In a recent post, I highlighted some thoughts from John Oswalt’s The Bible Among the Myths on the matter of science and the way that the Christian worldview undergirds it. Here’s another gem from the first chapter in which Oswalt reveals his agenda for this book. I don’t know about you, but when I read this I got excited.
In this book I want to examine the distinctive view of reality that is first found in the Old Testament as it presently stands and which provides the underlying assumptions for the New Testament. I will show why current attempts to describe the Bible as one more of the world’s great myths are incorrect. I will argue that in the end there are only two worldviews: the biblical one and the other one. I will demonstrate why the Christian faith cannot be other than exclusivist. I will show how current trends in the United States in particular are the logical result of the loss of biblical faith. In passing, I will ask whether any other explanation than the one the Bible claims (direct communication with the one God) can explain where this understanding of reality came from. In the end I hope to have convinced younger readers especially of the necessity of standing absolutely firm on the biblical understanding of reality and of giving no quarter to what is, in the end, the enemy (28).
And somehow people have a hard time believing this guy is Methodist?
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