Much has been written about the three primary worldview perspectives found in the societies of the world (Roland Muller, Honor and Shame, 20). These include, (1) Guilt-Innocence; the perspective favoring propositional right vs. wrong reasoning, (2). Shame-Honor; the viewpoint which esteems relationships and reputation above forthrightness; and (3) Fear-Power; the perspective which dreads evil spirits and purports to defeat or manipulate them.
I propose a fourth major world view; (4) the Existential-Transcendent perspective (Hadaway, A Survey of World Missions, 147-148). Members of this worldview exalt emotion and intuition above so-called reason. Those adhering to this perspective do not care much about what is right, whom they might please, or which evil spirit they might offend. On the contrary, they operate within a realm that pursues a truth that is embodied, actualized and authenticated by feeling and emotion.
Adherents of Worldviews 2, 3 and 4 cannot be expected to understand and process a Gospel presentation like most Westerners who hold to Worldview 1. This does not mean apologetic approaches cannot be deployed with them, it’s just their primary window for apprehending spiritual concepts will be filtered through the prism of their own worldview.
The late missiologist David Hesselgrave points to a book entitled The Gospel in Dispute (1958), where the author Edmund Perry, claims “all peoples think in three ways – conceptual postulationally, concrete relationally, and psychically intuitionally” (Hesselgrave, Missionshift, 284; Perry, The Gospel in Dispute, 100). Hesselgrave deduces from Perry’s work that supposedly “Western” logical thinking populates every society, not just the cultures of the supposedly “developed” world. Similarly, I will argue in this paper that there are people in every culture who think psychically intuitionally with an existential-transcendent outlook on life. As Perry (101) writes concerning Western, Chinese and Indian cultures,
“…what is primary in one culture is also operative in all cultures, even if only in a secondary or merely a peripheral way. The epistemological differences are not impenetrable “iron curtains.” … For us Westerners this means the location and cultivation of the suppressed artistical and mystical outlooks. Needless to say, we Western Christians in particular need to be shocked out of our unexamined reverence for logical concepts …(W)e ought to be prepared to explore the possibility of understanding and communicating the Gospel in other than logical conceptual categories.”
This paper will present a case for a 4th worldview (Existential-Transcendent) and describe ways of presenting the Gospel to those in every culture who hold to more of a mystical and emotional slant than a logical, Western academic worldview. This paper will also argue that there are people who hold all four primary worldviews in every culture and conceptualize reality conceptual postulationally, concrete relationally, and psychically intuitionally.
Respectfully submitted,
Robin Dale Hadaway, Th.D., D. Min., Sr. Professor of Missions, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary