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