What's In A Worldview? Part III - The Universality and Diversity of Worldview

What’s In A Worldview? Part III – The Universality and Diversity of Worldview

Tawa J. Anderson, W. Michael Clark, and David K. Naugle, An Introduction to Christian Worldview: Pursuing God's Perspective in a Pluralistic World. IVP Academic, October 2017. 384 pp. Amazon link

Worldview is the conceptual lens through which we see, understand, and interpret the world and our place within it. Worldview develops in and flows through the heart, the center of the human person, and necessarily involves answers (propositional or narrative) to four sets of questions: What is our nature? What is our world? What is our problem? What is our end? Furthermore, a worldview is a person-specific matrix—a perception of reality, a filter through which everything flows as we seek to make sense of external data. The answers, conscious or unconscious, consistent or inconsistent, to the four governing questions constitute one’s fundamental worldview. Each person has an answer to the four sets of questions, even if the person has never formed them into intelligible propositions or coherent narratives. Whether one looks at worldview as a set of beliefs about the structure of the world, an internal framework, or a set of glasses through which we look at reality, the bottom line is that every person possesses a worldview. We may not like it; we might deny it. We might insist that worldview is not even a rational concept. But that does not change the fact that each of us has a worldview and that one’s worldview strongly affects the way that one lives.

Because everybody has a worldview, there are literally countless worldviews held by people across the globe. Each worldview is unique to its owner. No two people have precisely identical worldviews.

Consider, for example, possible answers to the second worldview question, what is our world? Christians are going to answer that question with the same general answer: God’s. This is my Father’s world; the universe is created by and for God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To this point, Christians will universally agree. But if we delve deeper, there is much more to explore. For example, what else can we say about the God who created the universe? Some philosophers and theologians argue that we cannot say much else because God is utterly transcendent and beyond our knowledge, definition, and comprehension. Others insist that we can and should seek to understand God and that we can indeed come to know God truly (although not exhaustively). They might argue, for example, that God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.

Imagine that we agree that God is omnipotent. Well then, what does omnipotence mean? Can God do literally anything? William of Ockham and others insist that yes, God can do literally anything. Thomas Aquinas and others insist that no, God cannot do some things. God cannot lie, because to do so would be to violate his very nature.

How about God’s omnibenevolence, or all-goodness? How can we work that out? If God is all good, where does evil come from? Is evil, as Augustine argued, the absence of goodness that occurs when God’s creatures fail to practice his goodness in their lives? Does evil result strictly from the sinful rebellion of man? Does God desire evil to exist in order to bring greater glory to himself through redemption? Christians have differences in these areas.

How about God’s omniscience, or all-knowingness? Most Christians affirm that God knows all things, including future actions that human beings, as free-willed creatures, have not even chosen to do yet. How can this be? Augustine and Boethius argue that God exists outside of time and space, such that he experiences what is future to us as already present to himself. Thus, our future free actions are already seen by God and enable his eternally present knowledge of those events. God sees our future in the same way that we see our present. Others, including Bruce Ware, argue that God’s knowledge of the future is grounded in his meticulous sovereignty, whereby he not only foreknows but foreordains what is yet to come. God knows future actions because God determines what those actions shall be.

The point here is not to engage in discussion or debate about these issues; rather, the point is simply to demonstrate that within one broad worldview perspective (that of orthodox Christian theism), there exists a wide variety of ways to work out the answers to worldview questions. The moral of the story is simply that each person possesses a worldview that is entirely unique to that person. No two Christians are going to have precisely identical worldviews. This creates somewhat of a tension within worldview thinking. On the one hand, there is such a thing as a Christian worldview—propositions, answers, or narratives that are common to all Christians at all times in all places. Baptist, Pentecostal, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Christians will affirm the overarching narrative of creation-fall-redemption: God created, humanity is fallen, and Jesus saves. On the other hand, Christian traditions nuance those worldview beliefs and work out other aspects of worldview differently. Examination of individual Christian believers reveals a great deal of diversity. Simply put, different Christians possess different manifestations of the Christian worldview. Despite the differences, however, there is such a thing as an overarching Christian worldview.

In some ways, this diversity in the midst of unity should not surprise us; this is just one version of the classic philosophical problem of the one and the many. For example, a typical college classroom is filled with perhaps two dozen human beings; yet each student is a different and unique example or manifestation of humanness. We all share certain essential or nonnegotiable characteristics or properties that make us uniformly human. Yet we each have other, more incidental or accidental, characteristics or properties that make us a uniquely instantiated human being. The same is true with respect to worldviews. There are certain essential characteristics to a uniformly Christian worldview, yet there are also numerous secondary characteristics that mark a uniquely fleshedout Christian worldview.

Thus, the fact that everybody has a unique individual worldview does not prevent us from identifying a more limited number of overarching worldviews. Often these broad worldviews will be defined as philosophical systems or as religious worldviews. Some of the key worldviews prevalent in the world today include Christianity, Islam, Judaism, naturalism (atheistic modernity), existentialism, Buddhism, Hinduism, animism, New Age spirituality, and postmodernism. These overarching worldviews provide different large-picture answers to the fundamental worldview questions.

For example, a naturalistic (or atheistic) worldview claims that there is no God, the universe sprang into existence with no explanation (or else has existed eternally), life arose on primordial earth through random chemical reactions, and human life evolved through random mutation and natural selection. There is nothing particularly special about human beings compared to the rest of nature, and our primary problem is enslavement to superstitious worldviews that promote religious belief. The solution to the problem is intellectual evolution and liberation from religious oppression. After we die, we entirely cease to be, so whatever purpose we choose to pursue for our lives is the only purpose and meaning there can be.

The Christian worldview has substantially different answers. In the beginning was God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All that is was created by him out of nothingness; at its creation, everything was declared good by God. Humankind was created good by God and stamped with his very image. The problems in the world are the result of humanity’s rebellion and fall into sin. Instead of harmony and communion, human beings now experience broken relationships with God, self, fellow human beings, and God’s creation. God provides the means for redemption through the atoning death of Jesus; broken relationships can be healed and reconciled in Christ. After death, all human beings are judged on the basis of their relationship with God in Christ; believers experience eternal life in the presence of God.

The differences between the worldview matrices of naturalism and Christianity are significant and greatly affect the way that we perceive the world around us. You can, indeed, say with justification that the Christian theist and the naturalist inhabit different worlds. The conceptual lens through which the world is viewed is starkly distinct; thus, what is seen is also quite different. I consider Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, understood through the filter of worldview thought, to be a fitting reflection on the importance of worldview thought:

The eye [worldview] is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your

whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole

body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how

great is that darkness! (Mt 6:22-23)

For more on Worldview, its nature and impact, worldview analysis, the contours of Christian worldview, and worldview comparison, please check out our recently-published Worldview textbook:

Tawa J. Anderson, W. Michael Clark, and David K. Naugle, An Introduction to Christian Worldview: Pursuing God's Perspective in a Pluralistic World. IVP Academic, October 2017. 384 pp.  Amazon link