The Biblical Worldview

One of the great Christian thinkers and apologists during the second half of the twentieth century was the American pastor Francis Schaeffer. He emphasised this vision of the Biblical worldview being the foundation of all aspects of human thought and life. He argued, for example, that Biblical Christianity alone provides this through what Schaeffer termed “true truth” to counter the philosophical and cultural idea that "truth" was subjective rather than objective. That is, truth was whatever a person wanted it to be, whether that was truth about the external universe or about the internal person.

In emphasising the phrase "true truth", Schaeffer was underlining that truth is objective, not subjective, and that this truth is true objectively not subjectively, and is truth defined by God himself, mediated to humanity through his message to humanity about truth - that is, the Bible itself, and secondarily and dependently on the evidence that comes from our exploration and examination of the material universe, whether science or history.

This Biblical worldview is thus not just a unified explanation, but at the same time, is the only sufficient explanation for all of reality. This Biblical worldview thus sets itself in oppostion to and above all ideas expressed in the modern fragmentation of so-called truth. It exposes all the internal contradictions of competing worldviews while at the same time demonstrating that only the biblical account of the creation of the universe, the subsequent fall of humanity into sin and rebellion, and God's plan of redemption and salvation by the entry into the space-time fabric of this universe by Jesus Christ, can account for both the dignity and brokenness of humanity, for all the good and beauty that we see and experience in the universe and in humanity on the one hand, and for all the evil and ugliness that we equally see and experience in the universe and in humanity on the other hand.

These opposities, their reality, their relationships, their reconciliation through the work of Jesus on the cross, their perfecting through the resurrection of Jesus, Christian theologians and apologists throughout the ages, in different pictures as to be expected by the different eras and cultures in which they were placed, yet pictures that are all consistent with the Biblical woldview, have all affirmed that the whole of reality ultimately, daily, practically, finds its origin, its coherence, and its ultimate purpose, end and destiny highlighting and rejoincing in God’s glory, as history moves on its ever onward journey towards, on the one hand, the final judgment and defeat of all that is evil and ugly, and on the other hand, the restoration of all things to perfection, good and beauty for those who through what the Lord Jesus Christ has done, and through faith in him - by faith alone, in Christ alone - as the old universe is removed from existence and replaced by a new one where there will never be anything evil, ugly, destructive, sad, hateful and so on ever again.