Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Scott Smyth's avatar

Wouldn’t the danger of this approach be that it makes permissible conclusions that are contrary to scripture? For example an inductive approach to understanding sexuality would catalog same-sex sexual interactions and ambiguous sexual categories in the animal kingdom to make normative claims about human sexuality that would contradict Biblical teaching. On the other hand, a Christian worldview approach allows those observations to be bracketed due to the Bible’s teachings of man’s unique moral stature.

In other words, how is an “inductive” approach different from a “secular” approach?

Expand full comment
Ian McKerracher's avatar

It seems to me that we have two worldviews “warring in our members” as Paul said (Romans 7:23) There is the troubling unintentional worldview we all have constructed from our experiences to date which, as you say, is a concession to subjectivism. The other is a worldview built intentionally from the reading of scripture, fellowship with faithful saints, and Face-to-face encounters with God. The first is fraught with untruth by virtue of its source in the perceptions of our humanity, but the second is as truthful as the measure of our commitment to Christ’s discipleship.

There is a third sense of the term worldview found in the “isms” of our culture. We can see them displayed on the spines of books in the library. Capitalism and Communism, Calvinism and Arminianism, Evangelicalism and Catholicism, (etc ad nauseum) are all the spouting of formal worldviews of which no one believes in their entirety. They are usually (universally?) descriptions of the author’s idealism.

Expand full comment
2 more comments...

No posts