"...although in the sixteenth century the Word of God had been taken captive by the Catholic Church, the meaning of sin had been lost, and the death of Christ had been diluted, the Reformation still happened.
"The Gospel was recovered, the Church was renewed, Christian life was invigorated, and Europe was changed in deep and profound ways.
"If the Church then, which had been all but lost despite its outward wealth and pomp, could be recovered, so can the Church today. And if Europe [during the time of the Reformation] could be changed as drastically as it was, so might out world today.
"Then as now, however, the prerequisite is a Christian life that is biblically faithful and a Church that is doctrinally shaped, morally tough, intellectually vibrant, and buoyant with a faith that can lay hold of the promises of God in the face of circumstantial disconfirmation and see God's great power at work.
"Is this the kind of Christian life we find in evangelical churches? The answer is that what I have described here is becoming rare and is being replaced by a kind of spirituality that, because it is walking lockstep with the culture so often, is better able to mimic that culture than to change it."
-- David Wells, "Losing Our Virtue" p.30 (Eerdmans 1998)
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