Missions Buzzwords: The Anthropic Principle

October 14, 2008 – 2:44 pm

David Doran in chapter 3 of For the Sake of His Name, offers the following concerning the buzzword “Anthropic Principle” used in the realm of evangelism and missions today:

Some of the man-centeredness [that infected the early 20th century missions movement and affects us today] is subtle and sophisticated, some is overt and pragmatic. Often it is simply a matter of making man’s needs the ultimate motivation for missions. Bill Hybels and Mark Mittelberg provide illustration of this man-centeredness while writing on evangelism. In offering argument for why believers should be concerned about reaching unbelievers, they start by appealing to an “Anthropic Principle.”

So the lesson we can draw from the Anthropic Principle is this: Someone must have gone to a lot of effort to make things just right so that you and I could be here to enjoy life. In short, modern science points to the fact that we must really matter to God!¹

While it cannot be denied that both the wonder of and biblical revelation about creation demonstrates that mankind was the pinnacle of God’s creative activity, the Scriptures are clear that “all things have been created through Him and for Him” (Col 1:16).As Paul draws his profound discussion of God’s sovereign purposes in Romans 9-11 to a close, he does so by demanding that our focus be God-centered: “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen” (11:36). The proper biblical response to the wonder of creation is to stand in awe of His glory, not gush about how much we matter to God and how wonderful it is that God made all of this for us to enjoy life!²

¹Bill Hybels and Mark Mittelberg, Becoming A Contagious Christian (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 14.

²David Doran in For the Sake of His Name, David Doran and Pearson Johnson (Allen Park, MI: SGI, 2002), 49-50.