Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (20 page)

The worldview analyst who best captures this characteristic is Herman Dooyeweerd with his concept of religious “ground motive.” As we saw in chapter two, Dooyeweerd identifies two ground motives: “One is born of the spirit or holiness, and the other of the spirit of apostasy.”
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That is, a ground motive is a spiritual orientation, the result of a commitment either to the living God of the Bible or to his archenemy. Dooyeweerd sees these ground motives as prior to any worldview.
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I am, rather, incorporating his concept of ground motive into my definition of
worldview
. In my estimation, simply by being alive in the world, everyone makes and lives out of a religious commitment. The character of that commitment controls the entire character and direction of one’s life. This commitment is usually subconscious, but it can be made conscious by self-reflection. Worldview analysis itself can aid us in becoming more conscious of what that commitment has been, is now and may become through further reflection and decision.
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One philosopher who is well aware of his worldview and how it functions as a foundation for his further theorizing is John Searle. In his lucid study of consciousness, Searle is well aware that his rejection of any notion of a transcendent being is important:

What Searle does not seem to understand is, first, that his conviction that there is no god, no transcendent, is as much a matter of faith as is the conviction of a theist that there is such a god, and second, that a Christian may have evidence for this conviction that is equally valid and convincing. Harts’
The Experience of God
presents in great detail why the existence of a transcendent God is far more reasonable than any case for naturalism, which he concludes is “a pure assertion, a pure conviction, a confession of blind assurance in an inaccessible beyond.”
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Of course, as we saw above with Richard Dawkins, Searle is not the only scholar to rely on a plausibility structure to lend credence to an otherwise tendentious argument.
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Expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions.
A worldview is not a story or a set of presuppositions, but it can be expressed in those ways. When I reflect on where I and the whole of the human race have come from or where my life or humanity itself is headed, my worldview is being expressed as a story. Each major worldview has its own metanarrative, its own master story.

Naturalism, with its pattern of big bang; evolution of the cosmos; formation of the galaxies, suns and planets; the appearance of life on earth and its eventual disappearance as the universe runs down, or reconstitutes itself by way of another big bang, is a master story. So is the notion of universes that multiply endlessly, a sort of mirror image of the Hindu notion of eternal return. Nihilism is a master story, perhaps a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, but a master story nonetheless.

Christianity, with its pattern of creation, fall, redemption and glorification, is a master narrative. I see my life and the lives of others as tiny chapters in that master story. The meaning of these little stories cannot be divorced from the master story, but some of this meaning is propositional. When, for example, I ask myself what I am really assuming about reality, the result is a set of ideas that I can express in propositional form.

The initial story in the present book illustrates one way a question requiring a nonstory answer moves through story into propositions without losing its story form. Notice what happens to the father when he is challenged by his son to explain why the world doesn’t just wildly spin off in space or plunge downward to oblivion. He may not have thought about such an issue since he took earth science or astronomy in high school or college. He does, however, remember a bit about what he learned, and so he can make some progress. He can tell his son about the law of gravity. He can even tell him about the orderliness of the universe. What stymies him, however, is the ultimate question—what makes the universe orderly? Still, by pondering, he can make a stab at an answer. “Well, ah, er . . . uhm . . . it’s matter and energy all the way down,” or “God made it that way, and it’s God all the way down.” These are the choices a father in the modern Western world is likely to make. One is the first ontological presupposition of naturalism, the other of theism or perhaps deism.

There are, of course, other ways for the father to have answered his son’s question. Let’s say the father has made a full commitment to Zen. He is not yet a Zen master. He has not yet been enlightened or achieved satori. But he is anxious to steer his son in the right direction. So how does he answer the question, What holds the world in space?

“Son, that’s considered an interesting question by those who do not know what questions to ask. Your teacher or something in you has started you thinking in the wrong direction.”

“Why, Dad? What do you mean?”

“Why? What do I mean, Son? Even those questions are really unproductive. Come, sit with me. There, now get into the position you see me taking.”

“Okay, Dad. Is this right?”

“Right? Wrong? Don’t ask. It will do. Now, let us be silent.”

The father may turn the boy’s attention to an object in nature—the moon, the stars, a bird on a branch. He may teach the boy a mantra, like
Om mane padme hum
, or just have him say
Om
slowly over and over. But he will not answer his questions. Questions have no answers, at least not ones that appear rational to the waking logical consciousness. But after meditating, the boy may well no longer be interested in the questions. He may be captivated by the journey toward the Void—the empty fullness of the universe.

The first principle of Zen is that there is no first principle of Zen. Or, the first principle of Zen is Not. Everything in our conscious Western being cries out against the possibility that the father and son humming their mantra are remotely in touch with
the way things are
. Our presuppositions are so radically different that we have great difficulty seeing what the Zen father is trying to get his son to see. Perhaps we can’t see it at all. Is there something there to be seen? If there is, then the Western notion that being is determinate—some specific thing and not something else—is wrong. No logic—no form of rationality—is common to the Zen father and the Western father, whether Christian or naturalist.

Here is where Dooyeweerd’s notion of
ground motive
seems to me to be helpful. There is a commitment or disposition below the level of conscious reason that characterizes the heart of everyone. From this commitment flows the character of one’s whole take on life. It generates the answer one gives to the first worldview question, What is prime reality? And that controls the rest of one’s worldview. James Orr saw this: “Everywhere the minds of men are opening to the conception that, whatever else the universe is, it is one—one set of laws holds the whole together—one order reigns through all. Everywhere, accordingly, we see a straining after a universal point of view—a grouping and grasping of things together in their unity.”
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So did Abraham Kuyper: There is a “need for all thought to proceed from a single principle, a ‘fixed point of departure.’”
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Orr and Kuyper are, of course, talking about the worldviews of people who are self-reflective and have some conscious knowledge of their own worldview, though they need not know that it is a worldview. What about the ordinary person who goes through life relatively unconscious of his or her commitment to a view of reality? Is their worldview generated from a single ontological conception? My tentative answer is yes, it is, far more than they might think.

What, for example, is assumed by those who are not particularly thoughtful about what orients their life? That thinking about such a topic is irrelevant. It doesn’t make a difference to what makes life work for them. In other words, they have a subconscious notion that the universe (reality) is basically benevolent. God, if there is a God (and there may well be), is not concerned for their view of God. So even if God exists, he can mostly be ignored, at least until one faces death. If God does not exist (and who knows—he may not), then there is no need to worry about his nonexistence. Again, the universe (reality) is basically uninterested in the worldviews of people. One need not worry about such issues. Nonetheless, it is the ontology of such people, their notion of what the universe or God is really like, that governs the rest of their take on life.
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That the “fixed point of departure” must be the one true God should go without saying for Christians. As Dallas Willard says, “The single most important thing in our mind is our idea of God and the associated images.” Then he quotes A. W. Tozer: “That our idea of God corresponds as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us.”
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Not just any God will do.

Assumptions which may be true.
The presuppositions that express one’s commitments may be true, partially true or entirely false. Since there is a way things are, the assumptions one makes about this may be more or less accurate. Perhaps, given our fallen nature, none of our presuppositions are held in such a way that they are completely and utterly true.

One could object, “But what about our belief in God? Surely that is completely and utterly true.” So it would seem. If there is a God and we believe in God, our belief is a true belief. The question comes when we begin to put content into the concept of God. Do we have a completely perfect notion of what it means for God to be omniscient or transcendent? The very concepts stretch the limits of our mental capacity. As philosopher Roy Clouser says, “A concept of a thing includes everything that is true of it (which is why we never actually possess a complete concept of any individual thing).”
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I suspect that we can be only partially true about most things that are possible for us to know.

There is an interesting biblical illustration of holding a correct presupposition and yet not holding the truth. In the Gospel of John 7–8, Jesus is arguing with the religious authorities. They believe that God is one. After all, does not the Torah say, “Hear, O Israel: The L
ORD
is our God, the L
ORD
is one” (Deut 6:4
NIV
)? Yes, God is one. That’s for sure. But Jesus has just made statements that more than suggest that he thinks he is God. That doesn’t make sense. Jesus is a man. He can’t be God. To say he is God is blasphemy. Jesus, however, tells them that they don’t know what they are talking about, that it is they who are deceived. If they really knew God, they would recognize him as God’s Son. So he charges them with not knowing God.

So what was wrong with their knowledge of God? Just this: They thought they knew
what
God could possibly be. They did not know that God’s oneness—his absolute
onlyness
—could be a complex of at least two (later in John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of the Spirit, revealing God as a complex of three). The religious authorities’ notion of God was partially right, but they extrapolated from this a supposed fact that was not true. They held it to be true, however, and thus they missed the stellar truth that God himself as Son to the Father was standing in front of them and speaking with them. Thus their supposed knowledge that God is one was false.

It is best to acknowledge that all our presuppositions are—as we hold and understand them—limited in their accuracy.

Presuppositions which we hold consciously or unconsciously.
I have noted this so often that it doesn’t need further elaboration. Suffice it to say that in our daily life as thinkers and actors, the bulk of our worldview is utterly unconscious. We are thinking with it, not about it.

Presuppositions which are consistent or inconsistent.
This is undoubtedly true, but it is hard to document in any easy way, for once we recognize that our presuppositions clash, we are likely to abandon the offending presupposition, modify our idea or modify the system so that the contradiction is either resolved or remasked from our consciousness. Still, I can think of one instance in my own mental development when I discovered a contradiction.

Early in graduate school I had adopted a radical form of New Criticism which said that the intention of the poet was irrelevant to the meaning of the poem. In my papers I wrote from this perspective. At the same time, I was studying the psalms of the Bible and assuming that the intention of these poems was precisely what I was trying to understand. I held these two views side by side and for months did not notice any conflict. Of course, it made no sense to read Scripture and not be interested in what its human writer, and more important divine inspirer, had in mind. Finally one day the contradiction dawned on me, and I changed my mind. Since I believed that my Christian faith, the content of which depends on knowing at least some of the intention of the authors of the Bible (and of God who inspired them), was far more firmly rooted than my recent developing literary theory, I jettisoned my acceptance of that aspect of New Criticism. This was fairly painless.