Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 256 pages
• Published by: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company September 1, 1999
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0802846688
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0802846686
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Weighs: 12.6 ounces

Reader Reviews
The troubled state of Evangelical worship and doctrine has elicited different solutions from those within its boundaries. Some have called for a repudiation of the individualism so prevalent in the Evangelical mainstream and a return to the higher view of the Church endorsed by the early Protestant Reformers. Others, concluding the principles behind the Protestant experiment have been the cause of the problem, have cast their lots with Rome, Constantinople, and Canterbury. Still another view, championed by Thomas Oden and D. H. Williams, calls for retaining the many strengths of the Evangelical movement and adding to it the riches of the faith of the early Church. In Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism, Williams puts forth an analysis of the current state of affairs in Evangelicalism and their historical roots. He then proposes a program for a new Evangelicalism by retaining the current structures but supplementing them with a sense of history and received faith and tradition so missing from the current Evangelical scene. Only by maintaining contact with the Christians of the past, Williams contends, can Evangelicals be truly prepared to counter doctrinal errors and questionable practices within the Church. Williams' historical analysis makes a number of insightful points as to how the Churches founded by the early Reformers gradually turned their backs on the past. For example, Williams contends there was initially a far greater respect of the Tradition of the Church among Protestants until the wide use within Roman Catholicism of the Donation of Constantine - now known to be a forgery - to bolster papal claims. It was in this period that the Emperor Constantine was demonized by many Protestant apologists. Thus because Roman apologists convinced early Protestants of something that never actually happened, Protestants increasingly viewed the post-Constantinian Church as the source of apostasy. Williams forcefully points out the folly of this characterization - the most important doctrines of the Christian Faith received their most powerful expression and defense from the Ecumenical Councils and Church Fathers of that period. Additionally, there was no disconnect of doctrine and practice with what was believed prior to Constantine. It is this disengagement from the history of the Church that is the source of many current woes in modern Evangelical Protestantism and leads some to invent their own histories (i.e., the ahistoric silliness of such beliefs as Baptist Successionism and the restorationist sects). However, a question one must pose to Williams is if the Evangelical mainstream were to adopt the ideas suggested here, would they cease to be Evangelicals and become something else? That is, does the proposed solution mean to leave Evangelicalism as has been known and practiced and move on to another path. If ahistoricial reasoning is as ingrained into the Evangelical Protestant psyche as Williams suggests, then it follows that a large part of the Evangelical house has been built upon sand. Reforms of the existing system, however good the intentions, cannot overcome the erroneous assumptions at its foundation. A true correction would mean the creation of something new or the return to something old. However this may play out for Evangelicalism (and Williams himself hints at the fact that many Evangelicals glory in their lack of historical understanding), Retrieving the Tradition & Renewing Evangelicalism has, along with many other recent works by concerned Protestants, sounded the alarm and called for a reappraisal of their own beliefs and practices in light of the early Church. D. H. Williams has provided a major work that rightly deserves to be considered the most important "in-house" challenges to Evangelicals. It remains a question as to whether Evangelicals will bother to answer the challenge. Comment | | (Report this)