A Review of Against Worldview: Reimagining Christian Formation as Growth in Wisdom, by Simon P. Kennedy
Christian teaching about worldview has done much to alert us to the biases that prevent secular scholars and journalists from objectivity. However, the language of “worldview” has also, at times, been used to suggest that Christians cannot be objective either. We must instead introduce our own worldview, our own bias, into our intellectual engagement with the world.
But is worldview the right solution, or a concession to subjectivism?
Simon P. Kennedy, author of Against Worldview and research fellow at the University of Queensland (AU), encountered this question as a professor. The Christian college at which he taught required that every course have “a learning outcome related to a Christian worldview.” But for reasons he could not yet articulate, Kennedy felt that this exercise was forced or artificial. He puzzled over how to “frame a Christian worldview learning outcome” for courses as diverse as mathematics, ancient poetry, and World War II history. Of course, he wanted his students to be Christian and to think about the world as Christians. But something about the concept of a worldview did not sit right.
In his book, Kennedy articulates the reasons for his discomfort. He objects to a deductive model of worldview: At the beginning of our investigations, we download a correct worldview from the Bible, later applying to each subject matter we encounter. In contrast, he recommends an inductive model: A Christian worldview is the product of continuous study and interaction with the world God has made. It is the pursuit of wisdom, rather than rigid adherence to a prior worldview.
Christian education at every level has been impacted by the worldview approach to Christian thinking. On this account, education and study of the different disciplines of human learning must be guided by an over-arching worldview. Helpfully, Against Worldview appears to be targeted toward not only Christian academics but Christian educators generally. It is informative, but also accessible.
In the first chapter, Kennedy introduces his own motivation for the project, including both his personal story as a Christian educator, mentioned above, and his philosophical objections to the worldview-model. The temptation might be to teach the course as it would be taught at a secular university, but with intermittent sprinklings of Bible verses. How distinctive does it have to be?
In the second chapter, Kennedy details the history of worldview. He focuses on proving two claims: that worldview thinking derives from German idealism, and it is designed for ideological conflict. On the first point, the notion of worldview is derived from German idealism: Kant, Schelling, and Hegel. According to idealism, the mind does not passively experience reality; it shapes reality by its own concepts. In Hegel especially, “worldview” comes to mean a perspective on the world that shapes perception and differs between cultures, religions, and philosophies. Dutch Neo-Calvinists, chiefly Abraham Kuyper, took up this notion. Kuyper’s ideological descendants were Cornelius Van Til and Francis Schaeffer, from whom the evangelical worldview movement arose.
Throughout this history, Kennedy demonstrates his second claim, that worldview is a “combat concept.” While effective for ideological battle, it is a poor fit for the patience and curiosity required in Christian education: “The old form of worldview thinking is a square peg in a round hole when applied to Christian education.”
Rather than abandon worldview altogether, Kennedy demonstrates, in chapter three, that Herman Bavinck, Kuyper’s fellow Neo-Calvinist theologian, provides a better model of Christian worldview. Bavinck is aware that the Christian view of the world is under attack at the end of the 19th century. However, he argues that Christianity is bolstered by a thorough, inductive, and empirical engagement with the world, rather than by the intellectual adoption of an a priori worldview. As Kennedy says, “Worldview education should be understood primarily as inductive rather than deductive.”
The fourth chapter is a biblical survey of discussions of wisdom. Kennedy ably proves that categories of both spiritual and practical – including secular – wisdom are well-attested by Scripture.
The fifth chapter pivots toward an audience of Christian school educators, making the book actionable. Kennedy advises that Christian educators not think that they must stuff a bit of Christian content into each course. The various topics of academic education are worthy in their own right as explorations of God’s world. Each is a portion of the mosaic of a Christian worldview, without having to give explicit mentions of the whole at every point.
Kennedy intriguingly claims that the modern worldview movement arose from a context of culture war, the “positive world” in Aaron Renn’s “three worlds of evangelicalism” model. Kennedy says, “Christian worldview education emerged in the latter part of the twentieth century as a defensive weapon in an age of cultural combat. Our situation is different now and requires a different approach to worldview in education.” My question is whether worldview-thinking is bad only because times have changed, or because it is wrong on the merits.
In fact, Kennedy’s own arguments have shown that worldview-thinking is not only out-of-place, but also wrong on the merits. In Kuyper’s time, Van Til’s, Schaeffer’s, and our own, worldview thinking has encouraged an all-or-nothing intellectual approach. It has discouraged patient, objective engagement in the fields of secular and humanistic learning. Even Christian academics, like Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (who blurbed the book) who were shaped by Dutch Neo-Calvinism, had to overcome simplistic Christian worldview thinking in order to engage in serious scholarship.
Many will see Kennedy’s opposition to this emphasis on worldview in Christian education as misplaced. Worldview-teaching has done much to alert Christians to the perspectives and biases that affect secular thought, whether in university education, science, or journalism. But consider: What is the solution to secular bias? Is it Christian bias? Unbelievers twist the truth in unrighteousness. Is the solution for Christians to twist the truth in righteousness? To force a Christian explanation into every course, journal article, and news piece?
It is rather the case that objective, unbiased apprehension of the world is consonant with a Christian worldview. All truth is God’s truth. Creation declares the glory of God. The rocks will cry out, even if no one teaches geology from a Christian worldview.
Kennedy’s book is a welcome contribution to the critical discussion of worldview, especially as it affects Christian educational institutions. It provides a substantive history of worldview in German idealism and Dutch Neo-Calvinism. It offers guidance toward a Christian epistemology that is objective, rather than subjective in orientation. And while it does not answer all the questions that arise, it opens up a discussion, inviting further contributions to the Christian theory of knowledge beyond the deductive model of a Christian worldview.
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The title of the book, and apparently much of the book, uses imprecise language. The author is not “against worldview.” The seminal James Sire worldview book, “The Universe Next Door,” is descriptive rather than prescriptive. Learning to recognize different worldview perspectives is valuable. I don’t see how anyone could be against it.
Rather, the book is arguing against a presuppositionalist and indoctrinationalist application of the concept of worldview in Christian education. That would make a mouthful in a book title, I realize. But being “against worldview” is equivalent to being against reality.