Worldviews: Alleged and Actual

This morning I finished James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2004).

One idea that struck me in a new way was that worldviews are not merely intellectual but encompass the whole person. So often in philosophical circles (of whatever persuasion), worldviews are discussed as systems of thought that correspond to reality and have internal coherence (to a greater or lesser degree). While we have an intuition that we should be living according to our worldview, we rarely dwell on this idea when discussing worldviews as such. But Sire quotes approvingly from Wilhelm Dilthey that worldviews are arrived at intellectually in the cognition of reality, affectively in the appraisal of life, and volitionally in the active performance of will.

In other words, worldviews are not merely how we say we view reality but how we actually view reality, as demonstrated by our affections and actions. For this reason, perhaps Kuyper's life system is a preferable term to denote what we are talking about here. Sire summarizes this insight and offers a pointed application to Christian believers:

The point is, our worldview is not precisely what we may state it to be. It is what is actualized in our behavior. We live our worldview or it isn't our worldview. What we actually hold, for example, about the nature of fundamental reality may not be what we say.

Here is a simple test. On one side of a sheet of paper, write what you believe about prayer. Now turn over the sheet and write down how much and how often you pray. Or vary that. On one side of a sheet of paper, write what you believe about God that supports what you believe about prayer. Now turn over the sheet and write what your prayer life indicates about what you really believe about God. Christians are often less spiritual that their stated worldview would require (133).

I think Sire's analysis is a clarion call, not merely for individual believers, but for Christian educational institutions whose expressed goal is to provide their students with a Christian worldview. Apply yourself wholly to the text. Apply the text wholly to yourself wrote the famous scholar and pietist Johann Albrecht Bengel. While this is obviously challenging in a formal academic setting, I think there is plenty of room to integrate all aspects of the Christian worldview into a Christian educational experience. Though this is a formidable challenge, I think all parties involved will find it worth the effort.