We’re back from our family vacation to Grand Rapids, MN. It was a fantastically relaxing time of sitting by the lake, swimming, barbeque-ing every night, and bonding. Our daughter Karis had some difficulty (as did Marni and I) with the sweltering heat (mid-90s, sometimes with humidity to boot).
The family vacation afforded me the opportunity of some extended reading time. I read ahead on most of the assigned reading for my upcoming Preaching class this Fall and Spring. But the book that has most been captivating me (I’m about 1/3 of the way through) is David Well’s Above All Earthly Powers. Here’s an excerpt from John Piper’s synopsis:
The burden of Wells’ book is first to understand the postmodern world, and then to confront that world with the never-changing Christ. His thesis is that the West today is not simply a product of Enlightenment ideology, with its rejection of authority and reliance on reason without revelation, but is also the product of a process of consumeristic, technological, media-driven modernization that created an experience of reality which affirms and reinforces that ideology.
One effect of this modernization has been to give rise to the centrality of the psychologically oriented self in the place of a morally oriented human nature. The postmodern, all-consuming “self”—with its self-made spirituality—is subject to no outside authority. All reality has contracted into this self. It is radically individualized and privatized and insistently therapeutic. It does not feel at home in the doctrines and traditions of religion. It is on an endless quest for the enhancement of its experience measured by itself alone.
This volume from David Wells is the last of four installments in a series that began in 1993 with No Place For Truth. Wells’ most recent book is a masterful depiction of how modernism fell and why the postmodernism ethos has come into vogue. Moreover, Wells gives an insightful critique of contemporary evangelicalism as well as a stirring exhortation on how we should faithfully herald the eternally true, relevant gospel in our particular day and age.
John Piper was so moved by this book that the entire Desiring God National Conference this year is being based on the themes expounded by David Wells’ book. The speakers are Donald Carson, Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, Voddie Baucham, David Wells, and John Piper. The Conference looks outstanding. Pre-registration has begun.
Particularly if you are unable to attend, I highly recommend that you purchase Above All Earthly Powers. It is a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand where our culture is today, as well as the trends within evangelicalism, including the morphing of the seeker-sensitive movement and the rise of “emerging churches.”
Update: Here is an interview with David Wells discussing Above All Earthly Powers, and its relation to the previous three books in his series.