Review: The World of World Views

Third Quarter 2003

David K. Naugle, a professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University, has crafted a path-breaking and masterful account of the development of the idea of "worldview" with his Worldview: The History of a Concept (Eerdmans, 2002).

The book traces a remarkable journey. Worldview, Naugle explains, began to be used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by European philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel. Today, he writes "no single philosophic school or religious community has given more sustained attention to or taken more advantage of this concept than Protestant evangelicals."

The comprehensive sweep of Naugle's scholarly gaze is striking. He surveys important contributions to worldview thinking by no less than fourteen evangelical thinkers, including Francis Schaeffer, Abraham Kuyper, and Herman Dooyeweerd. In a theologically rich chapter sure to spark ecumenical discussion, he explores how Roman Catholic and Orthodox liturgical and sacramental traditions share with evangelicals a clear tendency to convey the meaning of Christianity in the "worldviewish" terms of creation, fall, and redemption. Naugle shows that much like three gems cut from the same stone, all three traditions in their distinctive ways call humans to exercise responsibility in this world in obedience to Christ, who, as the central figure of cosmic history, will redeem and transform the entirety of God's fallen creation in partnership with His creatures.

In a major achievement, Naugle offers the first detailed study of how nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophers employed and shaped the idea of worldview in their philosophical systems. Engaging thinkers as diverse as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Dooyeweerd, Heidegger and Kuyper, Wilhelm Dilthey and others, Naugle shows how each figure colored and refashioned the idea in their writings, influencing its meaning today. He also traces the linguistic development of the term and its subsequent use in literary theory and in natural and social scientific disciplines by thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Karl Marx, Peter Berger, Thomas Kuhn, and Michael Polanyi.

Naugle argues that evangelicals are wise to adopt the term "worldview" to communicate and defend their convictions in the public square, but that they must be aware of the word's philosophical association with modern rationalism and relativism. Evangelicals need not avoid the term because of its use in philosophies at odds with Christian beliefs. Instead, he urges them to "plunder Egyptian treasure." A worldview structured by belief in a sovereign creator helps immunize one's mind and heart against the twin modern idolatries of relativism and rationalism.

Naugle explains that for Christians "worldview" implies neither the loss of universal truth to an utter subjectivism nor the arid imperialism of modern scientific absolutism. Rather, forming a Christian worldview "entails God's gracious redemption that delivers the hearts of men and women from idolatry and false views of life engendered by satanic deception and the blindness of sin." It "enables them through faith in Jesus Christ to come to a knowledge of God and the truth about his creation and all aspects of reality."

After inspecting the philosophical baggage of the worldview idea, Naugle presents his own concept of worldview drawing on semiotic theory. A worldview, he explains, provides the basic story by which one lives life and interprets all of reality using a system of signs, symbols, and language.

Naugle concludes his investigation with an assessment of the potential dangers and benefits of worldview thinking. He reminds his readers that a Christian worldview offers more than a way to view the world. Christianity is not only a way of seeing or thinking, it is a way of living and worshipping God in everything one undertakes before the face of God. Christian faith accepts God's authoritative revelation and plan for the world and leads believers to heed the call to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. It is true truth, divinely given. The discovery of Christianity as worldview and a heightened awareness of the existence and influence of other worldviews should enhance our appreciation of these truths and not diminish them.

Describing the benefits of worldview thinking, Naugle writes that "the notion of worldview has a mysterious way of opening up the parameters of the Bible so that believers might be delivered from a fishbowl-sized Christianity into an oceanic perspective on the faith.... Conceiving of the faith in this manner opens up fresh vistas and exciting possibilities rooted in the true nature of historic biblical faith."

Stephen Lazarus is the leadership liaison and senior policy associate at the Center for Public Justice.