Christians may disagree on doctrine, politics, church government, and other issues, but what are the biblical core elements that motivate all Christians everywhere to share a unified outlook on God and the world, and that separates Christianity from other religious and secular perspectives?
Bible Gateway interviewed Roger E. Olson about his book, The Essentials of Christian Thought: Seeing Reality Through the Biblical Story (Zondervan, 2017).
You write that your book is “an explanation of the hidden background within the biblical narrative.” Please explain.
Roger E. Olson: The biblical writers assumed many things about reality that modern, Western people do not assume because we’ve been conditioned by our cultures to assume otherwise. We, including many Christians, read the Bible through “eyes” conditioned by, and even accommodated to, modern Western culture plus the influences of messages and ideas from other cultures that are alien to the worldview of the biblical writers. Therefore, in order fully to understand the Bible and allow the Bible to absorb the world (rather than the world—culture—absorb the Bible) we must practice an “archaeology” of the biblical writers’ implicit, assumed view of reality.
They did not feel the need to “spell it out” because they could take much for granted–such as that ultimate reality, the reality “behind” observable reality, is personal and involved in our world, its history, and our lives. Today we cannot assume people, even all Christians, understand the Bible’s implicit, underlying view of reality. We have to dig it out and show it to people, including Christians, and ask them to “see reality as this” rather than “as that”—where “that” refers to any number of unbiblical ideas about reality.
You extensively use the term “ultimate reality” in The Essentials of Christian Thought. What do you mean?
Roger E. Olson: “Ultimate reality” is the highest, deepest, eternal, unchangeable, source and ground of everything we see, touch, and experience with our five senses. It’s that which gives being and meaning to everything finite, mortal, changeable. It’s also that toward which we creatures look and live—whether we know it or not—our telos; our goal and purpose.
For Christians ultimate reality is and can only be a personal, sovereign, holy, and loving God. But even some Christians, under extra-biblical and even anti-Christian cultural influences read the Bible as pointing to something not ultimate, such as material wealth, health, happiness, power, etc. The Heidelberg Catechism rightly says, for all Christians who allow the Bible to absorb the world for them—who see reality through the biblical story—that the purpose of life is to glorify God—a personal being who is ultimate over us and everything else—and enjoy him forever. This should be clear to all Christians, but many Christians have been influenced to think otherwise even about the Bible because of dabbling in movements such as the New Age Movement or the Gospel of Health and Wealth or even naturalistic humanism.
Why do you think the Bible isn’t as clear on some matters as we’d like it to be?
Roger E. Olson: The biblical writers didn’t need to say everything; they could assume some things. They didn’t anticipate a day when even Jews and Christians would fall under influences of non-biblical religions, philosophies, and worldviews, to the extent that is now the case in our pluralistic culture and society.
To some of us, raised and trained in allowing the Bible to absorb the world (that is, to “see” all of reality through the biblical story), the Bible is quite clear about all really important matters.
However, if the biblical writers were writing today they might spell out some things more clearly, given how easily even Christians fall into thinking in ways alien and foreign to the biblical story of God and creation. For example, today, under the influences of Eastern religions and philosophies imported into the West, many Christians confuse God’s Spirit with our spirit and think our spirit is a spark of the divine, “the God within everyone.” That’s not how the biblical writers thought about our spirits or souls. We’re created in God’s image, but our souls or spirits are not offshoots of God’s own Spirit—as New Age teachers would have us believe.
How should Christians see reality through the biblical story?
Roger E. Olson: It comes through training within a Bible-centered community of faith that’s not afraid to say “No, that message about reality is wrong because it fundamentally contradicts the biblical story about reality.”
For example, a very prevalent advertising mantra is “no limits.” We’re creatures, so we have limits. The idea of having no limits, either through education or money or possessions or power, is radically alien to everything the Bible assumes and says. Only God has no limits (except those he voluntarily imposes on himself). The mantra “no limits” is actually a call to idolatry.
How does the Bible convey the idea that God is vulnerable?
Roger E. Olson: The Bible portrays God as entering into covenants with people which, when broken, causes him grief and sorrow. The biblical prophet Hosea and God’s using him as an illustration of how much Israel’s idolatry costs God emotionally points to God’s vulnerability. But also the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ who, even as God the Son, suffered for our sins, points to God’s vulnerability.
As the perfect parent, God suffers emotional pain when his creatures, created in his own image and likeness, rebel against him and do evil instead of good.
What is biblical Christian-humanism?
Roger E. Olson: It is simply the idea, rooted in Scripture itself, that human beings are special, of higher dignity and worth than other animals, because they’re created in God’s own image and likeness. It’s actually true humanism.
Humanism cannot survive on a purely secular platform. Only a loving and covenant-making personal God can provide humans with unique dignity, worth, and rights. Blind nature cannot do that. So, for the Christian, “secular humanism” is an oxymoron.
How will Christians strengthen their faith and view of the Bible by reading your book?
Roger E. Olson: I hope that reading The Essentials of Christian Thought will aid Christians in clarifying their view of reality, separating that which is biblical from that which is secular or pantheistic (for example), and avoiding believing messages in culture that are contrary to the biblical view of reality. It’s an exercise in what James Sire called “discipleship of the mind.”
Is there anything else you’d like to say?
Roger E. Olson: There’s nothing easy or simple or even entertaining (in our contemporary American sense of that word) in disciplining our minds to “see” reality through biblical lenses; it takes effort and time. But Christians who don’t take that effort and time will inevitably succumb to some of the anti-biblical and anti-Christian messages that bombard us every day through advertising, entertainment, etc.
Far too many American (and other) Christians revel in feelings and/or morality and don’t care to develop a biblically-shaped Zeitgeist or worldview. The result is folk religion rather than classical, historical Christianity which has always included sound theology.
Bio: Roger E. Olson is the Foy Valentine professor of Christian theology and ethics at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary. Before that he was professor of theology at Bethel University in Minnesota for fifteen years. He earned his PhD in religious studies (with concentration in theology) at Rice University and studied for a year under theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg at the University of Munich. Dr. Olson is the author of many books, including Questions to All Your Answers, Reformed and Always Reforming, How to Be Evangelical without Being Conservative, and Finding God in the Shack. He’s written numerous articles for a wide variety of publications including Christianity Today and Christian Century. During the 1990s he was editor of Christian Scholar’s Review, a scholarly journal dedicated to the integration of Christian faith and learning.
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