Chuck McKnight
According to Peter Jones, our culture as a whole has switched worldviews over the past few decades. Rather than maintaining a fundamental distinction between God and his creation, today’s predominate worldview sees everything as essentially one.
In his book, The Other Worldview, Jones explains the difference between what he calls “Oneism” and “Twoism.” He exposes the pagan roots of Oneism, and he traces its spread and influence throughout Western culture. Most importantly, he shows us why Oneism is incapable of saving anyone or truly changing the world for the better.
In this excerpt from R. C. Sproul’s foreword to The Other Worldview, Sproul gives his insight into the book.
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We have seen the noonday sun reveal the destruction of the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of sex, and the sanctity of the sacred itself. The culture is not merely post-Christian and postmodern. It has become not only neopagan, but neo-barbarian.
Ideas have consequences. The ideas of the New Age, of our age, have their roots in ancient Gnosticism. That particular philosophy embraced a form of pantheism or monism: God is ‘the One’—the sum of everything. All is God, and God is all.
Of course if everything is God, then nothing is God. The very word ‘God’ can point to nothing individuated from everything. It becomes a meaningless, unintelligible word.
Peter Jones has labored to show the distinction and impact of a zeitgeist of Oneism (monism) versus Twoism (duality). The Twoism of which Dr. Jones speaks is not an ancient form of dualism which embraced equal and opposite forces of good and evil. No, it is a cosmic duality that sees—sharply and vividly—the distinction between creature and Creator, and the relationship between the two.
This is not a simple problem of arithmetic wherein we learn to count from one to two. These numbers have suffixes. The suffix -ism is added to the one and the two. The suffix -ism adds to a simple number an entire worldview or philosophical standpoint embraced by either.
Dr. Jones provides for us a clear map. This map traces the historical paths, the philosophical routes, and the cultural lanes that have brought us to the Age of Aquarius. It is a must-read for every concerned American—and especially for every Christian who weeps at the graveside of his culture.
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Get The Other Worldview today.
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