Summary of the worldviews and the transitions from one to another

1. Christian Theism ( 기독교 유신론 )

1. God is personal, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.
2. God created the universe from nothing to operate in a uniformity of cause and effect in an open system.
3. Man is created in God’s image.
4. God can and does communicate with man.
5. Man was created good but through the fall, the image of God became defaced, though not so ruined as not to be capable of restoration; through
the work of Jesus Christ God redeemed man and began the process of restoring man to goodness, though any given man may choose to reject that
redemption.
6. Death is either the gate to life with God and His people or to eternal separation to the only thing that will satisfy man’s aspirations.
7. Ethics is transcendent and is based on the character of God as good (holy and loving)
8. History is linear, a meaningful sequence of events leading to the fulfillment of God’s purposes for man.

Some couldn’t accept the special revelation of God found in the Scriptures, but used REASON instead to learn and
search the existence of God. God + Reason = Deism.

2. Deism ( 이신론 )
1. A transcendent God, as a First Cause, created the universe but then left it to run on its own. God is thus not immanent, not fully personal,
not sovereign over the affairs of men, not providential.
2. The cosmos God created is determined because it is created as a uniformity of cause and effect in a closes system; no miracle is possible.
3. Man, though personal, is part of the clockwork of the universe.
4. The cosmos, this world, is understood to be in its normal state; it is not fallen or abnormal. Man can know the universe, and he can
determine what God is like by studying it.
5. Ethics is limited to general revelation; because the universe is normal, it reveals what is right.
6. History is linear, for the course of the cosmos was determined at creation.

Assumption of an unfallen, normal universe tend to imply that whatever is, is right, which leaves no place for distinctive content to ethics. There is
no universal mind. Man is limited by time, so man can’t generalize knowledge. Human significance is meaningless in a determined universe.

3. Naturalism ( 자연주의 )
1. Matter exists naturally and is all there is. God does not exist.
2. The cosmos exists as a uniformity of cause and effect in a closed system.
3. Man is a complex “machine”; personality is an interrelation of chemical and physical properties we do not yet fully understand.
4. Death is extinction of personality and individuality.
5. History is a linear stream of events linked by cause and effect but without an overarching purpose.
6. Ethics is related only to man.

3 Bridges: 1. The great cloud of unknowing (if man is by chance, or a machine, there is
1. Necessity and chance (Naturalism does not supply man with a no way of knowing illusion or truth.
basis on which man can act significantly. 2. Is and ought (the world is only is and man has no sense of oughtness)

Atheistic existentialism rose

4. Nihilism ( 허무주의 ) in response to nihilism, took a
subjective turn, lifted
Is the negation of everything—knowledge, ethics, Theistic existentialism rose from dead Theism,
philosophy, and created
beauty, reality. It is the “natural child” of rose religion and focused on inner meaning.
meaning from human
Naturalism. affirmation.
Loss of meaning: “If the cosmos is to have meaning,
man must manufacture it for himself.
“At the heart of a nihilist, one affirmation lies a self- 5. Existentialism ( 실존주의 )
contradiction.” Basic Atheistic Existentialism:
“In order to deny god, one must have a God to deny. A
1. The cosmos is composed solely of matter, but to man reality
practicing nihilist is a parasite on meaning. The
appears in to forms—subjective and objective.
cynic is out of business when he is the last one
around.” 2. For man alone existence precedes essence; man makes himself
who he is.
Five reasons why Nihilism is unlivable:
3. Man is totally free as regards his nature and destiny.
1. From meaninglessness, nothing at all follows, or
rather, anything follows. If the universe is 4. The highly wrought and tightly organized objective world stands
meaningless and man cannot know and nothing is over against man and appears to him as absurd.
immoral, any course of action is open. For 5. In full recognition of and against thte absurdity of the objective
example, suicide can not be weighed as world, the authentic man must revolt and create value.
appropriate or not. Basic Theistic Existentialism:
2. Every time a nihilist thinks and trusts his thinking, 6. Man is a personal being who, when he comes to full
he is inconsistent, for he has denied that thinking consciousness, finds himself in an alien universe; whether or not
is of value or that it can lead to knowledge. God exists is a tough question to be solved not by reason but by
3. While a limited sort of practical nihilism is possible faith.
for a while, eventually a limit is reached. 7. The personal or the valuable.
4. Nihilism means the death of art. But nihilists use 8. Knowledge is subjectivity; the whole truth is often paradoxical.
art to convey their message, another
9. History as a record of events is uncertain and unimportant, but
inconsistency.
history as a model or type or myth to be made present and lived is
5. Nihilism poses severe psychological problems for of supreme importance.
a nihilist.

Shift from Western thought to Eastern thought is

primarily a retreat from the contradictions
brought about by the Western philosophy.

6. Eastern Pantheistic Monism ( 범신론적 일신론 )

1. Atman is Brahman; that is, the soul of man (each and every man) is the Soul fo the cosmos.
2. Some things are more one than others.
3. Many (if not all) roads lead to the One.
4. To realize one’s oneness with the cosmos is to pass beyond personality.
5. To realize one’s oneness with the cosmos is to pass beyond knowledge. The principle of non-contradiction does
8. Postmodernism
not apply where ultimate reality is concerned.
is a tendency in contemporary
6. To realize one’s oneness with the cosmos is to pass beyond good and evil; the cosmos is perfect at every
culture characterized by the
moment.
rejection of objective
7. Death is the end of individual, personal existence, but it changes nothing essential in man’s nature. truth and global cultural
8. To realize one’s oneness with the One is to pass beyond time. Time is unreal. History is cyclical. narrative or meta-narrative. It
emphasizes the role of
language, power relations,
and motivations; in particular
7. New Age it attacks the use of sharp
1. Whatever the nature of being (idea or matter, energy or particle) the self is the kingpin—the prime reality. As mankind classifications such as male
grows in his awareness and grasp of this fact, he is on the verge of a radical change in human nature; even now we see versus female, straight versus
harbingers of the new man and prototypes of the new age. gay, white versus black, and
2. The cosmos, while unified in the self, is manifested in two more dimensions: the visible universe, accessible through imperial versus colonial.
ordinary consciousness, and the invisible universe ( or Mind at Large), accessible through altered stated of consciousness. Postmodernism has
influenced many cultural
3. The core of the new consciousness is the experience of cosmic consciousness, in which ordinary categories of space, time
fields, including literary
and morality tend to disappear.
criticism, sociology, linguistics,
4. Physical death is not the end of self; under the experience of cosmic consciousness, the fear of death is removed. architecture, visual arts, and
5. The distinct attitudes are taken to the metaphysical question of the nature of reality under the general framework of the music.
new consciousness: (1) the occult version in which the beings and things perceived in states of altered consciousness exist
apart from the self that is conscious; (2) the psychedelic version on which these things and beings are projections of the
conscious self and (3) the conceptual relativist version in which the cosmic consciousness is the conscious activity of a min
using one of many non-ordinary models for reality, none of which is any “truer” than any other.
6. New Age ( 범신론적 일신론 )
1. Whatever the nature of being (idea or matter, energy or particle) the self is the kingpin—the prime reality. As mankind grows in
his awareness and grasp of this fact, he is on the verge of a radical change in human nature; even now we see harbingers of the
new man and prototypes of the new age.
2. The cosmos, while unified in the self, is manifested in two more dimensions: the visible universe, accessible through ordinary
consciousness, and the invisible universe ( or Mind at Large), accessible through altered stated of consciousness.
3. The core of the new consciousness is the experience of cosmic consciousness, in which ordinary categories of space, time and
morality tend to disappear.
4. Physical death is not the end of self; under the experience of cosmic consciousness, the fear of death is removed.
5. The distinct attitudes are taken to the metaphysical question of the nature of reality under the general framework of the new
consciousness: (1) the occult version in which the beings and things perceived in states of altered consciousness exist apart from
the self that is conscious; (2) the psychedelic version on which these things and beings are projections of the conscious self and
(3) the conceptual relativist version in which the cosmic consciousness is the conscious activity of a min using one of many non-
ordinary models for reality, none of which is any “truer” than any other.