Read Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept Online
Authors: James W. Sire
W
hen the young boy asked his father,
“What holds the world up?” the question demanded an ontological answer. The boy was not asking about the authority on which his father would base his answer (epistemology). Nor was he asking about the meaning or intentionality—if any—of the world (its purpose for being there). He was not wondering whether there was any value to the world (ethics). He was instead asking a question about what the nature of the universe is. What makes this globe relate to the rest of the cosmos such that it can seem to hang in space?
Whether the father gives the naturalist answer (matter and energy in complex but orderly unity) or the theist answer (God made it that way), the answer is ontological. Throughout the history of Western thought till the seventeenth century, the ontological question has been implicitly understood to be primary. That something exists has been taken as a starting point. The first question then becomes, What is it that is there? Self-reflection replies, “I am there, and something other than me seems to be there too. Who or what am I? And is there any other? If so, what?” These are all ontological questions.
Other questions soon follow: How is it that I am able to know what is there? Why is it there? Why am I here? Am I responsible for what I do? What should I do? What makes being here worth the effort to continue to be here?
In my first formulation in The
Universe Next Door
, I singled out seven prime questions. I have listed them in chapter one; I list them again here for easy reference:
Let us assume for the moment that these seven questions come close to exhausting the issues addressed by a worldview. There is another question that quickly arises: Does the sequence of questions make a difference? The quick answer is yes—a profound difference. A substantial answer is the main purpose of this chapter.
Perhaps the best way to demonstrate the importance of putting first things first is to see what happens under two different circumstances: (1) when ontology precedes epistemology and (2) when epistemology precedes ontology.
Ontology First
Both traditional Jewish theism and traditional Christian theism have always seen the Infinite-Personal God as the most basic form of what is. God, at the most fundamental level, is what it means to
be
. That is, they have put ontology before epistemology.
When Moses turned aside to see a burning bush that was not consumed by the flame, a voice identified itself as the traditional, tribal God of the Hebrew people, the God of Moses’ fathers—“the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex 3:6). When Moses asked for God’s name, God replied, “
I AM WHO I AM
. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I
AM
has sent me to you’” (Ex 3:14
NIV
).
I
AM
: one can get no more fundamentally real than that. I
AM
is not to be equated with anything within the created order. He is not the god of war or the moon goddess or the spirit of the Nile, one among many. He is single and sole. He is what it is
to be
.
1
Of course the God of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures does not remain without character. He is far more than bare being. Even in the Scripture in which God identifies himself as That Which Is—that is, that which by its very nature could never not be—God shows himself as the tribal God of Moses’ family, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This God is no vague ethical principle or mere infinite force. He is fully personal. He calls Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees. He accepts the worship of Abraham. He engages himself in the whole history of the Hebrew people, speaking personally to and through his prophets.
It is not necessary here to show the way by which the biblical concept of God unfolds in the history of the Jews and Christians. But a few high points emphasizing the ontological aspects of biblical revelation will confirm its centrality to the Christian worldview.
The first chapter of Genesis declares that God was “in the beginning,” that unlike the gods of the surrounding nations, he is not a part of the cosmos. He is rather the Creator of the universe (the heavens and the earth) and of human beings, declared to be so like him that they are “in his image.”
Moses is told that if he obeys God by returning to Egypt to bring the Israelites out of captivity, God will meet him on a mountain in the wilderness. Moses obeys, and through the course of his obedience he learns to trust God. In fact he becomes so engaged with God that he wants to see him face to face. “Show me your glory,” he asks (Ex 33:18). God warns him that no one can see him fully and live, but he puts Moses in a crack of a huge rock and then passes by so that Moses can see his back. In the process he declares to Moses who he is. This declaration is rich in intellectual content but contains an enigma that will not be explained till Jesus unlocks its secret:
The L
ORD
, the L
ORD
,
a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,
yet by no means clearing the guilty,
but visiting the iniquity of the parents
upon the children
and the children’s children,
to the third and the fourth generation. (Ex 34:6-7)
The enigma—God as love and God as judge—is untangled only when Jesus, very God of very God, takes on himself the sins of the world. As Paul says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).
The point here is that the biblical concept of God is rich in content. One of the clearest formulations of this concept is given in the Westminster Confession:
There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgressions, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and withal most just and terrible in his judgments; hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty. (2.1)
The second and third sections (2.2-3) of the Confession then further unpack the notion, commenting on the all-sufficient character of the Trinity in terms of goodness, power and knowledge.
Not everyone who can be said to have a Christian worldview will express (or even be able to express) their concept in such detailed and abstract language. In a much briefer way, the following definition gets, I think, to the essence:
God is the infinite, personal (triune), transcendent and immanent, omniscient, sovereign and good being who created the universe.
2
Epistemology Second
With this concept as the foundation of the Christian worldview, it is easy to see that the answers to the subsequent six worldview questions will be limited. If prime reality is the biblical God, for example, then it is neither what anyone imagines it to be nor what scientists say it is; the cosmos is what it has been made to be. Its nature and character are determined by God. Moreover, people—each individual and all of them together—are who God has made them to be, not who they think they are or declare themselves to be. John Henry Newman put this point well: even though God as Creator is infinitely separate from his creation, “yet He has so implicated Himself with it and taken it into His very bosom by His presence in it, His providence over it, His impressions upon it, and His influences through it, that we cannot truly or fully contemplate it without contemplating Him.”
3
All of the universe bears a distinct relationship to God. “Religious Truth is not a portion, but a condition of general knowledge,” Newman says.
4
Moreover, the universe is knowable.
Epistemology is predicated on the nature of what is, not on an autonomous ability, human reason disengaged from God. Moreover, there is no dichotomy between religious knowledge and secular knowledge. As Newman says, “All knowledge forms one whole, because its subject matter is one; for the universe in its length and breadth is so intimately knit together that we cannot separate off portion from portion, and operation from operation, except by mental abstraction.”
5
If prime reality is the biblical God, ethics will not be based on humanity’s highest aspirations but will be grounded in the character of God as ultimate goodness. Human purpose will not be self-determined by any person, community, nation or multinational group but will be predetermined by God.
In the biblical worldview, in short, everything is first and foremost determined by the nature and character of God. It cannot be said too strongly:
Ontology precedes epistemology.
Though it may not appear to be so at first, to turn this around and presuppose the epistemology determines ontology is devastating to the Christian worldview.
When the Scriptures turn to epistemology, they do so with the assumption of the existence of God. The primary text here is the opening of the Gospel of John:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (Jn 1:1-5)
God as existent in the beginning or “from everlasting” (Ps 93:2) underlies both the existence of the universe and its determinate nature. It is the Word, Logos (the very principle of rationality, purpose and meaning), that characterizes God himself. And it is by the Word that all things were made. In other words, all things have a particularly determinate character. They are one thing and not another; there is order, not chaos.
As Josef Pieper says:
Everything that has
being
is by its very nature—which means, by reason of its being
real
—also knowable. . . . All existing things originated in the creative and inventive mind of God and
consequently
, when they were conceived and then also “spoken,” they received in themselves, as their essence, the quality of a “spoken word,” the character, therefore, to be in principle understandable and intelligible.
6
George MacDonald, the novelist-theologian whom C. S. Lewis thought to be “closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself” than any other writer, expands on the same notion:
I believe that every fact in nature is a revelation of God, is there such as it is because God is such as He is; and I suspect that all its facts impress us so that we learn God unconsciously. From the moment when first we come into contact with the world, it is to us a revelation of God, His things seen, by which we come to know the things unseen.
7
Human knowledge is possible because he who created and knows all things exhaustively is also the “light of all people” (Jn 1:4). Christ is “the true light, which enlightens everyone” (Jn 1:9). That is why we can know. Ontology—the existence of an omniscient God who creates us in his image—is the foundation for epistemology.
Ontological priority even governs the evangel. All four Gospels are bent on answering one primary question: Who is Jesus? It is not what he did or even what he said that is the first matter of importance. It is who he was. If he is understood to be who he was, then his teaching will be powerful and existential, not just abstractly true, and his life, death and resurrection will be among the most significant events of the cosmos.
Finally, we should note the rich connection between theology and science. For what we study in every academic field is made by God and sustained by his presence. “He sustains all things by his powerful word” (Heb 1:3).
The character of this world is what it has been made to be. As John says, the Logos made the world, that is, reasonability/intelligibility/meaningfulness is characteristic of the world. There is reason to believe that despite its human-mind-boggling complexity, there is intelligible order and structure behind it all.
So what is the nature of fundamental reality? What is Being? It is God in his awesome personal array of omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence and goodness. We can understand the universe because an understanding God made it to be understood.
Epistemology First
Of course, in his revelation of himself to human beings, God sometimes gives reasons this revelation is to be trusted. These reasons are often linked to actions that his prophets are to perform. Moses, for example, was told to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into the desert. If he did so, God would be with him and give supernatural signs of God’s approval and his power to free the Israelites from bondage. Some of those signs were given to Moses before he stepped out on this seemingly impossible task (Exodus 3 and following chapters); others came after he had begun to obey. Jesus, too, gave the religious leaders reasons for his claim to be the One sent from God (Jn 5:31-47). And the Gospel of John records seven signs that further justify belief in Jesus as God incarnate. The Bible assumes the existence of God; it does not try to prove it.