Does a person have to "convert" to be a Christian? Or can one merely "follow" Jesus by studying Scripture? Does the Bible ever say that conversion is necessary? Or is it a development of the church? Turning to God explores these fundamental questions about regeneration and conversion, distinguishing Christianity from every other faith as one in which conversion is unique, supernatural, and necessary for salvation. In it you will find a clear, thoughtful, balanced discussion of the Christian conversion experience, including its history, controversy, and scriptural basis. Anyone who has marveled at the mystery of how and why we turn to God, along with those skeptical of religious conversion, will find themselves challenged and encouraged by this thorough treatment of one of the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

Turning to God: Reclaiming Christian Conversion as Unique, Necessary, and Supernatural

Religion & Spirituality

Wells, David F.

Christian Books & Bibles

Baker Books

Dutch Reformed Theology (Reformed Theology in America)

History

Europe

Baker Book House

Has something indeed happened to evangelical theology and to evangelical churches? According to David Wells, the evidence indicates that evangelical pastors have abandoned their traditional role as ministers of the Word to become therapists and "managers of the small enterprises we call churches." Along with their parishioners, they have abandoned genuine Christianity and biblical truth in favor of the sort of inner-directed experiential religion that now pervades Western society. Specifically, Wells explores the wholesale disappearance of theology in the church, the academy, and modern culture. Western culture as a whole, argues Wells, has been transformed by modernity, and the church has simply gone with the flow. The new environment in which we live, with its huge cities, triumphant capitalism, invasive technology, and pervasive amusements, has vanquished and homogenized the entire world. While the modern world has produced astonishing abundance, it has also taken a toll on the human spirit, emptying it of enduring meaning and morality. Seeking respite from the acids of modernity, people today have increasingly turned to religions and therapies centered on the self. And, whether consciously or not, evangelicals have taken the same path, refashioning their faith into a religion of the self. They have been coopted by modernity, have sold their soul for a mess of pottage. According to Wells, they have lost the truth that God stands outside all human experience, that he still summons sinners to repentance and belief regardless of their self-image, and that he calls his church to stand fast in his truth against the blandishments of a godless world. The first of three volumes meant to encourage renewal in evangelical theology (the other two to be written by Cornelius Plantinga Jr. and Mark Noll), No Place for Truth is a contemporary jeremiad, a clarion call to all evangelicals to note well what a pass they have come to in capitulating to modernity, what a risk they are running by abandoning historic orthodoxy. It is provocative reading for scholars, ministers, seminary students, and all theologically concerned individuals.

No Place for Truth: or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?

William B. Eerdmans Publishing

Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ In A Postmodern World

The deflation of the Enlightenment worldview and rise of the post-modern mood over the last decades has altered the relation of Christian faith to culture. How, in this new situation, should the church confess Christ? "Above All Earthly Powers" paints a picture of the West in all its complexity, brilliance, and emptiness.
As David F. Wells masterfully depicts it, the postmodern ethos is relativistic, individualistic, therapeutic, and yet remarkably spiritual. By placing a premium on marketing rather than truth, the evangelical church is in danger of selling authentic engagement with culture for worldly success. Christians need to confess Christ as the center in a society lacking a center, as the sovereign in a world seemingly ruled by chance, and as the one who can give meaning in a nihilistic culture. "Above All Earthly Powers" issues a prophetic call to the evangelical church that it cannot afford to ignore.

Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ in a Postmodern World

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

In our postmodern world, every view has a place at the table but none has the final say. How, as Christian faith adjusts to a new culture, should the church confess Christ? 
"Above All Earthly Pow'rs," the fourth and final volume of the set that began in 1993 with "No Place for Truth," paints a picture of the West in all its complexity, brilliance, and emptiness. As David Wells masterfully depicts it, the postmodern ethos of the West is relativistic, individualistic, therapeutic, and yet remarkably spiritual. Wells unabashedly locates American postmodernism's roots in the last century's waves of immigration — waves that, for all their diversity, have brought with them numerous new religions and a cultural relativism born out of confusion and a fear of offense. Wells also carefully differentiates between intellectual and popular postmodernism; while few Americans read Foucault or Derrida, nearly everyone is subject to the permeating flood of TV ads. 
Wells's book culminates in a critique of contemporary evangelicalism aimed at both unsettling and reinvigorating readers. Churches that market themselves as relevant to consumption-oriented postmoderns are indeed swelling in size. But they are doing so, Wells contends, at the expense of the truth of the gospel, as the trappings they adopt come laden with theological consequences. By placing a premium on marketing, the evangelical church is in danger of selling authentic engagement with culture for worldly success. 
Welding extensive cultural analysis with a formidable theological contribution, "Above All Earthly Pow'rs" will grip pastors, educators, and all serious readers concerned about the fate of evangelical Christianity.

David F. Wells's award-winning book No Place for Truth - called "a stinging indictment of evangelicalism's theological corruption" by TIME magazine - woke many evangelicals to the fact that their tradition has slowly but surely capitulated to the values and structures of modernity. In God in the Wasteland Wells continues his trenchant analysis of the cultural corruption now weakening the church's thought and witness with the intent of getting evangelicals to rethink their relationship to the "world." Wells argues that the church is enfeebled in part because it has lost its sense of God's sovereignty and holiness. "The fundamental problem in the evangelical world today," says Wells, "is that God rests too inconsequentially upon the church. His truth is too distant, his grace is too ordinary, his judgment is too benign, his gospel is too easy, and his Christ is too common." God has become weightless to the extent that the church no longer allows him to shape its character, outlook, and practice. Evangelicals have become heavily invested in the mind-set of modernity - a mind-set that Wells correlates with the biblical concept of the "world." They have become enamored of advanced management and marketing techniques, have blurred the distinctions between Christ and culture, and have largely abandoned their traditional emphasis on divine transcendence in favor of an emphasis on divine immanence. In doing so, they have produced a faith in God that is of little consequence to those who believe. An extensive survey of students at seven evangelical theological seminaries - the results of which are included in this book - indicates that the next generation of evangelical leaders is as caught up in these trends as the laity. Arguing that the church's diminished appetite for truth will not be restored without repentance and a fresh encounter with the holy God, Wells makes a compelling case for urgently needed reform in the evangelical church. Without such reform, he says, evangelical faith will be lost in and to the modernity that has invaded the church.

God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams

Eerdmans Pub.Co.

Wells loudly throws down the gauntlet to the evangelical church in this perceptive analysis of our culture in crisis. Painting a vivid description of societys moral and spiritual confusion, he explains how the church can regain its effectiveness and influence in our postmodern world. A challenging look at social reform vs. spiritual transformation.

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

Sociology

Available now for the first time in paperback, Losing Our Virtue offers a bold critique of the moral disintegration taking place in contemporary society and its reflection in today's evangelical church. Continuing the series begun with David Wells's No Place for Truth and God in the Wasteland, this acclaimed volume urges the church to regain its moral weight and become a missionary of truth once more to our relativistic postmodern world.

World

At its heart, the Protestant Reformation was about a deep, doctrinally shaped faith centered on God and his Word. But that historic, substantive faith is not faring so well in our contemporary Western context. In his 2008 book The Courage to Be Protestant, David Wells issued a summons to return to the historic Protestant faith, defined by the Reformation solas (grace, faith, and Scripture alone) and by a high regard for doctrine. In this thoroughly reworked second edition, Wells presents an updated look at the state of evangelicalism and the changes that have taken place since the original publication of his book. There is no better time than now to hear and heed Wells's clarion call to reclaim the historic, doctrinally serious Reformation faith in our fast-paced, technologically dominated, postmodern culture.

The Courage to Be Protestant: Reformation Faith in Today's World

Eerdmans

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wells, David F.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wells, David F.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wells, David F.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Turning to God: Reclaiming Christian Conversion as Unique, Necessary, and Supernatural

Dutch Reformed Theology (Reformed Theology in America)

No Place for Truth: or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?

Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ in a Postmodern World

Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ In A Postmodern World

God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams

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

God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams

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

The Courage to Be Protestant: Reformation Faith in Today's World