Worldview Features: Part 2
By Paul Copan
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Worldview Features: Part 2
Characteristics of a Worldview
By Paul Copan
Introduction
Last month we observed how a worldview is deeply embedded within the human mind, and very often what remains unsaid and assumed about a person’s worldview lies at the core of her being and doing. A worldview very much lies beneath the surface of our awareness but nevertheless informs how we think and what we do.
For Christians, life is to be oriented around Christ’s kingdom and lordship over us. The gospel is to permeate our attitudes and values and to prioritize how we think, function, and relate. The reason we embrace the gospel is because it is true—a historical fact confirmed by Jesus’s bodily resurrection (1 Cor. 15:14). And not only is this gospel true, but it helps us make sense of the world in which we live, and it rings true in light of the realities of human experience. As C. S. Lewis famously wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”[1]
In this next installment of “Worldview Features,” we want to look at characteristics of a worldview.
Pentecost and Paganism
The North African church father Tertullian wondered what Jerusalem has to do with Athens—that is, what faith has to do with reason or philosophy. For many of us who are familiar with the term “worldview” and the role it plays, we are likely aware of a common contrast in the book of Acts—literally, a contrast between Jerusalem and Athens.[2]
In Acts 2, the apostle Peter’s Pentecost sermon is directed to a Jewish audience in Jerusalem—a crowd whose worldview was shaped by its history, institutions, and its Scriptures. Then later in Acts 17, Paul gives a speech at Mars Hill in Athens to philosophically-minded pagans. While Peter quotes the Old Testament Scriptures, Paul quotes Stoic thinkers. Nevertheless, both speak from a biblical worldview while contextualizing for their respective audiences. And at Pentecost, a large crowd believes. At Athens, a smaller number are persuaded by Paul; however, others scoff at the idea of bodily resurrection—anathema to the Greek mind, which saw death as the soul’s release from its bodily prison house. Most of Paul’s hearers reacted according to the worldview or mindset that had characterized their culture. It was a significantly different worldview than that of Peter’s Jewish hearers at Pentecost.
Characteristics of Worldviews
In the Christian literature on worldviews, we encounter various metaphors or descriptors about how worldviews function, and each serves in illustrative purpose.
Worldviews as Grids, Filters, or Lenses
A worldview functions as a grid or filter in confronting ultimate human questions. For example, a naturalist approaches a miracle-claim from a particular stance or angle—namely, the impossibility of any event that smacks of “divine intervention” or “the supernatural.” A purported “miracle” necessarily has some natural—even if unusual—explanation. This is the naturalistic “filter”: the supernatural elements pass through the filter as irrelevancies and absurdities; only the naturalistic stuff is preserved.
A similar metaphor for worldviews is that of a lens. We’re familiar with the image of “seeing the world through rose-colored glasses.” One “sees” these significant matters from a certain angle. Given one’s particular worldview stance, one will interpret and answer those ultimate human questions accordingly.
Worldviews as Foundations
N. T. Wright observes, “Worldviews . . . are like the foundations of a house: vital, but invisible. They are that through which, not at which, a society or an individual normally looks; they form the grid [there’s that grid image too!] according to which humans organize reality, not bits of reality that offer themselves for organization.”[3] Of course, this “foundation” image can be overstated. After all, we may think quite deliberately or intentionally about the structure of—and rational grounds for—our worldviews, and perhaps make changes to—or dramatically alter—our particular worldview. That said, a good deal of one’s worldview does operate below the surface.
Worldviews as Stories
Worldviews can serve stories or narratives that help us find our place or locate us in the world and in history. N.T. Wright puts it this way: “Narrative is the most characteristic expression of worldview, going deeper than the isolated observation or fragmented remark.”[4]
Going a bit further, Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew include the dimension of story as well: “Worldview is an articulation of the basic beliefs embedded in a shared grand story that are rooted in a faith commitment and that give shape and direction to the whole of our individual and corporate lives.”[5] The late James Sire has fleshed things out this way: “A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being.”[6] According to his lights, then, a worldview exhibits three features: (a) an inner commitment that (b) can be expressed in language, (c) speaking of the nature of reality and serves as a foundation for how we live and think.[7]
Summing Up
One’s worldview gives shape to one’s values, beliefs, actions, and daily life. But a worldview isn’t merely an intellectual theory. Consider how a person acts or how she relates to others, despite the worldview she professes; the person’s actual worldview lies in that vicinity. Even for the Christian in the modern world, it is easy to lapse into a “practical atheism”—living as though God doesn’t exist. This, as Craig Gay has argued, is the way of the depersonalization that modernity brings—with its automation, control, and accessibility—and Christians must be alert to its dangers.[8]
More to the point, at the core of a worldview is a heart commitment, an expression of the will or taking one’s stance (cf. John 7:17). One’s heart commitment worldview directs the shaping of one’s character and the priorities of one’s life. Thus, the matter of worldviews is ultimately spiritual. Though not using the term “worldview,” Jesus reminds us of spiritual commitments behind what a person thinks and does: where our treasure is, there our heart will also be (Matt. 6:24). And so we must guard our heart with all diligence because the springs or issues of life flow from it (Prov. 4:23).
This brings us back to stories and to C. S. Lewis. As persons, each of us has his own story, but the more significant question is: what greater story or metanarrative do our own personal stories best fit? By what story can we best “see everything else”? Which larger story better makes sense of the way things really are and of our fundamental human experience? As Lewis found, it is in the Christian faith—and by putting our trust in Jesus of Nazareth at the heart of that story—that reality and human experience come into clear focus.
Notes
[1] C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 140.
[2] For those interested in the background, exposition, and modern application of Paul’s speech at Athens, see Paul Copan and Kenneth D. Litwak, The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas: Paul's Mars Hill Experience for Our Pluralistic World (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014).
[3] N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 125.
[4] Ibid., 123.
[5] Michael W. Goheen and Craig G. Bartholomew, Living at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Christian Worldview (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 23.
[6] James Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 122.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Craig M. Gay, The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It’s Tempting to Live As If God Doesn’t Exist (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998).
— Paul Copan is the Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Learn more about Paul and his work at paulcopan.com.
Image by Garik Barseghyan from Pixabay
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