Dr Paul Allen

The Christian concept of apocatastasis includes a restoration of the world to its original state, as in the Garden of Eden (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Ecclesiastes 2:1–11 “I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.’ But behold, this also was vanity” (v. 1). Hedonism is a non- Christian worldview  and can be traced back all the way to the garden of Eden . Genesis 3:6 says that Eve chose to eat the forbidden fruit partly because it was a “delight” to her eye. There was a certain amount of pleasure that the fruitgave her when she beheld it, and, no doubt, a degree of pleasure that she thought she would receive should she disobey God and take from the tree. In retrospect, however, Eve found only pain when she and Adam sinned (Gen.  :7, 16–19). As a worldview, hedonism is concerned with the maximizing of pleasure and the minimizing of pain. At various points in history it has expressed itself crassly. We can think, for example, of the orgies an

The Christian concept of apocatastasis includes a restoration of the world to its original state, as in the Garden of Eden (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Ecclesiastes 2:1-11 "I said in my heart, 'Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.' But behold, this also was vanity" ( v. 1 ). Hedonism, the final non- Christian worldview we will cover in our brief study of philosophy, can be traced back all the way to the garden of Eden . Genesis 3:6 says that Eve chose to eat the forbidden fruit partly because it was a "delight" to her eye. There was a certain amount of pleasure that the fruit gave her when she beheld it, and, no doubt, a degree of pleasure that she thought she would receive should she disobey God and take from the tree. In retrospect, however, Eve found only pain when she and Adam sinned ( Gen. 3:7 , 16-19 ). As a worldview, hedonism is concerned with the maximizing of pleasure and the minimizing of pain. At various points in hist

Image via Wikipedia "And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead , some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter. . . . Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite , and a woman named Damaris, and others with them." ( Acts 17:32, 34 )   Today's verse describes the reaction of the Athenians to Paul's preaching on the resurrection. These listeners seem to have consisted mostly of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers: these were the ones who got Paul to come over to the Areopagus (near the famous Parthenon ) to present his case there to an open-air gathering of curious spectators.   Now these philosophers, like most of our modern philosophers, were evolutionists.  The Stoics were pantheists and the Epicureans were atheists: neither believed in a personal Creator God nor in a primeval creation. Paul began his message by stressing the fact of special creation. They had been worshipping ma