What is the difference between what we read about the "world" in the New Testament and what we read about in Time or Newsweek?… What is the difference between John and Time, Paul and Newsweek, when the "world" is in view? The difference is that the biblical authors see everything from a theocentric viewpoint, and secular writers see everything from an anthropocentric viewpoint. That means that the biblical perspective must be seen as theological knowledge in its strictest sense: it is knowledge in relation to God, knowledge as defined by his character, acts, and will, knowledge that derives from him, knowledge that is no less authentic than the One who guarantees it. The biblical writers compel us to read the world from this perspective, to see it in relation to the moral character of God and the ways in which he has disclosed his saving intentions in human history. Secular writers, by contrast, force us to read the world from within a framework in which God’s moral will and saving intentions, his truth and his Christ, are never the criteria of meaning or importance.
Paul Wells