The scientific mentality that demands warrant for all our beliefs permeates all of modem thinking. Of course, at the base of all those beliefs for which we demand evidence are more fundamental beliefs that are simply acquiesced in because they are part of our culture. They are the things that few of us scrutinize, but they have enormous influence upon the beliefs and doctrines that we do scrupulously think about.

This is especially true in the area of theology where theological doctrines are greatly affected by more fundamental notions of things like good and evil, sin, love, happiness, etc. We spend time debating and developing our theological doctrines but take for granted that we have correct ideas of what is good or evil — that we know what sin or love is — but do we? In fact, the notions most of us have of such things are simply unreflectively acquired through our experience as individuals and members of a language community and culture. My language community and culture taught me to understand such things in certain ways, and then my individual experience moulded my understanding without much reflection. But, although acquired unreflectively, these basic notions which have such an enormous influence upon our theology are philosophically loaded concepts. Although we take them for granted and treat them ‘as if’ they were somehow God-given, they in fact represent the philosophical views of the culture we were born or educated into.