Biblical Landmarks

How do you destroy speculations and lofty things raised up against God?

Have I made it clear enough? There is only ONE worldview. That is the worldview based on the . . .

I was about to write “Bible” but I stopped myself. Here’s why.

This is the fifth (final?) article in this series “The Making of a Worldview.” And I’ve only quoted one verse of Scripture, and referred to one section of the Bible. Almost everything you need for a worldview is wrapped up in the first three chapters of Genesis. Now there are some important things that come later, but they are not the foundation.

So it is a worldview based on the Old Testament — the Hebrew Bible — that is the only worldview. It is the principles in the Old Testament that allow us to make comments about worldviews, even if we pretend that we have somehow decided our worldview without the Old Testament.

Thus the Old Testament is not true because you or I or someone else says it is. The Old Testament is true because without it we cannot even begin the process. Without it our minds and mouths are locked tight.

Without this worldview in place, you cannot even get to the New Testament and what it teaches. Therefore, the necessity in everything is to insist that the Old Testament is the first — the mountain peak — from which all things must be viewed. And that includes the New Testament.

“In the beginning, God created . . .” demands that we accept our limited nature. We are not “infinite, eternal and unchangeable”, to use the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. We are created. We are “finite, temporal, and changeable” — the latter, very much so.

The Catechism states that “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable, in his being wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth” (Q. 4).

These last four words — holiness, justice, goodness, and truth — declare there is a framework of opposites: Unholiness, injustice, badness, and lies. In other words, there are categories. Without this juxtaposition, the words themselves lose meaning.

Herein lies the foundation of morality — right and wrong. If nothing else is obvious, it is the way in which everyone insists their ideas are right — and most other people are wrong. I’ve made reference to some of these ideas through this series. “There’s no such thing as truth.?” Oh, yeah? Is that true? Because if it is true, then the statement itself is a nonsense. A stupid attempt to prove that someone has figured out the governing principle of the universe — there is no truth. And in so doing, he establishes the very thing he is trying to deny.

Herein lies the dilemma of all worldviews that are not based on the Old Testament. They have no foundation for determining the categories of truth and error, right and wrong. If someone decides it’s OK to shoot people on a Sunday afternoon with an AK47, leaving 33 people dead, why shouldn’t he — and thousands like him — do this. After all, this is his idea of rightness.

It is obvious to those who want to see, then, that the ability to answer three founding questions is critical to the development of a worldview.

1. How can I know things? How do I know that there is some connection between my senses and the external world, so that what I see, smell, touch and hear, is a reality and not just a figment of my imagination?

2. The answer to this question forces you to also make some choices about who you are and your place in the universe — metaphysics. Your knowledge is real and possible because of who you are — made in God’s image. Yet you are not God.

3. The ability to make judgments and use categories such as right and wrong, true and false, is only possible because of the answers we give to the first two issues. Deny either one and we have no basis for making statements about anything.

Now this Old Testament worldview is the one that gets people mad. This is the one they really hate. Why? Because of what those first three chapters of Genesis tell us. They tell us that man’s desire is to be his own god, making up the categories of good and evil, truth and error, right and wrong, for himself.

When we get that message through our thick skulls, maybe we’ll be willing to listen to what follows. What follows is a list of rules and regulations handed down from above.

You see, neither you nor I is capable of determining the categories. Only Someone who knows everything can do that, because He has the exhaustive knowledge with which to do it. There are no surprises for Him. There is nothing new to learn that causes Him to change His mind.

So when He speaks and commands and says, “Do this,” it is a prudent man or woman who will listen.

The battle of the universe is the battle of who will make the rules. Who will make the choice between what is right and what is wrong. This is a battle that involves all of mankind, from Adam forward.

When you grasp these things, you begin to understand the “logic” of the Bible. The law (or Torah) follows the story of man’s creation and fall because it is God telling the piddling little human gods, “You guys have it wrong. THESE are the rules. Obey them!” The Psalms of the Old Testament are songs of delight about God and His laws. The Proverbs are practical applications of the principles. The prophets and the writings are men of God calling Israel back to obedience.

Get to the New Testament, and the “Pharisee of the Pharisees” — Saul, renamed Paul — can remind us how the one true system of belief based on God and God’s dealings with Israel, provides him with enough evidence so that he and his friends “are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God” (II Cor. 10:5). How is this being done? By bringing “every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”

The obedience of whom? Come on now, no cheating. Think about St. Paul’s answer here. He didn’t say the obedience to some new addition to the Hebrew Bible called the New Testament. That didn’t exist when St. Paul wrote his words to the Corinthians.

He didn’t say obedience to Jesus of Nazareth. St. Paul deliberately selected the name that links Jesus of Nazareth with the Old Testament Messiah. This is the same person who said “I did not come to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfill.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met so many people who have trouble with communications and understanding words. Christ did not come to abolish . . . but we are told we no longer have to keep the law of God. This is nuts. It’s the most ludicrous explanation of what is plain. “I did not come to abolish, to do away with.” What other words could be used to make this meaning clearer? None.

It’s not the words that are the problem, however. It’s our psychology. Mankind is so hell-bent on being his own god — that is making up his own rules — he will stop at nothing to eliminate any competition to that claim — even from Christ Himself.

Unless you understand Jesus’s commitment to the whole of the Old Testament, and Paul’s continuation of Judaism along with his acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah, you will never understand how Paul can construct his argument.

It quite simple. I mean that. It really is simple. You cannot destroy the stupidity of this world unless you hang on the the Old Testament. It’s the foundation, the cornerstone of our ability to follow Paul and do likewise to the vain philosophies of this world. Instead of hanging on to the OT, however, we prefer to “hold down” or “suppress” the truth and knowledge about God (see Romans chapter 1).

Epistemology — Metaphysics — and ethics. The moment you abandon the Old Testament — the Hebrew Bible — as providing the answer to these questions, you’ve cut yourself loose from the Scriptures as providing a worldview.

And without a worldview, you cannot destroy the silly ideas that are passed around as “competing” worldviews.

When we get that in our heads and turn back to the Old Testament as the real Bible, and hold an older view that the New Testament is commentary — albeit an inspired commentary — on the Old, then we might do like Paul — the Pharisee of the Pharisees — and destroy every “speculation[s] and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God bringing “every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”

The obedience of Whom? That’s Christ, the Messiah. The Second Person of the Trinity. The One who caused these words to be written . . . “In the beginning, God created. . . .” This is the same Person who “was behind” the Torah, the Psalms, and the prophets. The same Person who said, “I did not come to abolish the law. . .” You get the idea.

I guess now you need to figure out what you’re going to do with this?

God bless you as you serve Him this week.