The Cosmology ‘Bomb’ has to hit
By Jay Wegter
A great problem in the church today is that millennials have been blind-sided by a pagan worldview that is so heavily politicized our young people are unable to discern its heretical nature. As a consequence our own culture has become a new kind of mission field. America used to be a powerhouse of mission-sending to the four corners of the world. But, now our nation is incubating the worst kind of heresy, for the West has decided that there is no such thing as divine law. The present rising generation is the first one in western history to be presented with a comprehensive pagan worldview.ⁱ
This pagan cosmology is a reconfiguration of the way we think, especially about our sexuality. People are imagining that they can create their own reality, as if law emanates from them. This pagan ideology is an all-inclusive, self-justifying cosmology. When the New Age movement first offered itself in America, this ‘way out’ way of thinking was an invitation for some to ‘drop out’ of the accepted flow of society in order to seek individual enlightenment. But, now the New Age has gone mainstream and the evidence its pagan cosmology is here is that this monist worldview is now being applied to everything in our culture. This is evidenced by the fact that the deconstruction of gender and sexuality is welcomed as the pure expression of self—without restraint upon self-expression.ⁱⁱ
The radical nature of this moral revolution would not have found traction 30 years ago, for the fumes of Christian worldview still held that heterosexual marriage constituted the building blocks of a civilized society. But, now erasing every God-ordained distinction is considered the foundation of freedom. Christians who are millennials are far too easily silenced by the arguments from the left. It is this author’s contention that the reason our young people are mute in the face of progressivism’s assault is that they have never been taught biblical cosmology. Central to biblical cosmology is that God creates by separating things: light from darkness, land from sea, woman from man. Then He sanctifies, or hallows these distinctions and pronounces them both good, perfect, and holy.
The primary distinction undergirding the distinctions God has placed in creation is the distinction between Creator and creature. As sovereign Creator, God is the distinction-maker, we honor Him by honoring the distinctions He has formed. But, the opposite is sobering: Satan gains followers with people reject the distinctions God has made (Peter Jones). Exalting God’s transcendence and omnipotence is the starting point in biblical cosmology. For the creation is utterly dependent upon God, therefore the creation gives praise, it does not receive praise. Pagan cosmology immediately departs from biblical theism at this foundational juncture. For pagan cosmology places everything in the circle of a self-existent creation including the divine. Thus, pagan cosmology is pantheistic because it affirms that everything is infused with the divine. We need to be able to explain to our young adults that it is the height of arrogance to suggest that a human shares the same essence as God, and is therefore divine. In biblical cosmology we define that creation as God does. Just as in Acts 17 in Paul’s sermon to the Athenian philosophers, we cannot know the creation as it truly is and we cannot know our place in the creation apart from knowing God’s relation to the creation. For, the entire cosmos is a kind of theater of God’s glory, for according to Romans one, the creation is a sacred teaching device which infallibly reveals God’s divine nature and attributes.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse (Rom 1:18-20).
But, pagan cosmology desacralizes or profanes the creation by suggesting that the cosmos is self-originating, self-sustaining, and self-defining. By contrast, the truthfulness of biblical cosmology asserts that our Creator has an absolute claim upon us, His creatures. And, central to His claim upon us is that God requires holiness from His creatures and that holiness means honoring the creation structures and distinctions which He Himself has formed and hallowed. This absolute claim is inseparable from the fact that among the innumerable orders of creatures which God has formed, there is but one order of creatures that exists to bear the image of God.
Our image-bearing according to Genesis, immediately describes male and female. “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen 1:27). As man and woman, we reflect God as distinct from one another in our sexuality. We carry this holy image and are answerable to God for how we reflect His character and distinctions. The Lord has told us: “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but ᵃlike the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’ ” (1 Pet 1:14-16).
According to 2 Corinthians 7:1, we are to bring holiness to completion as the people of God: “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” This is not a theory. It is a way of living, it is what it means to live a life unto God. In the New Testament the word submission is used 76 times. Because we have been conditioned by feminism and individualism to be suspicious of that word, we do not see its value in connection with the dominion mandate (our subduing of the earth as His viceregents unto the His glory). Therefore, we tend not to see the word submission as taking hold of the world God has made, and then living out that holy place that God has made for us. This is where we have a profound opportunity to teach millennials (and all genuine believers) the ABC’s of biblical cosmology. For submission to the creation structures that God has ordained (marriage, family, gender, sexuality, law, government, gainful employment, revealed truth, His definition of beauty, etc.) does not mean we are being forced into a role we do not want. What is actually intended is that we respond with a joyful recognition of the nature of God’s creation and then find our place in it, living out our calling unto His glory.ⁱⁱⁱ
Thus, submission is an exhortation to take control of the place where God has put you. Submission is everyone’s calling. Jesus was called to submission, and according to 1 Corinthians 15:28, He will continue to be in submission to the Father throughout eternity. Children submit to their parents within the family structure, the wife to the husband. A Christian wife gladly sees the distinction of the roles as a holy thing, and finds her place in a God-ordained structure to live out the full significance of who she is. This is very much tied to the meaning of holy matrimony; its holiness involves the celebration of the distinctions God has created. In our culture of ruthless, self-willed individualism, we don’t tend to view the individual as finding his or her fulfillment in the alignment of one’s life in joyful faith before God to the cosmic structures which He has created and in which we find our rightful place.ⁱᵛ And, as Al Mohler recently commented, “The political left measures everything by choice, but in order to think that way, biblical cosmology must be completely abandoned.”ᵛ
In the cosmology of the Bible, our calling in God’s cosmic structure is a place for us to be faithful. Our work in our area of calling or place in the world is how we bring a holy offering to God. The place in which we are deployed is that of a kind of stake holder in God’s holy cosmos. It’s a place where through our faithfulness we are stewards of God’s glory. But, consider how far the West has moved into paganism. For, today our culture denies that God has structured our cosmos and our sexuality.ᵛⁱ
If our young people are to come to an understanding of biblical cosmology, then they must become aware of this concept of stake holder in God’s ordered cosmos, for we do not structure reality, God does. Therefore, pagan cosmology’s soul-destroying lie that the creation is but an illusion, or simply raw material from which one may construct the self is but a repetition of the ancient lie that you shall be as God. The pride of man is based upon ignorance —the greater the pride, the greater the ignorance. But this arrogance is a very temporary thing, for God’s Kingdom is coming. It will fill the earth and the cosmos. He will vindicate His holiness in time-space history at the Day of the Lord. The day is coming soon in which He will make His glorious presence known in the New Jerusalem, the holy city in Zion. In His coming Kingdom, God has glorious assignments for His elect. But, these rewards are clearly based upon faithfulness as a stake holder now. For our present challenge to live holy lives by honoring the distinctions He has made and fulfilling our part in the place in which He has situated us. This role as a faithful stake holder is very much tied to our assignment in the coming Kingdom. Thus, this truth of stewarding our calling unto the glory of God brings cosmology down to a very personal level. Our young people will experience a kind of paradigm shift when they begin to understand that their present faithfulness and holiness in honoring God’s distinctions is very much tied to how they are being prepared for their role in the coming Kingdom.
How little we think of a day in which cosmic holiness will fill the universe. In the new heavens and the new earth (2 Pet 3:11-13), every single thing will be in its proper place. Every created thing will fulfill the purpose for which it is made and therefore honor and glorify God. Every vestige of corruption, decay, and perversion will be gone. The glory of God will cover the earth as the ocean covers the sea floor (Hab 2:14; Is 11:9). This cosmic holiness will be absolutely stunning and beautiful. The true child of God must be controlled and animated by this hope of glory.
All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them (Heb 11:13-16).
We are aliens and strangers in an enemy occupied world—our true citizenship is in the coming Kingdom of God (1 Pet 1:1; Phil 3:20-21).
Our universities are teaching our youth that the essentials of human flourishing are grounded in pagan cosmology. Our public universities are determined to separate Christian students from their biblical worldview and replace it with a pagan one. It is no accident that paganism is violently opposed to patriarchy. For, from the fatherhood of God issues His moral government and from the fatherhood of God the Son of God is sent to be the heart of the good news of the gospel. But, in the fall in Eden, human and angelic sin turned our world upside down. God’s chain of order and honor was flipped upside down in the rebellion. For, prior to apostasy, in the unfallen creation, the animals were subject to the man and woman. The woman was subject to the man, and the man was subject to God. But, in the temptation and the fall, a creature (the serpent) deceives the woman who then leads her husband into sin, and then he abandons God.
Thus, we now have an upside down world in which unregenerate humans are subject to the creation and the devil (Eph 2:1-2). And, in which the glory of God has been exchanged for that of an ox and creeping things (Rom 1:22-23). Therefore, it should not surprise us that paganism is bitterly opposed to the patriarchy and has a strong affinity for the divine mother. Destroy the patriarchy and you lose the gospel and you lose the economy of grace and you lose the moral government of God. Consider the size of the challenge we face. Our youth are victims of LGBTQ propaganda. They should be witnesses for the gospel and they ought to be bold worldview-changers, but, instead they are mute. Christian millennials feel utterly stranded between two worldviews. And because they have not been trained in biblical cosmology to exercise discernment, they feel helpless when the political left defines the two antithetical choices as either heartless Bible dogma versus loving social justice.
The words love and hate now have new definitions, but what millennials do not see is that the new definitions been cast and framed within the worldview of pagan cosmology. So, when our Christian young people face the choice of speaking a word for Christ or being silent, they find the choice immensely easy—they choose silence. In part, this is because of their blindness to the nature and consequences of pagan cosmology. What the rising generation of millennials does not see, is that the vast majority of inner workings of pagan cosmology is concealed from sight. This is much like the iceberg analogy in which 90% of the iceberg is out of sight, below the waterline. Our young people only see the behavior and the moral messaging which is the 10% which is above the waterline. In other words, they know all too well the content of the reigning, shrill narrative of the LBGTQ agenda, but, what they do not see the 90% beneath the waterline. What they don’t see is that America has changed religions. The OT prophet Jeremiah rebukes the inhabitants of Judah in Jeremiah when he thunders, “Has a nation changed gods when they were not gods? But My people have changed their glory for that which does not profit” (Jer 2:11).
The truth that mankind is created in the image and likeness of God functions philosophically as a divinely ordained ‘vantage point’ from which all other truth claims concerning worldview may be evaluated. When human sexuality is viewed from this divine view point, we see an immense watershed, or continental divide. Like a mountaintop rising to a sharp peak, human sexuality serves as a ‘fulcrum’ which forces one to declare his or her worldview. In other words, your spirituality defines (reveals, or is manifested in) in your view of sexuality. State Peter Jones, “The two views of sexuality in our world emerge from two timeless religious options (which are tied to two fundamental worldviews). How we order our sexuality is one of the most telling/revealing indices of a civilization. Actually, how we do order our sexuality will determine whether our civilization will survive.”ᵛⁱⁱ Thus, at the heart of worldview is how the sexual body is to be used. Therefore, sexuality is the inescapable divider—one cannot balance on the needle-sharp tip of the mountain peak, one will either come down one side of the mountain or the other—either on the biblical cosmology side of the mountain, or the pagan cosmology side.
These two mutually exclusive worldviews (biblical cosmology and pagan cosmology) are driving the culture war (which conceals a spiritual war). For, consider that the two moral/social issues that will be vigorously debated in the upcoming 2020 presidential election will be: 1) abortion on demand, and 2) LGBTQ ‘rights’.ᵛⁱⁱⁱ By enshrining choice (for both abortion, and erotic ‘freedom’), it is clear that the political left is now advocating a pagan worldview in which man is not the image of God. By exalting choice as the liberation of self, of self-expression and self-identification, it is clear that just beneath this idolatrous autonomy is a pagan cosmology which gives tacit permission to worship the self. To rail against the distinctions which God has established is to oppose the God who formed them for His glory.
Thus, as Christian worldview recedes in the West, the culture of death (abortion, euthanasia, etc.) will enthusiastically claim every square foot of territory that has been abandoned by biblical theism. And, with this eagerness to ‘liberate’ our culture from the remnants of its ‘Christian harness’ comes the wholehearted rejection that our human identity and dignity rest upon the fact we are image-bearers of our Creator. The progressive left’s pagan cosmology constantly telegraphs that the priority of choice overshadows any assertion that the dignity and sanctity of life are at stake in these matters. Nevertheless, the rejection of our creational identity as the image of God is primary in the ploy to justify the moral revolution. Bearing the image of our Maker comes with massive and profound consequences. History reveals a record of spiritual and physical carnage whenever a culture has denied mankind’s creational identity as the image of God.
We cannot afford to hide our heads in the sand by relegating this replacement of cosmologies (biblical replaced by pagan) to nothing more than political differences. For, biblical cosmology is the indispensable foundation of the gospel. Paul’s address on Mars Hill to the Athenians is proof that the gospel only makes sense in a world in which God is Creator, Sustainer, Law-giver, and Moral Judge. Otherwise, the gospel is remotely removed from reality, and may be consigned to one of many subjective religious myths and traditions (which it has been in every educational-political center in the Western world!).
Pagan cosmology is no longer waiting patiently on the sidelines for a few seekers to become adherents. The assumptions and ramifications of this lying cosmology are rapidly being legislated as public policy in our own government. The ‘one-ism’ of pagan cosmology is being marketed through a clever strategy of redefinition. And as Isaiah warned 2700 years ago: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight!” (Is 5:20-21). The Christian West is rapidly becoming the pagan West. Therefore, there is great urgency to warn and train our youth as to what is taking place. For, the vast majority of young Christian adults are completely unable to provide a biblical apologetic in the face of progressive left’s branding of their worldview. Consider how the following terms are utilized in a frontal attack on religious freedom while defending erotic freedom. Here are some of the most common modifiers and nouns that are incorporated in the narrative of the progressive left: diversity, peace, tolerance, inclusion, justice, equality, self-affirmation, civil rights, equal protection, non-discrimination, personal empowerment, and human flourishing.ⁱˣ The majority of these terms, in their original meaning are derived from Christian values. They cannot be traced to Darwinian, secular, humanistic, or pagan sources. Yet, the left has no compunction of conscience for its ‘theft’ of Christian values—which they then label as values inherent in erotic freedom! Millennials need to be able to see through this ruse. For, the self-justifying, all-inclusive cosmology of paganism is parading these pseudo-values as the very core of human flourishing.ˣ In advertising, the field in which I used to work, we called this kind of promotion, ‘borrowed interest’. In other words, the ad pictured an object commonly held in admiration, and then when interest garnered in that object, it is then associated with the product, as if the product possessed the same attributes! Yes, we Christians are all for human flourishing, for human flourishing is connected to the original command to be fruitful and fill earth. “God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen 1:28). But, God has made us ‘bounded creatures’ meaning that our origin and existence comes with clear moral boundaries that are crucial to our wisdom, thriving, and survival.
But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You will not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days . . . (Deut 30:18-20a).
The strident narrative of erotic freedom of the progressive left continues to cast aspersion upon proponents of Biblical worldview as being guilty of homo-phobia, trans-phobia, etc. But, there is an underlying cruel agenda beneath the surface when these insults are flying about (classist, racist, xenophobic, sexist, hetero-sexist, etc.). The goal of pagan cosmology is the ushering in of a massive worldview of egalitarianism. This is an all-embracing cosmology of homo-cosmological sameness. Everything must be deconstructed; any notion of sexual morality must go. All sex is good or permissible. This comprehensive ‘leveling’ is all done in the name of equality so that the culture is fully ‘rinsed’ of all of the distinctions that God has made. Our Christian young people need to hear that it is impossible to buy into this omni-gendered, pansexual view of the world apart from a deeply pagan notion of human existence.ˣⁱ
Vishal Mangalwadi warns that when the soul of man is ‘amputated’ (through denial of the image of God) nihilism is the result (the absence of human worth, meaning and dignity). “Mankind falls headlong into a black cesspool of razor wire.” Mangalwadi’s word picture is arresting indeed, reminiscent of C. S. Lewis’s prophetic message of danger in his book, The Abolition of Man. A nation’s cosmology is the very fabric or soul of its culture. And, the seriousness of what is at stake in rejecting biblical cosmology is almost beyond our comprehension. For, Romans chapter one issues the strongest possible warning to any culture which tells us that it is noble to go against nature (Rom 1:26-28). It is unfathomable to ponder the severity of the judgment involved in the loss of the knowledge of God while being given over to a reprobate mind. Our believing millennials need to hear why normalizing the unnatural (LGBTQ) brings about this present revelation of divine wrath.
What the progressive left demands, erotic freedom by means of an underlying worldview of pagan cosmology, is tantamount to open war on the knowledge of God. For, when the ordained boundaries , creation structures, and distinctions which God has formed are regarded as obstacles to ‘freedom’—it is obvious to true believers that this entails a declaration of war on the knowledge of God.
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete (2 Cor 10:3-5).
The proponents of erotic freedom would have us believe that we in the West are ever gaining new freedoms as time passes. This is the myth of endless democratization—as if someday we will arrive at ultimate freedom in which there will be absolutely unhindered self-expression. This myth underlies the lie that is fed to parents: your little boys may become girls, and your little girls may become boys. Author, Nancy Pearcey reminds us in her book, Love thy Body that secular morality blows apart the connection between scientific and moral knowledge.ˣⁱⁱ Such is the fragmenting dualism of today which is at the heart of sexual and gender anarchy as well as abortion.ˣⁱⁱⁱ Secular university students are taught that the Christian perspective in the public arena violates the idea of neutrality and objectivity. But, the secular position is not neutral, it rests upon a two-level view of human nature that is crassly utilitarian in its view of the body. Put your nihilistic worldview cards on the table! The secular worldview functions as a state sponsored religion. This fragmented view of the body treats the body as extrinsic to the person. That is the opposite of a holistic view in which the body has intrinsic value and worth.ˣⁱᵛ
Democracy (democratization) without biblical cosmology taught alongside leaves people blind to the reality that divine order, structure, purpose, and uniformity have as their goal God’s glory and our good operating together. But, when biblical cosmology is faithfully taught, it dovetails into the goodness, wisdom, and beauty of God’s moral government. And this truth, by means of the gospel is designed to bring the creature to bow before his Maker. This response, granted by sovereign grace, shows the love of the knowledge and infinite worth of God. When the church occupies its calling as the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim 3:15), she will include in her teaching the creation structures which comprise biblical cosmology.
Now corporations having taken up the mantle and are using their media visibility to participate in the moral signaling embraced by the left. Their hope is that by showing that they are full participants in the moral revolution (having bought into the mainstream of pagan cosmology), the buying habits of the populace will be sure to follow. Our young adults are being torn in two: either they go with the flow of popular culture, or face the consequences of being ostracized. Their most common choice they make is to keep their Christianity ‘under the radar’ (covert). But, the semblance of neutrality can only be maintained for a limited period of time. For consider what is lost in terms of the knowledge of God when the LGBTQ agenda is unopposed and unexposed. There is the loss of: the hatred of sin, the fear of God, the fight for purity and virtue, the education of the conscience by God’s commandments, the purpose of the cross of Christ, the exaltation of God’s moral government, and the ability to train up the rising generation. These are but a few transforming truths that disappear into the background when sin is normalized by a culture.
When a culture that once had the knowledge of God drifts into full-blown paganism, one of the judgments God sends is a ‘spirit of distortion’. In other words, the social order which finds its source in divinely ordained distinction begins to degrade. For, when God is no longer at the top, society will not be ordered under Him as it should be. The culture begins to implode when the appointed roles of individuals in a society no longer take their instruction from God. Consider the following texts:
And I will make mere lads their princes, and capricious children will rule over them, and the people will be oppressed, each one by another, and each one by his neighbor; the youth will storm against the elder and the inferior against the honorable. For Jerusalem has stumbled and Judah has fallen, because their speech and their actions are against the LORD, to rebel against His glorious presence. The expression of their faces bears witness against them, and they display their sin like Sodom; they do not even conceal it. Woe to them! For they have brought evil on themselves. Say to the righteous that it will go well with them, for they will eat the fruit of their actions. Woe to the wicked! It will go badly with him, for what he deserves will be done to him. O My people! Their oppressors are children, and women rule over them (Is 3:4-6, 8-12).
The pagan cosmology of the progressive left is an illusory worldview; it is an escape from reality. And it is a blatant participation in the Lie of Eden, for the serpent’s murdering false promise was that rebellion against God would create a new reality. Eating the forbidden fruit (infers the devil) would allow our first parents to transcend the boundaries and limitations inherent in their creaturehood. At the core of Satan’s lie is the soul-damning notion that sin creates a new reality—a reality in which one may operate as a being autonomous from God. How horrifying that countless westerners are fully immersed and invested in this lie. The evil one’s deception has not changed much, it has always been: ‘you can win your freedom from God by rebelling against Him’.
Closely bound up in this lie is the absence of the fear of God. But Scripture demonstrates that there is no greater folly than refusing to fear God. For, God is an avenging God, He will clear His holy Name of all of the profanations He has experienced by sending reprobates to the lake of fire (Nah 1:1-8). God as distinction-maker will make the ultimate distinction when He separates the His sheep from the goats. For, the consummation of history at the Day of the Lord will be the flawless, comprehensive record of the honoring and the dishonoring of God—and the public revelation of the destiny of each person.
Therefore, to boldly speak biblical cosmology into our increasingly pagan world is the most caring and merciful thing we can do. Theocentric Bible doctrine, ‘big picture theology’ has the power, by the Spirit of God, to rectify, calibrate, and unify what is frequently fragmented into incomplete thoughts in our understanding. History is His Story. God is conducting a ‘grand demonstration’ in which He will demonstrate both His mercy and His wrath. And through the mechanism of redemptive history, God is placing His perfections on display—and doing so through His works of redemption, providence, and judgment. As trophies of His matchless grace, God elicits from believers faith, obedience, love, honor, and awe. There is no undisputed middle ground in the cause of God and the destiny of souls. For every individual, it will either be wrath outpoured or refuge in Christ.
What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles (Rom 9:22-24).
The rising generation, sometimes referred to as the ‘millennial generation’ is facing the most dangerous time to live spiritually in the history of the planet. For, never in the history of the world has a nation faced our current philosophical climate: having been inoculated with Christianity, our culture now regards biblical Christianity as a regressive thing of the past, a layover from a former age of oppression. Our public universities are diligently teaching their students that this view of Christianity is accurate. How can the rising generation resist the ploy foisted upon them by the progressive left, namely that the social values they enshrine and hold dear (that were actually birthed by Christianity), must be protected from Christianity. Think of it! Students are being told in order to protect social values, they must reject Christianity in order to safeguard and champion those ideals.
Christian leaders need to learn how to expose the ‘lab coat’ disguise of pseudo-science and ‘humanitarian’ disguise of the libertine. In order for young adult believers to be able to boldly proclaim the gospel to this generation, they will need to be taught to see through these two disguises of the progressive left. Today’s moral revolution is a marked symptom of the West changing of religions. Pagan cosmology wears a convincing disguise, posturing as ‘science’, when actually it is philosophic naturalism. The pagan idea that a divine cosmos ‘made itself’ fits nicely with the premise of pseudo-science that everything came from nothing. The second disguise (which fools the rising generation even more than pseudo-science) touches the social dimension. That disguise poses as a selfless humanitarian who defends human rights and love. But, again this is a ruse to promulgate erotic freedom at the expense of religious freedom. Disguised as a defender of the rights and freedoms that bolster human flourishing, the humanitarian disguise is the more subtle of the two. And, of course what this disguise is concealing is the godless philosophy of pagan cosmology.
72 years ago (1948) conservative thinker Richard Weaver wrote the book, Ideas have Consequences. This brilliant author applied the principles of biblical theism to negative trends he observed in Western culture. And, perhaps without intending to do so, his book became an uncanny ‘prognostication’ of our nation’s current moral and political climate. In these final paragraphs of our present article on cosmology are portions selected from Weaver’s book which accurately predicted our current state or affairs.
States Weaver, the denial of universals carries with it the denial of everything transcending experience. When one denies objective truth, it means you can’t escape the relativism that man is the measure of all things. This sets us up for the Abomination of Desolation. For, there is a feeling today of alienation from all fixed truth. Formerly nature was regarded as imitating a transcendent model, but now nature is viewed as containing principles of its own constitution and behavior (note the popular materialistic concept of a closed, self-originating universe).ˣᵛ
Today there is a desire for immediacy (gratification through the senses)—a dissolving of the aspects of form (by ‘form’ Weaver means transcendentals such truth, beauty, virtue, God’s existence, love, moral absolutes). People are controlled by desire alone which produces a person who has nothing in self by which to spiritualize (by ‘spiritualize’ Weaver means a life regarded as accountable to a holy Creator). Today man mistakenly associates all sorts of forms (transcendent truths) with the machinery of oppression which he has fled and proposed to oppose politically (note: postmodernism regards the absolute truths of God’s self-revelation to be an oppressive power play). We are seeing an effort at the emancipation from symbolism (as if the material world is all there is)—a ‘freedom’ from indirect methods. (Note how today this dismissal of transcendentals is framed as objectivity in the academy.)ˣᵛⁱ
In a decaying culture—‘redemption’ suggests that freedom is achieved by deliverance from restraint imposed by idea (note that ‘redemption now’ is a utopian delusion inherent in Marxism that society’s ‘redemption from oppression’ must be brought about by any means including revolution). (Also note Thomas Sowell’s summary of the culture war as two contrasting visions of freedom: a restrained and unrestrained vision of freedom. Biblically we see a freedom based on teleology—God’s design; while the pagan/secular worldview wants a freedom from teleology/design). Ideas are harmonized by some vision; without vision the people perish. Our task is to redefine the relationship between faith and reason in an age that does not know the meaning of faith.ˣᵛⁱⁱ
It is generally assumed that erasing all distinctions will usher in pure democracy (and its reign). But this is not so. All teleology rejects ‘freedom from’ (design) in favor of freedom to (design)—what dominates today is the romantic fallacy of freedom from (design).ˣᵛⁱⁱⁱ Weaver’s stunning observation has now, 70 years later, come to full flower—for the average university student today regards his personal liberty to rest on the idea that nothing outside of himself defines him. Therefore, there is no obligation to adhere to God’s design.)
In the loss of cosmology, religion is completely severed from education—and [as the new, materialistic atheism goes mainstream, it] is viewed as a proud achievement of modernism. Knowledge (the philosophy of it) is separated from metaphysics—and this is taught by steady indoctrination. Modern man no longer looks above his head to see the canopy of stars (the message of the sacred canopy: love, truth, beauty, order, justice, good and evil, moral law are transcendentals which are universally discernable). Modern man’s cosmology is a material conception of the world. The media today so colors our thinking (as much as medieval cosmology did 700 years ago). The newspaper is a man-made cosmos of world events in our time (Weaver said this 72 years ago!).ˣⁱˣ
In pretending to operate in a philosophy-free zone, the majority of today’s scientists do not own, or admit the truth that facts cannot be gathered, correlated, and interpreted without an organizing universal or philosophic superstructure that is itself taken on faith. A perfect example would be one’s response to this question: do we live in a personal or impersonal universe? Your answer IS your organizing universal, and IS you’re a priori approach to facts.)
We have lost the sacred canopy as the ultimate source of evaluations (‘sacred canopy’ consisting of the self-evident truths of general revelation which is suspended above all peoples). Then/thus, truth and beauty are fragmented (note Albert Mohler: beauty is joined to the good, the true, and the real). The media depicts the sacred canopy [of divinely revealed absolute truth] as a source of strife (as that which divides and produces unfairness). Spiritualization is an arduous road (in other words, the pursuit of virtue involves self-denial, whereas our animal passions, lusts, and appetites come easily. The Christian worldview of true spirituality, which calls for virtue through self-denial is resisted by the flesh) . People choose what’s easy—they choose animal passion instead (see C. S. Lewis The Abolition of Man, see also Ephesians 4:17ff.). Society does not fear the truly wise man; ONLY when he seeks to make others wise also.ˣˣ Barbarism has made a successful stand against Logos. (When Weaver wrote this 72 years ago, providing an accurate description of why sexual license is always accompanied by violence, he had no idea that someday in America late terms abortions would become a profitable business through the sale of body parts of human babies.)ˣˣⁱ
We must make some application to law that in the beginning was the Word [Logos]—IF the world is to remain cosmos (ordered)—and not a material machine hosting upright bi-pedal bio machines. (Weaver saw the nihilistic consequences of reducing man to a cosmic accident, a soul-less creature born of chance, a biological robot made in the image of an animal. Christian worldview answers with certainty ultimate questions such as: What is God’s relation to the cosmos? What is man? And what is man’s place in the cosmos? Biblical cosmology answers why these questions are foundational to knowledge)ˣˣⁱⁱ
End Notes:
i Peter Jones, “Mission in the 21st Century; the Witness of Holiness,” Christ Church, Moscow, ID
ii Ibid.
iii Ibid.
iv Ibid.
v Albert Mohler, The Briefing
vi Peter Jones, “Mission in the 21st Century. . .”
vii Peter Jones, God of Sex, p. 11
viii Albert Mohler, The Briefing, January 7, 2020
ix Peter Jones, “Paganism in Today’s Culture,” Ligonier Conference, February 25, 2015
x Peter Jones, “Paganism in Today’s . . .”
xi Ibid.
xii Nancy Pearcey, Love thy Body, p. 12
xiii Ibid, p. 18
xiv Ibid, pp. 63-64
xv Richard Weaver, Ideas have Consequences, p. 4
xvi Ibid, p. 24
xvii Ibid, p. 34
xviii Ibid, pp. 44-45
xix Ibid, p. 93-94
xx Ibid, pp. 104-106
xxi Ibid, p. 147
xxii Ibid, p. 169