Biblical Worldview

All worldviews are not the same. A legitimate Biblical worldview relies solely on biblical revelation as its presuppositional starting point with regard to evaluating all of reality. The Bible is considered the ultimate source of truth and authority since it is the revealed will of God to mankind in written form. The issue of final authority was the main issue involved in the Reformation. The Reformers based final authority regarding all truth and reality solely on the revelation given by God in the Bible. Human reason was to be in submission to the revealed revelation of God. The Reformation was the great reset in which the Reformers pointed people back to the Bible as the ultimate source of authority regarding truth and not the Roman Catholic church leadership.

Churches that maintain this view today are found largely within the conservative Protestant streams. Luther led the way by dealing with the question of authority in relation to the Roman Catholic church leadership and their theology on salvation. John Calvin later developed the basic biblical paradigm for a holistic biblical worldview. Calvin reasoned that if Jesus and the Bible were the ultimate sources of authority, then how should mankind relate to that knowledge? He then proceeded to develop a holistic worldview based on biblical presuppositions that would address all facets of life. Biblical revelation applied to every-day life was the basis for the Reformed worldview that fueled the Reformation and helped transform the nations of Europe. This Reformed worldview also laid the covenantal foundations for the American republic through the influence of the early colonial settlers known as the Puritans and the Pilgrims.

A biblical worldview differs from other Christian worldviews. It is founded solely on the Bible as its ultimate authority and presuppositions. Christian worldviews differ from a biblical worldview in that they can rely on extra-biblical revelation, evidences and human reason to determine their worldview. Other sources can also include church traditions, church hierarchy, human reason, natural revelation, natural law, natural theology, humanist derived theologies and ideologies, the latest science trends, philosophy, subjective personal revelations and other sources of human-based reasoning.

The Calvinist Reformed stream of theology was presuppositional in its methodology. The early Reformers sought to get back to the original biblical revelation which taught the sovereignty of God in all areas of life. This revelation was the presuppositions on which they would built a holistic biblical worldview that conformed to the revelation given by God to mankind. This theology was used to help complete the Great Commission which called for Christians to disciple the nations of the world. John Calvin established Geneva Academy to train men with this biblical revelation in line with his understanding of the Great Commission. The result of the work of these Reformers was that whole nations would be impacted and changed. An example of this was John Knox. He sat under the teachings of John Calvin and went back to Scotland where he worked to make Scotland a Christian nation. Other nations in Europe would be changed dramatically as biblical revelation reached the people and they adopted biblical principles which transformed both their lives and their cultures.