Today it is our distinct pleasure to be speaking with Dr. James Sire. Dr. Sire is an active speaker and writer and former senior editor at InterVarsity press. He has taught English philosophy and theology at over 200 universities and seminaries around the world. an internationally renowned apologist, Dr. Syers, the author of the universe next door, a basic worldview catalog, which has come out in its fifth edition from IVP academic in 2009. It's a clear readable introduction to worldviews originally published in 1976. This thought provoking work is now in its fifth edition, it's been translated into 19 languages. Dr. Sire, we are very honored to be speaking with you today.
Well, it's good to be with you. First of all, sir,
you're a phenomenally prolific author. Have you been writing anything new recently?
Well, thanks for asking. But yes, just as almost as we speak, cascade, has issued my book echoes of a voice, we are not alone. It's a book about the signals of transcendence, those special moments that strike us suddenly and without awareness, and very deeply, that this trigger the perception that there's something more to the universe than the material world. And that's, I look at that those kinds of phenomena, from the standpoint of, they're promoting Christian understanding and the understanding of the presence of God, and also in the ways in which they are understood by people with other worldviews the naturalist who, of course, has no place for transcendence, and so forth.
Absolutely. Fascinating. Sir, your texts, the texts that we'll be discussing primarily today, the universe next door, a basic worldview catalog, has had a phenomenal reception 19 languages and translation, its fifth edition in 2009. Did you ever imagine when you were writing this book that it would achieve such a reception? And why did you originally write this book?
Well, certainly I did not think this was going to happen. And the reason was that, first of all, it's my first book that really addressed a larger audience. I hadn't textbook done before that on how to write letters on literature. While I was teaching at Nebraska, Wesleyan, I wrote that, but it didn't go anywhere. And I was not expecting anything. But the reason I wrote the book is that I wrote it for students who are coming from Christian backgrounds, of evangelical backgrounds. That entered college suddenly discovered that these professors and my colleagues are thinking all kinds of thoughts I never thought could be thought, and I find them very odd, and they don't know where they're coming from. So it was a way of introducing university students to the panorama of perspectives that they were reaching and listening to and hearing from their university world. That's a long time ago, that was 1976, when the book was actually published, and drew on my experience from the 1950s, when I was an undergrad on that all the way through grad school.
Many of us think of Francis Schaffer, perhaps is the one who awakened the evangelical world broadly to the importance of studying worldviews and a concept of a worldview. Would you agree? And if so, how did Francis Schaefer affect your own development of this idea of worldview?
Well, I'd actually heard of Francis Schaffer before I became editor of University Press in 1968. He was one of the few people that were recommended to me when I was a graduate student at the University of Missouri. He was said to be a man who was in Switzerland, and he was answering these tough questions that students have and that I had the kinds of questions and the kinds of interests of Francis Schaffer had now to get a hold of him. Well, I didn't. But when I became the editor for InterVarsity press, in June of 1968, suddenly, and in my hands were some advanced copies of two of his books escaped from reason and the God who was there, and I read them. And I was really surprised that I was quite disappointed because I thought Francis Schafer does not understand the Renaissance. I do. I'm a religious scholar. I have my degree in the academic world and in academic studies, and Francis does not how does he understand the Renaissance and the Reformation in this way? So I was rather disappointed in the books but this And I listened to him speak at Wheaton College. And I listened. And I said, Wait a minute, there's something here. I'm not understanding Schaefer correctly. It's not that he's wrong, and I'm right, but I just haven't understood what he's talking about. So I became his editor. And I did about 13 books, at least 13 books came through my hands as some, some of my colleagues were did some of the hard editing on them. But I became convinced that he had really seen something about the way in which the university, the ways of the university in the world, and the way in which Christianity related or didn't relate in conflict conflicted with what we were experiencing culturally, especially as it was filtered through the university. And I didn't become a Schaffer right, but I certainly was influenced by his perspective on the history of the West.
In your chapter, sir, on nihilism, you argue that the worldview of naturalism leads to nihilism, in your view, is nihilism as powerful today as it has been in the past? Or has this worldview perhaps lost some of its currency, our culture today?
Well, that's a very good question, because nihilism or nihilism is as prevalent today, as it ever has been, the problem is that at least someone like nature, and serious, academic, or sophisticated, unnecessarily academic, serious, sophisticated thinkers understand that if there isn't any foundation for the declaration that you have the truth, that this is going to be a form of nihilism. And it's what I call Metallica in his book nihilism called ciphered nihilism, that is nihilism and below the surface. So you can make a statement, and not recognize that the foundation on which you're making that statement doesn't allow you really to declare its truth. For instance, if I say that everything we do, is determined by the atoms of which we are made, and the situation in which we find ourselves in, in the material world, everything is determined. In other words, everything has a cause, and that causes physical, then there's no reason to think that the what comes out of those causes, like a text of philosophy has any claim on actually being true. It's only one your your machinery has caused it to be. And that means that the notion of the kind of thing that that Richard Dawkins proclaims, can't possibly be justified as being true. So Dawkins is a nice list, even though he would declare that he was not.
So I think I hear you're saying that actually, it is, is prevalent today as ever, it's just yet perhaps in a form that we don't immediately recognize.
I don't think it was ever recognized very well, excepting by those who really thought about it, because there's a tremendous amount of optimism. In the Enlightenment world, for instance, it introduced this notion that human reason was autonomous, that it could do things on its own. And one of the things it could do, I need to find some truth, not all truth, but it could find truths about reality. But there would Don't be no foundation for no philosophic Foundation, no other ultimate foundation for the notion that you are understanding the mechanics of the world, if all your mind is is a machine.
I remember a passage back in Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, where he devises or concludes that it we must be free, because otherwise our understanding of rationality doesn't work. Would you agree with his basic analysis there that rationality requires freedom of thought?
Yes, yes, I do. There has to be some way of no of distinguishing between that which is and that which isn't and that, yeah, that requires some kind of transcendence over the, the, the world of causation. I talk about this, by the way, in another book that I've just published, or rather when we published this, this coming, August, called apologetics beyond reason, in which I reason that unless we are told something from the outside, about who we are, we will never be able to know that there is an outside or that there isn't an outside and that anything, that everything that we predicate as being true is predicated on on the fact of the existence of a god who knows what he's doing and intends for us to know those kinds of things. And intends also for us to have the kind of freedom which allows us to make mistakes, both both moral And it'll actually, that's a fascinating story by Stanislav Lem. In his book siberie. Ed and I take off from that, showing that status of Laflamme himself is an is an atheist, who undercuts his own authority for atheism, by the works that he writes. It's a kind of deconstruction of an atheist author, normally who gets deconstructed are the Christian authors. But here's a Christian destruction of an atheist stuff.
Sir, in a chapter that is entitled The vanished horizon, you discuss post modernism as a worldview, that is hard. What is post modernism?
Well, I think the first thing to grasp is that when you look at your overall worldview, your theism or your deism, or pantheism, or whatever it is, you have, the fundamental question is what is really real. And for a postmodern, there isn't anything real, that you can grasp and hold on to accepting the language by which you speak. So there's a shift in intellectual thought, from the primacy of being God's existence is primary, to thinking one's thoughts about God, our primary one thoughts about what is primary as Descartes, Aquinas would be, the first Decart would be the primary first person who emphasize the priority of epistemology, I think, therefore I am. But then the thinking requires a language. And the language is that which you invent, and which requires interpretation. And so when you get to the postmodern world, all you have left is interpretation. And so everything in front of you is a text, which you interpret, and there's no authority for one interpretation being different or, or more primary or more authoritative than another than another story, another proclamation. So post modernism is a move from trust in rationality, that's very modern, to trust in a to a lack of trust, in rationality, and with an acceptance of what you get, when you're when that's left over. It is a form of nihilism.
Many speak of this shift from the primary of metaphysics and philosophy to the primary of epistemology, and some will talk about happening with Descartes, if this Cartesian moment is it possible to see that post modernism is really this frustration with the whole epistemological project, rather than seeing metaphysics as necessarily the primary parts of any philosophy. And therefore, arriving at the conclusion as you just drew for us that post modernism is the conclusion that language is all that actually is? Is it possible to reframe the whole question into this epistemological plane? And is that useful?
Well, one of the things that is useful is to figure out how it is that one's locutions one's language could possibly be. Give you some sense of these, this is what's really going on. And I don't see how you can do that apart from a primary trust. It really I I've been accused of being a rationalist. I've been accused of being a mystic, but I, I've been accused of being a feed atheist? Well, I don't know exactly I am. I just know that unless God has given us some things that we cannot prove that He has given us. In other words, the capacity to think and to acquire truth, we don't get anywhere.
Would you be willing to postulate with us whether you believe post modernism will continue as a dominant worldview for some time, or is part of post modernism, the announcement of the failure of modernism?
I think it is an announcement of the failure of modernism. But I don't think that the post modernists know where to go with it. Now, what happened back with Nietzche, with his critique, which, by the way, a good deal of post modernism sounds very much like nature, in nature in modern dress. Nature knew that you had you didn't have any other out than to say, you've got to discern, determine this for yourself, you become the Uber Mensch the over man, the man who is more than man, and because this is the man who then declares by his own self projects out he by his own self, the reality that exists, he becomes a kind of God and alternate God, I substitute for the God who has projected His Word into the world that makes me The World meaningful, you now become the person who does that. And of course, what happens then is you have pluralism, leading to chaos, pluralism leading to relativism leading to chaos. So I, I am kind of gloomy about that project particular projection, I think only if we can come back to some kind of understanding of a God who reveals himself. Now Islam doesn't have that problem doesn't, because Islam declares that there is the word and the word is you always you always word. This is the word of truth, and it exists only in Arabic. And you have to get into that conception before you have any knowledge of anything, anything else. So they have a different problem as Christians would have a different problem in arguing philosophically, that they're incorrect there, because they agree with them on the primacy of God. But the postmoderns, of course, have certainly turned against anything remotely like Islam, and it's always a puzzle as to why Islam is making an inroad. Maybe intellectual Islam is making an inroad because it does not it because it does have some way of saying what's really true. It's a faith a gift of the of Allah.
Sir, your text the universe next door was published almost four decades ago now. First, in 1976. As you've watched the American religious landscape change over the past 40 years, what have been some of the greatest surprises to you personally?
You know, I'm done being surprised. I'm surprised when I read the gospels and, and Jesus appears to be something different than I ever knew before. But I've been I'm done being surprised about what happens and culture because crazy things happen all the time. I like to use an analogy back in the middle of the 1980s. They, if you ask someone, where's the next war between major nations going to break out? And you would say the Middle East or you would say, maybe Southeast Asia or something like that? Well, it turned out to be in Falkland Islands, and it was Argentina against England. If that wasn't a surprise, in terms of where the culture was going at the time, or at least the that particular part of culture was going? Nothing, nothing else is. And it seems to me that that's the same kind of thing that's happening here. It's, it's amazing atheism is back with Dawkins and Dennett and so forth. And atheism doesn't have a philosophic leg to stand on. As far as I'm concerned. I'm not surprised about much of anything anymore.
Would you be willing to postulate I just want to take advantage of this opportunity that I have to speak with you. And and if you'd be willing to share your perspectives on some of these questions that none of us could answer? Where is education going at this present moment?
Well, there's another strange one, education seems to be going digital. It seems to be going. Liberty University has? Well, when I was there, lecturing to the faculty, two or three years ago, they were looking forward to 80,000. I, somebody told me recently, there was over 100,000 students they have on online. And that's happening now at the University of Phoenix and other universities. And a lot of schools like Harvard and so forth, are putting their courses online. It's a strange, strange world, for those of us who are print oriented, especially publishers, and writers who want to write books and see the end season published.
Many are talking about the decline of the West is present moment in culture. Is there something to that? Do you buy that narrative?
I really don't know what to think about that. I do know that there is that the Christianity is burgeoning in the third world country in Africa and China, amazingly, in places that you would not have expected, and what kind of form say, for instance, Chinese Christianity is going to take as it as it matures and becomes, shall we say, intellectually sophisticated outside of China, I just don't know. The West is the West is still powerful in the sense of technology. And every culture is being becoming technological. To that extent, you're not going to get rid of that sort of modernity. This is going to stick around for a very long time. What may happen is that this kind of modernity gets us into very odd places where we can say, create human beings with alternate powers that come through technological stuff that there's all kinds of things that are going on. To which I'm afraid the sun Other scientists are getting to be more like Frankenstein and the creation of a monster. By the way, that's a, that's an archetype that always shows up. The archetype of Godzilla keeps coming back the archetype of the mad scientist. This inhabits the world of science fiction. And when you see it inhabiting this kind of a world where it is spread around the world in science fiction form, you really wonder what's what's happening? I don't think you can tell I think you can limit what crazy writers and producers of movies and technological monstrosity are claiming to do next.
Sir, if I can ask you one more unformed question, if you had the opportunity to start afresh, and and you had another career ahead of you, as, as the students who will be listening to this interview, perhaps do, what would you say to them? What, what is the need for the church today? And what do young theologians need to be working on?
Well, one of the things that we have to do that has become gripping, we're getting better at it. What we have to do is to understand the culture that is around us understand the commitments that are being made willingly and wittingly and unwittingly, to ideas to propel them. In other words, goals and aspirations that human beings have. And we've got to understand that and understand that there's a whole world out around us that's very pluralistic, very, very, very unChristian in one sense of the word, and that we ourselves are both participating in that world and having an influence us. And we have the task as Christians and believers and under the Spirit of God and, and the witness of Christ, to make that to make our contribution to this pluralistic world, and make one which will be attractive, and, and forward the kingdom of God. God is building his kingdom. I don't know where it's going. I don't see it. In, in practical terms, I see pieces of it here, pieces of what's there. But I'm sorry, I don't know where we're going in terms of the whole culture. And I don't even pretend to predict. But if I were teaching, I would want students to become aware of what's going on now and recognize that there is a future and they're going to be living it and they're going to be making it.
Sir, if I can just ask one last question. And this is the question that we've been asking all of the interviewees on this program. And that is this despite the tremendous diversity that we see in Christianity around the world, what is it that gives the church her essential unity?
I think that's your Zinger question. First of all, it assumes facts not in evidence. That is that there is a unity. If there is a unity, it is clearly a spiritual unity, and a unity around the central character of the Christian of the Christian worldview, their central character, meaning I've been mean by that the central person of the Christian worldview, which is the triune, God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with Jesus, our, our brother and the one to whom we owe our allegiance and to whom we wish to follow. That seems to me if that isn't the center of the Christian world, then we are in really, really deep doo doo. And this is the real Trinity with a reality and ontological being that is stronger, more firm, more permanent than anything else. That's what will hold us together if we are held together at all, but sometimes I wonder.
We've had the honor of speaking with Dr. James Sire. Dr. James sire is an active speaker and writer and the former senior editor at InterVarsity press, and also the author of the best selling the universe next door, a basic worldview catalog now in its fifth edition from IVP academic, Dr. Sire, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you