Philosophy
must start somewhere and the aim of reformational philosophy is to be a
philosophy that is in line with scripture. This means it is important to
say something about the world and life vision that finds its inspiration in the
Bible. To do this we shall make some
comments about the key Biblical themes of creation, fall and redemption with
particular emphasis on the first since, as we have already indicated, that is
what gives context to philosophical activity.
Creation
includes everything that is not God.
There are three points about creation that are relevant in this context
which will be explored in this and the following sections:
1. Creation is good.
2. The human task is to develop creation.
3. Creation is ordered (given structure) by God
The
Bible’s story of creation is described in terms of God commanding by his Word
and creation responding in obedience.
After each response God affirms what he has made. And we see that the whole of creation, in all
its rich diversity is considered very good.
We should be careful not to equate this goodness with other-worldly
notions of perfection, or think of goodness only in relations to our own
desires. Creation is set up to fulfil
the purposes given to it by God; that is what is central. Creation is God’s kingdom (Psalm 24); it
reveals his will (Psalm 19); and should be received with thanksgiving (1
Timothy 4:4)
To
believe in the God who has revealed Himself in the Bible is to understand
ourselves and the world we live in as God’s world; we were made to be at home
in this world. We are part of God’s good creation and thus are part of His
ongoing purposes. Life is of one piece
and the fundamental question for the Christian is to what extent one’s life is
a walk of obedience to God. That
following Christ has implications for the whole of life is often resisted by
Christians and it is worth considering why this is. In reformational philosophy this resistance
is attributed to a basic “dualism” that underlies it, though it is worth noting
that today there may be a lot of emphasis given to “integrating” the two realms
or spheres that form this dualism. The
basic idea is that life can be separated into a natural and a supernatural realm. The natural realm is constituted by the
common world in which all people live whether they are Christian or not. Here people build homes for themselves, live
together in society, develop science and pursue various social and personal
goals without much concern for “religious” issues. It is a realm that is largely neutral with
regard to religion and, in that sense, is sometimes described as
“secular”. The supernatural realm is
then that realm of life that is unique to Christian experience. It is primarily found in the church community
and involves distinctive activities like worship, prayer, Bible reading and
some specific moral teachings. This
sphere is directly affected by religion in the sense that God’s grace brings an
individual into this sphere, or adds this to one’s common life. So, as well as being a car mechanic and
football fan you become someone who prays, reads the Bible and attends church.
It
is important to see that this is a very persuasive position. It is a “ground motive” that affects us all
such that it often acts like ‘common sense’ and can be very difficult to
resist. We need to see what’s wrong with
this view at its heart. The key is to
see that our whole life belongs to God. There is no sphere of our existence
that can be hidden from God or that can be kept back from the claim of Christ’s
Lordship. So the problem with this view
is that it undermines the integrity of our religious situation. The whole of reality is created, sustained,
and ordered by God; it is comprehensively distorted, though not destroyed, by
the fall; and the whole of reality is taken up in God’s redemptive work through
history to reconcile all things to himself.
The great Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck summarised this stance simply
like this: “God the father has reconciled His created but fallen world through
the death of His Son, and renews it into a Kingdom of God by His Spirit.” What this means is that any attempt to divide reality up
into a 'secular' or 'natural' sphere and a 'spiritual' or 'supernatural' sphere
undermines the comprehensiveness of the central biblical categories of
creation, fall and redemption.
We
must therefore resist any view that sees salvation as taking us out of this
world, and so sees our destination as a spiritual realm beyond this world. Such a view finds no support from the Bible.
However it does hold a striking resemblance to certain pagan Greek ideas of the
world of matter as evil, or a principle of imperfection, and of a non-physical
soul as our true self which is trapped in the body and longs for its release
into a purely spiritual world. One
important source of these ideas has been Plato’s dialogue the Phaedo, which
has unfortunately been more influential in many Christians’ understanding of
spirituality and eternal life than 1 Corinthians 15, as the New Testament
scholar Oscar Cullmann once noted. This Greek inspired view has both minimised
the value of our earthly lives and cut off whole chunks of our life from the
renewing power of the Gospel. While it
is true that most Christians would reject the more extreme forms of this view
it is still common for Christians to think of their life in terms of sacred and
secular and so find it strange that the Gospel is relevant to the whole of
life. The effect of this deep lying dualism is to deny the lordship of Christ
for the greater part of our life! It
leads us to assume that work and play, food and drink, business and politics,
art and entertainment are somehow outside of our Christian calling.
This
is really important. When the
comprehensive character of creation is taken out of a Christian view, when we
start with a reduced Christian faith that covers only Sunday service and
private Bible study, then we cut out any relevance the Christian faith can have
for life, and in doing so we condemn Christianity to irrelevance. A Christian philosophy cannot solve these
problems, indeed it will suffer from them. Seeing how such a philosophy can
give distinctive insight and direction in the different sectors of life can,
however, play its part in encouraging a more wholehearted Christian life.
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