On the vital necessity for a Christian worldview.

Posted byStephen ThompsonPosted inUncategorizedTags:, , , , , , , , ,

I hope that my readers will have noted that I have continually alluded to the need for a Christian worldview, and made brief comments about what that might consist in, and thus why it is important. Nevertheless, I have not so far addressed this topic head on, suspecting that it would be a major project. I responded to a need to pray with a friend today, and some thoughts about this emerged from our prayerful discussion about my involvement with Green campaigning which helped me to condense and crystallise this matter into a few words. I’ll use more here, but hopefully not too many!

COP 27 will soon be upon us, to be held in Egypt, and you might have visited my previous pieces composed for COP 26 in Glasgow last summer. I am convicted that God not only made the cosmos with this singular jewel of Earth within it, and that He cared for it, and said that it is Good. God also wished and willed that we should care for it, and that we continue to do so. This care should be expressed in prayer, and in personal and local action. It should also be embraced as part of the gospel mandate- the charge to declare God’s Good News to all the world, to all humanity, in all times and places.

For too many of my brothers and sisters, and also other neighbours who do not (yet) share my convictions, there are crucial challenges and obstacles in this manifesto. They stem from our tendencies to oversimplify what must be embraced as a whole. It might seem obvious that thought-through beliefs should be holistic, nuanced and resistant to naïve simplicity. But culture is divided into silos; we are easily drawn to generalisations that make for a simpler life, we tend toward ideological division and all too often pick fights with ‘others’ who we rudely label under stereotypical headings, making a straw man of their complex positions.

In order to set up the solution, I will briefly explore the three sorts of oversimplifications that ought to be avoided. Something like this:

Firstly, the humanists and atheists typically object that Christianity is entirely/mostly concerned with spiritual matters, with mumbo jumbo about the heavenly realms that are in fact merely the residue of the imaginations of a pre-scientific age. God and his angels and all manner of hypothetical things that are not were hypothesised as the causal agents of change and the foundations of our being- all that can now be safely dispensed with.

Now it is certainly true that the most significant point of Christian belief is God. Theology means the study of God. Every manual of theology contains other headings than simply ‘God’, but God comes first, and everything else flows from God. But it is not enough to say that the only proper concern of Christian belief is the Trinity; God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. That is not because we say so, but because we believe that God’s Revelation says so. It should be obvious to say that believing in the God revealed in Christ ought to lead to radical behaviours in community and in the world, but Christian witness has not always borne this out. If community only means the people who meet in a church building, and they do not act to bring significant impact in the world they quietly inhabit from sabbath to sabbath, then whatever books of theology of may state, the practice of such a community gives grounds to the inadequate understanding that these are people who are so heavenly-minded that they are of no earthly use.

Secondly, I recall a different attitude which was popular during the middle of the last century. Confessing belief in the spiritual and supernatural claims of Christian scripture was commonly rejected. It was trendy for the likes of Don Cupitt to opine that religion is really a human creation, and not owing any debt to the Divine. Revelation is rejected in favour of evolutionary psychology and humanist anthropology. I recall being taken to a showing of Cupitt’s Sea of Faith by a religious studies teacher, leaving with the sense that he had thereby undermined any claim he might otherwise have had to make a valid contribution to our collective spiritual journey. Yet at the same time, it was also common, especially in Catholic circles, to emphasise the so-called social gospel. The emphasis on the conviction that if being Christian means anything it should be visibly expressed in terms of loving our neighbours. Martin Luther King’s faith was expressed in terms of equal rights in the USA, Desmond Tutu’s faith in terms of anti-apartheid campaigning in South Africa, while Catholic Oscar Romero’s faith became visible in denouncing the oppressive dictatorship of El Salvador. For many of my new Christian friends when I was a youngster, these examples were laudable but largely ignored, as their message was presented as being about liberation for people, regardless of faith, and not significantly to do with personal piety or the coming of the Kingdom of God as a spiritual experience. Students of these campaigners will protest that this was an injustice to their convictions, and that is my point. We tend to oversimplify things. And so both groups, whether ‘liberal theologians’ or social campaigners, were rejected as being too much concerned with humanity and things on earth. They are too earthly minded to be of heavenly use, it might be said, or, it would be quoted, as correction, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” (Col 3: 2)

And so we come to the third case. Today, many Christian folk are speaking up in the cause of environment and sustainable living. This position easily becomes stereotyped. Members of congregations, rather than their leaders, are frequently heard waxing lyrical about the priority of the planet for our continued thriving under God. This Earth is the focus of our stewardship mandate, we are told. God will hold us accountable for our treatment of God’s Good Earth, and judgement is to be expected if we do not properly discharge our responsibilities in this regard. So our expression of bringing God’s Good News is now to be more seen on the allotment than on a preacher’s soap box. It seems that we speak of worshipping at the recycling centre rather than in the church meeting. The more well-informed will recall that the Christian historian Lynn White explored the thesis that it was the very doctrine of the Dominion Mandate, derived by ‘Christian society’ from the book of Genesis that led to the pillaging and oppression of our world by, firstly, explorers and colonists, and now our modernised and technological society. White’s 1967 paper suggested that we Christians should reinvent our faith more in the image of St Francis of Assisi, singing his canticles to Brother Son and Sister Moon, in preference to the despoiling pre-Industrial ‘dominioning’ of Adam in the Garden of Eden.

The response to this, from self-styled orthodox Christian folk, would be to complain that the ‘real gospel’ is about Jesus who shows us the only way to the Father, and that so-called Christians espousing ‘creation care’ may have a point but that this is dangerously close to exchanging the true God of Heaven for Gaia or some earthly Green religion, closer to paganism than Christianity. It might further be said that the cause of Green politics is to prefer the claims of the planet over those of people- that God’s will is being mistakenly taken in favour of the world over the gospel concern for souls. By definition, any concern that takes attention away from the preaching of the gospel, and the priority of Christian worship in community, must be unorthodox- indeed, heretical.

So my point is this. If we allow ourselves to be drawn into debates about what is really important to be framed in terms of statements beginning, ‘The only thing that matters is…’ then we will fall short of the truth. It might be expected that Christian folk would fall into this kind of simplification, given commitments to the theological keystones of sola scriptura [‘by scripture alone], sola fide [by faith alone], and so on. Perhaps some readers are helped by my brief commentary above; simply elevating such simplifications to the light can expose their naiveté, though I have deliberately only attempted this briefly. The Christian worldview is not simply, ‘God’, or contra your favourite Sunday School lesson, whatever the question is, the answer should be, ‘Jesus‘! Loving our neighbour- and even the atheist Dawkins agrees – must also be important, and this must be practical. We live with our neighbours in the world, and rely on it in every respect for our sustenance and survival, so it is at once neighbourly to look out for the interests of both planet and people. This does not mean that our concern for God becomes less- rather, it finds immediate, more lively and vital expression in these ways. Or, after Paul Tillich, that Ultimate Concern is expressed at all levels and in all modes.

So I begin by saying that there is such a thing as a Christian worldview, and it is informed at a profound level by this discussion. All three points of focus must be constantly in view, which is not to say that they are of equal importance. My belief in the importance of the world, that is, this Earth that is our only physical home, is not inspired by the convictions of either James Lovelock and his post-pagan Gaia hypothesis, nor by the flavour of Green politics that makes the planet the priority, with greater significance than the thriving of human community. Rather, because I believe that the God of the Bible created both cosmos and the ecological environment in which our communities can continue to co-exist it should therefore be possible for us to work out with fear and trembling, (to allude to Phil 2:12) what proper and responsible use of this Earth, rather than its abuse, ought to look like. It seems the plain understanding of the scripture that God did make both planet and people in order than we should live on it, and to make use of its provisions for our own proper ends. The construction of cities is, I think it is reasonable to assert, accepted as an expression of our creative thriving, as is the development of scientifically informed technologies, including space travel. Yet there are, as we now know all too well, significant dangers to both planet and people, far too many of which we have realised, in particular over the last century or so.

My tripartite worldview diagram, indicating that the categories of God, Humanity and the Cosmos (Christopher Southgate’s title) should be augmented with depictions of the relational interactions between them, after Martin Buber. It is also important to state that the cosmos and humanity gain theological definition in being said to belong to God, and being for God’s purposes. In these ways I go beyond what might be considered a statement of received orthodoxy. (P)2018

So I will conclude this statement of principle with commentary on this diagram. The concept of a Christian worldview is not self-evident to anyone who owns that badge, as I have briefly described. I think that the lenses through which various flavours of Christian disciple look at their lives under God are not the same. Some choose to focus their attention on God, and minimise other concerns. This is not so much a ‘worldview’ as a ‘heavenview’. Others acknowledge the spiritual roots of their faith; its Divine inspiration, but are mostly concerned with the here-and-now expression. For them, the question is how to transform the ‘worldliness’ of this life, in the negative sense that the New Testament writers describe the world, into the life of the coming Kingdom of God. And now much more recently the Green movement has been baptised into Christianity by a certain section of believers in many denominations, with orthodox concern for issues and sections of society who have been disadvantaged in various ways, including in the developing world and the poor more generally, though often without much sense of how this relates to the established doctrines of God and humanity.

However inaccurate my brief summary may be, I hope you will allow that my proposal of a worldview that embraces all three poles of concern is persuasive. Certainly, a worldview that is Christian should elevate the person of Jesus Christ in all respects. A Christian worldview will be richly informed and grounded on Christian Scripture. Such a worldview does not mean the pictorial representation of the cosmos in the ancient Near East that had a flat earth on pillars surrounded by sea and overshadowed by a solid dome of the heavens- that is a common misconception that is tangential to the question of worldview.

But really what a formulation that is worthy of the description must be- one that conveys with integrity to the message of Christianity- is one that puts us in mind of the broadest vantage point which our faith empowers, the most inclusive view. Photographers have a fish eye lens, and this captures the very widest view available. This can be a metaphor for the worldview- it has everything in it. As with the photo, we have more detail in some parts than others. Our scientific understanding of the Earth and the wider universe is now much advanced, and we also know a great deal about various aspects of humanity. Our knowledge of God is different, relying on God’s self-revelation to us. But these points are a little besides the point. It is the source of Christian revelation, the Bible, that tells us about God’s world, which we can approximately call the Earth, though this is not an identical category. In the same way, what the Bible has to tell us about ourselves as human beings is not of the same order or mode as the insights of our science or psychology. And key amongst these are the revelations of God to God’s people, firstly the Jews, and then the Christians. We are given insight, significantly informed by God’s own point of view, about these three categories. For me, this is what should be usefully meant by a Christian worldview.

I further conclude that this ‘worldview’ should perhaps be considered as a film rather than a still image. A study of Genesis under those three headings provides particular insights, and these are not the same as that afforded by other parts of the Biblical canon. In the case of Genesis, I must say that this starts as a Jewish worldview, but that is then modified from the Christian perspective. The same data is then considered somewhat differently from the later perspective, and thus becomes Christianised, or ‘Judeo-Christian’ perhaps. Telescopes and microscopes contain many lenses, and these are deployed in many ways for different purposes. Something similar could be said for the Biblical or Christian worldview- and so perhaps I would say that ‘Christian’ adds elements of tradition and praxis to such a view that the more constrained reliance on the text of scripture affords.

I will pause here, as the next significant discussion will be my take on the contribution that the work of Martin Buber in Ich und Du, ‘I and Thou’ can make to my formulation of a Christian worldview. This will require more preparation after my earlier research, so you will have to be patient.

In the meantime, I will make this clear. I am, as far as I know, making a novel claim about what a Christian worldview should be. I am developing something myself because I see the need to bring scriptural resources and understanding to bear on this key question that is charged with new significance in this current age: How does God want God’s own people to see their place and their roles in God’s world and cosmos in these days of increasing challenge? John Piper told us, ‘Your God is too small.’ I think that our view of humanity is diminished compared with God’s stated intentions. ‘Your humans are too small,’ as Piper might have said. And we have not paid enough attention to God’s gift of God’s Earth to us. ‘Your view of the Earth is too limited.’ And because God has formed us in God’s image, in imago Dei, Who is both Unchanging and eternally Creative, we should discover that just because all things are to be brought together under One Head, even Christ, does not mean that what-is-to-come has already been written. ‘Your view of the Future is too constrained.’ Not because God is obliged, but solely because God has willed it, we are engaged by God in a covenant to make the future with God.

St Augustine is commonly credited with this aphorism, in this telling certainly resonant with John 15:5. Image from Rev Tim Kell’s blog. My claim is that this is the germ of the concept of co-creation at a scale that has yet to be realised. I am sure you note the visual reference above to Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

I propose that a wide, holistic and fully informed worldview is vital and necessary in our day to empower us to draw on the resources of scripture, tradition, doctrine and Spirit that have always been at our disposal, but to which we have stood too close to appreciate the possibilities and potential it offers. From a more suitable and objective vantage point we will better understand both the challenges we face in God and also the means by which God would partner with God’s people as co-creators of God’s Good Future.

© 2022 Stephen Thompson, except where credited.

Published by Stephen Thompson

Thinking inside the box is to be recommended for many reasons. I am creating this blog in May 2020 as we are encouraged to stay inside our boxes as far as possible, though we are allowed out- encouraged out, indeed- for exercise. By blogging, our thinking can also be allowed out for public exercise. Right now we need new thinking, new exercising of our mental faculties, and collective application of our thinking to the big idea of a healthy collective future. I am trialling my thinking in constructive theology, science and leadership in the light of my experience as a science teacher, theological student and as a representative of the Christian community in the county of Kent, in the UK. I welcome your partnership!

One thought on “On the vital necessity for a Christian worldview.”

  1. Pingback: SUNDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2022: THE THIRTY-THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME. – Sunday Mass Readings

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.