Engaging with Thinking Going On in the World

Because the New View sees the whole world and its potential as important in God's cosmic plan, and recognises that all people operate within that world, it has a basis for understanding in what ways it is valid to engage with thinking that emerges from all people.

Specifically, it holds that the operation of thinking (a) discloses some truth about the creation (b) contributes something to humanity's mandate to shepherd the rest of creation for its own sake. This is so even though it might be carried out by non-Christian or even anti-Christian thinkers. But also, all thinkers will distort this to some extent.

So those who are guided by this New View, and are called to undertake thinking, can and should engage with the world's thinking. The engagement can be seen as 'shepherding' the thinking of the others (not for our sake but for its own sake; see Radah). It should have at least three characteristics:

• Sympathetic, because Jesus Christ was sympathetic: seeking to find what is valuable in it, especially in what motivates it, and what previous evils it is trying to overcome; example: Karl Marx had at least some concern for justice;
• Respectful, because God's people are called to show respect: seeking to understand it from the inside, from the point of view of what it is hoping to achieve, rather than stumbling over the words it uses; example: Marx was wanting to understand the economic basis of life;
• Critical, because all the world is in the grip of sin: exposing its deep presuppositions so as to bring to the light its inner inconsistencies, and questioning the ways thinkers try to work it out and give it shape; example: Freud contended that every belief is a product of a person's unconscious emotional needs - which includes Freud's own theory, making it useless as a theory [See Roy Clouser's 2005 edition of 'Myth', p.84 and C.S. Lewis'

In this way, we can see the world's ideas as contributing to God's cosmic plan, even in spite of the wishes of some thinkers! (Compare Tolkien's Silmarillion, where God tells the Enemy that all the latter tries to do in despite will eventually prove "tributary to My glory".)

Engagement is harder work than the three alternatives commonly adopted by Christians (ignoring, opposing, uncritically accepting; see below), but it can be done. C.S. Lewis was one who tried - and succeeded to a marvellous extent; read his Pilgrim's Regress. Herman Dooyeweerd was a philosopher who tried to do this in philosophy. I have tried to do this in the field of information systems; see my book Philosophical Frameworks for Understanding Information Systems, and my paper Enriching Humanist Thought presented at a conference of Reformational Christians in the Netherlands in 2005. But engagement need not be of these intellectual kinds. I add examples later.

The main point is this: New View thinkers can make an authentic contribution to the world's thinking, not opposing or replacing it but rather enriching it. In so doing, we are harnessing this thinking for God's Cosmic Plan, shepherding ways of thinking so they flourish rather than stagnate. But also we are bringing the Lord Jesus Christ into the lives of these other people, so that at the very least they will know that God's Kingdom has come near to them. The Apostle Paul's desire was to 'bring every thought into captivity to Christ'; 'captivity' might not be the best word, except that the way the cosmos is designed is so that it works best when it is surrendered to Christ, who is Love.

Human Activities

Under New View we can engage with the academic discourse of each of these, with attempts to understand it and be a recognisable discipline. As such, each human activity is centred on a certain aspect or sphere of meaning and law. A useful list of such aspects is the suite devised by Dooyeweerd. Each defines a distinct science.

Development of each activity is not for its own sake. Development is not to aim to optimise that activity. But rather, development of each activity is for the sake of all the other activities, so all together they contribute to what God intended. Egbert Schuurman suggested this for the activity of technology: technology should not be guided by the norms of technology itself, but rather by the norms of all other aspects such as those of aesthetics, justice and faith.

Traditional Approaches

• Some just ignore it, seeing world's ideas as irrelevant and unimportant. This is expressed in statements I have heard from some church-goers, that they get on with real life and have no truck with their theories. It is also found in various circles of Christian thinking who have constructed their own edifices of thought and ideas that hardly even engage with those of the world; in particular I find this in the Roman Catholic world (e.g. some influenced by Lonergan's thought) and in the Reformational community (e.g. some influenced by Kuyper's thought). These people can provide a useful corrective to any of us who get too closely engaged with the world's thinking, to remind us of important things that only the Christian community focuses on. But it we take their line, then all the above activities become devoid of the salt and light that Jesus wanted, abandoned to godless ways of thinking.

• Some oppose it, seeing the world's ideas as fundamentally anti-Christian. The prime example is, of course, so-called (six-day) Creationists. It is also found in Christian Reconstructionists and Presuppositionalists such as Cornelius Van Til. Out of such opposing thought-activity comes a stream of writings trying to undermine or disprove the world's thinking. These people can provide useful material to use in critique of the world's thinking, but we should beware the infectious character of their anger. Taking their line means not only abandoning such activities but damning them.

• Some uncritically accept the world's thinking, ideas or products thereof. Example 1: When churches centre their worship around beamer (computer projector) technology most are uncritically accepting not only the products, but the idea that new technology is a must, and we must sacrifice even advantages of the 'old', more human ways, in order to seem up-to-date. Example 2: Liberal theology, which has accepted uncritically the motive of unbelief and the pretended neutrality of theoretical thought.

New View tries not just to overcome the problems of these, but rather to provide a positive incentive to, and reason for, engaging with the world's thinking and activity, which is honest and well-founded rather than with any hidden agenda. It is perhaps not alone in this attempt, but it might be rare in that the attempt harmonises with, and is a natural outcome of, its central ideas. So nothing needs be bolted on to its theology to allow for or encourage engagement.

See Also

• Engaging with Secular Thought - Talk and workshops to Christian postgraduates at Universities of Leeds and York, U.K., 3 November 2011. This provides a longer list of papers showing enriching.

• Engaging with Extant Thought: Listening, Affirming, Critiquing, Enriching (LACE) - draft.

• Enriching Other Thought - discussing the enriching part of that.

• Dooyeweerd's Aspects - for those who would like to understand them in more detail.

This page, URL= 'http://abxn.org/nv/engaging.html', is part of the on-going work in developing a 'New View' in theology and practice that is appropriate to the days that are coming upon us. Comments, queries welcome by emailing

       

Copyright (c) Andrew Basden to latest date below, but you may use this material subject to certain conditions.

Written on the Amiga with Protext in the style of classic HTML.

Created: 23 November 2008. Last updated: 18 December 2008 human activities; better ending; some rewriting. 8 July 2012 link to engage.secular and ssd; environmental. 16 September 2020 added See Also; new .end, .nav, bgcolor.