Losing Our Virtue

Sunday, 02 May 2010 19:08 Written by Bob Flack

Losing Our Virtue

My goal is to write a review that will persuade you to read Losing Our Virtue by David F. Wells. That won’t be easy. Current culture seems much more concerned with the challenge of losing weight than with the problem of losing virtue. The book’s subtitle doesn’t help my cause. Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision does not immediately grab the attention of people who expect churches to package vision in neat statements fit for a banner. Moral vision sounds highly impractical and severely out-of-date. But Wells will convince the careful reader otherwise. Nor will it help my cause to acknowledge that this is a theology book. Doctrine has dropped significantly in the polls of popular interest among Christians. Biblically sound thinking demands too much from minds overloaded with entertainment. A large segment of professing Christianity craves a faith that is convenient and casual. Wells has no illusions about the readiness of most to dismiss his book. In his introduction he admits that offering today’s evangelical a book on theology will mean “having to reach for the smelling salts” (2).

Wells’ approach to theology employs neither the mechanistic outline form of the modern era nor the tentative speculation of the postmodern.  He values the best of the Church’s theological legacy but determines to do something different. In his own words, his project involves “bringing the truth of God’s Word into lively intersection with the life of the Church, as it exists in its own culture, with the intention of seeing Christian understanding, character, and behavior made more authentic.” (p. 2). He uses “authentic” not in its contemporary sense of something being true to itself but in the classic sense of something being true to an established standard, in this case, the Scriptures.

This is solid book. It represents Well’s third installment in a four-book series touching the broad subjects of Christian theology. Previous to this work he published No Place for Truth: or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (1993) and followed that with God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (1994). The fourth book Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World caps the series with a strong critique of the destructive elements of the thought system which has gained ascendency since he began the series. This final volume served as the inspiration for the 2006 Desiring God national conference at which Wells spoke. Those who are not familiar with Wells would find watching the video of his address a helpful introduction to his thought. It is available at the DesiringGod website. Those who have read systematic theologies will recognize certain categories popping up but the overall presentation will seem strange.

Common to all four books in Well’s series is a determination to teach theology while seated not in the seclusion of the seminary but in the center of the culture. Wells is a keen observer of the world in which we live and a discerning evaluator of the ideas that drive it. His writing embodies the biblical ideal of being in the world but not of it. He investigates carefully with an eye to rendering an accurate assessment of contemporary culture in light of biblical truth rather than seeking any appeasement with it.  One may not agree with the conclusions he draws, but one could not accuse him of making hasty or superficial judgments.

The volume that stands as the focus of this review explores the Bible’s view of the individual as made in the image of God in a world paranoid about image. It is a resounding affirmation of the moral significance of every human life without echoing the shallow mantras of the therapeutic religion that has all but eliminated sin as a subject of serious discussion. Wells documents how some of the most celebrated symbols of prosperity including the shopping mall and the fitness center erode the moral identity of human beings. More means less when it comes to who we are. But the major target of criticism in Losing Our Virtue is not the world but the church and how she has adopted the culture.

The detailed argument begins with a description of two major constituencies within the professing church. Wells treats them as dueling spiritualities: classical and postmodern. They may espouse similar doctrine but they differ widely in the place they give the moral or the holy. The superscription for the chapter sets the fourth verse of Wesley’s “And Can It Be” with a 1990’s worship chorus by Brenda Lefavre. The eighteenth century hymn draws on a miraculous prison rescue account like Peter’s in Acts 12 to describe the experience of regeneration as the work of God resulting in the response of the sinner in repentance and faith (Long my imprisoned spirit lay / Fast bound bound in sin and nature's night; / Thine eye diffused a quick'ning ray, / I woke, the dungeon flamed with light; / My chains fell off, my heart was free, / I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.). The more contemporary chorus also celebrates religious experience and that direct and personal with the Lord. “I need you to hold me / Like my daddy never could / And I need you to show me / How resting in your arms can be so good.” Wells will convince the reader that whichever Christian spirituality one chooses the two are significantly different. And he leaves no doubt that rejecting classical spirituality will deepen an already severe poverty in the church.

My respect for the author elevates when in this first chapter he takes on one of the most formidable challengers to classical spirituality in the 20^th century. Someone could argue that quoting a few sentimental lines from a single praise chorus from one particular publisher does not a movement describe. Agreed. But Wells traces the river back to the spring. He takes on the central thesis of the earthshaking article by Krister Stendahl (“The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” Harvard Theological Review 56, no. 3 [1956]). He provides the arguments and explanatory footnotes to show how Stendahl’s contention does not fit the biblical record and then traces the significant influence of the classical understanding of Paul in church history. The author’s potent academic skills are on display (see pp. 35-41).

The rest of the book describes how the church came to find herself with this choice between two spiritualities. Chapter 2 describes the interplay between law and liberty in the culture and the church. His concern throughout is to assess the damage any shift has had on our sense of the moral and holy. Chapter 3 relates how serious the issue is because a loss of moral vision carries away the means of salvation in the gospel. Wells sets before us the portfolio of potential saviors that the world has created and the church has courted. He focuses on forces such as style, fitness, and psychotherapy as the modern gospel(s); the mall, the gym and the couch as the contemporary Calvaries; and the advertisers, personal coaches, and therapists as the saviors. The fourth chapter gets to the heart of the problem, the concept of the self, where the postmodern and biblical worlds seem most markedly disparate. He warns of the consequences of viewing shame as the greatest problem when guilt is real. One summary selection from this chapter (“The Bonfire of the Self”) serves to reflect Wells’ insight and passion.

In the psychiatric literature, as well as in the wider culture, the transition to the language of shame from that of guilt really signals the secularization of our moral life. What it suggests is that any moral discomfort, any inward pangs that are the result of our actions, should be construed as relational problems, not moral ones. They should be resolved along the horizontal plane of psychological understanding rather than against the vertical realm of theological knowledge. It is we who will dissolve our own shame, not God. It is we who will do it by technique, for when all is said and done, what is awry is simply the way we are viewing ourselves (p. 141)

As is typical in his organization of the books in this series, Wells moves toward a solution by moving backwards. His concluding chapter is called “The Faith of the Ages” in which he calls the church not only to recover a moral vision of life but to recommit herself to the gospel that answers the problems revealed in that vision. He argues that the gateway for the gospel in this postmodern world will be the direct confrontation of the emptiness that the culture senses giving way to new if misguided interest in spirituality. Culture and self try to re-label sin but the created moral order cannot be escaped. “[T]he threads of moral existence are ever present.” (p. 196). The church’s faithful response is first to communicate a biblical gospel and then to live in biblical community, though he treats these in the opposite order. At this point I insert another invitation to consider these two themes in Mark Dever’s keynote message at this year’s Together for the Gospel conference on making the gospel visible in the local church (T4G.org). There is a tension in contemporary Christianity between those who emphasize community (the fruit of the gospel) and those who wave the banner of the objective gospel message. Surely, as Dever testifies, we must find a way to champion both, together, in the same church. We cannot force people to make a false choice.

On this point of the local church I conclude and focus my single yet significant criticism of Wells. Who or what is “The” Church of the subtitle that must recover “its” moral vision? Before I draw attention to my concern with the author’s answer to the question, I introduce a small point. O how I wish the word “its” could have read “her.” Surely the more personal designation would have thrown Wells into the company of the classical theologians he loves. As it stands, we have in bold print on the cover of this book a less personal and more mechanistic label for the bride of Christ. But my disagreement with Wells over how he views the church is more substantial than a pronoun. In his introductory chapter he chronicles the moral decline of our society, comparing it to the degeneration that corrupted Roman society in the early centuries of the church’s expansion. In this Wells puts himself in company with Augustine whose more ambitious City of God remains the standard of the specific genre in which Losing Our Virtue belongs. The collapse of Rome created a vacuum that was the middle ages. The demise of the once strong empire marked a significant turning point in history. Wells does not shrink back from drawing the comparisons between Augustine’s day and ours in America especially.

At the low point of his assessment, he borrows the analysis of another philosopher and ethicist, Alisdair MacIntyre, to describe how desperate the situation has grown. “[A]midst the moral disintegration of our society, we should begin, ‘the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages that are already upon us.’ “ (p. 9) But Wells for some reason will not go that far. While he acknowledges that such “new forms” may be the “only path to survival at some point in the future” (p. 9), he also holds out the possibility of an intervening evangelical revival to save America (p. 10). He then insists that this challenge out to be the “constant preoccupation theologians and Church leaders.” (p. 10). I quote Wells at this point to note the capitalization of the singular “Church.”

My disagreement is two-fold. First, we have reached the turning point and the need for new forms is not a future possibility but a present necessity. Here I return to this book’s conclusion calling for both a strong gospel and a healthy gospel community. Modern structures have proven somewhat successful at promoting and protecting the first but rather ineffective at the second. Here is the second part of my criticism. Wells treats the church (which he would say is at least most prominently represented in the evangelical church) as a single entity. Clearly it is not. And within the society in which the church exists (which Wells so skillfully exposes), forces are at work that would homogenize the church either by making her like a global fast food franchise with predictable but marketable blandness or pushing her to some flimsy organizational unity in the name of ecumenical minimalism.

I would invite Wells to consider a revived localism for the church. Take MacIntyre’s prescription and wed it to a vibrant local church that would be the ultimate “act locally, think globally” movement for our shrinking world. The local church community could sustain not only civility, intellectual vibrancy, and moral fidelity but also theological orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Such a new localism would require a recovery of a biblical theology of the visible church. For most of the last century we took this for granted and taught that the church universal is really the only important aspect of eccesiology. But this over-emphasis morphed into a strange kind of Gnosticism which neglected the embodied, interpersonal, and biblically structured society which is the body of Christ in a particular place at a particular time living in covenant with her Head and Husband. When we survey the current landscape we find local churches seeking identity and solutions from the outside. I would add to add to Wells’ call for a recommitment to the sufficiency of the Bible (p. 208) a renewed confidence in the sufficiency of the local church. The church is not inerrant as the Scriptures are. But we have spent too much time musing about the theoretical perfection of a universal church and too little investing in the progressive sanctification of the actual, visible churches to which we belong (if we even do belong to them).

I contend that strong, local churches with solid leaders and supportive members (several pages would be in order to describe these two groups) must be the “arks” in which the gospel and true Christian community thrive and where repentant sinners find refuge while the dark flood of moral decay rises. These are “self-contained” in important ways but not isolated or self-reliant. They interact with other churches but without unhealthy dependence. They engage the local culture in which members work and participate but with a strong sense of who they are and how easily they might forfeit their other-worldly identity to some secular trend. Leaders of all kinds within these sorts of churches will find Losing Our Virtue a helpful read.

The True Worship War

Thursday, 29 April 2010 20:40 Written by Bob Flack

Created for Worship

Get past a strange cover photograph (you’ll have to tell me what it has to do with the book’s theme) and you will open immediately to find an excellent study of worship in the Bible. I say immediately because the book does not boast a bevy of preliminary pages overstocked with endorsements. The editors elected not to include even a short biography of the author. Readers can only surmise that Dr. Due (one of the two short endorsements does use the title) is on the faculty at Highland Theological College in Scotland because his paragraph-long “Acknowledgments” expresses gratitude for the” encouragement and stimulating fellowship” that God provided through the staff and students there. This is a book which has to stand on its own. And it does.

My own enjoyment of the book was enhanced by the experience of sharing it with our worship intern, Ryan Hales, who spent the first three months of 2010 at Grace before his graduation from Cedarville University in Ohio with a degree in Church Music. As I write this review, his graduation ceremony is just days away. Ryan and I read the book in fulfillment of a theological component to his internship. Alan Gerling, our worship and music director, supervised the entire internship but we determined from the beginning that this would not only be about music and worship administration. We would have done Ryan a disservice if we had not included some theological study and reflection. I, gratefully, got the assignment. So on four occasions during the internship (if my memory serves me well) we met for an hour or more to discuss sections of the book which we had read and evaluated. We covered two chapters each session. Ryan would review the odd chapter. I would do the even. At our last meeting we covered the conclusion as well. I’m grateful for Alan’s recommendation of this book and for Ryan’s thoughtful interaction. Even as I write I pray for the Lord’s provision for his post-Cedarville future.

The title “Created for Worship” fits (to a certain degree) the contents of the book. It alerts the reader (a divine image-bearing creature) that this is a book to take personally. It provides an avalanche of evidence for the conviction that the main purpose for a human being is to offer worship to his or her Creator. But this is not a book limited to the human sphere. Due pushes worship beyond and before a narrow focus on human praise, showing how angelic and terrestrial elements (as well as cosmic elements though not emphasized) are integral to God’s overall strategy to evoke worship from his creation. A more appropriate title would have been “The Battle for Worship” which is in fact the title of the first and introductory chapter. This is a book whose thesis is that the battle for the true worship of the true and living God is the central and supreme theme of the entire Bible. No author will sustain such a thesis without a comprehensive and careful survey of the whole canon. Here Due unveils his skill as an accessible academician. His work is not stuffy but neither is it fluffy. Consider that it carries over fifty pages of endnotes and over ten pages of bibliography. Due has done his homework. On the bibliography I would note that it is not annotated so it is not as helpful as it could have been. But if the author had begun commenting on the hundreds of sources he tapped for this work, he would have had to talk the folks at Christian Focus into another hundred pages.

The book’s subtitle hints at its full biblical sweep: “From Genesis to Revelation to You.” It certainly covers Genesis to Revelation. This book is a great model for the practice of biblical theology. The overview first chapter focuses on four major stages of the battle for worship in the flow of biblical revelation. It highlights the four great movements in God’s story in the world: Creation, Fall/Judgment, Redemption, and Restoration (although not with a one-to-one correspondence between these movements and the stages). Due begins with Jesus’ baptism. In this he alerts the reader that a good biblical theology will be Christo-centric. When one finishes this book, he certainly cannot conclude that the author thinks that Jesus is just another stage in the battle for worship but is the Captain and the Center of the battle. Once we land from the flyover of the first chapter, we begin a walking tour through the Bible. Chapters trace the worship battle from the early chapters of Genesis, through the Patriarchs and Israel before the Promised Land and then with the nation as it enters, settles, and finally forfeits the New Land. At the center of the book, fittingly, is the chapter “Jesus and the Transformation of Worship.” The implications of this chapter for New Testament worship follow with the remaining chapters on worship in Hebrews, worship in Paul and Peter, and worship in the Bible’s closing book, Revelation.

Due’s ability to summarize a vast amount of material in a way that proves credible and understandable deserves high praise. His bent toward biblical theology means that he avoids the proof-texting that often comes to characterize systematic theologies with their tight outlines. He traces large themes across the full scope of revelation, tying together all significant biblical material and elements of the story line together in their relationship to the subject of worship, strengthening the core message that worship and the battle for it is the central theme of Scripture. Yet the book does not lack sufficient detail and nuance. I sight as one example Due’s treatment of God’s interaction with his people in the Old Testament. He explains how the presence of God is both resting and moving, both immanent and transcendent, and both blessing and testifying against the people. The thought of God’s presence in the holy soil of his people who worship Him according to his designs so that the knowledge of God’s glory grows out into the nations from that seed is a sweet meditation. It has implications for the relationship between worship and missions for our present era. On this same point, Due takes time in his chapter on Hebrews to refute the argument of Torrance that Christ’s vicarious ministry refers only to his taking on humanity and not his sufferings as a propitiatory sacrifice. This lends credibility and force to this work. I could cit other examples. I would invite any to read the chapter on Revelation and see if it does not provide a refreshing simplicity to a book whose interpretation has invited excessive complexities.

The word “You” in the subtitle (“From Genesis to Revelation to You”) will mislead the reader for two reasons. First, the book is short on implications for the practice of worship today. As I wrote to Ryan in preparation for one of our sessions: “Due is so careful to lay the groundwork for his discussion of worship in sound biblical theology that I’m beginning to wonder if he’s going to draw any implications for New Covenant worship. I’m a bit concerned that the chapter labeled “Conclusion” is only ten pages, less than 5% of the text of the book, not counting bibliography and endnotes. There are scattered comments that approach the level of implication (like the statement on p. 112 about the meaningless of manifestation without verbal revelation) but he is apparently leaving the specifics for later (we can hope).” That turned out to be a forlorn hope. This book compares with the excavation work that serves as an essential stage in new construction. Biblical theology of worship is essential groundwork for developing a worship ministry in the church today. But Due leaves this latter work for the reader to pursue. He’s given much encouragement but not much substance.

The second reason why “You” is misleading in the subtitle is that whatever present-day application appears in this book it offers help to the worship leader in the corporate context not to the individual believer. Individuals will benefit a great deal from this book. But the “you,” if anything, is a plural “you.” This is a book for worship leaders and pastors primarily. It will help keep worship in the church biblical and Christ-centered. That will be a great blessing for all God’s people and those who do not embrace the gospel. A church cannot presume to have the gospel right if it has worship wrong. But this corporate emphasis should not scare away more general readers. Nor should this review. Due’s writing and research packs scholarly punch but his writing skill and organization make “Created for Worship” a worthwhile read for all who care about sound worship.

I must temper my enthusiasm with a couple of negative notes. Especially in the early chapters, some of the connections made seem a bit forced. For example, evidence for Eden as tabernacle/temple is sparse as is the Adam/priest connection. At this point, Due slips into the trap of biblical theology seeing continuity everywhere so that it becomes a grid rather than a guide. In addition, Due assumes a replacement theology seeing the church as a permanent substitute for national Israel. This seems to be a legitimate conclusion from the first full paragraph on p. 200 at the opening of the section on Ephesians 2:11-24. If this is not his assumption, some clarifying language would have been appropriate to assuage fears of those readers (myself included) who have grave concerns about the wholesale rejection of Israel in favor of the church. In the same vein, Due avoids any issues related to the millennium which is oversight when so many of those issues relate to worship.

Let me conclude by drawing attention to a point that Due makes throughout this treatment of the battle for worship. As he records the universal tendency toward idolatry and shows how (as attested in the book of Revelation) world history culminates in a open confrontation on earth between God’s faithful worship(pers) and a Satanic counterfeit complete with an incarnated “son” who expects universal worship, Due insists that there is “there is no vacuum of non-worship.” He means that we will always worship something. We are always reaching out our hearts to something larger than ourselves or reaching inward convinced that there is nothing more than ourselves to worship. We cannot ignore the issue of worship. The question is never, “Will we worship?” but, “Whom will we worship?”We are, of course, created for worship.

Jumping Through Fires

Wednesday, 20 January 2010 15:33 Written by Alan Gerling

Jumping Through Fires by David Nasser

I’m not sure what I expected when I “picked up” a copy of David Nasser’s new book, Jumping Through Fires: The Gripping Story of One Man’s Escape from Revolution to Redemption.  I heard David Nasser speak last year at the National Worship Leader’s Conference.  If you know me well, you know that I often say that most people learn their theology from what they sing in church, not what they hear in church.  What you remember is not usually specific examples from the sermon, but rather the songs that you sing in your car, home and often in your head.  There are however a handful of times that I’ve heard a message by a speaker so riveting that I remember it starkly.  One example is when Pastor Mark talked about what divorce really is.  He talked about two becoming one flesh.  Then to demonstrate what happens when you tear that flesh apart, he ripped a teddy bear in half.  The one message that has been on my mind for the last half of a year or so is David Nasser’s message.  If you go back through my blog a bit, you will find the link to the video of that message.  It is powerful, but I highly recommend that you watch it a couple of times.

So, it was with that frame of mind that I sat down to read this book.  Jumping Through Fires is a well written, engaging book.  I would say that it is an easy read, and I got through it in a couple of hours.  Nasser’s style is storytelling at its best.  He tells the story in a linear style, and then goes back and fills in the tangents that would have sidetracked most authors throughout.  The result is that you become so engaged in the story he’s telling that when he goes back afterwords and fills in holes, you appreciate more the stories he just told.

Reading about Nasser’s life is really reading about Jesus’ working through a tapestry of events that unfolded over the course of 20 or so years.  You really see how God moved through events, often events that are bleak, to eventually bring a young man to saving faith, and then send him out to touch the lives of people all over the globe.

The story starts when David Nasser is 9 years old, and his family is caught up in a religious revolution that changed their world.  Nasser talks about moving to America, going from shy Iranian kid, to school druggie, and then Christ taking hold of his life and story, and using it to spread the gospel.  One story that moves me is the story of his first visit to youth group, and how God used a team of worshipers with servant hearts to soften the hard heart of Nasser’s Muslim father.

I did find myself wanting more from this book.  Perhaps because the book is a strict autobiography, and at no point does Nasser go off on a tangent and start preaching at his readers.  He simply lets the events speak for themselves and lets the reader draw their own conclusions about God’s power in lives.  It does give me a bit of perspective on the talks I have seen him give, and likely on any future books I will read by him.

I would encourage you to go out and grab a copy of this book and enjoy!

Secondhand Jesus

Wednesday, 06 January 2010 13:49 Written by Alan Gerling

Secondhand Jesus by Glenn Packiam

Last Friday I read through the new Glenn Packiam book Secondhand Jesus.  Glenn is one of the worship pastors of New Life church in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  He runs the New Life School of Worship and regularly leads worship for the college ministry there, theMILL.  I’m sure you will recognize the church name New Life first from the Ted Haggart scandal and then from the shocking tragedy that happened there only a couple of years later.

This book is primarily about the wake-up call that happened as a result of the former scandal.  He calls this the first of many what-the-heck moments that happened that caused him to reevaluate his walk with Christ, and his ministry to the Church.  In this book he talks about four rumors of God that have crept up in the “suburban church.”

I won’t go through the rumors, I’ll let you pick up a copy of the book and let you do that yourself, but the fourth rumor is the basis for this book.  When I read the title, Secondhand Jesus, I assumed that it was about spreading the gospel.  Instead the title refers to the cosmic game of telephone that many Christians have chosen to play.  Rather than getting their information straight from the source (Christ himself through the Bible), they have contented themselves to learning about Him from secondhand sources.   This is why when you ask many Christians why they believe what they believe, they can’t tell you.  Too many people skipped the steps to reach conclusions, and are satisfied with being told the answers by someone else.  I wonder if this isn’t the reason that when I read the book, UnChristian, I saw such a disconnect between who and what Jesus calls His Body to be, and what we actually are.

To talk about each of these rumors, Glenn walks through the story of the Ark of the Covenant.  He does so in a straightforward fashion.  I found the book an easy read, yet it was deeply insightful and often convicting.  I found Glenn’s openness throughout the book to be refreshing.  He closes the book with a description of the tragedy that happened only a short time after the scandal that caused him to reevaluate his walk.

I would highly recommend you grab this book.  Read it with an open heart and mind.