Christian View of God and the World Book

James Orr - (1844-1913), Scottish theologian
Born in Glasgow and educated at the university there, Orr went on to the United Presbyterian Church's college in Edinburgh. After ordination he ministered in the Scottish border town of Hawick (1874-1891). He was then appointed professor of church history in his old college, transferring in 1900 to the Glasgow college. There he taught apologetics and systematic theology-with classes augmented by the union between his church and the Free Church (a development in which he played a prominent part).

Orr was critical of established religion. "A State Church", he declared, "speaks in bonds; its guns are spiked". Ye he himself came under fire (from conservatives in the continuing Free Church for teaching a modified Calvinism and for holding a defective doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. The allegations were open to question; from another Presbyterian church came a different assessment: "Some make Christianity a doubtful thing", said the Original Secession Church magazine. "Dr. Orr made it to many a stable, imperishable, reliable thing."


I Might briefly define the object of the present Lectures by saying that they aim at the exhibition, and, as far as possible within the limits assigned me, at the rational vindication, of what I have called in the title, "The Christian View of the World." This expression, however, is itself one which calls for definition and explanation, and I proceed, in the first place, to give the explanation that is needed.
The Idea of the "Weltanschauung."
A reader of the higher class of works in German theology--especially those that deal with the philosophy of religion--cannot fail to be struck with the constant recurrence of a word for which he finds it difficult to get a precise equivalent in English. It is the word "Weltanschauung," sometimes interchanged with another compound of the same signification, "Weltansicht." Both words mean literally "view of
the world," but whereas the phrase in English is limited by associations which connect it predominatingly with physical nature, in German the word is not thus limited, but has almost the force of a technical term, denoting the widest view which the mind can take of things in the effort to grasp them together as a whole from the standpoint of some particular philosophy or theology. To speak, therefore, of a "Christian view of the world" implies that Christianity also has its highest point of view, and its view of life connected therewith, and that this, when developed, constitutes an ordered whole.