LoCK within Christian Thought

Locating LoCK within Christian Thought

LoCK began with a practical question: How should a follower of Jesus Christ discern what he or she encounters? What developed was a framework for bringing what is encountered beneath Christ and His Word in order to see more clearly and respond faithfully. It was not built by gathering the ideas of particular theologians into a new system.

For an introduction to the framework itself, see What Is LoCK?

But no Christian thinks alone. We receive God’s Word, learn from other believers, inherit centuries of Christian thought, and carry ideas whose histories we may not fully know. As LoCK developed, many of its convictions began to sound familiar for good reason. Christians before us have wrestled deeply with Christ’s lordship, biblical authority, creation, culture, worldview, human fallibility, and faithful living.

One of the simplest examples is found in the name itself. The Lens of Christ’s Kingdom (LoCK) intentionally uses the image of a lens: how we see matters, and our sight must be brought under Christ and His Word. Only later in LoCK’s development did John Calvin’s well-known image of Scripture as spectacles come into view. Calvin described Scripture as helping fallen people see more clearly what God has revealed in His works. LoCK’s language was not borrowed from Calvin, though the underlying idea was certainly not invented by LoCK.

Discovering Calvin’s spectacles helped reveal something about LoCK’s inheritance. Ideas already present in its development had roots deeper in Christian thought than were realized at the time. Similarity does not prove direct influence, but neither should genuine precedent be ignored simply to make the framework appear more original.

One way to picture that inheritance is as a building. Many of LoCK’s bricks are old, and some of its walls have recognizable precedents as well. The more useful question is how these inherited convictions have been gathered and ordered for the practical work of Christian discernment.

That is the purpose of this companion. It seeks neither novelty nor pedigree, but truthful location. The Christian thinkers considered here help show where LoCK stands within the Christian inheritance and where its particular arrangement may be less common. But they cannot establish whether LoCK is faithful. LoCK is a human framework that can be examined, corrected, and refined. Christ is the standard by which it must be judged.

And so He is where we begin.

Jesus Christ as the Center

If LoCK begins under Christ, the reason must be more than Christian preference. It begins with a claim about something that happened in history: Jesus Christ was crucified, buried, and raised from the dead.

Paul makes the stakes unmistakable in 1 Corinthians 15. If Christ has not been raised, Christian faith is empty and Christians remain in their sins. But the resurrection does more than confirm that Christianity is true. The Christ who was raised also reigns. Paul looks ahead to the day when every enemy is placed beneath Christ’s feet and all things are subjected to Him. The movement is clear: Christ crucified, Christ raised, Christ reigning.

That changes the starting point for Christian discernment. Christians do not encounter the world as though Christ were one possible explanation to be weighed alongside every other. Paul describes all things as created through and for Christ and held together in Him (Colossians 1:16–17). John presents Him as the Word through whom all things were made and as the One who is truth and life. The risen Jesus does not merely change what Christians believe about salvation. He changes how they understand reality.

Christians have reasoned from this center across the centuries. Irenaeus understood God’s work in creation and redemption as finding its coherence in Christ. Augustine joined rightly knowing with rightly loving God. Much later, Kuyper pressed Christ’s lordship across every part of life, while Bavinck brought revelation, creation, history, culture, and human knowing together within an integrated Christian account. Their settings differ, but the shared conviction reaches across centuries: Jesus Christ is not one truth among many Christian truths. Who He is and what He has done reorients everything else.

LoCK gives that conviction a visible place. Jesus Christ is not the first step in a process or one source of information among several. The entire framework remains beneath Him. Biblical Authority and Reflection have their place because Christ is crucified, risen, and reigning.

His lordship also gives discernment its purpose. Christ does not call His followers merely to reach correct conclusions. He calls them to follow Him. Christian discernment cannot begin from neutrality. If Christ is risen and reigning, it begins under the King.

Sources in Conversation: Irenaeus · Augustine · John Calvin · Abraham Kuyper · Herman Bavinck

Biblical Authority

If Christ is the center, Christian discernment must ask how He has made Himself known. LoCK answers first with Biblical Authority. God’s Word does not merely contribute to Christian discernment. It governs it.

Within that authority, LoCK gives deliberate attention to Jesus’ words, then the New Testament, then the Old Testament. This is not a ranking of inspiration. The whole Bible is God’s Word. LoCK is describing an interpretive orientation within one Biblical Authority, not three levels of biblical authority.

The One speaking in the Gospels is the crucified, risen, and reigning Christ. His words come to us through the apostolic witness, yet who He is gives those recorded words particular significance. This does not create a “red-letter” Bible within the Bible. It recognizes that the whole Bible bears witness to Christ, while Christ Himself helps us understand the witness that surrounds Him.

Jesus receives and fulfills the Old Testament rather than setting it aside. After His resurrection, Luke records Him opening the Scriptures to show how Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms pointed toward Him. Paul interprets Christ’s death, resurrection, and reign through those same Scriptures. Peter joins prophetic witness with apostolic eyewitness testimony. The Old Testament leads us toward Christ, and Christ teaches us how to read what came before.

Christians have wrestled with this relationship from the earliest centuries. Irenaeus held together Christ’s fulfillment, apostolic proclamation, and the Scriptures that preceded Him. Much later, David Starling described a similar relationship between the teaching of Jesus, the apostolic witness, and the Old Testament. Catholic and Orthodox traditions likewise provide important examples of Christ-centered reading, even where their understanding of the Bible and tradition differs from LoCK’s Protestant ordering.

LoCK gives this relationship a simple architectural form: Jesus’ Words, New Testament, Old Testament. The arrangement may be more particular to LoCK, but the conviction beneath it is not. Christians have long read the Bible as one coherent Word whose story finds its center and fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Biblical Authority remains one authority. We do not begin with the risen King and then leave Him behind when we open the Bible. We receive the whole Bible as God’s Word and read it knowing who Christ is. It governs how we see, what we believe, and how we follow Him.

Sources in Conversation: Irenaeus · John Calvin · Dei Verbum · Thomas Hopko · David Starling

Reflection

Biblical Authority governs Christian discernment, but Christians do not discern with their eyes closed to the world around them. We live within God’s creation, receive what others have learned and handed down, and encounter worldviews that seek to explain what reality means. LoCK receives these as Reflection beneath Biblical Authority.

Reflection is intentionally ordered: Created World, Cultural Memory, Worldviews. God created a real universe. Human beings encounter it, remember what they have learned, and pass that learning to others. We also interpret what we encounter, often through larger accounts of what reality means. Each can contribute to discernment, but none becomes another Biblical Authority.

Created World

Christianity begins with a world God actually made. The heavens declare His glory, and creation reveals His power and divine nature. Paul could point toward rain, crops, seasons, and human existence because the created world bears genuine witness to its Creator.

Christians have long recognized both the value and limits of that witness. Aquinas emphasized the intelligibility of creation and what human reason can genuinely know from it. Calvin affirmed that God makes Himself known through His works while insisting that fallen human beings do not always see those works clearly. His image of God’s Word as spectacles belongs here. The problem is not that creation has nothing to say. The problem is that our sight can be wrong.

Bavinck develops the relationship more broadly. We encounter a world that is already there, created by God and open to genuine investigation. Observation, science, and reason therefore matter. But the person observing remains a creature, with limited knowledge and sight affected by sin.

LoCK receives created order in that spirit. What is actually there matters. Evidence may expose a mistaken assumption or reveal that we have misunderstood something, including our own interpretation of the Bible. Creation does not become a higher authority correcting God’s Word. It may help reveal that the correction is needed in us.

Sources in Conversation: Thomas Aquinas · John Calvin · Herman Bavinck

Cultural Memory

We also receive much of what we know through others. History, literature, art, scientific inheritance, institutions, traditions, creeds, confessions, and the accumulated wisdom of communities preserve what human beings have seen, learned, believed, and passed on. LoCK gathers this inheritance under Cultural Memory.

Augustine recognized truth within non-Christian learning while insisting that truth ultimately belongs to God. Kuyper’s account of common grace likewise helps explain how human cultures can preserve real insight even amid sin. We do not encounter the world as isolated minds. We inherit much from those who came before us.

Christian tradition deserves particular gratitude. Creeds, confessions, councils, church history, and theologians can protect us from old errors and help us recognize truths we might otherwise miss. LoCK’s Protestant inheritance becomes especially visible in how it orders these voices. They may carry considerable weight when they faithfully reflect God’s Word, but they remain received human testimony beneath Biblical Authority. Subordination does not imply distance.

The same ordering applies across Christian traditions. Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed, Lutheran, Baptist, and other voices may differ greatly, but none receives an exemption from LoCK’s architecture. Even the Protestant and Reformed voices with which LoCK often resonates remain corrigible beneath God’s Word. We receive the Christian inheritance gratefully, while allowing Biblical Authority to govern what we receive.

Sources in Conversation: Justin Martyr · Augustine · John Calvin · Abraham Kuyper · Dei Verbum · Thomas Hopko 

Worldviews

Human beings do more than observe and remember. We also gather what we believe into larger accounts of reality. Worldviews make claims about God, humanity, truth, morality, identity, meaning, history, and destiny. They shape both the answers people give and the questions they think are worth asking.

Here LoCK has particularly strong affinities with the Reformed worldview tradition. Kuyper and Bavinck emphasized the comprehensive reach of Christian truth. Van Til and Frame challenged autonomous and supposedly neutral reasoning. Later Christian worldview writers carried those concerns into practical engagement with culture.

Recognizing a worldview as rival to Christianity does not mean assuming that everything it sees is false. People beginning from mistaken assumptions still encounter the world God actually made. They may preserve something true through Cultural Memory or notice something in Created World that Christians have overlooked.

LoCK therefore asks what is being seen clearly, what has been distorted, and what assumptions are shaping the interpretation. A competing worldview may expose something we have failed to notice without becoming the authority by which Christian truth is judged. We can receive what is true without receiving the larger account that gives it a different meaning.

Sources in Conversation: Abraham Kuyper · Herman Bavinck · Cornelius Van Til · John Frame · Vern Poythress · Albert Wolters · James Sire · Nancy Pearcey · Summit Ministries

Taken together, Created World, Cultural Memory, and Worldviews give Reflection its shape. This hierarchy establishes authority, not necessarily distance. God has placed us within a created world, among people from whom we can learn, carrying an inheritance we did not build ourselves. These are gifts to receive with gratitude and humility.

And Christ remains the center. Creation belongs to Him. Human history unfolds beneath His reign. Every worldview makes claims about a reality that is already His. Reflection can help us see more clearly, but it never gives us another king.

Authority and Correction

Because Reflection can help us see what we have missed, Christian discernment must also leave room for correction. God’s Word does not change. Our understanding can. Every Christian reads with limited knowledge, incomplete experience, and the effects of sin. The authority is not uncertain, but we can be wrong.

The Bereans give a helpful example. When Paul preached Christ to them, they received his message eagerly and examined the Scriptures daily to see whether what he said was true (Acts 17:11). Their willingness to listen did not weaken their confidence in God’s Word. It showed where their confidence rested.

Reflection can serve us in much the same way. Creation may challenge an assumption. Christian history may reveal something we have overlooked. Even someone working from a different worldview may notice something we have missed. When that happens, we return to God’s Word and look again.

Jesus brings the question closer. Before addressing the speck in another person’s eye, He tells His followers to remove the beam from their own (Matthew 7:3–5). Sometimes clearer sight reveals that the problem is not only in the idea before us. It is in us.

LoCK may help reveal the beam. It cannot remove it. Once error is seen, Christ calls His followers to repent, obey, and walk faithfully.

The same humility applies to LoCK. It is a human framework used by fallible people. If it is shown to misunderstand God’s Word or hinder faithful discernment, it should be corrected. The authority has not changed. We have. Faithfulness means following Christ where correction leads.

Sources in Conversation: Augustine · John Calvin · Martin Luther · Herman Bavinck · John Frame · Vern Poythress

The LoCK Architecture

Once the pieces are considered individually, another question comes into view: what happens when these relationships are brought together?

Bavinck offers perhaps the broadest theological comparison, while Kuyper provides strong precedent for comprehensive lordship, worldview, and non-neutrality. Frame and Poythress come especially close to LoCK’s concern for how Christians know and interpret the world under God’s authority. Other comparisons help us see parts of the structure. The Wesleyan Quadrilateral distinguishes governing Scripture from other resources, Starling provides a parallel within Biblical Authority, and Ignatian discernment shows that structured Christian discernment itself has a much older history.

But none simply gives us LoCK.

Many of the bricks are old. Several of the walls are recognizable. What appears less common among the sources considered here is the completed building. LoCK gathers inherited convictions into a fixed vertical order: Jesus Christ, Biblical Authority, Reflection. The person encountering an idea moves horizontally toward discernment and then toward faithful response. At the intersection, what we perceive is brought beneath the fixed framework.

This appears to be where LoCK is more particular. Christian intellectual history is too large to say that no one has assembled these pieces similarly. Among the sources considered here, however, no close precedent was identified for this complete two-axis arrangement brought together at a single point of practical discernment.

That is a limited conclusion, not a claim of originality. And distinctiveness is not the final question. LoCK matters only if its architecture helps Christians see more clearly beneath Christ and then respond faithfully.

Sources in Conversation: Herman Bavinck · Abraham Kuyper · John Frame · Vern Poythress · John Wesley · David Starling · Ignatius of Loyola

Discernment and Faithful Fruit

That brings us to the reason the architecture exists. Christian discernment is not an end in itself. Seeing clearly matters because Christ calls His followers to live faithfully. A person may understand an idea correctly and still refuse to obey. LoCK can serve discernment, but it cannot produce faithfulness.

Jesus begins somewhere deeper than better reasoning. In John 15, He calls His disciples to abide in Him. His words are to remain in them, His love is to shape them, and their lives are to bear fruit. The branch does not produce fruit by mastering a method. It bears fruit because it remains in the vine.

Paul likewise calls believers to be transformed by the renewing of their minds so that they may discern the will of God (Romans 12:2). In Philippians, he prays that love will grow with knowledge and discernment so that believers may recognize what really matters and be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:9–11). Discernment belongs within a life already being shaped by Christ.

The same pattern appears throughout the New Testament. John joins knowing Christ with obedience and love. Peter connects resurrection hope with holy living. James warns against hearing God’s Word without doing what it says. Truth is meant to be lived.

Christians have recognized this connection across the centuries. Jonathan Edwards argued that genuine Christian affections finally show themselves in Christian practice. Ignatian traditions of discernment likewise remind us that discernment must become a faithful choice before God. The circumstances may change, but the call to faithfulness does not.

This is where the horizontal movement of LoCK matters. An idea is brought beneath the framework in the hope of reaching clearer discernment. But LoCK stops at the intersection. It cannot take the next step for the person standing there.

That response may require speaking or remaining silent, acting or waiting, changing course or continuing faithfully. It may require repentance when discernment has exposed a beam in our own eye. The framework may help make the choice clearer. It cannot obey for us.

Nor does LoCK replace the ordinary life of Christian faith. We still pray, seek wisdom, listen to other believers, depend upon the Holy Spirit, and obey even when obedience is costly. LoCK may help us see. Christ is the One we follow.

That is the hope of discernment: not simply a better answer, but faithful fruit. LoCK helps the believer see. The believer must then walk.

For a practical guide to bringing an idea through LoCK toward discernment and faithful response, see How to Use LoCK. 

Sources in Conversation: Ignatius of Loyola · Jonathan Edwards · Martin Luther

LoCK within the Christian Inheritance

Where, then, does LoCK belong? Its center in the crucified, risen, and reigning Christ belongs to the historic Christian faith. Its ordering of Biblical Authority has clear Protestant roots. Its treatment of creation, culture, worldview, and non-neutrality has particularly strong connections to Reformed thought.

LoCK does not trace neatly to one theologian or tradition. It receives from a much broader Christian inheritance. That should give us both confidence and humility. Many of its convictions have been tested and carried by Christians before us. LoCK did not discover them.

Christian thought is also far too broad to insist that no one has assembled these ideas similarly. More importantly, novelty would prove little. The better question is whether LoCK faithfully helps Christians discern beneath Christ and His Word.

The inheritance helps us ask that question well. Christians who walked before us can sharpen the framework, expose weaknesses, and help us see what we might otherwise miss. There is a gift in listening to them.

But eventually they point beyond themselves. Calvin’s spectacles remind us that we need help seeing. Kuyper reminds us how completely Christ reigns. Bavinck helps us see the coherence of a world that belongs to God. None carries the authority on which LoCK rests.

Jesus Christ does.

LoCK began there, and it must remain there. The framework can help a believer bring what is encountered beneath Christ and His Word, see more clearly, and discern faithfully. What follows cannot be supplied by LoCK. Christ calls each of us to follow Him.

That was the purpose all along.

Works Consulted

The works below informed the research, comparison, and synthesis behind this companion. Not every source appears directly in the text. Some provided historical or theological context or helped clarify similarities and differences that were ultimately summarized.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. Creation, reason, natural knowledge, and revealed knowledge.

Augustine, Confessions. Christian knowing, rightly ordered love, and humility.

Augustine, On Christian Doctrine. Biblical interpretation and the faithful reception of wider learning.

Herman Bavinck, Christian Worldview. Worldview and the coherence of reality under God.

Herman Bavinck, The Philosophy of Revelation. Revelation, creation, culture, science, and human knowledge.

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Revelation, Scripture, creation, knowledge, sin, and grace.

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion. Biblical authority, creation, fallen sight, and Scripture as spectacles.

Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections. Christian affection, practice, and faithful fruit.

John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. Authority, created reality, human knowing, and perspectivalism.

John M. Frame, “A Primer on Perspectivalism.” A concise account of perspectival Christian knowing.

Richard B. Hays, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness. Christ-centered reading of Israel’s Scriptures.

Peter S. Heslam, Creating a Christian Worldview. Historical context for Kuyper and Christian worldview thought.

Thomas Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, Volume I: Doctrine and Scripture. Orthodox understandings of Scripture, Christ, and Holy Tradition.

Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises. Christian discernment directed toward faithful response.

Irenaeus, Against Heresies. Christological coherence, apostolic witness, creation, and redemption.

Justin Martyr, First Apology and Second Apology. Truth beyond the Christian community and its relation to Christ.

Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace. Culture, common grace, and genuine knowledge amid sin.

Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism. Christ’s comprehensive lordship, worldview, culture, and non-neutrality.

Martin Luther, On the Councils and the Church. Biblical authority, the fallibility of human teaching and councils, and correction beneath God’s Word. 

Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian. Christian freedom, faith, obedience, and service flowing from life in Christ. 

Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks. Gospel truth and the assumptions of Western culture.

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Gospel truth, pluralism, and Christian witness.

Albert C. Outler, “The Wesleyan Quadrilateral in John Wesley.” Historical formulation of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.

Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth. Christian worldview, culture, and the sacred-secular divide.

Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief. Christian knowledge, warranted belief, and the effects of sin.

Vern S. Poythress, Symphonic Theology. Multiple perspectives, human limitation, and theological correction.

Vern S. Poythress, “Thoughts on Cultural Analysis.” Scripture, creation, worldview, culture, and Christian analysis.

Francis A. Schaeffer, A Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy. Revelation, reason, truth, and competing systems of thought.

Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? Christian engagement with ideas, history, art, science, and culture.

Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum. Catholic understandings of revelation, Scripture, Tradition, and teaching authority.

James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door. Practical identification and comparison of worldviews.

David I. Starling, Hermeneutics as Apprenticeship. Jesus, apostolic witness, the Old Testament, and interpretation.

Summit Ministries, Understanding the Faith. Biblical and apologetic foundations for Christian worldview.

Summit Ministries, Understanding the Times. Identification and evaluation of competing worldviews.

Summit Ministries, Understanding the Culture. Christian worldview applied to contemporary culture.

Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith. Presuppositions, non-neutrality, and autonomous reasoning.

John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch. Scripture, revelation, church, and Christian reading.

John Wesley, “The Character of a Methodist.” Scripture as the rule of Christian faith and practice.

The Wesleyan Church, “The Wesleyan Quadrilateral.” Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience in Wesleyan thought.

Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained. Creation, fall, redemption, and Reformational worldview.