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

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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.

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

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.

This book is a fascinating read, and I give it high marks for that; but it's not or everyone. If complex theological questions bore you, you won't make it through the first chapter.

The book aims to refute the prevalent evangelical notion that Church tradition is necessarily at odds with the principle of sola scriptura. Williams makes his point effectively by taking aim at several common misconceptions about Church history:

* He shows that the Church did not fall some time after the New Testament era, only to be restored in the Reformation.

* He shows that the ecumenical creeds developed out of the traditions of local churches, rather than being imposed by a state-sponsored top-down hierarchy.

* He shows that early Christian writers appealed to scripture as the final authority, and that the reformers of the sixteenth century appealed to early Christian writers (i.e., to Church tradition) to defend their interpretations of scripture.

If the historical data Williams cites is accurate, then he has made a compelling case for the place of tradition not as a second source of truth alongside scripture, but as a context which informs us in our interpretation of scripture and our understanding of our Christian faith. However, his concluding remarks speak of a higher goal, and in attaining that goal his book misses the mark.

Williams is rightly distressed by the theological chaos which has overtaken evangelical Christianity. He asserts that the solution to this mess is for Christians to once again take tradition seriously as a context in which to interpret scripture. Only by rejecting the idea of personal interpretation, which makes every Christian a little Pope, and appealing instead to the traditions of the Church, can we hope to achieve doctrinal stability again.

When I read this, the first question I asked myself was, How do we draw the line between the true traditions of the early Church and the erroneous traditions of medieval Roman Catholicism? He anticipated this question, and states that the line is drawn where tradition began to be based on ecclesiastical authority instead of scriptural authority.

In theory this sounds like good criteria, but on closer examination I find it to be faulty. Many false traditions have claimed scriptural authority, such as the Mormon appeal to John 10:16. Likewise, many true traditions have claimed ecclesiastical authority, such as the Catholic Church in their correct stance on many, many issues.

One could argue that the Mormon appeal to scripture is corrupted by their aberrations; and that many Catholic traditions remain informed by scripture despite their ecclesiastical views. But even if that is enough to refute the first objection, there is still another.

If we accept the principle of tradition while rejecting Catholic ecclesiology, there is no particular reason to believe this would be effective in resolving the theological chaos of evangelicalism. If the greater authority of scripture cannot be interpreted accurately and consistently without tradition, then how can the lesser authority of tradition be interpreted accurately and consistently? Perhaps we will build tradition upon tradition ad nauseam until one day we compound theological chaos with traditional chaos.

The Catholic Church answers this problem by vesting its authority in the individual person of the Pope, whom it considers to be Christ's representative on Earth. The scripture-tradition model requires such a unifying element. That is the appeal of Catholicism, and its absence is the failure of Williams' book. I am not claiming that the Pope is the answer (I don't believe that he is), but tradition itself cannot fill this unifying role as Williams hopes.

At the suggestion of a professor of Patristics after taking his class on Early Christian Thought, this was a tremendous eye-opener to the danger of forsaking the wellspring of rich legacy found in the Early Church and in Christian history in general. D.H. Williams writes primarily to "Suspicious Protestants," i.e. those leery of tradition and its (oft-thought) destructive influence upon authentic Christianity. On the contrary, Williams argues, Tradition (capital "T" -- thus not the man-made jots and tittles of deadening religion but the Heritage of Orthodoxy bequeethed to us from the Ancient Church) is just the necessary component to direct our way aright in the pluralistic/subjectivist mileiu in which we find ourselves. As Henri de Lubac has correctly noted: "Every time a Christian renewal has blossomed in our West, whether in thought or in life... it has blossomed under the sign of the Fathers."

Buy this book!! You won't regret it!

Williams is another voice in the chorus of Christians calling us to return to the Fathers. In a world threatened by the extremes, Williams calls us to a radical moderation, rooted in the Bible but guided by "the Tradition."

On the one hand, retrieving the Tradition expels the incoherent syncretism that liberal Protestantism tends toward. On the other hand, the Tradition resists the overt consumerism of conservative evangelical church growth. To be fair, both conservative and liberal Protestants engage in marketing religion as another item for consumption. Williams argues that such approaches put Protestants in danger of losing the content for which the original Reformers protested - the apostolic faith as written in Scripture and proclaimed in the Tradition of the Church in late antiquity.

To argue that D.H. Williams is "postmodern" is simply avoiding the issue. If consumer religion is modern, then Williams is post-modern. One reviewer suggests that Williams denies "ultimate truth" because Williams doesn't quote 1 Timothy's statement that "all Scripture is inspired by God." The same reviewer also dismisses the idea that the Bible can be twisted and made to say anything. This again misses the point. Williams affirms the inspiration of the Bible by God. His point is to explain how the earliest Christians recognized and affirmed together that inspiration.

Moreover, it seems amazing to me that any Protestant could deny that particular passages of Scripture could be twisted or misinterpreted. Was this not the case the Protestant Reformers made against the Roman Catholic church? Jesus himself corrects misinterpretations of the Old Testament. Early Christians encountered those claiming to be Christian who rearranged the picture of Jesus as proclaimed by the apostles and eventually written in the New Testament. Christians need some boundaries when reading the Bible. The Tradition - the faith passed on from the apostles themselves - is that guide. Retrieving that Tradition will enable all Christians, including evangelicals, to reclaim a sense of true catholicity.

Dr. Williams is an unusual teacher and author. In this work, he is able to accept key elements of would be opponents and make those elements his own. And not only does he borrow from the opposition, he sells his own side on the idea that they should do so as well. It is a rare individual who can so skillfully pull off such a feat. It is an honest scholar who is willing to make the attempt to face the assumptions and challenges of his own side. Much more so when the topics have more than 500 years of religious history as baggage.

Dr. Williams not only makes one of the best cases for the importance of searching the scriptures within the context of the traditions of the church fathers, he is also able to calm the fears of his fellow Protestants by taking them into that view demonstrating a great gift of diplomacy toward both Protestant and Catholic. Catholics will find little with which to disagree in this work and may find themselves cheering Dr. Williams on. But, they should not become too excited in that, in the end, Dr. Williams still insists on retaining certain Protestant distinctives, though he shies from defining too narrowly what they may be. Protestants may wonder if Dr. Williams has not already joined the opposition, yet they will find it difficult to deny the logic and historical analysis he brings to bear on the issues. For instance, his analysis of the "fallen Church" paradigm, wherein the claim is made that at some point after the Apostles the church fell into gross corruption and needed replacement rather than reform, is one of the most challenging this reviewer has seen. His conclusions that the fallen church paradigm is dubious at best will likely have a ripple effect through Protestant circles for some time.

As Protestants attempt to find their roots, they have a ready and gifted guide in Dr. Williams. This, along with his other works, can go a long way toward healing the wounds of the reformation. They will also go a long way to giving his Protestant brothers and sisters deeper roots in the ancient faith from which they seem to have jettisoned too soon in the heated debates of the past 500 years. Dr. Williams' work cannot be too highly recommended for both Catholics and Protestants.

Very Briefly, D. H. Williams has written a book that should be read by every Protestant. A Catholic friend once said to me that the fragmentation of Protestantism will eventually lead to there being one church for every Protestant. Sadly with the advent of George Barna's "Revolution" this sad prophecy seems to be well on its way to coming to pass. To compound this sad developement, some of today's most influential Protestant pastors and leaders are flat-out Heretics by the standards of catholic, orthodox early church creeds. We have T.D. Jakes who denies the trinity. We have Brian Mclaren who denies hell and the biblical prosciption against homosexuality. But who is there among us to declare that these teachers are wrong? Where there is no defined orthodoxy, there is no heresy. For anyone who believes in the reality of One Holy Apostolic Catholic Church, yet finds themselves swimming in the mucky chaos that is evangelicalism and yet desires to gain some clarity and objectivity, this book is an essential read.

'But appealing to the Bible alone and the personal enabling of the Holy Spirit, however central these truths are, do not insure orthodoxy (they never have!) ' p 14 Reading this book made me realize why the Reformed are typically historical, and why dispensationalists are typically ahistorical.

Williams makes a defense of the rich historic catholic Christian faith, warning of the current and yet ever-increasing latitudinarian spirit which is 'disconnecting them from the rich heritage of the church in its formative years where the doctrines of Christ and the Holy Spirit were developed, where the experience of Christian martyrs realized, and where concepts of faithful biblical interpretation were devised. There is in fact an acute problem of continuity.' p 1

With norms that respect the boundaries of our finite knowledge, Paul more than hints that Timothy must 'guard the good deposit entrusted to you' 2 Tim 1:14. Williams grieves the fact that postmodern evangelicals 'are no longer sure what this deposit consists of, or where it can be found.' Even worse, for most believers today 'finding this deposit does not matter anymore'. pp. 9-10

Christian thinking must be informed by this 'good deposit'. We are instructed by divine revelation, and as creatures are required to submit to the manner in which God is pleased to reveal Himself - through Scripture, and through apostolic tradition, which confirm catholicity. Universal truths are rejected 'partly because the apostolic period has been marginalized by the very life and practice of most churches evangelicals attend.' p 5

As an added caution, Williams' assures us that he is not attacking the privileged position of biblical authority. The questions then remains, how authoritative in degree are the varying forms of apostolic, patristic and ecclesiastical tradition DH Williams seeks to argue. Also, one senses no worthwhile attempt from Williams at reconciling 'inspiration' with the transmission of written tradition, as if in his view, a mechanical dictation/transmission were solely at work. B B Warfield stated, 'instead of a mere tradition however guarded, we have what we have all learned to call in a unique sense, the Scriptures.' Specifically with regard to patristic tradition as authoritative, Richard Muller cautions: 'Both Lutheran and Reformed denied the existence of any absolute doctrinal consensus external to and independent from Scripture, and therefore denied a normative status to the tradition of the church, even in the more restricted sense of the tradition of the patristic period.' Dictionary of Latin & Greek Theological Terms p 79

Williams does, however, make a compelling case for biblical theology, asserting that 'Christianity, like its Jewish parent, is fundamentally a historical faith. Christian history is the very process of receiving, transmitting, and renewing that original gospel of the apostles. Thus, the announcement of God's 'Righteous One', i.e, the Messiah, is a message which is offered in relation to an understanding of what God has been doing all along. Such an understanding lies at the very heart of the apostolic message of the gospel.' pp. 16, 17

A central point of concern for Williams is the cultural accommodation to anti-intellectualism where many have resiliently clung to the belief that their knowledge of the Bible alone is the norm for doctrine, while emphasizing the ability of a believer's own judgment as led by the Holy Spirit: 'A combination of the sovereignty of the common man and the right to private judgment was instrumental in leading to a populist kind of hermeneutic that captured the pious imagination.' p 19 Sounding his discontent, Williams reviews the devastating effect this had on the American scene in the 1800s: 'The legacy left by this perspective, as seen through the kaleidoscope of movements it spawned in the ensuing century, shows how the search for a simplified and unifying factor of faith resulted in a cacophony of conflicting voices, all claiming to have found the original faith of the apostles.' p 21

Exclaiming his despair of the autonomy of man further: 'Endemic to anti-credal attitudes has been an apocalyptic or millenarian view of history - a central and abiding component of dispensationalist movements. Believers are urged to eschew creeds, confessions or councils and are told to 'study the Word itself' since the truth is conveyed in simple terms known to all.' pp. 21-22

The departure from an accepted normative standard, a historically conditioned and received rule, more accurately in the form of apostolic tradition than patristic, displays a glaring ignorance of church history, for 'All of these primitive creedal formulae the New Testament church developed with the full knowledge and approval of Christ's inspired apostles.' p 171
Professor Robert L Reymond, The Hope Fulfilled: Essays in Honor of O Palmer Robertson

As a Baptist and professor of Patristic and historical theology, Williams seeks to encourage Evangelicals to recognize the inevitability of tradition and to return to the early church for instruction and inspiration. As he writes: "To make any claim for orthodox Christianity means that the evangelical faith must go beyond itself to the formative ears of that faith, apostolic and patristic, which are themselves the joint anchor of responsible biblical interpretation, theological imagination, and spiritual growth." It is a compelling case but may be difficult for Williams to consistently sustain in light of his own ecclesiological assumptions.