James Orr -- Worldview Apologist

I'm presently engaging in a study of the long-neglected Scottish worldview apologist, James Orr with a view to author a paper on his thinking that would share the title of this blog post. What I'm presently reading in this regard is Glen Scorgie's excellent volume, A Call for Continuity: The Theological Contribution of James Orr (2004), perhaps the most accessible text for getting an introduction to Orr's critical contribution to Christian worldview studies.

Orr's role in developing an understanding of the concept of worldview for Christians has been largely overshadowed by his contemporary, Abraham Kuyper. But even Kuyper had to acknowledge (albeit briefly) his indebtedness to Orr's formulation of Christianity as a Weltanschauung ("life and world view"; "life-system" as used by Kuyper; known to us as "worldview" today) in the opening pages of his Stone Lectures, published today as Lectures on Calvinism (p. 11, fn. 1). So important is Orr to Kuyper that Kuyper scholar Peter Heslam says:

"The transition to the full use of the worldview concept as the central feature of Kuyper's though was largely due to the influence of the Scottish theologian James Orr (1844-1913) ... Although Kuyper made only a fleeting reference to Orr in one of the footnotes of his Lectures, it does appear that Kuyper's Stone Lectures were influenced significantly by his reading of Orr's Keer Lectures for 1890-91." (Peter Heslam, "The Meeting of the Wellsprings: Kuyper and Warfield at Princeton," in Religion, Pluralism, and Public Life: Abraham Kuyper's Legacy for the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000): p. 26; cf. Heslam, Creating a Christian Worldview: Abraham Kuyper's Lectures on Calvinism, pp. 88-89, 92-96)

Later evangelical worlview thinkers would also acknowledge their indebtedness to Orr's formulation (e.g. Carl F.H. Henry, "Fortunes of the Christian Worldview," Trinity Journal n.s. 19 (1998): 163-176, esp. 163). For this reason, it's not surprising that David Naugle begins his extensive study of worldview in his Worldview: The History of a Concept with Orr (pp. 6-13).

In his magisterial, The Christian View of God and the World, Orr makes the case that understanding Christianity as a comprehensive worldview is important for apologetic purposes. In his day, Christianity was under assault from many points of modernist attack from liberal theology, evolutionary naturalism and higher criticism. Instead of having to defend the articles of the Christian faith separately, Orr argued that the defense of Christianity should be rooted in presenting Christianity, not as an amalgam of unrelated proposition, but as an entire system of thought and belief in toto. Christian truth was interrelated. Hence the "call for continuity". Cultural apologetics, Orr submitted, must be done by using the multi-faceted strength of the entire Christian worldview. As Orr states it:

"the opposition which Christianity has to encounter is no longer confined to special doctrines or to points of supposed conflict with the natural sciences... but extends to the whole manner of conceiving the world, and of man's place in it... It is no longer an opposition of detail, but of principle... It is the Christian view of things in general which is attacked, an it is by an exposition and vindication of the Christian view of things as a whole that the attack can most successfully be met." (p. 4)

And again:

"I shall endeavour to show that the Christian view of things forms a logical whole which cannot be infringed on, or accepted or rejected piecmeal, but stands or falls in its integrity, and can only suffer from attempts at amalgamation or compromise with theories which rest on totally distinct bases." (p. 16)

One element that attracts me to Orr's approach is how theological it is. Far from shying away from systematic theology as an "abstraction" (a view advanced in our day by the Federal Vision crowd), theology is the lifeblood of the Christian worldview. What was needed, according to Orr, was an advance of theological interest, not a retreat from it:

"I venture to say that what the church suffers from today is not, as so many think, too much theology, but too little theology, of an earnest kind." (Orr, The Progress of Dogma, p. 9n)

The role of theology was so important to the Christian worldview that Orr dedicated the rest of his career to defending the Christian faith through theological study and polemics, as we see in his later books: The Progress of Dogma (1901), God's Image in Man (1905), The Problem of the Old Testament (1906 - against higher criticism), The Virgin Birth of Christ (1907), The Resurrection of Jesus (1908), and Revelation and Inspiration (1910). Even the full title of The Christian View speaks to how essential the doctrine of the Incarnation was to his understanding of worldview: The Christian View of God and the World, as Centring in the Incarnation. His citation by the German theologian Issac August Dorner in The Christian View informs us to the critical link between Christian theology and the whole system of Christian thought:

"A Christian system which is unable to make Christology an integral part of itself, has pronounced its own judgment; it has really given up the claim to the title of Christian." (p. 41)

An added element of attraction for Orr's view is how he conceives of the Christian worldview as a comprehensive system of thought, reminiscent of Kuyper's "Every Inch" speech:

"He who with his whole heart believes in Jesus as the Son of God is thereby committed to much else besides. He is committed to a view of God, a view of man, to a view of sin, to a view of Redemption, to a view of the purpose of God in creation and history, to a view of human destiny, found only in Christianity. This forms a 'Weltanschauung," or "Christian view of the world," which stands in marked contrast with theories wrought out from a purely philosophical or scientific standpoint." (p. 4)

In our day, evangelicalism compartmentalizes apologetics apart from theology. This is especially true for the evidentialist method, but is also found amongst presuppositionalism. Orr warns us against this tendency. The Christian apologist must not only presuppose the Christian worldview, but their apologetic must be an advancement of the Christian worldview itself.

I must admit that The Christian View is not your light reading. When I first read it several years ago, I regularly found myself drifting off. But the details here are important to the case that Orr makes on the whole. This is what makes Scorgie's introduction to the life, times and thought of Orr a perfect place to initiate a study of Orr, because it makes his arguments and approach much more understandable for the current reader that is probably not overly familiar with late 19th Century philosophy and theology. Do yourself a favor: start with Scorgie.