| Issue | New View |
View 1 (Anti-Matter) |
View 2 (Pietistic, Charismatic, Catholic) |
View 3 (Humanist) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
||||
| God's Purpose |
"All things complete in Christ" 3-way relationship between humans, non-human creation and God, bringing joy. | Populate heaven with souls at rest |
Human personal relationships with God Serve, worship, love God. | Human satisfaction, fulfilment, pleasure, convenience. |
| Purpose of Humanity |
To represent God to the rest of Creation, to care for it and tend it, to bring it joy. Rom. 8:19 |
To become Soul/Spirit in heaven, to escape the prison of Body, to become self-controlled. | "To glorify God and enjoy him forever." (Westminster Confession) |
Pleasure, convenience, satisfaction, self-actualization. Humanity is the purpose. |
| The Purpose of Nature |
To take full part in the final joy. | Very little. |
To move us to wonder, worship, love for God; we use it in our service of, and worship and love for, God. | Expendable resource for human use, convenience and pleasure. |
| Human - Nature Relationship |
Mutual joy:
| Humans tolerate or ignore nature. |
Humans use nature to facilitate relationship with God. We try to respect nature but believe it will be destroyed one day. |
Consumption, Pillaging, Pollution. Nature groans under human arrogance, cruelty. |
| What is Sin? | Attitude towards God and his Creation that, directly or indirectly, can result in harm to 'the rest', which God loves. |
Body-related, (e.g. sex), Passions, Pleasures Yielding to Temptation |
Insult to God's Authority Rebellion, Disobedience | Anything against a human being |
|
Redemption Christ's Death |
To restore all things to God. Plus all the others. |
To procure forgiveness for us, so our eternal status is 'justified'. |
To justify so that the Holy Spirit can live in us, and to destroy the Enemy. | An example of self-giving that we should perhaps follow. |
| Role of Holy Spirit | To make us those who will treat Creation like God would. | As seal for salvation | Give of power, gifts, comfort, wisdom, etc. | - |
These ground-motives are based on the insights of the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd, who examined the history of theoretical thought immanently, showing that most Western thought was always driven by one of three ground-motives:
Dooyeweerd argued that all of these have driven philosophy and theoretical thinking into antinomies and other impossible problems, but that the Biblical ground-motive of Creation-Fall-Redemption resolves these problems. The above table suggests that they lead to not just philosophical problems.
the following is not really for this page: Dooyeweerd had tried to generate a 'Christian' philosophy. But Jeremy Ive criticises him for (a) building an account of God and the world on selected Biblical texts (b) trying to state the Biblical ground-motive without theology. The problem Dooyeweerd had was that to ground his philosophy in theology would end up letting theology dominate philosophy in a way that it should not, acquiescing to the Nature-Grace ground-motive. The New View in Theology and Practice might address these criticisms without acquiescing to the Nature-Grace ground-motive. It seeks an account of God and the World with reference to the whole Bible. It does bring in theological concepts, but does not let theology dominate because it is the rest of the world that is seen as primary.
This page is offered to God as on-going work in developing a 'New View' in theology that is appropriate to the days that are coming upon us. Comments, queries welcome.
Copyright (c) Andrew Basden 2012, but you may use this material subject to certain conditions.
Written on the Amiga with Protext. Number of visitors to these pages: .
Created: 9 February 2003. Last updated: 15 December 2003. 16 May 2010 sin. 23 April 2012 explanation of Dooyeweerd's ground-motives and criticism of Jeremy Ive; .end, .nav