The distinction between the covenant as a theological concept and as a metaphysical concept is one of degree rather than of principle.¹ The Bible is not silent about things metaphysical. If we use the broadest possible definition of metaphysics as the theory of the nature of being, the Bible must be allowed to set the perimeters of any such metaphysic. If the Bible tells us truth about God’s being, we are given most important metaphysical teaching. In this section we shall first treat the nature of the being of God, then the nature of the being of nature. viz. creation, and finally the nature of man’s being in particular and how these three “kinds” of being relate. (Continue Reading…)

1. That is, if we take metaphysics to be not autonomous but rather subject to biblical teaching as a subset of philosophy in its ministerial (rather than magisterial) use, as we need to understand it.↩

James W. Sire has recently made a contribution to the current thinking on worldview with his new book Naming the Elephant - Worldview as a Concept. Sire has grappled with the issues involved in worldview thinking for many years now. In fact, his book The Universe Next Door has gone through three editions up until 1997. With each edition he amended his own definition of worldview and refined the basic ingredients. The working definition of worldview at that time was the following:

“A worldview is a set of presuppositions (or assumptions) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously) about the basic makeup of our world.”¹

When David Naugle’s landmark study, Worldview: the History of a Concept came out in 2002, Sire sensed a need to go even further in refining his own definition. Naugle’s book provided the impetus for this latest book by Sire in which he offers four important revisions to his own definition of worldview:
(Continue Reading…)

1. James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door Intervarsity Press, 1988), 17.↩

“Foundationalism, allied as it was with metaphysical realism and the correspondence view of truth, was undeniably the epistemological king of the Enlightenment era.”¹

Thus quotes Millard Erickson the late Stanley Grenz, concerned that as foundationalism goes and as the correspondence view of truth goes, so goes the concept of truth altogether. “Although neither [Grenz] nor John Franke overtly reject the correspondence view, it is so closely allied with foundationalism that their rejection of the latter seems to entail the negation of the former as well.” (Continue Reading…)

1. Stanley J. Grenz, Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era Baker Academic, 2000), 190.↩