Leadership Personal Reflection see the file.(information of Leadership Personal Reflection) For any of us to be fully conscious intellectually we should n
Leadership Personal Reflection see the file.(information of Leadership Personal Reflection) For any of us to be fully conscious
intellectually we should not only be able
to detect the worldviews of others
but be aware of our own—
why it is ours and why in light of so many options
we think it is true.
Other Books by James W. Sire
How to Read Slowly
Scripture Twisting
Beginning with God
Discipleship of the Mind
Chris Chrisman Goes to College
Why Should Anyone Believe Anything at All?
Jesus the Reason (Bible study guide)
Habits of the Mind
Václav Havel
Naming the Elephant
Why Good Arguments Often Fail
Learning to Pray Through the Psalms
A Little Primer on Humble Apologetics
Praying the Psalms of Jesus
Deepest Differences with Carl Peraino
A Basic Worldview Catalog
F I F T H E D I T I O N
J A M E S W . S I R E
THE
UNIVERSE
NEXT DOOR
InterVarsity Press, USA
P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426, USA
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Email: ivp@ivpbooks.com
Fifth edition ©2009 by James W. Sire. First edition ©1976 by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of the United
States of America. Second edition ©1988 by James W. Sire. Third edition ©1997 by James W. Sire. Fourth edition
©2004 by James W. Sire.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in
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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®.
NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing
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Design: Cindy Kiple
Images: deep space: Phil Morley/iStockphoto
open door: Nicolas Loran/iStockphoto
USA ISBN 978-0-8308-7742-3
To Marjorie
Carol, Mark and Caleb
Eugene and Lisa
Richard, Kay Dee, Derek, Hannah, Micah, Abigail and Joanna
Ann, Jeff, Aaron and Jacob
whose worlds on worlds
compose my familiar and burgeoning universe
CON T EN TS
Preface to the Fifth Edition 9
1 A World of Difference: Introduction 15
2 A Universe Charged with the Grandeur of God:
Christian Theism 25
3 The Clockwork Universe: Deism 47
4 The Silence of Finite Space: Naturalism 66
5 Zero Point: Nihilism 94
6 Beyond Nihilism: Existentialism 117
7 Journey to the East: Eastern Pantheistic Monism 144
8 A Separate Universe: The New Age—Spirituality
Without Religion 166
9 The Vanished Horizon: Postmodernism 214
10 A View from the Middle East: Islamic Theism 244
11 The Examined Life: Conclusion 278
Index 287
PR EFACE TO
T HE FIF T H EDITION
It has been more than thirty-three years since this book was first
pub lished in 1976 Much has happened both in the development of world-
views in the West and in the way others and I have come to understand
the notion of worldview
In 1976 the New Age worldview was just forming and had yet to be
given a name I called it “the new consciousness ” At the same time the
word postmodern was used only in academic circles and had yet to be
recognized as an intellectually significant shift Now, in 2009, the New
Age is over thirty years old, adolescent only in character, not in years
Meanwhile postmodernism has penetrated every area of intellectual life,
enough to have triggered at least a modest backlash Pluralism, and the
relativism and syncretism that have accompanied it, have muted the dis-
tinctive voice of every point of view And though the third edition of this
book noted these, there is now more to the stories of both the New Age
and postmodernism In the fourth edition I updated the chapter on the
New Age and substantially revised the chapter on postmodernism
In the fourth edition I also reformulated the entire notion of world-
view What is it, really? There have been challenges to the definition I
gave in 1976 (and left unchanged in the 1988 and 1997 editions) Was it
not too intellectual? Isn’t a worldview more unconscious than conscious?
Why does it begin with abstract ontology (the notion of being) instead of
the more personal question of epistemology (how we know)? Don’t we
first need to have our knowledge justified before we can make claims
about the nature of ultimate reality? Isn’t my definition of worldview de-
10 Th e U n i v e r s e N e x t D o or
pendent on nineteenth-century German idealism or, perhaps, the truth
of the Christian worldview itself? What about the role of behavior in
forming or assessing or even identifying one’s worldview? Doesn’t post-
modernism undermine the very notion of worldview?
I took these challenges to heart The result was twofold First was the
writing of Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept, published at
the same time as the fourth edition of The Universe Next Door Here I
addressed a host of issues surrounding the concept of worldview Readers
who are interested in the intellectual tool used in the fourth edition and
this one will find it analyzed at much greater depth there To do this, I
was greatly aided by the work of David Naugle, professor of philosophy at
Dallas Baptist University In Worldview: The History of a Concept he sur-
veyed the origin, development and various versions of the concept from
Immanuel Kant to Arthur Holmes and beyond, and he presents his own
definition of the Christian worldview It is his identification of worldview
with the biblical notion of the heart that has spawned my own revised
definition, which appears in chapter one of the fourth edition and the
present book
Readers of any of the first three editions will note that the new defini-
tion does four things First, it shifts the focus from a worldview as a “set
of presuppositions” to a “commitment, a fundamental orientation of the
heart,” giving more emphasis to the pretheoretical roots of the intellect
Second, it expands the way worldviews are expressed, adding to a set of
presuppositions the notion of story Third, it makes more explicit that the
deepest root of a worldview is its commitment to and understanding of
the “really real ” Fourth, it acknowledges the role of behavior in assessing
what anyone’s worldview actually is To further emphasize the impor-
tance of one’s worldview as a commitment, in this fifth edition I have
added an eighth worldview question: What personal, life-orienting core
commitments are consistent with this worldview?
Nonetheless, most of the analysis of the first four editions of The Uni-
verse Next Door remains the same Except for chapter three on deism,
which has been significantly expanded to account for the diversities
within this worldview, only occasional changes have been made in the
presentation and analysis of the first six of the eight worldviews exam-
ined It is my hope that with the refined definition and these modest revi-
sions the powerful nature of every worldview will be more fully evident
Preface to the Fifth Edition 11
Finally, there is one major worldview now affecting the West that I
have not treated in any of the previous editions Since September 11,
2001, Islam has become a major factor of life not only in the Middle East,
Africa and Southeast Asia but in Europe and North America as well The
Islamic worldview (or perhaps worldviews) now impinges on the lives of
people around the globe Moreover, the term worldview appears in daily
newspapers when writers try to grasp and explain what is fueling the
stunning events of the past few years Unfortunately, I am not personally
prepared to respond to the need for us in America to understand Islam’s
understanding of our world So I have asked Dr Winfried Corduan, pro-
fessor of philosophy and religion at Taylor University and author of a
number of books but especially of Neighboring Faiths, to contribute a
chapter on Islamic worldviews 1
One final comment on my motivation for the first edition It has trig-
gered numerous negative comments especially among Amazon com re-
viewers who complain that the book displays a pro-Christian bias They
want an unbiased study There is no such thing as an unbiased study of
any significant intellectual idea or movement Of course an analysis of
worldviews will display some sort of bias Even the idea of an objective
account assumes that objectivity is possible or more valuable than an ac-
count from a committed and acknowledged perspective C S Lewis,
writing about his interpretation of Milton’s Paradise Lost, once com-
mented that his Christian faith was an advantage “What would you not
give,” he asked, “to have a real live Epicurean at your elbow while reading
Lucretius?”2 Here you have a real live Christian’s guide to the Christian
worldview and its alternatives
Furthermore, I first wrote the book for Christian students in the mid
1970s; it was designed to help them identify why they often felt so “out of
it” when their professors assumed the truth of ideas they deemed odd or
even false I wanted these students to know the outlines of a “merely”
Christian worldview, how it provided the foundation for much of the
modern Western world’s understanding of reality and what the differ-
ences were between the Christian worldview and the various worldviews
that either stemmed from Christianity by variation and decay or coun-
tered Christianity at its very intellectual roots The book was immedi-
1Winfried Corduan, Neighboring Faiths (Downers Grove, Ill : InterVarsity Press, 1998)
2C S Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), p 65
1 2 Th e U n i v e r s e N e x t D o or
ately adopted as a text in both secular institutions—Stanford, the Univer-
sity of Rhode Island and North Texas State, for example—and Christian
colleges Subsequent editions have been edited to acknowledge readers
with other worldviews, but the Christian perspective has, without apol-
ogy, not been changed
In fact, the continued interest of readers in this book continues to sur-
prise and please me It has been translated into nineteen languages, and
each year it finds its way into the hands of many students at the behest of
professors in courses as widely divergent as apologetics, history, English
literature, introduction to religion, introduction to philosophy and even
one on the human dimensions of science Such a range of interests sug-
gests that one of the assumptions on which the book is based is indeed
true: the most fundamental issues we as human beings need to consider
have no departmental boundaries What is prime reality? Is it God or the
cosmos? What is a human being? What happens at death? How should
we then live? These questions are as relevant to literature as to psychol-
ogy, to religion as to science
On one issue I remain constant: I am convinced that for any of us to be
fully conscious intellectually we should not only be able to detect the
worldviews of others but be aware of our own—why it is ours and why, in
light of so many options, we think it is true I can only hope that this book
becomes a steppingstone for others toward their self-conscious develop-
ment and justification of their own worldview
In addition to the many acknowledgments contained in the footnotes,
I would especially like to thank C Stephen Board, who many years ago
invited me to present much of this material in lecture form at the Chris-
tian Study Project, sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and
held at Cedar Campus in Michigan He and Thomas Trevethan, also on
the staff of that program, have given excellent counsel in the develop-
ment of the material and in the continued critique of my worldview
thinking since the first publication of this book
Other friends who have read the manuscript and helped polish some
of the rough edges are C Stephen Evans (who contributed the section
on Marxism), Winfried Corduan (who contributed the chapter on Islam),
Os Guinness, Charles Hampton, Keith Yandell, Douglas Groothuis,
Richard H Bube, Rodney Clapp, Gary Deddo, Chawkat Moucarry and
Colin Chapman Dan Synnestvedt’s review of the fourth edition sparked
Preface to the Fifth Edition 13
my vision for a fifth and provided guidance, especially for the chapter on
deism Recognition, too, goes to David Naugle, without whom my defini-
tion of a worldview would have remained unchanged To them and to the
editor of this edition, James Hoover, goes my sincere appreciation I would
also like to acknowledge the feedback from the many students who have
weathered worldview criticism in my classes and lectures Finally, which
rightly should be firstly, I must thank my wife Marjorie, who not only
proofed draft after draft of edition after edition, but who suffered my at-
tention to the manuscript when I had best attended to her and our family
Love gives no better gift than suffering for others
Responsibility for the continued infelicities and the downright errors
in this book is, alas, my own
Chapter 1
A WOR LD OF DIFFER ENCE
I N T RO D U C T I O N
But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life:
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us—to know
W hence our lives come and where they go.
M a t t h e w A r n o l d , “ Th e B u r i e d L i f e ”
In the late nineteenth century Stephen Crane captured our plight as we
in the early twenty-first century face the universe
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist ”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation ”1
1From Stephen Crane, War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899), frequently anthologized The He-
brew poem that follows is Psalm 8
16 Th e U n i v e r s e N e x t D o or
How different this is from the words of the ancient psalmist, who
looked around himself and up to God and wrote:
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens
From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor
You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
all f locks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Ps 8)
There is a world of difference between the worldviews of these two
poems Indeed, they propose alternative universes Yet both poems rever-
berate in the minds and souls of people today Many who stand with Ste-
phen Crane have more than a memory of the psalmist’s great and glori-
ous assurance of God’s hand in the cosmos and God’s love for his people
They long for what they no longer can truly accept The gap left by the
loss of a center to life is like the chasm in the heart of a child whose father
has died How those who no longer believe in God wish something could
fill this void!
A World of Difference 17
And many who yet stand with the psalmist and whose faith in the
Lord God Jehovah is vital and brimming still feel the tug of Crane’s poem
Yes, that is exactly how it is to lose God Yes, that is just what those who
do not have faith in the infinite-personal Lord of the Universe must feel—
alienation, loneliness, even despair
We recall the struggles of faith in our nineteenth-century forebears
and know that for many, faith was the loser As Alfred, Lord Tennyson
wrote in response to the death of his close friend,
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last, to all
And every winter change to spring
So runs my dream; but what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light;
And with no language but a cry 2
For Tennyson, faith eventually won out, but the struggle was years in be-
ing resolved
The struggle to discover our own faith, our own worldview, our beliefs
about reality, is what this book is all about Formally stated, the purposes
of this book are (1) to outline the basic worldviews that underlie the way
we in the Western world think about ourselves, other people, the natural
world, and God or ultimate reality; (2) to trace historically how these
worldviews have developed from a breakdown in the theistic worldview,
moving in turn into deism, naturalism, nihilism, existentialism, Eastern
mysticism, the new consciousness of the New Age and Islam, a recent
infusion from the Middle East; (3) to show how postmodernism puts a
twist on these worldviews; and (4) to encourage us all to think in terms of
worldviews, that is, with a consciousness of not only our own way of
thought but also that of other people, so that we can first understand and
then genuinely communicate with others in our pluralistic society
That is a large order In fact it sounds very much like the project of a
lifetime My hope is that it will be just that for many who read this book
and take seriously its implications What is written here is only an intro-
duction to what might well become a way of life
2From Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam (1850), poem 54
18 Th e U n i v e r s e N e x t D o or
In writing this book I have found it especially difficult to know what
to include and what to leave out But because I see the whole book as an
introduction, I have tried rigorously to be brief—to get to the heart of
each worldview, suggest its strengths and weaknesses, and move to the
next I have, however, indulged my own interest by including textual
and bibliographical footnotes that will, I trust, lead readers into greater
depths than the chapters themselves Those who wish first to get at
what I take to be the heart of the matter can safely ignore them But
those who wish to go it on their own (may their name be legion!) may
find the footnotes helpful in suggesting further reading and further
questions for investigation
WH AT IS A WOR LDVIEW?
Despite the fact that such philosophical names as Plato, Kant, Sartre, Ca-
mus and Nietzsche will appear on these pages, this book is not a work of
professional philosophy And though I will refer time and again to con-
cepts made famous by the apostle Paul, Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin,
this is not a work of theology Furthermore, though I will frequently point
out how various worldviews are expressed in various religions, this is not
A worldview (or vision of life) is a framework or set of fundamental be-
liefs 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 interpretative 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.
JAMES H. OLTHUIS
“On Worldviews,” in Stained Glass: Worldviews and Social Science
A World of Difference 19
a book on comparative religion 3 Each religion has its own rites and litur-
gies, its own peculiar practices and aesthetic character, its own doctrines
and turns of expression Rather, this is a book of worldviews—in some
ways more basic, more foundational than formal studies in philosophy,
theology or comparative religion 4 To put it yet another way, it is a book of
universes fashioned by words and concepts that work together to provide
a more or less coherent frame of reference for all thought and action 5
Few people have anything approaching an articulate philosophy—at
least as epitomized by the great philosophers Even fewer, I suspect, have
a carefully constructed theology But everyone has a worldview When-
ever any of us thinks about anything—from a casual thought (Where did
I leave my watch?) to a profound question (Who am I?)—we are operating
within such a framework In fact, it is only the assumption of a world-
view—however basic or simple—that allows us to think at all 6
What, then, is this thing called a worldview that is so important to all
of us? I’ve never even heard of one. How could I have one? That may well
3For a phenomenological and comparative religion approach, see Ninian Smart, Worldviews:
Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs, 3rd ed (Upper Saddle River, N J : Prentice-Hall,
2000); see also David Burnett’s Clash of Worlds (Grand Rapids: Monarch Books, 2002), which
focuses on religious worldviews
4A helpful collection of essays on the notion of worldviews is found in Paul A Marshall, Sander
Griffioen and Richard Mouw, eds , Stained Glass: Worldviews and Social Science (Lanham, Md :
University Press of America, 1989); the essay by James H Olthuis, “On Worldviews,” pp 26-40,
is especially insightful Worldview analysis in general has recently been criticized not only for
overemphasizing the intellectual and abstract nature of worldviews but for the implicit assump-
tion that there is such a thing as the Christian worldview Because any expression of a worldview,
Christian or not, is deeply imbedded in the flow of history and the varying characteristics of
language, this criticism is sound Each expression of any general worldview will bear the marks
of the culture out of which it comes Nonetheless, Christians, especially Christians, in every
time and place should be seeking for the clearest expression and the closest approximation of
what the Bible and Christian tradition have basically affirmed See Roger P Ebertz, “Beyond
Worldview Analysis: Insights from Hans-Georg Gadamer on Christian Scholarship,” Christian
Scholar’s Review 36 (Fall 2006): 13-28 Ebertz remarks: “The resulting worldview is not ab-
solute and ahistorical Nor is it a set of bare theological claims It is rather a richly fleshed-out
perspective that incorporates discoveries from the past and the present, as well as insights from
believers and non-believers” (p 27) The description of the Christian worldview that constitutes
the next chapter should be understood in that light
5In the third edition of The Universe Next Door I confessed that long ago I took T S Eliot to
heart He is credited with saying, “Mediocre poets imitate; good poets steal ” The title for
this book comes from the two last lines of an e e cummings poem, “pity this busy monster,
manunkind: listen: there’s a hell/of a good universe next door; let’s go ” See e e Cummings,
Poems: 1923-1954 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1954), p 397
6As Charles Taylor says, “[A]ll beliefs are held within a context or framework of the taken-for-
granted, which usually remains tacit, and may even be as yet unacknowledged by the agent,
because never before formulated” (A Secular Age [Cambridge, Mass : Belknap, 2007], p 13)
2 0 Th e U n i v e r s e N e x t D o or
be the response of many people One is reminded of M Jourdain in Jean
Baptiste Molière’s The Bourgeois Gentleman, who suddenly discovered he
had been speaking prose for forty years without knowing it But to dis-
cover one’s own worldview is much more valuable In fact, it is a signifi-
cant step toward self-awareness, self-knowledge and self-understanding
So what is a worldview? Essentially this:
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 (con-
sciously 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
This succinct definition needs to be unpacked Each phrase represents a
specific characteristic that deserves more elaborate comment 7
Worldview as a commitment. The essence of a worldview lies deep in
the inner recesses of the human self A worldview involves the mind, but
it is first of all a commitment, a matter of the soul It is a spiritual orienta-
tion more than it is a matter of mind alone
Worldviews are, indeed, a matter of the heart This notion would be
easier to grasp if the word heart bore in today’s world the weight it bears
in Scripture The biblical concept includes the notions of wisdom (Prov
2:10), emotion (Ex 4:14; Jn 14:1), desire and will (1 Chron 29:18), spiritual-
ity (Acts 8:21) and intellect (Rom 1:21) 8 In short, and in biblical terms,
the heart is “the central defining element of the human person ”9 A world-
view, therefore, is situated in the self—the central operating chamber of
every human being It is from this heart that all one’s thoughts and ac-
tions proceed
Expressed in a story or a set of presuppositions. A worldview is not
a story or a set of presuppositions, but it can be expressed in these ways
When I reflect on where I and the whole of the human race have come
from or where my life or humanity itself is headed, my worldview is being
7See my Naming of the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove, Ill : InterVarsity
Press, 2004), especially chap 7, for an extended development and justification of this defini-
tion
8See David Naugle’s extended description of the biblical concept of heart (Worldview: The His-
tory of a Concept [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002], pp 267-74) The nrsv translates kardia as
“mind”; the niv translates it as “heart ”
9Ibid , p 266
A World of Difference 21
expressed as a story One story told by science begins with the big bang
and proceeds through the evolution of the cosmos, formation of the gal-
axies, stars and planets, the appearance of life on earth and on to its dis-
appearance as the universe runs down Christians tell the story of cre-
ation, Fall, redemption, glorification—a story in which Jesus’ birth, death
and resurrection are the centerpiece Christians see their lives and the
lives of others as tiny chapters in that master story The meaning of those
little stories cannot be divorced from the master story, and some of this
meaning is propositional When, for example, I ask myself what I am re-
ally assuming about God, humans and the universe, the result is a set of
presuppositions that I can express in propositional form
When they are expressed that way, they answer a series of basic ques-
tions about the nature of fundamental reality I will list and examine these
questions shortly But consider first the nature of those assumptions
Assumptions that may be true, conscious, consistent. The presup-
positions that express one’s commitments may be true, partially true or
entirely false There is, of course, a way things are, but we are often …
