The Impulse of Power: Formative Ideals of Western Civilization (Follow this link to Amazon)

The Impulse of Power: Formative Ideals of Western Civilization (Follow this link to Barnes and Noble)

Michael W. Kelley

Michael W. Kelley concludes his latest book "The Impulse of Power: Formative Ideals of Western Civilization" by stating "Whether or not Western culture is to continue…will depend upon Christianity becoming a force for culture in a way that it has not been so far."

Currently Western culture is rushing ever more quickly toward the brink of collapse and degeneration. A sadder moment in human history cannot be imagined. Clearly the seeds of cultural unraveling were always present, given man’s fallen nature. And Dr. Kelley traces those seeds as they germinate into Western man’s reliance on the logic and reason found in the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, among many. Later as we see the sprouting heresies of Gnosticism, Monasticism, Scholasticism and the ever broadening appeal of man as God, King, and Center of the Universe.

Against this background of a weakening culture, Dr. Kelley successfully argues the revelational nature of Christianity as the glue that held the centrifuge of Western culture together. Keeping the West from splintering into the multitude of camps always present within, and amply illustrated externally in the cultures surrounding the West. Conversely it is demonstrated that it is Christianity, contrary to revisionist history, that has led Western civilization to its pinnacle of influence and hope for all mankind.

That Christianity and Christ’s Church have been the bedrock of Western Civilization, while true, is not necessarily the aim of Dr. Kelley’s thesis. Instead he seeks, by demonstrating the wayward glances of the past, to steady the vision of the coming generational Christians on the steadfast revelation that is God’s plan and direction for human culture. He points out rightly that God has created man as a cultural creature to shape and conform his culture to the will of his Creator. "Man can only truly act in this capacity by knowing that his meaning as man is only made possible by consciously recognizing that it lies rooted in God and not in himself."

Obvious to any casual reading of the contemporary scene are the dire consequences of our failing. The forces of Western disintegration could not be more clearly apparent to those with eyes to see and ears to hear. " No generation can begin, or make its contribution without first absorbing the work of those who have come before." This means both for the good and for the ill, but with a clear deciphering of which is which. This means for the West and for Christianity that man turn fully and with open hearts and minds to the clear revelation of God, in word and in the flesh. Only thus can Western Man reverse the terrible trend we see before us.

The value for this reader that Dr. Kelley imparts is that this situation is really nothing new under the sun or in the West. Nor are the forces so dangerous, nor so fearsome that Christ and his believers can not overcome. For the revealed word is "victory", and only our continued failure of attending to that message of God’s revelation will lead us from the path to a victory already won.