Is w-w in decline? Has OL been on the cutting edge (while pushing the envelope and kicking the can down the road)? Is this why Peter Leithart left Idaho?
. . . you’ve hit on a pet peeve. I’m ready to delete “worldview” from Christian vocabulary. It’s an especially clunky category for evaluating art. Drama and poetry can’t be reduced to clever ways of communicating ideas, which is what happens in “worldview” analysis.
To get the worldview, you extract ideas about man, society, God, and nature from the plays and organize them into a system; you ignore the poetry and the plot and everything that makes the play a play or the poem a poem. You come to the plays with a preconceived framework that makes it impossible to learn anything from them, much less enjoy them. You produce students who are glib know-it-alls, who don’t need to read the plays carefully because they already know what they think.
C. S. Lewis said that the first moment of any genuine literary criticism is a moment of submission to the work. Worldview analysis never submits; it always tries to dominate the work. As you can see, you’ve struck a nerve. This brings out the curmudgeon in me.
Rather than evaluating Shakespeare (or other poetry, drama, or fiction) with worldview categories, teachers should be teaching students to read. Memorize Lewis’s An Experiment in Criticism before teaching another lit class. In short, Harrumph!
Since w-wism is a kind of shibboleth among the co-allies, I wonder what drew Justin Taylor to this.
Old Life 
The linked interview is pretty nice. I did not know that Leithart has an affinity for The Bard.
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“glib know-it-alls”
A perfect description of your average w-w nazi!
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It hurst me to compliment Leithart.
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Rube, like who? I dare you. Double dare.
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The issue with the FVists was never their literary taste. Still, T David Gordon said much the same 5 years ago in “Why Johnny Can’t Preach.” I’ve started backing away slowly once believers drop, “I don’t read fiction,” into a conversation.
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Leithart’s treatment of Shakespeare is a classic example of w-w treatment of literature. Shakespeare would hardly recognize himself.
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As anti-ideology becomes one more ideology, the case against metaphysics gets metaphysical. Anti-foundationalism arrives at foundationalism, when those who define their worldview by antithesis with worldview get trapped in their attempts to define the difference.
To “submit” to “catholic” attempts to include is to exclude any notion of rational contradiction.
Gregory A. Clark, “The Nature of Conversion: How the Rhetoric of Worldview Philosophy Can Betray Evangelicals,” in Evangelicals and Liberals in Conversation, ed. Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis Okholm ( IVP, 1996),
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Mike K., I do the same thing when he (a preacher) says “I only listen to Christian music.”
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Adler and Lewis must’ve had the same curriculum
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JAS, worse — “I only listen to contemporary Christian music….”
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Hey, dude. Let’s make a worldview every-square-pixel movie and get Jars of Clay to do original music for it! Who’s up for frisbee golf?
http://www.letterstotheexiles.com/
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Did they make a movie/curriculum or a “Life is Good” t-shirt?
A key step in coming to understand our calling to creative service is to realize that everything really is awesome, not in the trite sense that it is simply cool or nice, but rather that the entire created order is awe-inspiring in its scale and scope. It is awesome in its complexity. It is awesome in its diversity. It is awesome in its expression of God’s grace. It’s all grace; “it’s all gift,” as we learn in “For the Life of the World.” Everything really is awesome.
http://www.acton.org/pub/commentary/2014/03/12/everything-really-awesome
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Is there a difference between “worldview” and “home-school view”?
The difference between the “worldview” of “mere christianity” and the gospel is the same difference as that between liberalism and the gospel. “Mere christianity” teaches another false gospel, one in which a combination of theism and moralism seeks to replace the true gospel.
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“Frisbee golf”?!?! My w-w compels me to insist that it is called DISC golf, and yes, I’m up for it!
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Worldviews are like liturgies: we all have them, but some are better than others.
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Now we wait for PL to delete the FV wv and submit to Scripture.
And DW to stop telling us the WCF teaches the FV wv.
Wait.This just in. Not gonna happen.
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Michael, we’re all Hegelians? I don’t think so.
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A flip-side to this whole glib know-it-all worldviewism that I’m sympathetic to is the fearful parent that doesn’t want their kid to chewed up by the godless liberals and so they have to get them ready for battle, to defend themselves, and w–w is a weaponized version of education. I say sympathetic because I taught a number of these kids literature and history last year and wanted to help them think of learning as something other than learning how to protect themselves from the bogymen out there or (more in line with the glib, triumphal know-it-alls) carry on the fight of the cross into the secular realm.
I think I did some damage (to carry on the military metaphor).
The point being, there is a frightened defensiveness that can drive w–w, which I think ought to be dealt with more gently.
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Michael, but since the category is faith, some have it and some don’t. See how 2k takes the self-righteousness away?
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Adam, how about gentle with those who are victims of the WW fear mongers but harsher on their drill sargeants?
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DG – Nope, we’re not all Hegelians.
Zrim – Nope, the category is biblical cultural outlook. Just because 2k allows for freedom/liberty in things indifferent doesn’t mean it isn’t a biblical w_w of some sort. Are you telling me that enjoying the goodness of creation w/o ulterior motives of transforming it into a Godly one isn’t in scripture?
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Michael, not transforming culture is not in Scripture. That’s the point of 2k. You have liberty to or not to transform because the Bible doesn’t say. The 2k objection is that transformers tell us transformationalism is biblical.
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Michael, the Bible’s category is not culture outlook, it’s faith (and that not of ourselves but a gift from God). 2k wants to take the Bible’s cue. That’s not to deny worldview or even its importance, but worldview is a (ahem) worldly category and one primarily nurtured for better or worse by families, believing or not.
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@Adam
How does one distinguish between “defensiveness” and faithlessness? I agree with @Zrim. I have no sympathy for the prolocutors of w-wism.
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Is there a guide somewhere to OLTS acronyms? I can’t for the life of me figure out what “w-w” is supposed to stand for.
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w-w = worldview — so as not to waste letters and energy that could otherwise by used to redeem, renew, and transform every square inch, centimeter, and hectare.
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cw, the reason is that w-w is a profane word, the way Y-H is holy.
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Chortles (maybe unintentionally, maybe not) brings up a good point. If we are to redeem the world, does that include systems of measurement?
Should we not be calling for all to be on customary or metric? An ecumenism of units squared.
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Zrim – Thanks for elaborating; that makes more sense now. I always mistook you (and Hart) for denying the *existence* of worldviews.
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