NPFT: Part 2

My previous post, NPFT: Part 1, as a summary of the entire book No Place for Truth by David Wells, is now followed by my summary of the first chapter. I begin by stating a thesis that I think fairly summarizes the the whole volume, then a statement summarizing the chapter, then a more developed summary of the chapter. My hope is that anyone jumping in can get caught up by reading the statements without having to go back and read everything (though that would help).

Book thesis: historic, orthodox theological conviction and action are largely absent in the contemporary evangelical church, and this absence has led to a church driven by visions of pragmatic methodology and psychological need.

Chapter 1 summary: Modern humanity is stretched too thin. The old world of traditional, established boundaries (e.g. moral, geographic, and knowledge) ensured social and cultural stability; our modern world exposes us to disorienting experience- and information-overload.

Prior to the 19th century in America, the church was “both the place where God addressed his people … and the knot that bound society together.” (p. 24) With the onset of modernity, that knot has been loosed. Part of the Old World’s sense of stability came from the bonds formed by each town’s boundaries (i.e. geographical, organizational, economic, psychological). Today, via television, for example, “we are contemporary observers of the entire world; we are everywhere and have access to everything and thus carry the awful load of being omniscient and omnipresent.” (p. 43) The automobile offers freedom from one’s geographic community (not by psychological escape like that of television, but by physically removing one from one’s community) and has hastened the disappearance of one’s ties to location. Our experience is now universal, not local. It is boundless, not personal. Modernization has worked to bring about the intrusion of the gigantic world outside. Wenham, Mass. (Wells’ case study) made it’s own passage into the modern world principally through these channels of travel and communication. Notably, these two phenomena (travel and communication) are developments that are uniquely suited to rapidly and indiscriminately distributing people and information across geographic space, by which the “awful load” is created and felt.

BHT

NPFT: Part 1

In 1993, I was a college freshman and knew nothing of the term "evangelical", let alone what others, either friend or foe, thought of it. That year, David Wells published the first in a line of four volumes aimed at constructively criticizing the movement. That first volume, No Place for Truth, was said to possibly be "the most provocative book evangelical pastors and laypeople ever read". That has been true for me.

Over the next several weeks, I will be posting first a summary of the book's thesis, followed by chapter summaries that support that thesis. In my summaries, I will aim less at evaluating his argument than I will at strictly summarizing it so that his message is heard without having to sift explicitly through my thoughts as well. This exercise will likely be more fruitful for myself than for any of you, I suppose, since I will have had to wrestle first with Wells, then with myself to articulate it without distorting it. Of course, I will fail at times, and you'll be able to tell what I think of his points.

Since what he has to say is meant for the health and welfare of the church, I will appreciate comments or inquiries, of which I may well not have thought myself. Others' perspectives are always welcome.

Engaging ministry, culture, and the world on the basis of theological reflection and conviction has all but disappeared from the church in America and in the West today, and we are not the better for it. To a large degree, this has come about as a result of the modernization of the West. In the wake and as a result of the 18th century Enlightenment, capitalism, technological innovation, urbanization, and telecommunications have converged to create a milieu (known as “modernity”) in which transcendent meaning to life and objective truth governing morality (seen as left-over consequences of the God-hypothesis of pre-Enlightenment views) have been abandoned. In their place, the values of modernity – efficiency and pragmatism – have usurped God as the ultimate criteria for truth and meaning and have relegated religion and revelation to the status of myths from a bygone era. As a result, moral conviction and theological truth no longer exercise authority over human pursuits; rather, pragmatism now governs society, both inside and outside the church.

With respect to 20th century Evangelicalism, David Wells argues that such a shift in thinking and doing has taken place as follows: first, that the modernization of the West came as a result of the technological and economic development that followed in the wake of the Enlightenment, and that it has taken over the urban centers of the West (“urban” being defined as a city that is technologically and economically developed); second, that this modernization ushered in a new value system called “modernity” that prizes efficiency and pragmatism for progress above moral or principled criteria; third, that this effect has reduced man from a moral, existential being in search of objective truth and in need of redemption to a psychological being in search merely of psychological wholeness and in need of subjective affirmation; this renders transcendence and theology irrelevant and makes experience and pragmatism ultimate and authoritative; and, fourth, that Evangelicals have embraced modernity and its values uncritically (often unknowingly) and are now operating within this framework, using efficiency and relevance as ultimate criteria of truth and progress. Evangelicalism is now defined sociologically and by ministry-methods rather than by theological conviction and confession; we have embraced modernity’s values of efficiency and pragmatism without asking whether we should do so, or what effects it may or may not have on our message and ministry.

Evangelicals today do not dismiss theology because of their unbelief, but because of its perceived uselessness; that is, they confess orthodox theology but more typically do not self-consciously minister in light of it. Nonetheless, they do operate with a theology: it is centered on a God who is on easy terms with modernity and Who, in the absence of moral realities, is quick to endorse modern theories regarding church growth and making people psychologically whole. “Without a vision of God as Other, different from and standing over against the modern world, there is no compelling reason to think thoughts about the world which are not essentially modern.” (p. 291) Pastors today stand or fall by their personality, not their character. Our questions today hardly ever penetrate to the heart of moral reality because modern life is hardly ever about moral concerns. Those who are most relevant to the modern world are those who are irrelevant to the moral purpose of God; ironically, though, those who are irrelevant to the world by virtue of their relevance to God actually have the most to say to the world. They are, in fact, the only ones who have anything to say to it.