Relationship with Christ or Worldview Change?

“For some people being Christian means bringing people into a relationship with Christ. To others it means bringing people into a world view. That’s a big difference.”

Dr. Barry Hankins
Baylor University Evangelical Historian

“But we have the mind of Christ.” (1st Corinthians 2:16)

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:5)

 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind… (Roman 12:2a)

Can you say “false dichotomy?” What does it mean to have a relationship with Christ that is absent a Christian Worldview?

I don’t know if Dr. Hankins really believes this himself or if he is just reflecting what some Evangelicals believe. Either way, one has to ask how people can die to self and live to Christ without a complete change in their worldview. Indeed, the very ideas of repentance and conversion mean the change of one’s worldview.

How can one go from living with self at the center of all things to the unseating of self and the owning of the Triune God as the center of all reality? How can one have a relationship with Christ unless their former worldview was completely obliterated — at least in principle?

How can one go from not embracing the trinity, God’s sovereignty, a Biblical anthropology, epistemology, ontology, axiology, teleology, etc. etc. etc. to embracing these truths and not have a worldview change?

Now granted a mature Christian worldview does not arise instantly in the freshly converted but all the same conversion means one is set on that path of worldview overhaul.

Honestly, I don’t even know what it means to be in a relationship with Jesus that is absent a worldview changed.

And frankly, anyone who insists that they are not interested in converts having a worldview change but are only interested in their having a relationship with Jesus are themselves likely not converted.

How do guys like Hankins (and their names are legion) get Ph.D’s?

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

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