GOVT 200 Exam 1

What famous world did Aurelius Augustine write which dominated European Christendom for close to 800 years?

"City of God"

List the 7 areas of frameworks of life:

1.) civil-social 2.) ecclesiastical 3.) education 4.) legal 5.) economic 6.) aesthetics 7.) international relations

List Ravi Zacharias' 5 key reasons why shifts occur in worldviews:

1.) lacks logical consistency (self-contradictory) 2.) lacks empirical adequacy (fails to match reality and lacks verifiability) 3.) lacks experiential relevance (abstract, and incapable of providing livable answered) 4.) lacks correspondence (fails to correspond to reality) 5.) lacks coherence (answers fail to intertwine to form a coherent belief system, or unified whole)

Which form of economics best expresses God's perspective economically?

A free market economy

What is supernaturalism?

A supernatural force or agent is the origin of, and explains all that exists: including man, and exists above and outside of the seen, phenomenal realm

Define a worldview:

A worldview is a philosophy of life, which attempts to address and answer the grand questions of life to direct man

What sort of law system (legislation) and jurisprudence recognizes God as divine law-giver, the existence of absolute law, and a pre-existing law order?

Absolute law

Represents all art forms ranging from the audiovisual (music, painting, sculpting) to the literary arts (literature and history)

Aesthetics

represents human corporate relationships, such as the various levels of civil-government, marriage, and the family:

Civil-social

What are the primary questions?

Cosmological and anthropological questions

represents church related functions, affairs, and government

Ecclesiastical

individuals who are privileged with the capacity to directly reach the hearts and minds of students established under their instruction. These are academics and various lecturers, university and college professors who pick and choose among prevailing worldviews to impart to their students through lectures books and other available communication medium

Eclectic level of selection

Represents market relations, or the production and distribution of goods and services among individuals in the marketplace

Economics

Represents the acquisitions of information, formal learning in secondary schools and universities, as well as informed learning through the media and other information

Education

personal covenant:

God is propositioning every person; no person has lived in this age or will live in this age without being propositioned by God. Thus, the personal covenant, God's propositioning man in his personal life, is often referred to as the "covenant of grace", as it is by grace that man is saved and made a covenant keeper with God-in-Christ. The personal covenant is propositionally directed by God toward individuals to accept His saving grace and "be reconciled to Himself on the basis of the finished work of God in Christ, for the Lamb of God was slain for the foundation of the world". An individual's acceptance of the atoning sacrifice of Christ through repentance and saving faith represents a covenantal agreement between God and that individual such that God will would be personally actualized and accomplished in his/her heart and behavior

What is the Kingdom of God teleology?

God's Kingdom, which includes His rule and authority, is eternal, and therefore, gives ultimate meaning, direction, and purpose. The Kingdom of God teleology assumes an eternal order.

What is humanism?

Humanism claims that humans are the most valuable beings or creatures in the universe. A person's value is understood in relation to him or herself.

What is intuitionalism?

Humans know by simply intuiting, or penetrating into the depths of their inner sense of self and being to discern what is true; intuitionalism assumes that humans do not need an outside force or supernatural agent to administer special revelation in order to know what is true. Humans come to understand truth apart from rational categories and reason, and instead, assert knowledge through non-rational means by subjective assessments, impressions and personal feelings

What are the two options for the Teleological question?

Kingdom of God teleology or Kingdom of Earth teleology

Represents jurisprudence, or the study of law and law order

Legal

Should civil government be limited or not? If limited, why?

Limited because Since God is indeed sovereign in the sense that He alone bears absolute and complete authority, civil government as an institution, and civil magistrates as rulers, are comprehended within God's sovereign rule. The duties that God has called every person to do (walk with Him and love your neighbors as yourself) can only be fulfilled in an environment of liberty secured through limited civil governments (unlike other ones where the authority is institutionally centralized)~ federalism

What is revelationism?

Man can come to know absolute truth about God, himself and all of existence because God has revealed it to man through special revelation or the Scriptures in verbal, propositional form

What is materialism?

Materialism claims that matter (or rather, matter in motion) is the most valuable entity in the universe. A person's value is understood in relation to this matter in motion, or this universal, cosmic force of causation and determinism

What are the two options dealing with the ontological question?

Naturalism and supernaturalism

What is the origin, nature and destiny of the cosmos?

Primary question #1 :Cosmological question

What is the origin, nature and destiny of man?

Primary question #2: Anthropological

A worldview has three components:

Primary questions: cosmological and anthropological 4 subsidiary questions: ontological, epistemological, axiological, and teleological

What is the Biblical perspective on economics?

Private property and free enterprise, both of which should not be absolutized; The Biblical Christian believes that God has ordained private property or private ownership and the stewardship of private possessions under God. Also, we believe that the market is created by God, as such, is the primary mechanism for establishing prices and wages

What is rationalism?

Rationalism asserts that man, by simply taking thought, or exercising his intilect, or contemplating life through human reason alone, can come to know truth in the absolute sense for all matters of life, including morals and ethics; reason is absolutized

What are the three options dealing with the epistemological realm?

Revelationism, rationalism, and ituitionalism

this stage often consists of spirited revolutionaries and change-makers who are willing to invest their lives, energies, and property to see such visions actualized. Such will formulate the vision further, expand upon it, craft it into a more viable view, and then seek to apply it. For example, a formative figure like Karl Marx would not have been as influential had Lenin not come along, invested in Marx's analysis of economic life, and relationships and marketed it to the Russian people

Sociological application

What is the Kingdom of Earth teleology?

Some force or agent, yet to be discovered, gives ultimate meaning and direction toward an undefined and undisclosed purpose. The Kingdom of Earth teleology assumes a temporal order only or the exclusive existence of this temporal age.

What is the biblical approach to international relations?

Sovereignty of the nation-state for national security and prevention of global tyranny

What is the biblical perspective on the structure and organization of civil government?

The Biblical Christian believes that government is a gift of God for the orderly procedure of man in a fallen world.

The center of all things is God. God is the final authority. The Biblical Christian hold that God, who has always been, is no, and will always be, reigns over all that exists, His rule is Spiritual in that it includes the totality of all things, seen and unseen, temporal and eternal. God is supreme and eternal. ("what is the really real? ..... "prime reality is the infinite, personal God revealed in the Holy Scriptures. This God is Triune, transcendent and immanent, omniscient, sovereign and good.) God's rule is supreme and His jurisdiction or lawful bounds of authority is complete and encompasses every area of life which includes the seen and the unseen realms and incorporates human behavior as well as human internal disposition and heart. God is the spiritual nature of God's Kingdom includes his just rule over everything.

The Kingdom of God is Spiritual

What is the institutional structure and procedure of Biblical Christianity?

The holy commonwealth and a covenantal arrangement

What is jurisdiction?

The lawful use of lawful authority

How do the two primary questions and the four secondary questions relate?

The two primary questions cannot be answered until the four subsidiary ones are answered.

What is theism?

Theism claims that a supernatural being such as the God of the Scriptures is the most valuable being in the universe. Man's value is understood in relation to God

What are the three options regarding the Axiological question?

Theism, humanism, and materialism

having God as the central interest and ultimate concern

Theocentrism

What is a covenant?

a covenant, by its very nature, represents an exalted and dignified approach to relationships that assumes God to be the superior partner in, designer of, and initiator of, the relational transaction. Covenants advance and cultivate the exaltation of God and his relational priorities established by virtue of His creation and creative efforts; a covenant is a morally-informed agreement or pact based upon voluntary consent and mutual oaths or promises, witnessed by the relevant higher authority, between peoples or parties having independent though not necessarily equal status, that provides for joint action or obligation to achieve defined ends under conditions of mutual respect which protects the individual integrities of all the parties to it. Every covenant involves consenting, promising, and agreeing

existing without relation to any other being; self-existing; self sufficient

absolute

to make absolute; convert into an absolute

absolutize

intellectuals or individuals who are absorbed and preoccupied and ideas who routinely mediate on metaphysical things, and those who attempt to answer the questions worldviews address; also known as the stage of conceptualization, whereby concepts and ideas are blended into a complex system of philosophical thought

abstractions

What are the levels of application of a worldview?

abstractions, sociological application, eclectic level of selection, and conglomerate

of or having to do with man

anthropological (Greek word for man: anthropos)

things which are in opposition to each other; in contrast

antithesis (antithetical)

value

axiology

Biblically speaking, what is the purpose of civil government?

civil government has been ordained by God for oder and procedure in a fallen world to secure an ordered liberty.

most people do not have a consciously held consistent worldview which they have though through and therefore, could propound, rather, they operate fragmentally on the basis of contradictory bits and pieces (from such sources as family, culture, traditions, politicians, peers at school, Hollywood, the media, church), or the basis of the prevailing worldviews.

conglomerate

belief in the existence of God without accepting revelation. *Belief in a God who created the universe but has no ongoing relationship with man

deism

diversion into two; *a false division which arises in the mind of a person who tries to understand something without beginning and ending with the Trinitarian God in his or her thinking

dichotomy

knowledge

epistemology

represents relations between and among nations which includes international diplomacy

international relations

view of the world that excludes the supernatural or spiritual. Action based on natural instincts; moral or religious system on purely natural basis:

naturalism

There is no institutional interposition between God and man:

no institution can interpose itself between you and God claiming to save you, make you "good", or render your righteous- your righteousness can only be mediated through the atoning sacrifice of Christ as you exhibit repentance and saving faith. Salvation cannot be accomplished through any institutional structure that positions itself as messianic or salvaic. No institution should be absolutized or made the final reference point for life, or considered the means by which all life's problems can be saved. ( Holy commonwealth)

origins

ontology

doctrine that God is everything and everything is God; "all"- theism

pantheism

thing assumed beforehand as a basis of argument or discussion. That which is required as a prior condition:

presupposition

Kingly status:

since humans, as male and female, has been made in God's image, they too are differentiated form the rest of creation and elevated to a distinct place of authority and role. Every person under God is a King

purpose

teleology

Ecclesiastical covenant:

the ecclesiastical covenant is corporate in nature and includes the body of individual believers who have covenanted first personally with God. Here, the church as a corporate body, commits itself to pursuing God's will in its ecclesiastical polity and policy. The recognition that the church, every grouping compromising the body of believers can know God and agree to do the full will of God in their ecclesiastical affairs.

civil-social:

the recognition that man can know God and respond to God's provisions, agreeing to do the full will of God in all civil-social relationships including the marriage covenant, the family covenant, and the covenant of calling among other.

Man is priest:

this priestly position God has granted to man must not be confused with the ecclesiastical office of a Roman Catholic priest established to mediate man's salvation through a series of rituals and work-based ceremonies; the priesthood of all believers claims that each individual person can directly approach God on the basis of His atoning sacrifice of "the finished work of God in Christ" through persona repentance and saving faith

What is meant by the phrase "covenantal order"?

to acknowledge that God has not left man alone; it refers to the reality that God has reached down to man and propositioned him; the Bible, in the final analysis, is imply propositional truth (God reaching down to man)

Man is prophet:

we tend to think of the Biblical view of man as prophet only in connection with the gift of prophesy which the Holy Spirit gives to select individuals in order to disclose His purpose at particular times and places, or even, in the narrower sense of foretelling particular future events. But what is meant by man as prophet is the reality that God lets us know. God gives man knowledge of the truth. What, for the Biblical Christian, is the source of this knowledge form God? The Bible. God is truth, and the Bible is God's revelation of Himself of what is in verbal, propositional form.

Axiological question:

~ The question of value ~What, if anything, is the ultimate value?

How are covenants superior to contracts?

~ covenants incorporate non-negotiable truths. Objective principles, and axioms coordinated with human nature and God's purposes ~ Covenants are God centered; vertical arrangement; begins with God reaching down to men ~ contracts are man centered; horizontal relationship; limited (God having been abandoned) ~ God Himself establishes the nature and content of covenants and testifies to covenantal obligations and commitments by operating as the authority through whom all parties are ultimately accountable

Depravity of man:

~ man is not depraved because he has been so declared by any person or group, but because of mans fallen condition ~ beginning and ending with himself, by taking thought/action; individually or corporately, cannot deliver or remove himself form the dilemma into which he was born. He is rather wholly dependent upon divine grace, the work and the will of God, for his deliverance.

What is the significance of the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper?

~ one of the most prominent Biblical Christian worldview proponents; best known for articulating the sovereignty of God in every area of life ~ free university of Amsterdam ~ prime minister of Netherlands ~ he emphasized "sphere sovereignty" by stressing divine origin and dimension of social institutions; including of course education, and their interconnectedness and unity under God's authority ~ divided life into unique spheres each with its own sovereignty ~ lectured on Calvinism

Ontological question:

~The question of being ~From where did everything originate? ~What is our starting point?

Epistemological question:

~The question of knowing ~ How do we know? ~ How do we know that we know?

What are the 4 characteristics of a worldview?

1.) A worldview must deal with the larger questions. That is it must supply answers to the primary questions of God, man and the cosmos 2.) A worldview must be universally applicable. This is to say that the answers which a worldview gives to the primary questions must be capable of application across the entire spectrum 3.) A worldview must provided lasting answers 4.) A worldview will present itself as factually adequate or endeavor to be consistent with the whole of reality and what actually exists, or what is really, truly there. In other words, in order for a worldview to be truly credible and therefor livable, it will match the reality of what is actually there or reality in its seen (phenomenal) and unseen (nawmenal) dimensions

What are the two fundamental biblical propositions relative to law and jurisdiction?

1.) God is the divine law giver: God Himself is the essence of absolute and ultimate law, which he not only declares to mankind but imposes upon all creation. ( the origin of God's authority to govern). Since God created all that exists for His purpose, He has the authority to govern in an absolute way. 2.) Jurisprudence based upon absolute, transcendent law: if God is law, then absolute and ultimate law is preexisting, by which is meant that it predates the creation of humans and civil authority, the function of which is administer such law justly and equitably.

Sovereignty of God:

~ the recognition that God is the ultimate ~ there is nothing higher than God, nothing beyond God, and nothing behind God ~ God is sovereign, not because he has been so declared by any person or group, but because of who He is

Teleological question:

~The question of destiny, direction and purpose ~ Where, if anywhere, are we going?

Why are there transitions between intellectual traditions? In other words, why do these shifts occur? Why do worldviews slowly fade in their attraction and staying power, and eventually replaced by other worldviews?

If the presuppositions of a worldview cannot be applied in such a way that they supply lasting answers, offer meaning and direction to life and withstand life's pressures, then shifts in worldviews or paradigms will occur. A worldview is eclipsed by another when some inherent weakness within it is discovered, an anomaly detected, and its response to the various life questions are considered incomplete, insufficient, or inadequate, when this occurs, its presuppositions are radically questions. (metaphor of a bridge)

List the main consequences of the reformation:

~ western civilization would not exist as it exists today ~ broke the back of ecclesiastical absolutism, returning the institutionalized church toward the power of divided authority and diffused power which, as we have discussed, is characteristic of the Biblical Christianity view of the institutions ~ the restated and reapplied Biblical Christianity would become intellectually dominant in Europe, temporarily derailing rationalistic renaissance humanism ~ It virtually obliterated Renaissance humanism in the north of Europe and it temporarily derailed renaissance humanism in central and Northern Europe ~ In North America, the reformation provided the basis for the entire civilization: American civilization, which later came to be the United States of America

List the 2 fundamental biblical propositions relative to economics:

1.) The Biblical Christian believes in freedom of enterprise, with and important Biblical qualification. The Biblical Christian recognizes that the marker is created by God and, as such, is the primary mechanism for establishing prices and wages 2.) The Biblical Christian believes that God has ordained private property or private ownership. The Biblical Christian believes in Private property in the sense of the stewardship of private possessions under God.

What is naturalism?

Some yet-to-be discovered force or agent with the natural realm is the origin of all that exists, including man and exists within the seen phenomenal realm