Charles Kraft:
Cultures pattern perceptions of reality into conceptualizations of what reality can or should be, what is to be regarded as actual, probable, possible or impossible.
These conceptualizations form what is termed the "worldview" of culture. The worldview is the central systemization of conceptions of reality to which the members of its culture assent (largely unconsciously) and from which stems their value system. The worldview lies at the very heart of the culture, touching, interacting with, and strongly influencing every aspect of the culture.
Christianity in Culture, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979, p.53
Long and McMurry:
Worldview is the culturally determined set of filters through which we perceive and experience reality.
David Hesselgrave:
A worldview is the way people see or perceive the world, the way they know it to be.
Communicating Christ Cross-Culturally. 2 nd ed., Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1991, p.197.
Robert Redfield:
The culture of a people is, then, its total equipment of ideas and institutions and conventionalized activities. The ethos of a people is its organized conceptions of the ought. The national character of a people, or its personality type, is the kind of human being which, generally speaking, occurs in that society. The "worldview" of a people, yet another of this group of conceptions, is the way a people characteristically look outward upon the universe. If "culture" suggests the way a people look to an anthropologist, "worldview" suggests how everything looks to a people, … But if there is an emphasized meaning in the phrase "worldview" I think it is in the suggestion it carries of the structure of the things as man is aware of them. It is the way we see ourselves in relation to all else.
The Primitive World and Its Transformation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1958, p.85, 86.
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Paul Hiebert:
Worldview is "the basic assumptions about reality which lie behind the beliefs and behavior of a culture.
Anthropological Insights for Missionaries. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985, p.45.
We will, however, define the concept as we use it in this study as the “fundamental cognitive, affective, and evaluative presuppositions a group of people make about the nature of things, and which they use to order their lives.” Worldviews are what people in a community take as given realities, the maps they have of reality that they use for living.
Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How
People change. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008, p. 15
Hiebert, Shaw, Tienou:
Worldviews are the most encompassing frameworks of thought that relate belief systems to one another. They clothe these belief systems with an aura of certainty that this is, in fact, the way reality is. They are the fundamental givens with which people in a community think, not what they think about.
Understanding Folk Religions. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999, p.40.
Geisler and Watkins:
A world view is a way of viewing or interpreting all of reality. It is an interpretive framework through which or by which one makes sense out of the data of life and the world.
Worlds Apart: a Handbook on World Views, 2 nd ed., Grand Rapids: Baker,
1989, p.11.
Ronald H. Nash:
In its simplest terms, a worldview is a set of beliefs about the most important issues in life…. A worldview, then is a conceptual scheme by which we consciously or unconsciously place or fit everything we believe and by which we interpret and judge reality.
Worldviews in Conflict, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992, p.16.
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J.P. Moreland:
“... a worldview functions as a set of habits, forming background beliefs that direct our acts of noticing or failing to notice various features of reality. ...Habit-forming beliefs do not stand between a person and reality as do glasses. Rather, they habitualize ways of seeing and thinking, which, through effort, can be changed or retained, on the basis of comparing them with reality itself.” (J. P. Moreland,
Kingdom Triangle: Recover the Christian Mind, Renovate the Soul, Restore the
Spirit's Power, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007, 34.)
James H. Olthuis:
“A worldview (or vision of life) is a framework or set of fundamental beliefs through which we view the world and our calling and future in it. This vision need not be fully articulated: it may be so internalized that it goes largely unquestioned; it may not be explicitly developed into a systematic conception of life; it may not be theoretically deepened into a philosophy; it may not even be codified into creedal form; it may be greatly refined through cultural-historical development.
Nevertheless, this vision is a channel for the ultimate beliefs which give direction and meaning to life. It is the integrative and interpretive framework by which order and disorder are judged; it is the standard by which reality is managed and pursued; it is the set of hinges on which all our everyday thinking and doing turns.”
Quoted in James Sire ,The Universe Next Door. 5 th ed. Downers Grove: IVP, 2009, p18.
James Sire:
“A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) that we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being.” Sire, The
Universe Next Door, 5 th ed. P.20
Sire’s Seven (eight) basic questions:
1.
What is prime reality – the really real?
2.
What is the nature of external reality, that is, the world around us?
3.
What is a human being?
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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 personal, life-orienting core commitments are consistent with this worldview?
-Sire, p22,23
Five basic questions answered by a Worldview:
1. Where am I? (What is the nature of reality; what is time and space?)
2. Who am I? (What does it mean to be human; what are “being” and “existence”?)
3. Who is in charge? (What powers control the reality I inhabit?)
4. How do I know? (By what logic is knowledge derived?)
5. What is good? (What is the basis for morality?)
Roland Muller:
“In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve experienced guilt, shame, and fear. I believe that these three responses to sin make up the basic building blocks that created mankind’s common-ancestral worldviews. This situation is similar to the three basic colors that an artist mixes to make all the colors of the universe. …
There are many different kinds of worldviews, but when carefully examined, they can be understood in the light of man’s response to guilt, shame and fear.
We must be careful, however, not to try and fit each culture into one specific category. As I stated, these common-ancestral worldviews are similar to the thousands of variations that can be created from three primary colors. How much of each primary color determines what the final color will be. In the same way, all three common-ancestral worldviews are present in all cultures and worldviews, but the amount of each one present determines the actual type of worldview that emerges.” – Roland Muller, The Messenger, the Message, the Community.
CanBooks, 3 rd edition, 2013, p 110,111.
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Guilt-based worldviews on continuum between guilt ……innocence. Basic principle: right versus wrong. See chapter 13.
Fear-based worldviews on continuum between fear ….. power. Basic principle: fear versus power. See chapter 15.
Shame-based worldviews on continuum between shame ….. honor. Basic principle: shame versus honor. See chapter 16
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