Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church »

D. H. Williams (Ph.D., University of Toronto) is professor of religion in patristics and historical theology at Baylor University. He is the author of Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism and the editor of The Free Church and the Early Church.

The past few years have seen a growing interest among evangelical leaders in the thought and life of the early Christian church. There is a desire to rediscover historical roots in the face of today's postmodern and increasingly post-denominational world.

Evangelicals and Tradition is the first in a valuable new series of books edited by D. H. Williams. The series seeks to help today's church leaders recover the early church fathers' ancient understandings of Christian belief and practice for application to ministry in the twenty-first century. This first book traces the development and role of tradition in the early church, what kind of authority should be ascribed to tradition, and tradition's interaction with the Protestant hallmarks of "Scripture alone" and "by faith alone."

Library Journal

Sociologists and theologians assert that we live in a post-Christian milieu. Such a claim may be overstated, but the Christian community at large is referred to as postdenominational. Theological and biblical illiteracy are the norm, not the exception; furthermore, the corporate or Catholic church has veered from tradition or lost its roots. Nature abhors a vacuum, and Williams fills the void with this first in a new series on the church fathers, "Evangelical Ressourcement," which exhumes exegetical, theological, and spiritual wisdom from the patristic church. As a professor of patristics and historical theology at Baylor University, Williams is qualified to tackle this subject. Moreover, he has traversed similar ground in his previous books (e.g., Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism). Here he examines the concept of tradition, its origin and components, and how it was used in the early church. The book should engender amicable and productive dialog and appeal to Evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox believers alike. The end result: renewal, recovery, and revival of the 21st-century Church (which sounds uncannily similar to the motif of the Emergent Church). Although a primer, the book is most appropriate for serious readers. Those interested in lighter devotional material would do well to pass. Recommended without reservation for academic libraries and collections specializing in religion and theology.-C. Brian Smith, Arlington Heights Memorial Lib., IL Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.