Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision | David F. Wells

Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision | David F. Wells | Perceptive

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	Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision David F. Wells Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Virtue or values?

David Wells is my current favorite b/c he confronts with kind, intelligent, insightful, and helpful language the problems facing the church today. In this volume he discusses how we have gone from the language of virtue (i,e, courage, perseverance, integrity, etc.) to values (fun, amazing, exciting, etc.) in the course of a century. This loss of a moral center has cost not only our culture but the church as we move away from a biblical way of seeing and interacting with our world. The church has become worldly and ineffective. How did we get to this place? How do we get out of it? How do we remain faithful to God and communicate to a world that has does not understand the vocabulary of redemption? Read this most helpful book to help you answer these and other questions raised by the loss of virtue?

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Perceptive

This third book in Wells' series of five books on postmodernism focuses on the erosion of ethics within contemorary culture. This book is, in many ways, a series of contrasts between what was and what now is.

Classical spirituality, which Wells' defines by its doctrinal basis, its devotional habits, its moral character, and its responsibilities in Church and Society" [33] is the backdrop against which the a-theological spirituality of postmodernism is viewed. Wells demonstrates that talk about virtues has given way to clarification of values, that emphasis on character has shifted to a focus on personality, that theology has been displaced by psychology, and that feelings of guilt, which are God-centered in their moral orientation, have degenerated into the emotions of man-centered shame.

Wells gets at his diagnosis of the moral state of the Church and culture in several ways. In chapter one, "A Tale of Two Spiritualities," Wells contrasts the hymnody of the historic Church with the contemporary praise and worship songs of today. The results of his research are somewhat alarming, whatever one's taste in music happens to be. Another chapter, "The Playground of Desire," draws more from a study of sociology, zooming especially on what Wells calls "the competition between law and freedom," the relevance of which to the political realm he unfolds with penetrating insight. In yet another place, Wells examines the ideology of Robert Schuller, Senior Pastor of the Crystal Cathedral. Schuller's view of sin "is really nothing more than poor self-image, and salvation is its reversal," says Wells [200]. But, "where sin has lost its moral weight, the Cross will lose its centrality, Christ will lose his uniqueness, and his Father will no longer be the God of the Bible" [200].

One of Wells most astute observations is that "much of the Church today, especially that part of it which is evangelical, is in captivity to [the] idolatry of the self. This is a form of corruption far more profound than the lists of infractions that typically pop into our minds when we hear the word sin. We are trying to hold at bay the gnats of small sins while swallowing the camel of self" [203-204]. As can be seen, Wells operates with a sharp surgical scalpel. But let no one think that he is a knife-happy physician, for he not only diagnoses the disease and cuts away the cancer, he also prescribes the medicine that will heal the Church. That cure is nothing less than a recovery of the Gospel, with its high view of God's transcendent holiness.

This is a must read for Christians who are serious about engaging the culture on a philosophical or theological level. And those who are not interested in such an engagement may need this book most of all.

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A helpful text with open interpretation

I read this book for my Theological Ethics class. David Wells' approach to understanding our postmodern culture in light of the church is unique and thought-provoking. Rather integrate his critique with Biblical doctrine, he gives over 180 pages of contemporary critique of culture from the perspective of psychology, technology, consumerism, politics, and notions of guilt, and shame. Only in his introduction and concluding chapter does he address our cultural ideas with the Biblical norm. Its a laborious way to approach the topic but bears his intended fruit. His opinion of the move from community to self may be simplistic but accurate. This text is useful for anyone considering ethical decision-making in our postmodern society.

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Solid, but least favorite of tetralogy

I have benefited enormously from the four-volume series by David Wells (No Place for Truth, God in the Wasteland, Losing Our Virtue, and the final volume, Above All Earthly Powers.

I interviewed Wells on this volume during my radio years. It is solid as are all in this series, but found this particular volume not quite up to the standard set by the other three.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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