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No Place for Truth: Or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology
How are we to explain the fragmentation of evangelical faith today and the current turmoil in the churches? According to David Wells, the answer lies in seeing how modernity is reshaping the whole of Western culture, including that part of it which is religious. This book provides a compelling critique of the modern world and the state of evangelical theology. Wells's swee...more
Paperback, 330 pages
Published
December 20th 1994
by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
(first published 1993)
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We are living in a culture that has spiritually decayed into the foci of self & truth by consensus...no absolute truth except the individual's personal opinion. Wells describes the long process of how & why we are in this self-destructive vacuum for real absolutes & the damaging effects on society & self without Divine Revelation & the power of the Gospel to transform from the inside out through faith in The resurrected Jesus, the living Savior.
Many today are sensing the resu...more
Many today are sensing the resu...more
This book charts the decline of truth in the evangelical world. It surveys a cultural history of the rise of modernism and its effects on the evangelical world. The statistics are now dated but it charts the history and problems in the evangelical worldview that arose in the last half of the 20th century. It is still helpful because one can see how many of the observations have only intensified since David Wells first pointed them out over a decade ago. This book calls Christians to return to a...more
Dr. Wells' brilliant analysis of contemporary evangelicalism is one of the most important books I have read. Indeed, his entire four volume series is necessary reading for any pastor or layman who desires to understand why evangelicalism is the way it is, where it is going, and how to chart a path forward must read this book and its sequels. Wells sounds the dangers of modernity and observes through research how it has come to shape the church. This is a clear call to the church away from cultur...more
Wells's book is impressive. Based on a reading of this book alone, I would confidently say that he is one of the most intelligent and well-read modern theologians I have ever read. I had heard that this was something of a theological classic, and given that it was only published in 1993, I was doubtful that anyone could make such a claim just yet. But, the more I think about it, I think the claim is justified.
Wells, with extensive Biblical scholarship and reference to church history, takes a loo...more
Wells, with extensive Biblical scholarship and reference to church history, takes a loo...more
In a separate lecture elsewhere, Wells reported to his wife that when this book is published, he will receive a lot of criticism from the EVANGELICAL flank of the church. As some of the reviews below have shown, he was excatcly right.
Wells's thesis can be summarized thus: "Since the church has adopted all the vestiges of modernity, it has become irrelevant to God, and as such can no longer deliver the demands of God to a dying people. This is so because the church views reality in light of a mod...more
Wells's thesis can be summarized thus: "Since the church has adopted all the vestiges of modernity, it has become irrelevant to God, and as such can no longer deliver the demands of God to a dying people. This is so because the church views reality in light of a mod...more
Wells examines the root causes of why theology is on the decline in the evangelical church. He concludes that the Church has embraced modernity without critically examining it. As Wells demonstrates, had the Church examined modernity, they would have discovered that it is inherently anti-theological.
Modernity has brought specialization--divorcing theology from the Church, leaving theology in the hands of seminarians. But then seminarians have discovered that the pastorate has become professiona...more
Modernity has brought specialization--divorcing theology from the Church, leaving theology in the hands of seminarians. But then seminarians have discovered that the pastorate has become professiona...more
I just finished reading David Wells' No Place for Truth, Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? I really liked the first 4 or 5 chapters, but think it went dramatically down hill from there. I suppose, more than anything, I was just annoyed with the negativity. Wells seems ready to bury the evangelical world. "We don't need revival, we need reformation." I largely agree with most of his critiques of evangelicals -- the large scale accommodation to culture, the trading of theology for self...more
The five books by Wells are a must read for every Christian today. They show the theological and moral bankruptcy of the modern church and calls for a theological reformation.
The books are:
1. No Place for Truth or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?
2. God in the Wasteland: The Reality of truth in a World of Fading Dreams
3. Losing our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover its Moral Vision
4. Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ in a Postmodern World
5. The Courage to be Protestant: Truth-lovers, M...more
The books are:
1. No Place for Truth or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?
2. God in the Wasteland: The Reality of truth in a World of Fading Dreams
3. Losing our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover its Moral Vision
4. Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ in a Postmodern World
5. The Courage to be Protestant: Truth-lovers, M...more
This is a very unsettling book. Like Mark Noll's "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" Wells, a Professor at Gordon=Conwell Seminary, documents the decline in importance of sound theology. This book came out almost 20 years ago. If anything the problem has gotten worse. Men and women ignoring sound doctrine and in some cases, the Gospels. Look at the Tea Party, the GOP and current thinking aboout you-name-it.
This book is one of the most important books I have read that opens my eyes to see the problems of Evangelicalism. It is only later that I learned that Dr. Wells is approaching this from a Reformed perspective. The book definitely piques my interest in the relationship between faith and culture, the meaning of culture mandate, and the Reformed view of Scriptures and the world.
Re-reading this 20 years later, Wells seems even more prophetic than when it first came out. If anything, he didn't sound the alarm loudly enough. In an age of social media and the web, his focus on the impact of television seems quaint. But in fact, these later media haven't changed his argument, they've amplified it.
Wells takes a hard look at modern, post-Christian, materialistic, urbanized, techno-culture and warns how it may undermine our faith
Excellent work, accounts for where the Church was historically and is now in light of postmodernity.
I read this book when I was 20. It shaped my approach to ministry more than any other book.
Part 1 of 4 book series on Christianity and contemporary culture. Good but not as good as 2 and 3.
Very thought provoking. I'll need to read it again.
The first salvo against Satan's seeker friendly church.
The content is excellent. Unfortunately, it is also tedious reading.
Outstanding.
Read. Digest. Act.
EXCELLENT
My favorite book of all time. Wells so precisely cuts through the culture, and specifically analyzes how the culture has infiltrated and compromised so much of evangelicalism. Part historian, part theologian, part prophet, Wells is vigorous in his defense of the idea of truth, and specifically, of theology. His definition of theology has been crucial in shaping my understanding of my relationship with God and His Word.
David Wells analysis of the trajectory of the modern American church is indespensable. This is the first of his four-volume trilogy (quadrigy?) on the subject. Though Wells can sometimes meander a bit, nobody is better at cutting to the heart of the damage that modern, consumerism, individualism have done to the church.
So nice to read such an erudite, learned study of the evangelical scene.
Dr. Wells is my Hero!
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“In our postmodern culture which is TV dominated, image sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant.”
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16 people liked it
“The disappearance of theology from the life of the Church, and the orchestration of that disappearance by some of its leaders, is hard to miss today, but oddly enough, not easy to prove. It is hard to miss in the evangelical world--in the vacuous worship that is so prevalent, for example, in the shift form God to the self as the central focus of faith, in the psychologized preaching that follows this shift, in the erosion of its conviction, in its strident pragmatism, in its inability to think incisively about the culture, in its reveling in the irrational.”
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5 people liked it
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