Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
www.takeittothestreets.info
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The source of ch. 1, & chs. 4-12 was derived from James W. Sire's The Universe Next
Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, 3rd 1997, 4th 2004, & 5th 2009 eds. The ch. 3 summary was
taken from an article posted on Scribd.com. The source of ch. 2 was adapted from Sire's Naming
the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept. The postscript was written by (the author of)
scribd.com/takeittothestreets. The annotated bibliography is taken from the footnotes of Sire's
books.
Contents
Section 1: OVERVIEW
1. Introduction: A World of Difference
2. A Brief History of the Worldview as a Concept
3. Summary of the Worldviews
Postscript
Annotated Bibliography
James Orr (1844-1913) was the first to introduce the concept of worldview into Christian theology. Orr
considered worldviews to originate deep within the constitution of human nature and involving the intellect and the
actions we perform. He observed the attacks against the Christian worldview on multiple fronts and held that a
proper theological exposition of it was actually its main defense. Orr demonstrated that a Christo-centric, rational,
self-authenticating system of biblical truth can adequately address all the issues related to human flourishing.
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) extended Orr’s approach by demonstrating Calvinistic Christianity as an all-
embracing life system. Kuyper said that each worldview addresses three fundamental relationships: man to God,
man to man, and man to world. Kuyper went on to discuss how the Christian worldview illuminates and stimulates
culture (i.e. religion, politics, science, and art) to its highest peak of perfection. One of Kuyper’s main contributions
was that he held to the need for all thought to proceed from a single principle.
Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) was the most philosophic of Christian thinkers and most insistent that
theoretical thought is not the basis of worldviews. Rather, he held each worldview as proceeding from a spiritual &
volitional commitment, of which there are only two: man converted to God or man averted to God. Personally, I (of
article) have added my thoughts in the postscript about these key points of Kuyper’s and Dooyeweerd’s.
Choosing A Worldview
How well does the worldview relate to itself?
Consistency - It does not violate the law of non-contradiction.
Coherence - Do its parts fit together; do separate statements support one another? (For instance the
following statements are true [grass is green; 2 + 2 = 4, Springfield is the Capital City of Illinois] however
they do not support one another in any way and therefore taken holistically they are not coherent)
Humans: History:
Created in the image of god Linear.
Possess self-transcendence, rationality, personality, morality, Determined at creation.
creativity, sociability. God does not act in history.
Originally good, now fallen but capable of redemption.
Optimistic naturalism (secular humanism)
Knowledge/revelation: God/ultimate reality:
Can have adequate knowledge of the world and god. Eternal or self-generated matter.
Available through general and special revelation. No god.
History: Ethics:
No direction or purpose. Understood primarily in “personal” terms.
Individual and world history are meaningless. Emphasis on personal relationship not moral values.
Death: Knowledge/revelation:
Undeniable absurdity. Transcends logic, language, physical senses.
Face it boldly as the final exercise of revolt. A direct experienced knowledge of one’s oneness with the
universe.
History:
World history is meaningless. Ethics:
Distinction between good and evil abandoned due to oneness Individual more important.
of reality. Atman is brahman.
Growing cosmic consciousness leads to superior human
Death: race.
Cycle of rebirth (samsara) that is only stopped when oneness
is achieved. Knowledge/revelation:
Future life determined by karma. Experiencing true reality in its unity is the goal.
Accomplished through altered states of consciousness.
History: Assisted by meditation, mantras, mediums, etc.
Individual and cosmic history are cyclical.
Time is unreal as one passes beyond it in the experience of Ethics:
the one. Good is whatever facilitates a cosmic consciousness of
oneness.
New Age Often involves ecological and human sensitivity.
God/ultimate reality: Everything part of mother earth.
Self linked to a permeating force throughout the universe. Death:
No transcendent god, only the good within. Not the end of self.
What lies beyond unclear.
Cosmos/prime reality: Many opt for repeated reincarnations.
Visible (accessible by normal consciousness). History:
Invisible (accessible by altered consciousness). Cosmos and man have entered a new age.
Some stress a one-world government and coming one-world
Humans: leader.
4. Christian Theism: A Universe Charged with the Grandeur of God
Up to the end of the seventeenth century, the theistic worldview was clearly dominant. The intellectual
squabbles that existed did so within the circle of theism, for most parties still held the same basic presuppositions.
The reason is obvious. Christianity had so penetrated the Western world that whether people believed in Christ or
acted as Christians should, they all lived in a context of ideas influenced and informed by the Christian faith. This
cultural consensus, that gave a sense of place and dominion, and the basis for meaning, morality, and identity, no
longer exists as worldviews have since proliferated.
It is important to note that Christian theism was culturally abandoned not because it was inadequately
understood, forgotten completely or not applied to the issues at hand. Moreover, not everyone abandoned theism.
There remains at every level in society, every academic discipline, and every profession, those who take their
Christian theism with complete intellectual seriousness and honesty.
Although theism lasted for so long, many forces operated to shatter the basic intellectual unity of the West.
Deism held sway over the intellectual world of France and England briefly from the late seventeenth into the first
half of the eighteenth century. Deism developed, some say, as an attempt to bring unity out of a chaos of theological
and philosophical discussion. The period became bogged down in interminable quarrels over what began to seem,
even to the disputants, as trivial questions. Deism, to some extent, is a response to this, though the direction such
agreement took put deism rather beyond the limits of traditional Christianity.
Another factor in the development of deism is a change in the location of the authority of knowledge about the
divine; it shifted from the special revelation found in Scripture to the presence of reason, “the candle of God,” or to
intuition, “the inner light”. The reason for this shift is somewhat ironic. Through the middle ages, due in part to the
rather Platonic theory of knowledge that was held, the attention of theistic scholars and intellectuals was directed
towards God; the idea was that knowers in some sense “become” what they know. And since one should become
“good” and “holy” one should study God. Theology was thus considered the queen of the sciences (which at that
time simply meant knowledge), for theology was the science of God. This hierarchical view of reality is more
Platonic than theistic because it picks up from Plato the notion that matter is somehow, if not evil, than at least
irrational and certainly not good or worthy of study.
But more biblical minds began to recognize that this is God’s universe and even though it is fallen, it still has
value. Furthermore, God is rational and thus His universe is rational, orderly, and knowable. Scientists operating on
this basis began to study the form of the universe. A picture of God’s world emerged as a huge, well-ordered
mechanism, a giant clockwork.
Due to the success of the method of obtaining knowledge about the universe, the same method was used to
obtain knowledge about God. Having cast out Aristotle as an authority in matters of science, deism now casts out
scripture as an authority in theology and allows only the application of “human” reason. Deism thus sees God only
in “nature” by which was meant the system of the universe. And since the system of the universe is seen as a giant
clockwork, God is seen as the clock maker.
Christian theism, of course says that the depth of the content revealed about God in nature, general revelation, is
limited. For Christians, much is left to learn from the study of special revelation. However, deism denies that God
can be known by revelation, by special acts of God’s self-expression in, for example, Scripture or the Incarnation.
As Peter Medawar says, “The seventeenth century doctrine of the necessity of reason was slowing giving way to the
sufficiency of reason.”
When put this way the existentialist version is obviously more attractive. Of course, traditional theists respond
by saying the second column demands or implies the existence of the first column and, theism has always included
the second column in its system.
5) Knowledge is subjective; the whole truth is often paradoxical.
Knowledge about objects is necessary but not sufficient. Full knowledge is intimate interrelatedness an is linked
firmly to the authentic life of the knower. Some existentialists have so disjoined the objective and subjective world,
that one has no relation to the other, and have thereby abandoned the concept of objective truth. It is not that facts
are unimportant but that they must be facts for someone and that changes their character making knowledge become
the knower.
7) History as a record of events is uncertain and unimportant, but history as a model or type or myth to be made
present and lived is of supreme importance.
Theistic existentialism distrusts the accuracy of recorded history and loses interest in its facticity and to
emphasize its religious implication or meaning. The former is associated with the high criticism of the mid 19 th
century. Rather than taking the biblical accounts at face value the higher critics, such as D.F. Strauss, Ernest Renan,
and Julius Wellhausen denied a Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch made the naturalistic assumption that miracles
cannot happen. These accounts must therefore be false, not necessarily fabricated by writers who wished to decieve
but propounded by credulous people of primitive mindset. Rather than change their assumptions they concluded that
the Bible was historically untrustworthy. But instead of an abandonment of the Christian faith entirely, a radical shift
in emphasis took place. The facts of the Bible were not important; what was were its examples of the good life and
its timeless moral truths. The Fall was not an event but is existential as a mythological description of the universal
experience of man rebelling against God. Other supernatural events are similarly demythologized. Either they are
not taken literaly, or if they are, their meaning is not in their facticity but in what they indicate about human nature
and our relationship to God. However, theists charge, their must be an event for there is to be meaning. Meaning is
created in the subjective world, but it has no objective referent. Such abandonment should lead to doubt and a loss of
faith. Instead it has led to a leap of faith.
4) Death is the end of individual, personal existence, but it changes nothing essential in an individual’s nature.
Human death signals the end of an individual embodiment of Atman; it signals as well the end of a person. But
the soul, Atman, is indestructible. No human being in the sense of individual person survives death. Atman survives
but Atman is impersonal. When Atman is reincarnated it becomes another person. Eastern thought teaches the
immortality of the soul but not the personal and individual immortality. But the personal is illusory so nothing of
value perishes; everything of value is eternal. This explains why life is cheap in the East. Individual embodiements
of life are of no value. But in essence they are of infinite value; for in essence they are infinite.
5) To realize one’s oneness with the cosmos is to pass beyond knowledge. The principle of non-contradiction does
not apply where the ultimate reality is concerned.
From the statement Atman is Brahman, it also follows that human beings in their essence are beyond
knowledge. Knowledge and language, like personality, demands duality – a knower and a known, speaker and
listener, subject and predicate. Ergo, language cannot convey the truth about reality. This is why Eastern thought is
nondoctrinal since no doctrine can be true in the sense that it could give the full and complete description of reality.
Perhaps some can be more useful at bringing a subject to unity with the One, but then even a lie or a myth could be
useful. But if there can be not true statement there can also be no lie.
6) To realize one’s oneness with the cosmos is to pass beyond good and evil; the cosmos is perfect at every moment.
Karma is the notion that one’s present fate is the result of past action, especially in a former existence. This ties
it to reincarnation, which follows from the general principle that nothing that is real (that is, no soul) ever passes out
of existence. On its way back to the One, however, it goes through whatever series of illusory forms its past action
requires. Karma is the Eastern version of reaping what you sow but there is no God to give forgiveness and so
confession is of no avail. A person can choose his future acts; thus karma does not imply determinism or fatalism.
This suggests a moral universe in which people should do the good. However, the basis for doing good is not so
that it will be done or for the benefit of others. Karma demands that every soul suffers for its past “sins”, so there is
no value in alleviating suffering. The soul so helped will have to suffer later. So there is no agape love, giving love,
nor would any love benefit the recipent. One does good deeds in order to attain unity with the One and therefore
doing good is first and foremost a self-helping way of life.
Second, all actions are merely part of the whole world of illusion. The only “real” reality is ultimate reality, and
that is beyond differentiation, beyond good and evil. Like true and false, the distinction between good and evil fades
away. Everything is good is identical to nothing is good or everything is evil.
7) To realize one’s oneness with the One is to pass beyond time. Time is unreal. History is cyclical.
History has no meaning where reality is concerned.In fact, our task as people who would realize their godhead
is to transcend history. This helps to explain why Christians, who place great emphasis on history, find their
presentation of the historical basis of Christianity almost entirely ignored in the East. In the East, yesterday’s facts
are not meaningful in themselves. They do not bear on us today unless they have a here-and-now meaning; and if
they have a here-and-now meaning, then their facticity as history is of no concern. The Eastern scriptures are filled
with epigrams, parables, fables, stories, myths, songs, haiku, hymns, epics, but almost no history in the sense of
events recorded because they took place in an unrepeatable space-time context.
To be concerned with history would be to invert the whole hierarchy. The unique is not the real; only the
absolute and all-encompassing is real. If history is valuable, it will be so as myth and myth only, for myth takes us
out of particularity and lifts us to essence. Despite notable attempts of some, like D.T. Suzuki, to insist that
Buddhism is not nihilistic, it will usually seem so to Western readers.
8) Core commitments among individual Eastern pantheistic monists may vary widely, but one consistent
commitment is, by the elimination of desire, to achieve salvation, that is, to realize one’s union with pure
consciousness, the One (Hinduism) or the Void (Buddhism).
Hinduism and Buddhism both locate the problem with human beings in their separateness from the really real,
the One or the Void. Human beings live an illusory material existence in an illusory material world, desiring illusory
goals. The result is suffering. To avoid suffering, one should eliminate this desire. Hinduism focuses on a variety of
meditation practices. Buddhism presents an eightfold path: right view, right intention, right speech, right action,
right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right consciousness.
11.3 The Death of the Substantial Self and Being Good without God
4) Human Beings make themselves who they are by the languages they construct about themselves.
We make ourselves by what we choose to do. For Nietzsche the only self worth living is the Ubermensch, the
one who has risen above the conventional herd and has fashioned himself as a ‘man beyond man’. However few can
do this as most of us have ourselves constructed by the conventional language of our age and society. So again there
is a shift from the ‘premodern’ theistic notion that human beings are dignified by being created in the image of God
to the ‘modern’ notion that human beings are the product of their DNA template which is the result of unplanned
evolution to the ‘postmodern’ notion of an insubstantial self constructed by the language it uses to describe itself.
5) Ethics, like knowledge, is a linguistic construct. Social good is whatever society takes it to be.
This is a postmodern version of an older cultural relativism that takes truth to be what we decide it is. Individual
freedom remains if the person agrees with how society draws its ethical lines. Postmodernism can make no
normative judgement; it can only observe and comment. So much the worse by those who find themselves
oppressed by the majority.
First, I suspect that certain very fundamental beliefs, like of a triune-creator-God, logically deduce to only one
possible conclusion. If we were to fully understand just a few basic Scripture verses then we could develop the full
Gospel, of course with its help. This idea is discussed below as how I would descibe all worldviews as an answer to
one question, instead of eight. Also, this means that those religions or worldviews that claim to hold to some
fundamental aspect but not its logical conclusion (ie salvation by faith) have an inconsistency. I suspect that in such
cases the fundamental belief is held to so that it can be twisted solely to produce a different conclusion. Such
worldviews would not be partially true but entirely false because some erroreous belief is most prefered and allowed
to override (reinterpret) a correct and more fundamental belief.
It seems that it is human nature to desire to know God before we do know Him. We follow, or attempt to
follow, His commands before we know them personally because they are written on our hearts and on our
conscience. However, some people do not prefer the ways of the Lord.... why...what does this mean? This is an
important aspect of the ‘Christian worldview.’ There is something that we intrinsically prefer, that we choose or
deny, value and give priority. It is possible that this fundamental orientation of the heart, mindset, committment,
basic preferance, is what we are driven by to seek and accept the Lord or reject His offering. It is more than a
misunderstanding of the Gospel and a hatred for ‘religion’ that keeps people from Christ. Either the Gospel is a
sweet fragrance for those who seek Him or it is foolishness....why? Why do people react differently to the Gospel?
Is it that prior seeds have been planted in them, or their upbringing and personal experiences, or socio-economic
environment? No. I suspect it is because of a very natural willingness to be positive and to prefer good & truth over
evil and subjectiveness. It has to do with the heart....the heart.
Sire states (Universe, 5th ed., pg. 10) that Naugle has introduced a link between the concept of worldview and
what many books of the Bible refer to as ‘heart.’ But what I am suggesting is that there is an orientation of the heart
that preceedes our adoption of the Christian worldview, for those who do. Now I don’t want to begin to discuss
predetermination and free will before I am capable of doing so. However I would like to point out that Romans 9
discusses God creating people for different purposes. But even so these verses, I think, do not refer to their salvation
and so the question why people react differently to the Gospel may still remain.
14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. 15 For he saith to
Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will
have compassion. 16 So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that
sheweth mercy. 17 For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised
thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all
the earth. 18 Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he
hardeneth. 19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his
will? 20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him
that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? 21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the
same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? 22 What if God, willing
to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of
wrath fitted to destruction: 23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels
of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, 24 Even us, whom he hath called, not of the
Jews only, but also of the Gentiles? (Romans 9:14-24 KJV)
There is another related issue I’d like to discuss. That is if one does reject Christ as his or her saviour then they
are doing so not by accepting, or keeping with any of the eight main alternative worldviews, say, naturalism or
paganism, but rather they do so by acquiescing nothing less than worship of themself and Satan. Now many non-
Christians don’t consider themselves to being doing this but ultimately it is so since at the end of life there is only
heaven or hell and eternity with God or a lonely eternity with the devil. Obviously this is thoroughly Christian but I
am making two agruments here:
1) that there is an additional worldview not mentioned in Sire’s books.
2) that there are ultimately only two worldviews.
Currently, I can identify two varieties of this additional worldview, which is effectively satanism, that is
extreme beyond the new age. First there is entry level satanism, or luciferianism, which considers the serpent to have
been wrongly cursed in the Garden as, they believe, the devil was only trying to free humanity from the suffocating
grip of Yahweh. As a result such people have a very twisted, overly pragmatic, and indifferent ethical views. The
other is hardcore black theistic satanism that recognizes the sovereign authority and personal character of the
Creator but without worship of Him and instead worship and sacrifice is directed to Satan and his anti-christ. Filled
with delusion and rage, such people refuse to serve the Lord and would rather take up war against Him and His
people, possibly in spite of knowing they will loose.
It is a good thing to be able to take all possible perspectives and condense them into a ten worldviews. But can
we go further and categorize these worldviews into just two? I propose that all worldviews should be lined up on the
question asked by Jesus to Peter “who do you say I am?” (Matt 16:15). If we say that Jesus, the Son of man, is “the
Christ, the Son of the living God” then we essentially have the Gospel and more elements follow producing
Christian theism. If we do not say that Jesus Christ is the 2 nd person of the God-head and the promised messiah, the
only mediator between God and man, then there are numerous ways to answer this question. All of this questions’s
negative answers can be divided and developed into worldviews, some being close and some far from what is
traditionally, biblically, Christian. As such, if this could be possible (and dare I say useful) then we have effectively
classified all thought as either that which conforms to the truth (Jn. 14:6) and which is built upon the only sure
bedrock (Matt. 16:18) and that which does not, in all the myriad ways of man’s speculation that it could possibly do
so.
Moreover, and linking back to the above agrument, since denying Christ would essentially be worship of
self and Satan, we are ultimately faced with only two alternatives: good and evil. Based around this one question
with essentially only two answers is how I would develop a system of worldviews. And this is how I would interpret
“seeing the world in a grain of sand” (W. Blake, Auguries of Innocence, 1805). This view, I think, is in concord with
all of the Bible, but especially the ceation and fall. In Genesis 3 the “very good” work of God was corrupted, not by
a plurality of religions, but by a slight ignorance of Word of God (as Eve added to what God had said) influenced by
Satan himself and thereby resulting in human sin and separation from God.
It is possible that by being created in the image of God we have an innate longing for Him, like an infant who’s
face brightens up when his mother appears and saddens when she leaves momentarily. As discussed earlier, there
seems to be a fundamental orientation of the heart preceeding our recognition of our worldview. An eternal
committment not towards a particular religion or set of beliefs but rather towards either God and goodness or evil. I
wonder and hope it is possible to rightly divide all theology, philosophy, and comparative religion upon one
significant question, as described, and thereby simplfy even further our systems of thought and making even more
obvious the glory of God.
Annotated Bibliography
On Worldviews
Sire, J.W., The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, 5th ed. (InterVarsity Press, 2009).
This book helped to convince me of Christianity.
Sire, J. W., Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (InterVarsity Press, 2004).
This book unpacks each specific characteristic of Sire’s definition of the worldview.
Sire, J.W., Why Should Anyone Believe Anything at All? (InterVarsity Press, 1994).
In this book Sire talks at length about why one should choose one worldview over another.
Naugle, D., Worldview: The History of a Concept (Eerdmans, 2002).
Naugle gives an extended description of the biblical concept of the heart and his identification of it with the
worldview concept spawned the 4th edition of Sire’s Universe Next Door. It also surveys the origin , development,
and various versions of the concept from Immanuel Kant to Arthur Holmes and beyond, and presents his own
definition of the Christian worldview.
Marshall, Griffioen, and Mouw eds., Stained Glass: Worldviews and Social Science (Univ. Press of America, 1989).
A helpful collection of essays, especially by J.H. Olthuis, “On Worldviews.” Every expression of a worldview,
it is claimed, is deeply imbedded in the flow of history and the varying characteristics of language. Each
expression of any general worldview bears the marks of the culture out of which it comes and is therefore not
absolute or ahistorical. Therefore, each formulation of each worldview must be considered on its own merits, of
course. But for each of the worldviews Sire weighed and found wanting he knows of no formulation that does not
contain problems of inconsistency (p.282, 5th.)
Comparative Religion
Smart, N., Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs, 3rd ed. (Prentice Hall, 2000).
For a phenomenological and comparative religion approach.
Burnett, D., Clash of Worlds (Monarch Books, 2002).
Has a focus on religious worldviews.
Corduan, W., Neighboring Faiths: A Christian Introduction to World Religions (InterVarsity Press, 1998).
Neill, S., Christian Faith and Other Faiths (InterVarsity Press, 1984).
The above two books survey and evaluate several world religions.
Christianity
The following recently published books offer decent expositions of the Christian worldview:
Holmes, A.F., Contours of a Christian Worldview (Eerdmans, 1983); The Making of a Christian Mind (InterVarsity
Press, 1985).
Phillips, G.W. & Brown, W.E., Making Sense of Your World from a Biblical Viewpoint (Moody Press, 1991).
Walsh, B. & Middleton, R., The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World View (InterVarsity Press, 1984);
The Truth is Stranger Than It Used to Be (InterVarsity Press, 1995).
Sire, J.W., Discipleship of the Mind (InterVarsity Press, 1990).
Pearcey, N., Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Crossway, 2004).
Bertrand, M.J., (Re)thinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live and Speak in This World (Crossway, 2007).
Kraft, C.H., Worldview for Christian Witness (William Carey Library Publishers, 2008).
Hiebert, P.G., Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change (Baker, 2008).
The following books offer a consideration of the theistic concept of God from the standpoint of academic
philosophy:
Gilson, E., God and Philosophy (Yale University Press, 1941).
Mascall, E.L., He Who Is: A Study in Traditional Theism (Libra, 1943).
Owen, H.P., Concepts of Deity (Macmillan, 1971).
The following books discuss a variety of metaphysical and philosophical theological issues:
Hasker, W., Metaphysics (InterVarsity Press, 1983).
Evans, S.C., Philosophy of Religion (InterVarsity Press, 1985).
Morris, T.V., Our Idea of God (InterVarsity Press, 1991).
Moreland, J.P. & Craig, W.L., Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (InterVarsity Press, 2003).
Deism
Hill, J., Faith in the Age of Reason (InterVarsity Press, 2004).
Taylor, C., A Secular Age (Belknap, 2007).
These books detail the transition from theism to deism and beyond.
Bloom, A., The Closing of the American Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1987).
This book argues for basing our values on more than commitment and decision.
Islam
Bavinck, J.H., The Church Between Temple and Mosque (Eerdmans, 1981).
For an approach to worldview analysis with an even more individual and personal focus.
Chapman, C., The Cross and the Crescent: Responding to the Challenge of Islam (InterVarsity Press, 2003).
Haneef, S., What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims (Kazi Publications, 1979).
Moucarry, C., The Prophet and the Messiah: An Arab Christian’s Perspective on Islam and Christianity
(InterVarsity Press, 2001).
These books take up the challenge of dealing more intently with the spcific details of each worldview – where
possible internal inconsistencies are, the differing conception of the nature and character of Allah and God, the
historical evidence for the nature and character of Jesus and Mohammad, and the reasons for the authority
afforded their two foundational scriptures (the Bible and the Qur’an).
Eastern Religion
Guinness, O., The Dust of Death (Crossway, 1994).
Includes a Christian critique of the Western trend towards the East.
Postmodernism
The following are presentations and critiques of the postmodern worldview:
Best, S. & Kellner, D., Postmodern Theory (Guilford, 1991).
Connor, S., Postmodernist Culture (Blackwell, 1989).
Burnham, F.B., Postmodern Theology: Christian Faith in a Pluralist World (Harper San Fransico, 1989).
Borgmann, A., Crossing the Postmodern Divide (University of Chicago Press, 1992).
Toulmin, S., Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (Free Press, 1990).