APOLOGETICS II
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APOLOGETICS II: The Development of the Godly View of Reality
APOLOGETICS II: The Development of the Godly View of Reality
INTRODUCTION
“A Chinese proverb says, “If you want to know what water is, don’t ask the fish.” Water is the sum and substance of the world in which the fish is immersed. The fish may not reflect on its own environment until suddenly it is thrust onto dry land, where it struggles for life. Then it realizes that water provided its sustenance.”
- The Universality of Worldview Thinking
o Everyone has and is driven by a world and life view.
“Whether conscious or subconscious, every person has some type of worldview. A personal worldview is a combination of all you believe to be true and what you believe becomes the driving force behind every emotion, decision and action. Therefore, it affects your response to every area of life: from philosophy to science, theology and anthropology to economics, law, politics, art and social order — everything. It is the interpretive “lenses‚” we use for understanding what we believe is real. From our personal worldview spring all of our actions and thoughts, and it is in unguarded moments when we can really see what we believe to be true.”
o The Way Out Is to See the Reality of What You Are In - Exclusion and Embrace.
§ Immersed in a culture with its ways of understanding the world, people are bound to this unless they are released and rescued by another, a right and Biblical, way of re-seeing what that have seen.
§ Being excluded from the way we interpret the structures of the world we can then embrace those same structures Biblically.
- The Biblical Mandate of Word and Life-view - 2 Cor 10:3-5
For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh.
For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.
We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,
o Implications of this Passage:
· It is to challenge of the interpretive lenses of how people make sense of the world.
· It is directed to several ways of thinking that challenge truth
o Post-Modernism
o Secularism
o Relativism
o Naturalism
o Narcissism
· We must challenge thinking before we challenge morality, since the implications and ramifications of life flow from the reflection of the mind
Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.
“Daniel Yankelovich defines culture as an effort to provide a coherent set of answers to the existential situations that confront human beings in the passage of their lives. A genuine cultural shift is one that makes a decisive break with the shared meaning of the past.”
I. WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN WORLD AND LIFE-VIEW?
A. Preliminary Structures
1. It is a distinct contrast between other views and theories of life and morality from a Biblical Interpretive Framework.
2. It is a unified structure that guides interpretation on matters of religion, science, etc. As other views divide religion from science, the CW sees all things from a singular point of view from the Biblical Interpretive Framework
B. Preliminary Definitions
1. A Biblical worldview is built upon the framework of ideas and beliefs through which a Christian individual or group interprets the world and interacts with the world.
C. Biblical Interpretive Framework
1. Creation
a. Where did the world and humanity come from?
2. Fall
a. When did things go wrong and what is wrong in the world?
3. New Creation
a. How was/is the wrong be made right?
4. Consummation
a. What is the conclusion to all of this?
II. THE IMPORTANCE OF A CHRISTIAN WORLD AND LIFE-VIEW?
1. It distinguishes us from secular reasoning and morality
2. It determines the nature of our ongoing conformityto Christ.
a. “Develops the framework for life-long faith in Christ guarding against:
i. Biblical illiteracy: Alarmingly high numbers of children raised in Christian homes do not know what the Bible teaches.
ii. Biblical confusion: Christians do not know why they should believe the teachings of the Bible instead of other views.
iii. Biblical immaturity: When Christians people encounter a different belief system, many do not know how to defend their faith or explain the basic truths of the Bible.”
3. It defends against counterfeit ideas.
a. Romans 12:2
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
b. Colossians 2:7-8
rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
c. Colossians 3:1-5-
SEEK … SET … DESTROY