CREATION REGAINED

This book has been in print for two decades and the second edition is an updated version along with an additional chapter dealing with the reformational worldview in the broader narrative and missional context.  Al Wolters has probably written the best statement of the ‘reformational’ Christian worldview that is available.  It is written in a style which is accessible to all and contains helpful analogies and illustrations and is compact in that it has less than one fifty pages.  There is a warm-heartedness in the whole of the book which causes its perspective to be the more acceptable.  It brings the central insights and categories of this particular Calvinist tradition into fresh non-technical language.  This book is recommended reading for all desiring to find instruction in Christian worldview, theology and philosophy.   Wolters begins by defining what a ‘worldview’ is, showing its nature as distinct from the latter two disciplines.  He then carefully analyses human history under three basic categories, those of creation, fall and redemption arguing that the fall reaches into every corner of the world and Christians are called to participate with God in Christ’s redemption of all creation.  At the heart of the perspective of this book is the removal of the idea of the divide between the sacred and the secular and to show that there is a wholeness in what God made and what He has set out to redeem.  Christians of today tend to err in one of two directions in their reading of the Bible, either the systematizing of it into a set of doctrines, thematically considering those aspects or alternatively reading it in devotional ‘chunks’ and extracting personal promises to help the heart forward through particular phases of the Christian life.  This book exposes the fallacy of these two uses of the scripture, they are inadequate and do not do justice to the action of God in His creation.  The whole Bible is a story, a wonderful unfolding of God as the faithful Creator, acting steadily all through history according to His settled purpose established in Christ and in which the church is to participate in mission and service.  This book will come as a helpful source of revelation opening the eyes of those who have never considered things from this perspective before.  The book was initially written to give an introduction to the Christian philosophy of Dooyeweerd, Kuyper and other twentieth century Dutch writers but it now draws on perspectives of later writers such as Lesslie Newbigin and N.T. Wright and is enhanced thereby in its breadth.  This is a highly commended book.