Biblical Critical Theory

The paradox of multi-lens humanity is reflected in work, in desire, in relationships, in fulfilment and frustration, and in every human pursuit and every human experience "under the sun."

A multi-lens biblical approach, by contrast, sees reality through three lenses: how things are now, how God first created them to be, and how they will be once redeemed. It insists that human existence today, after Genesis 3, is neither original nor the standard for how things should be, and that we were created for a life better than the one we no

The physicalist challenge to belief in the soul also challenges the widespread belief that human beings are causal exceptions to nature, that we have a contracausal free will (or libertarian free will) that transcends natural laws.

Richard Pratt explains the relation between divine sovereignty and human responsibility:

God's control of things is not contrary to the responsibility of man. It is the very foundation of it. If God were not in control He could not hold man responsible. Man is accountable to God because God is sovereign; he should obey God because God is in control

Creation-as-gift also tells us something about this universe in which we live precisely because it is needless; it puts us in a reality that is "an expression of a love always directed toward anothas well as an expression of God's delight in difference and proliferation. In short, the universe as such, in the mere fact of its existence, speaks

The self-justifying myth of the ideology of autonomy is that the only alternative to autonomous self-sufficiency is a groveling and passive heteronomous fatalism: define your own reality, or be walked all over by others who define you into theirs. But it is these two complicit and mutually dependent options of assertion and passivity, autonomy and

"The idea of the Fall is at bottom a proud idea, and through it man escapes from the sense of humiliation. If man fell away from God he must have been an exalted creature, endowed with great freedom and power." Only the exalted can be wretched; only the lofty can fall.

"When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it" (Gen 3:6). There are two echoes in these verses. The first is an echo of Genesis 1. Eve "saw" that the tree

This revolution is required in order to get from the unstated and almost always uncontested assumption of our contemporary society that autonomy and choice are necessarily and of themselves both possible and ultimately good to the biblical view that autonomy (understood in the sense of being independent from God in our judgements and evaluations) i