Vade Mecum: A Latin phrase meaning, 'Come, go with me.'
 

January, 2008

We are still slogging our way through David Well's book, "Above All Earthly Pow'rs". (You can read a review of the book here.) I say "slogging" not because it's a hard read using highly technological language but because the subject matter is so serious: how does a professing Christian believer with a strong, Biblical worldview share the gospel with postmodern souls who espouse privatized, individualized spiritualities and eschew the concept of absolute truth? In other words, is it possible to reach the postmodern soul and loose our own soul in the process?

After hearing John Piper say that he felt that Well's earlier book, "No Place for Truth" , was actually better than "Above All Earthly Pow'rs", I tracked down my own copy. "No Place for Truth" was published in 1993 and was, in retrospect, an amazing prediction of the looming, disastrous consequences that would result if the evangelical church in America continued its fascination with unbridled, cultural relevance.

One of Well's great strengths in his writing is his almost casual introduction of illustrations that upon introspection have the ability to hit you a little later like the ton of proverbial bricks. Protestant liberalism often promoted a scheme for world transformation that demoted truth claims and propositional statements to second class status. The "new" view that they proposed as a replacement is described by Wells with the slogan, "Life, not doctrine". In this view, doctrine is seen as opposed to life, as getting in the way of promoting spiritual transformation in people. The idea is that life can be had without doctrine. It was a view that was often promoted by the academy as the result of higher criticism and the demythologization of the Bible.

This connection between church on Sundays and the esoteric and rarified atmosphere of the academy is likened in Well's illustration to two different horses drinking out of the same trough but at opposite ends. Wells goes on to imply that the contemporary, evangelical church in America, all the while distancing itself from the academy and the older liberal Protestantism, is in fact, drinking out of the same trough. The result is that we have sold our theological, cognitive heritage for a mess of pottage.

There are, I suppose, many churches who would have no qualms about using the slogan "Life, not doctrine" as a byline for their marketing strategy. The innovative, evangelical church in pursuit of "success" at any cost has no reservations about sloughing off years of received tradition never mind what the Bible seems to so clearly teach. Evangelicalism, even though it refuses to admit it, is drinking out of the same trough as liberal Protestantism. Much of the mindless drivel that is announced as preaching on Christian television proves it.

E-mail me with comments: a.ellis@covcomchu.org

Blessings,

Allan Ellis
Lead Pastor