A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. David Stewart is the Assistant Librarian of Regent/Carey Library. This review appears by permission, and is taken from the December 1995 issue of CRUX, the journal of Regent College.
David F. Wells. No Place for Truth, or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1993) xii + 318 pp. $28.95 hb.
and
David F. Wells. God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams, (Eerdmans, 1994) x + 256 pp. $28.95 hb.
“I have watched with growing disbelief as the evangelical church has cheerfully plunged into astounding theological illiteracy the changes that are now afoot are so pregnant with consequence that it becomes, for me, a matter of conscience to address them.” (No Place for Truth, p. 4)
David F. Wells has earned a reputation in a career at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary as a careful and thorough theologian. In these books his task is chiefly a corrective one. He sees the theological foundations of American Evangelicalism as endangered, and the threat lies mainly in the disregard of theology itself. What he wants to know is why theology is disappearing from Evangelicalism. And why has [the] linkage between the past and the present broken down? (No Place For Truth, p. 12)
In the two-chapter prologue of No Place for Truth (NPFT), the author seeks to show how different the world he lives in is from that of his American Protestant forbears. The town of Wenham, Massachusetts, provides, in his scheme of things, a rather poignant snapshot of how community, culture, and values have been transformed: “… a truly momentous transformation of the human landscape took place without having been planned at all” (p. 52). “Westerners… have surrendered their moral order without so much as a tear. Our Time has stirred to a frenzy the relentless assault on all the old certainties, religious and moral. It has untied our hands. We are now loosed from the old bonds In the twinkling of an eye we Westerners, once the custodians of a stable moral order, have become like loosed bats whose silent, unpredictable flight in the new civilization is an omen of something gone dreadfully wrong” (p. 72). Wells is passionately concerned not only about the erosion of the older moral consensus, but about the convergence of modernism with modernization: “we live in an external world in which unbelief seems normal… a world in which Christian faith seems alien” (p. 90).
Having set out his analysis of the nature and scope of the changes in our world, Wells devotes the remaining chapters (III-VIII) of NPFT to the specific ecclesiastical and theological contexts. Theology, he says, consists of three elements, the confessional, the reflective, and the moral, and the disjunction of these aspects in the academy and the church is one component of theology’s decline (p. 98 ff.) The ostensible rise in evangelical influence in recent decades is thus deceptive. Depth of thought and critical analysis is on the wane. Wells sees a specifically American component to this decline in the ironic convergence of individualism and conformity: the former threatens to undermine the nature of theology, the latter challenges the function of theology (pp. 137-38). The rise of the self as the primary locus for theological demonstration is charted rather vividly: he has some harsh criticisms for the contents of Leadership journal, as representative of this subjectivizing trend.
In this context the point is made that the popular American understanding of democracy – democracy is not simply a political system but an entire worldview … therefore, culture and truth belong to the people …” – has not had a happy effect on the cultivation of theology in Evangelicalism. An analysis of the contents of Christianity Today from the 1950s to the present is adduced as evidence of a declining interest in theology within the evangelical laity. Wells sees two principal results of this demise: 1) now the audience is sovereign (publishing and preaching panders to the lowest common denominators of taste), and 2) now ideas find legitimacy and value only in the marketplace.
His criticism now turns toward the practitioners of ministry, and here the trend toward professionalization is the culprit. Centralization and standardization of theological education (for example, the influence of the Association of Theological Schools) are serious elements of the problem: “today’s students are given an arsenal of specialists’ tools and left to find a unifying principle, some means for orchestrating their use, in the practice of ministry itself’ (p. 244).
The concluding two chapters attempt to show how the place for truth has been forfeited, how it is that the Old Testament prophets, for example, could think in terms of truth, but we cannot. Here is offered a brief but helpful survey of how Israel thought about God and his truth: “Unless truth is objective, it cannot be declared to others, cannot be taught to others, cannot be required of others … wherever this preaching takes root, there the desire to know and practice God’s truth begins to blossom. And this is the soil, the only soil, in which theology can grow” (p. 282).
NPFT concludes with a call to holy dissatisfaction with the status quo of Evangelicalism: a resolute disbelief in modernity and what it offers. “Theology is not dying because the academy has failed to devise adequate procedures for reconstructing it but because the Church has lost its capacity for it…. the emptiness of evangelical faith without theology echoes the emptiness of modern life” (p. 301).
Readers of the first volume, with its decidedly dismal assessment of the theological state of Evangelicalism, ought to do so in the awareness that Wells aims to be more prescriptive in the second (NPFT, p. 12, 285). In God in the Wasteland (GITW) Wells sets out to provide a way through what he considers the greatest contemporary challenge to Evangelicalism: “modernity is not simply an issue; it is the issue because it envelops all our worlds – commerce, entertainment, social organization, government, technology – and because its grasp is so lethal” (GITW p. 28). “The fundamental problem in the evangelical world today,” he continues, “is that God rests too inconsequentially upon the church. His truth is too distant, his grace is too ordinary, his judgment is too benign, and his Christ is too common” (p. 30).
To begin with, we need to understand the duality of church and kosmos, and the author provides a brief discussion of these concepts in chapter three. (Kosmos is understood here as “the collective expression of every society’s refusal to bow before God” p. 39.) Wells’ grievance here is that evangelicals have caved in en masse to the allure of the world: “now [Evangelicalism] is as attentive as any other aspect of our culture to the pronouncements of the pollster” (p. 59). And in the fourth chapter (“Clerics Anonymous”) Professor Wells takes aim at some specific targets, representative of this worldly trend: Church Growth Theory, the Christian marketeer/social analyst George Barna,and the phenomena of Recovery Groups are given a thorough kicking-around. Here the author is at his angriest: “…a new and more culturally adapted Evangelicalism emerged, the central figures of which were no longer the scholars… but rather a host of managers, planners and bureaucrats” (GITW, p. 71).
In other words, the descriptive, diagnostic posture carries over from the first to the second volume: and it is only in chapters V-VII that Wells finally suggests prescriptions. God has become, in the estimation of Our Time, unimportant and weightless – and not only outside but inside the church. This argument and discussion can be summed up in his claim at the end of chapter 5: “I believe that the church has lost the transcendent truth and goodness of God, and I believe that if it fails to recover this truth and goodness, Christianity will buckle completely under the strains that are being exerted upon it by modernity” (p. 117).
As a preliminary corrective to this trend, Wells offers a biblical summary of God as transcendent: above, active, holy. The following chapter (“God on the Inside”) puts forward the disturbing hypothesis that, rather of being unwittingly duped by modernity, Evangelicalism is a willing participant in its own theological demise.
Why is “Our Time,” as Wells terms it, so uniquely susceptible, so apparently unable to embrace the truths of God’s sovereignty over creation, history, and self? Several factors are put forward: apprehension and insecurity that threaten to obscure any hope of purpose and hope; evil, suffering and brutality that draw attention toward human fragility and away from Divine providence; loss of a meaningful sense of progress: “modernity has gone a long way toward robbing us of our faith convictions. While we may believe in God’s existence and his goodness, we find ourselves psychologically disabled in our attempts to bring this belief into incisive relation with the stuff of daily experience …”(p. 162). Wells concludes his discussion with a biblical affirmation of the vision of faith: the church “lives in an interim time, between the first and second comings of Christ, in a murky twilight between the inauguration and the consummation of the Kingdom …”(p. 173).
In an attempt to discern the possibility of a brighter future, Wells uses his own and others’ research to try and anticipate what the next generation will bring to Evangelicalism: questionnaires on a range of important questions, conducted at seven different evangelical seminaries, suggest that seminarians: 1) do hold a fairly high view of Scripture; 2) affirm that theology should be central in the life of the church, and 3) are dissatisfied with the current status of the church. An appendix (pp. 228-256) provides some statistical data from this research.
COMMENT:
These are sobering books, in their tone, their criticisms, their arguments. And fair enough: Wells sees his own North American evangelical tradition as in danger of succumbing to an underdose of theology. Some equally sober questions, then, about these two books, and their place in current debate:
- Once we agree that Wells’ chief concern is over Evangelicalism’s loss of the vision of a transcendent and holy God, and over the gravity of this loss in the modem setting, does this point need to be made again? As I read and re-read these books, writers as diverse as A.W. Tozer, Francis Schaeffer, Donald Bloesch, and Paul Johnson came to For books of this substance to have any remedial effect, they need to say something new, or at least in a new or more engaging way: I am unsure that these do, especially since the author speaks with more authority, and certainly at far greater length, about the problem than about the remedy.
- In the introduction to the first book, the author mentions that his original impulse was to tackle the problem – of restating the urgency of theology – by writing a brief essay, on the lines of Thielicke’s A Little Encouragement for Young Theologians (NPFT, 4). If his hope is to engage the rank and file of Evangelicalism, that would assuredly have been a better approach. Collectively, No Place for Truth and God in the Wasteland add up to a highly demanding read: less would have been more.
Indeed, by the time we reach the second volume, Wells is already allowing that two books may not be enough (GITW, pp. 31 and 113). Now, 400 pages on, limits of space permit only a half-proposal for the recovery of the importance of truth? From the perspective of editorial constraint, and even more from considerations of simple fairness to the reader, this seems not only unnecessary but highly unsatisfactory. - The author is far too hard on the church. We all know how susceptible our churches and, sometimes, our church leaders are, to “success-ism”: we want our churches and ministries to matter, to make some tangible Is this necessarily a bad thing? Wells singles out Schuller, Barna, Recovery Movements and so on, and adduces the declining theological content of Christianity Today and Leadership as conclusive proof of a wholesale sellout to pragmatism. But I wonder at this kind of extrapolation: why, if his object is reformation, does the author so readily subscribe to the worst-case-possible scenario in his portrayal of the evangelical church? One memorable Reformer (Luther) said that “what we would change we must first of all love,” and the sort of caricaturization in these pages leaves a lot to be desired.
- The author is far too easy on his colleagues in the academy. Dilemmas like the one he says we are in do not materialize overnight, but take shape over the course of decades of inattention and neglect. I can see Wells’ concern about publications like Christianity Today and Leadership, wherein theological and biblical content leave something to be desired. But this is hardly the whole story: substantive publications in theology, biblical studies, ethics and theology by evangelicals are pouring off the scholarly presses as never before. The same is the case with theological journals. Has theology within Evangelicalism been professionalized?
The disclaimer that “[theology’s] purpose is not primarily to participate in the conversation of the learned but to nurture the people of God” (NPFT, p. 6) seems an unconvincing representation of the working relationship between church and seminary. What responsibility must the theological schools bear for the absence of the current teaching of theological truth in our churches? (NPFT, p. 282 and elsewhere). - Wells’ field of scholarly expertise is Historical and Systematic Theology, and so I found it curious,even disappointing, that neither of these volumes provided anything much from history. If things are as serious as Wells says they are, is this the kind of study we need? To be sure, Our Time (as Wells calls it) is a time like no other: but this is hardly the first time in history that orthodoxy has been neglected, that preaching has pandered to the demands of its audience.
In fact, I think a solid case could be made that Evangelicalism is suffering as much from being ahistorical as from its being atheologtcal: how did our forbears pray, and lead, and teach, toward the recovery of orthodoxy? What enabled them to be faithful in their time?
SUMMARY:
The task of sounding the alarm is never easy, and seldom appreciated. Wells’s task is made the more thankless by the fact that much of Evangelicalism is still relishing its recently-won position of cultural acceptance.
Books calling evangelicals to sober reflection are needful in these times, and it is probably best that they be written by people who do not flinch from saying what is unpopular. In my view Professor Wells is at his very best when summarizing what has supplanted the passion for truth within Evangelicalism (chapters IV – V of NPFT), making it clear, in other words, what has crept into the center in place of truth.
I found myself wishing both for more and less from the author: more hope, more prescriptive direction, more compassion for the church (surely the easiest target on the planet for criticism); less resolve to say everything, less preoccupation with the worst of Evangelicalism, less doomsday rhetoric.
Like all the tasks of the church, the work of theology is by way of response to the grace of God. Surely this reality summons us both to reclaim and renew this work where we have neglected it, and to take heart from the assurance of Christ’s unending love for his Church.