The inimitable Michael Spencer at the Internet Monk has a great post today about the value -- and limitations -- of worldview thinking: "World-Phooey." He expresses very well the frustration that led me to write Rethinking Worldview in the first place. On the one hand, I think the worldview concept is incredibly valuable. On the other, I sometimes feel it's been stretched beyond recognition, so that people are rightly tired of hearing about it. My concern was that, thanks to the excess, more and more of us would turn a deaf ear to worldview talk entirely.
So I appreciate the fact that, while he condemns the extremes, Spencer still teaches worldview analysis to his students and recommends classics like James Sire's Universe Next Door and the more recent Naming the Elephant, which popularizes the history found in David Naugle's Worldview: History of a Concept.
One thing that might help, as I've suggested here before, is a shift in emphasis away from apologetics and public policy toward sanctification. It just might be that worldview thinking fits into a larger framework of a lived Christian life and finds its greatest value there.
You (and Mr. Spencer) could NOT be more right. Some of the students at the classical and Christian school where I teach pepper the term "biblical worldview" into their papers like it's some sort of incantation. Sadly, most of those students (as do many of their parents) don't understand the term they are employing.
When I see the term printed below a Thomas Kinkaid painting I'll know that this super nova has burned out.
Posted by: Dell | October 11, 2007 at 04:13 PM