Worldview Analysis, Part 2

Models of Worldview Component Functions

(avg. read time: 4–8 mins.)

In addition to the different definitions of the concept of “worldview,” scholars have devised many models for explaining the components of worldview functions, i.e., how worldviews operate and in what capacities they operate. Kearney, for example, thinks that the assumptions that constitute worldviews can be described as fundamentally propositional and derive from the nature of the brain as well as from the reality referred to, “That is, there are certain modes of conceptualization necessary for people to interact with themselves and with their environment. We will refer to these as world-view universals.”¹ These universals concern the pre-theoretical that makes thinking possible, not more specific worldview characteristics that can distinguish one worldview from another. Most fundamentally, every worldview emerges from the awareness of the Self and the relationship to the Other (i.e., the Self’s environment or context).² From this fundamental awareness of the self-in-relation, other pre-theoretical universals of thinking emerge, such as relationship, classification, causality, and space and time.³

While this model may be helpful for categorizing ideas in relation to these universals of thinking, I did not find it especially illuminating for a text-based analysis or for illuminating the more direct foundations and functions of resurrection belief in particular. After all, resurrection belief is by no means a worldview universal, and this model simply lacks the tools for articulating both important similarities and differences in the specifics of resurrection belief among the texts I examined and the religious traditions they shape. Furthermore, this model focuses on the pre-theoretical without which thinking is impossible, which makes it less helpful for analyzing the presuppositional without further constructive work on top of this model’s frame.⁴

Some models define components by how worldviews answer/account for key questions or by how they address philosophical subjects. Aerts et al. aver that worldviews must provide a model for the world (answering correlative questions like “What is the nature of our world?”), explanation (“Why is our world that the way it is, and not different?”), evaluation (“Why do we feel the way we feel in this world and how do we assess the world?”), a model of integrated action (“How are we to act in this world?”), a model of possibilities (“What future is open to us in this world?”), and a model with integrity to answer the previous questions in a coherent fashion.⁵

Johnson, Hill, and Cohen divide worldview components into ontology (beliefs about who or what is in the world, including beliefs of theology and cosmology), epistemology (what can be known and how one can know), semiotics (symbols and signs used for conceptualization and description), axiology (proximate goals, values, and ethics), teleology (ultimate goals, beliefs about afterlife and/or eschatology), and praxeology (social norms and sanctions).⁶

Koltko-Rivera’s integrated theory of worldview and personality divides the components of worldviews into the subjects of human nature, will/agency, cognition, behavior, the interpersonal, truth (including in terms of its scope, possession, and availability), and the world and life (including such considerations as ontology, cosmology, theology, and teleology).⁷

Walsh and Middleton organize their model of worldviews as faith commitments around how a worldview answers the following questions: 1) Who am I (the nature, task, and purpose of humans)? 2) Where am I (the nature of the world)? 3) What is wrong? 4) What is the remedy?⁸

While Sire’s notion of worldview has become more complex over the years, his worldview model in The Universe Next Door remains organized around answers to basic questions posed to each worldview presented. These questions are: 1) What is prime/fundamental reality? 2) What is the nature of external reality? 3) What is a human being? 4) What happens to a person at death? 5)  Why is it possible to know anything at all? 6) How do we know what is right and wrong? 7) What is the meaning of human history? 8) What life-orienting core commitments are consistent with the worldview?⁹

Droogers suggests that worldviews answer five basic and ultimate questions related to the following subjects: 1) What is considered beautiful (aesthetics)? 2) What is morally good behavior (ethics)? 3) Why do humans live and die (ontology)? 4) What can be trusted as true (epistemology)? 5) How can groups and individuals, in answering these questions, distinguish themselves from others as authentic human beings (identity strategies)?¹⁰ Droogers goes further, however, and incorporates Ninian Smart’s seven-dimensional analysis of religion in how he models worldviews. Those seven dimensions are ritual/practical, doctrinal/philosophical, mythic/narrative, experiential/emotional, ethical/legal, social/organizational, and material/artistic.¹¹

These topic-oriented and question-oriented models could be useful for more straightforward theological or philosophical comparison (such as Sire performs in The Universe Next Door). However, for comparisons that are exegetical or exegetical-theological, like my own, these models are not especially helpful for text-based analysis. Smart’s seven-dimensional analysis is a step in the right direction for a model moving beyond discussing worldviews strictly in terms of belief. But it too is not best fit for a textual analysis, since such a focus does not use this model to its full potential in that multiple dimensions become irrelevant when examining given texts.

Hiebert employs two models: synchronic and diachronic. His synchronic model describes three dimensions of worldview—cognitive, affective, and moral—and of seven categories of conception (“suggestive themes” for exploration) borrowed from Robert Redfield: time, space, self, others, nonhumans, causality, and common human experience (as well as, more generally, themes and counterthemes).¹² His diachronic model focuses on how people see the human story in the form of myth, “the grand narrative in which history is embedded, the narrative by which the history and the stories of human lives are interpreted. In other words, myths are transcendent stories believed to be true that bring cosmic order, coherence, and sense to the seemingly senseless experiences, emotions, and ideas in the everyday world by telling people what is real, eternal and enduring.”¹³ Through all these modes, Hiebert identifies worldviews as performing the following functions: 1) plausibility structures that provide answers to our ultimate questions; 2) emotional security; 3) validation of deepest cultural norms, which we use to evaluate our experiences and choose courses of action; 4) integration of culture (organizing ideas, feelings, and values into a generally unified view of reality); 5) monitoring cultural change; and 6) psychological reassurance that the world is as we see it and a sense of peace of being at home in the lived-in world.¹⁴

Wright established a model for worldview analysis in The New Testament and the People of God that he has since used for the entirety of his Christian Origins and the Question of God series. His model consists of four component functions or expressions of worldviews: stories, answers to basic questions (which he adapts from Walsh and Middleton), symbols, and praxis.¹⁵ Of these four components, he regards story/narrative as the most characteristic expression of worldviews.¹⁶ But in day-to-day reality, all of these aspects of worldviews are typically assumed in the form of sets of beliefs and aims.¹⁷

Naugle’s model is not nearly so systematic as the ones noted above. Nevertheless, his summative definition cited earlier shows some overlap with Wright’s model.¹⁸ A worldview is a semiotic system of narrative signs, meaning that symbols are a key component of worldviews as they are endemic to the vision of a symbolic universe. At the same time, a worldview is a semiotic system of narrative signs, meaning that narrative is also endemic to forming the symbolic universe as a storied world. The symbolic universe formed by this system of narrative signs shapes human practices, hence “praxis,” as Wright notes above.¹⁹

Hiebert’s model seems better suited for cultural comparison rather than textual comparison. As with Smart’s approach, too much of this model would need to be left to the side for it to be particularly useful for the purposes of my kind of analysis. By contrast, Wright has used his own model extensively in the interpretation and illumination of texts, thereby providing his own demonstration many times over of its usefulness and helpfulness. His model also seems more complete than Naugle’s in that he includes the concern about answering basic worldview questions that drives many of the other worldview models (albeit with different variations of questions).

Furthermore, Wright’s model correlates well with what Neville and Wildman identify as the “sites” for testing a comparative method’s representation of ideas. The first is intrinsic representation (i.e., emic representation), which corresponds to this overall paradigm of worldview analysis. The second is perspectival representation, how an idea configures perspectives, which corresponds to the narrative dimension in particular. The third is theoretical representation in terms of how it effects other ideas in symbol systems, which corresponds to the symbol dimension. The fourth is practical representation in terms of how ideas shape practice, which corresponds to the praxis dimension.²⁰ I thus found a Wrightian model to be a good base to use for my particular comparative tasks and purposes. In the next four parts, I will outline the components of Wright’s model, since it is less straightforward than most of the others and since it is the one with which I am most familiar through my use of it.

1. Kearney, World View, 42.

2. Kearney, World View, 68–72.

3. Kearney, World View, 72–106.

4. As Sire explains, “The utterly pretheoretical is that without which we cannot think at all. The presuppositional is that which, though we may be able to give reasons for, we cannot, strictly speaking, prove.” Sire, Naming, 98.

5. Aerts, et al., World Views, 25–42.

6. Johnson, Hill, and Cohen, “Culture and Religion,” 143–44.

7. Koltko-Rivera, “Psychology,” 29–36.

8. Walsh and Middleton, Transforming Vision, 35.

9. Sire, Universe, 22–23.

10. André Droogers, “The World of Worldviews,” in Methods for the Study of Religious Change: From Religious Studies to Worldview Studies, ed. André Droogers and Anton van Harskamp (Sheffield; Bristol, CT: Equinox, 2014), 23–24.

11. Smart, Dimensions, 10–11. For an extensive application of these dimensions to his analysis of religions across the world, see Ninian Smart, The World’s Religions, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Cf. Klauck, Religious, 8.

12. Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews, 26.

13. Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews, 27.

14. Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews, 29–30. On category formation in worldviews, which is not as relevant for my analysis, see Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews, 33–42.

15. Wright, New Testament, 122–26. He also adds a fifth question—What time is it?—in N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, vol. 2 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 138, 467–72. For more on his model, specifically as it relates to Paul, see N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, vol. 4 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 28–36.

16. Wright, New Testament, 123.

17. Wright, New Testament, 125–26. Similarly, Lewis Mehl-Madrona and Barbara Mainguy in their narrative-based therapeutic approach describe beliefs as conclusion statements for larger stories (Remapping Your Mind: The Neuroscience of Self-Transformation Through Story [Rochester, VT; Toronto: Bear & Company, 2015], 84–85).

18. Naugle, Worldview, 330.

19. Cf. Olthuis, “Worldviews,” 38. His list of functions is broader than most, but at least some of the elements also correlate with Wright. “Story/narrative” is equivalent to “relates life to the universal order of existence.” “Symbol” is equivalent to “is expressed in symbol.” “Praxis” is equivalent to “induces and invites incarnation in a way of life.” The closest equivalent to “answers to basic worldview questions” is, “serves as the interpretative and integrative framework for all of life.”

20. Neville and Wildman, “Comparing,” 202–4.