No single piece of our mental world is to be sealed off from the rest and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!
-Abraham Kuyper, speech at the Free University
Significant as Kuyper’s innovative push for the creation and cultivation for a Christian worldview may be in the particular historical moment of which he was a part, we who live in what is, in many ways, a vastly different world have many reasons reject the monist conception that a comprehensive worldview may be developed from a single principle. The postmodern critique of objectivity (or should I say its appreciation of subjectivity?) and pessimism towards progress (at least in the non-scientific realm) makes it nearly impossible to merely affirm Kuyperian principles and foolishness to attempt to apply them in the forms that Kuyper developed [1]. But though the spirit of “systematization”that dominated modernity has lost much of its steam as it approached the present day, the mere fact that worldview-ism (in Kuyper’s conception) is culturally out-of-date does not invalidate all of its ideas. Christ remains sovereign over all, and Christ does reign with all of creation as his footstool. What is introduced, however, is a gap between the theological truth expressed by such a statement and our ability to act effectively according to its implications.
This gap, as I currently understand it, may be bridged a number of ways:
1.) Orientation-ism: One concept heavily attacked in the postmodern critique is that of the assurance of the absolute truth. While liberal scholarship and society in general has decided to deal away with the concept entirely, instead focusing on the “subjective truth”, a Christian appreciation of the holiness of God–that he is fully separate from creation–allows us to conceive of a notion of truth that is neither man-centered nor nature-centered, but God-centered and thus preserves the notion of the existence of absolute truth apart from man and nature. Instead of the outright agnosticism with respect to truth of the secularist, the Christian’s skepticism limits itself to the existence of an epistemic gap between the truth and his or her own conception or appreciation of it. As such, one solution to the problem of the affirmation of a Christian worldview which by logical necessity expresses certain points is to express the central principles in the language of orientation, which would give a stronger sense of the fluidity of theoretical conclusions and hopefully contribute to more willing acceptance of pluralism in expressions of orientation (such as between different practices between different churches and denominations) [2]. One may notice that, as a solution to the “gap” I proposed, this one results in minimal change, with mostly a translation of older terms into new terminology (or the use of older terms in the new ways) and the development of theories about how to engage with and/or accommodate those with similar orientations but different manifestations.
2.) Incomplete Revelation-ism [3]: An alternate solution more closely follows the structuralist and deconstructionist critiques of the formerly central role of the “author function” and the transcendental signified and rejects the concept of a structural center which organizes the structure. But again, a Christian who affirms the existence of a holy God cannot fully embrace the infinite hermeneutic potential that exists as a result of a rejection of all central organizing principles. Here, however, the epistemic gap between truth and the Christian’s perception of it becomes even more pronounced so that no single, coherent worldview or manifestation of orientation can ever be confidently affirmed to be sufficient for every person in every situation. Such a situation would necessitate the development of multiple parallel systems from which to analyze a single situation which are logically complete, but also overlapping in object [4]. In doing so, one affirms the usefulness of central organizing principles which are not arbitrary because they stem from an external grounding in God’s self-revelation without attempting to limit God’s self-revelation to a single set of individually knowable principles [5].
My hypothesis is that a fully formed worldview for today will likely make liberal use of both strategies.
[1] As of now, I have only really read Kuyper (and one paper on Dooyeweerd), so by virtue of sheer ignorance I am focusing my critique on Kuyper, which is really not fair to him in that his writing was never meant to address such a critique. This note is more of an attempt to organize my own thoughts as opposed to express something really new.
[2] Note that the existence of multiple expressions of a single orientation does not mean that all such expressions are all of equal worth or purity of expression.
[3] This does not so much imply that the canon is not closed, but that any one individual who would attempt to articulate a systematic worldview may necessarily have an incomplete experience of God’s self-revelation, and would therefore articulate a worldview that reflects his own biases and failures.
[4] For those who attended Manna’s 2011 Spring Retreat, a good example would be the three separate languages of the orphan, idol, and legalism provided from which to analyze your heart.
[5] In a way, this approach can be seen as an attempt to accommodate the limitations of humankind to properly apprehend God without resorting to explicitly apophatic theology or the mysticism commonly associated with it.
October 3, 2011 at 3:52 am
Why pluralism? or rather, why not a catholic irenicism instead? The German Reformed churches, for instance, subscribed to the Augsburg Confession in some fashion, the Variata, which was accepted as an authentic Lutheran expression until the Gnesio-Lutherans pushed the Philippists out. Likewise the Heidelberg Catechism aimed to be a pan-Protestant confession with considerable latitude. The problem I see in pluralism is that, whatever you try, you ultimately still need clear criteria of some kind, so the inclusion of different articulations is more a matter of tolerance and not of pluralism per se.