WORLDVIEW
Peter M. Wilson
28 October 2016
For a worldview to be coherent, it must possess a universal standard that can account for the following five elements:
Cosmology - a theory or doctrine describing the natural order of the universe.
Anthropology - theology dealing with the origin, nature, and destiny of human beings.
Methodology - a body of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline: a particular procedure or set of procedures.
Epistemology - the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge, especially with reference to its limits and validity.
Eschatology - a belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humankind.
Basic Christian Worldview
Cosmology: God brought everything into existence in six literal twenty-four-hour days, and on the seventh day, he admired his creation. This occurred six thousand years ago.
Anthropology: God created all living creatures during the six days of creation.
Methodology: God provided specific instructions and guidelines to humankind regarding morality and purpose.
Epistemology: God is the ultimate source of all knowledge; reality conforms to the eternal mind of God.
Eschatology: Humankind broke the guidelines God set in place. God orchestrated a series of redemptive events, redeeming humanity into a righteous relationship with him. God uses human beings and spiritual entities called angels to carry out the continuous cultivation of His world. This will continue forever, with the ultimate outcome being the entirety of humanity existing in perfect harmony. When physical death occurs, the soul of a person is judged. All souls who never had their relationship with God restored by accepting the son of God as their savior will enter into eternal separation from God, and all souls who did accept Jesus will go into the eternal presence of God.
Justification of Epistemology
The only coherent worldview within the Monotheistic belief system is the worldview that attributes the ultimate source of all knowledge and power to the God of the Bible and accepts his son as their Lord and Savior. The other Monotheistic worldviews are incomplete for the same reason as the other five belief systems: justification for their epistemology is incoherent. Christian Monotheism is a worldview that presumes God has revealed himself to man both physically through his son and through a reliable collection of historical documents.
These historical documents were written by eyewitnesses in the lifetimes of other eyewitnesses who reported supernatural events and fulfillment of specific prophecies, leading others to believe that their writings were divine rather than human in origin. The historical documents were originally written in two different languages: Hebrew and Aramaic. They were written by forty different authors, most of whom never met one another since they were written over such a long period of time. Adherents of this worldview choose to believe that the reliable documents were inspired by the Spirit of God and are, therefore, incapable of being false. The historical documents contain sufficient information to form a coherent worldview that matches what is understood of reality.
The historical documents have been combined into one complete collection commonly known as The Holy Bible. There are many different versions of The Holy Bible, which creates much concern about which one is the universal standard by which adherents of this worldview call anything true. The first step that must be taken is to understand the difference between methods of translation and transcription. Transcription is the process of changing one language into another. Translation, however, adds ideas, philosophies, and sometimes biases to make sense according to the knowledge of the translator(s).
Transcribing without translating the ancient manuscripts would likely result in words and phrases that wouldn't make sense in another language. Therefore, translators must combine methods of transcription and translation to develop a coherent result. Naturally, this results in many different versions of the same ideas. Regardless of whether the translators develop versions that agree, God's underlying concepts have remained unchanged since the beginning.
The truth of God was revealed through divinely inspired men, resulting in the development of the ancient scriptures. God also promised that he would protect his words from corruption forever. Even further, He promised that He would write His words on the hearts and minds of human beings so that we would inherently know and be able to identify His truth. Therefore, regardless of the plethora of translated versions that have come to be since the beginning of time, humanity can rest assured that if they put their faith and trust in God, He will guide them into complete comprehension of truth.
With that said, there are families of manuscripts that communicate traditional Christian beliefs and religious thoughts. Christian believers subscribe to schools of thought and families of manuscripts they believe are most consistent and coherent. The most coherent and consistent bible versions must agree with the majority text for the New Testament and the Hebrew Masoretic Text for the Old Testament. The Majority Text and Byzantine Text are terms used to describe over five thousand ancient Greek Manuscripts compiled over thousands of years since the beginning of the first century. These manuscripts agree with each other entirely other than matters of spelling, names, and punctuation.
The Hebrew Masoretic text is “the traditional Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible, meticulously assembled and codified, and supplied with diacritical marks to enable correct pronunciation. This monumental work began around the 6th century A.D. and was completed in the 10th by scholars at Talmudic academies in Babylonia and Palestine in an effort to reproduce, as far as possible, the original text of the Hebrew Old Testament. Their intention was not to interpret the meaning of the Scriptures but to transmit the authentic Word of God to future generations.
When the final codification of each section was complete, the Masoretes not only counted and noted down the total number of verses, words, and letters in the text but further indicated which verse, which word, and which letter marked the center of the text. In this way, any future amendments could be detected. The rigorous care given to the Masoretic text in its preparation is credited for the remarkable consistency in Old Testament Hebrew texts since then. The Masoretic work enjoyed an absolute monopoly for 600 years, and experts have been astonished at the fidelity of the earliest printed version (late 15th century) to the earliest surviving codices (late 9th century). The Masoretic text is universally accepted as the authentic Hebrew Bible (Encyclopedia Britannica)”.
Almost every modern bible version comes mainly from the Septuagint for the Old Testament and three ancient manuscripts for the New Testament known as the Minority Text or Alexandrian-Text. They hardly agree with each other on important foundational aspects, and are very different from the Majority text as well.
The Septuagint (also known as the LXX) “is a translation of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek language. The name “Septuagint” comes from the Latin word for seventy. The tradition is that 70 (or 72) Jewish scholars were the translators behind the Septuagint. The Septuagint was translated in the third and second centuries B.C. in Alexandria, Egypt. As Israel was under the authority of Greece for several centuries, the Greek language became more and more common. By the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C., most people in Israel spoke Greek as their primary language. That is why the effort was made to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek – so that those who did not understand Hebrew could have the Scriptures in a language they could understand. The Septuagint represents the first major effort at translating a significant religious text from one language into another (gotquestions.org)”.
The two primary ancient manuscripts used for a large portion of the modern translations have over three thousand differences in the gospels alone; they are called Sinaticus and Vaticanus. Two men named Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort went on to translate these two ancient manuscripts, small fragments from other manuscripts, and the Septuagint into a complete Greek collection. Mostly all of the modern translations are rooted in Westcott and Hort's translations of these critical manuscripts.
The Westcott and Hort translations have many vital verses completely omitted and are riddled with mistakes and contradictions. Therefore, to appeal to any of these versions as justification for truth would be problematic. Furthermore, the fact that the Septuagint came from Alexandria, Egypt, a place in the bible that serves as an example for abominable things, seems to justify why so many contradictions and unbiblical perspectives are all throughout the text.
The bible versions that align with the Majority and Masoretic text type, of the reliable collection of historical documents that form The Holy Bible, formulate the universal standard by which Christian Monotheists can justify things they claim to know, because they do not appeal to human reasoning as their source of truth but to revelation from God through scripture which has been preserved since the beginning of time. In the Christian Monotheistic worldview, the ultimate source of Universal Immaterial Unchanging Laws of Logic is not human reasoning but the eternal mind of God.
Establishing The Christian Worldview
In a Christian worldview, reality is spatial, and time is temporal, yet reality is eternal. In other words, time is a temporal measurement of either the earth's orbit around the sun or the earth as it rotates on its axis; reality, however, in its entirety is spatial or eternal due to the fact that outside of our galaxy and our universe time as we know it, does not exist.
We are intertwined in an intricate series of events; therefore, it is of the utmost importance to separate what we feel from what is real. For our foundation to be established, we must develop a viable Christian worldview. Here, viable means logically consistent and coherent. Everyone has a worldview already, which answers the basic questions about life. It is important to establish a viable worldview because what we believe severely affects how we function, and if we wish to function properly, we must believe properly. Forming a viable worldview is the act of cultivating the soul for a productive, understandable life, a life in which everything has true meaning. Cornelius Van Til said it best: “Without the correct view about God, man cannot have the correct view about himself.”
An important precondition to forming a Christian worldview is believing that God is, which requires faith (Hebrews 11:6; KJV). Once we simply submit, God will grant repentance, which is the ability to turn from our sinful ways, and he will provide us with the ability to endure and be able to acknowledge truth through grace (2 Timothy 2:25; KJV). Faith is the vital key to understanding this first step. The dictionary defines faith as; “a firm belief in something for which there is no proof (Merriam-Webster).” If one can overcome this elusive definition of faith, it will be easier to comprehend the following steps. This is an obstacle because it sounds completely absurd to believe in something that cannot be proven. It would follow that if something cannot be proven, then there is a possibility that it could be false. If it is possible for a thing to be false, then it cannot be absolutely true. We must not believe in a probable God; we must believe in the only true God. Belief in something for which there is no proof is a better definition of blind faith. Therefore, we must set guidelines that will allow us to develop our Christian worldview further, which will give us an understanding of knowledge. Here, knowledge simply means justified true belief.
We must understand that to have faith is not to believe in something that cannot be proven. Scripture tells us that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1; KJV).” Faith is a substance; when things are hoped for, the essence of faith begins to manifest within us. Something that is an essence is something that exists; it is the most significant element, quality, or aspect of a thing or person; it is the properties or attributes by means of which something can be placed in its proper class or identified as being what it is (Merriam-Webster). An essential substance to human life is faith; it is inherent. Faith is the evidence of things not seen, which means the evidence for things that are not perceived by our senses is faith itself. This may be difficult for some to comprehend, however our understanding of faith is vital and worth spending time to come to a complete understanding.
If our faith is diluted, our ability to function properly will inevitably be compromised. Therefore, ensuring our understanding of faith is completely coherent is necessary. Scripture tells us that “Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear (Hebrews 11:3; KJV).” Faith is an immaterial aspect of every person's being, by which we are able to exist and come to know things. It is what separates humankind from animals. Faith is something everyone living possesses. It is the ability to believe, comprehend, form opinions, and come to conclusions. Some may classify this as reasoning; here, it is a good working definition of faith. The purpose of forming a worldview is to cultivate our faith and consciously achieve the manifestation of a supernatural abundance of faith.
The ultimate substance that we hope for, and endure for is not of this world, but stored up for us in heaven, and is an eternal substance far better than any earthly thing (Hebrews 10:34; KJV). Scripture tells us that where our treasure is, that is where our hearts are (Luke 12: 33-34; KJV). If we are storing up our treasures in heaven, our hearts will become kingdom oriented, our thoughts will become kingdom oriented, and our very lives will become kingdom oriented. Faith in God and manifesting the kingdom will classify us as being what we are, zealous. This will become our most significant element, quality, or aspect. This concept will transform us entirely into completely new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17; KJV). Once God grants repentance, and we begin to come to knowledge of the truth, life will never be the same.
You may have heard the statement, “I have lost my faith.” it is impossible to lose our ability to believe, comprehend, form opinions, and come to conclusions in this life. When an individual assumes they have lost their faith, they are simply saying they have lost their faith in a certain thing that they once believed to be true and have replaced it with something else, thus classifying them into a different class or category. It is possible to repress what we know to be true; in fact, scripture covers this as it states, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18; KJV).” It is possible to have the truth and suppress it in unrighteousness. This is what we see when individuals use their God given ability to be faithful, and put it into something that makes no consistent, coherent, sense.
If a person makes the decision to leave what they know about truth, God will honor their decision, which is an interesting thing about free will. Scripture states, “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient (Romans 1:28; KJV).” We must know that we all have faith; it is a part of our being, and where we invest our faith will drastically affect our lives. Faith, like any other human emotion, is inherent. Every person regardless of ethnicity, religion, language or sexual orientation experiences joy, fear, anger, grief, etc., faith is no different. We did not have to learn how to be happy, become angry, or feel grief; although faith is inherent, it requires cultivation. Cultivation here means continuous conscious development. These are unlearned personality characteristics, and in the Christian worldview we have an unchanging standard by which we are to cultivate proper behavior.
We learn how to have faith early in our adolescence. Our faith begins to manifest from birth, yet it so easily goes overlooked and misidentified. We long to be fed, comforted, and generally taken
care of, and in time we receive what we long for. This allows us to come to an understanding that what we hope for will come to us, thus the substance of things hoped for (faith) begins to manifest. Longing is rooted in hope, and hope is rooted in faith. This gift of the ability to be faithful is seen throughout our entire lives. We hope the sun will rise and the world will revolve in perfect suspense to sustain life. We hope that logic will remain constant and that we come to possess a firm grip on what is real and what is false. Therefore, for someone to say they do not have hope or faith immediately classifies them into a category or class other than what they were created to be: righteous.
It is certainly possible for someone to believe or have faith in something that is not true. This is why it is so important for our faith in God to be established on viable facts we can comprehend; this is our foundation. There are some who will offer all the facts for God’s existence in an attempt to persuade others to believe in Him. This approach is backwards; individuals must first choose to invest their faith in God and believe God is, be granted the gift of repentance, and then comes the evidence. Here, repentance means the ability to change one’s mind about God.
If a person has not acknowledged that God exists and submits to his authority, then they cannot even begin to comprehend the truth about God. Scripture describes these types of individuals as “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 3:7; KJV).” The reason they are not able to is that they never acknowledged that God is.
Believing that God is and putting faith in him are necessary preconditions to receiving the gift of repentance and, thus, knowledge of any truth. This is called a presupposition, which is to suppose before hand (Merriam-Webster). Individuals can claim to know things, yet if they have no justification for their knowledge they are simply making claims. However, we already know that claiming knowledge is no proof of having it. Therefore, the first step we must take in forming a Christian worldview is to obtain a coherent presupposition and decide to view the world based on the paramount presupposition that God is who he says he is. Once this has been accomplished, knowledge of the truth will be available.
There is objective truth and subjective truth. The overall objective truth in the Christian worldview is that God is who he says he is, and without Him, nothing makes any logical, coherent sense. Objective truth is something that is true regardless of whether anyone believes it or not. Subjective truth is something that is true to a person or group regardless of whether it is actually true. Subjective truth can only be actually true if it aligns with objective truth. Any subjective truth that does not align with the fact that God is who he says he is can be reduced to absurdity. Therefore, the second step to formulating a Christian worldview is to acknowledge that God is not merely subjectively true, but that He is objectively true. This means that regardless of whether anyone believes that God is, He, in fact, is.
Do not be mistaken; anyone can look at facts and then decide to believe in God. However, that is not putting faith in Him. Understanding the facts about God is vital to building a solid faith-based foundation; however, this is after acknowledging that God is, not only in theory but in practice as well. Faith in God requires turning your life over to Him, trusting in Him to lead you and guide you, not by your own strength, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, by Jesus Christ, and by His mighty Grace. Faith in God is not simply intellectual knowledge; it is relational coexistence with Him. Faith in God is submitting to Him and giving Him ultimate authority in your life. Faith in God is a process whereby we go from being the sole authority of our lives to Him being the ultimate authority of our lives.
“Watch the video below to further expand on this subject.”
REFERENCES
Encyclopedia Britannica
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/368081/Masoretic-text
Got Questions
http://www.gotquestions.org/septuagint.html
DISCLAIMER
The opinions expressed within this article are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of the references.