Thursday, January 03, 2008

biblical worldview

Posited: "Biblical worldview" is ... gibberish. It's a mismatch of types. It's like saying "the curl of the div of a vector field" or ... "the escape velocity from a black hole". It has no meaning. It's an attempt to force onto a diverse body of literature a metanarrative, metatheme, and typology which just isn't there. It's like saying "American accent". No such thing. Such a broad generalization becomes meaningless. It's like saying "Latin American culture". When you attempt to make a telescope to see that far or that broadly, you end up seeing nothing--the image becomes meaningless. All you end up actually talking about is "My worldview".

done ranting now.

7 comments:

Joe said...

correctomondo

Benjamin Ady said...

Joe,

hooray! We agree! =)

Joe said...

All the things that are plainly obvious, we agree on. The things that aren't obvious... well then you're mostly wrong :P

Benjamin Ady said...

that's applying rather a lot of stress to the normal meaning of the the word "mostly", isn't it? =)

byron smith said...

Are there biblical worldviews? Can we speak of a worldview of part of the bible? (e.g. the Synopics, or Johannine literature or Paul)

Benjamin Ady said...

Byron,

you're the theologian =)

That would be more sensible, wouldn't it? Although as a postmodern, I would ... possibly argue against worldview as a category--that it is not *super* useful.

byron smith said...

I guess it depends on how sharply we are using the term. If it is a general 'vibe' of the approach taken towards life expressed in a text, community or individual, then I think it is still a useful term. If it is assumed to be a monolithic entity with strictly defined contents in which subscribing to a Worldview™ means accepting every detail of a complete package, then it may simply become a polemical term being used as a buzzword in service of an ideological agenda (just to drop a few buzzwords of my own).