Worldview Encounters

by Mr Brian Thomas

“I am convinced that for any of us to be fully conscious intellectually we should not only be able to detect the worldviews of others but be aware of our own - why it is ours and why in light of so many options we think it is true.” (James Sire)
“We may preach with all the fervour of a reformer, and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.” (J. Gresham Machen)
The need for “worldview” thinking
It is not enough for Christians to merely quote Scripture to people; we must be able to counter the basic assumptions held by people of other faiths, as well as be able to defend our own assumptions. In the West, the church failed to do so, and withdrew from being a contender in the war of ideas. This resulted in marginalisation and a loss of cultural authority. Accordingly, the West has become thoroughly secularised. This will be true of the church in any other culture that fails to engage in the war of ideas.
As it relates specifically to politics, worldview thinking is essential to understanding many political conflicts today. Thomas Sowell draws a distinction between interests and visions. Many people understand the role interests play in politics, and how interests can clash in the public square, for example, think of disputes between labour and management. However, the role of visions is often overlooked. Visions correspond to what we call a worldview - our vision of the way things are or ought to be. At the root of our most intense political conflicts are conflicts over different worldviews.
So worldview thinking is crucial to participation in the debates in the public square. We need to be able to articulate our Christianity in worldview terms, and be able to dialogue with our fellow citizens at that level in the public square.
The concept of a worldview
Norman Geisler defines a worldview as “a way of viewing or interpreting all of reality. It is an interpretive framework through which or by which one makes sense out of the data of life and the world.” Basically, your worldview is how you answer the most important questions of life. By way of illustration, a worldview is like a pair of glasses through which we see the world. Some glasses are better at presenting the world as it is, while others have a distorting effect.
James Sire’s seven basic questions answered by a worldview (illustrated with theism)
James Sire argues that all worldviews address seven basic questions. One of the most important things a Christian could do is to memorise these questions. They are a great tool for facilitating worldview dialogue with non-Christians. Let us look briefly at Sire’s seven questions, with answers by Christian theism.
a) What is prime reality—the really real?
Every worldview has a religious core, and every religion presupposes some worldview. It follows that just as everyone has a worldview, everyone has a religion. Basically, this question asks, “Is there a God or not? And if there is, what is God like?”
The Christian would answer as follows: God is infinite and personal (and triune, the Christian would insist), transcendent and immanent, omniscient, sovereign and good.”
b) What is the nature of external reality, that is, the world around us?
This is a question of metaphysics (the philosophical study of being, existence, and reality). According to Christianity, God created the cosmos ex nihilo (out of nothing) to operate with a uniformity of cause and effect in an open system. This means that the universe is not chaotic, but orderly. The universe is made up of substances with properties that can be discovered by man. Also, it is not closed and determined, but rather is open to personal free intervention, whether from God or man.
c) What is a human being?
The Christian must give a long answer to do justice to the complexity of the biblical view of humanity: Human beings are created in the image of God and thus, possess personality, self-transcendence, intelligence, morality, gregariousness and creativity. Human beings were created good, but through the fall, the image of God became defaced, though not so ruined as not to be capable of restoration; through the work of Christ, God redeemed humanity and began the process of restoring people to goodness, though any given person may choose to reject that redemption.
This is one of the most important of worldview questions. Non-Christian worldviews will almost always have a distorted view of man, tending either to idolise or degrade humanity. Furthermore, this worldview question is one of the most politically charged.
d) What happens to a person at death?
The Christian answers: For each person death is either the gate to life with God and His people (heaven) or the gate to eternal separation from the only thing that will ultimately fulfill human aspirations (hell).
e) Why is it possible to know anything at all?
This is a question of epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge). It is an important question, even though the man on the street rarely ponders it.
The Christian says: Human beings can know both the world around them and God Himself because God has built into them the capacity to do so and because He takes an active role in communicating with them. The foundation of human knowledge is the character of God as Creator. We are made in His image (Genesis 1:27). As Sire puts it, as God is the all-knowing knower of all things, so we are the sometimes-knowing knowers of some things. Basically, God gives knowledge to us through revelation, whether general revelation by observing life, or special revelation directly from God Himself.
The question of knowledge, its nature and limits, is also a politically charged one.
f) How do we know what is right and wrong?
This is a question of ethics (and epistemology). It is also helpful to meditate on the metaphysical foundations of ethics: what is “right” and “wrong,” and how is it possible that there is such thing?
The Christian claims: Ethics is transcendent and is based on the character of God as good (holy and loving). Goodness is based in God’s character - that is its metaphysical foundation. We know good and evil through our moral capacity (our conscience - even though our conscience can be seared). We also know good and evil through special revelation - God reveals in His Word what is wrong and right.
g) What is the meaning of human history?
This is where the element of narrative in a worldview is raised. What is the story all about? Does it have any meaning or significance to it at all? Is history heading towards some meaningful goal, or is it just one meaningless event after another?
According to Christianity, history is linear, a meaningful sequence of events leading to the fulfillment of God’s purposes for humanity. God’s plan of redemption has been moving throughout history towards fulfillment. The meaning of history is that God is reconciling the world to Himself through Christ, and He has called Christians to be agents or ambassadors appealing people to be reconciled to God and enter into His kingdom (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).
This is a brief illustration of the basic questions a worldview addresses. Let us examine how a few of these questions relate to controversies in the public square.
Some crucial areas of a worldview for the public square
a) What is knowledge?
This question shapes how debates are framed in the public square.
- The secular view of knowledge and its impact on history and culture
In the 1930s, Edmund Husserl reflected on Germany’s actions in World War I and the years leading up to World War II. How could the most educated society in history have been so easily led into such barbarism and atrocity? Husserl’s diagnosis was that the Germans had come to accept a view about the nature and limits of knowledge: science is the only source we have of the knowledge of reality - a view called empiricism or scientism. Questions that cannot be answered by science can be neither asked nor answered. But these are the most important questions of all. Is there a God? Is there right or wrong? What ought we teach the young? Germany no longer believed that there was knowledge regarding non-empirical issues, so German culture was left helpless before relativism and a creeping barbarism.
The sociologist Pitirim Sorokin labelled cultures that accepted this view of knowledge as sensate cultures. Sensate cultures, in contrast with ideational cultures, only believe in the reality of the sense-perceptible world. Ideational cultures believe there is more to reality than material - the world also contains immaterial realities, such as the soul, the mind, consciousness, and moral values. Furthermore, questions about immaterial realities are the most important questions. These questions can be studied and answers to them can be rationally believed and known. Sensate cultures do not last long, because their worldview cannot justify what is necessary for human flourishing. It is evident that most Western countries have been debased to the point of being thoroughly sensate cultures today.
- What does this mean for us?
Christians must attack this false view of knowledge, and defend the idea that there is such a thing as non-empirical knowledge of moral and religious truth that has a right to be spoken and heard in the public square.
We must renounce the anti-intellectualism that cripples the church’s effectiveness and renew a Biblical understanding of faith and reason. There is a widespread misunderstanding of the relationship between faith and reason in which faith is a blind act of the will to believe in something independent of reason, and regardless of the evidence. The Biblical understanding of faith is that it is the power to act in accordance with the kingdom of God, a trust that we have reason to believe is true. Thus faith is built on reason.
How should we respond? Should we try to correct the secularists’ definition of faith? That is counterproductive - a waste of time and effort. Better, I think, to simply stop using the word “faith” in the public square. This just plays into the hands of the secularist. Rather, we should use the terminology of knowledge: “reason,” “evidence,” “argument,” all in support of a “case” for moral (and religious) truths, a case that is superior to the case for secular views and views for alternate understandings of morality.
- A closer look at secularism and its empiricist view of knowledge
Secularism holds that religion and its beliefs must be limited to a prescribed place - a reservation, if you will. If the Christian steps off the reservation and asserts his views as objectively true and relevant to issues of public debate, he may receive a very intolerant response. He will likely be accused of trying to “impose” his views on people.
This is because secularist views of knowledge do not allow moral and religious truth claims to be taken seriously. This is relevant because knowledge is power, and those with cultural authority decide who has knowledge and who does not, and can marginalise and silence groups judged to lack knowledge and have only belief or private opinion. For secularists, knowledge is obtained solely by the five senses and science. Knowledge obtained by these means is culturally permissible, even culturally obligatory, to believe or speak of.
This view is scientism - that science alone can claim to give us knowledge. It is a false, self-refuting notion - the idea itself is not a claim of science or the result of scientific testing, but is a philosophical claim about science. No laboratory can ever test, confirm, or falsify the belief in scientism. Likewise, the empiricist view that truth only comes through the five senses is an a priori belief that can never be established empirically.
- The secularist view of knowledge results in a narrow plausibility structure.
A person’s plausibility structure is the set of ideas that the person is or is not willing to entertain as possibly true. A person’s plausibility structure is a function of the beliefs he already has. One’s plausibility structure includes his worldview, but extends beyond it to beliefs that he does not accept, but is willing to consider.
The secular view of knowledge forms a plausibility structure that excludes or marginalises Christianity, the Christian worldview, and the Christian perspective on moral and political issues. Therefore it is of paramount importance for the cause of Christ, as well as for the moral vitality of a society, for the church to deepen its understanding of knowledge, and to contend for the reality of non-empirical knowledge of religious and moral truths in the public square.
b) What is reality?
One of the most important metaphysical questions about reality is the question of realism (the affirmation of properties as universals) versus nominalism. This is a centuries-long philosophical debate that has to do with the problem of the one and the many, and with the existence and nature of properties, and it involves giving an account of the unity of natural classes. The problem of the one and the many is this: How is it possible to group together a number of individual things that all share something in common such that they form a natural set? Basically, realists assert that not only concrete objects exist, but also properties like redness, which are instanced in all red things. In contrast, nominalists claim only that concrete objects exist, but universals do not. Red things are red because the word “red” is true of them. The realist counters that this is backward.
The upshot is that the nominalist view winds up denying that things have specific essences that ground their membership in natural sets or in natural kinds. All groupings are purely conventional, customary, or pragmatic.
This impacts vital issues of moral and political relevance. Nominalism contributes to the loss of transcendent knowledge, and the restriction of knowledge to sensible particular objects. This led to the growth of empiricism and the loss of moral and religious knowledge. It has also led to moral relativism. Objective morality depends on acts having an intrinsic nature or character, in virtue of which they are right or wrong. But nominalism undermines that possibility - acts do not have an intrinsic essential character, and so must be labelled “right” or “wrong” relative to something external to the act - the individual’s preferences, or usefulness to society.
The “gay marriage” issue is another instance of realism versus nominalism. According to the realist, marriage is a thing in the world that has a definite intrinsic character - namely a man and a woman pledged to a lifelong monogamous union. Wherever you have such a union, there is a marriage. But according to the nominalist, “marriage” is just a word that can be applied to whatever grouping society likes. Marriage is just a “societal construct” or a “linguistic construct.” And if we vote, or if a judge decrees, “marriage” can be applied to two men or two women—and maybe someday, two men, three women, and a goat. If you have a problem with that, you are not only a “homophobe,” you are a “speciesist”.
c) What is a human being?
This is one of the most important worldview questions we could ponder in any sense - religiously, philosophically, and politically. Two recent works illuminate the implications of how we answer this question.
- Thomas Sowell, “A Conflict of Visions”, the constrained versus the unconstrained vision
Sowell points out that some of our deepest political conflicts are actually fundamental clashes of worldview. Specifically, he spells out two competing visions about the nature of man that have been warring in the West for centuries.
The first is the unconstrained vision: this is an optimistic view of human nature and human perfectibility; a belief that if only the right political and economic arrangements could be implemented, mankind will achieve progress and perhaps even completely eliminate many human problems. For this to happen, the wisdom of the elites must be imposed from the top-down, so there is little patience with decentralised processes like the free market, which can produce “unfair” or “unequal” outcomes. There is also little patience with systematic processes of the rule of law or constitutional government, which permit reform only in slow, piecemeal fashion, and which limit the power of the elites to institute revolutionary “progressive” reforms.
The other vision is the constrained vision: this is a pessimistic or tragic view of human nature as deeply flawed in a way that cannot be fixed by the “right” political and economic arrangements. It is necessary for government to acknowledge and accommodate these flaws as a brute given, and to prevent the full potentiality of man’s flaws from leading to greater harm. The best way to do this is through decentralised political power and systematic processes like the free market, the rule of law, and constitutional government. Reforms should be slow, incremental, and piecemeal. There is great distrust of visionary grand schemes implemented by elites - in fact, these usually exacerbate the problems they are intended to solve.
Sowell is a proponent of the constrained vision, and refers to the unconstrained vision as “the vision of the anointed” and describes it as a “quest for cosmic justice”, which cannot be realised on earth, but the insistent quest for it can lead to the loss of freedom and other great harms. On earth, there are no perfect “cosmic” solutions, there are only trade-offs of costs and benefits.
Sowell’s analysis illuminates the political struggles of history and of current events. For example, the unconstrained vision is seen in the philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the French Revolution, and in Communism. The constrained vision is seen in the philosophy of Edmund Burke, and was the vision of the American Founding Fathers. In contemporary times, it is an accurate generalisation to say that the unconstrained version animates the political Left, and the constrained version animates the political Right.
As Christians, we would not want to uncritically accept every aspect of any ideology or current political programme, whether of the Right or Left, without careful examination. However, the Christian worldview is in broad and general agreement with the constrained vision regarding the flaws deep in the heart of mankind. While we should strive for justice, reform, and progress, cosmic justice will not be achieved until heaven and earth are one. In the meantime, we should be guided by prudence and make our rule, “First, do no harm.” We should be suspicious of grandiose utopian schemes.
- J.P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae, “Body & Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics”.
Imagine that you are washing dishes one night and your child comes up behind you and says, “Mommy, can I kill this?” Supposing that you cannot turn around far enough to see your child, probably you would ask, “Kill what? What is it?” If your child wants to kill a spider or cockroach, that is OK. But it isn’t OK if it is the neighbor’s puppy or, even worse, the baby sister. The question “Can I kill it?” is vitally linked to the question “What is it?” What it is determines if it can be killed. The moral debate about abortion completely hinges on what the unborn is.
This illustration captures a truth that is expounded at length by J. P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae in their book “Body & Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics”. The gist of the book is that ethical questions are tied to different views of human nature. It is impossible to argue about ethical questions without assuming a view of what a human being is. Usually such views are not argued, but exist as hidden assumptions smuggled into ethical arguments. But ethics is based on metaphysics, moral issues turn on answers to metaphysical questions about what a human being is.
This fact has one key implication: It is inadequate to argue about an ethical issue without clearly arguing for the metaphysical view of the person underlying the ethical argument. For example, when arguing against pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia views, you must also show how their view of what a human being is false.
“Body & Soul” is a model example of a serious, high-level Christian philosophy and reflection on the crucial worldview question of what it means to be human, and the implications for the bioethical issues in the public square.
What is right and wrong?
Our ability to reason about ethical issues makes a significant difference to our effectiveness in dialoging in the public square about what the law ought to permit.
Ethics is a real problem for the secular mindset. It is hard to maintain that there is any such thing as ethical knowledge given empiricism or naturalism. Those who seek to be consistent with such views are forced to redefine morality as mere individual preferences, societal rules, or an illusionary sentiment foisted upon us by evolution.
None of these attempted redefinitions successfully capture the essence of morality or our experience of it. In fact, we do know many moral truths. For example, we do not just believe, but we know, that it is right to care for a little baby, and it is wrong to decapitate it. We know that it is better to care for the baby than to decapitate it. We know these things independently of our wishes, preferences, or society’s rules. Anybody who claims not to know these things is either lying, psychotic, or normatively blind and deficient. One cannot deny these moral facts unless he is socialised to do so through prolonged immersion in a defective cognitive environment, such as many Western universities; or unless he is committed to denying other truths (like the existence of God) that are connected to the existence of objective moral facts. Once this connection is discovered, the one who is committed to denying God may give up the knowledge of moral truths he had once possessed, paradoxically growing in ignorance and plunging himself into deeper darkness.
Needless to say, the implications of this kind of thinking in the public square are disastrous. For example, it leads to Princeton ethicist Peter Singer reasoning that there is no moral difference between abortion and infanticide… and therefore infanticide ought to be permitted. Doestoyevsky was tragically right when he wrote that if there is no God, everything is permitted. This shows why it is so important for Christians to be able to reason about the reality of ethics in the public square.
Conclusion
There are seven key questions about the meaning of life that every worldview seeks to answer. These questions can guide our own thinking as we deepen our understanding of our own worldview. They can help us to articulate our faith in a way that is intelligible and that makes sense in the public square.