Contours of a World View [ifacs: Studies In A Christian World View]

by Arthur F. Holmes

Book by Holmes, Arthur F.

Genres: Christianity, Philosophy

250 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1983

About the author

Arthur Frank Holmes (March 15, 1924 – October 8, 2011) was Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College, Illinois (1951–1994). Before his retirement in 1994, he had served for several decades as Chairman of Wheaton's Department of Philosophy. Thereafter, he held the title of Professor Emeritus. After his retirement, he returned and taught half of the yearlong history of philosophy sequence, particularly the medieval (Augustine to Ockham) and the modern (Descartes to Quine) quarters in 2000-2001.

He became widely known for his body of work on topics related to philosophy, including ethics, philosophy applied to Christian higher education, and historical interactions between Christianity and philosophy. Holmes also has served as a guest lecturer at many colleges, universities, and conferences on these topics.

Holmes was a graduate of Wheaton College, where he earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy. He earned the Ph.D. in philosophy from Northwestern University in Chicago. Reportedly, before he immigrated to the United States in 1947, he had flown for the Royal Air Force in England during World War II.

Holmes died in Wheaton, Illinois, on October 8, 2011, at age 87.

Reviews

[Stefan Johnsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's much work to be done within philosophy when it comes to apologetics. As current Christian theologians have said, it's a place that needs more work when it comes to defending a Christian worldview. This book, even with its age, brings a great and thoughtful understanding of the worldviews that exist in our society and how the Christian one adds up. It's highly recommended read for anyone wanting to know where Christianity stands in relation to the other worldviews out there and how to break these down and defend them from a Christian perspective.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written over thirty years ago, this introductory volume (the first in a series of ten volumes) was fueled by Arthur Holmes’ passion “to rekindle and disseminate” the vision for a Christian worldview (viii). In this volume, Holmes aims to “[sketch] in broad strokes the overall contours of a distinctively Christian world view in relationship both to the history of ideas and to the contemporary mind” (viii).

In Contours of a World View, Holmes presents a convincing case for the necessity of a Christian worldview, holding the artificial lights of naturalistic humanism against the sun of Christianity. Students of worldview, apologetics and Christian philosophy will find Holmes’ material to be useful for seeing the essentials of a Christian worldview and how the rejection of these essentials render naturalistic humanism untenable.

Since he was writing over thirty years ago, Holmes was mostly concerned to show the poverty of the naturalistic humanist worldview along with its various manifestations. Yet the world since 1983 has changed quite dramatically; thus Holmes’ work, void of discussions of the postmodern and Islamic worldviews, has diminished relevance for the contemporary reader.

Another concern with Holmes’ volume is worth mentioning, namely, his discussion of the personhood of the human fetus. In his chapter, “A Theistic Basis for Values,” Holmes writes that “the fetus is not yet actually a human person,” arguing that the fetus’ value is contingent on its potentiality (171). This potentiality, however, comes in degrees, depending on the fetus’ stage of development. For Holmes, this renders the issue of abortion to be a matter of graded morality: “the further a pregnancy proceeds . . . the greater the moral problems with abortion” (171). It is not difficult to recognize the troubling implications of such a view for the ethical treatment of unborn humans.