Because God created all things with coherent unity, everything can be understood from the perspective of everything else. We experience the world in the context of our own bodies, but every day we broaden our understanding through the perspectives of others. Meanwhile, our omniscient God is also omniperspectival. Through his revelation, he allows us a glimpse of his own divine perspective. What does this mean for us? One valuable dimension of this reality is that theological issues can also be helpfully viewed from multiple ...
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Because God created all things with coherent unity, everything can be understood from the perspective of everything else. We experience the world in the context of our own bodies, but every day we broaden our understanding through the perspectives of others. Meanwhile, our omniscient God is also omniperspectival. Through his revelation, he allows us a glimpse of his own divine perspective. What does this mean for us? One valuable dimension of this reality is that theological issues can also be helpfully viewed from multiple perspectives without compromising their unity and truth. In this accessible introduction to his Bible study and theological method, John Frame teaches us to approach doctrine with situational, normative, and existential perspectives modeled on the Trinity.
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John Frame, who has written some massive works, has written a short book (under 100 pages) which condenses his view of "triperspectivalism." Frame's method for understanding just about anything is called "triperspectivalism." It consists of three parts (chapters 5-7):
The normative perspective deals with norms and what ought to be the case (53). For example, "You shouldn't drive too quickly around that curve."
The situational perspective deals with facts, what is the case (53, 60). For example, "I drive a tan car."
The existential perspective deals with self-knowledge. You understand all you know by knowing yourself, and you understand yourself by all that you know (66). It includes your reason, your senses, your imagination, your dreams, you intuitions, and your feelings. It focuses on our internal, subjective experience.
However, as Frame notes throughout the whole book, these three perspectives are tightly wound together. The fact is, God is the Lord and Creator. Therefore, our obligation is to honor and serve him. Existentially, as we know ourselves by knowing God, and know God by knowing who are are and are not. We also understand things through our own lenses and experiences.
Unfortunately, I still don't quite understand the existential perspective. Part of the problem for this is the way the book is set up. First, Frame doesn't really define his three perspectives until chapters 5-7. I spent the first four chapters trying to figure out how the three perspectives (mainly the existential perspective) worked. Don't get me wrong, Frame does speak about the three perspectives in these early chapters. But the full-fledged definitions comes later.
Second, the full-fledged definitions are still vague. While Frame talks about the normative perspective, has almost can't seem to keep it away from the situational perspective, and vice versa. And I just didn't find the chapter on the existential perspective to be very clear.
In chapter eight, Frame presents how practical his method is. When it comes to pedagogy, he likes to give "'hooks' to help students remember teaching content" (78). He presents 48 different topics. Yet I don't quite understand how some of these "hooks" are the perspective they are. Some make sense, and others don't. (I write more about this on my blog.)
Recommended?
This is a very accessible work from a great thinker of Christian apologetics and philosophy. While I wasn't particularly impressed with the book, many of the reviews I've seen have enjoyed it, and Nate Claiborne (who enjoys all things John Frame) thinks it's a short gateway to Frame's thinking. If you've not read Frame before, this book might seem strange to you. If you've read some of his larger works, this book will help you understand how he categorizes things and will hopefully help you to better understand your Bible, theology, and the world around you.
