Above All Earthly Pow'rs by David F. Wells

Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ in A Postmodern World
by David F. Wells, Eerdmans/IVP, 2005

This book is the conclusion of a series of works in which Wells dissects the relationship between Evangelicalism and Western culture. The other titles are No Place for Truth (1993), God in the Wasteland (1994) and Losing our Virtue (1998). We need volumes like this to force us to reflect on our place in the world at this particular point in history. Without a penetrating, Biblical analysis of Western culture, the Church faces two main dangers. She may loose her distinctive witness by unwittingly becoming absorbed into the culture. Or the Church may retreat into its own little sub-culture, and find itself increasingly out-of-touch and bewildered by a fast changing world.

In the first two chapters, Wells charts the decline of the modern world and the emergence of postmodernism. The modern world was shaped by the twin forces of Enlightenment rationalism and technological advance. Western culture did not become "modern" simply because the thinking of the philosophers gradually permeated the rest of society. Wells shows how the Industrial Revolution radically transformed Western culture. What intellectuals were saying about the power of human potential was seemingly reinforced by abundant economic growth and rapid technological improvement. This gave birth to a mechanised, capitalist world in which happiness was measured by consumer choice. In this brave new society, God was banished to the margins of life and human beings were placed at the centre. But the turn from God to humanity debased rather than enhanced the true value of human life. We have been reduced to mere consumers, there to be manipulated by the advertising industry, or to victims in need of the latest self-help programme. But the modern consensus, reinforced as it was by the convergence of philosophy and technology is now falling apart. Modernism is so last century. Welcome to postmodernism.

Postmodernism is a reaction against the hubris of modernism. Where modern people were confident of man's ability to discover universal truth, postmoderns dismiss universal truth as a proud fiction. Just like modernism, postmodernism is the product of a new intellectual climate and shifts in society. Jacques Derrida's view that there is no truth, only subjective interpretations of reality is given credence by the shape of contemporary society. In a world of bewildering consumer choice, who is to say that only one worldview is right? Wells also analyses the effect of immigration on societies like America and the UK. As immigration accelerated during the mid-twentieth century, Western people found themselves mixing with adherents of other religions and cultures. The Judeo-Christian consensus was shattered on the rocks of multiculturalism. Such influences lead to a widespread rejection of traditional organised religion and the adoption of pastiche spirituality, where the consumer chooses those bits of religion that he likes best.

The postmodern world is void of deep meaning and significance. But the void is filled with a mixture of rampant consumerism and vague spirituality. Against this background, Wells discusses Christ in a Meaningless World. He helpfully differentiates between postmodern Eros spirituality that is centred on the self and Biblical Agape spirituality that is all about God reaching down to sinners in majestic saving grace. The Bible explains why postmodern life feels so empty and futile. Life without God is meaningless. But God has acted in Christ to save sinners from the judgement they deserve. Wells focuses on eschatology- the inbreaking of "the age to come" (here), christology - the doctrine of Christ, and justification by faith as the core truths that the Church needs to reassert in our postmodern society. In a decentered world, we must boldly proclaim the centrality of Christ.

Thus it is that we have two diametrically opposed visions of life. In the one, there is no centre; in the other there is and it is Christ. In the one, life is but a succession of random events; in the other, life is lived out under the sovereign rule of Christ. (p. 262)

The Church has not always responded wisely to the challenges of postmodernism. Wells critiques Open Theism. This view divests God of his sovereignty in the name of human freedom. Clark Pinnock, a leading advocate of this position says that Open Theism is an attempt to "make peace with the culture of modernity". (p. 247). But has the Church been called to make peace with the world at the expense of the freedom and sovereignty of God? The God of Open Theism may be culturally acceptable, but is he the glorious triune God who has revealed himself in Scripture?

Wells turns his attention to the "seeker sensitive" Megachurches as an example of what happens when the Church accommodates the postmodern world. This new way of doing Church tends to focus on one particular segment of society - usually young, white and middle class. The true multiethnicity of the Church is thus undermined. Church life is built around the felt needs of these spiritual consumers. Culturally awkward aspects of the gospel such as sin and judgement are downplayed. The demanding aspects of the gospel such as repentance, godliness and discipleship are not emphasised. The Megachurches are pragmatic in their approach and are geared towards success. But we have not been called to peddle the gospel, to win as many consumers as possible. Our task is to confront people with the claims of Christ and call them to repentance and faith.

There is a challenge here for the Church in the West. We must not be culturally indistinguishable from the world. We must dare to be different as God's holy people, his new humanity. Our only hope of reaching postmodern people is that we live authentically as the Church of God and remain faithful to the Biblical gospel. This important book helps us to understand our own times and calls us to Christ-centred authenticity. The Christ we serve and proclaim is indeed 'Above all earthly pow'rs'. He has triumphed over the forces of sin and evil. It is as we humbly rely on him that we will see the gospel triumph in our postmodern world.

David Wells on Christian hope in a postmodern world

Christian hope is not about wishing that all things will get better, that somehow emptiness will go away, meaning will return, and life will be stripped of its uncertainties, its psychological aches and anxieties. Nor does it have anything to do with techniques for improving fallen human life, be they therapeutic or even religious. Hope, instead, has to do, biblically speaking, with the knowledge that "the age to come" is already penetrating "this age", that the sin, death, and meaninglessness of the one is being transformed by the righteousness, life and meaning of the other, that what has emptied out life, what has scarred and blackened it, is being replaced by what is rejuvenating and transforming it. More than that, hope is hope because it knows it has become part of a realm, a kingdom, which endures, where evil is doomed and will be banished, that it has left behind the ship of "this age" which is sinking. And if this realm did not exist, Christians would be "of all men most to be pitied" (I Cor 15:19), because their hope would be groundless and they would have lived out an illusion (cf. Ps 73:4-14).

From Above All Earthly Powers: Christ in a Postmodern World,

(Eerdmans/IVP, 2005, p. 206)

David Wells on the Holiness of God (2)

Until we recognise afresh the centrality of God's holiness, until it once again enters into the innermost fibres of evangelical faith, our virtue will lack seriousness, our belief will lack poignancy, our practice will lack moral pungency, our worship will lack joyful seriousness, our preaching will lack the mordancy of grace, and the church will be just one more special interest pleading for a hearing in a world of competing enterprises. Until we acknowledge God's holiness, we will not be able to deny the authority of modernity. What has most been lost needs most to be recovered - namely, the unsettling, disconcerting fact that God is holy and we place ourselves in great peril if we seek to render him a plaything of our piety, an ornamental decoration on the religious life, a product to answer our inward dissatisfactions. God offers himself on his own terms or not at all. The deity who now appears to lie so limply upon the church is, in fact the living and glorious God. His hand may be stayed by patience and grace, but it is certain that he will eventually pass judgement on the world. It is this holy God, glorious in his being, doing wonders, who beckons his people to a deeper working knowledge of himself, and it is he who breaks the power of modernity.

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From God in the Wasteland p. 145

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In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said:

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“ Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

The whole earth is full of His glory!”

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And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.So I said:

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“ Woe is me, for I am undone!

Because I am a man of unclean lips,

And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;

For my eyes have seen the King,

The LORD of hosts.”

(Isaiah 6:1-5)

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In Above All Earthly Powers David Wells promises to discuss the challenge of Christ in a postmodern world. But my copy hasn't turned up from Amazon yet!

David Wells on the Holiness of God (1)

In his God in the Wasteland (1994, IVP) David Wells argues that, "The fundamental problem in the evangelical world today is that God rests too inconsequentially upon the church. His truth is too distant, his grace is too ordinary, his judgement is too benign, his gospel too easy and his grace too common." In this, the first of two posts, Wells challenges us with a Biblical vision of the majestic holiness of God:

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The Holy, by its very nature is in a realm we cannot enter as consumers but only as sinners, in sackcloth and ashes. Indeed we cannot approach the Holy at all; we must wait for the Holy to approach and and reconcile us to itself in Christ. The revelation of the Holy would be unbearable if we saw it in any other way than from within the redemption it grants us. The knowledge of God as holy, though taught throughout the Old Testament, must in the end be taught supremely by the Son, by his death in our place, before we can see all that God would have us see. The cross, writes P. T. Forsyth, "is the creative revelation of the holy and the holy is above all revealed in the Cross, going out as love and going down as grace."

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Without this holiness of God, sin has no meaning and grace and grace has no point, for it is God's holiness that gives to the one its definition and to the other its greatness. Without the holiness of God, sin is merely human failure but not failure before God, in relation to God. It is failure without the presumption of guilt, failure without retribution, failure without any serious moral meaning. And without the holiness of God, grace is no longer grace because it does not arise from the dark clouds of judgement that obscured the cross and exacted the damnation of the Son in our place. Furthermore, without holiness, grace looses its meaning as grace, the free gift of God who, despite his holiness and because of his holiness, has reconciled sinners to himself in the death of his Son. And without holiness, faith is but a confidence in the benevolence of life, or perhaps merely confidence in ourselves. Sin, grace and faith are emptied of any but a passing meaning if they are severed from their roots in the holiness of God. "Love" says Forsyth, "is but its outgoing; sin is but its defiance; grace is but its action on sin; the Cross is but its victory; faith is but its worship."

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From God in the Wasteland p. 144-145.

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The fear of the LORD

is the beginning of widsom,

And the knowledge of the Holy One

is understanding.

(Proverbs 9:10)