Evangelicals and the Early Church: Recovery Reform Renewal

In this volume noted Evangelical historians and theologians examine the charge of the supposed ahistorical nature of Evangelicalism and provide a critical historical examination of the relationship between the Protestant evangelical heritage and the early church. In doing so the contributors show the long and deeply historical rootedness of the Protestant Reformation and its Evangelical descendants as well as underscoring some inherent difficulties such as the Mercersburg and Oxford movements. In the second part of the volume the discussion moves forward as evangelicals rediscover the early church-its writings liturgy catechesis and worship-following the temporary amnesia of the earlier part of the twentieth century. Most essays are accompanied by a substantial response prompting discussion or offering challenges and alternative readings of the issue at hand thus allowing the reader to enter a conversation already in progress and engage the topic more fully. This bidirectional look-understanding the historical background on the one hand and looking forward to the future with concrete suggestions on the other-forms a more full-orbed argument for readers who want to understand the rich and deep relationship between Evangelicalism and the early church. This unusually interesting volume combines bracing historical engagement with rare theological wisdom. Its chapters carefully explore why how under what conditions and how much contemporary evangelicals should try to appropriate guidance from the first Christian centuries. A particularly helpful feature is the paired chapters that promote the best kind of respectful give and take on contested or difficult questions. The book is a gem of edifying insight. -Mark Noll Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History University of Notre Dame Here is a collection of essays that invites the reader to wrestle along with the authors over the query why evangelicals have not embraced more fully the early church as part of their theological and ecclesiastical legacy. It is certainly a question of importance. The appropriation of the early church by essentially free-church segments of contemporary Christianity remains at the experimental stage however much momentum it has gained over the last twenty years. Of varying degrees valuable insights are offered in this book with which pastoral and academic leadership needs to grapple for the future of evangelicalism. -D. H. Williams Professor of Patristics and Historical Theology Baylor University In 1994 Mark Noll threw down the gauntlet in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind challenging evangelical churches to overcome anti-intellectualism and broaden their engagement with a variety of intellectual traditions not only in theology but in other disciplines in the humanities and sciences. Surely one sign of an opening of the evangelical mind is the expanding interest over the last decade among evangelical scholars in the Catholic and Orthodox theological traditions of late antiquity and their value as a resource of Biblical exegesis and theological reflection. Evangelicals and the Early Church as a collection of excellent essays by evangelicals about the relevance of patristic thought for evangelicals is invaluable both for evangelicals wanting to integrate early Christian theology into a distinctly evangelical articulation of the Gospel and for non-evangelicals interested in understanding the state of the evangelical mind at the beginning of the twenty-first century. -J. Warren Smith Associate Professor of Historical Theology Duke University Why should evangelicals be concerned about the post-New Testament church? This volume addresses this fundamental question in several ways: by probing the reasons why earlier evangelicals focused on the church fathers by examining some of the pitfalls of relying on the patristic period and by reflecting in detail on the relation between Scripture the church fathers and e