Sire, J. W. (2020).  The Universe Next Door. InterVarsity Press.  https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9780830849390

World of difference introduction

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,

But often, in the din of strife,

There rises an unspeakable desire

After the knowledge of our buried life:

A thirst to spend our fire and restless force

In tracking out our true, original course;

A longing to inquire

Into the mystery of this heart which beats

So wild, so deep in us—to know

Whence our lives come and where they go.

MATTHEW ARNOLD, “THE BURIED LIFE”

IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY Stephen Crane captured our plight as we in the early twenty-first century face the universe.

A man said to the universe:

“Sir, I exist.”

“However,” replied the universe,

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”1

How different this is from the words of the ancient psalmist, who looked around himself and up to God and wrote:

LORD, our Lord,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

 

You have set your glory

in the heavens.

Through the praise of children and infants

you have established a stronghold against your enemies,

to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

human beings that you care for them?

 

You have made them a little lower than the angels

and crowned them with glory and honor.

You made them rulers over the works of your hands;

you put everything under their feet:

all flocks and herds,

and the animals of the wild,

the birds in the sky,

and the fish in the sea,

all that swim the paths of the seas.

 LORD, our Lord,

how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8)

There is a world of difference between the worldviews of these two poems. Indeed, they propose alternative universes. Yet both poems reverberate in the minds and souls of people today. Many who stand with Stephen Crane have more than a memory of the psalmist’s great and glorious assurance of God’s hand in the cosmos and God’s love for his people. They long for what they no longer can truly accept. The gap left by the loss of a center to life is like the chasm in the heart of a child whose father has died. How those who no longer believe in God wish something could fill this void!

And many who yet stand with the psalmist and whose faith in the Lord God Jehovah is vital and brimming still feel the tug of Crane’s poem. Yes, that is exactly how it is to lose God. Yes, that is just what those who do not have faith in the infinite-personal Lord of the Universe must feel—alienation, loneliness, even despair.

We recall the struggles of faith in our nineteenth-century forebears and know that for many, faith was the loser. As Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote in response to the death of his close friend,

Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall

At last—far off—at last, to all

And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream; but what am I?

An infant crying in the night;

An infant crying for the light;

And with no language but a cry.2

For Tennyson, faith eventually won out, but the struggle was years in being resolved.

The struggle to discover our own faith, our own worldview, our beliefs about reality, is what this book is all about. Formally stated, the purposes of this book are (1) to outline the basic worldviews that underlie the way we in the Western world think about ourselves, other people, the natural world, and God or ultimate reality; (2) to trace historically how these worldviews have developed from a breakdown in the theistic worldview, moving in turn into deism, naturalism, nihilism, existentialism, Eastern mysticism, the new consciousness of the New Age, and Islam, a recent infusion from the Middle East; (3) to show how postmodernism puts a twist on these worldviews; and (4) to encourage us all to think in terms of worldviews—that is, with a consciousness of not only our own way of thought but also that of other people—so that we can first understand and then genuinely communicate with others in our pluralistic society. That is a large order. In fact it sounds very much like the project of a lifetime. My hope is that it will be just that for many who read this book and take seriously its implications. What is written here is only an introduction to what might well become a way of life.

In writing this book I have found it especially difficult to know what to include and what to leave out. But because I see the whole book as an introduction, I have tried rigorously to be brief—to get to the heart of each worldview, suggest its strengths and weaknesses, and move to the next. I have, however, indulged my own interest by including textual and bibliographical footnotes that will, I trust, lead readers into greater depths than the chapters themselves. Those who wish first to get at what I take to be the heart of the matter can safely ignore them. But those who wish to go it on their own (may their name be legion!) may find the footnotes helpful in suggesting further reading and further questions for investigation.

WHAT IS A WORLDVIEW?

Despite the fact that such philosophical names as Plato, Kant, Sartre, Camus, and Nietzsche will appear on these pages, this book is not a work of professional philosophy. And though I will refer time and again to concepts made famous by the apostle Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin, this is not a work of theology. Furthermore, though I will frequently point out how various worldviews are expressed in various religions, this is not a book on comparative religion.3 Each religion has its own rites and liturgies, its own peculiar practices and aesthetic character, its own doctrines and turns of expression. Rather, this is a book of worldviews—in some ways more basic, more foundational than formal studies in philosophy, theology, or comparative religion.4 To put it yet another way, it is a book of universes fashioned by words and concepts that work together to provide a more or less coherent frame of reference for all thought and action.5

Few people have anything approaching an articulate philosophy—at least as epitomized by the great philosophers. Even fewer, I suspect, have a carefully constructed theology. But everyone has a worldview. Whenever any of us thinks about anything—from a casual thought (Where did I leave my watch?)

to a profound question (Who am I?)—we are operating within such a framework. In fact, it is only the assumption of a worldview—however basic or simple—that allows us to think at all.6

A worldview (or vision of life) is a framework or set of fundamental beliefs through which we view the world and our calling and future in it. This vision need not be fully articulated: it may be so internalized that it goes largely unquestioned; it may not be explicitly developed into a systematic conception of life; it may not be theoretically deepened into a philosophy; it may not even be codified into creedal form; it may be greatly refined through cultural-historical development. Nevertheless, this vision is a channel for the ultimate beliefs which give direction and meaning to life. It is the integrative and interpretative framework by which order and disorder are judged; it is the standard by which reality is managed and pursued; it is the set of hinges on which all our everyday thinking and doing turns.

James H. Olthuis, “On Worldviews,” in

Stained Glass: Worldviews and Social Science

What, then, is this thing called a worldview that is so important to all of us? I’ve never even heard of one. How could I have one? That may well be the response of many people. One is reminded of M. Jourdain in Jean-Baptiste Molière’s The Bourgeois Gentleman, who suddenly discovered he had been speaking prose for forty years without knowing it. But to discover one’s own worldview is much more valuable. In fact, it is a significant step toward self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-understanding.

So what is a worldview? Essentially this:

A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true, or entirely false) that we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being.7

This succinct definition needs to be unpacked. Each phrase represents a specific characteristic that deserves more elaborate comment.

Worldview as a commitment. The essence of a worldview lies deep in the inner recesses of the human self. A worldview involves the mind, but it is first of all a commitment, a matter of the soul. It is a spiritual orientation more than it is a matter of mind alone.

Worldviews are, indeed, a matter of the heart. This notion would be easier to grasp if the word heart bore in today’s world the weight it bears in Scripture. The biblical concept includes the notions of wisdom (Proverbs 2:10), emotion (Exodus 4:14; John 14:1), desire and will (1 Chronicles 29:18), spirituality (Acts 8:21), and intellect (Romans 1:21).8 In short, and in biblical terms, the heart is “the central defining element of the human person.”9 A worldview, therefore, is situated in the self—the central operating chamber of every human being. It is from this heart that all one’s thoughts and actions proceed.

Expressed in a story or a set of presuppositions. A worldview is not a story or a set of presuppositions, but it can be expressed in these ways. When I reflect on where I and the whole of the human race have come from or where my life or humanity itself is headed, my worldview is being expressed as a story. One story told by science begins with the Big Bang and proceeds through the evolution of the cosmos, the formation of the galaxies, stars, and planets, the appearance of life on earth, and on to its disappearance as the universe runs down. Christians tell the story of creation, fall, redemption, glorification—a story in which Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection are the centerpiece. Christians see their lives and the lives of others as tiny chapters in that master story. The meaning of those little stories cannot be divorced from the master story, and some of this meaning is propositional. When, for example, I ask myself what I am really assuming about God, humans, and the universe, the result is a set of presuppositions that I can express in propositional form.

When they are expressed that way, they answer a series of basic questions about the nature of fundamental reality. I will list and examine these questions shortly. But consider first the nature of those assumptions.

Assumptions that may be true, conscious, consistent. The presuppositions that express one’s commitments may be true, partially true, or entirely false. There is, of course, a way things are, but we are often mistaken about the way things are. In other words, reality is not endlessly plastic. A chair remains a chair whether we recognize it as a chair or not. Either there is an infinitely personal God or there is not. But people disagree on which is true. Some assume one thing; others assume another.

Second, sometimes we are aware of what our commitments are, sometimes not. Most people, I suspect, do not go around consciously thinking of people as organic machines, yet those who do not believe in any sort of God actually assume, consciously or not, that that is what they are. Or they assume that they do have some sort of immaterial soul and treat people that way, and are thus simply inconsistent in their worldview. Some people who do not believe in anything supernatural at all wonder whether they will be reincarnated. So, third, sometimes our worldviews—both those characterizing small or large communities and those we hold as individuals—are inconsistent.

The foundation on which we live. It is important to note that our own worldview may not be what we think it is. It is rather what we show it to be by our words and actions. Our worldview generally lies so deeply embedded in our subconscious that unless we have reflected long and hard, we are unaware of what it is. Even when we think we know what it is and lay it out clearly in neat propositions and clear stories, we may well be wrong. Our very actions may belie our self-knowledge.

Because this book focuses on the main worldview systems held by very large numbers of people, this private element of worldview analysis will not receive much further commentary. If we want clarity about our own worldview, however, we must reflect and profoundly consider how we actually behave.

A Universe charged with the Grandeur of God Christian theism

IN THE WESTERN WORLD up to the end of the seventeenth century, the theistic worldview was clearly dominant. Intellectual squabbles—and there were as many then as now—were mostly family squabbles. Dominicans might disagree with Jesuits, Jesuits with Anglicans, Anglicans with Presbyterians, ad infinitum, but all these parties subscribed to the same set of basic presuppositions. The triune personal God of the Bible existed; he had revealed himself to us and could be known; the universe was his creation; human beings were his special creation. If battles were fought, the lines were drawn within the circle of theism.

How, for example, do we know God? By reason, by revelation, by faith, by contemplation, by proxy, by direct access? This battle was fought on many fronts over a dozen centuries and is still an issue with those remaining on the theistic field. Or take another issue: Is the basic stuff of the universe matter only, form only, or a combination? Theists have differed on this too. What role does human freedom play in a universe where God is sovereign? Again, a family squabble.

During the period from the early Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century, very few challenged the existence of God or held that ultimate reality was impersonal or that death meant individual extinction. The reason is obvious. Christianity had so penetrated the Western world that whether or not people believed in Christ or acted as Christians should, they all lived in a context of ideas influenced and informed by the Christian faith. Even those who rejected the faith often lived in fear of hellfire or the pangs of purgatory. Bad people may have rejected Christian goodness, but they knew themselves to be bad by basically Christian standards—crudely understood, no doubt, but Christian in essence. The theistic presuppositions that lay behind their values came with their mother’s milk.

This, of course, is no longer true. Being born in the Western world now guarantees nothing. Worldviews have proliferated. Walk down a street of any major city in Europe or North America and the next person you meet could adhere to any one of a dozen distinctly different patterns of understanding what life is all about. Little seems bizarre to us, which makes it more and more difficult for talk-show hosts to get good ratings by shocking their television audiences.

Consider the problem of growing up today. Baby Jane, a twenty-first-century child of the Western world, often gets reality defined in two widely divergent forms—her mother’s and father’s. Then if the family breaks apart, the court may enter with a third definition of human reality. This poses a distinct problem for deciding what the shape of the world actually is.

Baby John, a child of the seventeenth century, was cradled in a cultural consensus that gave a sense of place. The world around was really there—created to be there by God. As God’s vice regent, young John sensed that he and other human beings had been given dominion over the world. He was required to worship God, but God was eminently worthy of worship. He was required to obey God, but then obedience to God was true freedom since that was what people were made for. Besides, God’s yoke was easy and his burden light. Furthermore, God’s rules were seen as primarily moral, and people were free to be creative over the external universe, free to learn its secrets, free to shape and fashion it as God’s stewards cultivating God’s garden and offering up their work as true worship before a God who honors his creation with freedom and dignity.

There was a basis for both meaning and morality as well as for the question of identity. The apostles of absurdity were yet to arrive. Even Shakespeare’s King Lear (perhaps the English Renaissance’s most “troubled” hero) does not end in total despair. And Shakespeare’s later plays suggest that he himself had passed well beyond the moment of despair and found the world to be ultimately meaningful.

ABSURDISM

Absurdism is the belief or philosophy that life is inherently meaningless, without purpose and chaotic. As such, it is a form of nihilism. Various novelists and playwrights—among them Eugène Ionesco, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and Edward Albee—have explored absurdist themes.

“The Theatre of the Absurd strives to express its sense of the senselessness of the human condition and the inadequacy of the rational approach by the open abandonment of rational devices and discursive thought.” (Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd)

It is fitting, therefore, that we begin a study of worldviews with theism. It is the foundational view, the one from which all others developing between 1700 and 1900 essentially derive. It would be possible to go behind theism to Greco-Roman classicism, but even this as it was reborn in the Renaissance was seen almost solely within the framework of theism.1

BASIC CHRISTIAN THEISM

As the core of each chapter I will try to express the essence of each worldview in a minimum number of succinct propositions. Each worldview considers the following basic issues: the nature and character of God or ultimate reality, the nature of the universe, the nature of humanity, the question of what happens to a person at death, the basis of human knowing, the basis of ethics, the meaning of history, and life-orienting core commitments.2 In the case of theism, the prime proposition concerns the nature of God. Since this first proposition is so important, we will spend more time with it than with any other.

1. Worldview Question 1 (prime reality): Prime reality is the infinite, personal God revealed in the Holy Scriptures. This God is triune, transcendent and immanent, omniscient, sovereign, and good.3

Let’s break this proposition down into its parts.

God is infinite. This means that he is beyond scope, beyond measure, as far as we are concerned. No other being in the universe can challenge him in his nature. All else is secondary. He has no twin but is alone the be-all and end-all of existence. He is, in fact, the only self-existent being,4 as he spoke to Moses out of the burning bush: “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). He is in a way what none else is. As Moses proclaimed, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4 KJV). So God is the one prime existent, the one prime reality, and as will be discussed at some length later, the one source of all other reality.

God is personal. This means God is not mere force or energy or existent “substance.” God is personal. Personality requires two basic characteristics: self-reflection and self-determination. In other words, God is personal in that he knows himself to be (he is self-conscious) and he possesses the characteristics of self-determination (he “thinks” and “acts”).

One implication of the personality of God is that he is like us. In a way, this puts the cart before the horse. Actually, we are like him, but it is helpful to put it the other way around at least for a brief comment. He is like us. That means there is Someone ultimate who is there to ground our highest aspirations, our most precious possession—personality. But more on this under proposition 3.

Another implication of the personality of God is that God is not a simple unity, an integer. He has attributes, characteristics. He is a unity, yes, but a unity of complexity.

Actually, in Christian theism (not Judaism or Islam) God is not only personal but triune. That is, “within the one essence of the Godhead we have to distinguish three ‘persons’ who are neither three gods on the one side, not three parts or modes of God on the other, but coequally and coeternally God.”5 The Trinity is certainly a great mystery, and I cannot even begin to elucidate it now. What is important here is to note that the Trinity confirms the communal, “personal” nature of ultimate being. God is not only there—an actually existent being—he is personal, and we can relate to him in a personal way. To know God, therefore, means knowing more than that he exists. It means knowing him as we know a brother or, better, our own father.

God is transcendent. This means God is beyond us and our world. He is otherly. Look at a stone: God is not it; God is beyond it. Look at a human being: God is not that person; God is beyond. Yet God is not so beyond that he bears no relation to us and our world. It is likewise true that God is immanent, and this means that he is with us. Look at a stone: God is present. Look at a person: God is present. Is this, then, a contradiction? Is theism nonsense at this point? I think not.

My daughter Carol, when she was five years old, taught me a lot here. She and her mother were in the kitchen, and her mother was teaching her about God’s being everywhere. So Carol asked, “Is God in the living room?”

“Yes,” her mother replied.

“Is he in the kitchen?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Am I stepping on God?”

There is but one living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty; most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and withal most just and terrible in his judgments; hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.

Westminster Confession 2.1

My wife was speechless. But look at the point that was raised. Is God here in the same way a stone or a chair or a kitchen is here? No, not quite. God is immanent, here, everywhere, in a sense completely in line with his transcendence. For God is not matter like you and me, but Spirit. And yet he is here. In the New Testament book of Hebrews Jesus Christ is said to be “sustaining all things by his powerful word” (Hebrews 1:3). That is, God is beyond all, yet in all and sustaining all.

God is omniscient. This means that God is all-knowing. He is the alpha and the omega and knows the beginning from the end (Revelation 22:13). He is the ultimate source of all knowledge and all intelligence. He is He Who Knows. The author of Psalm 139 expresses beautifully his amazement at God’s being everywhere, preempting him—knowing him even as he was being formed in his mother’s womb.

God is sovereign. This is really a further ramification of God’s infiniteness, but it expresses more fully his concern to rule, to pay attention, as it were, to all the actions of his universe. It expresses the fact that nothing is beyond God’s ultimate interest, control, and authority.

God is good. This is the prime statement about God’s character.6 From it flow all others. To be good means to be good. God is goodness. That is, what he is is good. There is no sense in which goodness surpasses God or God surpasses goodness. As being is the essence of his nature, goodness is the essence of his character.

God’s goodness is expressed in two ways, through holiness and through love. Holiness emphasizes his absolute righteousness, which brooks no shadow of evil. As the apostle John says, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). God’s holiness is his separateness from all that smacks of evil. But God’s goodness is also expressed as love. In fact, John says, “God is love” (1 John 4:16), and this leads God to self-sacrifice and the full extension of his favor to his people, called in the Hebrew Scriptures “the sheep of his pasture” (Psalm 100:3).

God’s goodness means then, first, that there is an absolute and personal standard of righteousness (it is found in God’s character) and, second, that there is hope for humanity (because God is love and will not abandon his creation). These twin observations will become especially significant as we trace the results of rejecting the theistic worldview.

2. Worldview Question 2 (external reality): External reality is the cosmos God created ex nihilo to operate with a uniformity of cause and effect in an open system.

God created the cosmos ex nihilo. God is He Who Is, and thus he is the source of all else. Still, it is important to understand that God did not make the universe out of himself. Rather, God spoke it into existence. It came into being by his word: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Theologians thus say God “created” (Genesis 1:1) the cosmos ex nihilo—out of nothing, not out of himself or from some preexistent chaos (for if it were really “preexistent,” it would be as eternal as God).

Second, God created the cosmos as a uniformity of cause and effect in an open system. This phrase is a useful piece of shorthand for two key conceptions.7 First, it signifies that the cosmos was not created to be chaotic. Isaiah states this magnificently:

For this is what the LORD says—

he who created the heavens,

he is God;

he who fashioned and made the earth,

he founded it;

he did not create it to be empty [a chaos],8

but formed it to be inhabited—

he says:

“I am the LORD,

and there is no other.

I have not spoken in secret,

from somewhere in a land of darkness;

I have not said to Jacob’s descendants,

‘Seek me in vain.’

I, the LORD, speak the truth;

I declare what is right.” (Isaiah 45:18-19)

The universe is orderly, and God does not present us with confusion but with clarity. The nature of God’s universe and God’s character are thus closely related. This world is as it is at least in part because God is who he is. We will see later how the fall qualifies this observation. Here it is sufficient to note that there is an orderliness, a regularity, to the universe. We can expect the earth to turn so the sun will “rise” every day.

But another important notion is buried in this shorthand phrase. The system is open, and that means it is not programmed. God is constantly involved in the unfolding pattern of the ongoing operation of the universe. And so are we human beings! The course of the world’s operation is open to reordering by either. So we find it dramatically reordered in the fall. Adam and Eve made a choice that had tremendous significance. But God made another choice in redeeming people through Christ.

The world’s operation is also reordered by our continued activity after the fall. Each of our actions, each decision to pursue one course rather than another, changes or rather “produces” the future. By dumping pollutants into fresh streams, we kill fish and alter the way we can feed ourselves in years to come. By “cleaning up” our streams, we again alter our future. If the universe were not orderly, our decisions would have no effect. If the course of events were determined, our decisions would have no significance. So theism declares that the universe is orderly but not determined. The implications of this become clearer as we consider humanity’s place in the cosmos.

3. Worldview Question 3 (human beings): Human beings are created in the image of God and thus possess personality, self-transcendence, intelligence, morality, gregariousness, and creativity.

The key phrase here is “the image of God,” a conception highlighted by the fact that it occurs three times in the short space of two verses in Genesis:

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27;

compare Genesis 5:3; 9:6)

That people are made in the image of God means we are like God. We have already noted that God is like us. But the Scriptures really say it the other way. “We are like God” puts the emphasis where it belongs—on the primacy of God.

We are personal because God is personal. That is, we know ourselves to be (we are self-conscious), and we make decisions uncoerced (we possess self-determination). We are capable of acting on our own. We do not merely react to our environment but can act according to our own character, our own nature.

No two people are alike, we say. And this is not just because no two people have shared exactly the same heredity and environment but because each of us possesses a unique character out of which we think, desire, weigh consequences, refuse to weigh consequences, indulge, refuse to indulge—in short, choose to act.

In this each person reflects (as an image) the transcendence of God over his universe. God is totally unconstrained by his environment. God is limited (we might say) only by his character. God, being good, cannot lie, be deceived, act with evil intent, and so forth. But nothing external to God can possibly constrain him. If he chooses to restore a broken universe, it is because he “wants” to, because, for example, he loves it and wants the best for it. But he is free to do as he wills, and his character (Who He Is) controls his will.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars that you have established;

what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

mortals that you care for them?

 

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,

and crowned them with glory and honor.

You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;

you have put all things under their feet,

all sheep and oxen,

and also the beasts of the field,

the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,

whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

So we participate in part in a transcendence over our environment. Except at the very extremities of existence—in sickness or physical deprivation (utter starvation, cooped up in darkness for days on end, for example)—a person is not forced to any necessary reaction.

Step on my toe. Must I curse? I may. Must I forgive you? I may. Must I yell? I may. Must I smile? I may. What I do will reflect my character, but it is “I” who will act and not just react like a bell ringing when a button is pushed.

In short, people have personality and are capable of transcending the cosmos in which they are placed in the sense that they can know something of that cosmos and can act significantly to change the course of both human and cosmic events. This is another way of saying that the cosmic system God made is open to reordering by human beings.

Personality is the chief thing about human beings, as, I think it is fair to say, it is the chief thing about God, who is infinite both in his personality and in his being. Our personality is grounded in the personality of God. That is, we find our true home in God and in being in close relationship with him. “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man,” wrote Pascal.9 “Our hearts are restless till they rest in thee,” wrote Augustine.10

How does God fulfill our ultimate longing? He does so in many ways: by being the perfect fit for our very nature, by satisfying our longing for interpersonal relationship, by being in his omniscience the end to our search for knowledge, by being in his infinite being the refuge from all fear, by being in his holiness the righteous ground of our quest for justice, by being in his infinite love the cause of our hope for salvation, by being in his infinite creativity both the source of our creative imagination and the ultimate beauty we seek to reflect as we ourselves create.

We can summarize this conception of humankind in God’s image by saying that, like God, we have personality, self-transcendence, intelligence (the capacity for reason and knowledge), morality (the capacity for recognizing and understanding good and evil), gregariousness or social capacity (our characteristic and fundamental desire and need for human companionship—community—especially represented by the “male and female” aspect), and creativity (the ability to imagine new things or to endow old things with new significance).

We will consider the root of human intelligence below. Here I want to comment on human creativity—a characteristic often lost sight of in popular theism. Human creativity is borne as a reflection of the infinite creativity of God himself. Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586) once wrote about the poet who, “lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, . . . freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit.” To honor human creativity, Sidney argued, is to honor God, for God is the “heavenly Maker of that maker.”11

Artists operating within the theistic worldview have a solid basis for their work. Nothing is more freeing than for them to realize that because they are like God they can really invent. Artistic inventiveness is a reflection of God’s unbounded capacity to create. Human creativity differs from divine creativity in one important respect. God creates ex nihilo from nothing while humans create by giving form to preexisting matter.

In Christian theism human beings are indeed dignified. In the psalmist’s words, they are “a little lower than the angels,” for God himself has made them that way and has crowned them “with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:5). Human dignity is in one way not our own; contrary to Protagoras, humanity is not the measure. Human dignity is derived from God. But though it is derived, people do possess it, even if as a gift. Helmut Thielicke says it well: “His [humankind’s] greatness rests solely on the fact that God in his incomprehensible goodness has bestowed his love upon him. God does not love us because we are so valuable; we are valuable because God loves us.”12

So human dignity has two sides. As human beings we are dignified, but we are not to be proud of it, for our dignity is borne as a reflection of the Ultimately Dignified. Yet it is a reflection. So people who are theists see themselves as a sort of midpoint—above the rest of creation (for God has given them dominion over it—Genesis 1:28-30; Psalm 8:6-8) and below God (for people are not autonomous, not on their own).

This is then the ideal, balanced human status. It was in failing to remain in that balance that our troubles arose, and the story of how that happened is very much a part of Christian theism. But before we see what tipped the balanced state of humanity, we need to understand a further implication of being created in the image of God.

4. Worldview Question 5 (knowledge): Human beings can know both the world around them and God himself because God has built into them the capacity to do so and because he takes an active role in communicating with them.

The foundation of human knowledge is the character of God as Creator. We are made in his image (Genesis 1:27). As he is the all-knowing knower of all things, so we can be the sometimes knowing knowers of some things. The Gospel of John puts the concept this way:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. (John 1:1-4)

The Word (in Greek Logos, from which our word logic comes) is eternal, an aspect of God himself.13 That is, logicality, intelligence, rationality, and meaning are all inherent in God. It is out of this intelligence that the world, the universe, came to be. And therefore, because of this source, the universe has structure, order, and meaning.

Moreover, in the Word—this inherent intelligence—is the “light of all mankind,” light being in the book of John a symbol for both moral capacity and intelligence. Verse 9 adds that the Word, “the true light . . . gives light to everyone.” God’s own intelligence is thus the basis of human intelligence. Knowledge is possible because there is something to be known (God and his creation) and someone to know (the omniscient God and human beings made in his image).14

Of course, God himself is forever so beyond us that we cannot have anything approaching total comprehension of him. In fact, if God desired, he could remain forever hidden. But God wants us to know him, and he takes the initiative in this transfer of knowledge.

In theological terms, this initiative is called revelation. God reveals, or discloses, himself to us in two basic ways: by general revelation and by special revelation. In general revelation God speaks through the created order of the universe. The apostle Paul wrote, “What may be known about God is plain to them [all people], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made” (Romans 1:19-20). Centuries before that the psalmist wrote,

The heavens declare the glory of God;

the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

night after night they reveal knowledge. (Psalm 19:1-2)

In other words, God’s existence and his nature as Creator and powerful sustainer of the universe are revealed in God’s prime “handiwork,” his universe. As we contemplate the magnitude of this—its orderliness and its beauty—we can learn much about God. When we turn from the universe at large to look at humanity, we see something more, for human beings add the dimension of personality. God, therefore, must be at least as personal as we are.

Thus far can general revelation go, but little further. As Thomas Aquinas said, we can know that God exists through general revelation, but we could never know that God is triune apart from special revelation.

Special revelation is God’s disclosure of himself in extranatural ways. Not only did he reveal himself by appearing in spectacular forms such as a bush that burns but is not consumed, but he also spoke to people in their own language. To Moses he defined himself as “I AM WHO I AM” and identified himself as the same God who had acted before on behalf of the Hebrew people. He called himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exodus 3:1-17). In fact, God carried on a dialogue with Moses in which genuine two-way communication took place. This is one way special revelation occurred.

Later God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and revealed a long code of laws by which the Hebrews were to be ruled. Later yet God revealed himself to prophets from a number of walks of life. His word came to them, and they recorded it for posterity. The New Testament writer of the letter to the Hebrews summed it up this way: “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways” (Hebrews 1:1). In any case, the revelations to Moses, David, and the various prophets were, by command of God, written down and kept to be read over and over to the people (Deuteronomy 6:4-8; Psalm 119). The cumulative writings grew to become the Old Testament, which was affirmed by Jesus himself as an accurate and authoritative revelation of God.15

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews did not end with the summary of God’s past revelation. He went on to say, “But in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things. . . . The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:2-3). Jesus Christ is God’s ultimate special revelation. Because Jesus Christ was very God of very God, he showed us what God is like more fully than any other form of revelation can. Because Jesus was also completely human, he spoke more clearly to us than any other form of revelation can.

Again the opening of the Gospel of John is relevant. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, . . . full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). That is, the Word is Jesus Christ. “We have seen his glory,” John continues, “the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father.” Jesus has made God known to us in very fleshly terms. Special revelation comes to us today through the record of Scripture, which by faith we recognize as the authoritative word from God. We know of the revelation of Jesus, the words of the prophets, and all these other means through the words of Scripture.

The main point for us is that theism declares that God can and has clearly communicated with us. Because of this we can know much about who God is and what he desires for us. That is true for people at all times and all places, but it was especially true before the fall, to which we now turn.

5. Worldview Question 6 (morality): Human beings were created good, but through the fall the image of God became defaced, though not so ruined as not to be capable of restoration; through the work of Christ, God redeemed humanity and began the process of restoring people to goodness, though any given person may choose to reject that redemption.

Human “history” can be subsumed under four words—creation, fall, redemption, glorification. We have just seen the essential human characteristics. To these we must add that human beings and all the rest of creation were created good. As Genesis 1:31 records, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” Because God by his character sets the standards of righteousness, human goodness consisted in being what God wanted people to be—beings made in the image of God and acting out that nature in their daily life. The tragedy is that we did not stay as we were created.

As we have seen, human beings were created with a capacity for self-determination. God gave them the freedom to remain or not to remain in the close relationship of image to original. As Genesis 3 reports, the original pair, Adam and Eve, chose to disobey their Creator at the only point where the Creator put down limitations. This is the essence of the story of the fall. Adam and Eve chose to eat the fruit God had forbidden them to eat, and hence they violated the personal relationship they had with their Creator.

In this manner people of all eras have attempted to set themselves up as autonomous beings, arbiters of their own way of life. They have chosen to act as if they had an existence independent from God. But that is precisely what they do not have, for they owe everything—both their origin and their continued existence—to God.

The result of this act of rebellion was death for Adam and Eve. And their death has involved for subsequent generations long centuries of personal, social, and natural turmoil. In brief summary, we can say that the image of God in humanity was defaced in all its aspects. In personality, we lost our capacity to know ourselves accurately and to determine our own course of action freely in response to our intelligence.

Our self-transcendence was impaired by alienation from God, for as Adam and Eve turned from God, God let them go. And as we, humankind, slipped from close fellowship with the ultimately transcendent One, we lost our ability to stand over against the external universe, understand it, judge it accurately, and thus make truly “free” decisions. Rather, humanity became more a servant to nature than to God. And our status as God’s vice regent over nature (an aspect of the image of God) was reversed.

Human intelligence also became impaired. Now we can no longer gain a fully accurate knowledge of the world around us, nor are we able to reason without constantly falling into error. Morally, we became less able to discern good and evil and less able to live by the standards we do perceive. Socially, we began to exploit other people. Creatively, our imagination became separated from reality; imagination became illusion, and artists who created gods in their own image led humanity further and further from its origin. The vacuum in each human soul created by this string of consequences is ominous indeed. (The fullest biblical expression of these ideas is Romans 1–2.)

Theologians have summed it up this way: we have become alienated from God, from others, from nature, and even from ourselves. This is the essence of fallen humanity.16 But humanity is redeemable and has been redeemed. The story of creation and fall is told in three chapters of Genesis. The story of redemption takes up the rest of the Scriptures. The Bible records God’s love for us in searching us out, finding us in our lost, alienated condition, and redeeming us by the sacrifice of his own Son, Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity. God, in unmerited favor and great grace, has granted us the possibility of a new life, a life involving substantial healing of our alienations and restoration to fellowship with God.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned to our own way;

And the LORD has laid on him

the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)

That God has provided a way back for us does not mean we play no role. Adam and Eve were not forced to fall. We are not forced to return. While it is not the purpose of this description of theism to take sides in a famous family squabble within Christian theism (predestination versus free will), it is necessary to note that Christians disagree on precisely what role God takes and what role he leaves us. Still, most would agree that God is the primary agent in salvation. Our role is to respond by repentance for our wrong attitudes and acts, to accept God’s provisions, and to follow Christ as Lord as well as Savior.

Redeemed humanity is humanity on the way to restoration of the defaced image of God, in other words, substantial healing in every area—personality, self-transcendence, intelligence, morality, social capacity, and creativity. Glorified humanity is humanity totally healed and at peace with God, and individuals at peace with others and themselves. But this happens only on the other side of death and the bodily resurrection, the importance of which is stressed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. Individual people are so important that they retain uniqueness—a personal and individual existence—forever. Glorified humanity is humanity transformed into a purified personality in fellowship with God and God’s people. In short, in theism human beings are seen as significant because they are essentially godlike and though fallen can be restored to original dignity.

6. Worldview Question 4 (death): For each person death is either the gate to life with God and his people or the gate to eternal separation from the only thing that will ultimately fulfill human aspirations.

The meaning of death is really part of worldview question 6 (morality), but it is singled out here because attitudes to death are so important in every worldview. What happens when a person dies? Let’s put it personally, for this aspect of one’s worldview is indeed most personal. Do I disappear—personal extinction? Do I hibernate and return in a different form—reincarnation? Do I continue in a transformed existence in heaven or hell?

Christian theism clearly teaches the last of these. At death people are transformed. Either they enter an existence with God and his people—a glorified existence—or they enter an existence forever separated from God, holding their uniqueness in awful loneliness apart from precisely that which would fulfill them.

And that is the essence of hell. G. K. Chesterton once remarked that hell is a monument to human freedom—and, we might add, human dignity. Hell is God’s tribute to the freedom he gave each of us to choose whom we would serve; it is a recognition that our decisions have a significance that extends far down into the reaches of foreverness.17

Those who respond to God’s offer of salvation, however, people the plains of eternity as glorious creatures of God—completed, fulfilled but not sated, engaged in the ever-enjoyable communion of the saints. The Scriptures give little detail about this existence, but glimpses of heaven in Revelation 4–5 and 21, for example, create a longing Christians expect to be fulfilled beyond their fondest desires.

7. Worldview Question 6 (morality): Morality is transcendent and is based on the character of God as good (holy and loving).

7. Worldview Question 6 (morality): Morality is transcendent and is based on the character of God as good (holy and loving).

This proposition has already been considered as an implication of proposition 1. God is the source of the moral world as well as the physical world. God is good and expresses this in the laws and moral principles he has revealed in Scripture.

Made in God’s image, we are essentially moral beings, and thus we cannot refuse to bring moral categories to bear on our actions. Of course, our sense of morality has been flawed by the fall, and now we only brokenly reflect the truly good. Yet even in our moral relativity, we cannot get rid of the sense that some things are “right” or “natural” and others not.

For years homosexual behavior was considered immoral by most of society. Now a large number of people challenge this. But they do so not on the basis that no moral categories exist but that this one area—homosexuality—really ought to have been on the other side of the line dividing the moral from the immoral. People with this perspective do not usually condone incest! So the fact that people differ in their moral judgments does nothing to alter the fact that we continue to make, to live by, and to violate moral judgments. Everyone lives in a moral universe, and virtually everyone—if they reflect on it—recognizes this and would have it no other way.

Theism, however, teaches that not only is there a moral universe but there is an absolute standard by which all moral judgments are measured. God himself—his character of goodness (holiness and love)—is the standard. Furthermore, Christians and Jews hold that God has revealed his standard in the various laws and principles expressed in the Bible. The Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the apostle Paul’s ethical teaching—in these and many other ways God has expressed his character to us. There is thus a standard of right and wrong, and people who want to know it can know it.

The fullest embodiment of the good, however, is Jesus Christ. He is the complete human, humanity as God would have it be. Paul calls him the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45-49). And in Jesus we see the good life incarnate. Jesus’ good life was supremely revealed in his death—an act of infinite love, for as Paul says, “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person. . . . But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:7-8). And the apostle John echoes, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

So ethics, while very much a human domain, is ultimately the business of God. We are not the measure of morality. God is.

8. Worldview Question 7 (history): History is linear, a meaningful sequence of events leading to the fulfillment of God’s purposes for humanity.

“History is linear” means that the actions of people—as confusing and chaotic as they appear—are part of a meaningful sequence that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. History is not reversible, not repeatable, not cyclic; history is not meaningless. Rather, history is teleological, going somewhere, directed toward a known end. The God who knows the end from the beginning is aware of and sovereign over the actions of humankind.

Several basic turning points in the course of history are singled out for special attention by biblical writers, and these form the background for the theistic understanding of human beings in time. These turning points include the creation, the fall into sin, the revelation of God to the Hebrews (which includes the calling of Abraham from Ur to Canaan, the exodus from Egypt, the giving of the law, the witness of the prophets), the incarnation, the life of Jesus, the crucifixion and resurrection, Pentecost, the spread of the good news via the church, the second coming of Christ, and the final judgment. This is a slightly more detailed list of events paralleling the pattern of human life: creation, fall, redemption, glorification.

Looked at in this way, history itself is a form of revelation. That is, not only does God reveal himself in history (here, there, then), but the very sequence of events is revelation. One can say, therefore, that history (especially as localized in the Jewish people) is the record of the involvement and concern of God in human events. History is the divine purpose of God in concrete form.

This pattern is, of course, dependent on the Christian tradition. It does not at first appear to take into account people other than Jews and Christians. Yet the Old Testament has much to say about the nations surrounding Israel and about God-fearers (non-Jewish people who adopted Jewish beliefs and were considered a part of God’s promise). And the New Testament stresses even more the international dimension of God’s purposes and his reign.

The revelation of God’s design took place primarily through one people—the Jews. And while we may say with William Ewer, “How odd / Of God / To choose / The Jews,” we need not think that doing so indicates favoritism on God’s part. Peter once said, “God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right” (Acts 10:34-35).

Theists look forward, then, to history’s being closed by judgment and a new age inaugurated beyond time. But prior to that new age, time is irreversible and history is localized in space. This conception needs to be stressed, since it differs dramatically from the typically Eastern notion. To much of the East, time is an illusion; history is eternally cyclic. Reincarnation brings a soul back into time again and again; progress in the soul’s journey is long, arduous, perhaps eternal. But in Christian theism, “people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). An individual’s choices have meaning to that person, to others, and to God. History is the result of those choices that, under the sovereignty of God, bring about God’s purposes for this world.

In short, the most important aspect of the theistic concept of history is that history has meaning because God—the Logos, meaning itself—is behind all events, not only “sustaining all things by his powerful word” (Hebrews 1:3) but also “in all things . . . [working] for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). Behind the apparent chaos of events stands the loving God sufficient for all.

CORE COMMITMENT

What then fuels the fire of consistent Christian theists? What provides the driving motive for their lives?

9. Worldview Question 8 (core commitments): Christian theists live to seek first the kingdom of God, that is, to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

The Christian worldview is unique in many ways, but not the least of which is the way in which it serves as the focus for the ultimate meaning of life, not just the meaning of human history or human existence in the abstract, but the meaning of life for each Christian. As God himself is the really real, the ultimate ground of being and the Creator of all being other than himself, so devoted Christians live not for themselves but for God. “What is the chief end of man?” asks the Westminster Shorter Catechism.18 And the answer is “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” To glorify God is not just to do so in religious worship, singing praise and enacting the traditional rites of the church. To glorify God is to reveal his character by being who we were created to be—the embodiment of the image of God in human form. When we are like him, we glorify him. And what is he like? He is not just the awesome I AM, shaking the heavens and the earth with his thunderous voice and transcendent being. He is Jesus. He is Immanuel, “God with us.” To be like Jesus, then, is to be like God who is himself all the glory there is.

Jesus came proclaiming the kingdom of God, embodying in his earthly existence the presence of the Father’s kingdom (Mark 1:14-15). We are to imitate him, to obey his command to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). Lo and behold, when we do this we both avoid the tragic consequences of selfishness and pride and receive what really fulfills our lives. All the happiness and joy we seek when we substitute our desires for God’s glory comes to us as a result of yielding our will to his. Human flourishing, then, while not being a primary goal, is a result of turning one’s attention toward God and his glory.19 “All these things will be given to you as well,” Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:33). To glorify God then, as the catechism says, is to enjoy him forever.

There are, of course, other ways to personalize this core commitment. Some Christians say it is to obey God; or to love God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength and their neighbors as themselves; or to lose their lives for the sake of the gospel. Others may cast their answers in rather unique ways, but if these answers truly reflect a grasp and commitment to the Christian understanding of reality, they will emphasize the centrality of God and his good pleasure in what they say. They will not point first of all to happiness; happiness or joy will be a consequence, not a goal. Life is all about God, they will say, not about themselves.

THE GRANDEUR OF GOD

It should by now be obvious that Christian theism is primarily dependent on its concept of God, for theism holds that everything stems from him. Nothing is prior to God or equal to him. He is He Who Is. Thus theism has a basis for metaphysics. Since He Who Is also has a worthy character and is thus The Worthy One, theism has a basis for ethics. Since He Who Is also is He Who Knows, theism has a basis for epistemology. In other words, theism is a complete worldview.

So the greatness of God is the central tenet of Christian theism. When a person recognizes this and consciously accepts and acts on it, this central conception is the rock, the transcendent reference point, that gives life meaning and makes the joys and sorrows of daily existence on planet Earth significant moments in an unfolding drama in which one expects to participate forever, not always with sorrows but someday with joy alone. Even now, though, the world is, as Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote, “charged with the grandeur of God.”20 That there are “God adumbrations in many daily forms” signals to us that God is not just in his heaven but with us—sustaining us, loving us, and caring for us.21 Fully cognizant Christian theists, therefore, do not just believe and proclaim this view as true. Their first act is toward God—a response of love, obedience, and praise to the Lord of the Universe, their maker, sustainer, and, through Jesus Christ, their redeemer and friend.

Listen (Transcript) : America's Birthday: The Real Story

Ryan, a few weeks ago, we heard a

profound message from pastor tommy Nelson. You remember that I was called America,

the great idea. And basically what he was saying was that

America is not a piece of land

or a group of people. It's an idea. It's about liberty

and freedom and those inalienable

rights that we enjoy here in

this country. Yeah, you know

what he had to say reminded me of a quote from Benjamin Franklin. It says Where

liberty dwells, there is my country. And I love America. I love the

freedoms we enjoy, but I know that even I sometimes take those

freedoms for granted. Well, he really isn't every day that we

pause to think about the enormity of what

led to the birth of this country and how incredible it

is that well, over 200 years later, we're still enjoying the majority of

those freedoms. I don't think that has occurred anywhere

in world history. And there's a

reason for it. Now, the fourth of

July is Sunday, and it will be celebrated, of course, on Monday. And I think it's very appropriate that we take some time today to

reflect on the glorious, the history of the

American Revolution to help us do

that is one of the foremost Christian

American historians, David Barton. David is the founder and president of

wall builders, which is passionately

dedicated to educating the public on America's

forgotten history. And he rose, especially

when it comes to our moral and

spiritual heritage. David has written many

bestselling books on the topic and

was named by Time Magazine as one of America's 25 most

influential evangelicals. So I'm excited

about David Barton allowing us to share his message with our

listeners today. Well, Im2 doctor,

I know as a mom, I have got to be very intentional in

making sure that my son's really understand the truth about the

nation's history. I mean, another broadcasts

that comes to mind. I remember Dennis

Prager recently admonishing us to almost commemorate the

4th of July, much like the

Jewish people did when their ancestors were

let out of Egypt. And I really think

today's program could be the basis for

something like that for families this weekend. I agree, Luann,

I love history. I can't wait for

this broadcast. And he highlights the

Christian faith of our founding fathers and how their knowledge of the scriptures

directly lead our desire to secede from Great Britain here now as David Barton on this

family taught broadcast, specifically talking about this holiday we're

going to celebrate. We approach another

birthday in America. And each year is again, another record setting

year where the longest ongoing constitutional

republic in the history of the world. And if we rolled around at the 4th of July

every year, we do like to celebrate

it and we do have the the fireworks and the other festivities

that go with that day, but it's become

today with us so many people don't understand the roots

of American history, the roots of the

American Revolution. If you ask them what the revolution was

about, they say, Well, it was taxation

without representation. That answer really

goes back to something that

happened in the 1920s. In the 1920s, some

revisionist historians called Charles

and Mary Beard, came up with what

they called the economic view of the

American Revolution. And a day that's

what we teach. We don't teach the

spiritual side, we don't teach that the

constitutional side, all the other issues

that were there, even the biblical side. We used to in

previous generations, to understand the

American Revolution. To understand what we celebrate on the

4th of July, you really have

to go back a 150 years before the

American Revolution. You have to go

back to the time of the Pilgrims

and the Puritans, settlers that

arrived in America. Now, if you ever get to

go to Washington DC, you'll see there

in the capital a picture of the embarkation

of the pilgrim's. It shows them gathered

around a Geneva Bible. It was a popular

Bible with the group called

the dissenters. Those are the people who didn't really think that everything centered

around one person at the top of every

organization, whether it was

church or state. They really were quite

anti autocratic. And the people that had started that group go

back to people like Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and knocks

and the reformers. And so the significant

thing about the Geneva Bible was its marginal

commentaries. Those commentaries

were written by the reformers and

they point out that God had so many

different ways of governing divine right of kings says all monarchies, the only way we do this, god has a single leader at the top of the state, a single leader at the

top of the church. But here came these

reformers say No, there's the priesthood

of believers. Each of us can

go to God on our own through what Jesus

Christ has done. Each of us can self-govern ourself as citizens. They were persecuted

for having those views, those anti

autocratic views. And finally, the

pilgrims said, we're out of here. We're going to

America where we can read and study the Word of God

for our self without being

persecuted for it. And so they arrived

here in America. Now when they arrived

here, the Bible is a very significant

book to them. There are so many aspects

of American culture today that came from the Puritans and

the Pilgrims, and that came

specifically from the Geneva Bible,

what we call The free enterprise system that came out of

1st Timothy 5, 8, according to

the pilgrims, that's a system

they found. You'll, you'll find

that they were in the habit of

finding things in the scriptures

and trying to literally apply them in a civil government

into education and alive and a

family into church. It's a matter of

fact, that's where the first education

laws came, were out of New

England is 642. They pass that law

in Massachusetts. That was, if you

will, a public school law that day, that the purpose of public education was

to teach kids to know the scriptures

so that they can judge both the church

and the state. But what God has said

in the Scriptures. Well, five years

later, Connecticut pass that same law. It says because if

you can't read, you can't read

the Word of God, and you therefore

can't judge the loss of the state against the Word of God, which means that we in

the General Assembly might pass a bad law and you folks

wouldn't stop us because you can't

read the Bible. We judged everything that went on against

the Word of God. And this is the

real backdrop to the American

Revolution. Now, let me go

through those, some of those

sermons and show you the type of things that

we preached about. Because this does give you a good indication

of how that, no matter what went on, we went to the Bible to see what the Word of God

had to say about it. I, for example, you'll

see here a sermon. This is a sermon

preached 1804. This is a sermon on

a solar eclipse, which had just happened

in Connecticut. Here's a sermon from 799, and this happened

in Massachusetts. And it was a hail

storm and a tornado happened on the

second of August. It says here

on the sermon. And so the next

Sunday the pulpits were filled with

sermons on hailstorms, tornados, and here's

what's called an execution sermon at

the sermon from 796. It was priced at Salem, January the 14th, 796. It's occasioned by

the execution of Henry Blackburn

on that day for the murder of

George Wilkinson. Here's someone

being put to death by civil government. And there's a sermon

on that execution. Absolutely. You say, we went

back and said, what does the scripture

say about this? Is this something civil government

can really do? What is Romans

13 mean when it says that the

government doesn't bear the sword in vain, one is a government

even have the sword. What does it use

the sword? Is this a justified use of the sword by

the government? And we just went back and looked at the Scriptures. No matter what went on, we went to the scriptures. Here's a sermon,

this is from 1803. It's called an

artillery sermon. What happened

was once a year, they get that the military together and brought

ministers and to preach these artillery

sermons that his sermons on what

the Word of God says about the military. See nothing went on

that we couldn't find a biblical

precept with. So for a 150 years before the American

Revolution, we had been trained in

our culture to look at every single thing

from the Word of God. And that is literally

how we approached it. Now, it was

because of that training that

we were able to recognize when King George the Third came along, that he was transgressing

those loss. Not only was he

transgressing biblical laws, he was transgressing the British constitution

at that time. And the founding

fathers to saying, these are things

that have been in Great Britain

for 4500 years. They'd been worked

out, they'd been set down in law. Constitutions

work this way. Rights work this way. These are sovereign, inalienable rights

that God has given man and King George the Third,

you're violating that. You can't do this. So it's striking

that is you look at the first

reactions of the Americans against

the policies that King George the Third was imposing on America. You will find

that it takes a very strong biblical tone. Probably the first

person to write about these violation of rights was James Otis. And James Otis is really

that the man who, who mentored Samuel Adams, the father the

American Revolution, james Otis is the philosophical

underpinnings. And in a book that

he has right here, it's from 1766 is called the rots,

the colonist. And then this

came out because of the Stamp Act of 1765. Now the Stamp Act for

taxes, and of course, the Americans objected these taxes and the way

that they were being imposed on the

Americans and for the purpose that they

were being imposed. And the Americans

had no voice in determining their

own policies and, and so it was taxation without representation. But notice how

they go back to the Bible and I

say that king st, look, I'm the King,

I'm the authority. I am the top here. This is the

divine right of kings when I speak the same as if God

speaks to you. And James Otis

says, No, no, no. He says timeout,

let's back off here. And so in this running,

which is really the first objection raised in what became the

American Revolution. James Otis says this. He said the power of God, Almighty is the only

power that can properly and strictly be called

Supreme, an absolute. He said You're

not infallible. He said, only God is infallible and we don't obey you as if you're God, which is the same

thing that you'll find with the Apostles

and x4 and five, when the civil authorities

told them Don't do this and the

apostles said, No, wait a

minute, timeout. God, Jesus told

us to do this. Now do we obey God

or do we'll pay you? And of course,

the apostles chose to obey God and that put them in direct conflict with

civil authority. And this aspect of, if you will, civil

disobedience. If you even look through Hebrews 11 at

what we call the faith Hall of

Fame and look at all of those individuals

who are in there. It's striking how

many are there simply because of

civil disobedience? The Hebrew midwives. And why did they make

it into that chapter? Because they

disobey the order of Pharaoh to let them know when a

young child was born so that young

child could be killed. They protected Moses. Chad rack, may

shack and unbidden ago there are heroes, they're in that chapter. Why? Because they disobeyed a

civil authority. They would not bout a man. They were going to stand

firm, forgot Daniel. He works his way

into that chapter. Why? Because he said, I'm not going to obey

a civil law that causes me to

violate God's laws. Another person who

spoke out about this very strongly man

named John Dickinson. John Dickinson

was a sign or the constitution

after the revolution. And he declared a

similar sentiment. This is from his writings on the rocks,

the Americans, he says kings

or parliaments cannot give us the rights essential to happiness. He says, We

claim our rights from a higher source. We claim them from

the King of Kings, lord of all the earth. But at this point people say Now

wait a minute, this is called the

American Revolution. Romans 13 says Your to

submit to authority. How can you say

that God bless this nation if it was

birth in revolution, that is rebellion

against God. God can't blessed

nation that does that. Well, you have to

understand first off that the founding

fathers did not call it the American

Revolution. It was called that

in later years. At that point

in time it was called a civil war. And as they point out,

they didn't start it. Matter of fact, we

took great pride in the fact that we never

fired the first shot. We never sent troops to

attack Great Britain. The Americans, they

did not have an army. They did not have a navy, but they did have

the Biblical right to defend themselves. And that was one of the inalienable

rights by the way, that the founding

fathers put in the Second

Amendment the right to keep and bear arms. They pointed that in

the scriptures and you can see that

throughout Nehemiah. Nehemiah, what do

you do when he was rebuilding that the, the, the city of Jerusalem, he's Station them

with a sword in one hand and a

trail on the other. You have the right to defend yourself

if your attack. For 11 years, we've been negotiating over

these principles. And finally,

King George the Third says, I

don't negotiate. You are going to bow your knee and he

sent these troops. So it was not a

revolution in that sense. As a matter of fact, there's some great

statements here. Here's one by Sam Adams. Sam Adams wrote this to the British government,

and Sam Adams, signer of the Declaration, a member of

Congress, he wrote this to the

British officials. He said, you know, that the cause of

America is just, he said the blood of the innocent is upon

your hands. We again make our

solemn appeal to the God of heaven to decide between you and us. And we pray that in

the doubtful scale, a battle, we may be successful as we have

justice on our side. And that the

merciful savior of the world may forgive

our oppressors. And that's not an or heat, that's

not rebellion. I mean, they are sincerely submitting to

God and saying, we gotta stand

for what's right. And we ask God to

judge between us. Ethan Allen, his

Green Mountain Boys. He was approached

by citizens and the legislature

of Connecticut. Connecticut was

really scared. They said, man,

here we are between Virginia

and Massachusetts. British troops have gone into Williamsburg,

Virginia. British troops are

going through Lexington and Concord,

Charleston, boston, Bunker Hill, were

scared to death, are going to come

in to Connecticut next and we don't know

what we're gonna do. Ethan, would you take your Green Mountain Boys and go over here

to New York, way inland, go

to Ticonderoga and capture Fort

Ticonderoga. So Ethan took Green

Mountain Boys, they surrounded that

Ford in May of 1775. It was late at

night. Poor British didn't know anything

was coming. I mean, this is a long way from any scene of action. So they knocked

out the guards. There were two guards. They knocked them out,

they tied him up. They got the rest

of the barracks. This was late at night,

coming up toward midnight and they get the rest

of the barracks. And then Ethan Allen, after having secured

the whole four, it went and banged on the door of the

common dot. Captain de Laplace. And Captain de

Laplace be in the proper British

soldier that he was didn't like being awakened in the

middle of the night. So he came storm into

the door and he says, Who is this? What

do you to demand? And Ethan Allen says, I order you to

surrender your four. And Captain de Laplace became indignant,

and he says, by whose authority do you order me to

give up my forte? Ethan Allen in his

own autobiography, he took a step back. He raised his

sword in the air. Ethan Allen said,

in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental

Congress. And it was that

declaration, the great Jehovah in the

Continental Congress and got the attention of the British commander. He promptly gave him

the fort on the spot. Not a single

shot fired they captured for without

any loss of life. You see nobody hears that about Ethan Allen anymore, but that was the

declaration made then 776, one of the members of the Virginia

legislature. Now remember, Virginia

has been under attack. One of the members

of the Virginia legislature was

a minister. He was the Reverend John Peter Gabriel

and Mulan Berg. In January of that year, he had just heard

the report, a Patrick Henry and have

that he had to rally 5000 Virginia troops to push back the British. And, and so as pasture me Lundberg

heads home, he gets to this remote, secluded part of

the state where his churches are long

way across the state. And he preached

on January 21st, that Sunday, what became

his farewell sermon. And he stood there in his clerical robes

that morning and he preached out of

Ecclesiastes 3 verses 1 through rate, which is the

passage about, though there's a time

and a season purpose to everything tied to be

born, time to die. Well, they went

through all this and you get down to verse 8. And verse eight

says there's a time of peace and a time of war. Any

closest Bible. And he put his finger out and he said brethren, he said this is not

the time of peace. He said this is

the time of war. He stood right in front

of the congregation, started this roaming in front of the congregation. When he jerked off,

there's clerical robes. Underneath those

robes, he was wearing the full uniform of an officer and

the Continental Army sword and everything. He started marching down the out of that church. There was one aisle

down the middle the church, he

marched on an island. He preached as he went. He said brethren.

He said We came here to practice our religious and our

civil liberties. And if we don't

get involved, we're going to lose

those liberties. He said, Who's going with me to defend

those liberties? While 300 men got up and met him at the back

door, that church, those 300 man

became known as the eighth

Virginia Brigade. His brother was pasturing in, in New York City. And his brother wrote

him a scathing letter. And I mean, he just

absolutely chewed him up. And his brother was Frederick Augustus

Mulan Berg. And Frederick

tells his brother, he said you would have

asked for the best if you'd kept out of this business from

the beginning, he said, I now give you

my thoughts in brief. I think you're wrong. That's just about as

brief as I guess. He said, Brother, you shouldn't

have done this. You're supposed to

stay in the pulpit. You shouldn't be getting involved in this

kind of stuff. Well, brother Peter

wrote back a letter. He said, Wow, we

said that was a pretty scathing letter. You wrote pretty,

pretty serious stuff and he said

you've accused me of getting involved and that I shouldn't because

I'm a clergyman. This is what he said. He said, I am a clergyman. It is true, but

I'm a member of society as well as

the poorest layman. And my liberty, he says, Dear to means it

is to any man. He said Shall I had

been set still. He said, heaven forbid it. He said, I'm

convinced this my duty so to do and duty I owe to God

and my country. And then he

started metal and with his brother he

said, Oh, by the way, he said Frederick is, Do you realize you

couldn't stand here and pulpits and

do what you're doing. You couldn't

stand there and preach the gospel

if it wasn't for people like me going out to the finger, right. To preach the

gospel and Vertigo. Yeah, Yeah, right. Just kinda blew it off. While interesting thing

happened in 1777, the British invaded

New York City. They came into

New York City. They seized his

brother's church, they desecrated

his church, and they chased him

out of the pulpit. And suddenly this minister of the

gospel, Frederick, who said you shouldn't

be involved, has lost his church losses and ministry. It's

been taken over. He says, you

know, maybe how to get involved after all. So he does get involved. Do you know the

Frederick Augustus mean Lundberg is

Frederick Augustus. Real number was the

original speaker of the US House of

Representatives. A matter of fact, there's only

two signatures on the Bill of Rights. He, he and John Adams. So the only two to sign

the bill of rights. And this minister, the

gospel sign it not because it guaranteed separation church

and state. You say He got involved and make sure

that government couldn't come in and stop those public

religious activities like they had done

to his very Church. Not because a separation

of church and state. Move through

other instance in the revolution,

for example, if you go into 778,

you may recall that year because that's the famous Valley Forge year. You remember

Washington crossed the Delaware and after

crossing the Delaware, they went into the battles at Princeton and Trenton, and finally settled

down in Valley Forge, which was that

tough winter. And so every

day Washington would go out

and walk among the troops and try to

encourage them and keep their

confidence up and put a good face

on himself and, and try to look like

the good commander. But what he wrote

in his diary was a whole

different story. It just literally tore

his heart out to see what those soldiers

were going through. Every day. Between 12 and 20 soldiers fell over and died

in that camp. Every day at Valley Forge, died of malnutrition,

of sickness, of starvation

that they died of exposure not

having closed, being exposed to cold

weather washes that. I've never seen

sacrifice like that. I've never even

read of it, never heard of this. This is the

greatest degree of patriotism he

had ever seen. Well, it's

interesting that when the intelligence

came to him and may, the British are

breaking camp in Philadelphia, they are

about to march out. So that night he writes

at his final order, and he's the rats

out his final order, which was given

unmade the second 778 in Valley Forge. He said guys, he said, I've seen what

you've done. I've senior sacrifices. I can't tell

you how much I appreciate what

you've sacrificed. Words, can express it. And then he closed

with the statement, this is right out of

his orders, he says, but while we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers with all

the sacrifice. He says, We certainly

ought not to be inattentive to the higher

duties of religion. He said to the

distinguished character, a patriot, it should be our

highest glory to add the more distinguished

character of Christian as Washington

in the middle of Valley Forge from the most sacrificial times in

American history. St guys, I love

you patriotism. I just gotta remind

just more important to be a Christian than it

is to be a patriot. See it has the aspect to the American

Revolution. We don't hear

anymore and it's a strong spiritual aspect. While we finally

get into 780 one, which is the final battle of the American

Revolution, the Battle of Yorktown. And so at the

Battle of Yorktown, we are able to

convince Cornwallis to surrender and he does

military actions over. But it would be

two years before Great Britain

was willing to admit that it

had been beat. Finally, in 1783,

the peace treaty was negotiated and signed. What was the very first

line of this treaty? This political treaty

is said in the name of the Most Holy, an

undivided Trinity. Amen, as the opening line and the name

of the Father, Son, the Holy Ghost. Now, we've

acknowledged God. We said God at

the top. This. Now let's talk about the terms of

surrender here and who's gonna

get what and how are we going

to divide america? See, that was the

opening line, even the final

peace treaty. From start to finish. This was remarkable. Open declarations of God. Now when Washington

and finally got the word that

they've signed the treaty is now

officially over. He turned in his

resignation. And then he had

13 copies of that That made and sent

to the governor's. He he's told

the governor's. He says, I now make it my earnest prayer

that God would have you and the

state over which you preside in his

holy protection, that he would most

graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do

justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity,

humility, and peaceful

temper of mind, which were the

characteristics the divine author of

our blessed religion. And without a

humble imitation of his example and

these things, we can never hope to

be a happy nation. There's Washington,

yeah guys, we won. But remember if we

don't imitate Jesus, we're not going to

be happy nation. Now that's not

the economic view of the American

Revolution. We here today. And so here we are to celebrate

the Fourth of July. What's the best way to celebrate the

Fourth of July? Well, maybe the best

way to celebrate it is the way that John Adams said it should

be celebrated. And if you want

a good read, go to the public, elaborate, get

the letters of John Adams to his

wife Abigail. This is like a blow by blow account of

what was going on the American

Revolution. And this is what he

predicted to Abigail on that day over

200 years ago, he says, I believe

that this day will be the most

memorable epoch in the history of America. And then he wondered

whether we should really celebrate what

they had done that day. Is that something that

should be celebrated? And he finally

decided that it was, if we celebrated

throughout way, what's the right

way to celebrate? According to John Adams, he said This

day ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance

by solemn acts of devotion to God. All my, you see in

America for generations, the 4th of July

was a holiday. And so as you celebrate the Fourth of

July this year, enjoy the fireworks, enjoy the family picnics

and festivities. But don't forget to

make this a day, a commemoration By solemn absolute devotion

to God Almighty. The way that our

founding fathers intended it should be. What, an adventure. This has been our

guest historian. David Barton has

walked us through the American Revolution on this family talk with

Dr. James Dobson dead. What better way to enter into this fourth

of July weekend? Well, what David Barton had to say was

just marvelous. Ryan and I would

like to comment on his reference to

Hebrews Chapter 11, which theologians refer to as the heroes

of the faith. And that chapter recounts the stories of

patriarchs who made it clear that if they're

forced to choose between obeying God and obeying the king

or pharaoh, or in our day, Congress or the president. There's a contradiction between those two things. We will choose to obey the King of Kings

and Lord of Lords. And that simple

concept guided the founding fathers

in the writing of the Constitution and

the Federalist Papers, and the other materials that come down to

us from that day. Our ultimate

responsibility is to God Almighty. And he's the one who

gives us our freedoms. And if we forget that, we have nothing left. And doctor, if there's a mom or dad out there who need some help instructing

their children. In the next level,

we have all kinds of resources that my

family talk.com, I really would

encourage them to go there,

check those out. There's a lot of help

for parents who really want to pass this on as you've just described. And we'd love to hear how you celebrate

America's birthday. Let us know on

our Facebook page or email us at my family talk.com or even call us and

tell us about it. Our number is

877732682587773260825. Have a great weekend and make sure to be

with us Monday. When all here an

amazing story from a decorated war hero who fought to preserve

our freedoms. Don't miss it.

Listen( Transcript) : America's Enduring Legacy

Hi everyone, Ryan Dobson here today for

your course study, you'll be listening to

a patriotic edition of family talk with our

guest, Bill Bennett. Here now is Dr. James

Dobson, family talk. Welcome to this special

Memorial Day addition of family talk with Dr. James Thompson and I'm Luann and I'm Ryan Dobson. And we have a great

show planned for today, focusing on the

history of America. And it's very appropriate that we do that, Ryan, because we're

remembering today all those men and women

who've given their all to defend and

protect our nation. And, and all of

that stands for going back to the very

birth of this country. And we honor all of

them today by hearing stories about

our country's founding from my friend

Dr. Bill Bennett, who is a

distinguished scholar on American history. He's written a three volume series on the topic called America

last best hope. And this conversation

that we're about to hear focused

on volume one, going back to

the early days in America's

glorious history, Dad Doctor Bennett

has written 20 books with a number of them being

best sellers. And the three

volume series you mentioned has

actually been turned into a curriculum

for public schools. He has a law degree

from Harvard and hosts his own radio program called Morning in America, heard on the Salem

news talk network, which I tune into

every morning, Ryan, as I'm getting

ready for work. I appreciate Dr.

Bennett so much. This gentleman has had

an amazing career, which includes serving in cabinet level positions in both the Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr.

administrations. We're so pleased to once again feature

this discussion, which we'll pick

up with where Dr. Dobson asked him about

the title of his book, which again is America the last best

hope here now on this family top

broadcast is Dr. Thompson's conversation with Dr. Bill Bennett. I don't ever

remember starting an interview with an

author by saying, what's the significance

of that title. But in this case, I want you to express it. It's Lincoln's

words, of course. So many of our words

about our country, our Lincoln's or

Washington's. He said in a speech, a talk and a message.

He said to Congress. He said, we shall

nobly save or mainly lose this last best

hope of Earth. The words are beautiful as they often are

with Lincoln. What perhaps is more interesting is

when he said it, he said we were the

last best hope of earth after the

Battle of Antietam, sometimes called the

Battle of sharps berg. The bloodiest day in

American history, still 211000 casualties, 22000 casualties

at that battle. And Maryland, not far

from where I live, I drive out there

sometimes an early morning and look at

the battle scene. It was touch and go. It wasn't clear whether this nation would survive. It was unclear whether the Union would prevail. Lincoln was a sailed

on many, many sides. I've sent a number of messages to the

White House along with the book about reading about

Lincoln during his time. His cabinet was

not with them. The man who was running the war form

General McClellan, people thought

he might take, try to take control of the government

and military. In fact, give the North, had lost that battle, Lincoln would

have probably been thrown out of off he, they were very close to Washington and there

was that chance, there was the chance

at Gettysburg, you're exactly right. And I mean, it

was touch and go. It was not at all clear that we

would survive. But Lincoln said

at the time, we are the last

best hope of earth. And it struck me in writing this book

at this time, that it's right

to say it again. If you are sitting

in some God forsaken place

in the world, if you have hope. If there is a military coming over

the hill with a flag, what flagged you

want it to be. Despite what our

critics say, people all over the world want it to be the

United States, the flag of the

United States. I came to Washington's

deliverance. I came to Washington

to hear you speak when you were

Secretary of Education. And you used

the phrase then that you've referenced

in this book. Again, you call it

the gates gates test. Yeah. I remember that day. I don't smoke for us. Explain what the

gates tests. I refer to it in the book. You're absolutely right. I, when I was secretary

of education, I taught at a 120 schools

around the country. And a young woman in

San Diego said year, you obviously love

the countries that I'm not so

sure about it, but why do you think

it's such a great place? I said, Well, it would take I'll give you

a reading list, but I said I'll give

you a short answer. I said every country

has its gates. I said, and when a

country raises its gates, you want to find out

about the country. Look to see which

way people run. They run in or

do they run out? I said when we

raise our gates, people run in. When we don't raise our

gates, people run in, which is why we're talking about this

immigration issue. Other nations raise their gates and people run out. I said that's a

very good test of what a country has

end from the beginning. People have fled

to this country, have looked to

this country, has given that

historical fact and the way it is today. Isn't it amazing

that there's such a sizable number of people in the media and in the liberal

community that despise this country in

its freedoms are doing everything they can to undermine it. It's never been this bad in terms of the media. I wouldn't say that presidents haven't

had it this hard. They have.

Lincoln was one. But in terms of the media, it has never

been like this. David McCullough

says that, that if the Washington

or Lincoln had, had to face the press and the press reports

that you'd have now, these things wouldn't have been one if Washington and if the reports

of the battles, Washington lost

more battles than any general

in modern history, luckily won some big ones and he ate a pulsar. Very good

surprises of that. If had been reported, the discouragement would

have been so great. But what you, you've

made reference a minute ago to the fact that this great experiment

in liberty that Dell Lincoln spoke about is not a foregone

conclusion. Absolutely could

lose it can those and it's

probably in as much danger right now

as it has ever been, including the

revolutionary war. I think it's a

very serious time. And the question I have is whether we have

the cultural resolve, the

moral resolve. No doubt about

our soldiers, no doubt about

our military, their ability

to get the job done and the kind

of people we have. But whether we

have a culturally, whether we will call things by their

right name, whether we will endure. The founders. And I talk about this

in the book. Hoped that we

could survive for a 100150 years. That

was there. Oh, yes. Because places

of this size, democracies,

republics just don't have a history of

surviving very long. So we've, you know,

we've set a record. But the question is, Jim, as you say whether

whether we will endure, I do think I don't want to just hit the thing again, the cliche about those who don't study history are condemned to repeat it. But one of the

parts through, one of the parts

of the book that people have picked up on is our war with

the Barbary pirates in the 1800s. This is our Muslim, so it was our first

war with Muslim. You know what

they were doing? They were

kidnapping people, holding them for ransom. And at the time

this was going on, there were about

a million and a half Christians being held slaves by Muslims,

muslim warlords. And they were taking our ships and then

making us pay ransom. And Jefferson and I kinda ON and

OFF Jefferson. Yes, no, I gotta

tell you on this. When he said, we're not

going to take this, we're not going to let these people get

away with this. And John Adams, he said, I'm not sure you can

fight these people. Why? So I think if you

fight these people, you will be fighting

them forever. This is 8800. 8800. Well, 200 years later, the fights to the cause of the religious

fanaticism that values death. Yeah, Now, I'm

not implying that all Muslims

or violent, I'm sure of what I've been told that the

vast majority are peace loving people who would do us no harm. But a small percentage of a big number is still

a very big number. And there are, I'm told, 1.2 billion Muslims on

the face of the earth. And if 10 percent of them believe that

Quran instructs them to kill infidels, which would include us. That is a 120

million people who would give their

lives to destroy us. But let's assume that figure is

grossly overstated. If only 4% are fighting the jihad

or holy war, that still means 48 million people

want to kill us. That's at threat of

enormous proportions. When you start talking

about nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction,

you're exactly right. And that's 40 million. We saw at 19 could do. On 9, 11, Bernard Lewis, who was the great

scholar of Islam, retired professor

at Princeton. I was with him

not long ago. I asked him the

exact question. I said of the 1.2 billion, he said ten to 15%. It gets it up

to 200 million. I mean, it's a,

it's a whatever, whether it's 50 or 20. And that explains why you say our national life. That's right. And

then we stretch. And then we look at

the numbers out of Great Britain where

they did those polls after the July 7th

killings in, in London. And 13 percent of Muslims in London said they supported the

suicide bombers. 13 percent of 2.2 million and that's a significant

number of people. Now you know what IN planned for us to

talk about all this on this program

because your book is. Not just on the

threat to this. And they show it's

the great heritage of iterations

and the stories. We've got a whole lot more to talk about here. We're in the middle

of a fascinating conversation on

this family talk broadcast with our

guest Dr. Bill Bennett, talking about American

history appropriately. So here on this

memorial day, if you can't

be with us for the rest of our time

together, remember, you can catch us online at my family talk.com. We'll rejoin their

conversation now as Dr. James Dobson and Dr. Bill

Bennett tackle the dark parts of

America's past. Courseware imperfect. We have some very embarrassing components

to our history, slavery, and some of what we did to Native Americans

that was evil, that was wrong, right? But there's also an awful lot

that's good here. It's less than perfect. But find me a better one. That's right. And

the amazing thing about America is when

I tell the story, I mean I tell the

stories of the, of the, of the

wicked things, the atrocities and in

a non blinking way. But the amazing

thing about this country is

the capacity to recognize a problem

and to deal with it. Sometimes it takes

us to long as it did with slavery

and emancipation. But we get there.

But this capacity to set it right,

self-renewal. One of the figures

in the book, giant figure for

me from Frederick, Frederick

diagnose guy that I knew you're going to say that he just is just

larger than life. And I love this quote. He meets Lincoln

and someone says, You met the president

and you know, it's black man goes and

meets the president, says yes, he says, What did you think of

the president? He said, Well, he's intelligent but he's

got some growing to do. Yeah. I guess if

you are a slave and you gain your

freedom one day by, you know, when you're,

the man they had on the plantation there

in eastern Maryland, who was there as

the slave breaker. This is the guy who's to break the will of a slave, anybody who shows

any gamete. And when Douglas turns

on him and pins him, he realizes the help of a couple other

people too. He realizes than that

there's only one way you can go and that's

all out and strong. And so then he

goes, he goes to Boston, he goes north. But he remains a very strong supporter

of Lincoln, a very strong Republican. I'm just historical fact,

I'm not advocating, but it's not uploading now auditory

political editorial. And again, his, his way of presenting things and his impatience for justice and his talk with

a number of his, of his friends were very active to get the

vote for women. And he said

Fine, important, but us first, they're

not lynching you there. Lynching us where

first, your second. They wanted him to

put things on equal, putting me say one thing, that Constitution

had not one word in it that authorize slavery that had the

foundations width. And at that end it's

like exactly right. He said that and

in saying that he, he said something

which was then later picked up on by

Martin Luther King, who goes back as

Douglas did and as link to the

founding documents, to the Constitution. But even more. And

of course, you know, this is a big debate

among the scholars, which is the document, the constitution,

the declaration. I'm a declaration man. For a couple of reasons. We hold these truths to be self-evident

that all men are created equal

and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable

rights. And Douglass goes back and says that's the

foundation, the foundation

of our freedom. But he is a fabulous,

fabulous character. I do all these, all

these wonderful. We are jumping around

chronologically here at rebelled this

because that's the way that conversation

has unfolded. But you spent a lot of time talking about

George Washington, where he was not

just the father of our country and

the first president, but the character of that man comes

through, Yeah, explain why my

favorite story, it's a commonplace,

but I love the story. It's about character.

At the end of the war, a lot of the soldiers

wanted to march on Philadelphia to

get their money. And Washington was trying

to discourage them. Not a good way to

start government, which to hold the Congress

at bayonet point. I understand

the temptation. I've been there. That's not a good

idea. So he's trying to persuade

them to use. Another one of his things is he was not a great

public speaker, but he remembered

something that someone had given

him a slip of paper. So he pulled it out of one pocket to the

other pocket, he pulled his

glasses out and his men had never seen him with his spectacles. And he noticed

that he heard the crowd goes silent. And he said, I

see that you notice that I

wear glasses. He said, Well,

it is it was to be I have not only

grown old and gray, I've become almost blind in the service

of my country. That simple one rehearse spontaneous

statement and everyone

started to cry. They were reminded

of who this man was and what he had

done for the country. The respect for him, one of the ironies I talked about was so great. That several of

the founders pointed out that

we almost blew it. We almost went

back to monarchy because the regard

for him was so great. The first proposal for

his title, you know, they had and

we had renamed things we had to rename or Commander-in-Chief would

be the first title John Adams came up with. It was his

glorious highness, the President of the

United States and glorious protector of the liberties, of

our liberties. And William Macleay

from pennsylvania said, What's with atoms? Doesn't he understand what we fought this thing for? It's to get rid of

all that stuff. But yes, Such was

the regard for whatever reason that

I consider him to be such a hero is right

along this point that almost no one in human experience

gives up power. Thrillingly, That's right. It is intoxicating. And once you have it, you don't want

to let it go. And he could

have been king, but he served two

terms as president and would not accept

even a third term. And, and you talk about greatness that really

speaks to make, the world was watching. And George King,

George said, it was this moment whether he would give

up his power. Said, if he gives

up his power, as he said, he will he will be submitted

at the world. And he did, he say, he did it without a

moment's hesitation. Has another of your

heroes in this book? This is one story

right after that, give you a sense of

pride and dignity. Not arrogant pride, but thankfulness and

gratefulness for the leaders that, that the Lord gave us. And especially when

we consider what was going on in the rest of the world at that time. I mean, the

French Revolution resulted in all this, the killing in

the streets. And, and then of course, the British said had

their civil war. And here right in the

middle of that is this ultimate statement of a representative

form of government. A government

of the people, by the people, for the people that makes

me want to cheer. You, want to defend this country

and it makes me angry when I hear the media assaulting

what we have stood for. And I know well, let's press on that bill. Let's turn our

attention now to our 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt,

who really had just about everything going for him when

he was younger? Yes, had the had the silver spoon

had had all that Harvard but didn't let it hold them back. A guy just full of

energy and drive for, for his country,

full of patriotism. When he was pleased, Commissioner of New York, he walked to

beat at night. He walked into the

middle of the night to find out if everybody

was doing their job. He was an extraordinary

human being who had a deep end and just pervasive sense

of right and wrong. When he went west out into the Dakotas where he developed his great

love of America. He, these, these two guys had stolen

something from him. He went out, the

captured them, brought them back,

both of them back. They can speak softly

and carry a big stick. Show us that it's still kinda makes

sense that yes, we have an American

put a chorus who was kidnapped

by rests solely, who's this chieftain in? Barbri chieftain. And some question about whether as an American citizen, Roosevelt assumed he was

an American citizen. And this, this chieftain over

there in Morocco takes, kidnaps him and Roosevelt gets a wire back and he sends a wire back

immediately. Sit proto Keras

alive or dead. No, don't mess with

the American citizen. I want my citizen

back or you're dead. I will send the

US military with all its might. Come back to what

I was saying, how impressive

our entrance into Afghanistan was and the beginnings of

a rack and where American military power

is used when it's, when it's

presented, it needs to be unambiguously

powerful. It should not be sparing. It changes. You want

to go in there, get it over with

and get out. And I think our

willingness to exercise military power

in a way that is unambiguous is

in some ways a measure of our

internal confidence. Now, I'm sounding bloodthirsty

to the audience. I just want to

point out, remind people the last seven times that the United States military

has been deployed. It has been deployed

to save Muslims. To save Muslims, go

just go through it. Iraq, Kosovo, Kosovo, some Afghanistan, Somalia,

exactly right. I mean, just you

just keep going and we have done this and done it and have liberated in the last

seven deployments, 50 million or

more Muslims. I am proud of the

work that you've done with this bill. I do hope. That our listeners and especially their

older kids, will read this bot. It's not a heavy tome. I tried to. It's the

great story of America. I mean, in the

story is full of romance and drama, and comedy and humor and characters like you

wouldn't believe. This is a place not only where people have dreams, but the dreams

actually come true. They really do come true. You have called

it in fact, the second greatest

story ever tell. Absolutely. That's after the story

of Christ coming. That's curious is the greatest

political story. It is the greatest story and people come

here and hope. And in one of the reasons I wrote this

book was to correct the revisionist stuff I told you last

time I was here, there was a history book. They've now changed it that defined

the Puritans as people of the 17th century who took long trips. People from

England because they didn't want to get into the religion thing. Now, because that's not appropriate to talk

about in schools, don't you and yours alone. So I said Puritans are like Super Savers

or something. Nothing to do with faith. This country was

built on that. The title of the book

is America the last best hope volume one from the age of discovery

to a world at war by Dr. William

J. Bennett. I have the best

days gone forever. I don't think it's nice. I think her greatest

days are still atoms because the influence now on the world

that we've had. I mean, the founders

helped read last 150 years when we beat that

record by bunch. And now we move on. But this is the challenge. The challenge

that is before us is discretization. Such rich and informative conversation

we've heard today on this family talk

broadcast with special guest Dr.

Bill Bennett, Dr. Dobson, it occurs to me that this was simply the perfect

discussion for us to hear on Memorial Day. And Ryan as President Ronald Reagan once said, If we forget what we did, We won't know who we are. And it's fitting on a day in which we

recognize those who have fallen in the service

of their country that we remind ourselves of exactly what

they died for. As we've heard today, regardless of our

spots and blemishes, and America does

have plenty of them. We are still the greatest nation in the world. And I pray that our listeners will

reflect the day on how we can continue to be that shining

city on a hill. And do so in memory of those

who had fought and died over the centuries

on our behalf, dead, that is very,

very well said. And listeners should know that we can offer them all three volumes of

Dr. Bennett series, again titled America,

the last best hope, which has been made into

a school curriculum. And I think that would be especially perfect

for homeschooling families to get hold of. Laura and I will look

that in our future. Just look for

that at my family talk.com or you can ask about it when

you call us. Our number is

87773268 to five.

Module 1

Christian Theism in Human History: Must be at least 400 words (2) scholarly citation in APA format.

America’s legacy on freedom, justice, and religious liberties as an advocate and lobbyist for policies have created the reordering of a new society not established under one God, but under the perspective of the human being.  

1. How has “human” history changed since its creation, the image of God, scriptural recording of redemption and glorification? 

2. Do you agree on the perspective of Christian theism (theology) and its practice in understanding the history and nature of God? 

3. What is your perspective on the current climate of the world today and God’s active role in the world today? 

Your thread must reveal an in-depth exploration of the question in a comprehensive answer reflecting specific concepts and principles. Refer to the Discussion Thread Grading Rubric for grading details.