Monday, March 27, 2006

Out of the Fishbowl, Into the Ocean

"For a variety of reasons - perhaps a bits-and-pieces mentality, or an inability to make the theological connection between the Old and New Testaments, or a pernicious dualism that divides life into the airtight compartments of the sacred and secular - contemporary biblical understanding among average, everyday Christians is subject to extreme forms of reductionism. A comprehension of the overall biblical story and its constituent components is lost upon the minds of far too many evangelical believers. There is precious little understanding of the broader horizons of the Scriptures. For example, creation is merely a doctrine to be defended against evolution, sin only affects people, and redemption has exclusive application to the human soul. When it comes to the faith, many well-intended saints understand it in limited terms as a church view, or a Bible view, or a doctrine view, or a ministry view, or a spirituality view, or a religious view, or a God view, but not as a comprehensive, all-embracing, wholistic world and live view.

"But the notion of a worldview has a mysterious way of opening up the parameters of the Bible so that believers might be delivered from a fishbowl-sized Christianity into an oceanic perspective on the faith."  
- David Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 341-342.

1 comment:

shawne said...

ya i agree. when faced with a doctrinal issue the first question i ask myself is 'does this jive with the love story of Christ?'in order to answer this question one must have an oceanic perspective.