That’s the Ways of the Worldviews (A Book that Will Be Blog Posts This Year!)

Back in the Fall of 2007, I started teaching Biblical Worldview at a small Evangelical Christian high school in Alabama. The headmaster essentially gave me free rein to develop an entire four-year Worldview curriculum from scratch—and I did just that. I created an Old Testament Worldview class for the 9^th grade (i.e. basically OT Introduction), a New Testament Worldview class for the 10^th grade (i.e. basically NT Introduction), a Church History and Theology class for the 11^th grade, and a class I titled Worldviews and World Religions for the 12^th grade—the first semester being an overview of Western culture, civilization, and philosophy.

Since my background was in Biblical Studies, the 9^th and 10^th grade classes weren’t that hard to put together. But when it came to things like Church History and Philosophy, let’s just say I had to do a lot of personal study and reading in those areas. In any case, in regards to my 12^th grade class, I had to start somewhere, so I decided to use Francis Schaeffer’s book, How Shall We Then Live? I remembered reading it on my own early in college—it basically gives an overview of how Western culture and philosophy has developed ever since ancient Rome. I figured that would be a good “introduction” to Western culture and philosophy to high school seniors.

I ended up using that book for my eight years at the school, but with each passing year, the more I read and studied Western culture and philosophy on my own, the more and more I tended to disagree with many of Schaeffer’s views and claims. I found it somewhat simplistic in a number of areas. Since Schaeffer was such a devotee of Reformation Calvinism, his book gives (a) a very passing glance at early Church Christianity, (b) virtually no consideration to the rich legacy of Orthodox/Byzantine Christianity, and (c) an overly-negative view of Medieval Christianity, while (d) spending way too much time glorifying the Reformation, and virtually ignoring some of the key tragic consequences of the Reformation.

And so, year after year, I started providing supplements to Schaeffer’s book. My goal was eventually to write a high school-friendly introduction to Western culture and philosophy, and possibly get it published one day. As things turned out, I am no longer teaching high school, and am now teaching Old Testament at the college level. Although I learned a tremendous amount about Western culture during my years teaching that class, and although I even was able to bang out a very rough draft of the book I wanted to write, I highly doubt I will ever get around to ever finishing that book idea.

Nevertheless, I DID do all that writing, and I really do find that topic quite fascinating! I have decided, therefore, over the course of this next semester, to occasionally post various excerpts from my rough draft. Hopefully, I will be fortunate to get feedback from anyone who reads the posts.

History and Story-Telling
So allow me to just start off in this initial post with a few thoughts on the very idea of “history.” Let’s be clear on one thing: there is no such thing as “objective history.” All history is, in a sense, an exercise in storytelling. When you think about it, this should not be surprising. After all, anytime someone writes a book about some historical event or time period, that person is essentially trying to make a point about that event or time period. And since that author cannot possibly include every fact and every detail about a historical event or time period, he must choose what facts and episodes of that event or time period he will include in his book. So he selects and chooses the details, he arranges them in a certain way, and he attempts to convince the reader that his particular take on that event or time period is convincing, more true, or makes better sense than other attempts to explain that event or time period.

In effect, he is attempting to make his story about that particular historical event the most convincing way in which that historical event is understood. He hopes that his story is accepted above all other stories regarding a particular historical event, that his interpretation is more convincing than all others. But at the same time, since things in the past either really did or didn’t happen, some histories that are written are much more illuminating and truthful than others. Just because I say there is no such thing as objective history, doesn’t mean I am saying that “everything is relative” or that “there is no such thing as truth.” All I am saying is that anytime anyone writes anything about a history event, that person is going to have a limited perspective. Therefore, that person (hopefully) will do the best he can to articulate his perspective on that historical event, and (hopefully) that attempt will bring the past into clearer perspective for the reader.

And so, I am going to tell a story. In this story I am going to try to give my take on the major historical, theological, philosophical, political, and cultural events and time periods in Western history over the past 2,500 years. I want the reader to be able to say, at the end of this book, “This is where Western culture has come from, these are the major events and people that have shaped Western culture, these are the things that have gotten us to where we are today as a culture, and these are the issues of the 21^st Century that Christians will have to wrestle with and address if they are to continue to be the prophetic voice that Christ has called them to be.”

The False Enlightenment (and Evangelical) Worldviews
Now, for the past 200 years increasingly secular Enlightenment thinkers have successfully controlled the narrative of the history of Western society. Their narrative of history, though, has been far from honest. In fact, it has been purposely misleading and deceptive. The basic narrative goes something like this (I’m sure you’re familiar with it):

The ancient pagan society of classical Greece and Rome was a golden age of learning, philosophy, innovation and the arts. Yet when Constantine became the emperor of the Roman Empire in 325 AD, he cunningly seized upon the minority religion of Christianity and used it as the vehicle to destroy his opponents, crush all other largely pastoral and tolerant pagan faiths, and unite the empire under his iron grip. Christianity thus became the oppressive, irrational, superstitious, intolerant religion that destroyed the glorious ancient pagan societies of Greece and Rome, and ushered in over 1,000 years of intellectual, scientific, philosophical darkness over medieval Europe.

It wasn’t until the Renaissance when, aided by the rediscovery of those ancient classical authors of Greece, that the oppressive grip of the Church over Europe began to loosen. And then, with the coming of the Enlightenment, the dark stranglehold of the Church was broken, and a new era of progress, liberty, rationality, and science began to dawn across Europe. Yet, Christianity, being that hateful intolerant beast, continued to fight the emerging enlightened society that brought about secularism, logic, and science, and we are still witnessing the ongoing warfare between science and religion in issues like “creation vs. evolution.” “Religion,” we are told, is just part of human evolution, and that we are witnessing human society evolving away from religion, for it no longer holds any benefit to the human condition.

Does that sound familiar? Well, virtually everything in that narrative is wrong. Critical thinking people would rightly be wary of such a simplistic and over-generalized depiction of the past 2,500 years of Western history and civilization. I could probably write an equally over-simplistic worldview that has come to dominate modern American Evangelicalism: (A) Early Church = Good; (B) Roman Catholicism = Bad; (C) America was originally a Christian nation; (D) then the Supreme Court took prayer out of public schools, and the next thing you know, we have abortion and evolution, and Barack Obama! (Yes, I know, that is entirely over-simplistic, but that’s the point).

In reality, history is never simple, and is always complex. History is not a static, easily deciphered and clear progression from one point to another. There is an ebb and flow to history, a give and take, where one event is the culmination of countless smaller, seemingly unrelated and unforeseen events; and that event, in turn, spawns countless reactions and unintended consequences. Consequently, trying to understand how we got to where we currently are in our society is really, really hard and really, really time consuming. The posts I will share over these next few months are simply my attempts to understand these very things.

What to Look for…
The basic eras I will focus on are the following:

1. The Greco-Roman World (500 BC-325 AD): This will focus on Greek Philosophy, Roman Culture, and the early Church within Roman culture
2. The Byzantine Age (325-1054 AD): This will focus on the era during with Eastern Orthodoxy was prominent.
3. The High Catholic Age (1054-1500 AD): This will focus on the rise of Catholic Church, from the time of the Great Schism, through the Crusades, and up to the Reformation.
4. The Age of Revolution and Reform (1500-1800 AD): This will focus on the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Counter-Reformation, what I call the “Secular Revolution,” along with the Scientific Revolution.
5. The Modern Age (1800-1900 AD): The rise of modern philosophy, the industrial revolution, evolution, and liberal theology.
6. The Age of Fragmentation and Fundamentalism (1900-Present Day): Just think of what happened in the 20^th century—there will be a lot to address.

That’s quite a lot to cover, but hopefully I’ll be able to put a lot of it into perspective. I’ll continue to write on other topics as well, from Young Earth Creationism to Biblical Studies. But I’m going to make a concerted effort to present my reflections on Western culture over the next semester.