The Biblical worldview (below) is distinguished from its opponent (the secular/pagan worldview) by its proclamation of a cosmos created from nothing (ex nihilo) by the most complete, most personal, and most particular/concrete being possible. These two worldviews are the two ultimate choices we have about life.
God, in the Biblical view, is a Person, a Someone, not a something, an essence, or an unformed substance. In the Biblical worldview, persons are the basic building-blocks of reality, not things, such as atoms. Persons do not "evolve" out of an original stuff, but are each unique creatures of God.
In this cosmos, all the "things" created are the stage, the backdrop, the context in which persons form their relations and communities, most importantly with God Himself.
Much more will be following to explain the diagram, including (hopefully sometime in 2006), a book, Yahweh or the Great Mother? comparing the two ultimate worldviews.
Get these worldviews under your belt, and you will be able to talk to the world around you about your Christian faith much more reasonably and convincingly.
The pictures of the two opposing worldviews need more explanation, which will follow as time allows. But to get started, the Biblical worldview can be graphically pictured as follows below:
Biblical Worldview Diagram - *.pdf file
Secular/Pagan (Perennial") Worldview
Chart of Biblical vs. Perennial characteristics (pdf file)
(If you cannot open pdf files, click here)
The Biblical cosmos is an "open circle" or "open system" because there is an exchange of information and energy between those in the circle and God outside the circle. The pagan world is a closed system because there is no such exchange (since there is nothing outside the circle with which to exchange). This difference springs from the fundamental and defining difference between the two, that the source of all existence in the Biblical view is a personal cause of all things, the Creator, who is already complete and formed, the primary object and the primary subject of all reality who rationally determines His creation and makes Himself known to it. On the other hand, the secular/pagan cosmos begins in exactly the opposite manner, coming from an unformed, impersonal, indeterminate, and unknowable primordial substance.
The Biblical worldview is quite simple -- the Creator, His creatures, and the relationship of Creator to creature. The Biblical definition of 'God' is 'creator & sovereign'. God is sovereign because He is creator. Our Creator alone determines our reason for existence, and is logically thus also Sovereign over all things. The Voice and Hand represent our Primary Circuit of communication (with God), and the two arrows between Adam and Eve are the Secondary Circuit of communication (between ourselves and the world around us).
The open circle is the sacramental world-space between the Hand and Voice of God where we live and move and have our being, where we relate to God and one another.
See Pagan
Worldview -- study the differences.
For a fuller description of this worldview, see article on
the Ordination of Women.
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