What Is A Worldview? Part 2

What Is A Worldview? Origins & Definitions

Excerpted from Anderson, Clark, and Naugle, An Introduction to Christian Worldview (IVP Academic, 2017), 9-13. (To be released October 12, 2017.)

The English term worldview is derived from the German Weltanschauung, a compound word (Welt = world + Anschauung = view or outlook) first used by Immanuel Kant to describe an individual’s sensory perception of the world. The term spread quickly in German idealist philosophy “to refer to an intellectual conception of the universe from the perspective of a human knower.” In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, German philosophers used Weltanschauung increasingly for the concept of answering pivotal questions regarding life,

the universe, and everything.

A worldview can be helpfully defined as “the conceptual lens through which we see, understand, and interpret the world and our place within it.” There is, however, a multitude of ways to define and explain worldview.

Steven Cowan and James Spiegel define worldview as “a set of beliefs, values, and presuppositions concerning life’s most fundamental issues.” They argue that the central goal of philosophy is constructing and developing a comprehensive worldview. For example, if you ask about the philosophy of Rene Descartes or David Hume or Socrates, what you are really asking is, what is their worldview? From this perspective, worldview is primarily an intellectual construction, a rational system of belief.

Worldview certainly has a rational component. If nothing else, worldview necessarily involves an understanding of the world that can be expressed in terms of intellectual propositions. It is possible, however, to overintellectualize worldview and to think of it strictly in terms of

intellectual propositions or rational systems. When this happens, worldview is equated to a formal philosophical system and becomes an abstract concept that seems applicable only to an educated elite.

More problematically, a strictly rationalistic presentation of worldview thinking misconstrues the nature of human beings by suggesting that we are primarily or exclusively thinking beings. There is no doubt that we are indeed thinking beings. Our ability to conceptualize, to theorize, to reflect, and to synthesize is an essential and nonnegotiable element of human nature. The problem arises with the implication that human beings approach the world primarily or exclusively rationally, evaluating competing truth claims and embracing those that they are convinced are the most logical and rationally compelling. It seems instead that our worldview is most commonly formed (at least initially) without intellectual propositions or rational deliberation. A purely rationalistic picture of human beings seems to miss the prerational (or pretheoretical) and sometimes nonrational nature of worldview and worldview formation.

Adapted from:

Tawa J. Anderson, W. Michael Clark, and David K. Naugle, An Introduction to Christian Worldview: Pursuing God's Perspective in a Pluralistic World. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017.  Amazon Book Page.

What are others saying about An Introduction to Christian Worldview?

“This book offers a refreshing update of Christian worldview teaching for students of Scripture. It is rigorous and deep for serious students, yet accessible for the popular reader who wants to live a muscular Christian faith in our pluralistic marketplace of world-and-life views. One of my favorite aspects of this book is its real world examples of worldview thinking and analysis from Scripture, life, entertainment, and culture—especially movies!”

Brian Godawa, author of Hollywood Worldviews