Above All Earthly Pow Rs

Wells, David F. Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005.339 pp. $16.00.

Introduction David F. Wells is the Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Historical and Systematic

Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is also an ordained Congregational minister. He earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from London University, England (1966), a

Master of Theology degree in church history from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School,

Deerfield, IL (1967) and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in theology from the University of

Manchester, England (1969). He served as research fellow at Yale Divinity School from 1973 to

Wells has authored or edited fifteen books. His book, No Place for Truth, or Whatever

Happened to Evangelical Theology (1993) is the first of a series of four books that takes a close look at contemporary American evangelicalism. No Place for Truth was instrumental in leading a number of evangelical pastors and theologians to create the Cambridge Declaration (1996).

Summary If you are going to fight the Goliath of postmodernism, it will not be helpful to use his own weapons against him. Wells takes a careful look at the postmodern culture in this final book. He analyzes postmodern assumptions, ethics and impact on the soul. With his understanding of church history, he is able to put the latest cultural trends and fads, both inside and outside the church, into a proper historical context.

Wells is evenhanded in his treatment of the culture; he never minimizes or dismisses the power of the postmodern culture to seduce its adherents or its detractors. While he is careful to show respect, as one would to a powerful enemy, neither does he shrink back from a strong 2 conviction that “there is nothing in the modern world that is a match for the power of God and nothing in modern culture which diminishes our understanding of the greatness of Christ” (11).

Wells’ breadth of research includes sixteen pages of authors cited (318-334). He interacts with theologians (past and present, evangelical and non-), culture-watchers and researchers, sociologists (Christian and non-), church growth consultants, etc. The sheer number is breathtaking but it has the effect of solidifying his credibility as a cultural-historical-church

“guru.” By this I mean that the reader will be introduced to a compendium of accurate and insightful information that lies at the root of contemporary trends. For anyone wanting to do more research on the topics discussed, this book points the direction forward.

Postmodernism and its full reach is not the main focus of Wells’ book. He gives a brief history of postmodernism’s relationship to modernity, especially focusing our attention on the

Enlightenment period. This historic overview sets the stage for what he calls postmodernism’s

“rebellion” against modernity.i He explains what he sees happening in America because of a number of “movements”: postmodern rejection of modernity, of the East coming to the West and the South coming to the North, i.e., immigration, open theism, and the rise of American megachurches. But his main concern is the relationship of the church to this brave new world and dying culture. He also offers a way that the church must respond to this new and not-so-new threat to the gospel through a high Christology reminiscent of the NT letter to the Hebrews.

The book is eight chapters long. Wells begins with two chapters that give the reader a bird’s eye view of American contemporary culture and how we traveled from modernity to postmodernity. He next sets before us a discussion of how immigration into the West from the

East and South is contributing to new “streams of spirituality.” The heart of the book, the middle chapters (four, five and six) focus on the new spirituality growing rapidly in the fertile soil of our 3 consumer-driven, fragmented and privatized culture and the effect it is having on the human soul. Chapter seven analyzes the megachurch experiment and its effect on the proclamation of the gospel. The final chapter calls the church “to be the church” rather than a “retailer of spirituality.”

Critical Evaluation The breadth of research makes this book worth the time and effort. You will be rewarded with a firm bit of ground on which to stand when it comes to engaging with those enamored with the postmodern trends. You will get a sense of how this culture seeks to mold the church.

My only criticism comes as a frustrated pastor who wants to hear Wells’ ideas for putting a healthy barricade around God’s people as protection from the culture. Selfish, I know. Wells wants pastors to think about it; God wants pastor to seek him about it.

The heart of Wells’ book traces by comparison the new-ancient blends of Gnosticism,

Buddhism and Hinduism in new American clothing. This is fascinating reading. If anyone wanted to know what is happening to the American culture, this will be a helpful guide. This blend of East with West raises important questions for church ministry and gospel preaching.

I found myself wondering if when I say “Jesus Christ is Lord” that while my listeners might

“agree,” do they have a different Jesus in mind? You might say we are “back to the future.” The days of the polytheistic culture faced by the early church are here again. Wells calls on Irenaeus’ battle against the heretics to show us the old enemy in new dress (136-145). Without saying it,

Wells implies that it might be of benefit in this new battle for truth to read Irenaeus’ Against

Heresies.ii

It is not as though we are left without a weapon. Truth matters. Truth will win the day.

Cultures may boast loudly as modernity did but has lost its audience because it is a dying culture before the Lord of all truth. Wells started this analysis with a question for the church: “Whatever 4 happened to truth?” in his first book No Place for Truth. He concludes in this book with a resounding call to the church to stand armed with the truth like David against Goliath. A dying culture armed only with the fragility of its own “autonomous self” and hollow at the center is no match for a church armed with the truth of Christ the Lord.

Over and over again, Wells warns the reader and by implication the church against taking up the weapons of the culture in order to fight the culture. It will not work; the church will lose.

Throughout the book he has included quotes from postmodern thinkers, theologians, song writers, etc. in order to highlight his assertion. In a long section that starts with chapter seven and continues through chapter eight, Wells looks carefully at the effects of world without a “hub”, that is a world with Christ at the center. He analyzes what this worldview has done to seeker- churches that have adopted the postmodern philosophy in order to “reach out.” While he admires the evangelistic motive and concern for the lost – and this is plain about the seeker churches – he still concludes that it has not been good for the gospel. He writes,

It is an attempt to respond to the spiritual yearnings of Boomers and Xers while creating an experience of the church which is compatible with their habits, likes, dislikes, wants, expectations and sounds. It produces an evangelism which is modest in its attempts at persuasion about truth, but energetic in its retailing of spiritual and psychological benefits. So successful, so alluring, has this experiment become that it would not be an exaggeration to say that it is transforming what evangelicalism looks like (266).

And this, “…there is no theological truth upon which the methodology is predicated and upon which it insists, because theological truth, it is thought, is not what builds churches” (281). And this, “Here is spirituality without theology, spirituality which is privatized and therefore, to some extent, freed from the external rhythms and authority of a practiced faith. And that is producing many changes” (282).

Then comes what I believe to be a stunning moment at the end of chapter seven when he quotes 2 Corinthians 2:17: “For we are not like so many peddlers of God’s word” (309). I say 5 stunning not because it was the first time I had ever read it, but because of its strategic placement following a lengthy cultural analysis in the light of a high Christological discussion. It has the effect of giving the reader reinvigorated hope for the battle.

I have read Gene Edward Veith, Neil Postman, Os Guinness and most recently D.A. Carson

(Being Conversant with the Emerging Church) on the postmodern culture, and I admit that I found those books easier to read and digest. Wells’ book adds a dense and rich voice to the discussion. There is a quiet plea in Wells’ voice that will cause you to refrain from attempts to skim through it. He will provoke your thinking by raising more questions. His goal is to draw you into a tussle of the minds about the grand redemptive themes of the Bible and how they intersect with our times. His platform of the postmodern discussion serves to open our eyes to the greatness and supremacy of Christ over history and the church.

Obviously, Wells has done his homework and I appreciate that. He did not presume that I know the subject as well as he does. But I appreciated more that he challenged me to think of

Christ who is above. Christ’s “aboveness” is not the aloofness of distance but the power of the

Reigning Monarch who has broken into history from a qualitatively different world.

What Christ brings in salvation is powerful; “now but not yet” fully realized. This distinction sets apart the church from the world. If we forget this, if we start bartering with the culture on its terms, trying to woo the culture with its accessories, Wells fears we may displace

Christ just as the culture has already done in its rebellion. As a consequence we will lose the power of Christ’s influence in our culture and become as obsolete and dying as that culture because we will become indistinguishable from that which we seek to win.

Willow Creek’s recent public admission that “they got it wrong” on this matter proves the old saying, “he that marries the spirit of the age will be left divorced in the next.”iii The odd thing 6 is that the Willow Creek leadership plans to go back to the research well first rather than to the

Scriptures first to determine their next step. Wells would no doubt put this into the “arming- yourself-with-Goliath’s-sword” category.

Conclusion The statement that caused me to think more deeply about postmodern culture and ways of thinking than any other was this:

The vanity, emptiness, and futility of fallen reason are the affliction visited upon sinners by God’s judgment. In every age, this has followed different directions. In the postmodern world today, whose center lies in the autonomous self, all of which is yielding a bountiful harvest of intellectual emptiness and moral disorder, this is not good news. What the postmodern world celebrates in its rejection of all absolutes and in its assumed right to define all reality privately is a sign of God’s wrath (cf. Rom 1:22) (201-02).

Postmodernism, like Modernism before it, is a humanly devised system for the rejection of

God. Its failures and empty promises and rebellion are the result of God’s just judgment for rejecting him.

Yet, postmodernism offers the church another opportunity to proclaim the supremacy of

Christ over all things. The church must once again find its prophetic “voice of proclamation, not its sales agent…not its marketing firm. And in that proclamation there is inevitable cultural confrontation. More precisely, there is the confrontation between Christ…and the rebellion of the human heart” (309).

Bob Buchanan Faith Baptist Church i I just finished reading Carson’s Conversant with the Emerging Church, in which he expands on this idea of protest nearly for its own sake. Carson focuses on that wing of the evangelical church that identifies itself with the Emergent Movement. ii Philip Schaff, “The Apostolic Father with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus” [on-line]; available from http://www.ccel.org; Internet. iii Bob Burney, “A Shocking ‘Confession’ from Willow Creek Community Church” [on-line]; accessed 31 October 2007; available from http://www.Townhall.com; Internet.