And then, I spoke with a friend who convinced me that I'm totally wrong in thinking this.
Sure, reinvention is a pointless exercise with stuff like math and engineering. But what about stuff like philosophy and theology?
You might think you could never achieve the same depth of insight as Thomas Aquinas or Martin Luther, and you might be right, but you would be completely missing the point.
Sometimes, reinventing the wheels that revolve in our minds help us to understand them better.
Worldview is defined by Wikipedia (gasp) as the following:
A comprehensive world view (or worldview) is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the entirety of the individual or society's knowledge and point-of-view, including natural philosophy; fundamental, existential, and normative postulates; or themes, values, emotions, and ethics.
So, the question is, how do you form a worldview without reinventing the wheel? Technically, you can read books of philosophy and theology, then form your worldview by reusing the framework of the authors. Lots of people do this.
Trouble is, if you're using the framework that someone else has built, how can you have a true appreciation for how that framework was built?
Starting from the fundamental tenants of Scripture, it is totally possible to come up with a complete and useful worldview that affects how you interact with the issues in life. You can do this without referencing a solitary theologian or philosopher. Yes, I'm absolutely serious. The John MacArthurs and John Pipers of the world are optional reading material (I mean, shoot, where did they derive their framework from?).
What would happen if each Christian took their Bible, threw out every presupposition not contained therein, and proceeded to build a worldview from "scratch"?
I think you would discover a leaner Christianity, bereft of ideological baggage, denominational differences, and pet doctrines. Sure, it's a lot of work. Nobody said reinventing the wheel was easy. Sure, not everyone is going to reach the same conclusions. We're different and have sin natures that corrupt our understanding of even the simplest tenants of Scripture.
But one thing is certain. Struggling with Scripture is a very fruitful thing. We'd be able to better express our beliefs to those around us.
I mean, wow. Imagine a world free from soundbites. No, that's too hard.
Our dear leaders in office could learn something. We could use more original thinkers in office, willing to put aside agendas and ideology to--quite simply--do right by their constituents.
But that's a topic for another post. Thanks to Paul B. for the idea behind this one. Love you bro.
Until next time,
- Daniel
As the one who provided the fodder for this posting, I feel an obligation to add my two cents (for what they're worth). I have to admit, Daniel Sauble, that your post exposed a subtle but significant misunderstanding that would be easy to make, so let me qualify what I said earlier. I believe that you CANNOT completely reevaluate doctrines on your own in the name of making your Christian faith leaner, but you should look to others for a consistent worldview that you can then interperet everything from there, because you need to start at establishing a worldview and thus a reference point for reevaluating the Christian faith as you perceive it, so that you can come to answers that stay consistent with each other, with historic Christianity, and with the authoritative Word of God(an example, which is my theological reference point and has backing from scripture, personal experience, and living and dead Christian greats' acknowledgment, would be John Pipers', specifically, Christian Hedonism). However, in the course of that last century, so many excess issues and viewpoints and debates and emphases that arose to defend the Christian faith from the specific attacks that were being leveled against it in the early 20th century have cluttered our perception and displayal of Christianity to the world. So, what I would like to see done is to whittle away the issues and the discussions of specific sins and the debates and the unnecessary crusades for unnecessary causes to Christ and Him Crucified.
ReplyDeleteI think in establishing a base worldview, we must balance the thoughts of the greats of the Christian faith, with scripture, with our own personal experience, and find the harmony among them all and stick with that.
I think the great attack being leveled against the church today is an assault on the lifestyle of the Christians in contrast to the lifestyles of those in a Post-modern, Post-Christian world, and thus we need to, at a practical level, whittle away everything that is an "add-on" to preaching Christ and Him crucified, without sacrificing embracing the depths and intricacies of Scripture and doctrine and the beauty of the complex interwovenness of the Bible and the gospel story that it preaches. Thus, by doing so, we can keep the gospel simple but our faith as we understand it comprehensive in its explanation and understanding of God, His plan, His creation, and the world around us.
And the way I've done that, which is what we talked about, was, from a philosophical standpoint that asks the fundamental questions about the surface-level questions we ask and seek answers for, to essentially admit that my foundation was fatally flawed, repour it in the shape of Christ, and then with that in the crosshairs carefully comb through everything I knew and thought and believed, and recategorized and repaired the thinking processes that had become flawed due to a flawed foundation.