Wolters, Albert M. Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, 2^nd Edition, (Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdmans, 2005)

In an attempt to effectively define and engage an understanding of worldview Albert Wolters examines the framework for understanding the ordering of creation though the categories of creation, fall, and redemption. Wolters’ definition of worldview drives at the foundational presuppositions encompassing all things “about which we have basic beliefs”. Together, the thorough assimilation of these presuppositions forms a pattern that can be recognized by others and categorized into certain systems of belief. A worldview will make a cognitive claim to some kind of knowledge; knowledge which can be formulated into principles and hypotheses that guide moral and ethical convictions, not merely facts or feelings.

A worldview is formed by this pattern of beliefs about ultimate questions concerning man and his relationship to himself, to other man, to nature, and to God. These basic beliefs are held by all of humanity. To hold a specifically Scriptural worldview, one must allow these beliefs to be shaped and guided by Scripture, which holds complete authority over all categories of life, including nature and norms.

What Wolters calls the Law of Nature and Law of Norms refer to specific law corresponding to the two ways God imposes his law on Creation. The Law of Nature is the medium though which God rules without human responsibility, and the Law of norms appropriates his direction with mediation through human involvement with cultural institutions such as art and agriculture. When one or both of these are disregarded a dualistic philosophy separates God’s sovereignty over all of creation, relegating certain aspects of the created order to merely secular influence and direction. This dichotomy minimizes the influence of Christianity and the Church to purely sacred activities and shrinks the kingdom of God to a purely spiritual existence.

What Wolters advocates instead is a comprehensive view of the Kingdom of God where traditionally “secular” pursuits are encompassed as sacred activity as well because God lays claim to the whole of creation. The entire Biblical account justifies Christ’s sovereignty over the political state and agriculture as equally as it does the planets’ orbit and the law of gravity. This argument is drawn to the conclusion that creation as general revelation is a continually forming process where humanity actually continues the act of creation through the advancement of civilization. This augments his claim that the fall (as broadly encompassing as creation) is not merely an Adamic disobedience, but is aided by the subsequent disobedience of humankind.

But just as the human race perpetuates the fall of mankind, so the Christian human race renews it, thus the understanding of the transformative process of redemption. Redemption is by nature restorative, reclaiming the pre-existing good of the Nature or the Norm (Wolters calls this “structure”) and redirecting the parasitic nature of the bad (defined as “direction”). At the heart of this tension between structure and direction is a real battle between God and his adversary for control of creation. In extreme forms this battle emerges in the form of directly competing worldviews (overtly religious in nature). Even more significantly however the battle, at least for Western Civilization, has been waged on the fronts of public education, media, and the overwhelming secularization of culture.