Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision

by David F. Wells

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 1998

In Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision, theologian David Wells argues that the Church is in danger of losing its moral authority to speak to a culture whose moral fabric is torn. Although much of the Church has enjoyed success and growth over the past years, Wells laments a “hollowing out of evangelical conviction, a loss of the biblical word in its authoritative function, and an erosion of character to the point that today, no discernible ethical differences are evident in behavior when those claiming to have been reborn and secularists are compared.” The assurance of the Good News of the gospel has been traded for mere good feelings, truth has given way to perception, and morality has slid into personal preference.

Losing Our Virtue is about the disintegrating moral culture that is contemporary society and what this disturbing loss means for the church. Wells covers the following in this bold critique:

How the theologically emptied spirituality of the church is causing it to lose its moral bearings

An exploration of the wider dynamic at work in contemporary society between license and law

An exposition of the secular notion of salvation as heralded by our most trusted gurus—advertisers and psychotherapists

A discussion of the contemporary view of the self

How guilt and sin have been replaced by empty psychological shame

An examination of the contradiction between the way we view ourselves in the midst of our own culture and the biblical view of persons as created, moral beings

Can the church still speak effectively to a culture that has become morally unraveled? Wells believes it can. In fact, says Wells, no time in this century has been more opportune for the Christian faith—if the church can muster the courage to regain its moral weight and become a missionary of truth once more to a foundering world.

Contents

Top Highlights

“Worldliness is that system of values, in any given age, which has at its center our fallen human perspective, which displaces God and his truth from the world, and which makes sin look normal and righteousness seem strange. It thus gives great plausibility to what is morally wrong and, for that reason, makes what is wrong seem normal. It is this spiritual reality that is pervasive in modernity and that has caused the evangelical world to stumble so badly. I concluded that what is most put in jeopardy, and what most needs to be recovered with respect to God, are our understanding of his moral nature and his sovereign providence. And without this recovery, evangelical faith would lose—if it has not already lost—its moral pungency and its spiritual authenticity.” (Page 4)

“meaninglessness is the signature of the depleted, minimal, and postmodern self” (Page 125)

“This is the first time that a civilization has existed that, to a significant extent, does not believe in objective right and wrong. We are traveling blind, stripped of our moral compass. And this is true, not only in society, but increasingly in the Church as well.” (Page 17)

“It was these rules that replaced the virtues, and these rules have now been replaced by governmental regulation and by litigation, a point that will be developed more fully in chapter two.” (Page 15)

“The latter begins, not so much with sin as morally framed, but with sin as psychologically experienced, not so much with sin in relation to God, but with sin in relation to ourselves.” (Page 42)

Product Details

• Title: Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision
• Author: David F. Wells
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Print Publication Date: 1998
• Logos Release Date: 2019
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Christianity and culture › United States; United States › Moral conditions; Christianity › United States--20th century; Christian ethics
• ISBNs: 9780802846723, 0802846726
• Resource ID: LLS:LSNGRVRTTMRLVSN
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T01:21:24Z

About David F. Wells

David Falconer Wells (born 1939) is Distinguished Senior Research Professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books in which his evangelical theology engages with the modern world. Wells received his B.D. from the University of London; Th.M. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; Ph.D. from Manchester University (England); and was a post-doctoral Research Fellow at Yale Divinity School. Wells is a Council member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.