The Impact of Biblical Worldview on Christian Education
By Rod Dreher
Rawlings School of Divinity
CLED 720: Biblical & Theological Foundations of Education
Genevieve Hamer
July 1, 2022
Battleground
Education is the worldview battle field. We witness the battle for hearts and minds fought
on many fronts: in the classroom, in the media, and in the courts. In addition we exert our
resources fighting the fruits of secularism, animism and pantheism, yet we often see little fruit.
Why is this? It is because these are only symptoms of the problem and not the cause. The real
battle is taking place elsewhere! It is an all-out attack on the authority of the Word of God. If we
allow the Word of God to be set aside in one area, it undermines our entire foundation.
Consequently we must understand this as we seek to equip and train our youth to stand strong
in these secular cultures.
Education in South Africa
The educational philosophical changes that have been taking place in South Africa since
1994 have created enormous challenges to Christian school governance, management,
leadership and classroom instruction. The country chose a secular humanistic worldview as an
official worldview without knowing its religious nature (Humanist Manifesto II). So the country
is no longer neutral or the home of other worldviews. As a result most teachers are trained in
secular institutions and trained to teach their subject not children.
Consequently our system of education is designed based on a secular humanistic
worldview system. The theory of evolution influences its view of God, its view of humans and
its view of creation. Therefore the system has removed Theology from being the school
foundation and replaced it with secularised Philosophy and Science. There is accordingly a need
for Christian centres of education, for a system with a deeper understanding of the implications
of their pedagogy in a complex pluralistic society and a Biblical worldview. They need to
examine and clarify their worldview as well as the challenges that our country faces. These
challenges include racial and ethnic attitude as well as poverty. The institutes should
accordingly develop the pedagogical knowledge and skills needed to work effectively with
learners from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Christian Philosophy of Education
The Christian philosophy of education is Christ-centred, Bible-based, learner-related and
socially applied. When God is in control of education through the Holy Spirit, Christ will be
central. All things stand in relation to God and this includes the learner. Children should thus
be viewed as created, sinner, redeemable and that they can have a fulfilled life in Christ. God
created all persons in His image and likeness (Ge.1:26). Because we are images of God we
should reflect God in our lives.
We call the division of philosophy that deals with knowledge epistemology; this is the area
where the Christian community is in desperate need of returning to the Biblical foundations
(Green: 1990). The spirit of Enlightenment has carried us away from our anchor. We have been
carried by the thinking of Francis Bacon the father of Enlightenment and John Dewey. They
concluded that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Dewey held that we make truth by
using the scientific method, and that, if it works, the truth we make is reliable until science
alters it.
The problem is how do we form a concept of knowing that can embrace both freedom and
determinism? Scientific knowledge is determined but it contains no freedom. The knowledge
of value and purpose or beauty involves freedom. But no concept can embrace both what is
free and what is not free.
This tension had led the modern concept that only really reliable knowledge is scientific. It
has pushed religious concepts off into the private sphere.
Thus serious difficulty plagues modern epistemology: it has no way to include religious or
moral concepts within the sphere of valid knowledge.
Geniune Knowledge
Genuine knowledge, since it is knowledge of something created and upheld by God,
inevitably demands a response to the God. He speaks to us in His creation. A Christian view of
knowledge or Biblical worldview is that knowledge that does not include love is not knowledge.
“It is true, in the love of God I discover my fellow human being and it is through the love of God
that I discover the created reality.” Love gives life to all things. Things receive reality and worth
only when man loves them and puts value to them. Scientific knowledge is valid and important,
as long as it feeds back into our hearts to promote our love, reverence, and awe for the God
who gives meaning.
Nature of Reality and Children
As Christian educators, we need to know that the nature of reality and the nature of
children can be truly understood only by the redeemed in the Lord. One of the difficulties of
nurturing children is that they are such complex beings, each different form the next. Therefore
Christian teachers and parents need to understand children as follows: The child is created by
God as a unique being. The child is an image bearer. Remember, imaging God represent our
makeup, our constitution, our glory and our high and holy calling in God’s world (Fennema:
1977).
Biblical Worldview
To achieve this teachers need to embrace a Biblical worldview, which is an orientation that
provides not only a vision of what life is like, but also an overall guide for life. It is a framework
that constitutes the conditions for our thinking and our conduct. Worldview forms the
framework for any of our interpretative activities, such as philosophizing, reading, teaching,
judging, evaluating etc. In other words, a worldview is a conditioning vision for life.
Worldview is part of the structure that makes seeing, knowing and acting in the world
possible. It is a compass or map that points us in a certain direction. Furthermore it shapes and
orients our belief, action and attitude (Walsh and Middleton: 1996).
As illustrated in Isaiah 8:17-20, the way of the Lord provides a distinctive way of looking at
the world. Throughout the world people who grow up in Christian families accept certain
perceptions of reality that are different from non-Christian people. When Jesus called Paul to
be a minister to the Gentiles, he described the transformation that would take place. Jesus said,
“I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from
the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among
those who are sanctified by faith” (Acts 26:17-18). These words infer that there is a distinctive
worldview change that occurs when one turns to God and follows the way of Jesus Christ.
Four major types of worldviews
At least four different worldview types are present in world cultures.
Secularism
Stated succinctly, a secular worldview divides the world into natural and supernatural
realms and focuses almost exclusively on the natural realm. Secularists considered God to be
either non-existent or irrelevant to human affairs. They tend to be resistant until they realize,
usually during times of trauma, that humans are unable to “direct their own steps” (Jer. 10:23),
that the divine and the human are interrelated.
Animism
An animistic perspective of reality believes that personal spiritual beings and impersonal
spiritual forces have power over human affairs. During times of disease, death, and drought,
they use divination to discover which beings and forces are impacting them in order to ward
them off or to employ their power. Animists must learn that creator God is approachable and
concerned about human life, and unlike the gods, “majestic in holiness” (Ex. 15:11). Through
the death and resurrection of His son God has defeated all the principalities and powers (Col.
2:15).
Pantheism
A pantheistic worldview perceives that an impersonal, all-pervading essence, sometimes
defined as “god,” fills the universe. As droplets of water merge to become a stream, then a
river, and finally an ocean, so individuals can become one with the essence of the world
through meditation, thus achieving a change of consciousness called enlightenment. The
pantheist, through living illustrations of Christian meditation, must experience God to be living
and personal, full of compassion and having a distinctive holiness.
Theism
A theistic plausibility system presupposes that God created the heavens and the earth and
continues to care for that universe. Some theists follow God’s distinctive way of salvation
through Jesus Christ while others focus on submission to and honouring of Allah.
The complexity and influences of secularism, animism, pantheism, and theism mar Africa
within the host culture. While most cultures emphasize one or two of these types, influences
from all four types may be syncretized in various configurations. Understanding the various
influences in the culture enables Christian educations to encode the gospel in theological
metaphors appropriate to the culture.
