"Every worldview answers the questions 'What’s wrong with the world?' and 'How can it be fixed?' Some worldviews get the answers to these questions very, very wrong. Hatred of the Jews, for example, is perhaps the oldest hatred in the world." - John Stonestreet and Maria Baer
Let me begin with a few lines from T. S. Eliot:
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, but ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? (Choruses from ‘The Rock’)
I want to add to this the words of Jesus in John 8:12:
I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.
We live in a world suffused with the information of which the poet speaks, and much of it trivial. If we don’t prioritize correctly we will never be wise. But what information we prioritize depends much on how we view our lives and our world. Some questions are bigger and more solemn than others. It is a shame when men and women settle for explanations which do not explain; answers which do not answer. The ‘choice’ of worldview is a determining choice.
Before I launch fully into my talk I want to make 2 clarifications:
"...a biblical worldview— not a secular one—provides the foundation for logic, making critical thinking possible. We can think critically because God is the source of absolutes. He created a logical universe and gave us faculties for reasoning." - AiG
"I first read The Universe Next Door as an undergraduate and new convert in 1977. The book was published in 1976 and was used in an alternative education class at the University of Oregon. I had been reading Francis Schaeffer (1912–1984) and was learning to think philosophically about my newfound faith....That word 'worldview' would change my life and the lives of countless others in the 1970s, and we largely have Sire to thank for that." - TGC
"Given the cultural challenges facing the church in our day – not only from the outside, but increasingly from within – it is appropriate that we remember some of the keynote truths at the heart of Schaeffer’s work." - Ref21
"After highlighting that only 6% of U.S. adults possess a biblical worldview, George Barna, director of research at Arizona Christian University’s Cultural Research Center, concluded that 'the only viable way to transform America is by restoring its collective worldview to reflect biblical principles.'" - CPost
"To aid the church in commending and defending the faith in our late modern context, the journal's articles intend to exemplify rigorous study that is faithful to Scripture, consistent with our theological heritage, alert to current scholarship, and directed toward contemporary application." - Eric Newton, Editor
Read Part 1.
The hermeneutics of postmodernism are very diverse and difficult to understand.13 Written communication has three components: the author, the text, and the reader. As already noted, premodern and modern interpreters tried to uncover the intention of the author as expressed in the text. What is consistent in postmodern approaches of interpretation is that the author no longer controls the meaning of the text. Authorial intention is irrelevant in postmodern interpretation. Further, the text itself does not control meaning. The text is devoid of meaning altogether. In postmodern thinking, the reader not only controls the meaning but actually creates it. The text is merely an opportunity to explore the reader’s own perspectives. Vanhoozer explains: “Postmodernity is the triumph of situatedness—in race, gender, class—over detached objectivity… . Postmoderns typically think of interpretation as a political act, a means of colonizing and capturing texts and whole fields of discourse.”14
