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  • Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church
  • Anders S. Tune
D. H. Williams Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005 Pp. 192.$16.99 (paper).

This is a unique book. It is both an insightful introduction to the development of patristic thought and an eloquent plea for Protestants to re-appropriate the early Christian heritage. As an introduction to patristic thought, Williams leads the reader through key controversies to show how the early ideas that would come to define Christian orthodoxy became the sources of later Christian theology in Protestantism as well as in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. As a plea to Protestants, the author argues that the insights and decisions of early Christian theologians and bishops were authoritative for the Reformers and are still needed by modern day Protestants. This is a complex approach to the period, yet in each of these aspects Williams succeeds.

The author argues that theological renewal for Protestants, both evangelical and mainline, requires a re-appropriation of the early church's theology and spirituality, including the function of the ancient church's "rule or tradition" as the chief [End Page 105] hermeneutic for determining when doctrine is true or false (23). The normative character of the "rule" is found first in Scripture and secondly in the confessions and creeds of the early church. While it underwent development throughout the early years, by the fourth century a sense of catholicity had developed which was based on Scripture and creed and which was inculcated through the catechumenate. It was epitomized by the receptum of a creed that "maintained continuity and linked Christians to the Christian legacy of the past" (44–45). The normative patristic tradition, especially as articulated in the theological developments of the fourth and fifth centuries, "functioned as a canon of Christian belief," and became "the historico-theological precedent for all subsequent formulation" (60). Williams's account of the genesis and acceptance of the Nicene creed shows how the creedal aspects of the patristic tradition developed, and since the Biblical canon, especially the New Testament, also went through an "untidy" process of discernment and reception in the early church, Protestants, along with other Christians, are absolutely beholden to the bishops, theologians, and laypersons of these formative years.

But what is the relationship between the scriptural and catechetical traditions of earlier times and our own? While Protestant scholasticism relies on the infallibility of the biblical text (90), the fathers affirmed "an infallibility of the divine intention behind the text" (91) so that the patristic writers used the catechetical tradition to interpret Scripture (94). In effect, the "faith of the church both guided and was responsive to the text of the Bible" (106). Though a similar approach can be found in Luther, Calvin, and Wesley (96–97), the hyper-individualistic approach to Scripture sometimes seen in the church today is foreign both to patristic writers and to the Reformers (99).

Another significant issue is the role for the Reformation principle of justification by faith. Williams considers it in the context of the "great tradition" of the early church. After surveying the views of various early theologians on justification, he concludes that "justification is not the supreme touchstone of Christian doctrine." It "must be integrated within the church's 'rule of faith,'" which is centered on the triune God and the incarnation (141). Williams's point is, I think, well taken. However, it is also true that Luther and the other Reformers saw justification by faith as a shorthand way of speaking about the central truth of God's incarnation in Christ and the gratuity of grace it implies. In this sense, the Reformers saw themselves as simply making explicit something that had been more implicit in the thought of the early church. Here Williams's argument could use more nuance.

The author concludes that the traditions of the early church offer "the most trustworthy way of future dialogue between the major dissenting Christian churches;" here is "the bedrock . . . which we may believe and defend together" (180). Thus, for example, when it comes to the interpretation of Scripture, "the authority of the tradition" implies...

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