Chapter 4: In the Beginning

Soon after the founding of the Christian religion and its organizational structure in the church, things took a turn for the worse and the opinion of the general public moved from apathy to loathing. The book of Acts first tells of the trial and execution of Stephen, making him the first recorded Christian martyr, but he would soon be followed by many more and the persecutions would become more frequent and grisly.

The rule of Nero in the mid-1st century marks the beginning of widespread, state sanctioned persecutions as perpetuated by the Roman government. These atrocities began following the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, which burned a great deal of the city, causing many of its inhabitants to lose their lives. There are various accounts of what may have started the engulfing inferno, with many historians placing the responsibility squarely at the feet of the emperor, who has become synonymous with insanity over the years. This is the incident from which the legend that Nero “fiddled while Rome burned” took its shape and became a part of the Western consciousness. Regardless of how the fire began, Nero turned his accusation upon the easiest target to be found, Christians. Soon the early believers found their status changed from minority religion to enemy of state and Nero became their chief persecutor. The countless Christian martyrs of that dark time would face horrible deaths, some being thrown to dogs, some crucified, and some set afire to act as torches in the long nights.

Over the next 250 years, those of the Christian faith would be utterly despised by the masses and would face varying degrees of persecutions, finally culminating in the Great Persecution under Diocletian in the early 4th century. Despite the great efforts of Diocletian, the newly founded faith survived and even thrived. Church historian Tertullian described this strange, paradoxical relationship between faith and mass persecutions in this manner, “The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow, the blood of the Christians is the seed of the Church.”

Facing a hostile public and a powerful government bent on their very destruction, the early church moved into a defensive position in this seemingly overmatched game of chess. Under the constant threat of persecution, early Christian leaders made great advances in the style of writing known as the Apologetics (from the Greek word apologia), defined as a reasoned defense and justification of the Christian faith. Armed with their strong faith and a responsibility to their fellow man, Christians upheld the cause of Christ, guarding against the forces from without and compelling others to join the movement.

Justin Martyr, whose ministry stretched across the first half of the second century, was one of the greatest of the early apologists, defending the beliefs and practices of Christianity to a hostile pagan public. It was his contention that divine wisdom was to be found throughout the world and that Christians could and should expect to find aspects of the gospel reflected outside the church, itself. He then took this idea to the surrounding pagan culture, showing the similarities between the Gospel and the works of Plato, in hopes that they would come to belief. Many in the Christian community were quite critical of Justin’s work, though, including the aforementioned Tertullian, who answered his method with a question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Taking the flip side of the argument, Tertullian saw the newly formed religion as a countercultural movement, one that must maintain its distinctive identity by avoiding secular influences and refusing to allow itself to be contaminated by the surrounding mental or moral environment. This conflict between church and culture and the relationship between the two is one that has continued through the centuries all the way to our 21st century churches of today.

After only a few years, the church that had been a solitary institution in its advent began to splinter as new and different ideas were introduced. One of the most prominent of these Christian offshoots was known as Gnosticism, a name which signified a sort of special knowledge, something outside the generally accepted teachings of the early church. Irenaeus of Lyons was one of many early Christians that took a stand against these ideas, labeling them as heresy and insisting in the existence of a “rule of faith” that was rooted in the Gospel as taught by the apostolic church and in the coalescing Christian canon.

While the first 250 years of the church’s existence is best described by the challenges from the empire on the outside and false teachings on the inside, the movement from despised minority to forced majority in the early 4th century would display the toughest challenge yet for the newly formed religion.

…to be continued

A Musical Interlude

I promise that there is a new entry coming soon. Things have been pretty hectic lately and I haven’t written out the next chapter of our discussion. For now, check out an excellent song from Sinead O’Connor’s Theology album.

Chapter 3: The Bible According to Plato pt.3

Finally, we see the hand of Plato in the New Testament retelling of his Allegory of the Cave as a salvation narrative. This is perhaps no more apparent than in the story of Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus. The time of Christ followed centuries of “silence” from God, an era of Christian history known as the intertestamental period. The Jews held tightly to their faith and practices throughout the tempestuous times, so tight, in fact, that many of them denied the Messiah for whom they had been waiting for centuries prior and some, such as the aforementioned Saul, even went so far as to persecute and murder those who did proclaim their belief in Jesus.
Much like the subjects of Plato’s allegory, the Jews resided in a sort of darkness, a cave in which they were quarantined with their own narrow vision. It is here that they glimpsed a shadow of the truth through the prophets, but never quite understood the meaning. They could see the metaphorical shadows on the wall, but true understanding continued to elude them. Paul, then, takes upon himself the role of Plato’s escaped prisoner, the one who, for the first time in his life, is liberated from his underground dwelling and into the real world. The seventh book of Plato’s The Republic tells of this:

Socrates: And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision – will he not be perplexed?

Stories of salvation in the New Testament seem to follow a similar path, for upon coming in contact with visions of truth, one will encounter some confusion as they attempt to sort through the path upon which they once trod in life and the new option now opened before them. The story of Saul’s conversion in Acts 9 is a remarkable example:

1Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
5″Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6″Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

Following this experience, Paul was imbued with a new awareness, a more complete view of reality, much like the escaped prisoner. His narrow view had suddenly been widened, moving beyond the mere shadows and to the actualities of life. This life-changing event, though, was not something to merely keep to oneself, rather it becomes a desire and even a duty to express it to those whom he formerly kept company. Plato would also describe this way of thinking a bit later in his Allegory:

Socrates: And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them?

Plato would go on to write that once the escapee told his fellow prisoners of the above world, they would ridicule him and persecute him:

Socrates: Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.

In much the same way, Paul would spend the remainder of his life teaching people of the new and better life to be found in Christ. He would endure beatings and numerous imprisonments to try and lead them out of the cave in which they dwelt and, while some would be loosed from their bonds and be led to the service, many would refuse, preferring to remain in the darkness and persecute those who would see the light. In the end, even Paul, the escaped prisoner himself, would be suffer a brutal execution at the hands of those unwilling to leave their cavernous homes.

A final note:
Though the similarities are astonishing, it must be said that this does not invalidate the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament. It should, however, give one pause and reason to view things a bit more critically. While it may appear that the works of Plato influenced the New Testament writers, one must proceed carefully and be mindful of the idea that the true influence, through the conduit of history, may be upon the reader, affecting the interpretive lens through which one reads and understands. This is a concept we will continue to explore throughout this discussion as we move along this path of human thought from ancient Greece to today.

Chapter 3: The Bible According to Plato pt.2

Plato would explain this otherworldly knowledge of the Forms by claiming that the soul, or the essence, of humans was eternal, having existed in the world of the Forms prior to its birth into the material world and returning to it after his death. This thought is effectively put forth in his dialogue entitled Phaedo, which chronicles the last conversation of Socrates, just prior to his death by hemlock.

Socrates: If, as we are always repeating, there is an absolute beauty, and goodness, and essence in general, and to this, which is now discovered to be a previous condition of our being, we refer all our sensations, and with this compare them-assuming this to have a prior existence, then our souls must have had a prior existence, but if not, there would be no force in the argument? There can be no doubt that if these absolute ideas existed before we were born, then our souls must have existed before we were born, and if not the ideas, then not the souls.

It is also here that we find the familiar idea of an eternal afterlife.

Socrates: That soul, I say, herself invisible, departs to the invisible world to the divine and immortal and rational: thither arriving, she lives in bliss and is released from the error and folly of men, their fears and wild passions and all other human ills, and forever dwells, as they say of the initiated, in company with the gods.

Interestingly, the concept of an afterlife, of some glorious existence in a perfect space in which the presence of God resides, is absent from the Hebrew Scriptures, as is the eternality of the soul. In the Old Testament, the people of Israel were more concerned with sustaining their national identity than with the promise of eternal rewards. It is within the New Testament, hundreds of years after Plato, that these ideas are brought to the forefront and made into a central tenet of the faith. Through scriptures like the famous John 3:16:

16For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son that whosoever might believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

we see that the ultimate goal is an eternal paradise. Paul again invokes the imagery of Platonic dualism while affirming the existence of this other world, apart from the material one, in Philippians 3:20-21.

20But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

and in 2 Corinthians 5:1-4

1Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, 3because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life

Over and over again, the language of a dualistic idealism bursts forth from the sacred writings and, whether speaking of the individual life or an ultimate metaphysical reality, the specter of Plato hovers near.

To be continued…

The Bible According to Plato

It was against the backdrop of imperial Rome that, around the turn of the millennium, Jesus was born into this world. His short, three year ministry would forever change the world and, following His death by crucifixion at the hands of the Romans and at the behest of the Jews, His followers would join together to form the first churches and a new religion would be born, Christianity. His disciples produced a variety of written works during the sixty years following the time of Jesus, including four accounts of His life, teachings, and death, an historical narrative of the early church, and an assortment of letters to the first churches regarding practices and beliefs. These pieces would eventually be placed together to form what we call the New Testament.
While the issue of divine inspiration in the writing of the Scriptures will be discussed in a later chapter, it is of some importance that we understand the influences that may have acted upon the early Christians as they wrote these great works. It is nearly universally accepted that Jesus was an actual person who lived, taught, and died (though his resurrection is still debatable to many), upon whom the entire canon of the New Testament is based. There are many reasons to believe, though, that the Greek philosophers, particularly Plato, also played a large role in the actual content of the writings. The idea that the authors employed the language and ideas of philosophy in the New Testament writings should come as no surprise when it is considered where they came from and to whom they were writing. Plato spoke of dual realities, a perfect one in which the Forms resided, and an imperfect one comprised of the material world, and it is this idea which parallels that put forth in the Biblical writings.
Paul utilized this idea often, harkening back to Plato with much of what he is thought to have written. This is perhaps no more apparent than in Romans, Chapter 8, where he sets up a distinct separation between the sinful nature and the Spirit.

1Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,[a] 2because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature,[b] God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.[c] And so he condemned sin in sinful man,[d] 4in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.
5Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6The mind of sinful man[e] is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; 7the sinful mind[f] is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.
9You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. 10But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.
12Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. 13For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, 14because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.[g] And by him we cry, “Abba,[h] Father.” 16The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

This dualism between the perfect reality of the Spirit and the world of the sinful nature seems to draw a direct correlation to the ideas espoused by Plato four centuries earlier. Where Paul points to the Spirit as something perfect from which we receive guidance in our lives, Plato would evoke the ideals of the Forms, but they would no doubt agree in their perceptions that this reality in which we live is far from perfect and we, as flawed beings, require some guidance from outside to live a fuller, richer, more realized life.

To be continued…

Chapter 2: It’s All Greek To Me (pt.2)

Following the execution of his teacher, Socrates, Plato donned the mantle of the greatest philosopher in the land and became one of the most desired teachers in ancient Greece. Among his stable of students was one man who would rise to, if not surpass, the respected level of.his teacher, Aristotle.

Where Plato’s work was mostly based around the search for a unification of knowledge, using an abstract, mathematical sort of logic to create the reality of the forms, Aristotle favored a more biological view of knowledge that paid special attention to the concrete, particular changing things of nature and human life. His goal was based around gathering knowledge of the actual things surrounding him than in trying to unify all knowledge.

The metaphysics of Aristotle diverted to a great degree away from that of Plato, for where Plato embraced the existence of perfect ideals within another reality, Aristotle objected to this separation of worlds. He visualized one world in which the ultimate, ideal realities of all things unfolded themselves in the phenomenal world of our experience. In constructing this idea, he introduced two terms to the world of philosophy, actuality and potentiality. Potentiality refers to what a thing is capable of doing while actuality is the actual end result. For example, when a seed is planted in the soil, it has the potential of becoming a plant, but there is no guarantee that this will come to fruition – the plant could die or be eaten by an animal or suffer any number of calamities that would prevent it from reaching its ideal end. Aristotle would then say that every individual object in the universe has its own essence, containing both potentiality and actuality, and, in a major break from his teacher, he would go on to state that there is no outside source in which an ideal can be found.

Aristotle’s concept of God was greatly characterized by his metaphysical ideas emphasizing change. Aristotle looked upon the universe and saw that it was best described in terms of change or motion, but, through his use of logic and experience, it became apparent to him that all change was the result of some cause. This reasoning led him to state that all things must have sprung from some initial cause, something that is immovable and constant, which is why Aristotle named God the Unmoved Mover. This idea transcended his own time, affecting many thinkers in the years to come as they formulated a cosmological proof of the existence of God.

The reach of Aristotle’s work went far beyond that of philosophy and metaphysics, though, for he is often looked upon as the first scientist, a study which he termed natural philosophy. Many would also characterize him as the first empiricist, a philosophy that stresses the concrete realities of life, stressing the role of experience as the source of knowledge. Though many of the scientific pronouncements of Aristotle were decidedly wrong, such as his geocentric views and the idea that more massive objects fall faster than those of less mass, they were accepted as fact for centuries after his death. His most enduring contribution to the sciences was not in these erroneous assumptions, rather, it was his methods of classification and systemization that truly changed the course of scientific study from that point. This can be seen through his cataloguing of five physical elements, which would set the stage for the modern periodic table, and through designations of living things, a forerunner of our current biologic taxonomy.
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Together, the works Plato and Aristotle would form competing bases for human thought from the world of ancient Greece to our current time in the postmodern Western world. 19th century thinker and writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge once said, “Every man is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist,” a statement which has again and again proven itself true. Where Plato would talk of the existence of a higher reality, one that contained the perfect ideals upon which our very world was based and that mankind could reach some knowledge of through reason, Aristotle would reject this, preferring instead to understand the workings of the world in which we live through logic and experience. This contrast between Plato’s rational idealism and Aristotle’s empiricism is perhaps best displayed in Renaissance artist Raphael’s masterpiece, The School of Athens, in which Plato can be seen pointing up to the heavens while Aristotle holds his arm out, motioning to the earth below. And it is this contrast that has followed us to this very day.

The time following that of the great Greek thinkers was one of great turmoil and change in the Western world. Aristotle’s student Alexander, who was later christened “the Great,” expanded the empire of Greece, along with its power and influence, to its zenith. The kingdom was becoming unwieldy, though, and following Alexander’s death in 323 BC, great infighting among its generals caused the powerful dominion to crumble, culminating in a 40 year war that left the decimated empire partitioned into four sections. By 147 BC, less than 200 years following the climax of the once-great empire’s power, it was no more, having fallen beneath the republic of Rome. The brutish Romans, characterized by their military strength and lack of originality, co-opted the ideas of Greek thought and religion as their own. Within 100 years, the republic had been replaced by an emperor and the kingdom continued to expand as it gained more and more power.

Chapter 2: It’s All Greek to Me (pt.1)

Outside of Jesus, himself, there is probably nobody else in history that has exerted as powerful an influence as that of the ancient Greek philosophers on the thinking of the Western world. Unbeknownst to the vast majority of people, their very minds have been molded by the metaphysics of Plato and the systemization of Aristotle, resulting in everything from the concept of a utopian afterlife to David Letterman’s top ten lists. That being the case, it is of great importance that we recognize the incredible impact that these ideas have had upon the cognition of those who came before us. Thus, we will now travel back in time to the land of ancient Greece, to an era predating the birth of Christ by some 400 years.

Plato was a very well-learned man in ancient Greece, having attended some of the best schools in the land and having learned at the feet of the great Socrates, who subsequently became a frequent character in the writings of Plato. The majority of his written works were written using the dialectical method, a style employed to dissect opposing viewpoints and come to some resolution through logic and reason. This technique exercised the Socratic method to stimulate rational thought that was pioneered by his teacher.

The most important contribution of Plato to the burgeoning study of philosophy began within the field of metaphysics. He looked upon the world with a critical eye and found it somewhat lacking, noting the imperfections in all things. At the same time, though, there was an impossibly perfect image that existed in his mind of how something “should“ be. For example, in my mind I can visualize a perfect equilateral triangle (one which has three sides of equal length), but, despite this ideal shape in my mind, it would be impossible for me to replicate it in real life. Even the most powerful computer in the world would not be able perfectly mimic it without some miniscule error. The image of perfection continues to exist, though, so the question must be asked – from whence did this ideal originate?

To answer this sort of query Plato constructed a dualistic metaphysics, often called Platonic Idealism, in which two separate realities were in existence. The first of these consisted of the imperfect world around us, the reality of physical objects in both space and time. The objects in this place are able to be physically experienced using our senses. This world is also in a constant state of change as all things travel along the never-ending circle of decay and renewal. The other reality constructed within Plato’s metaphysics was known as that of the forms. These forms were unchanging, universally true, objects of thought. It is in this reality that the aforementioned idea of a perfect equilateral triangle resides. The idea of the forms gave a basis to all of Plato’s philosophy, forming everything from an ethical foundation for living to a basis for aesthetic beauty. In Plato’s way of thinking, humans are eternal beings whose existence begins in the world of the forms in which they are imbued with the knowledge of these ideals. They are then born into the material world in which they live and die before returning back to the reality of the forms.

Our existence in this material world and its relationship to the world of the ideals is brilliantly illustrated in Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave. The imagery begins with all of mankind imprisoned in an underground cave that has a wide entrance open to the light outside. The prisoners are facing the inside wall of the cave with their necks and legs chained so that they are immobile and keeping them from ever having seen the light of day outside the cave. Behind the prisoners a fire burns and between the fire and the people there is a raised area on which a low wall has been built, similar to one that might be used in a puppet show. Other people walk along the raised way carrying all sorts of objects, statues of animals, people, trees, and other things, holding them in such a way that their images are projected above the wall. The prisoners cannot see one another, nor can they see the objects being carried behind them. All that they can see are the shadows the objects cast on the wall in front of them. The people live all of their lives only seeing these shadows of reality, but they cling to the familiar images and to their passions and prejudices toward them, causing them, even if they did somehow become free, to probably prefer the shadow world to the real, unfamiliar one. But, if one of the prisoners were freed and turned around to see the source of the familiar shadows, what would happen? How would he feel if someone forced him to leave the cave and walk into the blindingly bright sun outside? If he were able to see reality as it truly is, what would he think of life in the cave? This person would most likely have trouble readjusting to a world of darkness and shadows and he would probably have to endure the scorn and persecutions of his fellow prisoners who did not even recognize the existence of the outside world. A modern retelling of Plato’s allegory can be found in the 1999 box office smash, The Matrix.

His idea of God is also a product of his metaphysical ideas, for even God is subject to this universal dualism. Plato would describe God as being a good, supreme deity, who embodies the highest, most perfect reality in the universe, and to whom he would ascribe the title of Demiurge, or hand worker, for God is the one who built the world. This God, though, did not create ex nihilo as the Christian God is often thought to have, instead, the Demiurge built every element of the universe using a primordial substance termed materia. God, then, took this materia from a receptacle of sorts where it existed in a state of chaos without form and used it to construct the material world using the world of the forms as a blueprint. God is then seen as an architect and a craftsman, rather than as a creator.

Questions for pondering:
1) What applications might we find of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in our world? In religion? In science? In our everyday lives?

2) Do we see examples today of people and groups who have adopted a view of God similar to Plato’s?

To be continued…

What’s a Worldview Anyway? – Video

To further show McLaren’s illustration using the Wizard of Oz, below you will find two clips containing the first 20 minutes of the movie.

Chapter 1: What’s a Worldview Anyway?

The term “worldview” has increasingly become more commonplace in our society today as people attempt to make some sense of a seemingly senseless world. The word itself can be defined as a set of beliefs about important issues in life and, though the worldviews of different people may hold great similarities, they, like snowflakes, are not identical. Before achieving a full understanding of ourselves, we must become aware of our worldview, our influences, and our values. We must understand why we hold some issues above others in terms of importance and why we brush some under the proverbial rug. One of the greatest theologians of our time, Bishop N.T. Wright has said about them, “Worldviews are the basic stuff of human existence, the lens through which the world is seen, the blueprint for how one should live in it, and above all the sense of identity and place which enables human beings to be what they are. To ignore worldviews, either our own or those of the culture we are studying, would result in extraordinary shallowness.”
“Know thyself,” that two word tenet often attributed to Socrates, at once reaffirms itself as a vitally important piece of knowledge in today’s postmodern climate. Before we will be able to step into the footwear of our fellow person, we must first realize why it is we chose our own. Our personal worldview can be considered a sort of philosophical DNA composed of many different components that together give the basis for why we think the way we do, what makes us unique among our six billion fellow souls trudging through life on this rather nondescript blue-green rock. The most basic components of our worldview are known as presuppositions, beliefs that we accept without support from other beliefs or arguments. These presuppositions are things that we have gathered throughout our lives, from schools, churches, books, other people, our own life experiences, and a multitude of other sources. Most religions assume the existence of a deity figure or of some underlying principle that they hold to as truth. Even within the objective ideals of science it is assumed that knowledge is possible and that sensory experience is generally reliable. So, deep within the subconscious of every person, there is an underlying, and oftentimes unrecognized, belief that shapes their view of the world.
The elements of a worldview generally mirror the major divisions of philosophy as a whole and it can be surmised that everyone has some innate notion regarding each of them. There are a seemingly infinite number of descriptors for each of these pieces depending on your point of view, so this writing will reflect the idea that perhaps they are best described with questions that you may answer for yourself. While this list may not be conclusive or exhaustive, it should paint with strokes broad enough to accomplish our goals. For the most part, our discussion will focus on the first four of these divisions, but there will be at least some mention of the final two.

The first of these fundamental building blocks is that of God. Is there some underlying force, some elemental principal, or some all-powerful being standing at the root of all things? If so, what is the nature of God? Is God personal and loving or impersonal and uncaring? Is God involved or distant?
The second element of a worldview is found within the realm of metaphysics. A central branch in the tree of metaphysics is that of ontology, the study of being, a pondering of reality and existence. Metaphysics is an attempt to answer many of the basic questions of philosophy. What is real? What is the nature of existence and reality?
The third piece of the philosophical puzzle is epistemology, which can be defined as the study of knowledge. Delving into the world of epistemology reveals more questions. How can we know something? Can we trust our senses? What is the nature of reason or logic?
Next on our list is the age-old topic of ethics. Ethics can be looked upon as guidelines as to how and why people should live a certain way. What is good and evil? How do you determine between good and evil? Is there a true standard for morality?
The fifth topic is Aesthetics, or art and beauty. To understand this, we must ask ourselves, what is beauty? Why do I consider some things more beautiful than others?
The final division to be discussed here is that of politics. What is the best social order? Why do we consider one form of political thought better than another?

Across the vast expanses of time since the advent of this world, worldviews have changed dramatically. Our worldview today would probably not be that similar to an American 100 years ago, much less to a person from Medieval Europe or Ancient Israel. But, within similar locations and time periods, there exist discernible likenesses between the worldviews of individuals, even for those who seem to disagree on nearly every issue. Brian McLaren, in his book A New Kind of Christian, defines these general similarities as paradigms of thought which he then uses to segment the whole of recorded human history into four general pieces:

pomo-diagram1

In this simple model, the Ancient world refers to the time of the great empires, those of Sumeria, Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Greece, and Rome. In theological terms, the era also contains what is known as the Patristic period, the time from the advent of the church to its adoption by those in power. The collapse of the Roman Empire in the late 5th century heralded in the next great era, known as the Medieval period. This was the time of feudalism and of the dominance of the church in the western world. In the 15th century new discoveries and inventions were becoming widespread, shaping the views of those across the land. This time, known as the Modern age, can be characterized by its reliance on science and reason. Today, in the 21st century, we are entering a whole new frontier of human thought, one which, though based on those preceding it, has developed characteristics all its own. The Modern dream of ultimate knowledge has been dashed to pieces by the realization of uncertainty, leading us to the brave new world of Post-Modernism.
Each paradigm change has brought with it certain difficulties in which some move forward with open-eyed wonder while some pine for and cling to days of old, a utopian vision of the past that may not really even exist. McLaren gives five phases of paradigm change using the opening scenes of The Wizard of Oz as his model:

1. Stability – when life is fine, current theories explain everything adequately, and questions are few, which correlates to Dorothy living happily in Kansas.
2. Discontinuity – when the old system seems to be working less well, which is reflected socially in Dorothy’s relationship with her neighbor, psychologically in her desire to run away from home, and physically in the approaching thunderstorm.
3. Disembedding – when we begin to feel that the current system is no longer supportable and we begin to disconnect from it, seen in Dorothy being carried away from her Kansas home by a tornado.
4. Transition – when we haven’t fully left the old world nor fully entered the new one, like Dorothy arriving in Oz and trying to get her bearings.
5. Reformation – when we decide to move forward in the new world we have entered, corresponding to Dorothy setting out on her journey to see the wizard, filled with new hope and vigor.

As we look back at these previous eras in history, we must always keep in mind the biases that arise from our perspective, now hundreds or even thousands of years removed. Plato would not have though of himself as ancient, just as a person in the Medieval world would have thought of themselves as being on the cutting edge, rather than in the “Middle Ages,” as we have labeled them. This realization on our part is a great reminder that our point of view is merely our perspective, “not the ultimate perspective,” as McLaren puts it. It can be difficult for us, in this late-Modern, early-Post-Modern world, to divorce ourselves from the attitude of our time that our viewpoint is vastly superior to that of a person from another place and time It is simple for us to gaze upon those who came before us with a critical, almost mocking eye, as has been the case in the Modern Era from which we are emerging, but the ideas of Post-Modernity bring about a wholly different way of thinking in which we turn that same criticism upon ourselves, looking for the log rather than the twig and no longer dismissing our ancestors.
It is an exciting time in which we live, but, in order for us to truly understand it, we must go back in time, all the way back to the earliest of human philosophy.

Introduction

Today’s world is one of confusion. The lines that once easily delineated all things, left and right, good and bad, black and white, have been eroded away, leaving behind little but a thin residue, a relic of times past when things were seemingly easier. Our simple little categories for looking at the world have become more and more cluttered, until finally everything is piled into one jumbled heap, but this is not some nonsensical, haphazard mess of ideas, rather, to many the world is finally coming into focus.
Our world teeters on the brink of change, a change that is bound to happen regardless of how much we scream and cry and grasp for a handhold on this towering edifice that we have constructed for our way of life. Where, once upon a time, everything worked and moved according to a method that was thought to be definable and predictable, today the certainty of our concepts has been knocked somewhat askew. Humankind’s greatest prophetic voice of the last half a century may have stated it best when he said, “The times, they are a-changing.”
The word postmodern generally elicits quite a diverse amalgamation of responses from others. Many look upon the word with contempt, automatically concluding that it is synonymous with loose morals, a lack of respect for authority, and the ultimate erasure of all vestiges of absolute truth. Those looking upon the idea with disdain may correlate it with a life spent floating through a baseless nether, bouncing about with no foundation upon which to rest. And perhaps, to an extent, they are correct. At the same time, those who embrace the philosophy’s precepts (or lack thereof) may see it as one of freedom, loosing the bonds of the guiding scientific laws of a clockwork universe in which they are but minute, insignificant cogs in this all-encompassing machine.
Even within the once rock-solid walls of Christianity the most unquestionable of tenets are being looked at with some level of dubiousness. Today many of the faithful are treating long-held beliefs in everything from the nature of God to the inspiration and infallible nature of scripture to even basic practices and morality with suspicion. This clash of ideas is reverberating from every corner of the Christian universe, shaking the very foundation upon which the past few centuries of history have been built.
In my own denominational fellowship, the Church of Christ, this is perhaps no more apparent. In a desperate attempt to not concede defeat, many are trying to withdraw from these outside forces, barricading the doors and fortifying the walls of one of the few remaining bastions of pharisaism, as they further isolate themselves to preserve the old ways. The Church of Christ has reached a crossroads and the time is rapidly approaching when a decision on the future must be made. One road continues along the same path upon which we have trod for decades, the road that earnestly strives to recapture a past mindset and whose anchor holds firm amid the storms and turmoil about it, regardless of and perhaps in spite of changing conditions. The other way is looking ahead and embracing many of the ideals of our times, evolving to meet the needs of postmodern people while continuing to love and serve God. The path lying before us will not be particularly comfortable or easy, as all sides go through the sometimes painful process of self reflection, but it will be essential to survival.
As we look to the future, though, we must also gaze into the past with the discerning eye in order to discover how we, both as a culture and as a church, arrived at this point in history. Once we achieve some understanding of where we have been and where we are today, perhaps the challenges of the future will seem less frightening