Having given a template of the nature of worldviews and how they work, we can now make a sketch of the Judeo-Christian worldview according to the basic worldview parameters. This isn’t a list of what Christians believe so much as a panoramic look at the Christian proclamation: worldviews, as normative, insist that they speak to reality as a whole, and thus the Judeo-Christian worldview assaults the sensitivities of the relativist who would rather all worldviews live in peace and harmony. The relativist’s desires are irrelevant: his own worldview does what he demands other worldviews to avoid, namely asserting itself over against all competing worldviews. While people may snicker and sneer at Christians for advocating a certain approach to reality, and encouraging—even summoning—people to embrace it, and while Christians may be called arrogant for trying to push their views on others, the simple fact is that this worldview can do no other. Every worldview claims to speak to reality as a whole, and the Judeo-Christian worldview, though receiving much more flack than other worldviews, is no different: it simply carries identifiers such as “evangelism” and “conversion” to speak to its own method of doing what all other worldviews do, asserting itself as the correct one and thus encouraging people to accept it as truth and order their lives around it. This isn’t something peculiar to Christianity, it’s just that Christianity’s gotten far more screen-time in this arena than most other worldviews. Now to the sketch:
The Story. N.T. Wright, in his voluminous book The New Testament and the People of God, gives the Judeo-Christian story as follows: “The story is about a creator and his creation, about humans made in this creator’s image and given tasks to perform, about the rebellion of humans and the dissonance of creation at every level, and particularly about the creator’s acting, through Israel and climactically through Jesus, to rescue his creation from its ensuing plight. The story continues with the creator acting by his own spirit within the world to bring it towards the restoration which is his intended goal for it.” (132)
The Worldview Questions & Answers. There are four questions every worldview must answer, and Christianity’s answers are as follows:
Question: “Who are we?”
Answer: “We’re human beings fashioned in the creator’s image, and we have responsibilities that come with the status as God’s image-bearers.”
Question: “Where are we?”
Answer: “We’re in a beautiful, lovely world created by God but stained by death and decay and subject to corruption.”
Question: “What’s wrong?”
Answer: “God’s image-bearers have rebelled against their creator. The result is a disturbance in the connection between the creator and his creator, and as a result the world is severely out-of-tune with the creator’s intentions for it.”
Question: “What’s the solution?”
Answer: N.T. Wright puts it wonderfully: “The creator has acted, is acting, and will act within his creation to deal with the weight of evil set up by human rebellion, and to bring his world to the end for which it was made, namely that it should resonate fully with his own presence and glory. This action, of course, is focused upon Jesus and the spirit of the creator.” (133)
The Symbols. The events & artifacts which have come to embody the basic tenants of this worldview are wide and varied, as should be expected in a global movement. From church spires to cathedrals, from liturgy to prayer gatherings, from the hammering of statues to the painting of icons, from cross necklaces to refugee centers, the symbols that articulate and embody the worldview, and consequently guide its adherents, are myriad.
The Praxis. Like all worldviews, the Judeo-Christian worldview advocates a certain modus operandi, a certain way of being in the world. But Christianity goes a step further, so that it’s not so much about how we live in the world but, according to N.T. Wright, it’s about how we live for the world. On pages 133-134 he says this is because “in the fundamental Christian worldview humans in general are part of the creator’s designed means of looking after his world, and Christians in particular are part of his means of bringing healing to the world.” As to the inconsistency that’s often found—and spotlighted—within Christians, he observes, “As with all other worldviews… its adherents are not noticeably successful in attaining a complete correlation between their statements about their own being-in-the-world and their actual practice. This is in no way fatal to the theory, it merely means that Christians, like everybody else, are often muddled, mistaken, foolish and wayward, and are probably trying to ride at least one other horse at the same time as the Christian one.”
Born out of the story, the questions & answers, and the symbols and praxis of the Judeo-Christian worldview are the basic beliefs, which in turn lead to both consequent and subsequent beliefs. Consequent and subsequent beliefs center around things like the peculiarities of God’s nature, the details of the work of Christ, different viewpoints on the Holy Spirit, opinions on revelation, the Bible, and the church. Perhaps someone has a particular view of scripture, or has a certain slant on the atonement. These aren’t basic beliefs, but sometimes the lines are blurred, and Christians will assume their consequent and/or subsequent beliefs are basic beliefs when that’s not the case at all, thus erecting barriers between them and other Christians of differing beliefs. Most debates and discussions within the worldview take place at the level of consequent and subsequent beliefs with the basic beliefs held taught as an anchor, around which everyone moves and thinks.
This quest of mine focuses on the basic beliefs of the Judeo-Christian worldview. These basic beliefs—the “essentials” as it were, against the non-essentials—are the hinges upon which the worldview either stands or falls. As I wrote earlier, this quest leaves questions regarding consequent and subsequent beliefs on the backburner, since they’re not integral to the health of the worldview. The basic beliefs of Christianity include things such as “God exists” and “God cares” and “Jesus was raised from the dead.” If you eliminate God, you destroy the worldview. If you eliminate his caring disposition towards creation, you end up with deism which is incompatible with Christianity (despite the attempts of Enlightenment thinkers to reconcile the two). If you eliminate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, the matter is quite simple, easy for anyone to understand; as St. Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 15.17-18, “[If] Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Thus it is the basic beliefs that demand attention.
Ultimately the Quest comes back to the riddle of assumptions. You know the old adage: “To ‘assume’ means to make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me.’” Assumptions undergird the way that we view the world, and no worldview is without its assumptions. These assumptions are the foundation of a worldview’s basic beliefs, and Christianity is no exception: we assume God exists, we assume he cares for us and his world, we assume Jesus was raised from the dead. These assumptions are necessary in order to truly believe in & invest in the worldview. If we assume that God does not exist, then we could be deemed atheists. If we assume God does not care, then we’re deists. If we assume Jesus was not raised from the dead, then why the hell would we align ourselves with the Judeo-Christian worldview? As I wrote back in March, the Quest is about determining whether or not the assumptions needed for the Judeo-Christian worldview are justifiable: “Can I intelligently make this assumption without sacrificing logic & reason?” While Christianity may indeed make sense of our world in a simple and coherent manner that sheds light on issues outside its immediate concern, this doesn’t automatically validate it. If the assumptions needed to keep it standing are untenable, then the whole thing is called into question. Over the next couple months I’m going to go through some of Christianity’s biggest assumptions and seek to defend them.
Is the assumption that God exists a justifiable assumption?
Is the assumption that God cares a justifiable assumption?
Is the assumption that Jesus rose from the dead a justifiable assumption?
These are the three pillars upon which Christianity lives or dies. There are countless other assumptions, but these are the big ones, and thus they’re the ones that demand to be dealt with. All the posts throughout this week serve as a sort of prolegomenon to the issue at hand, setting-the-stage, as it were, for what’s around the corner. Per usual I’m giving no timeline regarding when these posts will show up; I’m taking my time going through them, not hurrying myself as if there were some deadline. I think that’s the best way to go about this. So, until then, keep maintaining your groovy selves!
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