Who We Are: Biblical Worldview - Part 1

In today’s culture the term “Christian” is thrown about quite loosely—so loosely, in fact, that it would be difficult to settle on a definition of the word that would satisfy the majority of people interested in the matter. Even Bertrand Russell, a famed opponent of Christianity, recognized this difficulty:

 

The word does not have quite such a full-blooded meaning now as it had in the times of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. In those days, if a man said that he was a Christian it was known what he meant. You accepted a whole collection of creeds which were set out with great precision, and every single syllable of those creeds you believed with the whole strength of your convictions…Nowadays it is not quite that. We have to be a little more vague in our meaning of Christianity.

It is a travesty, but given the vagueness that the term “Christian” has taken on, when one begins to speak of a “Christian worldview,” the waters are immediately muddied. When we speak of a “biblical worldview,” however, we can be a bit clearer. We do not mean a worldview that has been “Christianized” and would be acceptable to the professing “Christian” world. Rather, our aim is that the student would view the entirety of the created order through the lens of Scripture itself.

In our next post, we will see what John Calvin has to say about the “lens of Scripture.” In the mean time, let us pray and work diligently that we might be transformed by the renewal of our minds, with Scripture itself as the agent of transformation.