Knowledge Network

By his own admission, Rick Ostrander’s Why College Matters to God: A Student’s Introduction to The Christian College Experience contains little that is new, but it is a very deft introduction to the Christian view of things (organized around the time-honored creation-fall-redemption scheme) with many helpful illustrations.  Designed for college freshman, the book is remarkably accessible without being silly or trite.

One of his most illuminating sections compares the development of a worldview to the completion of a crossword puzzle.  In a crossword, words depend on other words; you follow the clues to solve an interlocking network of words.  No word stands on its own.  Likewise, a worldview develops as a network of knowledge, each bit of knowledge depending as much (or more) on its “fit” with other bits as on the bits’ connections with some foundational presuppositions.

The analogy with crosswords also gives Ostrander a neat way of distinguishing between different levels of certainty.  Some crossword puzzle clues are so obvious that you can immediately write the answer in pen.  Many answers are more tentative, and depend on solving other clues and building up the network; much of our knowledge is penciled in.  So too in a Christian worldview, some pieces of the puzzle are permanently inscribed in pen (Scripture is God’s Word, Jesus is God’s eternal Living Word, a member of the Triune fellowship, etc.).  Much of our worldview is more tentative, and develops over time, through trial and error.  Thus Ostrander uses the analogy to respond to Christians for whom everything is tentative, nothing fixed; but also to respond to those Christians who want everything written in pen, and want it written in pen now.

All in all, a very fertile analogy.