cheesman, lucy--the rhythm of the world a dangerous playgro~1

7/31/2019 Cheesman, Lucy--The Rhythm of the World a Dangerous Playgro~1

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The Rhythm of the

World

A Dangerous

Playground?Responding to David F. Wells:

on the moral distinctiveness of today's churchin contemporary Western society.

Lucy Cheesman

B3

13th May 2003

Supervisor: Dr. Anna Robbins


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OUTLINE

Introduction

Part 1: The Rhythm of the World

i) The Hum of Postmodernity

Vanishing Acts

Truth

Revelation and Reason

Collapse of the Metanarrative

Sin

Changing Concepts

Salvation from what?

Character

The Third Domain

Support Structures

ii) The Bass Line of Secular Salvation

Self Construction

Personality

New Adjectives

Celebrities and heroes

Consumerism

Seeking the Signified

Marketing Church

Therapy

Self-Potentiality

Substitute Religion


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Part 2: A Different Beat

i) Out of Step with Holiness

The Role of the HolyGod as Other

Ultimate Purity

Transcendent Presence

Worship Perspectives

God as Reference Point

The Place of Sin

Guilt and Shame

ii) The Distorted Lyrics of Human Nature

Questions of Identity

A Twilight Knowledge

Recognising what we are

Remembering what we were

The Embarrassed Church

The Great Contradiction

Reinterpreting Sin


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Introduction

Functionally, we are not morally disengaged, adrift, and alienated; we are

morally obliterated. We are, in practise, not only moral illiterati; we are

morally vacant.1

This is what David F. Wells calls his beguilingly simple thesis, in his bookLosing

our Virtue. This essay responds primarily to this volume. However, it is third in a

trilogy, preceded byNo Place for Truth and God in the Wasteland. There will be

references to these works, in order to grasp continuity of thought and theme. Wells

writing deals primarily with the United States of America, and thus will in some ways

be culture specific. Cultural differences exist within the West itself. Furthermore, his

concern is the evangelicaltradition.

This project looks at Wells argument that the Church reflects too much of the modern

(and postmodern) world, betraying its call to be in the world, but not of it. It buys into

a postmodern spirituality, which lacks a moral centre, essential to the Churchs

distinctiveness. His primary concern is the Church, and the business of retrieval, of

preserving and reclaiming those riches of our classical spirituality that are especially

in danger of being lost.2

Part One looks at cultural elements that Wells sees as creeping into the Church; Part

Two deals with his call to restore the moral centre, by focussing on a Holy God. This

will include any relevant critique. The main response occurs in Part Three, where we

reflect on Wells thesis, and how church needs to relate, or not to relate, to culture.

1

Wells,Losing, 132

Wells,Losing, 7


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Part 1: The Rhythm of the World

i) The Hum of Postmodernity

Wells contends that in attempting to communicate with culture, the Church is guilty

of dalliance with the world from which it is meant to be set apart. In dancing to the

beat of the modern world, the Church unwittingly propagates its ideals. He proposes

that, although intending to be more effective, the Church compromises its moral

distinctiveness, instead of offering an alternative rhythm. He considers some

elements of spirituality as lost, whereas cultural elements creep in and compromise

the Churchs integrity.

Vanishing Acts:

Truth

Revelation and Reason

Wells proposes that the Enlightenment enthroned reason above God, claiming that

objective truth was sought naturalistically, not in revelation. In the Enlightenment, itwas no longer believed that God had spoken, or that he wanted to speak, and so

truth was sought out of relation to him.3 Wells doesnt chart any progression of

Enlightenment thinking, or differentiate between which Enlightenment this is,

whether French, English, or Scottish, which are significantly different from one

another.4 Also, Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke had a strong theistic

worldview. However, Locke was an empiricist, criticising those who did not subject

revelation to reason.5 For Descartes, God remains the ultimate guarantor of it all,

but, says Hicks, in a sense even Descartess Godwas a God established by

reasonthe criterion for his nature and activity was that they should be rational. 6

Wells links this subjection of revelation to reason with postmodern rejections of the

metanarrative. Modernitys authority rested on stolen Christian assumptions, seen

3

Wells,Losing, 123.4 Sell, Confessing, 135.5

Hicks,Evangelicals, 27.6

Hicks,Evangelicals, 26.


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as fraudulent by the latter day children in our postmodern world.7 They rejected any

overarching story. Wells blames much of this on the Enlightenments individualism,

in contrast with Reformation individualism. The difference, says Wells, is the form

of accountability; Reformation individualism was accountable to God.8 The

Enlightenment world placed humanity at the centre, and recast the whole sorry

scheme of things bare-handed, as it were, leaning on our own reason and goodness.9

Gradually, he says, this certainty evaporated, as the Enlightenment promises proved

to be empty.10

This statement is broad and possibly premature, as the debate

continues over whether postmodernity even properly exists.

The Collapse of the Metanarrative

Wells considers grand Enlightenment ideas to have collapsed under scrutiny, as the

humanistic became dehumanising. Modernitys bureaucratic structures remain, while

original beliefs are jaded. Postmodern thinkers, he says, are the vanguard of a

profound reaction to the failure of the Enlightenment project, giving expression to a

deeply held suspicion that modernity is in fact the enemy of human life. 11 Due to

modernitys dance with a humanistic metanarrative, the ensuing disillusion affects all

metanarratives. For postmodern thinkers, objective truth has now fallen into disrepute

generally. In some ways, Wells comments, this helps Christians to critiquemodernity, but on the other hand their virulent attack not merely on Enlightenment

meaning but on allmeaning has made Christian faith less plausible in the modern

world.12

Universal truth claims are accused of being vehicles of oppression, due to past

experience of imposing truth claims on societies. This has expanded from critiquing

the hegemonic, imperial, absolutistic claims of modernity and violence done in the

name of the progress, to encompass a widespread suspicion of any comprehensive

metanarrative of world history that makes total claims.13 Things become

community exclusive, each governed by its own epistemological and ethical

framework. The postmodernist position is one of moral nonrealism: the belief that

7

Wells,Losing, 123.8

Wells,No Place, 141.9

Wells,No Place, 57-58.10

Wells,No Place, 63.11 Wells, Wasteland, 47.12

Wells, Wasteland, 4713

Middleton and Walsh, Stranger, 71.


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be geared toward and bound up with his neighbour.20 For Wells, this natural self-

orientation means that we refuse to bear the pain of moral recrimination, or accept

the reproach that such self-scrutiny may entail.21

Wells sees classical spirituality as

centred around truth, but postmodern spirituality as based on the search for power,

be it in dramatic charismatic encounter, or in therapeutic methods of handling our

situations.22 We seek power for ourselves, and this, says Wells, is the essence of

pride, what C.S. Lewis calls the great sin, which is the completely anti-God state of

mind.23

Salvation - from what?

Understanding sin means that we recognise the need to be saved, for if there really is

no danger from which deliverance needs to be sought, then there really is no necessity

for anyone to take the Gospel seriously and believe it.24 Salvation language loses

power. Grace is misunderstood. If we dont see ourselves as sinners, we dont see the

need for atonement. For if a human is basically good with intellectual and moral

capabilities essentially intact, then any problems to his or her standing before God

will be relatively minor.25 Also, says Erickson, sin closely relates to our

understanding of the nature of God, of humanity, and our approaches to ministry and

society.26

If the concept of sin slides out of spirituality, then it impacts widertheological understanding.

Character

The third domain

Wells charts a third domain between freedom and law, once inhabited by affirmation

of truth and cultivation of character.27 He claims this space has been evacuated. God

has not only been placed at the periphery of the public sphere, as religion is privatised,

but also in our private universe, as in that which is public, there is no centre.28 The

place is missing where law and restraint areselfimposed.29

Self-obsession and

20

Berkouwer, Sin, 251.21

Wells,Losing, 186.22

Wells,Losing, 43.23

Lewis,Mere, 100.24

Wells,Losing, 180-181.25

Erickson, Theology, 581.26

Erickson, Theology, 581.27 Wells,Losing, 63.28

Wells,Losing, 60.29

Wells,Losing, 63.


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autonomous ideas result in the search for self-gratification, responsible only for

individual happiness.

Concepts of character as wholesome and good, something to be formed, have been

replaced by desire for self-fulfilment. Hauerwas notes in his earlier works that our

character is not a shadow of some deeper but more hidden real self; it is the form of

our agency acquired through our own beliefs and actions. 30 This process of

formation by what we believe and do seems quite alien when the true self is seen as

discovered, not made. The modern mindset sees humanity as essentially good. This

Pelagianism results in the idea of goodness as discovered inside us. Sense of the

cultivation of character or self-control, and quests for goodness outside us are lost.

Support Structures

The vacuum of this middle territory becomes a conflict zone. Social constraint

(chiefly, law) battles it out with self-expression. Law must now do what church,

family, character, belief, and even cultural expectations once did by way of instructing

and restraining human nature.31 Individualistic society provides few external

restrictions. Without these outside elements to act as mentors, or points of referral,

we are abandoned, with boundaries in continual flux. It is a contest in which the selfstands in one corner, glowering across the ring, and society stands in the other corner,

looking no less determined.32 Expressive individualism drives us demanding

freedom from any external expectations, as opposed to a sense of personal

responsibility. We seek to please ourselves, not others, to do what feels good, not

what we know to be right.

It is not character that defines the way that expressive individualism functions

today, but emancipation from values, from community, and from the past in

order to be oneself, to seek ones own gain.33

For individuals in todays church this aggravates moral dilemmas, as support

structures are dysfunctional. Right and wrong become harder to discern where

boundaries are less easily fixed. Social systems that once functioned as restrainers are

30

Hauerwas, Character, 21.31 Wells,Losing, 64.32

Wells,Losing, 64-65.33

Wells,Losing, 67.


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no longer central in our lives. Self-control is a lonely task, and hardly a virtue where

self-gratification is considered a right. Bryan Wilson notes that it is no longer a matter

of wishing not to be controlled by external agents. Now, we are in a time when a

permissive society tells us that even self-control is bad; that there is something worse

than misbehaviour, namely, that individuals should be thwarted in doing what they

want.34 This attitude of self-seeking, claims Wells, is evident in postmodern

spirituality, which focuses on self-expression and individual fulfilment.

34

Wilson, Transformations, 19.


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ii) The Bass Line of Secular Salvation

Wells proposes that the focus on self leads to a secularised salvation, where cures to

our ills lie essentially within ourselves, and in what we can purchase. New ways of

defining ourselves arise.

Self Construction:

Personality

New Adjectives

Wells comments on the shift from character to personality. Personality is based more

on self-expression than self-control, more on image than virtue. The terminology is

different. Character is good or bad, while personality is attractive, forceful or

magnetic, now attention has shifted from the moral virtues, which need to be

cultivated, to the image, which needs to be fashioned.35 Ideas of self become based

more on appearances and impressions. These impressions are not primarily character

judgements instead they are assessments of likability. The paradox is in wanting to

be yourself, but also seeking others favour (however superficial). Wells asks, how

do we fly in the face of conformity by becoming different, while conforming enough

to be liked?36 The vision that sprung from personality was one of unlimited self-

expression, self-gratification, and self-fulfilment.37 Guinness also notes the new quest

for designer personality:

The emphasis is now on surface, not depth; on possibilities, not qualities; on

glamour, not convictions; on what can be altered endlessly, not achieved for

good; and on what can be bought and worn, not gained by education and

formation.38

Celebrities and heroes

Wells highlights this in discussing celebrities and heroes. Individuals were once

perceived heroic because of character. Now the cult of the celebrity supersedes the

admiration of heroes. Theirs is a glamorous, more easily granted (if not as enduring)

fame. Reasons for celebrity status are usually to do with successful image, rather than

35

Wells,Losing, 97.36 Wells,Losing, 103.37

Wells,Losing, 99.38

Guinness, Time, 47.


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admirable qualities, as they embody nothing and are typically known only for being

known. Fame, in our world of images and manipulation, can be manufactured with

little or no accomplishment behind it.39

Actual accomplishments and skills need not

relate to morality. People may say its all about the music, that lifestyle is

unimportant. (Interestingly, acting itself is being something we are not, and songs

dont necessarily represent the true lifestyle of the writer.)

Celebrities wanting to be emulated have very different primary qualities to that of the

hero. The reason for their following is image-based. Manufacturing replaces

cultivation; identity becomes commodity. Does the church unwittingly buy into an

image-based ethic, with its own celebrities? Gibbs and Coffey identify the modern

evangelical superstar, placed on a precarious pedestal of fickle popularity which

undermines authentic spirituality by emphasizing publicity hype and image at the

expense of substance.40 They suggest that spiritual superficiality of leadership

means spiritually shallow churches.41

To take a wider view, if celebrities carry the

adjectives of personality, not character, then do attempts to change church image

mean that church, too, is emptied of character? Do image based churches attract more

followers, and are these followers are true disciples, in the line of denying self?

Image sells. Wells sees the Church as trying to sell itself to a consumer society.

Consumerism

Seeking the Signified

The postmodern person, says Wells, is a consumer.42

We search to fill our emptiness.

Goodliff sees shopping as expressing a deeper malaise, needing the regular fix of a

shopping spree to ward off the sense of meaninglessness of existence and to keep the

inner demons of boredom or depression at bay.43

Additionally, we seek to purchase

new definitions of ourselves. We consume what we think might help. It is, as

Baudrillard states, not merely that we purchase the product, but chase after what it

signifies. Ultimately, this is what they always said money couldnt buy. Happiness,

written in letters of fire behind the least little advert for bathsalts or the Canary

39


Gibbs & Coffey,Next, 121.41 Gibbs & Coffey,Next, 123.42

Wells, Wasteland, 218.43

Goodliff, Care, 54.


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Islands, is the absolute reference of the consumer society: it is the strict equivalent of

salvation.44

Advertisements offer secular salvation by suggesting products can improve life. They

associate products with some personal status or achievement, offering them as a

means to fill the emptiness of the modern self.45 Advertising functions on a far-

reaching platform. For, as Baudrillard comments, when it speaks of a particular

object and brand it potentially glorifies all of themin targeting each consumer, it is

targeting them all, thus simulating a consumer totality.46 Offering self-gratification,

it creates desire for it, telling us what we want, with the imperative of need.

Possessions start defining us. The consumption framework dictates our mentality;

everything can be bought and sold. Shopping malls replace cathedrals, with their

unique blend of high commercialism and undaunted fantasy.47

Marketing Church

Culture influences identity. We can become so used to our consumer culture that it

seems natural and right, and allow it to reshape all aspects of our lives.48 Wells

argues that the consumer mentality infects the Church. Congregations become

consumers customers shopping around to find a satisfactory church. The focus ison meeting personal needs. Groothuis sees this as symptomatic of postmodernism:

Those holding a postmodernist view of truth may appear very spiritual, and to go

along with Christian belief to a point, just so long as religion meets their felt needs.49

These felt needs Wells suggests, are what the Church today is trying to meet in order

to survive. However, if everything is based on individuals needs, then there is a

serious danger that the message itself will become distorted and edited down in the

interest of relevance and immediacy.50

Wells cites the research of Donald E. Miller, using features of what Miller calls new

paradigm churches, to illustrate what he calls postmodern spirituality. He quotes

Miller as saying that these churches do a better job of responding to their

44

Baudrillard, Consumer, 48.45


Baudrillard, Consumer, 125.47

Wells,Losing, 88.48 Bartholomew, Christ, 9.49

Groothuis,Decay, 275.50

Gibbs and Coffey,Next, 50.


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clientele.51 This idea of clientele shows an approach based on individual needs,

not requirements of faith. However, Miller also says that more importantly these

churches successfully mediate the sacred, bringing God to people and conveying the

self-transcending and life-changing core of all true religion.52 Nevertheless, Wells

claims that these efforts focus on pleasing people, not God, resulting in a gospel seen

as glossy and saleable. If Wells is correct, this implies salvation itself is for sale,

placing it in the consumers court, rather than within doctrines of God and of sin. It

becomes a buy-able factor, rather than a gift, especially if salvation is equated

primarily with happiness and self-fulfilment, rather than rescue.

In his vision ofLiquid Church, Pete Ward claims that church needs to embrace the

sensibilities of consumption.53

He considers the tendency of shopping to be less

about need than desire. 'To shop is to seek for something beyond ourselves. To

reduce this to materialism is to miss the point, or more importantly it is to miss an

opportunity.'54

He sees an opportunity, where meeting needs is replaced by

stimulating desire for God. He considers that it is possible to offer choice without

being dictated to be customer demand, and envisions a church network of goods and

services.

Unfortunately, it is hard not to think of materialism when considering this issue.

Consumerism is a loaded term. If we take the desire for something more as a factor

in shaping the church, then a new terminology is needed. Participating in

consumerism, for those such as Wells, will automatically mean that the gospel is

something to be bought and sold, thus belittling its function and reality as saving

grace. Faith becomes merely another product. By using the same tactics as the

secular society, in order to sell what it offers, church can endanger its

distinctiveness. Ward gives a new sheen to consumerism, but it is difficult to remove

negative connotations from the word.

51

Wells,Losing, 31.52 Miller,Reinventing, 3.53

Ward,Liquid, 72.54

Ward,Liquid, 59.


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Therapy

Self-Potentiality

Psychotherapy is popularised in our culture, especially in America. Patients become

clients, doctors their counsellors.55 It has expanded beyond the sphere of science and

medicine. Hurding describes Freuds theories and practises as the tree of

psychoanalysis, from which other offshoots sprouted.56 These focused on more than

just external behaviour. Freuds theories related to the inner life of a person, asking

what was going on below the surface.57

However, Freuds concepts of negative

human instincts have been succeeded by the alternative notion of inner self as

positive.

Ideas of self-potential are illustrated by approaches such as that of Carl Rogers, who

saw human nature as essentially good, in the sense of being constructive and

trustworthy.58 He placed much emphasis on self-expression and experience. Wells

sees this liberationist psychology as placing redemption in ones self, with the result

that both meaning and values become relative to each self.59

Wells identifies this as

the dominant therapeutic emphasis today. Popular culture sees self as having the

potential to heal itself. The therapeutic, says MacIntyre, has been given application

far beyond the sphere of psychological medicine in which it obviously has its

legitimate place.60 It is, says Wells, a secular spirituality, which has been cut

loose from its superintendence by the experts.61

To become a psychological man, says Philip Rieff, is to become kinder to the

whole self, the private parts as wells as the public, the formerly inferior as well as the

formally superior.62 We have become psychologically kind to ourselves, believing in

self-goodness and the right to self-express, seeking inside ourselves the cures for our

ills. Wells sees this introspection as typically Western, saying it is a remarkable

thought that buried within are the balms for our wounds and moral failures.63

He

agrees with Christopher Lasch in saying that we have become narcissistic in our

55


Hurding,Roots, 55.57

Hurding,Roots, 58.58

Hurding,Roots, 129-30.59

Wells,Losing, 28.60 MacIntyre,After, 30.61


Rieff,Feeling, 5.


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personality, with an exaggerated sense of importance, and that our culture itself now

echoes the narcissist personality hollow without a core.64

Substitute Religion

The spawning of societys obsession with the self and psychotherapy invades the

public conscious with the idea that a therapy exists for everything. Wells sees it as

resembling a substitute religion, although Lasch suggests that it constitutes an

antireligion, chiefly due to societys unfuturistic outlook, concerned only with

immediate needs.

Love as self-sacrifice or self-abasement, meaning as submission to a higher

loyalty - these sublimations strike the therapeutic sensibility as intolerably

oppressive, offensive to common sense and injurious to personal health and

well-being.65

However, we can argue that this harmonises with self-enthronement. The selfis the

higher loyalty to which all else must submit. This supports Wells argument; the self

is seen as the place of healing, worship, and authority. Where we used to approach

God for healing, we now go to personal therapies and techniques. We read self-help

literature, which assumes that healing is possible because the self carries within it the

means of its own healinga secularised form of salvation.66

We could call it,

perhaps, the modern equivalent of wisdom literature, but there is no fear of the

LORD here. It is reverence of a Holy God that Wells calls us to regain, and intrinsic

to an alternative rhythm to that of the world.

63

Wells,Losing, 122.64 Wells,Losing, 108.65

Lasch,Narcissism, 13.66

Wells,Losing, 111.


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Part 2: A Different Beat

i) Out of Step with Holiness

Classical spirituality, Wells suggests, had the moral centre that postmodern

spirituality lacks. It focuses on God as transcendent Other, both in majesty and purity.

Most important is the role which the Holy has, which gives weight and shape to the

understanding of God.67

If the Church is not informed by moral centredness, based

on the otherness of God, it cannot distinguish itself adequately from culture, or

recognise cultural elements within itself.

The Role of the Holy

God as Other

Ultimate Purity

God as transcendent ruling authority is not just a matter of objective truth. Wells

stresses the importance of Gods nature. God is holy ultimate in purity, set apart

from us. Wells accuses postmodern spirituality of over-emphasising experience of an

immanent God of love. We have turned to a God we can use rather than to a God we

must obey; we have turned to a God who will fill our needs rather than to a God

before whom we must surrender our rights to ourselves.68 We lose the recognition of

God as wholly Other, and the recognition of ourselves as created, but fallen beings.

In response, this often results from good intentions, seeking to communicate God in a

culture very different from biblical times. However, in these attempts, we can over-

accommodate, trying to fit God into cultural attitudes and ideals. The aspects we have

explored in Part One not only impact our view of ourselves, but our view of God.

All too often our pictures of God get caught up with what is current, the now, the

up-to-date. We feel we have to find the right image for God. So we try and make

God fit the surrounding culture in some way or other. Not to do so would make us

67

Wells,Losing, 35.68

Wells, Wasteland, 114.


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irrelevant. And in a culture where image is all-important this is too high a price to

pay.69

Even if unconsciously, the line between God and self can become so blurred that he is

no longer functionally distinctive. He becomes too familiar, too close to be set-apart,

too much like us to be holy. Ironically, God is holybecause God is not like anything

else.70 By overstating, or misunderstanding, his immanence, we lose the sense that

God is over and above everything.

Transcendent Presence

Wells contends that postmodern spirituality has made Gods love pre-eminent. By

removing Gods holiness from his transcendence, ideas of his relatedness grew, andimmanence loomed large.

71Erickson describes God's immanence and

transcendence as 'nearness and distance' ways that God relates to creation.72 Wells

dislikes this description, because 'if God's holiness is distant that is to say, not a

present reality the church loses its moral life'.73 Gods holiness is intrinsic to the

moral vision Wells seeks for the church. He doesnt advocate a remote God. The

philosophers radically transcendent God, and pantheism and panentheisms radically

immanent God, are both removed from the living God of biblical-prophetic

tradition.74

If ideas of holiness as separation are pushed too far, we are left with holiness as some

sort of ethereal and disembodied existence, in isolation from potential

contaminants.75 This kind of semantic baggage creates problems when discussing

holiness. Unless holiness is understood as a dynamic part of the Gods nature, rather

than a less than theology of what God is not, it retains a certain negativity which

feels more heavy than awesome.

69

McFarlane,Holy Spirit, 15.70

McFarlane,Holy Spirit, 19.71

Wells,Losing, 51.72

Erickson, Christian Theology, 327ff.73 Wells, Wasteland, 92n.74

Bloesch,Almighty, 262.75

Riddell, Threshold, 75.


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Worship Perspectives

Wells notes the mystical nature of postmodern spirituality, containing ideas of

direct, personal access to God, mystery over rationality, and understandings of grace

as a power that brings psychological wholeness.76 He sees worship in this

spirituality as individualised and experiential, illustrating the emphasis on love. This

replaced old emphases on consecration and commitment in classic hymns, with the

thought of loving God, and occasionally of being in love with God.77

The trouble with the debate over Gods holiness and love is that Gods holiness can be

seen as sparring with his love, as if they were competing elements. This illustrates a

confusion of Gods holy love with sentimentality. We use the language of romance,

not reverence. Webber makes this point, saying that worship can be reduced to warm

fuzzies, and God is no longer the God of judgement, whose holiness inspires fear

and awe, but just our buddy, our pal, our friendIt panders to me-ism Gods chief

value is in making me feel good.78

This links to Wells contention of grace as power

bringing psychological wholeness so too is Gods love seen sentimentally, or even

selfishly, as something to be demanded, not to be grateful for.

However, worship songs reflect certain phases in church life. Recently Vineyard UKreleased an album called Holy, containing lyrics focussed on Gods holiness and

transcendence as well as immanence.

Awesome God, Holy God, I worship you in wonder,

Awesome God, Holy God, as you draw near, Im humbled

By your majesty79

However, many Vineyard songs convey a deep intimacy. This sometimes risks loss

of reverence, especially when the language used is more applicable to a human lover

than a transcendent God. Intimacy that degenerates into over-familiarity regarding

God and the nature of his love, is both presumptuous and embarrassing to those who

see God from a transcendental perspective.80 The nature of divine love is

misrepresented as casual sentimentality. It is shallow thinking to imagine the love of

76

Wells,Losing, 46.77

Wells,Losing, 45.78 Webber,Ancient-Future, 124.79

Beeching, Awesome.80

Gibbs & Coffey,Next, 155.


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God as something weak, soft and indulgent. Absolute love implies absolute purity

and absolute holiness: an intense burning light.81

God as Reference Point

The Place of Sin

Sin seems an unpleasant, accusing word in todays society. Wells thinks the

Church needs to recover an understanding of sin. The problems of sin-recovery

seem to be the relocation, or disappearance, of the reference point. Sins only

reference point is the Holy God. In our failures, we are not able to penetrate the

real character of sin, because we cannot take its measure, see its nature, in relation

to God.82

It is Godwho defines sin. Berkouwer also emphasises this, for to

understand sins essence we cannot ignore this relation of sin and God and regard

our sin as mere phenomenon in human living.83

Biblically, sin is defined in reference to God, who is holy and perfect. In this sense

sin is relational, and also works out relationally. In its primary and most fundamental

sense, Ramm states, sin violates the perfection of God, and that perfection is the

basis for human beings to relate to each other.84 Making understanding of sin purely

anthropological means having only one half of a two-sided relationship. Without

God, sin and guilt become confusing terms, as standards to measure them by are lost.

Guilt and Shame

In divorcing guilt from shame, and emptying shame of moral tones, we live, says

Wells, with guilt in remission.85 When guilt (over violating a moral norm) is

divorced from shame (over disappointment with what we are not), then the former is

inevitably transformed into the latter. Guilt disappears and all that remains is

shame.86

Failing to obtain the correct image, before others and ourselves, causes

embarrassment and shame. Shame can be false or real. Because we are basing our

feelings on the judgements of others, not God, we have no means to measure it.

81

Watson,Real, 39.82


Berkouwer, Sin, 242.84 Ramm, Offense, 94.85


Wells,Losing, 130.


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Guilt is the compass point that lines up our actions with the moral worldin

which we live. Whether people know it or not, this world is a part of that moral

reality whose apex is the holiness of God and which is given verbal expression

in the moral codes of Scripture. Shame has to do with our location in oursocial

world.

87

Wells suggests that shame relates to the horizontal plane of psychological

understanding rather than against the vertical realm of theological knowledge; thus

the cure is within that plane.88

However, here Wells seems himself to divorce the two

realms. He divides them too sharply. It is also misses the connection between right

relationship with God and others. In the command to love God and neighbour, 'human

relations are not compartmentalized or set off to a certain area of their own. They

dont have their own relative norms and criteria. Rather we are always concerned

with the One who is God in and over all things.'89

Wells shows how our moral understanding is warped, while feelings about ourselves

are confused, based on popular opinion (particularly infalse guilt and shame).

However, the relation and meanings of guilt and shame are complex. Some consider

that objective guilt is emphasised, without enough reference to shame within our

relationship with God. We [have] emphasised guilt and justification at the expense

of shame and adoption.90

Reintegrating guilt and shame lessens the danger of

neglecting one or the other. Disagreement over the terms shows the issue as not

easily defined.

Confusion over the nature of guilt and shame, and the relationship of sin to humanity,

relate to our self-perception. Additionally, Wells notes that what we think of the self

and what we think about God are closely related.91

The place of holiness in Gods

transcendence is lost; so too is the moral understanding of the self. Wells contends

that in moving away from the language of human nature and towards self-

consciousness, we lose the universality of human createdness, and human fallenness.

87


Wells,Losing, 140.89 Berkouwer, Sin, 244.90

Long, Generating, 103.91

Wells,Losing, 51.


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ii) The Distorted Lyrics of Human Nature

Questions of Identity

A Twilight Knowledge

Remembering what we were

Wells sees our present reality as contradictory, due to the memory of what we were

created to be. He interacts with Brunner, believing the imago dei was not totally

obliterated in the Fall. In us lies a moral understanding in conflict with societys

narcissism, and the strains of moral experience that continue to be heard in our fallen

world are constant reminders of who we once were.92

We still ask big questions; we

still experience remorse. As Brunner asks, What is the origin of this sense of

disharmony which becomes most acute when I refuse to do what the law within me

commands?93 The conflict exists, says Wells, between what we are and what we once

were.

From the creation, we have a twilight knowledge of the kind of God before

whom we are standing, and we have some sense of how we should comport

ourselves in life, but from within ourselves we find only the urge to disregard

what we know and to dismiss what we should do.94

Any goodness we possess is the goodness of our createdness, which needs to be

affirmed. This is God-constructed, not self-constructed. Rogers view on human

nature conflicts with the biblical picture. Behind these Rogerian concepts is the

baleful idea of autonomy, that men and women can be, and should be, completely

self-governing with respect to their destiny.95 However, as we have seen, Wells

wishes to restore God as our ultimate reference point, away from the world of the

internal and psychological.96

Even if ideas of moral absolutes are dismissed, we possess an internal moral sense,

and the more morally threadbare life becomes, the more our nature cries out against

us.97 Wells sees this moral sense as reminiscent of the image of God within us. He

92


Brunner,Divine, 28.94

Wells,Losing, 161.95 Hurding,Roots, 120.96


Wells,Losing, 163.


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talks chiefly about this 'memory' of what we were, which is a slightly awkward term.

A memory is not an actuality; it suggests something no longer exists. The actuality of

our createdness needs to be affirmed. It is not just an inkling in the mind, but part of

human identity. This relates to our future hope, in understanding recreation and

restoration from our fallenness. It is also universal. Wells sees the language of self-

consciousness as taking away this sense of a common nature.

Recognising what we are

Modern society tends to protest human innocence. The Bible states that none are

innocent. Indeed, the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth (Genesis

8:21). The idea that the source of goodness lies within, where answers to life can be

discovered, conflicts with the attitude of Christ. Only romantic fictionalizing can

interpret the Jesus of the New Testament as one who believed in the goodness of men,

and sought by trusting it to bring out what was good in them.98 Wells considers

moral living based on confidence in the selfs own goodness, with self-referential

standards, as suffused with sin.99

Wells contends that recognising our fallenness makes sense of the desire for self-

satisfaction. We are able to identify the contradictions we experience, confessingsomething has gone wrong. We are not who we were created to be. For all have

sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:22). Against Gods standards,

we fall short. Our true nature, says Wells, is seen in relation to God. God defines us.

If sin is inherent and none of us righteous, we continually need God, as we cannot rely

on ourselves. It entails gratitude rather than demand.

The Embarrassed ChurchThe Great Contradiction

The frustration we feel in the conflict between the moral sense and our fallenness

Wells considers as giving Christian faith its best access to a postmodern culture that

has given up on serious thought, rational argument, and historical defenses.100 He

considers the new spiritual hunger in the postmodern world as reacting against a

98 H.R. Niebuhr, Culture, 25.99


Wells,Losing, 192.


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life stripped down by the rhythm of modernity.101 Wells objects to any

reverberations of stripping down within the Church itself.

The nature of the Church is itself a great contradiction, the place of Gods revelation,

yet still a community characterised by human frailty. In the Church is Christs grace

but also pride in its many forms. Here, in an even more intense form, are the

contradictions of the postmodern world.102 Brunner notes the non-existence of a

purely divine or purely spiritual Church. It belongs to the essence of the Church that

it is at once divine and human, sacred and secular.103 Church always interacts with

current cultural elements. It is meant to place our moral sense and opposing fallenness

into the right perspective. However, Wells sees the church as embarrassed about

professing its faith, particularly regarding sin, and thus the atonement as salvation

from sins consequences. This is not only due to the pressure people feel to be civil

in this secularized society, but also due to the Churchs moral fabric [having] been

worn bare and its sin in failing to grasp what sin is all about, which is apparently

lost on it.104

Reinterpreting Sin

Wells illustrates this urge to make sin more acceptable by using the example ofDonald Capps. Capps says that the woman who anoints Jesus feet is commended for

herself-trust, and that the time has come for us to recognise that taking care of

ourselves this once-in-a-lifetime gift is emphatically not a self-indulgence, but a

moral imperative.105

This is irreconcilable with the gospel emphasis in denying self

for the sake of Jesus. Wells is justified in criticising Capps, who has substituted the

psychological self for the moral self, the dynamics of shame for the workings of sin,

therapy for the Gospel, and psychological wholeness for biblical justification.106

Wells also cites the example of Robert Schuller, who reinterprets sin as poor self-

image and salvation as its reversal.107 These examples, Wells claims, show that sin

has lost its moral weight in the Church itself, which should be where sin comes to

101



Brunner,Divine, 527.104

Wells,Losing, 197.105 Capps,Depleted, 168.106


Wells,Losing, 200.


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light. Soon, says Wells, guilt becomes bad and pride becomes good.108 Since

Wells identifies sin most fully with pride we can see the irony in this reversal. The

problem with these examples is that they are fairly extreme. Wells uses them to

portray general trends, but they are very specific cases, and cant be used as

portraying the state of Christian spirituality in general.

Using Millers research to illustrate postmodern spirituality, Wells criticises this

spirituality for its (however unwitting) lack of moral centredness. Conversely, Miller

notes that these churches consider human selfishness or to use the old-fashioned

term,sin as the core cause of all social problems. Mere increase of social programs

wont do, for people need to shift from servingselfto serving God, and hence be

born again.109

Hence Miller observes that these churches do have a sense of sin.

In describing their worship styles, which Wells criticises for absence of lyrical

content, Miller discovers that during worship people in Vineyard churches often

experience a real conviction of individual sin. Nearly as often as people experience

joy in worship, they spoke of brokenness, pain, sorrow, repentance, and memories of

wrongs they had committed without retribution.110 Saying that these forms of

Christian spirituality have re-translated sin entirely seems without warrant.

Wells criticises the Church for displacing God from the throne room, and instead

enthroning the self. Kenneth Leech observes that much contemporary spirituality

within the Church itself is highly individualistic and directed more at self-cultivation

than communion with God.111

Preoccupation with the self seems to be a modern

hazard. Wells calls the Church to resist this tendency. The bottom line is the relation

of church to culture.

108

Wells,Losing, 200.109 Miller,Reinventing, 109110

Miller,Reinventing, 89.111

Leech, Sky, 128.


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Part 3: A Timeless Discord

i) Recognising the Chords of Culture

Debates surrounding Christian living in the world arent new; the problem has been

an enduring one through all the Christian centuries.112

The Church community

continually faces crises of discernment. 'There is always a tension, sometimes

creative, sometimes destructive, between our Christian faith and the values of

contemporary culture.'113

Miller describes new paradigm Christians as not easily

fitting into traditional categories; they could be described as fundamentalists, but are

seeking cultural relevance, instead of being culture-denying reactionaries.114 Wells

sees this as mimicking modern cultures moves.115

Perception and Interpretation

On Being Whole

Places of Healing

Wells notes, from Miller, that postmodern spirituality emphasises the therapeutic.

However, Miller himself highlights the new paradigm churches he investigates as

hostile to the narcissism they see in contemporary values, despite their openness and

tolerance.116

For new paradigm Christians worship of self is replaced with worship

of Godpersonal meaning is achieved in living rightly ordered relationships as

revealed in scripture; therein lies freedom, not in self-driven pursuits of individual

happiness.117 He perceives a therapeutic form outside the framework of narcissism,

unlike Wells. It relates to self-expression and healing, not sought from within, but

from God. In this light, the therapeutic is not entirely negative. If, as Wells suggests,

the self has been emptied out, logically it needs re-filling. This is revealed in thedesire behind consumerism and the need to reconstruct ourselves. The issue is the

source for reconstructing our self-understanding. Moral dilemmas start when we

approach self, not God. In his dismissal of the therapeutic, Wells doesnt engage with

Christian counsellors who have a distinctive commitment to the truths of living

112

H.R. Niebuhr, Culture, 3.113

Greene, 'The Spirit of the Age', 22.114

Miller,Reinventing, 121.115 Wells,Losing, 32.116


Miller,Reinventing, 151.


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Christian faith, while still seeking to broaden their understanding of people through

psychotherapy theories.118 For example, Larry Crabb, in his approach to biblical

counselling, strongly emphasises the fallen self-centredness of human nature and

asserts that anything that counterfeits life and thus encourages people to press on

without turning to God is dangerously wrong. The core of all helping effort must be

Christ.119

The Sufficiency of the Atonement

Most seriously, Wells accuses the therapeutic of undermining belief in the sufficiency

of the atonement. If these elements are add-ons for spiritual wholeness, it implies

Christs work is incomplete. Medieval piety reached for moral attainment to

complete the work of Christ. We reach for psychological technique and knowledge to

do the same thing.120 If technique becomes more important, or more necessary than

fundamental aspects of Christian faith, then the Churchs distinctiveness is

endangered.

Nevertheless, churches that Wells sees as manifesting postmodern spirituality do

focus on God, albeit in a way more experiential than cerebral. This doesnt mean that

the atonement is seen as insufficient. Understandings of it may be wider than simplyobjective justification, or penal substitution, which for many American

Christiansinterprets the significance of Jesus death fully, completely, without

remainder.121 New emphases, such as shame and adoption, need not replace older

interpretations, but build on them. However, the centrality of the cross is central, and

seen as integral to evangelical faith. Any other theme as the focus of theology would

be taking a step away from Evangelicalism.122 If people understand themselves as

saved by psychotherapy, not Christ, then this is a real problem.

However, using therapeutic technique does not necessarily imply that salvation is

being sought elsewhere. Scripture does not grapple with issues of living in the

modern world; it simply does not address many issues people face today. This takes

place in a society where ethical dilemmas are expanding and developing in

118

Jones & Butman,Psychotherapies, 21.119

Crabb, Understanding, 211.120 Wells,Losing, 30.121

Green & Baker, Scandal, 13.122

Bebbington,Evangelicalism, 15.


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unprecedented areas. Christians generally are in a great deal of moral confusion.123

Due to the experiential nature of postmodern spirituality, it can be harder to navigate

through moral waters. It is not unfaithful to search out how to reasonably expand our

understanding beyond what God chose to reveal in the Bible.124 Wisdom is needed

to discern those situations where self becomes the source of reliance, not God.

The Role of the Holy Spirit

Wells seems to discount most experience as selling out to narcissistic society. Where

the experiential is over-emphasised, objective elements are endangered. However, not

all experience is emptied of moral centre. Wells claims little about the Holy Spirit.

He states that moral redirection is through the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit

and that more confidence is needed in the Spirits power, as well as in the atoning

work of Christ.125 This is barely mentioned elsewhere, and given little significance in

his thesis. This seems odd, considering Wells appeal for having more confidence in

the power of God.

Wells refers to the Holy Spirit being asserted, especially in Charismatic/Pentecostal

circles, as responsible for changes that are actually the products of modernised

culture, and that here the art of discrimination is also unceremoniouslysurrendered.

126He cautions against saying that self-indulgent experience is the

Spirits doing. However, he doesnt address realexperience of the Holy Spirit as a

balance to this argument. Neither does he discuss the Spirits role in helping people to

grow in holiness.

On Being Holy

The Importance of Otherness

Wells sees God as holy, set apart, and transcendent, claiming that postmodern

spirituality makes God too immanent. An older reaction is seen in Barths strong

emphasis on God as Other, contrasting with Schleiermachers God-consciousness. In

Barths theology, God is God, not man writ large; and he cannot simply be spoken of

123

Riddell, Threshold, 7.124 Jones & Butman,Psychotherapies, 21.125

Wells,Losing, 207,208.126

Wells,No Place, 182.


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the light of Jesus, as the emphasis shifts fromseparation to involvement.133 Jesus

holiness, he suggests, was an inner reality that did not require separatism, existing in

culture without fearing contamination. Holiness is separation to, rather than

separationfromIt need not fear contamination because it proceeds outward from the

heart.134 Focussing on the dangers of compromise may result in withdrawing from

culture entirely, thus purged from its influence. As Greene warns, the more church

perceives its fundamental relationship with contemporary culture in terms of

antagonistic or subversive opposition, the more it tends to withdraw into its own

cultural ghetto.'135

Riddell relates this to mission, for true holiness wont keep us from the world, but

drive us into it in faith.'136

The Churchs presence in the world is Christs presence in

the world. Christian holiness stems from union with Christ, not from virtue or

behaviour. The true source of holiness needs to be recognised when calling for moral

reform in the Church. The Gospel the Church supposedly preaches is one of liberation

and freedom, not a moral crusade. In turn, Riddells view needs to be tempered by the

recognition that we are not yet perfect. We cannot do away with wisdom in areas of

weakness. It is still helpful to have a sense of not belonging to the world (John 15:19,

17:14). The Church can take seriously the call to holy living while still being awareof its dependence on Gods purpose and grace.

132

Bloesch,Almighty, 159.133

Riddell, Threshold, 73.134 Riddell, Threshold, 81.135

Greene, 'Spirit of the Age', 22.136

Riddell, Threshold, 87.


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ii) Stop and Rewind?

Future Vision

Medium and Message

Miller identifies a second reformation, challenging not doctrine but the medium

through which the message of Christianity is articulated.137 Wells is concerned that

in heavily concentrating on medium, the original message is lost. Miller observes

sociological aspects (from a liberal viewpoint); Wells calls for reformation, not of

medium but of faith and truth (from an evangelical viewpoint). Wells believes the

evangelical church cannot afford to buy into modernitys structure and style.

Changing Image

Brian McLaren, who advocates totally revamping church style, confesses that when

we change the medium, the message that's received is changed, however subtly, as

well. We might as well get beyond our navet or denial about this.'138 However, he

considers it worth the risk. He calls for new ways of doing theology, a space for

confessing inadequacies and uncertainties, being involved in an exciting journey of

discovery, waking up slumbering Christians and perhaps attracting the outsider as

well.139 Approaches like these have merit and sound good, but can be dangerous,

especially if taken out of context (loyalty to the Word of God). However, being so

paranoid about the Churchs future that the only way is backwards is also dangerous.

Miller notes that new paradigm Christians are responding to the pessimism of

postmodern culture by transforming it rather than simply rejecting it in the hope of

recovering a simpler, less corrupt bygone age.140

Wells considers attempts at changing church image as weakening biblical identity.

He comments that in attempting to sell Church, it is supposed that what has

distinguished the Church in its appearance and functions should be abandoned.141 It

is difficult to see exactly what Wells criticises here, as he uses examples of casual

dress, the removal of pews and the changing of robes, and cites all contemporary

137


McLaren, Other Side, 68.139 McLaren, Other Side, 69.140


Wells,Losing, 201.


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hymns as empty of theological substance.142 With the exception of hymnal content

(although even this reflects cultural emphases), his examples are very appearance-

driven and seem rather irrelevant to morality. Ironically, here he seems to defend

culture, as all styles and forms are in some sense cultural.

Courageous Faith

Wells claims the Church lacks the courage to believe Gods power to save, and that

todays churchly trendiness is really yesterdays unbelief.143

The style doesnt need

to be changed, for the message is powerful enough on its own. Attempts to help

God along dilute the message, showing disbelief in the Gospels power. Certainly,

disillusionment undermines confidence, but Wells doesnt seem to acknowledge that

it is for the love of God that some people (particularly church leaders) try and amend

style. Wells doesnt encourage or affirm such motives.

Conversely, his argument could also work the other way round; God is not limited by

changing styles. Style always fluctuates, and always relates to culture. Courageous

faith will not always be static, and will be eager to present the Gospel in various

communication forms, remaining faithful to the message. Wells negative criticism of

attempts to access postmodern generations can lead to a Church paralysed by self-condemnation as well as one moved by genuine repentance. He appears to allow little

room for grace.

Recovery or Discovery

Past and Present

Wells focuses on recovering what has been lost in spirituality. In his passion for

reclaiming the moral centre, he seems to advocate returning to Reformation

spirituality, existing before the bankruptcy of the Enlightenment experiment144.

However, history cant be reversed; every era is culture bound. Different questions are

asked in different times. We cant continue giving the same rehearsed answers to

changing sets of questions; otherwise we are irresponsible stewards of the message.

Historically, theologians have continually worked through deep questions of faith,

142 Wells,Losing, 201.143


Wells,Losing, 145.


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addressing specific concerns, often to combat current heresies. We cannot reverse the

emergence of the therapeutic, or the rise of consumerism.

Perhaps the Church has had a time of rediscovering Gods active presence

(immanence) among his people. In turn, the need arises to rediscover his holy

transcendence as if climbing a spiral staircase, each redressing the balance of the

generation before. Ultimately a balance is needed; otherwise we get trapped in a

reactive spiral, taking energy away from the Churchs mission. As with Gods love

and holiness, they need not be seen as competing elements. For example, Gibbs and

Coffey say that new-paradigm churches are recapturing a sense of the transcendence

of God encountered through his immanence.145 To discount false, self-oriented

experience should not discount true experience of God.

Wells doesnt offer much practical, specific guidance towards change. Any study of a

specific subject encounters this danger, but Wells doesnt seem to progress from his

statement inNo Place for Truth, merely reiterating and embellishing his arguments in

the following volumes. Churches can easily become disillusioned with criticism that

offers no sense of progression. Losing Our Virtue, with its predecessors in the

trilogy, takes a largely condemnatory stance without really giving any practical senseof forward motion.

Too Harsh a Sentence?

The children who have grown up or are growing up in the postmodern world bear

its mark. They are cut loose from everything, hollowed out, eclectic, patched

together from scraps of personality picked up here and there, leery of

commitments, empty of all passions except that of sex, devoid of the capacity for

commitment, fixated on image rather than substance, operating on the seductive

elixir of unrestricted personal preference, and informed only by personal

intuition.146

This is a bleak evaluation, and a gross generalisation. It takes the idea of

postmodernity and applies it right across the board, without appreciating the nuances

involved. We have seen how Wells can be selective in his examples, whereas other

145

Gibbs & Coffey,Next, 141.146

Wells, Wasteland, 222.


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Conclusion

The modern world is so painful, so costly, so brutal to life that mimicking its

rhythms, rather than providing an alternative to them, will soon be seen to be the

hollow charade, the empty mirage, that it is. The happy campers in modernitys

playground are blithely unaware that this is a dangerous neighbourhood.147

Wells sees mimicking the rhythm of the world as a risky enterprise. He calls for

cultural engagement, discerning the wolf of secular salvation dressed in religious

clothing. Secular salvation draws its power from the self. Life becomes image-based,

compensating for emptiness of character. In consumerism we seek new ways of self-

construction. Finally, we seek the source of our strength within, taking the

therapeutic emphasis to its extreme, believing we can heal ourselves.

Wells sees this as resulting from relocating the Holy God from transcendent point of

reference, to the place of customer satisfaction. Over-emphasising his immanence

and love, blurring them with self, means that we lose reverence and awe, and finally

confidence in our God. As the Self nudges God from the throne, we lose the

understanding of ourselves as created, moral beings. We merely wish to satisfy theself. This, says Wells, is a quintessential part of our fallenness. Understanding our

fallenness makes sense of this desire for self-satisfaction.

Wells exposes subtle reinterpretations of cultural elements within evangelical

Christianity. The Church needs to be bold in speaking its message, not tempted to

exchange language of sin and forgiveness for need and fulfilment. However, there are

times when the Church can learn from culture, and work within it. Although Wells

makes valid criticisms, they do not apply in all cases. Antagonistic approaches are

unhelpful where encouragement is needed. Different views must be considered

carefully in and drawn on where appropriate.

Practical suggestions need to be made as to how to avoid compromise. Advocating

return to the past is not feasible. Positives can be taken from both past and present,

correcting each other in seeking future moral vision. There needs to be a balance

147

Wells,Losing, 52.


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between Gods immanence and transcendence, between his holiness and love, which

arent competing elements, but complementary. Finally, what is needed is the

wisdom to discern where Self has replaced God, seeking true perspective on

ourselves, in order to be a distinctive community that testifies to the power of God

alone.

9,992 words


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cheesman, lucy--the rhythm of the world a dangerous playgro~1

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