Newbury anti-bypass campaign, involved many people in civil disobedience. Is this an option for Christians? Many point to Romans chapter 13 as demanding unconditional obedience to government. Government is established by God to be God's servant, to do justice (Rom 13: 1-5). And yet we are not called to blind obedience. Government is to be a servant, when it tries to become an oppressive master (e.g. Rev 13) we cannot obey. Without civil disobedience by Hebrew midwives Moses would have died at birth, and in many countries the gospel would not be preached. Civil disobedience for the Christian consists in obeying God rather than human authority (Acts 5: 29).

A Christian then can engage in civil disobedience, but there are also God-given constraints. It should be: a last resort; non-violent (harming neither people or animals, and property only minimally); an opposition of policies, not people; and done fully realising and accepting the consequences; arising from it.

Hence, involvement in campaigns such as the Newbury bypass are not off limits for Christians, but we cannot always accept our cobelligerents' worldview (see table) and sometimes our policies would drastically diverge. Involvement must arise out of a commitment to the lordship of Christ over his earth and not from selfish reasons.

Getting to the roots

For the Christian the root of all environmental problems is the fall, most can be traced back to greed and idolatry. Without tackling that problem we will, to an extent, be fighting a rear-guard action. Nevertheless, the defence of God's earth is part of our responsibility as stewards; but it is God first rather than earth first.

Everything is spiritual

At last someone else has taken up the neo-calvinist message: 'all of life is religion'.
[HT Jon Swales]

The theological ramblings of an Anglican ordinand

This blog by Jon Swales is well worth checking out. He's - as the blog title aptly suggests - an Anglican ordinand studying at Trinity College, Bristol. Plenty of worldview stuff and Tom Wright too!
Update: he's now blogging here

Odds and sods

David Lewis on divine evil [HT David Field]: "A God that would condemn any moral being to hell eternally and determinately is plainly unjust."

Vote on the image of God!

Paul Helm on 'Saving the planet'

American Theological Inquiry - a new online journal [HT Faith and Theology]

Four types of emergent churches and thinkers

Groothius's review of The God Delusion

Hector Avalos, author of The End of Biblical Studies (Prometheus 2007), responds to J P Holding on Debunking Christianity

Powered by ScribeFire.

The four horsemen

Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens in a round table discussion. [Ht Internet Infidels/ Debunking Christianity]

Hour 1 - Google Video | Quicktime (78.7 MB) | Torrent | Audio Only (mp3, 26.6 MB)
Hour 2 - Google Video | Quicktime (73.6 MB) | Torrent | Audio Only (mp3, 27.1 MB)

Andrew Basden pages

I am pleased to announce the launch of the Andrew Basden pages on All of life redeemed. Andrew is Professor of Human Factors and Philosophy in Information Systems at the Salford Business School, at the University of Salford he also maintains the invaluable Dooyeweerd pages. He is the author of A Philosophical Framework for Understanding Information Systems. There are 16 papers of Andrew's available in html form:



1999. On the ontological status of virtual environments
1999. A new framework for sustainability
2001. Beyond emancipation
2001. A philosophical underpinning for IT evaluation
2002.The critical theory of Herman Dooyeweerd?
2002. A Philosophical Underpinning For ISD
2003. with A. Trevor Wood-Harper A Philosophical Enrichment of CATWOE
2003.Enriching critical theory
2003.Levels of guidance
2004. Emancipation as if it mattered
2004. On Appealing to Philosophy in Information Systems
2005. Enriching humanist thought
2006. Information systems as a life-world
2007. 'Fresh light thrown on the Chinese room'
2007. A brief overview of Dooyeweerd's philosophy
2007. Frameworks for understanding IS and ICT

Brilliant!

Don't knock the cup! [HT David Field]

Cambridge Saturday School of Theology

A new set of lectures starts at The Cambridge School of Theology: 'The roots of contemporary culture'. Lectures are Jonathan Chaplin, Adrienne Dengerink-Chaplin and Jason Rampelt.

The course will include the following lecture topics and much more:

• Introduction to thinking about Philosophy in a Christian way (Rampelt)
• The rise of Naturalism and Skepticism (Rampelt)
• Dawinism in the past and present (Rampelt)
• From scientific control to the manipulation of society (J. Chaplin)
• The rise of modern Liberalism and the responses of Socialism and Romanticism (J. Chaplin)
• Political Ideologies Today (or anti-ideologies): Capitalism, Multiculturalism, Islamism, etc.(J. Chaplin)
• Art and its place in a biblcal worldview (A. Chaplin)
• Christianity's relationship to artistic making: a history and theology (A. Chaplin)
• Jesus-centred viewing and listening: The Christian and the contemporary arts (A.Chaplin)

Details

When?

The second Saturday of every month
Where?

Tyndale House, Hexagon Room, 36 Selwyn Gardens, Cambridge, CB3 9BA click HERE for map

How to Apply

Application Form

CLICK HERE FOR A PDF COPY OF BROCHURE TO PRINT

B J van der Walt: Transformed Ch 2

Culture, worldview and religion

This is a paper delivered at the International Symposium of the Society for the Reformational Philosophy on Cultures and Christianity AD 2000 held at Hoeven, the Netherlands, 21-25 August 2000. A shorter version without reference to development was published as part of the conference proceedings in Philosophia Reformata 66 (1) (2002)23-38, with the subtitle 'A perspective from the African Continent'. An edited version also appeared in African Journal for Transformational Scholarship 1 (1) (Nov 2002) 1-26.

Here van der Walt starts and ends by briefly looking at development. The origin of the idea is Western and the word development was first mentioned in 1944; this had the effect of splitting the world into two: the developed and the undeveloped. He also itemises some of the dubious motives behind development. The zeal behind development can only be understood when we see it as 'a secular form of salvation' (p. 47). He then turns to the concept of 'culture'. He examines two definitions of culture: the segmental and the comprehensive. The first sees culture as something that bestows 'lustre upon life'; the second regards it as 'human life in its totality' (p 49). He rightly asserts that 'every human being is a cultural being'. Development he notes is a cultural product. Each culture has aspects that are good, but also each culture has its own blindspots; each culture has a mixed nature.

Using a diagram of five concentric circles he examines five aspects of culture. The inner circle is the religious dimension, the next the worldviewish dimension, followed by the social, the material or technical and then the behavioural dimensions. As with all models it has limitations, but t serves well to illustrate the relationship between religion, worldview and culture: 'Religion and worldview influence (the remainder of) culture, but culture (for instance socio-economic-political circumstances) also influences worldview and religion' (p. 53). Religion he defines as 'the cultural directedness of all human life towards the real or presumed ultimate source (God/god) of meaning and authority'.

Worldview - our perspective on created reality - next comes under scrutiny. He makes an excellent observation on the difference between a worldview and an ideology: '' a wolrdview and an ideology have the same structure, but different directions. A worldview is normal and healthy; an ideology can be dangerous' (p. 58) Any worldview can degenerate into an ideology. He identifies six aspects of a worldview:

1. God/god

2. norms or values

3. being human

4. society or community

5. nature

6. time and history

Two of possible options between Christianity and culture, conformity and isolation, are dismissed in favour of a reformation or transfromation of culture. Our culture task, then, is to serve God (the direction) according to his will (the normative) in his creation (the structural) (p.62).

The six aspects of a worldview are identified in the Western, African and Christan worldviews. These are summarised in this table:



He then concludes by offering a definition of development:

Development is the (1) balanced unfolding of (2) all the abilities of the human being and (3) the potential of material things, plants and animals (4) according to God's purpose and (5) His will, to enable the human being (6) within his/ her own culture, (7) to fulfil his/ her calling (8) as a responsible steward of creation (9) in a free society (10) to the honour and glory of God.

Real Science, Real Faith

The book Real Science Real Faith, edited by Prof R.J. Berry, a collection of testimonies by senior scientists from a variety of fields, showing that Christian faith is compatible with life as a professional scientist is now available on-line (some of the links arn't yet working - but will hopefully in the near future):

• Entire book (pdf, 674 KB)


• Contents (pdf)
• Surprised by Science Colin Russell, Chemist and Historian of Science (pdf)
• Down to Earth Martin Bott, Geologist (pdf)
• Credibility and Credo Roy Peacock, Engineer (pdf)
• A God Big Enough John Houghton, Meteorologist (pdf)
• A Talent for Science Ghillean Prance, Botanist (pdf)
• Non in tempore sed cum tempore Robert Boyd, Space scientist (pdf)
• Biology and Belief Andrew Miller, Molecular biologist (pdf)
• How can I know God, or rather be known by God? Duncan Vere, Physician (pdf)
• Can Science and Christianity Both Be True? Colin Humphreys, Materials scientist (pdf)
• Personal Faith and Commitment Elizabeth Rhodes, Chemical engineer (pdf)
• Pathways Roger Bolton, Industrial chemist (pdf)
• Brains, Mind and Faith Malcolm Jeeves, Psychologist (pdf)
• Man–Dust with a Destiny Monty Barker, Psychiatrist (pdf)
• To Whale or not to Whale, That is the Question Ray Gambell, Conservation biologist (pdf)
• Genes, Genesis and Greens Sam Berry, Evolutionary biologist (pdf)
• Science and Christian Faith Today Donald MacKay, Physicist and brain scientist (pdf)
• Bibliography (pdf)

It has been placed on-line at the Science-faith resources. com site

A Fox in sheep's clothing?

Matthew Fox's Creation-Centred Spirituality

Western Christianity, because of its emphasis on dominion, has often been charged with paving the way for the current environmental crisis, consequently theologians and writers have attempted to defend Christianity against this unjust accusation. One such attempt is what has been named "creation-centred spirituality". Matthew Fox, an American Dominican priest and theologian, is the foremost representative of this recently developed spirituality. His basic premise is that we need a new religious paradigm: one that replaces the old dualistic and patriarchal "exclusively fall/redemption spirituality"; that seeks to place humanity within the creation; that celebrates creation's beauty and our creativity; that affirms our bodies. A creation-centred spirituality, Fox believes, is one such appropriate paradigm.

Fox's writings on "creation-centred spirituality" include Original Blessing ,[1] The Coming of the Cosmic Christ [2] and Creation Spirituality[3]; these have been influential among Catholics and Protestants alike, and further afield. He appeals to Christians who are seeking a spirituality that affirms rather than denies the creation, because he uses theological terms and is theologically literate. He also appeals to some greens who are searching for a spirituality to explain the principles of human awareness and existence and interconnectedness. Creation-centred spirituality, because it has roots in a wide range of spiritual traditions and religions, resonates with others of different cultures and beliefs. Fox has been accused of "pure Taoism" and of being "aboriginal"; his is the ultimate ecumenicalism!

So is his creation-centred spirituality benign? Is it as he claims orthodox and supported by the Bible?


A silenced prophet?

Despite his popularity not everyone is happy with Fox's teachings. In December 1988 he was silenced by his Dominican Order for one year; ironically this had the effect of increasing his popularity. A panel was set up to examine his work, and came to the conclusion that he was not heretical. Commenting on this, Fox says:

I have done my homework and have proven that what I am saying is part of the mystical Christian tradition.[4]

In 1994 Fox was dismissed from his order and became an Episcopal priest. It is important to Fox that his teachings are seen as part of the Christian tradition: he thinks tradition distinguishes a spirituality from a cult.

He has never sought confrontation with the Vatican, but that does not mean the Vatican is totally happy with Fox's work. In an interview with Satish Kumar, the editor of Resurgence, Fox remarks:

I have always written for the people [as opposed to the Vatican], and tried to speak to the people, and that is what I will continue doing, and if it means that I will be expelled from the priesthood, then that is the price I will have to pay. I will not leave the priesthood voluntarily because I have spent twenty years proving that this is our tradition; it is in the Bible, it is our mystic tradition.[5]

The mystic tradition

This "mystic tradition" which Fox sees as part of the Christian heritage, however, involves a highly selective view of Christian history on his part. In particular he draws on the "Rhineland mystics", who he sees as "champions of an ecological spiritual consciousness";[6] these include Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), Mechtild of Magdburg (1210-1290), Meister Eckhart (c.1260-1327) and Julian of Norwich (1342-c.1415). Technically the latter is not a "Rhineland mystic" but Fox feels she deserves to be called one. He makes use of the works of Francis of Assisi (1181-1225) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).[7]

However, Fox's handling of these mystics is not always fair. Simon Tugwell O. P., in a review of Fox's Breakthrough [8] a translation of and commentary on Eckhart, observes:

it is difficult to avoid the feeling that the mistranslation is deliberate, intended to minimise anything that would interfere with the alleged "creation-centredness" of Eckhart's spirituality.[9]

Tugwell also notes that Fox

repeatedly insults his readers with bland assertions which it would be very difficult to substantiate, with tendentious half-truths, or with downright falsehood.[10]

And concludes that "Breakthrough seriously misrepresents Eckhart".


Creation-centred spirituality

Fox's creation-centred spirituality, which "considers the environment to be a divine womb, holy, worthy of reverence and respect"[11], is a backlash to what he sees as the poverty of Western spirituality. Fox is opposed to the subject/object dualisms that have dominated theology, at least according to Fox, since Augustine;[12] and he rejects the emphasis - again through Augustine - on a fall/redemption theology.[13] It will be worth looking at both these in turn. Before doing so a brief comment on Fox's use of Augustine is called for.

Augustine (354-430)
The blame for our current spiritual poverty is laid, almost solely, at Augustine's door:

The creation-centred spiritual tradition offers an alternative to much of Christian history for it delineates the truth that hellenism and its dualisms regarding the body, feeling and spirit is not Jewish or Biblical thinking and that Augustine's dualistic interpretation of Christianity was a distortion of Jesus' spirituality. since vast proportions of both Catholic and Protestant churchlife and polity have been constructed on Augustine's dualistic Neoplatonic world view, spirituality in the West must let go of Augustine's thought if it is to immerse itself in the profound wellsprings of Biblical spirituality and contribute to creating a global civilisation.[14]

Lawrence Osborn points out the irony of Fox's vehement attack on Augustine. Fox "relies heavily upon the mystical tradition of his own religious order: a mysticism which is steeped in Augustinian influence".[15] It is this selectivity of the truth that characterises much of Fox's scholarship; this is not to say it is deliberate: Fox's world-view - as does everyone's - colours his perception of reality and his choice of "facts".

Dualism
Fox is only partly correct when he notes that "Subject/ object dualisms have characterized the mainstream of spirituality in the West from St. Augustine to Jerry Falwell and points in between".[16] Dualism was also rife pre-Augustine: Plato (427-347 BC) had a form/ matter dualism that characterised all his philosophy, which in turn had an enormous impact on the early church fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215), Origen (c. 185-254) and Basil of Caesarea (c.330-79). It was through Augustine, under the influence of Plotinus, that dualism "received its ultimate theological legitimation".[17] However, the mystics that Fox draws upon were not free from dualism. Aquinas in particular was responsible for a nature/ grace dualism that paved the way for Descartes' radical dualism of mind/ matter.[18] This mind/ matter dualism is the root of the desanctification of nature,[19] the very thing Fox wants to avoid!

Fox is so keen to eradicate any dualism that he obliterates any distinction between the Creator and his creation. This distinction is described by Fox as "the ultimate dualism".[20] To do this he does not embrace pantheism (God is everything and everything is God) but the closely related panentheism (God is in everything and everything is in God).

...we have to move from theism to panentheism. Theism has haunted us for 300 or 400 years in the West and it basically says I'm here and God is somewhere else, and prayer is about getting to God or getting God here. This encourages subject/ object relationships. Carl Jung said that there are two ways to loose your soul and one is to worship a god outside of you.[21]

For some theologians panentheism can be a subset of theism; for Fox it is more a subset of pantheism:

I am proposing a new theology of creation in which God is not an absentee landlord. God is the creation.[22]

He is vehemently opposed to what he calls "theism": "... theism is by definition dualistic".[23] In 2005 – when Ratzinger was made Pope - he posted 95 theses to the ‘door’ of St Joan’s, MN.
Thesis 6 was:

Theism (the idea that God is ‘out there’ or above and beyond the universe) is false. All things are in God and God is in all things (panentheism).

However, his use of the term theism is a misleading. Most of his criticisms of theism apply to deism but not to theism.[24] He regards theism as naive compared with panentheism:

Moving from a theistic ("God out there" or even "God in here") to a panentheistic theology ("all is in God and God is in all") is a requisite for growing up spiritually.... A theistic imaging of God is essentially adolescent for it is based on an ego mind-set, a zeroing in on how we are separate from God.[25]

In attempting to undermine this "dualism" he falls into the trap of monism: all is one. Fox's panentheism is an attempt to do justice to the involvement of God in his creation and to undermine any desanctification of creation. It fails because it does not distinguish God from his creation: it deifies the creation; consequently humanity becomes divine and paradoxically no different to the grass. A more biblical way to deal with the problem of God's involvement with creation is through the traditional theistic categories of transcendence and immanence. The few Bible verses that Fox cites (out of context) for panentheism offer no support (Luke 17:21; John 15:5; Acts 17:25).[26]


Fall/redemption theology

We can now turn to Fox's trenchant criticism of what he calls fall/ redemption theology. Fox hopes to replace this with a creation-centred theology. Any attempt to mzrginalise the fall is immediately confronted by the problem of how to explain evil, death and imperfection. For Fox, death is a natural event and imperfection is integral to creation. Further, in rejecting a fall/ redemption theology, he bypasses the cross as the means of reconciliation. The cross is seen as a symbol of "letting go".[27] This reduction of the the cross is (at best) sub-Christian. Fox, in bypassing the redemptive function of the cross, ceases to offer a Christian spirituality and does not remain within the Christian tradition.

In discussing the "fall/ redemption" tradition Fox shows misunderstandings and commits several errors. The following factors undermine his position.

(i) His phrase the "fall/ redemption" tradition is a misnomer; it is best characterised by the term "creation, fall and redemption". For obvious reasons Fox ignores the first part.

(ii) His claim that the "fall/ redemption" tradition does not have an appreciation of, or theology of[28], creation [29] is misfounded. The "philosemitic medievalist" Margaret Brearley shows that in the Middle Ages when the fall/ redemption theology was perhaps at its peak that these theologians had an "intense preoccupation" with the creation. She cites Wolfram von Esschenbach, George Herbert and Bousset as medieval examples of those within the fall/ redemption tradition who could write in praise of creation.[30]

(iii) Even today theologians and writers within this tradition are expounding an ecologically aware theology; examples are Loren Wilkinson,[31] Wesley Granberg-Michaelson [32],Rowland Moss[33], Calvin DeWitt and Steven Bouma-Preideger.


Other problems

There are several other aspects of Fox's position that give cause for concern. Briefly these include: his defective anthropology - we are divine and have a responsibility to "divinize the universe";[34] his acceptance of non-Christian traditions such as Taoist, Kabir (Hindu/Sufi), Native American, Wicca (Starhawk, a well known white witch, teaches at his Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality), African, Zen, Celtic and Hasidic;[35] his understanding that the basis of all sin is dualism [36] - he also names dualism as "original sin";[37] his concept of salvation as "awakening to our divinity";[38] and his desire to see an emerging global civilisation that is "grounded on the understanding that the world is an undivided whole",[39]"a Global Civilisation which will usher in a new era in the divinization of the cosmos".[40]


Conclusion

What then are we to make of Matthew Fox? There are many aspects of his work we can endorse, even if we do not go the whole way, these include his rejection of dualism, his attempt to develop a world-affirming rather than world-denying spirituality and his desire to be equally inclusive of female and male; at least now these crucial issues are on the theological agenda. His increasing popularity and apparently uncritical acceptance by many Christians, however, can only be cause for concern. In this article I have attempted to show that Fox stands outside orthodox Christianity - be it Catholic or Protestant - despite his vociferous claims to the contrary. The methods and sources he uses to support his case are at best "suspect".[41]

I can only conclude with Lawrence Osborn [14] and Margret Brearley [29] that Fox's teachings are a vehicle for highly dubious New Age thinking; they are New Age in Christian clothing.


Notes

1 Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality (Bear & Co, 1983; UK edn 1990).
2 The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (Harper & Row, 1988).
3 Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the People's of the Earth (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991).
4 "From original sin to original blessing" Resurgence Jan/ Feb 1991 (issue 144) p. 26.
5 Ibid.
6 "Creation-centered spirituality from Hildegard of Bingen to Julian of Norwich: 300 years of an ecological spirituality in the west" Cry of the Environment: Rebuilding the Creation Tradition ed. Philip N. Joranson and Ken Butigan (Bear & Co, 1984) ch. 4.
7 For a more comprehensive list of those he believes "lived out and taught the creation-centered tradition" is to be found in "Appendix A: Toward a Family Tree of Creation-Centered Spirituality" Original Blessing pp 307-15.
8 New Blackfriars vol. 63 (1984) pp. 195-7.
9 Ibid p. 197.
10 Ibid p. 196.
11 Cry of the Environment p. 84.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Matthew Fox and Brian Swimme Manifesto for a Global Civilization (Bear & Co, 1982) pp. 17-8.
15 Meeting God in Creation Grove spirituality series No 32 (Grove Books, 1990).
16 Cry of the Environment p. 84.
17 Brian J. Walsh and J. Richard Middleton The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World View (IVP,1984) ch. 7.
18 Philip Sherrard The Rape of Man & Nature: An Enquiry into the Origins and Consequences of Modern Science (Goolgonooza Press, 1987) p. 60.
19 Ibid.
20 Original Blessing p. 89.
21 Resurgence p. 24. See also Original Blessing pp. 89ff.
22 Resurgence p. 24.
23 Cry of the Environment p. 86.
24 He even refers to a "Newtonian theism that posited a clockmaker God who wound the universe up and sat back...". An excellent description of deism not theism! Original Blessing p. 90.
25 Cry of the Environment. p.97.
26 Resurgence p. 24.
27 Original Blessing p. 166.
28 This is the same accusation made by Sean McDonagh: "This theological tradition has no adequate theology of creation" To Care for the Earth: A Call to a New Theology (Geoffrey Chapman, 1986) p. 81.
29 Margret Brearley "Matthew Fox: creation spirituality for the aquarian age" Christian Jewish Relations vol. 22 (2) (1989) p. 40.
30 Ibid. p. 41.
31 Editor of Earthkeeping: Christian Stewardship of Natural Resources (Eerdmans, 1988).
32 A Worldly Spirituality: The Call to Redeem Life on Earth (Harper & Row,1984) and Ecology and Life: Accepting Our Environmental Responsibility (Word, 1988).
33 The Earth in Our Hands (IVP,1982).
34 Manifesto p. 19.
35 These are all included in his "family tree of creation-centered spirituality" Original Blessing Appendix A pp. 307-15.
36 Original Blessing p. 296.
37 Cry of the Environment p. 88.
38 Ibid p. 235.
39 Manifesto p. 13.
40 ibid p. 7.
41 This is the conclusion of Oliver Davies "Eckhart and Fox" Tablet vol. 243 August 1989 pp. 890-1 (cited in Brearley op. cit.).

B J van der Walt Transformed Chapter 1

Why the salt has lost its quality

One of the largest problems facing Christians who want to develop and embrace a biblical worldview is dualism. Dualism is the tendency to split life into two levels: a higher and a lower sphere. Examples might be sacred and profane, spiritual and secular or grace and nature.

Van der Walt aptly describes it:

The basic mistake of early Christianity - which plagued Christianity throughout its subsequent history - can also be explained by saying that Christians ascribed a ontological (or structural) character to the religious (or directional) antithesis between obedience and disobedience to God: one part of the creation (the sacred) was regarded to be good by nature, while the other considered to be of less importance or even evil by nature (p 7).

He traces this tendency throughout the history of Christian thought from its pagan origins through its Christianisation in patristic and medieval thought. He also discerns aspects of dualism in Calvin and Abraham Kuyper (following Zuidema). In De Gemeene Gartie Kuyper distinguishes between common and particular grace; particular grace strengthens and enhance common grace - a grace perfecting nature position; whereas in Pro Rege he seems to have broken from this dualism and 'we are in the service of Christ throughout the entire domain of common grace' (p. 15).

Turning next to the tendencies in African Christianity he briefly looks at Kwame Bediako's analysis and the similarities between African theologians and the early church theologians. He finds Bedakio's approach, among other things, lacks an understanding of the 'dangerous ontological dualism inherent in the theologies of early christians' (p. 18). One major tragedy he identifies within Africa Christianity is its escapist tendency, this he believes is a consequent of the truncated and domesticated message of the missionaries. Among their many characteristics are pietism, individualism, an emphasis on personal holiness only, the spiritualising of the kingdom of God and the reluctance to be involved in politics. Together with an escapist mentality comes an increasing secularisation.

Van der Walt's vision for South Africa, which he has spelled out in a number of other books, is that it will be liberated from the shackles of dualism and includes 'an interal, radical (socially) involved and kingdom Christianity' (p. 23).

He now moves on to look at typology of five dualisms and to give a biblical critique of them. As I have mentioned bfore any mention of Christianity and culture will almost certainly invoke Niebhur - and this chapter is no different. He compares Niebhur's approach with James Olthuis's and Al Wolters's. This is neatly summarised in a table:

He then looks at how these positions might view politics and how they might respond to the question 'Should I go to a rock concert?'. The responses might be:

1. Stay away - it is from the devil!
2. If it is a good performance no problem - go for it.
3. You may attend - but remember before and after to confess your sin.
4. Please go - but I want to see you in church on Sunday.
5. Be careful! First ask yourself whether it will be possible to serve God - not before or after the event, but in your attendance.

He then examines these two-realm dualisms from a biblical perspective. He warns us to be on the look out for unbiblical terminology that may reveal a dualistic tendency. These include nature/ grace; nature/ supernature; secular/ religious; natural (general) revelation/ supernatural (special) revelation; profane/ secular; and so on.

Along the way he looks at the misconception of equating the church with the kingdom: 'the church reveals the kingdom but it is only one expression' (p. 34). He makes a distinction between religion and faith: faith is one of the modes of being religious, religion is not an addition but the essence of life.

He makes an excellent point about two-realm theories: they arise from different viewpoints as to the place in creation that sin is located, how serious the effects of sin are and how great or little the need for redemption will be (p. 36). He also draws out the different meaning of dualism in Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven. For Dooyeweerd dualism is primarily of a religious-worldviewish nature; the antithesis is given an ontological status. In Vollenhoven, dualism is used in the sense of being the opposite of monism: monists have to explain the variety in creation, whereas dualists have to explain the unity of reality.

He concludes by offering a brief description of a reformational worldview. It is free from dualism(s), it is integral and holistic.

Worldview - it's where we stand that matters

The Terry Lectures on-line

Available from here. They include:

Alvin Plantinga "Science and Religion: Why Does the Debate Continue?"

Ronald L. Numbers "Aggressors, Victims, and Peacemakers: Historical Actors in the Drama of Science and Religion"


Bas C. Van Frassen "The empirical stance" available from here.

The most popular posts of the last year

The most popular posts in the last year were:

1. The link for the audio of the Lennox-Dawkins debate
2. The Dawkins links
3. The anthroposophical worldview - even though it was written more than a year ago
4. Calvin Seerveld
5. Review of Frank Viola's Pagan Christianity
6. A Christian view of work
7. Dawkins's article in Private Eye

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Theo Plantinga: on-line resources

Theo Plantinga has a number of excellent resources on-line. These include two books:

• Christian Philosophy Within Biblical Bounds (Inheritance Publications, Alberta, 1991)
• Contending for the Faith: Heresy and Apologetics (Paideia Press, Jordan Station, 1984)

There are a number of his papers; including:

• Christianity and Visualism
• The Christian Philosophy of H. Evan Runner
  
• Commitment and Historical Understanding: A Critique of Dilthey
  
• Creation, Revelation and Novelty
  
• Dilthey's Philosophy of the History of Philosophy
  
• Protestantism and Progress
  
• The Real Meaning of Kant
  
• Where Would We Be Without Punishment?
  

An index of the files is here.

B J van der walt: Transformed by the Renewing of Your Mind

Transformed By the Renewing of Your Mind
Shaping a biblical worldview and a Christian perspective on scholarship
B J van der Walt
The Institute for Contemporary Christianity in Africa, Potchesfstroom, 2001 (third print 2007)
ISBN-10: 1868223825
ISBN-13: 9781868223824
198pages; pbk

As the subtitle suggests this book examines two concepts: a Christian worldview and Christian scholarship, particularly that in higher education. The context is Africa, but the principles apply anywhere in the world. Bennie van der Walt is well equipped to tackle these subjects. Until his retirement in 1999 he lectured at the Potchesfstroom university in South Africa and was the founder and director of the Institute for Reformational Studies. He has also been highly involved with IAPCHE (International Association for the Promotion of Christian Higher Education). Several of the chapters in this book were originally lectures presented at IAPCHE events.


The six chapters are:

1. Why the salt has lost its quality
2. Culture, worldview and religion
3. Transformed by the renewing of your mind
4. Taking captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ
5. The pilgrim's progress of a Christian academic
6. Our past heritage, present opportunity and future challenge.

A brief overview
The main thesis of the book is that we urgently need a genuine, biblical worldview and this should be seen in Christian scholarship and education. The first chapter looks at one of the major obstacles in forming a biblical worldview: dualism. The second looks at the relationship between the key concepts of worldview, culture and religion and this is applied to the important, particularly in the African context of development. The subsequent chapters start to focus on the need for a Christian worldview in higher education. Chapter 3 looks at what it means to renew the mind in the cotext of higher education and in general and in Africa in particular. Chapter 4 looks at the challenegs post 2000. The theory of these chapters is then applied in the story of Thomas, an African Christian academic. His struggle to integrate his scholarship with his Christianity as he moved from being a Christian and then a scholar to become a Christian scholar are told. The final chapter is a look back and forward to the work of the IAPCHE.

I will look at these chapters in more detail in subsequent posts.

The book can be obtained directly from the author; details are here.

(Re)thinking worldview 12

Chapter 12 takes a look at ‘Imaging and truth: Christians and cultural contribution’. It is inevitable that when Christianity and culture is discussed Niebuhr's typology is invoked. A google search on Christ and culture reveals 799 000 hits – adding Niebuhr to the search gives 128 000 hits; over 16 per cent of the total hits. Whereas adding Schilder to Christ and culture gives just over 3 000 hits. It is no surprise then that Bertrand cites Niebuhr. He sums up some of the options very succinctly: ‘Where the isolationist runs and the assimilationist joins, the transformer fights’ (p. 230). He also astutely observes that all three options are:

… in every tradition, every denomination, every church and every believer. … A youth pastor can pierce his tongue and host a skateboarding event for the community, calling it engagement, when in fact it looks more like assimilation’ (p 230).

He then turns to the role of imagination in the ‘creative’ arts. He makes some excellent observations on Christians and the imaginative endeavour, be it in art or in fiction writing. He explores two important questions: ‘ is the Christian imagination creative or didactic? … what is the anatomy of the Christian imagination’ (p. 234).

This is an excellent chapter and really deserves to be expanded in a book. It would be a great service to all, and not just Christian, artists. With particular regard to Christian imagination he makes – and expands upon – four points:

1. Christian imagination is an image bearer’s echo of the Creator
2. Christian imagination embodies the biblical worldview.
3. Christian imagination is incarnational.
4. Christian imagination aspires towards excellence.

These points could also apply to any other creational activity.

(Re)thinking worldview 11

What is it that makes some respond to the message of the gospel and others not? Asks Bertrand at the start of this chapter on ‘The enigma of belief”. His answer: God’s grace – beyond that it is an enigma.

He cites a wonderful quote of Binx Bolling from Walker Percey’s novel The Moviegoers – judging from the quote seems like an excellent book to check out:

My unbelief was invincible from the beginning. I could never make head or tail of God. The proofs of God’s existence may have been true for all I know, but it didn’t make the slightest difference. If God himself had appeared to me, it would have changed nothing. In fact, I have only to hear the word of God and a curtain comes down in my head.

Bertrand draws upon the insights in this quote and makes four excellent points, which he examines:

1. Unbelief treats God as the enigma
2. Unbelief is a faith commitment
3. Unbelief will not accept proof
4. Unbelief is a spiritual, not an intellectual condition.

AoLR update

Two more of Roy Clouser's papers have been added:

1985. Dooyeweerd on religion and faith: a response. ICS Conference paper.
A response to James Olthuis's chapter in C T McIntire (ed.). 1985b.The Legacy of Herman Dooyeweerd: Reflections on Critical Philosophy in the Christian Tradition. University Press of America: Toronto.

1981. Four Options in the Philosophy of Religion. Anakainosis (Toronto) April.


And thanks to the permission of the Churchman - the journal of the Church Society a paper by Stacey Hebden Taylor:

'The Reformation and the development of modern science'. Churchman vol 82 (2) (1968): 87-103.

Purple Haze by the Kronos Quartet

(Re)thinking worldview 10

The next chapter ‘Three in one: worldview apologetics’ left me feeling a little uncomfortable. Here the author draws upon Van Til’s notion of the Trinity as providing the solution for the one and the many. He also looks at the use of natural theology. I am very uncomfortable in the use of natural theology to prove the existence of God – I don’t think it can be done. I’m also wary of the cumulative argument of these natural theology arguments to prove the existence of God – if each argument is flawed how can they combine to make a valid argument for the existence of God? However, because I’m sceptical of the validity of these arguments doesn’t mean that I don’t find them interesting. By the way I don’t think we can prove the existence of God – we can’t use logical arguments to prove the existence of the one who created the arguments; he transcends them. By proving God by logic or rational argument merely makes God subject to logic.

Bertrand makes an interesting observation: ‘apologetics is the task of giving unbelievers a way to justify what the Spirit is doing in their hearts’ (p 201). If this is so then it may well mean that apologetics could have a place in ‘persuading’ the unbeliever.

Odds and sods

Wittenburg door interviews Tom Wright: 'Heavy theological dude mistakenly talks to us'.

Reformational Publishing Project has made available a pdf of S U Zuidema's 1972. 'Common grace and Christian action in Abraham Kuyper' from Communication and Confrontation. Toronto: Wedge. pp 52-105.

(Re)thinking worldview 9

The next part is devoted to ‘Witness’. Chapter 9 kicks this section of by looking at ‘Engagement and beyond’. The term witness conjures up so many different ideas and methods. Not all of them culturally appropriate. Bertrand wants to go beyond method: ‘it’s not a method or technique’ (p. 182). He draws the distinction between being a witness – having the information - and bearing witness – sharing the information.

He wants us to move from being consumers of to being contributors to culture via being self-conscious about culture and being a critic of culture. This process follows along similar lines of this book from worldview through wisdom to witness.

Inspiration and Incarnation

Peter Enns's book Inspiration and Incarnation is causing some ripples: here is Paul Helm's review and Enns' response.

(Re)thinking worldview 8

The final chapter of part 2 is ‘Learning to read’. By this Bertrand means reading to read critically. He cites two common errors in reading; we are largely undiscriminating and undemanding in what we do read. Though he argues that critical reading does not necessarily mean sucking the joy form life. It actually enhances our enjoyment of reading. Though it may mean that we find ‘that some fare is no loner palatable’. Critical reading means that we need to discern the author’s worldview and be aware of any worldview manipulation that the author is engage in. These worldviews can exert a negative impact upon us if we are unaware of them but if there presence is discerned ‘the treat is largely neutralized’ (p. 173)

He draws upon the advice of Leyland Ryken in Windows to the World and applies Ryken’s points to a brief analysis of Jude the Obscure and London’s Cry of the Wild two books where the authors’ worldviews are easily discerned. It would have been good to have these points applied to a text with less obvious worldview overtones.

(Re)thinking worldview 7

In chapter 7 ‘A city without walls’ Bertrand use the battle of Constantinople in 1453 as a metaphor for the Christian warfare. In May 1543 Constantinople fell to the Turks after a long hard fought battle. The 5,000 in Constantinople were very much outnumbered by the 80-100, 000 aggressors. Analysing their strategies and errors will help us.

The first lesson is: take responsibility for your walls. The virtue is: personal responsibility. Here Bertrand steers a much-needed clear course between personal autonomy and over-reliance on spiritual mentors:

Treat spiritual advice as you would a movie review. Draw upon the wisdom of others to form your own judgments – but form your own judgments (p 150).

In this section he also deals with discernment and makes an interesting distinction between engagers and discerners. The table summarises his views:

	Engagers	Discerners
Descriptions	Getting involved with culture Looking for ways to appreciate culture	Measuring cultural expressions against Christian norms Looking for ways in which to screen books and films for objectionable or uplifting content
Strengths	Look for something good Give more space to fiction	Trying to protect from something bad More interested in testing the spirit of non-fiction
Weaknesses	May end up christening some questionable stuff	May flip the baby out with the bathwater

This is an interesting distinction but as Bertrand acknowledges, we all in some sense do both, but tend to gravitate to one or the other. I would want to say that both are important and that we need to engage with discernment.

His second lesson is that we should constantly repair the walls; the accompanying virtue is self-control. This sounds a little dull, but Bertrand describes self control as ‘stewardship of the passions’. If we see it in this light then self-control can become sexy!

Lesson three is ‘guard your foundations’. We need to have a worldview awareness and cease to be a passive receptor of others’ influences.

Plan for unexpected attacks – is lesson four. We can do this by being flexible:

… our confidence must be based not on circumstances (which change) but on the Lord of the circumstance (p 160).

The fifth and final lesson is ‘remember to close the gate’. An unclosed gate was the eventual downfall of Constantinople. Care is required at all times.

Bertrand concludes this chapter thus:

The defense of Constantinople was unsuccessful. By cultivating the virtues of personal responsibility, self-control, worldview awareness, flexibility and care, perhaps the battle for our own minds will yield a far happier result (p. 163)

Odds and sods

• Pagan Christianity has been revised and expanded - see my review of the original edition here. Update Tom Gilson reviews the new edition here.
  
• Reforming My Mind has an extensive list of mp3 sermons on that over-neglected book Ecclesiastes.
• Peter Enns, of WTS, is now blogging [HT sets 'n' service]
• Rudi, at Intermezzo, has a list of sphere sovereignty articles available on-line here.
• Tyndale Tech is now available as a blog - much good stuff here.
  

Review of Schaeffer's Escape from Reason

This review appeared in Perspectives of Science and Christian Faith 59 (3) (Sept 2007): 239.

ESCAPE FROM REASON: A Penetrating Analysis of Trends in Modern Thought by Francis A. Schaeffer. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2006. 123 pages. Paperback; $8.00. ISBN: 10: 0 8308 3405 2.

Schaeffer is incredibly difficult to pin down. He has been described as a (compassionate, inconsistent and modified) presuppositionalist , an inconsistent empiricist and a verificationist– this is, I suspect, because he is more an evangelist and apologist than an academic philosopher. Schaeffer's books have been incredibly influential, not least his trilogy of which Escape from Reason (EfR) is the second part – the first being The God Who is There and the final part He is There and He is not Silent. EfR is the shortest of the two and has sometimes been mistaken for the introduction to the trilogy.

Reading Schaeffer is a bitter sweet experience. I rejoice at his desire to see the lordship of Christ expressed over every area of life, but get frustrated at his broad brush strokes that often over-simplify. Schaeffer is rarely subtle!

The villain of this piece is Aquinas. It’s perhaps an understatement to say that Schaeffer is a little hard on Aquinas; a better Reformed analysis of Aquinas is found in Arvin Vos’s Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought. Nevertheless, Schaeffer does highlight the problems scholastic dualism has caused Christianity.

He sees the most crucial problem facing Christians today as being rooted in the Middle Ages and in Aquinas in particular. It was Aquinas that opened the way for autonomous rationality. According to Schaeffer, Aquinas claimed that the human will but not human intellect is fallen. This assumption, once popularised, provided the fertile soil for the belief that humans could become independent, autonomous.

In EfR Schaeffer he examines the relationship between ‘grace’ and ‘nature’. He argues that nature has slowly been ‘eating up’ grace. Yet a ‘line’ or ‘gap’ exists between the supposed upper realm of grace and the lower realm of nature. Western society has gone below this line and it has led to despair. This despair is revealed first in philosophy; subsequently, it spreads to art, then music and general culture, before reaching theology.

Schaeffer had a way of communicating Christianity to modern culture – we need more like him today. He awoke his generation to the presence of secular humanism and showed that it was possible to think and be a Christian at the same time. This book provides an excellent introduction to his ideas, though it shows its origin in the lecture format: there are few footnotes and references. His analysis is often derivative of the Dutch Christian philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. Schaeffer's close friend Hans Rookmaaker once remarked that ‘Escape from Reason is Schaeffer's version of what Dooyeweerd develops in [In the Twilight of Western Thought].'¹

It is a shame that this book is not illustrated, for Schaeffer makes some excellent points regarding grace and nature using descriptions of art works and having them illustrated would have greatly enriched the reading experience.

This version has a brief foreword by James Moreland and a two-page index. It is a welcome addition to the IVP Classics series.

1 ‘A Dutch view of Christian philosophy’ in The Complete Works of Hans Rookmaaker edited by Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker Vol 6 Part III The L'Abri Lectures. (Piquant, 2005).

Steve Bishop

(Re)thinking worldview 5

This should have appeared before 6!

The second part of the book turns from worldview – thinking - to wisdom - living. A worldview provides a context, wisdom ‘plays a central role at the heart of Christian living’ (p 21).

This section on wisdom is replete with wisdom. Bertrand makes some excellent observations on seeking guidance:

Seeking counsel is wise, but it’s not the same thing as abrogating responsibility for one’s own decisions.

If knowing God’s will was that easy, why bother with all that wisdom literature in the first place?

Chasing after fleeces and green lights and open doors, whatever its virtues, can have the unintended effect of displacing the text in the hunt for a deeper subtext.

(Re)thinking worldview 6

‘Not what you think’ is the title of chapter 6. Here Bertrand deals with three important points. First he examines Solomon the archetypical wise person. He concludes regarding Solomon, that the kind of wisdom he demonstrates is ‘practical discernment, the ability to judge, the faculty for discerning the truth from lies’ (p 126).

His three points are:

1. WISDOM is not what you think – we have misguided views as to what wisdom is.
2. Wisdom is not what YOU think – it is what God thinks.
3. Wisdom is not what you THINK – it comes from the will and not the intellect.

One, of the many, excellent points he makes is that wisdom starts with worldview. Thoughts don’t make us wise, but what we do flows from our worldview. He then examines three questions: where is wisdom? What is wisdom? and why is wisdom portrayed as female in Proverbs? Along the way he exposes the poverty and unbiblical nature of a utilitarian approach to wisdom; maximise happiness and minimise pain. Sometimes we have to suffer for good.

Sustainable living

The Jubilee Centre have recently put oline at youtube a number of clips. Including this one dealing with Sustainable living - Jason Fletcher interviews Nick Spencer on sustainable living.

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(Re)thinking worldview 4

Creation, fall, and redemption: worldview as story

The final chapter of the first part of the book on worldview, deals with the well-known framework of creation, fall and redemption, this provides the narrative, or story for a Christian worldview. The third chapter dealt with worldview as a system here we have worldview as a story. However story still needs an abstract systematic approach, as this illustration shows:

Not long ago , I found myself in a small college town, overhearing a deep conversation between two students. They were explaining to each other how abstractions were dead and story was everything. It sounded good. I imagined this was something a professor said in class and the two men were trying the perspective for size. What didn’t occur to them, though, was the irony of having a rational, abstract conversation about the death of abstraction. They were crowing story king without engaging in one hwit of storytelling. They were bright young men, but they managed, as many of us do, to miss the forest for the trees. Things are rarely as simple as exchanging a bad paradigm for a prefect replacement (p.p 98-99)

There is much on the role of story in this chapter, but I would have liked to have seen a little more of the story of creation, fall and redemption spelled out a little more.

Revolutions in Worldview

Of the making of [worldview] books there is no end. Here's another one. [HT Between two worlds]. The Table of contents, preface and chapter 1 can be read here. Vern Poythress's contribition on 'NT Worldview' is available here.

Update: There is a resource page to go with the book here.

Happy Christmas

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(Re)thinking worldview (3)

Chapter 3 is God, man and the world: worldview as a system. Here Bertrand looks at Kuyper’s use of the term worldview in his Lectures on Calvinism. He cites Kuyper’s view that a worldview must speak to man’s (sic) relation to God, man’s relation to other men and man’s relation to the world.’

Bertrand is unhappy with the concept of the Christian worldview. This is because there are too many divisions within Christianity and that we are fallible.

Using the illustrations of Frankenstein and Hyde he looks at anthropology as being a major difference between a Christian worldview and all others. Some have a Frankenstein view: humans are essentially good; or a Hyde view: humans are essentially evil. He quotes, favourably, Herman Bavinck who wrote: ‘all religions except Christianity are autosoteric…’. For Christianity only God can save – humans are good, created in the image of God, but fallen.

As Bertrand concludes this chapter he writes:

‘Worldview functions on the level of system, and there’s no reason to be afraid of that fact. Where we must be careful, though, is in not allowing our systems to become closed systems – or in mistaking our conclusions with God’s’ (p 91).

(Re)thinking worldview (2)

Bertrand looks at four pillars that he sees as being central to a Christian worldview: creation, order, rationality and fear. These are the ‘load bearing structures’ of belief systems. I must confess that I wasn’t too sure about the emphasis on rationality. But as he notes:

Rationality is fundamental to a coherent view of reality. Those who challenge it seem to do so because they reject the possibility of a coherent view of reality – on what basis could they challenge it?

Though it did leave me thinking, whose rationality? Which rationality? There is not one version of rationality that everyone holds to.

He uses Robinson Crusoe – apparently Crusoe undergoes conversion while he is shipwrecked – Hardy’s Jude the Obscure and Job to make some excellent points. He then draws upon Paul (1 Cor 13:8-12) to develop some interesting points about knowledge:

… if we do not share Paul’s sense of the partial, incomplete nature of our knowing, then we have a sub-Pauline comprehension of our circumstances … if we don’t share Paul’s sense that our knowledge is true and reliable we’ve slipped into a sub-Pauline mode. We may not have perfect knowledge, but we do know things, and that knowledge comes with obligations.

He concludes with a brief description of the pillar of ‘fear of the Lord’. An often neglected aspect.

It would be easy to be pernickety and point out the use of exclusive language (man instead of humanity) and the overemphasis on rationality – here the influence of Schaeffer is evident - but Bertrand is right to assert the possibility of knowledge, but also ‘the limits of knowledge’ (p 72). And he comes out with some great one-liners; eg: 'It took the cross to deconstruct the dead/alive binary forever' (p 71).

(Re)thinking worldview by J Mark Bertrand (ch 1)

I nearly didn't get this book - oh no I thought another book on worlview. I'm glad that I did. At least as far as the first chapter is concerned - that's as far as I've got. (I only got it today.) What Wolters, and Walsh and Midelton were to the nineties,* I'm sure Bertrand will be to the noughties.

Although it is another book on worldview it is much more than that - it will be great for all those suffering 'worldview fatigue'. Bertrand writes not as an academic but as an artist. He has a way with words and images.

The first chapter is replete with the old images of worldview, a pair of spectacles, a map and so on and yet Bertrand breathes new life into these metaphors and brings out fresh nuances. One that struck a chord with me was that the spectacles are not sun glasses but prescription lenses:

The task of a worldview is to see the world as it is, to correct your vision, The test of a good worldview will be whether it brings reality into sharp focus or leaves things blurry. (p. 27)

He sees worldviews as being not only propositions and perspectives but also as stories. This theme will be developed no doubt in subsequent chapters.

J Mark Bertrand blogs here and has a blog on the book here - check it out.



* Surprisingly both these books are omitted from the index! Though Kuyper and Schaeffer references are there in force!

Wearne's annotated bibliography of Goudzwaard

Bruce Wearne has produced a 101-page annotated bibliography of the English works of Christian economist Bob Goudzwaard: Cultivating Care within a Vulnerable Economy: an annotated bibliography of the English writings of Bob Goudzwaard 1967-2007 [pdf December 2007; 101+ xvii pages (approx 1 MB)]. Bruce writes:

This annotated bibliography of the English-language writings and publications of Bob Goudzwaard, is the second in a series compiled as part of research into the normative foundations of social science. As reports of "work in progress", the series documents an initial response to the published writings of some or other leading exponents of reformational philosophy in the English-speaking world. These bibliographies provide "one at a time" annotations for each of the listed publications of these authors. Public Justice for All (February 2007) was the first.

In the opening pages of this document readers will find a list in which Goudzwaard's publications are grouped under various headings. For instance, there will be some headings that relate to the different subdivisions of economics, of related social sciences (political science, social policy research, sociology) as well as history and ethics. There will also be groups of articles under more general topic headings like: Christianity, neo-Calvinism, care, stewardship, capitalism, poverty, ecumenism, globalization, environment.

The different items listed in this bibliography will give the researcher a glimpse of how Goudzwaard has developed his scholarly contribution over the years. By his extensive networking he has tried to indicate serviceable paths by which economics can fulfill its vocation. The articles attempt to connect the world of "science" with policy-making and everyday life, but they also relate economics to other fields of scientific research as well.

The bibliography has links to most of Bob Goudzwaard's writings - which can be found on All of life redeemed.

Odds and sods

• Byron Borger has an excellent piece on 'What to think about the Golden Compass'
• Life Hack look at 13 web-based WPs
• Adrian looks at Accordance and Logos
• The Agora on 'What is dualism?'
• A calendar for a computer monitor

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Sentamu on Mugabe

"As far as I'm concerned, from now on I'm not going to wear a dog collar until Mugabe is gone"

The Devil's Account by Hugh Rayment-Pickard

The Devil’s Account:
Philip Pullman & Christianity
Hugh Rayment-Pickard
Dartman, Longman + Todd, 2004.

This is the quickest review I have ever written. I bought this book at the bargain price of 50p yesterday, I read it while taking a bath and am writing this review just 24 hours after purchasing it. From that we can deduce that it is an easy read and pretty short (117 pages). It’s also a great review of Pullman and his work. This book doesn’t stop at examining His Dark Materials trilogy but also looks at his other writings. I have only read the trilogy so I can’t comment on how accurate Rayment-Pickard’s (HRP) take is on Pullman’s other books.

I got this book primarily because the film of Pullman’s first book in the trilogy is causing quite a stir. The film The Golden compass takes its title from the US title of The Northern Lights, presumably American’s are ignorant of the norther lights phenomenon (only joking!). This book is no blunt hatchet job. It is a considered and thoughtful critique. He ably pulls apart Pullman’s worldview and shows where he is inconsistent – HRP uses a transcendent and immanent critique to analyse Pullman’s writings.

Pullman was born in 1946 the golden age of Lewis and Tolkein. Pulman went to live with his grandfather, a traditional Church of England priest (1666 and all that), after his father died in an air crash when Pullman was young. This accounts for the many Christian images that are found (and twisted) in Pullman’s work. Pullman says:

…I have to consider myself an atheist. But because of my upbringing I’m a Christian atheist, and I’m a church atheist …’

This influence is explored well by HRP. HRP has obviously spent time researching Pullman and his writings. It is fascinating to see the (a)theological themes in Pullman’s Dark Materials foreshadowed in his earlier writings.

The themes and issues that HRP discusses includes violence, the church, the soul, dust, sexuality, innocence and experience, the death of God and heaven. HRP makes clear the problem of violence for Pullman. One the one hand Pullman deplores the violence in C S Lewis’ Narnia; he finds it ‘objectionable’ hat the children are killed in a train crash at the end of the books. And yet no justification is provided for Lord Asriel’s murder of Roger in his own book. As HRP notes:

Pullman’s moral difficulties with violence are connected with his godless universe. With God out of the picture Pullman’s ethics cannot be based upon any theological or metaphysical system of justification. Pullman does not believe in the theological categories of ‘good’ and ‘evil’.

HRP goes on to comment:

Pullman’s ambivalence about the ethics of violence reveals a deeper theological ambivalence. On the one hand Pullman objects to a divine authority who lays down the morals. On the other hand he is not entirely comfortable with an ethic worked out in purely human terms. So he is left giving two cheers to ethics without God. It nearly works; but not quite. Not unless you have an alethiometer – but in real life aleithometers are in short supply.

Here lies the problem for the atheist – how can we do morals without a transcendent being? Morality must be a ‘natural’ phenomenon – so why not pick and choose our morals? It also highlights the problem of evil for the atheist. Traditionally it has been seen as a problem for the theist and much Christian writings have been devoted to developing a theodicy; however, the problem is even more acute for the atheist – why is evil evil if there are no God-given norms? Alethiometers may work in fiction but not in the real world.

HRP writes:

The death of God in His dark materials is liberating, but not dangerous. Will and Lyra are liberated to fulfil their duty to ensure that Dust does not escape from the universe. They are liberated from the Authority, only to fall under the spell of a new ‘authority’: the absolute obligation to build the republic of heaven. But they are not liberated to moral oblivion, or confusion, or an emptiness of meaning. This is ‘death-of-God-lite’: God dies but the cosmos retains its theological meaning. Humans still have a destiny, there are still objective ethical rules and Dust still gives the universe a warm glow.

The god that Pullman kills – kills is perhaps too strongh a term, as Pullman’s god withers away and dissolves into nothing – is a far cry from the robust good creator God of the Bible; Pullman’s god is a pathetic imposter god, a first angel formed from the Dust. However, because he was the first angel he was able to fool the others he was their creator.

Pullman’s atheism is parasitic upon theism. As HRP comments: ‘The dilemma of atheism is that it must always be dependent upon theism’. HRP closes his analysis with a warning for the church:

Pullman (and his readers) find Christianity life-denying and authoritarian. To them the church appears more concerned with preserving its doctrines and traditions than in celebrating the vitality and goodness of life, more concerned with the power and prestige than with people and their sufferings.

Unfortunately, all the talk of boycotting the Golden Compass film confirms these misconceptions. As most Christians know Christianity is life-affirming – how have we failed to convey the liberating message of the gospel?

The book ends with a synopsis of Pullman’s writings. Incidentally, the title The Devil’s Account comes from William Blake’s ‘The marriage of heaven and hell’:

It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out, but the Devils account is that the Messiah fell, & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss.

This book is a is a refreshing break from the knee-jerk responses to the film; it well researched by someone who appreciates Pullman as a writer but is sensitive to the non-Christian themes and issues.


There is an interesting interview with Pullman here.

Leaders with a vision by B J van der Walt

Leaders with a Vision:
How Christian leadership can tackle the African crisis
B J van der Walt
Potchefstroomse Universitet vir Christelike Hoer Onderwys, 1995.

This 101-page book started life as the lectures for the Pan African leadership Assembly II in Nairobi, 22-30 November 1994. B J van der Walt is no stranger to the African situation; he is a South African Christian philosopher and founder of the Institute for Reformational Studies based at the Potchefstroom University in South Africa (he retired in 1999). He writes about Africa from first-hand experience.

Although this book’s context is Africa its value extends beyond that continent. The four main chapters deal with: the nature of office, authority, power and responsibility; the structuring of society; social involvement and change; and the nature of the state. Important and crucial issues for Christians wherever they may live and work.

Vand der Walt is a clear and insightful writer. He applies reformational thinking to important cultural issues. I particularly appreciated the tables and diagrams that served to summarise and illustrate the main points made in the text.

He sees leadership as being a key to the African crisis. However, he rightly maintains that it will mean much more than leaders who are Christians. It needs Christian leaders with a clear vision that they can communicate and inspire others.

The first main chapter (Ch2 – chapter 1 is a brief Introduction) examines a Christian perspective on office, authority and power. As the author states’ If one does not know what office, authority, power and responsibility means, one cannot be a real leader’ (p 8). He sees office as God’s mandate to render service to the members of the societal relationship. Authority is the right to render this service, which requires insight into and obedience of the God-given norms for the specific relationship. Power is acted-out authority and is dependent on insight and obedience to god’s norms; and finally responsibility is towards God and the people of the societal relationship. This is important for Africa and equally so for the church everywhere.

Chapter 3 looks at the structuring of society. Here he looks at three biblical perspectives: from the perspective of the image of God, the perspective of different offices and from the perspective of diversified love. Individualim, communalism and pluralism are then examined. A Christian view is a pluralist view: it wishes to do justice to both individuals (individualism) and society (communalism).

In ‘A Christian perspective on social involvement and change’ (Ch 4) three models are mentioned and critiqued. The first two the dualist-pietist view – common among many evangelicals - and the revolutionary views are found wanting and the biblical reformational view is briefly expounded. The reformational view is radical – God transforms the world – and positive – it seeks to be obedient to God for the sake of God’s world.

Chapter 5 examines a Christian perspective on the state. Here the African background comes to the fore and he uses this turbulent context to draw out some biblical perspectives, including a useful discussion on civil disobedience. He discerns four viewpoints radical passivists, partial passivists, partial militarists and radical militarists. He concludes ‘In the final instance it is the duty of especially Christians to keep on talking, trying their best to convince the government that it has to change’ (p 90).

In the final chapter – the conclusion – he looms briefly at the different leadership models that have shaped Africa: the paternalistic elder tradition (Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah), the sage tradition (Leopold Sedar Senghor or Mwalimu Julius Nyrere), the arrior tradition ( (Gadafi or Idi Amin), the charismatic style of the inspiring personality (Kenyatta, Nyere or Amin) and the monarchical style (Nkrumah, who was sometimes known as Osagyefo, the Redeemer). He concludes that what is needed in Africa – and we might add everywhere – is responsible servant-leaders.

This is an excellent book and one that should be read by all leaders and aspiring leaders wherever.


Details of how to obtain Bennie van der Walt’s books are available here.

Christmas reading

From Noyon to Geneva by B J van der Walt

From Noyon to Geneva: A Pilgrimage in the Steps of John Calvin (1509-1564)
Dr B J van der Walt
Potchesfstroom University for CHE: Potchesfstroom, 1979
Series F: Institute for the Advancement of Calvinism (F2, No 10)
ISBN 086990 482 5

The South African scholar Bennie van der Walt has produced an original and fascinating study on Calvin. It is a photo history and tour guide. He has followed in the footsteps of Calvin and along the way he has written this short (71 pp) but marvellous tour guide, complete with 66 photographs.

He traces Calvin from his birth place in Noyon to his time as a student in Paris, his days as a fugitive in the south of France and then on to Strasbourg and Geneva. Along the way we are also given a brief history of the Huguenot’s. Van der Walt’s writing is very clear and he has many suggestions for the would-be Christian tourist/ pilgrim. He identifies places that the heritage of Calvin still lives on and places where his influence has been all but lost. The 66 photographs serve to make this book a first-class tourist guide for the modern Reformed pilgrim.

Unfortunately, at present it is out of print. Details of other books by B J van der walt are available here.