Albert Mohler: The Pillar and Ground of Truth

it is particularly a great joy to be here today as we are reflecting on the 25th anniversary of the publication of one of the most important books I believe in evangelical history I realized that's quite a statement but I intend to stand by it and what an honor therefore to be here with dr. David wells and mrs. wells and so many others I was elected president of Southern Seminary in 1993 as dr. Nichols indicated and it was precisely over these issues that I was elected Southern Baptists during the decade of the 1970s and then into the 80s continuing into the 90s rose up and demanded that their seminaries stand upon the infallible and errant truth of the word of God it was a battle over truth and I believe it wasn't coincidence but rather Providence that in the same year I was so encouraged by and strengthened by the publication of no place for truth my determination was that if it be true that within evangelicalism writ large there was no place for truth disastrous as that would be at least in Louisville Kentucky there would be one place for truth and by God's grace 25 years later the book stands and by the grace of God I stand and the Lord has done an amazing work for which I am just incredibly unspeakably thankful it is very interesting to note that the world is all the sudden decided to take truth with a new found seriousness just in time for the Oscar Awards last year the New York Times decided to run a 2 page advertisement about itself for itself with the slogan the truth is more important than ever they took the slogan and emblazoned it on both sides of their iconic building in Manhattan declaring that the New York Times had discovered in March of 2017 that the truth the truth you'll notice definite article in front of the word truth is now more important than ever the statement taken at face value is nonsensical it should have been an enormous embarrassment to the New York Times that it would all of a sudden discover the truth is important in the year 2017 the statement was entirely political but it tells us a great deal we need to ask the question in Reverse what desperation would lead the Editorial Board of the New York Times to determine that truth can be preceded by a definite article VIII and of course the New York Times continuing in this advertising series even until this past week it declares itself to be the voice of not a truth but truth the fact that the New York Times has found the ability to use the word truth and something other than ironic terms tells us something about our times but also tells us that something interesting has happened in the last 25 years two major themes came in the form of the argument of no place for truth by David wells the book did not come out of a vacuum there's a story behind the book a story behind the project and of course a story behind to the author there's a story behind the title there was self-evidently a two-fold crisis identified in dr. wells book going back to 2000 and well let's put it this way as we're looking at from 2018 we can well see that the crisis long preceded 1993 it was crystallized in terms of the argument in no place for truth in 1993 first of all the crisis of truth in the culture a culture marked by modernity now we use these terms rather commonly and with familiarity we expect the recognition of what we mean when we now speak of modernity of modernism and even of post-modernism it's interesting to note that in 1993 most Americans did not speak of post-modernism even American evangelicals it wasn't that it didn't exist it had been already very thoroughly argued in continental philosophy and this not that it didn't exist in the American Academy is that it wasn't yet named as we began to speak of it in the 1990s it's interesting to note that the crisis in the culture had also been diagnosed in a different sense according to a different worldview in this latter case a stoic worldview by alan bloom a distinguished professor at the university of chicago who in will this tells us something about a 30th anniversary in 1987 had published his book the closing of the American mind so last year is the 30th anniversary of the closing of the American mind a book that began with the now very familiar words there is only one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of almost every student entering the university believes or says he believes the truth is relative now what's really interesting is that in 1987 when the closing of the American mind was published Allan bloom one of the most influential figures in the American Academy did not diagnose the problem as post-modernism but rather as modernity gone wrong by the way that thirtieth anniversary of the closing of the American mind did not receive the attention it was due in 2017 I'm glad we are rectifying that in terms of no place for truth looking at the 25th anniversary of this text but now most Americans know the term post-modernism as a matter of fact is quite pass a in the Academy one of the high prophets of post-modernism up a philosopher from Paris declared that post-modernism happened that is to say it's over it's an accomplished project others major figures in postmodern thinking declared that it's a project that failed and of course inevitably it had to fail given its premises and its denial of objective truth and it been particularly of the no ability of objective truth Allan bloom back in 1987 had diagnosed one of the central problems as the failure to recognize the existence of facts and that's very interesting when you consider what's going on right now in terms of the contemporary cultural discussion once again taking us back to the media about what is and is not a fact and what's a true fact and what's a fake fact all of this very much a part of the current confusion sown by the high prophets of modernity and by those who later identified themselves with post modernity and post-modernism but the second crisis that David wells identified the one that was of his greater concern is the crisis of truth in the church he wrote that this crisis is so pervasive that it has led to the correct diagnosis made in his title and much of a metalic ilysm now there is simply no place for truth he identified this problem at every level congregational denominational certainly in terms of theological seminaries and the academic guilds the entire evangelical Empire as we would identify it including mega churches publishing agencies academia and all the cultural artifacts that come with with what's called evangelicalism about the time this book came out in fact about two years before it came out to the Christian booksellers association with meeting in Orlando Florida and I came down I was at that point editor of the Christian index I came down to visit the Christian Booksellers Association the first thing you note or I noted 27 years ago when I attended that conference was that whatever the Christian Booksellers Association was about it wasn't about books the displays were generally about something else now there were some books out to be sure but very few books with any solidity or materiality at all you could tell exactly what f angelical ism was about as the booksellers by the way that's a those were people who sold books they often had things called stores and we used to speak about bookstores and Christian bookstores began as place to sell to sell books but they died as places who sold incense and Christian Pope and an Easter eggs with Bible verses on them with a few books in the back of the store before they failed you'll notice the bookstore here is a very clear alternative to that pattern the crisis of truth in the church is the far greater crisis of our concern and it was fun and instructive and very helpful for me to go back on this 25th anniversary and look at the indictment the the the bill of charges laid out by David Wells in the book he argued and I quote what is new about our time and it's very interesting he capitalized the O and the T in our time speaking about this is a particular moment a turning point he said the what is new about our time is not the presence of modernization or the fact that the Christian faith is forced with or without its consent to be cognizant of the reshaping of the world but he instead identified what was problematic and new in three developments first he said modern consciousness is being shaped by world civilization and not merely the homogeneous culture of a particular nation that is in the throes of being modernized so that's very helpful to know and certainly true and it is not a compliment to the United States and to our intellectual culture to note that we are still more than we would like to recognize driven by continental developments and this was the world consciousness of which David wrote secondly today's mass media he said which are vital conduits for the values arising from modernization are so intrusive so pervasive so enveloping as to render the experience of modernity intense to a degree that is without precedent now recognized that those words were written long before anyone had ever tweeted those words were written when birds tweeted unlike the rest of us but now you look at what it means look at the verbs that he uses here and and the modifiers he speaks of mass media as vital conduits for The Vow arising from modernity intrusive pervasive so in developing is to render the experience of modernity intents to a degree that is without precedent this is now true for eleven year olds and is is fueled now by an intrusive nough sixth playing by the fact that the New York Times ran an article on last weekend indicating one of the struggles of many parents is to know how to handle the fact that their children want to sleep with their smartphones now this culture is intrusive to a degree driven by technologies that were not yet imagined in 1993 when Al Gore had not yet invented the Internet the third clarification dr. wells made was this he said we are seeing on a social scale that is without precedent the mass experimentation with and adoption of the values of modernity well in my latest book entitled no time to be silent it's it's or we cannot be silent and be helpful to know the title of your own book yeah that tells you how much I've been thinking about dr. wells book of retitling my own latest book but we cannot be silent is it is in the first part and attempt to diagnose this very thing the way that the values of modernity have now been so mainstreamed into the culture that they are in effect the only blood stream the culture knows there are the the it's the only vocabulary the culture knows and in in that work I published just about a year ago I deal with the argument made by a British theologian by the name of Theo Hobson very helpful I think by the way Theo Hobson does not share our concerns or our worldview he's self-identified as a theological liberal but he speaks of what dr. wells diagnosis here in terms of what it means to experience a moral revolution not just to shift in morality not just a change in the moral landscape but a pervasive thorough and genuine moral revolution three criteria he suggests and Cerie first what was condemned must be now celebrated you got to follow this very closely the first step but only the first step is that what was condemned must be celebrated the second necessary step is that what was celebrated must be condemned so you can see the displacement of Christianity in terms of the fact that what Christianity condemned is now celebrated and that means that Christianity in terms of its moral and and comprehensive truth claims must not be condemned but the third point he says is also necessary for a moral revolution to take place and that is this those who will not celebrate must be condemned and we can now see this the in the span of time from 1993 to 2018 just seen in seminole decisions by the United States Supreme Court have made this just abundantly clear as a matter of fact the very process that David Wells identified in this book can be traced to just three Supreme Court decisions each authored in the majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy who articulated these very arguments as being straightforwardly the most salient arguments that could be made of course these values are now to shape our culture well looking back at those three particular indictments was neighbor Wells right I did something interesting in preparation for this I had some of my research assistants and interns go back and copy for me every major review of no place for truth published between 1993 and 1995 let me just let you in on a little secret most people did not like this book Christianity today did not like this book and most of the reviews were dismissive suggesting that David Wells is a crank and and the book is a jeremiad that is just the bitter words of someone missing an older evangelicalism that is disappearing of course I have the opposite response when I read the book I grabbed it as a lifeline and furthermore as exactly the kind of argument that must be made if truth is to be honored by taught by preached by and defended by the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ but that again just affirms the point and evangelicalism specifically in which there was then no place for truth also had no place for a book entitled no place for truth and that in itself was a very tragic verification of the thesis one of the interesting things about reading no place for truth now is how quaint many of the illustrations are you have to be of a certain age to even get the inside jokes in some of it but I'm of a certain age so I I get it but many of the illustrations given references I mean they are they're heartbreaking more heartbreaking now than then what was famous infamous of constant symbolic attention and Emma Jellicle ISM in the 80s and the 90s was the Crystal Cathedral in California and Robert Schuller do you don't want to know that the real irony in all of this of course after Schuler's died although his ideas have largely just been mainstreamed into the culture but do you know that the Crystal Cathedral during the time that robert shiller was alive was not a cathedral he was no bishop there was no seat of a bishop there there was no diocese whose bishops sat in the Crystal Cathedral but there is now it is now the roman catholic cathedral of the Diocese of Orange California when the church was sold and effective bankruptcy it was the Roman Catholic Church they bought it of all ironies it is now a cathedral but you look at the trajectory and even the anecdotal history of evangelicalism during the last 25 years it's not that the illustrations are just now quaint it's that they have now been so utterly multiplied and simply updated in terms of current language cultural currents symbolism the main issue of course was the disappearance of theology from modern Christianity in the abandonment of truth dr. Wells wrote I do so on the assumption that theology making his thesis I do so on the assumption that theology is a knowledge that belongs first and foremost to the people of God and that the proper and primary audience for theology is therefore the church not to learn it gild that's an amazingly strong and on its face a necessary statement how could it otherwise be the theology be first and foremost the possession of a theological guild rather than of the church but you have to understand as many of you do while your presence even here at this conference that there had developed an effective allergy not only a distaste not only a lack of appetite but a positive allergy to theology on the part of many pastors and for that matter many theological educators and beyond that many Christians and those who were the leaders of the evangelical Empire dr. Wells went on to say that theology is not merely a philosophical reflection about the nature of things but is rather the cogent articulation of the knowledge of God the centrality of the knowledge of God as the first issue of theology now again we understand that that was not a new realization or theological discovery in 1993 what's most telling is that it had to be stated explicitly as a corrective in 1993 in my mind the most interesting part of the book is how it ends and that this requires a little more attention the book begins of course with its titled no place for truth it's hard to know where one could find encouragement on the other side of that but of course it wasn't merely a Jeremiah and it was a call for correction although it was pervasively and overwhelmingly a book of analysis and diagnosis almost an autopsy on evangelicalism and the Christian Church in America and this time he ended the book by writing and I quote geology is dying not because the Academy has failed to devise adequate procedures for reconstructing it but because the church is lost its capacity for it and while some hail this loss is a step forward toward the hope of a new image a local vitality it is in fact a sign of creeping death the emptiness of evangelical faith without theology echoes the emptiness of modern life both have elected to cross over into a world in which God has no place in which reality has been rewritten in which Christ has become redundant his word irrelevant and the church must now find new reasons for its existence end quote but of course there are no new reasons for the church's existence although when you look at what's now not so much represented by the evangelical movement as mega church not even now in terms of the the movement or impulse within evangelicalism they labeled itself emergent whatever emerged was not a church and it's now largely moved far off the evangelical periphery but when you look at what is presented by the world as its understanding of angelical ISM it is astoundingly and devastatingly devoid of theology in particular in the passage I read dr. Wells used that sequence of phrases a world in which God has no place in which reality has been rewritten in which Christ has become redundant his word irrelevant you take all that apart and you recognize from that humanly speaking there could be no recovery whatsoever a world in which Christ has become redundant an interesting choice of words what does it mean for Christ to become redundant well in a world of therapy and the therapeutic answer to everything one convinces oneself that there is no need for a redeemer all we need is therapy and and of course that hasn't gone away as a matter of fact that has now been multiplied into a myriad of ever-expanding therapy's just to see one example look at the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in terms of psychiatry and psychology and recognize according to our own psychiatrists and psychologists we are not getting healthier we are just getting deeper and deeper into a greater multiplicity of psychosis and neurosis is not a word you can use anymore but everything that is diagnosed in this manual of diagnosis and basically it just comes down to the worldview that you are either in therapy or in denial that is the that is the only the only divide amongst human beings in such a world Christ has become redundant and of course that requires sin to disappear which going back to the Crystal Cathedral one of the most awkward moments in my life and it's blissfully gloriously awkward but it was genuinely awkward I was speaking on a tour for a group of Christian schools and teacher conventions which is an interesting thing to do to speak to conventions of Christian teachers and and I don't mean little conventions I mean many thousands of them in giant Colosseum and and I it was is a strange sequence of events I would get on a plane fly to speak and then I'd just go get on another plane fight in the next city it didn't really matter where I was they want me to give the same address in five different cities over the course of six days from coast to coast so far so good but I was speaking about this very problem of the disappearance of truth and I was trying to encourage these Christian teachers to reclaim truth understand Christianity as a necessity framing Christian education as the transference of truth the inculcation of truth The Preserve viren's and preserving of truth anyway I I found myself on the west coast speaking in a hotel sláinte the plane was late I got there at O about 3 o'clock in the morning just got a little bit of sleep got up the next morning and went to give the address again I gave it in the this Coliseum attached to the hotel in California and I gave my great illustration of the the loss of truth and have angelical ISM when it comes to the understanding of humanity and I cited Robert Schuller who in his book self esteem the new Reformation began it by saying that sin must be rican sieved not as an offense against a holy God as in any way recognizable to historic Protestantism Morelli said sin is a fundamental lack of self-esteem that inhibits the full development of the human personality sin is a fundamental lack of self-esteem just exactly what you read in Genesis 3 but that was his argument and I went at it and at the end of my address the committee that was organizing the whole thing hit me I said wow wow I said what they said that was really courageous and I said why and they said well just given even where you're standing I said what are you talking about and they took me over to the curtain pulled back the curtain and there was the Chris I was across the street from the Crystal Cathedral it gets much much worse much much worse than he said and you realize the man who introduced you as the headmaster of their school and okay just made his life more interesting but I stand to by the argument but again that now appears to be quaint but it's not because Robert Schuller lost the argument in the culture it's because the culture is just well I just now breathe that air so deeply that it doesn't recognize anything other and it's to be moved on to an even greater number of diagnoses all in therapeutic terms a world doctor well said in which reality has been rewritten and you think how could that happen well let me just go back to that advertising slogan adopted by the New York Times truth the truth it's more important than ever well is it less important when the New York Times was established was it less important during the Civil War during the Great Depression during to cataclysmic world wars was a when when was it less important it's now more important than ever okay but again reality and this means fundamental reality time does not now the diagnosis of all that is now contained even 25 years later in this revising of reality God has no place well you'll notice the booktitle is no place for truth but in the last two pages of the book he argues that we now live in a world in which there's no place for God well there's a sense in which our worldview would have us to understand they're saying the same thing these two sentences and no place for truth no place for God because we actually don't believe in a world in which there's a place for truth without a place for God but this is a more foundational diagnosis a world in which there is no place for truth is inevitably a world in which there is no place for God he went on to define this world we now know it in this age as a time in which God's Word is irrelevant now of course we know that God's Word is not irrelevant but is a world that considers God's Word irrelevant and of course that's the way it is within much of the Christian Church God's Word is irrelevant and at least two different senses in the first sense it is irrelevant in the eyes of many who have adopted a platform of revising it that that's the entire thesis of theological liberalism we cannot live with the Word of God as it is now it's irrelevant Harry Emerson Fosdick one of the earliest of the Protestant liberal simply said modern man has no particular use for the Bible as we have received it there you go so we're going to do something with it in order to make it relevant but that that's the first method that the second method is simply to ignore it where the Bible simply becomes an embarrassment and that embarrassment leads to silence in both senses God's Word has indeed become irrelevant not only much of the world better much of the church he concluded the book by writing several lines including these quote unless the evangelical church can recover the knowledge of what it means to live before a holy God and lessen its worship it can relearn humility wonder love and praise unless it can find again a moral purpose in the world that resonates with the holiness of God and is accordingly deep and unyielding unless the evangelical church can do all these things theology will have no place in its life end quote now one of the things you know just in terms of publishing history is that that paragraph basically points to all the volumes that continued as dr. Nichols spoke of earlier in the great project of which this was the first major manifesto from the pen of David Wells he for the better part of our understanding took everyone to these phrases and wrote a book about it and a very important book but we also recognize that his key point is unyielding unless the evangelical church can do all these things all these things now what were those things again it was recovered the knowledge of what it means to live before a holy God and that must then lead to worship that relearn's humility wonder love and praise a church must the church must find again a moral purpose in the world that resonates with the holiness of God now here's what's interesting to me is I again look back 25 years later this is a language that Christians throughout the ages would have immediately understood to be the very grammar of Christianity and I think it's fair to say that the same is true of those who are gathered in this room the same is true of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Boyce College is true of Reformation Bible College it's true of the of the churches and and others represented by those who are here in this conference is true of Ligonier ministries but that grammar which is so familiar to us we need to recognize over and over again helps to explain why we are gathered here together why we see ourselves together fairly regularly and why we believe in these ministries and in these schools because we are in effect the opposition culture to what is diagnosed in this book and we also recognize that when we're talking about the knowledge of God and the truth of God we're speaking of the holiness of God and the moral character of God and we're speaking about the work of Christ and we're of what it would mean to be a Christian institution or don't make truth and we're talking about the scrip the very word of God we're using a language that Christians must use if there is to be any Christianity the fact that it would have to be stated in such stark terms in 1993 is to me the most chilling realization looking back on the 25th anniversary this book and of course many of the critics who wrote those reviews overwhelmingly negative about the book and I'm sure that David Wells expected those reviews to be overwhelmingly negative I think that's why you wrote the book not to get negative reviews but to aggravate all the right people which is not the main reason he wrote the book but it's at least it is we should just say to each other face to face that's not a bad reason to write a book to aggravate all the right people and to encourage hopefully simultaneously all the right people but he did point to hope listen to these words and I quote the reverse is also true if the church can begin to find a place for theology by refocusing itself on the centrality of God if it can rest upon his sufficiency if it can recover its moral fiber then it will have something to say to a world now drowning in modernity and there he wrote lies the great irony those who are most relevant to the modern world are those most irrelevant to the moral purpose of God but those who are irrelevant to the world by virtue of their relevance to God have the most to say to the world they are in fact the only ones who have anything to say to it that is what Jesus declared what the church in its best moments is known and what we by the grace of God can yet again discover now I was very thankful to get to that paragraph I can sense that you are as well because the work of necessary diagnosis whether in medicine or in theology would be for nothing if there is no answer and there is no hope and thankfully in just a few sentences David Wells distilled that hope and it really is nothing more than the logical reversal and Aristotle in terms of his rhetoric would understand this argument in immediately the diagnosis of the problem is then reversed in terms of the hope for recovery on the very same ground on the very same points and it comes down to this what was lost must be recovered but it's interesting to use to look at the words that dr. wells used he spoke of it instead being discovered again and and that's exactly what we hope and pray for that's what we hope and work for that's what we get to see I want to give to Professor David Wells and to others very good news I get to see this again discoverer of which he spoke in thousands of young people drawn to Christian ministry and I think there is a very very important difference in the seminary students the young men in particular training to be pastors when we compare 1993 and 2018 there isn't a single student on southern seminaries campus there because he has been encouraged by cultural Christianity to consider the ministry a profession that will give him social advancement the young men who have arrived on our campus to study recognize they are forfeiting their lives in the views of their generation maybe even of their parents of their peers they have already been swimming against the tide a tidal wave a tsunami of modernity and they have arrived on our shores ready for only one thing and that is the truth they're not about to forfeit what the world offers they're not about to let Goods and kindred go for a therapy or for some kind of vain hope or or for some mere pragmatism of course in the diagnosis that irritated so many people in the argument of no place for truth it was it was David Wells diagnosis of the managerial revolution as so much of the problem and again if you redefine senorita fine salvation to refine the church you redefine everything redefine reality as he pointed out then then management will do just fine and the rise of the management culture in the United States and of the entire mainstreaming again of the managerial impulse it certainly showed up in the church and and and by and by the way let me just point out we can't do without management there's a reason why I am president of Southern Seminary the institution needs a president someone's gotta sign things and someone's someone's name has to be on it and it's management but the problem is that the managerial revolution was not about good proper management it was about management as an end unto itself and truth was expendable the the redefining of the ministry in managerial terms one of the things that this book did in terms of irritating seminaries was was in David Wells indictment in his jeremiad of the Doctor of Ministry degree demon deep period mi n period which he then cleverly called the demonization of ministry now I'll say the seminary president it could be but it's not necessarily so but the demon degree when it began was explicitly in so many ways a way of either transforming the ministry into a managerial function or a therapeutic function the degree itself doesn't have to be the problem but the very existence and emergence of the degree indicated I will admit the problem so the book begins with its title no place for truth it ends with the declaration that in the culture at large and he raises the issue within what a much of what claims to be institutional Christianity there's now absolutely no place for God but the book doesn't end with hopelessness but rather the hope of discovering God truth and theology once again the only hope of an evangelical future and we're here because we share that hope we do see in 2018 signs of trouble even as we see the hope of reformation amid the ruins part of what's happening right now is just simply a winnowing whenev angelical ISM is no longer admired by the culture and by this I don't mean evangelicalism is a political definition that's where the the culture is largely stuck but I I mean in terms of what we know to be that evangelical Empire of institutions churches denominations persons agencies publishing houses and all the rest we do see some signs of reformation and part of that is just the winnowing because the people who can who really are interested to buy books about therapy can buy better books than our therapists can right now you don't need a few Bible verses and into Freud or have to update Freud these days you can just buy Freud you don't need that you don't really need Joel Osteen if you got Oprah and a distant second you really you really don't have the need of this and in terms of management the the problem with with being the best manager is you won't be for long because the world moves right along and management is redefined a new pragmatic Idol to be treasured polished and then dispensed with so in first Timothy chapter three verses 14 through 15 we read Paul write to Timothy I hope to come to you soon but I'm writing these things to you so that if I delay you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God which is the Church of the Living God a pillar and buttress of the truth much mischief has been done with this text the Roman Catholic Church sees it as a way of affirming the fact that the church is the steward of truth that truth emerges out of the church and the the truth is basically subservient to the church we know the fullness of Scripture even from explicit statements of the Apostle Paul to the contrary that is not the case but Paul here unabashedly unashamedly identifies the church as pillar and butter of the truth its identity as a people of the truth you can't have a church in which there's no place for truth if there is no place for truth it is no church but the Church of Lord Jesus Christ survives not because of our managerial excellence or because of our therapeutic adaptations or or even because of our best attempts and Reformation the church survives because jesus said upon this rock i will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it but wherever we find the church we find the truth the church cannot exist without truth you know this has implications this means that the minister the pastor must be primarily about truth the preacher of truth the teacher of truth dr. Wales used an interesting noun there that was the the minister as a broker of truth this means that the entire life of the church has to be built around the centrality of God misson travel T of Christ the centrality of the Word of God and the centrality of truth now as we follow a logical sequence this takes us right back to the sixteenth century in the Reformation we understand the logic of how the Reformation became encapsulated in those five soloists because every one of them each of them is what we are left with irreducibly we understand the logic of the gospel the logic of God the logic of Christ the logic of the church thus when we speak of a place for truth we're speaking about a place where the reality of God is the most fundamental truth where what God has done for us in Christ is affirmed and embraced and celebrated and explicitly biblical terms where the church is understood to be the people of truth by God's grace and to his glory where the ministry is defined in terms of the brokerage of truth the preservation of truth the teaching of truth the transference of truth or the Christian life is redefined in terms of a life of truth transformed by the grace of God living in submission and obedience to the Word of God the centrality of Scripture in the church Sola scriptura eventually without the affirmation of Sola scriptura all the rest of it falls apart and there will be no place for truth so as I come to the end of this address and to the end of my time I want to begin these very final words by saying that David Wells is not a crank sadly the last 25 years the last quarter-century has proved his words to be more accurate more perceptive and even more courageous than they were recognized to be in 1993 but I also want to say 25 years later I think we have even greater reason for hope the kind of hope that is articulated at the end of a place no place for truth the kind of Hope is based upon the sovereignty of God and the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ the kind of hope that is represented by the fact that 25 years later this room was filled with people who came to think about what it means to stand 25 years after this brave diagnosis of evangelicalism and Christianity in America and also it brings us great hope to know that we're not alone not by a long count and we understand that we're standing in a very long line of faithfulness and we intend to spend the rest of our lives doing whatever we can to extend that line in order that this book would be seen as an important marker that diagnosed the ills of evangelical Christianity in the late 20th century in the context of modernity in order that by God's grace no matter what the world may throw at us we would find the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ standing in truth if nowhere else may this be a place for truth to the glory of God amen you

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Published: Thu Feb 08 2018