What is a Worldview? Is There Such a Thing as a Biblical Worldview?

Within our rapidly changing culture, we hear the word “worldview” thrown around a lot. People use it to refer to ideas and concepts that are foreign to them—lately and most frequently to refer to the sociological theory "Critical Race Theory” (CRT). While dissecting the merits or criticisms of CRT isn't the purpose of this piece, what is important is to note that an idea, a theory, or a foreign concept is not necessarily a worldview in a proper sense. When we refer to a worldview, we’re actually referring to an actual thing, not simply an umbrella term to talk about a network of ideas.

I also hear a lot of Christians talk about the idea of a “biblical worldview.” Some implicitly use this term to really categorize their own perspective as biblical. I’ve seen folks refer to capitalism as a “biblical worldview” (ironic, considering that economic system didn’t exist among the cultures who actually wrote and first received the Bible). I’ve seen folks refer to what is really an individualistic, Western outlook on life as a “biblical worldview,” despite this also being a foreign concept to the cultures of the Bible.

Still others, upon finding out that the cultures of the Bible thought and interacted with the world very differently than we do in the West—and that many, many people still do to this day, will enthusiastically point to those worldview and exclaim, “This! this is the biblical worldview!” But is it? Let’s take a look at both questions right now.

Defining a Worldview

In his book Transforming Worldviews, the late Christian anthropologist Paul Hiebert outlines a worldview as consisting of three elements:

1. Beliefs (called the “cognitive dimension”)

2. Feelings (called the “affective dimension”)

3. Values and norms (called the “evaluative dimension”)

He defines worldview then as “the foundational cognitive, affective, and evaluative assumptions and frameworks a group of people make about the nature of reality which they use to order their lives.” He adds, “It is the cosmos thought to be true, desirable, and moral by a community of people” (Hiebert 2008, 25-26).

You can probably already see how classifying social theories like CRT fall short of being called a “worldview” because they simply do not order people’s lives at the foundational level an actual worldview does. It may be a cognitive concept with varying degrees of merit, but a worldview orders peoples’ lives at such an implicit, under-radar-level that we’re speaking to a level of how people perceive things like time, ethics, space, community, and family. We filter our experiences through this worldview system and make behavioral decisions accordingly. See the figure below from Hiebert’s book (26):

You can probably see how the figure might actually better visualize what we’re talking about if it were cyclical—because our behaviors and decisions produce new experiences which in turn begin the process anew. In fact, worldview shaping looks more like the orbit of the earth than a linear process like what’s depicted here. We’re constantly shaping our reality by the decisions we produce from our worldview and having our worldview reshaped by the reality around us.

Hiebert alludes to this when he speaks to how worldviews change. Worldview change naturally happens through two types of transformations: what Hiebert calls “Normal” (the everyday sort of slow change we all experience) and “Paradigm shift” (seismic changes that require change… “like rebuilding a house using parts and pieces of the old, but with a radically new way of ordering the fundamental configuration” (317)). The normal transformation usually happens too subtly to notice while the paradigm shifts come in times of crisis, innovation, and other reorderings to how humans live life (e.g., the invention of standardized time or the smartphone boom).

Changing a Worldview

Hiebert also suggests that there are three ways we can intentionally direct the changing of a worldview (319-324):

1. Examining our worldview. That is, to “surface them” (319). Our worldview is largely mysterious, implicit, unnamed. But by bringing to the surface what we do, it helps us examine it more objectively. Why do Westerners interact the way we do? View time and relationships and family and good versus bad the way we do?

2. Exposure to other worldviews. Once we realize how we perceive concepts like time and family, it can be jarring at first to discover that people in other cultures—people who love Jesus and their communities and their families just like we do—don’t view those things the same way. When I, as an American, think of “family”, my mind generally goes to my wife and my children…what we would call our “nuclear family.” But in many parts of the world “family” includes grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, etc., and in still other parts of the world includes deceased ancestors. By learning that many throughout the world think about very basic things differently than we do—including the cultures of the Bible, it helps us realize that what we consider “normal” isn’t normal to all.

3. Create living rituals. For those of us in church traditions and cultures that don’t have many rituals, this may seem odd or even against our natural impulsive. But rituals, as Hiebert says, “speak to the transcendent—of our deepest beliefs, feelings, and values…they point to mystery…fundamental allegiances, and express our deepest emotions and moral order” (322). But rituals for rituals sake are not the point. We must connect ritual, especially in the church, to deep meaning and allow it to structure and express our worldview.

So What About a Biblical Worldview?

Some suggest that there is no singular “biblical worldview” and in a sense that is true. It’s certainly a mistake to say that our Western worldviews are biblical, as much of what we consider normal does not even appear in the Bible. It’s also mistaken to point to any one particular (of the many) worldviews represented in the Bible and claim it as the biblical worldview, because contained within Scripture itself are examples of God bringing correction to the worldview assumptions of the biblical cultures, demonstrating their imperfection (e.g. 2 Sam. 12).

But Hiebert also notes that it’s shortsighted and incorrect to suggest that there’s not enduring and persistent cross-cultural worldview of sorts that binds the big story of God’s redemptive purposes for creation and is present in every culture throughout history. We don’t “get it” in its entirely, so to claim we have a firm and perfect grasp on a biblical worldview is arrogant (267). But rather the biblical worldview is a reality we, as God’s people, are all endeavoring to grow into together. Beginning with the person of Jesus the Christ, Hiebert notes that some of the following themes are wrapped up into this biblical worldview we are all journeying to grow into in a greater fullness of understanding (265-305):

• Cognitive Themes

  • Creator/creation

  • Divine revelation

  • The King and his kingdom

  • The church

  • Citizens of the kingdom

  • The mission of God and the church’s role in mission

• Affective Themes

  • Mysterium Tremendum (a “holy awe”)

  • The fruits of the Spirit

• Evaluative Themes

  • Good/evil

  • Justification and restoration

• Diachronic Themes

  • Cosmic story/human history

  • Shalom/warfare

  • Marriage

Conclusion

There you have it. Our worldviews are much more complex and grand, yet implicit and unspoken, than many in popular culture are imagining. They give structure and shape to our lives and inform how we view and interact with the world around us. They’re also not the way many other brothers and sisters in Christ around the world think and interact with the world around us. It’s crucial that we get that and pearl-clutch too tightly to our own view of the world. It’s also worth holding with an opening hand and humility this concept of a “biblical worldview”, recognizing that any particular worldview on this side of Christ’s return is fallen and incomplete, in need of redemption. As we await his return, we grow together in all of our diversity toward a redeemed, kingdom outlook that we will only see through a mirror dimly (1 Cor. 13:12) until we see Jesus face-to-face.

You can download a free one-sheet I created on worldview: here.

For more, see:

Georges, Jayson. 2017. The 3D Gospel: Ministry in Guilt, Shame, and Fear Cultures. Time Press.

Hiebert, Paul. 2008. Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker.

McCaulley, Esau. 2020. Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. Downers Grove, IL: IVP.

Richards, E. Randolph and Brandon J. O’Brien. 2012. Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible. Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP.