Recipient of the 1992 Ted Ward Writing Award on "The Christian Mission in Higher Education" ===================================== Worldviews, Modernity and the Task of Christian College Education + Brian J. Walsh + Senior Member in Worldview Studies Institute for Christian Studies "Worldviews" and North American Evangelical Scholarship The ascendancy of "worldview" language as part and parcel of the vocabulary of the intellectual evangelical community in North America is intriguing. It is intriguing because apart from anthropologists describing non-Western cultures, "worldview" language has not been a dominant motif in the North American academic tradition. As the Germanic origin of the term suggests, Weltanschauung has a European pedigree and it is fair to say that the dominant formative forces in North American evangelicalism are mostly domestic or British, with European thought having less influence. In this light, a significant question is: "How did evangelicals pick up this language and, more importantly, begin to integrate the whole notion of worldview into their thought and, indeed, discipleship?" The historian of North American evangelicalism, George Marsden, might have an answer to this question. In his plenary keynote address in June 1987, at the conference entitled, "A New Agenda for Evangelical Thought," held at Wheaton College, Marsden spoke of "the triumph of Kuyperian presuppositionalism" in the 1 North American evangelical scholarly community. Marsden describes this Kuyperianism as . . . a style of Christian thought that emphasizes that crucial to the differences that separate Christian worldviews from non-Christian ones are disagreements about pretheoretical first principles, presuppositions, first commitments or basic beliefs. Thus, without denying the value of human rational-ity, it denies the autonomy or competence of reason alone to adjudicate some of the decisive questions concerning the context within which rationality itself will operate. This viewpoint can be contrasted with the older common sense Baconian tradition that once dominated American evangelical thought. That tradition assumed that there was only one objective science for all people and hence that ultimately there could be no real distinction between Christian thinking and clear thinking. Christianity, they thought, should therefore be able to win its case on rational or scientific grounds. The prevailing view now emphasizes that Christian thought and non-Christian thought, being founded on some opposed first principles, reflect wide differences in total worldviews.1 Insofar as North American evangelicals are talking about worldviews and thinking "worldviewishly" (Weltanschauunglich), they are standing in the tradition of the 19th-century Dutch theologian, statesman and journalist, Abraham Kuyper.2 Kuyper was one of the first theologians to apply the notion of worldview to both Christian theoretical or scientific activity and to Christian socio-cultural analysis and action. When Carl Henry spoke of the need to challenge the controlling presuppositions of the secular mind and clearly to articulate a Christian "world and life view" in his 1947 work, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism,3 he was directly indebted to the tradition of Kuyper.4 And now a historian the stature of George 2 Marsden says that this Kuyperian emphasis on worldviews is the prevailing view in North American evangelicalism. More recently than Henry, of course, the whole notion of worldview came into the evangelical vocabulary through Francis Schaeffer5 who, in turn, influenced people like James Sire in his book, The Universe Next Door.6 And while Schaeffer's own fundamentalism made him very skeptical of the tradition of Kuyper, it takes little historical imagination to note his own indebtedness to this tradition. It was, after all, the neo-Kuyperian art historian Hans Rookmaaker who introduced Schaeffer to worldview thinking. While I am not so sure that Marsden is right when he says that this kind of Kuyperian worldview thinking is the prevailing view in North America, as a person who consciously stands in that Kuyperian tradition, I am flattered that he thinks so. The point here is not to boast of any "triumph" of this tradition but simply to note this historical connection and to confess a sense of profound gratitude that this tradition of Christian thought and cultural witness has been able to make such a contribution to North American evangelical scholarship and social witness. What is a Worldview? The fact that evangelicals are talking more about worldviews does not necessarily mean that they are all talking about the same thing, however. If one were to survey the various ways in which the term "worldview" has 3 been used in Christian literature since Henry's 1947 book, one would likely be able to categorize those various functional meanings according to the worldviews of those employing the term. While it is not my intent to provide such a survey here, there is at least one observation that is worth making about how evangelicals tend to use the term. The term worldview is often used by evangelicals as a synonym for theology, and that theology is still understood in the Protestant scholastic sense of a series of dogmatic propositions coherently organized and rooted in a divinely inspired, infallible and inerrant Scripture. This is, I think, the heart of Schaeffer's use of the term, and would seem to characterize the work of scholars like Norman Geisler and William Watkins.7 In a modified form such a theologization (or at least intellectualization) can be detected in Jim Sire's early book. One notes in The Universe Next Door that Sire deals with worldviews primarily as systems of thought, as theoretical constructs. He seldom addresses the question of how worldviews work, what they do, or what the cultural fruit of a particular worldview might be.8 It should be said, however, that his more recent Discipleship of the Mind has gone a long way towards correcting this deficiency.9 While the notion of worldview has a varied history, beginning with Kant in 1790, picked up via Fichte by Schelling, Schleiermacher, Hegel and Goethe and then on to Rickert, Wildebrand and Dilthey, one of the most common 4 features of the term's use (Engels being a notable exception) has been that worldviews are pre-theoretical in character.10 A Weltanschauung is a global anschauung, that is, a view, outlook, perspective in life and the world that characterizes a people or a culture. Such an anschauung is distinct from philosophy and science because it is held by all people regardless of their intellectual capabilities. Consequently, a worldview is non-theoretical and, if interpreted positively, it is seen to be pre-theoretical in the precise sense of being the very foundation of all theorizing.11 If interpreted negatively (as in Comte's positivism), worldview denotes the unscientific view of the unenlightened masses or primitive people. It is this non-theoretical character of worldviews that made the idea so attractive to anthropologists. A. Irving Hallowell coined the term "ethno-metaphysics" to describe the exploration and analysis of various cultures.12 Worldview seemed an appropriate category for anthropologists because so-called primitive people clearly had a set of conceptual presuppositions that functioned in an integrative way in their culture, yet these conceptual presuppositions were not theoretical in character. They were not anything like what we in the West called philosophy or science. In fact, they bore more relation to what we describe as myth. But if non-Western peoples led their lives and formed their cultures in terms of a worldview articulated in the 5 form of myth, could it not be the case that Western culture was also founded in a worldview, in a mythos? Many sociologists, historians and theologians have answered this question affirmatively. Langdon Gilkey is here representative: Social existence involves and depends on a shared consciousness, a shared system of meanings. This shared system of meanings is structured by symbols that shape or express the understanding of reality, of space and time, of human being and its authenticity, of life and its goods, of appropriate relations, roles, customs and behaviour, symbols which together constitute the unique gestalt, the identity or uniqueness, of that social group. To be a member of any community is to be aware of, to participate in, and to be oneself shaped, energized, and directed by this common symbolic mythos.13 This shared consciousness, this shared system of meanings that gives rise to a historical way-of-being-in-the-world, and which constitutes the identity of a particular group, people or culture, is what we are trying to get at when we talk about a worldview. One of the most helpful articles that I have read on worldviews is by James Olthuis, simply titled, "On Worldviews."14 Olthuis describes a worldview as "a framework or set of fundamental beliefs through which we view the world and our calling and future in it. It is the integrative and interpretative framework by which order and disorder are judged, the standard by which reality is managed and pursued."15 A worldview, then, is a vision of life. It provides its adherents with a vision of the world, a perspective through which to make sense of life. 6 Further, because the world is temporal, in process, a worldview always entails a story, a myth which provides its adherents with an understanding of their own role in the global history of good and evil. Such a story tells us who we are in history and why we are here.16 The way in which American history is taught to children and proclaimed on the political campaign trail is a good example of such a mythos. The worldview of the "American Dream" is the official and orthodox worldview of the United States and is proclaimed with equal conviction by both Democrats and Republicans. This worldview is rooted in the Enlightenment "progress myth." This myth is something of a secularized Heilsgeschicte which "sees history, beginning way back with Egypt and Greece, as a story of cumulative development leading up to modern times temporally and to Western culture- especially America-spatially."17 Here and now, with us, the goal towards which this story has led has been, or at least is being fulfilled. Scholars as diverse as Christopher Dawson, Reinhold Niebuhr, Bob Goudzwaard and J. B. Bury have described this as the myth that governs our common existence.18 Again, Langdon Gilkey's description of the role of the myth of progress in our lives proves to be illuminating: It helps us determine what is creative and what is not in the world, and what our own priorities are or should be. It tells us what to defend and why we defend it. It gives meaning to our work, confidence in the midst of failure, and hope in the face of tragedy or of temporary discouragement. It helps us to distinguish good 7 from evil forces in the world around us, and gives us confidence in the ultimate victory of good over evil in history. Above all, it tells us who we are in history and why we are here. It forms the ultimate set of presuppositions for most of our aims and so for our patterns of education.19 This leads us to another dimension of worldviews. A vision of the world and of history is always a normative vision. A worldview is always a foundation for socio-cultural action-it is always a vision for the world. It tells us both what is the case (vision of the world) and what ought to be the case (vision for the world).20 As anthropologist Clifford Geertz notes, worldviews are both descriptive and normative.21 For example, if a culture's worldview includes a view of economic life as guided by self-interest, of land as a commodity which can be bought, sold, subdivided and exploited, of history as progress defined as ever-increasing scientific mastery and technological control, of work as a disutility, of the environment as disposable, of happiness as consumptive satiation, and of government as the guarantor of such satiation, then that worldview will have definite (and usually devastating) ramifications for economic life, for the land, for historical development, for our work lives, for the environment, for the emotional well-being of its adherents, and for political life. And these historico-cultural ramifications would be drastically different in, let's say, a native North American worldview in which economic life is concerned with maintaining the necessities of life for the community; land is viewed as 8 Mother; history is entrustment; work is an integral part of a subsistence, land-based, labor-intensive lifestyle; the environment is a gift of the Great Spirit and an inheritance from the past; happiness is found by living in harmony with nature and with one's clan and by learning the wisdom of the animals imparted through the stories of the elders; and community leadership (or government) is communal and tribal. We can see, then, that a vision of life is always a vision for life: it bears cultural fruit, it is inculturated, taking on historico-cultural flesh-for good or evil. It characterizes the distinct historical élan of a particular culture or people. As James Fowler puts it, a worldview is the way one "leans into life."22 Never a matter of interesting speculation, a worldview, not unlike the leaven of the Gospel, permeates and flavors one's whole life. It is also important to note that worldviews are religious in character. They are frameworks of beliefs but these beliefs are not theoretical in character. Such beliefs cannot be argued to on the basis of either inductive or deductive reasoning-rather, they are the very foundation of such arguments. Worldview beliefs are more likely argued from than argued to.23 A worldview is rooted in beliefs that are ultimate in character because these beliefs are answers to what Stephen Toulmin has called "limit" questions.24 Such questions are at the limits of our rationality or, to change the metaphor, 9 they are the ground of our rationality. Their answers provide us with what Nicholas Wolterstorff has described as "control beliefs."25 It is at this level that Wittgenstein says, "If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say, 'This is simply what I do.'"26 In The Transforming Vision, Richard Middleton and I, like Toulmin, Gilkey, Sire, Holmes and others before us, attempt to list the kind of questions that can legitimately be described as worldview questions.27 We proposed that there are at least four questions that are simply constitutive to human life and that are implicitly answered in one way or another in all worldviews and, therefore, which guide all human culture forming. They are: 1) Where am I, or what is the nature of the reality in which I find myself? 2) Who am I, or what is the nature of human being? How do we relate to non-human reality? How do we relate to each other (as male and female, as different races, different cultures and different generations)? And, what is our relation to the divine (if any)? 3) What's wrong? Since we all recognize that something is amiss in life, that life is out of balance, disordered and broken-in short, that there is evil-we are all forced to find some way to account for, or at least understand, this brokenness. 4) What's the remedy? How do we find a path through our brokenness to wholeness? Wherein is the hope that gives us the strength to continue to live and to expect a better day? Since all 10 worldviews entail an answer to this question, all worldviews are soteriological and eschatological in one way or another. Such ultimate questions require ultimate answers, and answers that are characterized by ultimacy are faith answers. One's worldview, then, and indeed the worldview of a whole culture, is rooted in a faith stance-a stance in relation to that which is taken to be ultimate, an "ultimate concern."28 From a Christian perspective, this ultimacy will either be appropriately directed to the one who is Ultimate-our Creator revealed to us in Jesus Christ-or to a pseudo-ultimacy, a pseudo-god, an idol.29 At this point our description of worldviews remains incomplete. We have seen how worldviews are foundational for human culture-they are visions of and for life which are themselves founded in an ultimate faith stance. Consequently, we have seen the following pattern of relationships: faith _ worldview _ way of life (ultimate answers to(storied vision of (socio-historical cultural ultimate questions) and for life) patterns in community) [Weltanschauung] [Lebenswelt] The problem with this diagram is that the arrows only go in one direction, whereas the relation of faith, worldview and way of life is, in fact, not unidirectional. Rather, they are in a reciprocal relation. In other words, a worldview depends for its validation not only on its underlying faith30 but also on the way of life that it engenders-whether the worldview really does open up, 11 illuminate and integrate life in all of its dimensions or not.31 Olthuis describes this reciprocal relation when he says that a worldview "is a medium through which the ultimate commitment of faith plays out its leading and integrating role in daily life. Simultaneously, a worldview is a medium by which daily life can either call faith into question or confirm it."32 Consequently, the arrows go both ways: faith ó worldview ó way of life If a worldview is a vision of life and for life, then life itself must have some meaningful input into the worldview. Indeed, it must be able, in principle, even to change the worldview, and such change could mean change in the faith which is the very foundation of the worldview. All of the dimensions of reality that comprise a way of life (which include societal institutions such as government, education, business, gender relations, family structures and child-rearing patterns, race and even geography and climate) are formative of a culture's worldview-just as that worldview (and its underlying faith) is formative of those cultural patterns. The relation is reciprocal, perhaps even dialectical. What Paul Ricoeur calls the "hermeneutics of suspicion" has legitimately shown us that a way of life could be rooted in a distorted perception of life (or worldview) that is itself rooted in either personal/cultural neuroses (Freud) or oppressive societal ideologies (Marx).33 Indeed, a 12 worldview could be an ideological or neurotic justification for a certain way of life. This would be a distortion in the normative faith/worldview/way of life relation. But at certain points such neurotic distortions and ideological oppressions can, through various means, be brought to light. When this happens a new worldview framework is required (among other things) to account for the new perception of reality. If the worldview shift is radical enough it may even entail a conversion on the most fundamental religious level. People in both psycho-therapeutic and revolutionary contexts often speak of such conversions.34 Another way in which we can see the reciprocity in the faith/worldview/way of life relation, which is less theoretical, is to comment on a reality shared by all self-aware human beings, namely the experience that there is in fact a gap between our worldview (and ultimately our most firmly held faith commitments) and our way of life. The awareness of that gap leads us to evaluate our lives, but also, especially during times of crisis, to evaluate our worldview and our faith.35 Insofar as this gap is experienced as the inevitable tension between a normative vision of life and the present unfulfilled fallen character of our real existence (what we might call the "Romans 7 gap"- the "I-do-not-do-what-I want-but-I-do-the-very-thing-that-I-hate" gap) then it should function as a creative tension in our lives. Such a tension should be able to militate against the neuroses and 13 ideologies mentioned above. But if the gap between our worldview and our actual experience becomes too great-if actual experience seems totally unrelated to our worldview- then we have a worldview crisis on our hands. And a worldview crisis gives rise to what Clifford Geertz has described as "the gravest sort of anxiety."36 In such a situation the very ground on which you stand is uncertain, you are no longer sure of who you are, what the meaning of life is, what you are to do or where you are going. Ultimate questions that once had some form of ultimate, faith-committed answers are reopened and such a reopening is usually horrific.37 Worldview Crisis: Reformation, Conversion or Entrenchment When such a crisis occurs within the dominant worldview in a culture, the very scaffolding on which the culture stands begins to collapse. Jeremy Rifkin describes this in terms of a wide-spread cultural angst: When a particular worldview begins to break down, when it can no longer adequately answer the basic questions to the satisfaction of its adherents, faith is broken, uncertainty and confusion set in, and the individual and the masses are cast adrift- exposed, unprotected and above all frightened.38 It is my view that the culture of modernity, the culture animated by the progress myth, is presently entering into such a crisis period.39 Robert Heilbroner, in his trenchant and disturbing book, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect40 says we have come to the end of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment dream of progress which will inevitably result in "le perfectionnement de l'homme" 14 (Condorcet), that believed that "the Golden Age lies ahead of us not behind us" (Dewey) and that it is attainable through the autonomous exercise of human reason translated into technological power and economic abundance, has been proven not only to be an illusion, but is also dangerous. It not only lied to us about the world and ourselves, it has cursed us and cursed future generations.41 Consequently, the late George Grant wondered whether the whole experiment of modernity might not have been a mistake.42 And Daniel Bell was right when he said that "the real problem of modernity is the problem of belief." Bell went on to say, "To use an unfashionable term, it is a spiritual crisis, since the new anchorages have proved illusory and the old ones have become submerged."43 Consequently, the question that Bell and many of our most sensitive social analysts is forced to ask is: What holds one to reality if one's secular system of meanings proves to be an illusion?"44 In other words, when a chasm has developed between one's faith and worldview and the reality of one's life, what is one to do? There are perhaps three possible responses. One response is reformation. The reality of life leads an individual or a community to a refocusing or a reforming of their worldview. At best, this refocusing can occur in such a way that the initial faith is left mostly intact. In fact it might even appear that the reformation brings the worldview even closer in line with the founding faith.45 15 Indeed when such refocusing is occurring one often hears debates about the content of the founding faith.46 For example, at least part of the success of the civil rights movement in the United States is because those who have attempted to shift or refocus the American dream-or the American civil religion-or the American worldview-have done so by arguing that the reality of racism, even a racism embedded in the American worldview, conflicts with both what we experience to be just and with the vision of freedom and equality of the founding fathers. Whether the vision of the founding fathers was emancipatory or not I leave to historical judgment, but arguing that it was, or even that racial equality was implicit in their vision and needs to be enacted explicitly, made the message of the civil rights movement convincing to a large segment of the population. In other words, the refocusing of the worldview (in this case the liberalization of the worldview) is occasioned by an intolerable social reality and legitimated by wrapping the message in the American flag and waving the Constitution. Sometimes, however, such a worldview reformation is not possible because the gap between reality and worldview is simply too great and the worldview seems to be compounding the problems, not being a creative source of their solution. In such a situation, a culture (or at least sensitive members of a culture who do not allow their worldview to be ideologically co-opted into further legitimation of 16 intolerable socio-historical conditions) suffers a crisis of confidence and identity. And as the worldview suffers collapse, the entire world seems to come crashing down with it. It is at this point that all reformations and adaptations seem to be mere window dressing, not really addressing the fundamental problems. And then one is open to the second option, namely, conversion-the abandonment of one worldview for another. In other words, the reality which has discredited a particular worldview also dismantles the faith which underlies that worldview. And because it is impossible both to live a human life without faith, and to have a culture-directing-and-forming worldview without a faith foundation for that worldview, one is necessarily set on a quest for a new faith.47 The widespread fascination with the New Age consciousness movement in our time is indicative of the sense of lostness and betrayal of many people in our post-Enlightenment culture. Such people are looking for a new faith. They are ripe for conversion. And any of us who have had deep doubts about our own faith (or indeed who have experienced conversion) know what such a spiritual quest is like. There is, however, a third possible response to a worldview crisis. It is perhaps the most prevalent and, in the context of a declining culture such as ours, the most dangerous. It is what we could describe as entrenchment. In a time of crisis we often witness a conservative backlash 17 and entrenchment. Rather than creatively dealing with the crisis, cultures (and individuals) tend to dig in their heels and hang on to what they've got. A survivalist mentality emerges, and we witness a culture-wide recommitment to the very worldview and the very faith that seems to be discredited by one's historical reality. At times such a recommitment takes on the character of a revival service-"give me that old time religion of faith in human progress and the American dream of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Listen to the liberal optimism of futurist Herman Kahn: On the whole . . . this problem-prone, super-industrial period will be marked by rising living standards and less rather than more sacrifice. Eventually, almost all of the problems will be dealt with reasonably satisfactorily, so that at the end of the transition period, the true post-industrial society can emerge.48 There is still hope that the secular eschaton will dawn. And the neo-conservative revival seems to be a right-wing version of this same secular hope. "If only we can hold off the feminists, stamp out abortion, calm down the environmentalists, deregulate business-give it full reign, and break down trade barriers, then surely our cultural woes will be over and the rest of the world's problems will go away." Personally, I find it easier to believe in a literal six-day creation some 6,000 years ago and Jonah being swallowed by a big fish, than to believe that the very cultural belief system that got us into our trouble will now rescue us from it. Sadly, this stance of entrenchment has characterized 18 much of the cultural response of evangelicalism. Many of the calls "back" to the Judeo-Christian heritage of our culture, which we hear from many an evangelical/fundamentalist pulpit, are, in fact, thinly veiled calls to recommit ourselves to the Western worldview and way of life that is presently crumbling. Perhaps the biggest problem with developing a Christian cultural response and an integrally Christian educational perspective in our cultural malaise is that Christians are often at the forefront of defending the status quo of the dominant way of life. How else can we understand the perverse, if not heretical, gospel of wealth doctrine combined with a fierce ideological, if not idolatrous, American nationalism that characterizes almost all of the televangelists and most fundamentalist churches? Certainly such Christians want to oppose certain elements in our culture because of their Christian faith (like abortion, pornography and liberalized education), yet they still want to conserve some of its central features (technological superiority and military power, a commodity-oriented lifestyle in the context of a growth-oriented economy, a rapacious attitude toward creation, and an unjust, often racist attitude toward our Two-Thirds World brothers and sisters). Such a stance is, I submit, schizophrenic (believing that one can indeed serve two masters) and spiritually bankrupt. In place of this Christianity-legitimated cultural entrenchment we need a radically comprehensive cultural vision. In the next 19 section I will attempt to sketch out the contours of what such a vision might look like. A Christian Worldview in a Declining Culture While it is not possible to discuss here with any exhaustiveness the nature and role of a radically comprehensive worldview in the context of our present cultural crisis, I will present fourteen theses for consideration. 1) A Christian worldview is only Christian insofar as it is biblical. I take it as a fundamental given that the Scriptures are foundational to a Christian worldview. The Bible answers for us the ultimate worldview questions. They tell us where we are (in God's good creation); who we are (God's covenantal image-bearers called to stewardly service); what is wrong (we have broken the covenant with our Creator and chosen to serve and image idols rather than being his image-bearers); and what is the remedy (Jesus Christ, the incarnate image of God has died and risen again in order to reclaim God's creation and his rightful image-bearers-thereby establishing his Kingdom). The Scriptures are a worldview book telling the story of God's relation to us and to all of creation-a dramatic story of creation, lostness and rescue which becomes our story and the basis of our identity as the people of God when we turn to Jesus Christ in faith. 2) A biblical worldview is one which understands creation, fall and redemption in comprehensive terms. All 20 of reality is creaturely, all of creation is distorted by human disobedience, and Jesus Christ comes to restore all things.49 Consequently, the biblical worldview is truly a worldview-all of reality falls within its compass. 3) The tradition of dualism, rooted in the neo-Platonic subversion of the Gospel and reaching a new height of expression in North American evangelical pietism, undercuts or shortcircuits the dynamics of the Gospel by privatizing Christian faith, thereby failing to grasp or be grasped by the world-transforming power of a biblical worldview.50 Consequently, 4) North American evangelicalism has generally shortchanged itself of the worldview resources of its own Scriptures. Reading the text dualistically we have not been able to see how the Scriptures address our culture. We have been left with an infallible and inerrant, though also irrelevant, text. Therefore, 5) North American evangelicalism has de facto been taken captive by the dominant secular worldview and is, therefore, as much a part of the problem in the present crisis as it is part of the solution.51 6) A Christian worldview in a culture which views nature as mere resource for human exploitation and which is coming perilously close to a major environmental crisis, needs to be firmly rooted in the goodness of God's creation. We are to love, protect and heal the creation because it is God's not ours-the work of his wise and loving hand and the 21 object of his redeeming work. Wanton destruction of ecosystems is not only unwise, it is a sin against the Creator and a belittling of Christ's sacrifice on the cross.52 7) In a culture based on self-interested greed and competition, a biblical worldview insists that God's image-bearers are called to stewardly care for the earth, reaping its fruit for the benefit of all of the earth's inhabitants. Such a call to stewardship entails a call to an economics of care and equality. 8) In a culture still hanging on to the worn-out Enlightenment ideals of human progress, a biblical worldview provides a more sober estimate of human culture-forming. Such an estimate is rooted in the biblical understanding of idolatry. Those who do not image their Creator, necessarily image a creature or dimension of creaturely life. Such idolatry results in death-personally, spiritually and culturally. Therefore, 9) A Christian worldview provides the basis for a prophetic critique of the dominant worldview's idolatry. In our context this requires a dismantling of the false trinity of scientism, technicism and economism.53 10) Such prophetic critique must begin with the household of faith. By dualistically limiting the Gospel to a narrow dimension of life, the church has tacitly adopted the idols of the false trinity in most areas of life. Consequently, the church is, to an alarming degree, held 22 captive by the dominant worldview. 11) A prophetic worldview must also go beyond critique to setting the cultural imagination of the church free to embrace new ways of living and to embody an alternative reality.54 Concretely, dreams of the Kingdom must replace the American dream. The biblical worldview must energize us (fill us with the Spirit) so that we can begin to walk in new paths of discipleship. 12) In the Scriptures being energized in such a way that we discern new paths of obedience in creation is called Wisdom. Wisdom is God's loving way with the creation and to be wise is to celebrate and be at-home in God's good creation and to follow that way-it is to discern a path and a direction for our discipleship. 13) In a culture that has no normative foundation beyond individualistic rights and utilitarianism, a biblical worldview insists that God's world is a normed world. God's creation is subject to norms or a creational torah that leads to the fulfillment and healing of life. Disobedience results in death. Consequently, in place of economic self-interest, Christians will strive for an economics of sharing and care; competitive individualism is replaced is replaced by community cooperation; an economics of exploitation gives way to an economics of stewardship; unceasing economic growth is replaced by a contented lifestyle of "enough"; and in the face of an oppressive politics of power and control, Christians will seek justice 23 through service and cross-bearing. These are some of the norms of the Kingdom. To live out of such norms would be culturally subversive. 14) In a culture that believes that only human progress will bring the Kingdom (= secular utopia), a biblical worldview firmly, yet lovingly, proclaims that only God brings the Kingdom, and he does so on a cross. We are not called to bring the Kingdom but simply to erect obedient signposts of the Kingdom. In a time of cultural anxiety the Christian's deepest source of hope is that "the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our God and of his Christ. And he shall reign for ever and ever." (Revelation 11:15) The Calling of A Christian Liberal Arts College I will conclude this paper with a few "thesis-like" remarks on the significance of this analysis of the nature of worldviews and the power of the biblical worldview in a declining culture for the life and mission of a Christian liberal arts college. Perhaps these comments are something less than theses. Let's call them "tentative proposals." 1) All education is rooted in a worldview and all education nurtures students in that worldview. More specifically, however, the college stage of life (between the ages of 18 to 22) is a crucial and pivotal stage in one's worldview development. It is at this stage that young people make life decisions and career choices that implicitly or explicitly affirm for themselves the worldview 24 of their upbringing and of their culture (or subculture), or begin along another path which either denies and abandons the worldview of their parents or significantly refocuses and reforms that worldview. Therefore, a Christian liberal arts college should take formative participation and guidance in that late adolescent process of worldview formation as its central educational calling and task. 2) In the historical context of a church that is held spiritually captive by a dominant secular worldview that is itself sensing its own mortality, such worldview education must be prophetic and will generally be characterized by a spiritual battle-a conflict with principalities and powers. From a biblical perspective, worldview education is a matter of life and death. 3) The prayed-for objective of such education is nothing less than a transforming vision of and for life-a setting students free from cultural captivity and blind service to the dominant idols so that they can have opened eyes to new and radical paths of Kingdom obedience. 4) Such an educational vision could put a liberal arts college on a collision course with the very community that gave it birth and that supports the work of the college. Consequently, a worldview-focused educational vision requires the courage to take up a prophetic role in the community-not by angry denunciation but by passionate proclamation. 5) Insofar as a worldview-focused education is 25 concerned with wholistic knowing55 and insofar as a Christian worldview discerns the idolatrous character of fallen humanity, a Christian liberal arts college must have grave concern (philosophically and pedagogically) with both narrow specialism and single-minded careerism or a vocational focus for college education. Consequently, 6) Worldview education will be self-consciously interdisciplinary in character, attempting to open the student to the breadth of human thought, culture and experience in terms of an integral Christian perspective. The primary goal of such education is to help the student to learn and follow Wisdom, and it is only in this context that specialized theoretical research or certain vocational training can occur. 7) Insofar as a worldview is integral, the kind of education, theorizing and vocational life that it will engender will be integrated-therefore, the integration of faith with learning, faith with theory, and faith with careers is the goal of a Christian liberal arts college. And while such integration is never fully achieved (which is simply to say that sanctification is an ongoing process), our goal must be to make Christian learning a reality56 and disciple Christian biologists, sociologists, philosophers, doctors, lawyers, politicians, artists and engineers. Discipleship to Jesus Christ requires nothing less. Let me give you some examples of what I mean here. A Christian college concerned with worldview-focused education 26 could very well develop a MBA program, but the goal and purpose for developing such a program would not primarily be to train our young people to be successful in the corporate world. Rather, our goal would be to develop the tools that are needed to do business in a way that is stewardly, environmentally sensitive and concerned with sharing the resources of creation with all people-but especially the poor. We need to be training economists who will understand the patterns of oppression, the nature of work, the relationship between war and business, and the call to stewardship. We need to train engineers who will develop technology that is appropriate to the needs of our times and the limits of our resources; biologists who will give us guidance in a world choked by industrial pollution and impoverished by an ever-increasing rate of species extinction; and sociologists and philosophers and theologians of culture who can help us understand and deal with the social crises that we now experience and that will be compounded in the future. And we need to nurture in a worldview-focused education a generation of novelists, poets, film-writers, actors, musicians and composers who will break through both the commercialization of the arts in our culture and the narrow evangelization of the arts common among Christians, and find new ways to open our lives up aesthetically and give wise expression to a Christian view of life in the their art. This leads to the next thesis: 8) Insofar as a worldview is not only a vision of the 27 world but also a vision for the world, then worldview-focused education must be education for cultural praxis. As Paulo Freire and Thomas Groome have taught us, education can have, and should have, liberative power in the lives of those who are being educated and in the culture as a whole.57 Education for praxis is education which empowers people for cultural action of reform and redirection. Following Nicholas Wolterstorff, we need to move beyond cognitive learning (of data and theories, and even the conceptual contours of a Christian worldview) to tendency learning-a learning for discipleship.58 This is worldview education that takes seriously the vision-for character of worldviews and avoids the intellectualistic reduction of worldviews to mere conceptual visions of the world. We must not only train students to think Christianly, but, in dynamic relation to that thinking, to live Christianly. An education for obedient cultural praxis is what Wolterstorff has called an education directed to shalom.59 9) If we take socio-cultural praxis as a necessary implication of a worldview-focused educational vision and if we want to experience our theory and praxis as integrally related, then a spiritual discernment of our present socio-cultural context will guide us both in the theories we adopt and the problems we choose to address.60 10) Insofar as a worldview is truly open to reality and requires experiential validation if it is to be viable, it is, by nature, in process-open to reform, correction, 28 redirection and refocusing. Consequently, a worldview-focused education must also be characterized by such openness. A canonized worldview results in a stifling conservatism, scholasticism and separatism-none of which is conducive to the atmosphere of a "liberal" arts college. Being rooted in Jesus Christ gives one the courage to say that we don't have all the answers, nor do we need them. The world is in process and so is our worldview. It is in this context that both faculty and students can experience the academic freedom they have in Christ.61 And finally, 11) Worldviews are communal and therefore a worldview-focused Christian liberal arts college is to function as a community-the center of which is worship and service to Jesus Christ which naturally leads to a communal sharing of ideas and insights, and a struggling together to discern where God is leading us as educators at the end of the twentieth century, and indeed, at the end of the Enlightenment. Notes 1George Marsden, "The State of Evangelical Christian Scholarship," Christian Scholar's Review, XVII, 4 (June 1988), p. 355. 2For an introduction to Kuyper's view of Calvinism as a "world and life view" see his Princeton Stone lectures of 1889, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 29 1931), especially chapter 1. 3(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1947). For a more recent statement from Henry on these matters see his book, The Christian Mindset in a Secular Society: Promoting Evangelical Renewal and National Righteousness (Portland, OR: Multnomah Press, 1984). 4See Marsden, "The State of Evangelical Christian Scholarship," p. 352. 5See Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968). 6James Sire, The Universe Next Door (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1976); 2nd ed, 1988). 7See Norman Geisler and William Watkins, Perspectives: Understanding and Evaluating Today's World Views (San Bernardino, CA: Here's Life Publishers, 1984). A similar critique would seem to be applicable to W.A. Hoffecker and G. S. Smith, eds., Building a Christian Worldview, Vol 1: God, Man and Knowledge (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1986). 8I have raised this critique in a review article, "Two Books on the Christian Mind," in Anakainosis 2, 1 (September 1979): 9-13. While Arthur Holmes is diligent in this Contours of a Worldview (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983) to insist that worldviews are "prephilosophical" (p. 31) and to investigate the cultural implications of a Christian worldview (Part III), even his description of the Christian worldview and its rivals tends to be overly theoretical. A 30 similar critique could be leveled at Al Wolters' otherwise very helpful book, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985). 9James Sire, Discipleship of the Mind (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990). R.C. Sproul's Lifeviews: Understanding the Ideas that Shape Society Today (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1986) makes similar attempts to discern the social influence of worldviews but also seems to have a rather intellectualistic understanding of worldviews. 10For a more nuanced discussion of the historical use of the term see Al Wolters, "On the Idea of Worldview and Its Relation to Philosophy" in Paul Marshall, Sander Griffioen and Richard Mouw, eds., Stained Glass: Worldviews and Social Science, Christian Studies Today Series (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989), pp. 14-25. 11It is important to note here that referring to worldviews as pre-theoretical is itself indicative of the role of theorizing in the Western worldview. It is precisely the overemphasis on reason and theory-making in the Western consciousness that makes it necessary to highlight the pre-theoretical character of worldviews. 12A. Irving Hallowell, "Ojibwa Ontology, Behaviour and World View," in S. Diamond, ed., Culture in History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 19-52, as cited by Thomas W. Overholt and J. Baird Callicott, Clothed in Fur and Other Takes: An Introduction to an Ojibwa Worldview 31 (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982), p. xi. 13Langdon Gilkey, Society and the Sacred: Toward a Theology of Culture in Decline (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 43. I have discussed Gilkey's understanding of the religion/culture relation at some length in Langdon Gilkey: Theologian for a Culture in Decline, Christian Studies Today Series (Lanham, New York and London: University Press of America, 1991), ch. 3. The philosophical foundations of Gilkey's approach are discussed and critiqued in my article, "The Dimension of Ultimacy and Theology of Culture: A Critical Discussion of Langdon Gilkey," Calvin Theological Journal 24, 1 (April 1989): 66-92. 14Christian Scholars Review XIV, 2 (1985): 153-64. This article also appears in Stained Class (see note 10 above): 26-40. 15Christian Scholars Review, p. 155. 16On the centrality of story in worldview formation, see Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), especially parts 1 and 2. In my inaugural lecture, Who Turned Out the Lights: The Light of the Gospel in a Post-Enlightenment Culture (Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies, 1989), I refer to worldviews as "storied visions of and for life." 17Gilkey, Society and the Sacred, p. 23. 18Christopher Dawson, Progress and Religion: An 32 Historical Inquiry (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1938); Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943); Bob Goudzwaard, Capitalism and Progress, translated by Josina Van Nuis Zylstra (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979); J.B. Bury, The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth (London: Macmillan, 1920). 19Society and the Sacred, p. 24. Gilkey also discusses the notion of progress in Reaping the Whirlwind: A Christian Interpretation of History (New York: Seabury, 1976): part 1. 20See the present author's book (co-authored with J. Richard Middleton), The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984), ch. 2. 21Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 93. 22James W. Fowler, "Moral Stages and the Development of Faith," in B. Munsey, ed., Moral Development, Moral Education and Kohlberg (Birmingham: Religious Education Press, 1980), p. 134. 23See Langdon Gilkey, Religion and the Scientific Future (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), ch. 2. 24See Stephen Toulmin, An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), chapter 14. Toulmin's notion of limit questions has been employed in theology by Landgon Gilkey, Naming the 33 Whirlwind: The Renewal of God-Language (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1969), Part II, chapters 2 and 3; and David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology [A Crossroad Book (New York: Seabury Press, 1975)], chapters 5 and 7. 25See Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason Within the Bounds of Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), especially chapter 9. For an insightful discussion of the role of such committed beliefs in science, with specific reference to Kuhn, Polanyi and Radnitzky, see Clarence Joldersma's published M.Phil.F thesis, Beliefs and the Scientific Enterprise (Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies, 1983). 26Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967): section 217. 27See especially chapter 2. 28See Paul Tillich's notion of ultimate concern in Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), chapter 1; and Systematic Theology I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 11-15. 29Cf. Psalm 115 and Romans 1:20-25. Bob Goudzwaard discusses the dynamics of idolatry in modern culture in Idols of Our Time, translated by Mark VanderVennen (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984). See also Pablo Richard et al., The Idols of Death and the God of Life (New York: Orbis, 1983). 30This is what Middleton and I have called the criterion of coherence. Transforming Vision, p. 38. 34 31Middleton and I call this the reality criterion-is the worldview really a world view? See Transforming Vision, p. 37. 32James Olthuis, "On Worldviews," pp. 156-7. 33See Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, translated by Denis Savage (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 32-36; and The Conflict of Interpretations, Don Ihde, ed. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), pp. 148-50. 34Thomas Kuhn also speaks of conversion in the context of paradigm shifts in scientific research. See The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, rev. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), pp. 147, 149-50, 157. 35I have addressed the difficulties of the worldview/way-of-life gap within the Christian community at greater length in Subversive Christianity: Imaging God in a Dangerous Time (Bristol, UK: Regius Press, 1992), especially ch. 2. 36Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 99. 37It is something of this experience of anxiety that Jean-Paul Sartre captured in his novel Nausea, translated by Lloyd Alexander (New York: New Directions, 1959). 38Jeremy Rifkin (with Ted Howard), The Emerging Order: God in the Age of Scarcity (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1979), p. 212. 39Arnold Toynbee referred to such periods as "times of troubles," in A Study of History (London: Oxford University 35 Press), I (1934), p. 53; and IV (1939), pp. 1-5. See Langdon Gilkey, "Theology for a Time of Troubles: How My Mind has Changed," Christian Century 98 (April 29, 1981): 474-80. 40Robert Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1974). 41I have addressed the decline of modernity at greater length in The Transforming Vision, ch. 9, Langdon Gilkey, ch. 3, and Subversive Christianity, chs. 2 and 3. 42In an interview on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 43Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, 2nd ed. (London: Heineman, 1979), pp. 29-30. 44Ibid. 45The present crisis of modernity has led to such responses of reformation. See Charles Taylor's defense of the Enlightenment preoccupation of "authenticity" in a way that attempts to go beyond modernity's debasement of the notion in The Malaise of Modernity (Toronto: Anansi, 1991). 46See Walter Brueggemann's notion of "reorientation" in The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984). 47Postmodernity is characterized by such a quest for a new worldview that will serve to integrate life after the disintegration of modernity. Radical postmodernism such as deconstructionism, however, claims to have totally abandoned any attempts at worldviews with their totality concepts and 36 meta-narratives. While I cannot argue this point at length here, it is my contention that worldviews are anthropologically constitutive and that the attempt to totally abandon worldviews will either fail outright or will ideologically import an unexamined worldview in the back door. For a helpful introduction to postmodernism see Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (London and New York: Routledge, 1989). The last chapter of this book is illustrative of my point. For Hutcheon the one thing that is not subject to deconstruction is feminism. A more popular introduction can be found in Walter Truett Anderson, Reality Isn't What it Used to Be (New York: Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1990). 48Herman Kahn, "The Economic Future," in Frank Feather, ed., Through the 80's: Thinking Globally Acting Locally (Washington: D.C.: World Futures Society, 1980), p. 208. 49See Paul's wonderful Christological poem in Colossians 1:15-20. In Christ "all things" are created and all things "are being reconciled." Wolters emphasizes this comprehensiveness in Creation Regained. 50For a helpful critique of dualism written at a popular level see Steve Shaw, No Splits (London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1989). 51See Os Guiness' creative, yet disturbing, portrayal of the modern church in The Gravedigger File: Papers on the Subversion of the Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983). 37 52See Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, A Worldly Spirituality: The Call to Take Care of the Earth (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984); and Loren Wilkenson, et al., Earthkeeping in the 90's: Stewardship of Creation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991). 53See Middleton and Walsh, The Transforming Vision, chs. 8 and 9. 54See Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978). 55Or what Michael Polanyi called tacit knowing in contrast with focal or theoretical knowing in The Tacit Dimension (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1966). 56See the helpful book edited by Harold Heie and David L. Wolfe, The Reality of Christian Learning (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian University Press and Eerdmans, 1987). 57Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 1970); Thomas Groome, Christian Religious Education (New York: Harper and Row, 1980). 58Nicholas Wolterstorff, Educating for Responsible Action (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), especially chapters 1 and 2. 59Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Teaching for Justice," in Joel A. Carpenter and Kenneth W. Shipps, eds., Making Higher Education Christian (St. Paul: Christian University Press, 1987), pp. 201-16. 60Again, Wolterstorff has been most helpful in addressing the question of praxis in educational practice. 38 See his chapter on "Theory and Praxis" in Until Peace and Justice Embrace (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), ch. 8; and his 1982 convocation address at Wheaton College, "The Mission of the Christian College at the End of the Twentieth Century," Reformed Journal 33, 6 (June 1983): 14-8. 61A helpful discussion of academic freedom in the context of biblical fidelity is found in Frank Anthony Spina, "Revelation, Reformation, Re-Creation: Canon and the Theological Foundation of the Christian University," Christian Scholar's Review XVIII, 4 (June 1989): 315-32. 39