features of worldview philosophy (at least as employed by its most influential proponents) typically include: an insistence upon coherence, strategic approaches to effect the nullification of the plurality of “non-Christian” worldviews, and a concomitant validation of the elusive and much coveted “Christian” worldview. In this chapter, I suggest that evangelicals have set their youth up for a serious fall by over-welcoming worldview philosophy into their circles. Though worldview philosophy may prove serviceable to younger evangelicals in eliciting a much needed, critical self-awareness, the worldview mentality should be disseminated more discriminately—making clear to youth groups and college fellowships, for example, that worldview philosophy is a historically and culturally convenient tool that may prove helpful in developing, with varying success, a greater sense of critical awareness. To the consternation of many evangelical leaders and teachers, the worldview vogue may prove particularly insidious to younger evangelicals when they discover or are made aware of its inherent methodological limitations.
The limitations arise naturally on account of the dimension of religion that allows for mystery and paradox. Christianity, as a religion, will produce worldviews that are inevitably 1) inconsistent to varying degrees; 2) inherently plural; 3) “synthesis-frustraters.” Insistence upon the single import of worldview philosophy may be ironically unsettling younger evangelicals under the pretenses of more firmly grounding their beliefs. Evangelical leaders should more openly acknowledge worldview philosophy’s conceptual limitations when promulgating it to its young people in order not to unnecessarily further ostracize them in the course of their spiritual formation.
I. Coherence
“To think intelligently today is to think worldviewishly” reads Os Guinness’ endorsement of the third edition of Sire’s The Universe Next Door.5 Definitions of worldviews vary, but there seems to be a general agreement on what a Christian worldview is supposed to do. According to Sire, “. . . [T]o discover one’s own worldview . . . is a significant step toward self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-understanding.”6 Colson writes that “[d]eveloping the proper worldview is essential, both for properly ordering our lives and for influencing the world around us.”7 Moreland and Craig have suggested that an important function of philosophy is to “help someone form a rationally justified, true worldview, that is, an ordered set of propositions that one believes, especially propositions about life’s most important questions.”8 Within another tradition, a worldview has been said to be “the comprehensive framework of one’s basic beliefs about things.”9 Although the author just quoted and others within his tradition would insist that all areas of human living should be informed and affected by their Christian worldview, the most common assertion regarding worldviews is that everybody has a worldview whether they know it or not. A major task in worldview philosophy, consequently, is to promote the judgment that the Christian worldview is the most coherent one constructible.10
It has been my experience, however, that on account of the mysteries of the faith Christian worldviews must admit a measure of non-coherence. There are several topics pertaining to the Christian faith that possess more than a fair share of mystery and are generally not satisfactorily explicable to the inquiring mind. Among the most famous are the Trinitarian doctrine of God; the Chalcedonian definition of Christ; the nature of the inspiration of the Scriptures; issues dealing with the compilation of the Scriptures; the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; the creation of the universe; the existence and domain of angels and demons; the existence and locations of heaven and hell; the origin of evil; the coincidence of key divine characteristics with human free will; and so on.11
The inherent mystery that attends these topics thins, if even marginally, the strands upon which Christian worldview philosophy is comprised. Such a marginal dwindling is enough, I hold, to undermine the worldview methodology to such a degree that its need for supplementation is intrinsic.
As an example, consider for a moment the coincidence of the traditional “attributes” of God and human free will. Every position that one takes is fraught with mystery. I have not read every available treatise on God’s relation to time or on his means of obtaining knowledge (or lack thereof), but I am aware of the main options and have done a bit of research on the history of the doctrine of inherited sin, for example. I have also seriously wrestled with Sir Anthony Kenny’s God of the Philosophers and how the arguments presented there have moved the estimable philosopher to agnosticism.12 The family of controversies that surround these questions has made it apparent to me that there will always come a point, when pressed, that one has to cry, “Mystery!” Whether it be by proclaiming, for example, that God’s providence “extendeth itself even to the first fall . . . yet so as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature and not from God”13 and crying, “Mystery!” when asked how God managed to do this; or by believing, “. . . on the part of God’s will and desire the grace is universal, but as regards the condition it is particular”14 and crying, “Mystery!” when asked how such a thing could be; mystery abides. Whether one speaks with a Calvinist, an Amyraldian, an Arminian, a determinist, a compatibilist, a libertarian, whomever, all one needs to do is stress the opposite point (be it sovereignty or free will in these cases) hard enough and the other person will need to cry, “Mystery!”, at some point.15
This inevitable cry for mystery raises little qualms for devout religionists16—in fact, many would object if it were somehow eliminated—but I believe it conceals something intrinsic to the Christian faith that is seldom spoken of among believers. In a famous essay, Quine has helpfully distinguished between three types of paradox:
A veridical paradox packs a surprise, but the surprise quickly dissipates itself as we ponder the proof. A falsidical paradox packs a surprise, but it is seen as a false alarm when we solve the underlying fallacy. An antinomy, however, packs a surprise that can be accommodated by nothing less than a repudiation of part of our conceptual heritage.17
Countless Christian thinkers have exercised their spirits and intellects in exploring these topics and have assured the Church that the antinomies of the faith are indeed antinomies and not falsidical paradoxes. Even so, I do not think it too much to apply Quine’s observations concerning one of the antinomies he touches upon in his memorable essay to these efforts collectively: “Each resort [at resolution] is desperate; each is a departure from natural and established usage. Such is the way of antinomies.”18 Hasker has recently attempted to articulate certain of the antinomies that beset divine providence, but I think that Kenny’s presentation is the most concise: “If God is to have infallible knowledge of future human actions, then determinism must be true. If God is to escape responsibility for human wickedness, then determinism must be false.”19 On account of such an intractable predicament, Christians cannot but concede Quine’s wry comment, “One man’s antinomy is another man’s falsidical paradox.”20 Or, in more existentially relevant terms, the believer’s mystery understandably becomes the unbeliever’s absurdity.
Perhaps for this reason, many Christians insist, in good faith, upon the category
