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3D Gospel: How Does it Line Up with the Three Major Worldviews?

Jayson Georges, in his book '3D Gospel' suggests there are three sets of dynamics in Scripture and also in worldviews that people use as a framework when interpreting Scripture, and especially when understanding the gospel:

  1. Innocence-guilt. This the one any Westerner will have grown up with. The big question is, 'How can sins be paid for?' I'll let John Piper explain the rest: What is the Gospel? 
  2. Honour-shame. This is much less individualistic than the one above. The big question is, 'How can honour in the family be restored?' The family, in terms of Scripture, is the descendants of Jacob, and, by extension, the whole of humanity. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3.23). Gentiles were excluded from the covenant (Eph 2) but have now been included. The barrier between Jew and Gentile has been broken down. We are fellow citizens, with them. Jesus, as our older brother, has regained the honour he always deserved, and shares it with us, his family.
  3. Power-fear. There are forces of evil at work in the world, that need warding off, or better still, defeating. The big question is, 'How can evil be defeated?' The power-fear gospel describes how victory was won, and Satan defeated. We are now seated in Christ in the heavenly realms (Eph 1). There are still ongoing battles but the ultimate victory is assured. Sometimes evil becomes almost tangible e.g. Elijah and the prophets of Baal (1Kings 18), or Jesus casting out the demons into the pigs (Mat 8). There is a spiritual battle going on, but we are fighting on the winning side.
Barbara Fisher has a look at a worldviews in her study here. From a religious perspective, she isolates three major worldviews in the world:
  1. Naturalism—with its ‘loose’ sub-groups of agnosticism, atheism, existentialism, Marxism, materialism and secular humanism. 
  2. Theism—which may be divided into Christianity, Islam and Judaism; all of which are monotheistic. 
  3. Pantheism—which includes Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and New Age.
How do these line up with the 3D Gospel paradigms above? I would like to suggest that the Enlightenment has so affected Western worldview that it has invaded the Western church too, and therefore 1. Naturalism is found in parts of the world where Innocence-guilt dynamics are predominant. Number 3 Pantheism lines up nicely with Power-fear. This leaves 2. Theism to line up with Honour-Shame. We end up with this table:

Naturalism:    Innocence-Guilt
Theism:          Honour-Shame
Pantheism:     Power-fear

This is, of course, a huge over-simplification of the case. Where folk religions are involved no. 3 Power-fear/Pantheism is bound to be hugely influential. As I wrote earlier, the West is a heady concoction of at least two of these: naturalism (innocence-guilt) and theism (honour-shame). It also has many elements of 3. pantheism (power-fear), especially in parts of society affected by the new age movement.

So, what I'm suggesting is that the honour-shame dynamics found in the Bible are key. They are more important than the innocence-guilt dynamics that come, not so much from the Bible (though it is there too) but from the Enlightenment, influenced as it was by Greek philosophy (which is also there in some parts of the Bible). After all logic, rules, and the law court all stem from the Greek system. Many systematic theologies developed in Europe in the 16th-18th centuries began with a Greek philosophical grid. They asked Greek questions of the Scriptures. The understood terms like 'the law' in a particular way. Human reasoning was applied, as best as they were able, to the Bible, in order to find out answers to very innocence-guilt kinds of questions. It is no surprise that they missed some of the honour-shame and power-fear dynamics found in the Bible. It is good that as we have come to understand other cultures round the world, it has alerted us to this lack, and we are able to see more clearly, though still 'through a glass, darkened' (1Corinthians 13).



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