The Courage to Be Protestant

By -
I've just started to read David Wells' latest book, The Courage to Be Protestant (2008), and it promises to be a good one. Wells is the professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Writing as an evangelical himself, Wells has published some searing critiques of evangelicalism, beginning with his No Place for Truth; or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? in 1993. This was followed by God in the Wasteland (1994), Losing Our Virtue (1998), and Above All Earthly Pow'rs (2005).

The Courage to Be Protestant, Wells informs his readers, started out as a simple summary of these previous works, but ended up as a recasting of them in an attempt to get at the essence of what he sees as the chief problems with modern American evangelicalism.

He begins by setting forth "The Lay of the Evangelical Land" (title of chapter one). And he divides the evangelical world into "three rather distinct constituencies": (1) Classical Evangelicals, (2) Marketers, and (3) Emergents.

The evangelical world is now dividing into three rather distinct constituencies. Actually, it is dividing into many, many subconstituencies as well because this rather amazing empire of belief is fragmenting across the board. So my map with only three major constituencies portrays the land as it looks from afar, not up close. The important point here, though, is that two of these constituencies are new, and, like large icebergs, they are separating from the others. They are, as I see it, transitional movement. They are the stepping-stones away from the classical orthodoxy of the earlier evangelicals and, however unwittingly, toward a more liberalized Christianity. In due course the children of these evangelicals will become full-blown liberals, I suspect, just like those against whom the evangelical grandparents originally protested.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why did Jesus say, "Don't Tell"?

By -
Why did Jesus tell the people he healed not to tell anyone? This is a curious thing, isn’t it? Especially in light of the fact that Jesus has commissioned us to make him known. We find that on several occasions during his earthly ministry that Jesus told the people whom he healed not to let anyone know about it. This was not always the case, however. For instance, when Jesus delivered the Gerasene demoniac from the power of Satan, and the man “begged that he might be with him… Jesus sent him away, saying, ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you’” (Lk. 8:38-39). So here’s one time, at least, when Jesus told a man to tell everyone. But on most other occasions he told people not to tell. In Matthew 9 we read about two blind men whom Jesus healed. It says, And their eyes were opened. And Jesus sternly warned them, “See that no one knows about it” (Matt 9:30). In the first chapter of Mark we read of a leper who was healed; and it says, Jesus sternly charged h
Read more

The New Testament's most prolific authors

By -
Image
Have you ever wondered who the most prolific authors of the New Testament are? Well, wonder no more because here's the skinny: the top three by far are Luke, Paul, and John. Some people will perhaps be surprised to learn that Paul doesn’t stand at the head of the list. The claim is often made that he wrote most of the New Testament. Not so. To be sure, he wrote the most books , but Luke wrote the most words, although their totals are very close to each other. Together, the two men wrote just over half of the New Testament.  Of the 138,020 Greek words in the New Testament, Luke wrote 27.5 percent (37,932). Paul wrote 23.5 percent (32,408). If we take Hebrews to have been written by Paul—the traditional view, though opposed by the consensus of modern biblical scholarship—then the numbers are almost identical. The total number of words written by Paul rises to 37,361 (or 27.1 percent of the total).   For a break down of the numbers, see the two charts below. Click to enlarg
Read more

When your brother has something against you

By -
What does Jesus mean when he says in Matthew 5:23-24, “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift”? He’s referring to bringing a sacrifice or an offering to the temple to present as a gift to God as an act of worship. And he says that if while you are doing this you remember that someone has something against you, you must first go and make it right, or God will not find the act of worship acceptable. Now, I suppose the question largely has to do with what Jesus means when he speaks of someone “having something against you”. We should be very clear about this. He doesn’t mean that your worship is unacceptable to God just because your neighbor is upset with you, regardless of why he is upset. He means that your neighbor has a legitimate grievance against you because you have sinned against him. You h
Read more