Biblical Worldview Applications

• Creation. Any biology, Bible, or other courses at PHC dealing with creation will teach creation from the understanding of Scripture that God's creative work, as described in Genesis 1:1-31, was completed in six twenty-four hour days. All faculty for such courses will be chosen on the basis of their personal adherence to this view. PHC expects its faculty in these courses, as in all courses, to expose students to alternate theories and the data, if any, which support those theories. In this context, PHC in particular expects its biology faculty to provide a full exposition of the claims of the theory of Darwinian evolution, intelligent design, and other major theories while, in the end, teach creation as both biblically true and as the best fit to observed data.
• Equality. We hold this truth to be self-evident: that all men are created equal. All human beings are created in God's image, and all are precious and equal in His sight. Bigotry is a sin against God and man; therefore, it is appropriate that government forbid discrimination in commerce, education, and employment based upon ethnicity, national origin, or skin color.
• Sexual Conduct. Since any sexual conduct outside the parameters of the faithful marriage of a man and a woman is sin, any government which creates legal structures to encourage or condone inappropriate sexual activity or lust, heterosexual or homosexual, or which creates special legal rights and protections based on sexual conduct, is acting immorally and without authority. Pornography, because it degrades God's image-bearers and incites sinful lust, is always evil and merits no legal protection.
• Private Property. As God's image-bearers with dominion and stewardship responsibilities over the remainder of creation, men and women have the inalienable right to own and manage their own property, subject to government regulation only in the unusual situation where the rights of others are endangered. Government systems, such as communism and socialism, which give the government primary control over property, are a violation of God's creation order.
• Government and Law. Any legitimate system of government must be built on the dual realizations that all people (i) bear God's image and are therefore entitled to enjoy a number of fundamental, inalienable rights, but (ii) are tainted by sin and therefore cannot be trusted to be free of all government restraint. Importantly, sin affects not only those governed, but also those who govern.
  

  
  In the words of James Madison:

  If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

   

  Therefore, governmental and legal systems:
  
  • must be of law, not of men; with rules and processes that apply equally to all persons regardless of their ethnicity, national origin, or skin color; their wealth; or their influence or prestige;
  • must provide the rights of self-government, so that citizens may either directly decide questions of law and policy or have a voice in selecting those who make such decisions;
  • should-in order to achieve the highest possible level of stability and fairness-be based on the firm foundation of a written constitution and laws, whose meanings are determined by their text and the original intent of those who enacted them, with appropriate processes for change and amendment over time and with the approval of the people; to do otherwise invites governments to recognize the acts of men to be the highest laws of the land rather than the laws of nature and of nature's God that have been committed to a written text; and finally,
  • should maintain a separation of power among national, regional, and local governments and among the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government, so that no leader or group of leaders may ever acquire unchecked power. [Deuteronomy 17:14 20]