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

Daniel H. Williams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1999

A learned and uniquely constructive book that gently urges "suspicious" Christians to reclaim the patristic roots of their faith. This is the first book of its kind meant to help Protestant Christians recognize the early church fathers as an essential part of their faith. Writing primarily to the evangelical, independent, and free church communities, who remain largely suspicious of church history and the relationship between Scripture and tradition, D. H. Williams clearly explains why every branch of today's church owes its heritage to the doctrinal foundation laid by postapostolic Christianity. Based on solid historical scholarship, this volume shows that embracing the "catholic" roots of the faith will not lead to the loss of Protestant distinctiveness but is essential for preserving the Christian vision in our rapidly changing world.

Product Details

• Paperback: 254 pages
• Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (September 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802846688
• ISBN-13: 978-0802846686
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #641,018 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Challenge to the Evangelical Mind, November 13, 2005

By 

Labarum (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants (Paperback)

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.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't be afraid of the T word, March 24, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants (Paperback)

As a Baptist teaching patristics and historical theology at Loyola University of Chicago, D. H. Williams is well positioned to write this book. He knows from the inside the suspicion (indeed, hostility) of many in the "Free Church" toward anything labeled tradition. Worried that the market-oriented approach to estab-lishing "Bible-based" churches will result in an increasingly sectarian model of the Church, he aims to show that only by taking on board the Church's Tradition (the common Christian tradition, as opposed to the traditions of various Christian groups) can evangelicals preserve a definitive theological center.

Williams claims that, despite their mistrust of the formal language of creeds, all the essential elements of evangelical theology are dependent on the Tradition enshrined in the Nicene or Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, rather than simply being drawn from the Bible (37). He shows that the earliest Church was guided by tradition expressed in the formulation of the Gospel, the messianic exegesis of the Old Testament, the survival of ancient confessional and hymnic materials in the New Testament, and the formation of the Christian canon itself. He makes the case that the efforts of Tertullian and Irenaeus to define the norms of the apostolic Rule of Faith were made necessary by claims and counterclaims of Gnostics, Marcionites, and others that the Bible supported their competing versions of truth. He shows that the need for catechetical instruction required the churches to distill the essentials of the faith into formulaic constructs. His delicate task here is to show that the various summaries of the Rule of Faith were all intended as condensations of the apostolic Tradition existing alongside, but not displacing, scripture.

Next he tackles the notion, widespread among Free Church evangelicals, that the "pristine" Church of the New Testament period fell into corruption shortly thereafter, particularly as it accommodated itself to the empire during Constantine's rule. He sharply critiques examples of Free Church historiography that attempt to trace out a pure line of apostolic Christianity (represented by the Poor of Lyons, the Albigensians, Waldensians, Hus, Wycliffe, and others) preserved against the slide of the Church into the apostasy of papal absolutism.

Williams faces his most difficult task in chapter 5, where he devotes forty pages to responding to what he identifies as four theses implicit in the evangelical rejection of the ecumenical councils and creeds. In sum, this rejection is based on the misunderstanding that: (1) bishops of the late patristic period were tools of imperial and papal power rather than shepherds of the people; (2) the Nicene and post-Nicene creeds were political decisions that were meant to displace local church confessions; (3) the universal creeds dethroned scripture from its uniquely authoritative position. Williams maintains that during the post-Constantinian period the Church worked out definitive theological positions slowly, providentially, and, insofar as possible, consensually. Moreover, Constantine is not re-sponsible for the conception and wording of the Nicene Creed, which largely incorporated formulas in use in churches prior to 325 (except for the phrases "true God from true God, "from the substance of the Father," and "of same substance of the Father" [homoousios]).

The author then turns to the magisterial reformers to show that, however much they protested against the abuses of the pope, conciliar authorities, and clergy, Luther and Calvin both valued true catholicity and generally approved the doctrinal definitions of the first four general councils. Although Williams stops short of claiming that these same councils ought to define the faith for all believers, he does say that, "The Tradition as found in the ancient confessions, the rule of faith, and the doctrinal theology of the Fathers provides truth about God. . . . These sources point us beyond ourselves and ask us to peer out from the confines of the Protestant 'ghettos' we have created into the main street of catholic Christianity" (217).

As one of a growing tribe of self-confessed "free church catholics" (note the lower case), I find much to commend in this book. At the same time, it is unsettling to find the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), not only paired with Seventh Day Adventism as "an emerging species of idiosyncratic Protestantism" in the antebellum United States (19), but also consistently referred to as the Disciples of Christ (Christian Church). One could easily get the impression that the Disciples tradition should be understood solely in terms of its eighteenth-century origins, despite the long and distinguished history of the Disciples in ecumenical dialogue. Also, while I am glad to acknowledge the importance of the work of the first four great Church councils, I have reservations about the adequacy of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan formulation. The expression "the Creed" still means for me the "Apostles' Creed." Perhaps, as a New Testament scholar, I am reluctant to submerge any of the Christological voices of scripture (and the early Church) under one orthodox formulation, especially one that retains the filioque phrase. But perhaps I am only resistant to Williams's very capable instruction.

Robert F. Hull, Jr

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A LOOK AT THE 21ST CENTURY FAITH - ANCIENT AND FUTURE, December 13, 1999

By 

Fr Mac D. Culver (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants (Paperback)

When the history of the Church in the 21st Century is written, surely D. H. Williams will be one counted as a modern day prophet. This is a most interesting and challenging work that places the Ancient Faith directly in the stream of the Evangelical Faith. Modern day evangelical protestants are discovering that while the faith is wide, it is not very deep. We have lost our "roots" and thus are tossed about by every wind of teaching and yet another denomination springs up.

Once one gets over the shock of an Evangelical Baptist Pastor teaching in a Roman Catholic University; the book continues to offer up challenges and surprises that serves to focus our faith. As a former Evangelical Protentant who is now an Anglo-Catholic, I delight that others are also on the journey "back to the future".

An outstanding work that may well become a great classic of the faith.