N.T. Wright: Worldview Quotes

 Just a collection of quotes from N.T. Wright

 In order to answer the question ‘Why?’ in relation to the past, we must move from the ‘outside’ of the event to the ‘inside’; this involves reconstructing the worldviews of people other than ourselves’¹

 ’Worldviews are the basic stuff of human existence, the lens through which the world is seen, the blueprint for how one should live in it, and above all the sense of identity and place which enables human beings to be what they are. To ignore worldviews, either our own or those of the culture we are studying, would result in extraordinary shallowness.’² 

‘Worldviews, as I said earlier, are like the foundations of a house: vital, but invisible. They are that through which, not at which, a society or an individual normally looks; they form the grid according to which humans organise reality, not bits of reality that offer themselves for organisation³

 ”Worldview are the lenses through which a society looks at the world, the grid upon which are plotted the multiple experiences of life.”

Worldviews may be studied in terms of four features; characteristic stories, fundamental symbols; habitual praxis; and a set of questions and answers.

A mindset is a worldview held by a particular individual 

 

‘Their world view is their picture of the way things in sheer actuality are, their concept of nature, of self and society’ ⁴ 

There are four components of a worldview 

1. ‘provide stories through which human beings view reality. Narrative is the most chacteristic expression of worldview, going deeper than the isolated observation or fragmented remark’⁵ 
2. ‘from these stories one can in principal discover how to answer basic questions that determine human existence: who we are, where are we, what is wrong , and what is the solution?’
3. Stories and the answers provided to the questions are expressed in cultural symbols’
4. Worldviews include a praxis, a way-of-being-in-the-world .⁶

 

1NT &POG 121

2NT&POG 124

3NT&POG 125

4Gertz, Clifford 1973 The interpretation of cultures: selected essays New York: Basic Books, 1973 127

5NT&POG 123

6NT&POG 124

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