Difficulties surrounding the apologetic use of worldview in contemporary Calvinist scholarship

This thesis is an investigation and critical evaluation of the concept worldview as defined and employed by Reformed neo-Calvinists for broadly apologetic purposes including, but not limited to, making cognitive claims on behalf of religious beliefs and securing legitimacy for Christian worldviews in the academy at large. Regardless of one's sympathy for this project of Reformed scholarship, it is argued that reliance upon worldview as it has developed in modern philosophy since Dilthey, impacts negatively the efforts of Reformed scholars to affirm and articulate a cognitive dimension of Reformed Christianity. Three arguments are presented as establishing this contention. First, the visualism and perspectivism of worldview is in tension with the Reformed critique of modernity. Second, worldview is not adequately distinguished from premodern metaphysics within Reformed circles. Third, worldview, as understood in neo-Calvinist terms, does not adequately secure a place for the legitimacy of religious worldviews within secular academia.