Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (25 page)

But what if we understand worldviews as I have defined them?

This notion of a worldview goes a long way toward making sense out of the seemingly senseless. It may not solve all the problems that pluralism presents. It may not teach us how to get along with our deepest differences, but it does make sense of our situation.
26
That at least is a beginning.

“It’s Elephant all the way down,” said the father. Yes, it is. And just what is the name of that Elephant? Whatever others say, we as Christians must respond: “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the Elephant.” He alone is worthy and able to hold up not just our earth but the vast expanding universe of the billions and billions of galaxies the astronomers say surround our earth. God indeed is the name of the Elephant.

Notes

Chapter 1: Camel, Kangaroo and Elephant

1
The origins of this story are obscure, but John Locke used it to illustrate his notion of
substance
. He alludes to an Indian philosopher who, “saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on; to which his answer was—a great tortoise: but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied—SOMETHING, HE KNEW NOT WHAT” (John Locke,
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,
1.23.2. [Kindle, loc. 4045-47]). I owe this citation to David Beck. Clifford Geertz doesn’t know the origin either: “There is an Indian story—at least I heard it as an Indian story—about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked . . . what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle? Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down” (Clifford Geertz,
The Interpretation of Cultures
[New York: Basic Books, 1973], pp. 28-29). This version seems to picture a worldview in which fundamental reality is an infinite regress rather than merely infinite, a flux rather than an absolute.

2
Carl Sagan,
Cosmos
(New York: Random House, 1980), p. 4. Theists may point out that by the principle of sufficient reason (for every effect—like the brute thereness of the universe—there must be a sufficient reason) the universe does not explain its self-sufficiency but requires a sufficient reason. This charge, however, is rejected by naturalists. The issue of sufficient reason is central to the interesting debate between Christian philosopher F. C. Copleston and agnostic philosopher Bertrand Russell. See “A Debate on the Existence of God,” in
The Existence of God
, ed. John Hick (New York: Macmillan, 1964), pp. 167-91, where Russell declares that one need find no “cause” or “explanation” for the existence of the universe: “I should say that the universe is just there, and that’s all” (p. 175).

3
Some theists, notably scholastic philosophers, would say that extranatural information is not required. If the father wanted to explain why “that’s just the way it is,” he could say, “God, as a perfect and necessary being, is self-explanatory. The regress ends; no further explanation is required.”

4
See chapter seven, pp. 146-47.

5
Alfred North Whitehead says that some “assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them” (Whitehead,
Science and the Modern World
[1925; reprint, New York: Mentor, 1948], p. 49).

Chapter 2: Worldview Definitions

1
Two publications are extremely helpful in delineating the details of the history of worldviews and reflecting on their nature. See David Naugle,
Worldview: The History of a Concept
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), and Paul A. Marshall, Sander Griffioen and Richard Mouw, eds.,
Stained Glass: Worldviews and Social Science
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989).

2
Peter Heslam,
Creating a Christian Worldview: Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 89.

3
Sander Griffioen, “The Worldview Approach to Social Theory: Hazards and Benefits,” in
Stained Glass: Worldviews and Social Science
, ed. Paul A. Marshall, Sander Griffioen and Richard Mouw (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989), p. 83. One especially obscure definition is this one by G. F. W. Hegel (1770–1831): “Starting with a specific character of this sort, there is formed and established a moral outlook on the world [
moralische Weltanschauung
] which consists in a process of relating the implicit aspect of morality and the explicit aspect. This relation presupposes both thorough reciprocal indifference and specific independence as between nature and moral purposes and activity; and also, on the other side, a conscious sense of duty as the sole essential fact, and of nature as entirely devoid of independence and essential significance of its own. The moral view of the world [
Die moralische Weltanschauung
], the moral attitude, consists in the development of the moments which are found present in this relation of such entirely antithetic and conflicting presuppositions” (see G. F. W. Hegel,
The Phenomenology of Mind
, trans. J. B. Baillie, 2nd ed. [London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961], pp. 615-16; quoted in Naugle,
Worldview
, pp. 69-70).

4
The word itself first appeared in Kant’s
Critique of Judgment
(1790). See Naugle,
Worldview
, pp. 58-59.

5
Michael Ermarth,
William Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 324; quoted in Naugle,
Worldview
, p. 82.

6
Wilhelm Dilthey,
Gesammelte Schriften
, 5:406, quoted by Ramon J. Betanzos, trans., in his introduction to Wilhelm Dilthey,
Introduction to the Human Sciences: An Attempt to Lay a Foundation for the Study of Society and History
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), p. 291; quoted by Naugle,
Worldview
, p. 84.

7
Wilhelm Dilthey, “The Types of World Views and Their Unfoldment Within the Metaphysical Systems,” in
Dilthey’s Philosophy of Existence: Introduction to Weltanschauungslehre
, trans. William Kluback and Martin Weinbaum (New York: Bookman Associates, 1957), p. 21. This essay contains the core of Dilthey’s worldview philosophy.

8
Naugle,
Worldview
, p. 86.

9
Dilthey, “Types of World Views,” pp. 26-27.

10
Naugle,
Worldview
, p. 87. H. A. Hodges summarizes the same section this way: “Dilthey . . . analyzes a
Weltanschauung
into three structurally connected elements. The first is a belief about the nature and contents of the world of facts; the second, built on this foundation, is a system of likes and dislikes, expressed in value-judgments; and the third, resulting from the other two preceding it, is a system of desires and aversions, ends, duties, practical rules and principles” (
Wilhelm Dilthey: An Introduction
[London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1944], p. 92).

11
Dilthey, “Types of World Views,” p. 27.

12
Naugle,
Worldview
, p. 88.

13
Dilthey, “Types of World Views,” p. 74.

14
Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” in
The Portable Nietzsche
, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1954), pp. 46-47.

15
Naugle,
Worldview
, p. 102.

16
Nonetheless, Nietzsche used the terms
Weltanschauung, Weltbild
and
Weltsicht
seventy-nine times, says Naugle (ibid., p. 100).

17
Ibid., p. 101; see also Peter Levine,
Nietzsche and the Crisis of the Humanities
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), esp. pp. 45-65, 187-99.

18
This image comes from Friedrich Dürrenmatt, “The Tunnel,” in
A Casebook on Existentialism
, ed. William V. Spauos (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966), pp. 54-64.

19
Naugle,
Worldview
, pp. 152-53.

20
Ibid., p. 149.

21
Ibid., p. 157.

22
Ibid., p. 161.

23
Michel Foucault,
The Archaeology of Knowledge
, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Random House/Pantheon, 1972), p. 15; quoted in Naugle,
Worldview
, p. 181.

24
Naugle,
Worldview
, pp. 181-82.

25
Ibid., p. 183.

26
Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power,” in
The Foucault Reader
, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), p. 74.

27
Naugle,
Worldview
, p. 184.

28
Ibid.

29
James Orr,
The Christian View of God and the World
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), pp. 4-5, 365-70.

30
Ibid., p. 4.

31
Naugle,
Worldview
, p. 13.

32
Orr,
Christian View
, p. 3.

33
Edward Caird,
Social Philosophy of Comte
, p. 24, quoted in Orr,
Christian View
, p. 6. Caird (1835–1908) was a Scottish philosopher holding an idealist notion of reality.

34
Orr,
Christian View
, p. 8.

35
Abraham Kuyper,
Lectures on Calvinism
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1931), p. 31.

36
Ibid.

37
Ibid., p. 194.

38
Heslam,
Creating a Christian Worldview
, p. 92. Heslam points out that Orr too “had an independent, unified, and coherent worldview derived from a central belief or principle” (p. 93).

39
Richard Mouw’s
Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011) is an excellent first book for those unfamiliar with Kuyper or his work.

40
Naugle,
Worldview
, p. 26. Yet Dooyeweerd’s conception of the heart is quite vague, much more so than Naugle’s, since, as Ronald Nash says, “He [Dooyeweerd] tells us that the heart should not be identified with any of the following: (1) man’s emotions or feelings; (2) man’s intellect or reason; (3) the temporal function of faith (even though it is true that man believes with his heart); (4) or with any immaterial substance (or material substance, for that matter)” (
Dooyeweerd and the Amsterdam Philosophy
[Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1962], p. 91). Arthur Holmes, as well, has associated Dooyeweerd’s notion of worldview with the biblical concept of heart as the “unifying core” of a human being (
Contours of a World View
[Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983], p. 32).

41
Jacob Klapwijk, “On Worldviews and Philosophy,” in
Stained Glass: Worldviews and Social Science
, ed. Paul A. Marshall, Sander Griffioen and Richard Mouw (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989), p. 51.

42
Naugle,
Worldview
, p. 27.

43
Herman Dooyeweerd,
A New Critique of Theoretical Thought,
trans. David H. Freeman and William S. Young (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1969), 1:61. See J. M. Spier,
An Introduction to Christian Philosophy
, trans. David Hugh Freeman (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1954) for an explanation of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy.

44
Dooyeweerd,
New Critique.

45
George N. Pierson, “Evangelicals and Worldview Confusion,” in
After Worldview,
ed. Matthew Bonzo and Michael Stevens (Sioux Center, IA: Dordt College Press, 2009), p. 38. For an elaboration of the structure/direction distinction and its value for understanding worldview analysis, see Al Wolters,
Creation Regained
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), pp. 87-114.

46
Søren Kierkegaard, quoted in Naugle,
Worldview,
pp. 76-77.

47
Naugle,
Worldview,
p. 77.

48
Ibid., pp. 73-82.

49
A host of Christian thinkers from across the academic disciplines use worldview in this general way. A few examples will suffice: David Burnett,
Clash of Worlds: What Christians Can Do in a World of Cultures in Conflict
(London: Monarch Books, 2002); Steven Garber,
The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior During the University Years
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), esp. pp. 108-24; Armand M. Nicholi Jr.,
The Question of God
(New York: Free Press, 2002), p. 7; Douglas Groothuis,
Unmasking the New Age
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), p. 17 and
Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), pp. 49-60; W. Gary Phillips and William E. Brown,
Making Sense of Your World
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1991), pp. 42-43; Clifford Williams,
The Life of the Mind: A Christian Perspective
(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), p. 18; faculty contributors to
Shaping a Christian Worldview: The Foundations of Christian Higher Education
, ed. David S. Dockery and Gregory Alan Thornbury (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2002), pp. 1-15, 249-54, 280-97; J. Mark Bertrand,
(Re)thinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World
(Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007); Steve Wilkens and Mark L. Sanford,
Hidden Worldviews: Eight Cultural Stories That Shape Our Lives
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009); and Mary Poplin,
Is Reality Secular? Testing the Truth Claims of Four Global Worldviews
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013).