Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ in a Postmodern World

by David F. Wells

Book Overview

The deflation of the Enlightenment worldview and rise of the post-modern mood over the last decades has altered the relation of Christian faith to culture. How, in this new situation, should the church confess Christ? "Above All Earthly Powers" paints a picture of the West in all its complexity, brilliance, and emptiness.

As David F. Wells masterfully depicts it, the postmodern ethos is relativistic, individualistic, therapeutic, and yet...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802824552
• ISBN13: 9780802824554
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
• Length: 354 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A Timely And Important Warning

Other reviewers have indicated how important & difficult this book is to read. It is dense and requires sustained thought. But the insights in this book are absolutely essential to understanding how dramatically, comprehensively and severly Evangelical Christianity has been compromised or is being compromised in the post-modern cultural context. I will focus on what I consider to be the hinge-point of the book (pg. 123). Wells states... "..the current evangelical disposition to shuck off its cognitive structures and minimize the practical place of revealed truth in the life of the Church means that it has brought itself to the edge of a precipice. It is a precipice precisely because as evangelical faith has chosen to minimize itself in these way ....it is losing what makes it distinctive from all of the other postmodern spiritualities." There you have the complexity of thought, density of writing and insights which characterize the entire work. You also have the major premise. The post-modern world is a reversion to pagan spiritualities at the same time it is distancing itself from religion (you have to think about that). These spiritualities manifest themselves in an accumulating, individual, syncretic attitude toward life that is distant from any external authority. The Evangelical Church, in seeking to engage this culture, is too often joining it in a fundamental manner and by doing so, is in almost certain danger of losing the actual gospel that Jesus was so adamant to proclaim (the precipice). This book needs to be widely read and digested by Christians throughout the world. It is only by recognizing the threat that it can be resisted and yet, all too often, Evangelical zeal has blindly charged on, perhaps, already, into the chasm. Give yourself time to read it and work on following the thought. It is worth the effort. In fact, it is perhaps absolutely necessary that it be done.

It's simple

I've read over 15,000 pages of biblical material in the last 2 years for my graduate degree. This book was the most helpful, truthful and articulate. This Christmas, I'm telling all my friends that if they will read this book, I'm buying. If you care about the purposes and glory of God and desire to see the affluent American church "get it" this is the book for you.

A Mature Christology for Postmodern Times

David Wells, professor of theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, has gifted his readers with sustained theological critique of contemporary culture for over a decade. The previous books in this series, No Place for Truth (1993), God in the Wasteland (1994), and Losing our Virtue (1998), astutely assessed the loss of theological gravity in contemporary culture by investigating its historical, cultural, philosophical, and theological sources. If I could choose one phrase to summarize his critique in these books, it would be this from God in the Wasteland: "God rests inconsequentially on the church." That is, the great and awe-inspiring reality of God's truth, holiness, and power have been eclipsed by the tools and sensibilities of the contemporary world. Wells' work is exceptional in its interdisciplinary prowess. A trained theologian of Reformed convictions, Wells reaches deep into history, sociology, philosophy, literature, and cognate disciplines to carefully develop his perspectives, which are offered with a serious pastoral concern. This is essentially a work of Christology, hence the subtitle: "Christ in a postmodern world." But in order to present a biblical view of Christ to the contemporary world, one must know something of the structure of that world (see 1 Chronicles 12:32). So, Wells takes up the daunting task of assessing both postmodernity (a set of emerging social conditions) and postmodernism (a cluster of philosophies). To those who have read fairly deeply on the subject of postmodernism, much of what Wells articulates may not be new. Much of it has been said elsewhere. However, he writes so well and documents his claims so deeply that even those well-read in the area will benefit from his analysis. In many cases, the first books to treat new topics are not typically the best. Wells, who does not publish at a frantic pace (as do many evangelical authors who write on postmodernism), has been cogitating on this material for many years. This adds considerable gravity and sobriety to his words. Moreover, this book builds on the solid foundation of the previous three books in the series (and without very much overlap.) Wells wonders what the evangelical world has to offer a world traumatized by the barbarism of the September 11, 2001, attacks. He laments in his introduction that the evangelical church lacks "a spiritual gravitas, one which could match the depth of horrendous evil and address issues of such seriousness. Evangelicalism, now much absorbed by the arts and tricks of marketing, is simply not very serious anymore" (4). And serious it should become. Above all Earthy Pow'rs, which derives its title--and the alternative spelling of "powers"--from Martin Luther's famous line in "A Mighty Fortress is our God," is a valiant attempt to inject Christological seriousness back into the evangelical mind and heart. To those not familiar with this hymn, I will cite a few of the verses that Wells himself quotes. That word abov

A much-needed analysis

David wells is both a capable theologian and a very astute analyst of contemporary culture. His previous volumes have combined sociological, philosophical and theological assessments of the Western world and the contemporary church. His 1993 volume, No Place for Truth, along with his 1994 and 1998 works, God in the Wasteland and Losing Our Virtue all made valuable contributions to the Christian assessment of church and culture. How church and culture rub off on each other is an important topic which all believers should have some understanding of. Unfortunately, as Wells shows, in the interchange, it is often the surrounding secular culture that has the most impact on the church, instead of the other way around. This new volume continues this theme that has been covered in the previous three. Wells argues that the church today cannot properly understand itself and its mission unless it understands just how much both modernism, and its illegitimate son, postmodernism have effected it. And this is especially so in the area of truth. Modernism of course truncated truth, declaring that what is true is only that which can be measured empirically. Anything that cannot be verified by the scientific method is relegated to the realm of feeling, myth or opinion. Unfortunately much of the Western church would succumb to the siren call of philosophical naturalism, renouncing its supernatural trajectory in the name of relevance and acceptability. But it is exactly those churches that have embraced the modernist worldview which are now in deep decline. Wells shows how the attempt to accommodate to the best of the world's wisdom led to an anemic and lifeless church. So what about the onslaught of postmodernism? Wells rightly recognizes the several strengths of it: its rejection of ungrounded optimism, the belief in science as saviour, and the unwarranted belief in progress, all the hallmarks of modernism. But postmodernism, for all of its rightful critiques of modernism, is also a poisoned chalice. It even further decimates truth, but declaring that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Not only is there no such thing as truth, but there are no moral absolutes as well. Thus the postmodern world has lost its ability to speak of evil, let alone recognize it. Yet events like September 11 remind us that something is amiss, even though we have lost the vocabulary and worldview to discuss it. This book then is about how the twin worldviews of modernism and postmodernism have wreaked havoc not only on the Western world but on the Western church. These two worldviews have severely crippled the church, and as a result, our impact has been greatly lessened. Religion has been replaced by spirituality; doctrine by feelings; the transcendent by the immanent; the Other by Self. Much of Christianity today has been to reduced to the triumph of the therapeutic, as one commentator noted. Personal satisfaction, self-esteem and individual fulfillment have become for m

A tonic for what ails you

Thank God David Wells is minding the store. I love what he has done with Above All Earthly Powers. He has marshalled his impressive intellecutal gifts in order to present a defense of orthodox christian faith. I really enjoy the way he builds his arguments with finely crafted sentences, careful research, and relevant qoutes. Reading Wells makes me feel more cultured, like I am in a Tuxedo taking in some Bach or Chopin. This work is a tonic for what ails evangelicals, the tendency to believe anything that seems pithy and relevant. The scope of thought ranges from the history of philosophy to "Boomer" spirituality, from Piligrims Progress to consumer christianity. I really like the Russian Fashion Show at a detention center where every outfit is the same, "a babushka on the head" and a " baggy prison-gray smock, cut just above the knees to accentuate her flabby inner thighs." It shows how we gag on choice in the West, but in other parts of the world, choice is much more simple. The American church is saturated with materialism and consumption is eating the heart out of the gospel. You really must read this book, it can be a challenge in certain sections, but the rewards of perservance are great.