Evangelicals and the Early Church: Recovery, Reform, Renewal.

Rausch, Thomas P.

Evangelicals and the Early Church: Recovery, Reform, Renewal. Edited by George Kalantzis and Andrew Tooley. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books (Wipf & Stock), 2012. Pp. 273. $32.00, paper.

The product of a yearlong discussion at Wheaton College in 2009, inaugurating the Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies, this book's premise is that most evangelicals are largely unaware of the connections between their own ecclesial and theological heritage and the early church, as well as how they might benefit by studying the early church today. While acknowledging that American evangelicals have too often accommodated their beliefs to their surrounding culture, the editors also see a maturing of the evangelical mind in the last two decades, a judgment for which the book stands as evidence.

A major theme is reading the Bible in the tradition. In his introduction, Robert Louis Wilken notes that most of his graduate students in the last ten years have been evangelicals. He observes that the Fathers, in contrast to so much of contemporary biblical scholarship, emphasized reading the Bible as a whole, stressing not what Isaiah thought but what the scriptures teach. Christopher Hall argues that evangelicals have not offered the early church an attentive, empathetic ear, sometimes acting as though the Bible dropped from the sky for them to use in their own way. Commenting on Jeffrey Barbeau's chapter, Stephen Long sees John Wesley's patristically informed reading of scripture as analogous to the twentieth-century Catholic "ressourcement" movement.

Darryl Hart profiles the efforts of the "Mercersburg theology" of John Williamson Nevin and Philip Schaff to read the Bible in the context of the church and its creeds. Elisha Coffman traces the efforts of the "The Chicago Call" (1977) to challenge evangelicals to a deeper engagement with historic Christianity, a call that went largely unheeded, though she points to signs of progress, including Thomas Oden's Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (InterVarsity); Robert Webber's Ancient-Future series, published by Baker Books; and Touchstone, a magazine joining Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox in proclaiming the "Great Tradition." Two organizers of the Call moved further: Peter Gillquist led his group into Antiochian Orthodoxy, and Thomas Howard later became Roman Catholic.

Other contributors are concerned with theological renewal. Scot McKnight calls for a recovery of the ancient creeds to combat what he calls the theological superficiality of populist evangelicalism, while Jeffrey Bingham argues that American evangelicalism, particularly that of the Free Church tradition, needs to adopt a new baptismal catechesis, based not on culture but on the common confession of historical orthodoxy, the "rule of truth." Similarly, Michael Graves argues for a reading of scripture guided by the "rule of faith' or the whole of the Christian tradition, which is especially important for biblical scholars.

At the book's end, Kalantzis warns against allowing ahistorical narratives and approaches to scripture and Christology to become the dominant paradigms for evangelicalism. Many of the chapters challenge what the contributors critique as an individualistic, low-church Protestantism. While there is much emphasis on creeds, the rule of faith, and reading in the tradition, I found the lack of a focus on the sacramental and eucharistic life of the early church an unfortunate oversight.

Thomas P. Rausch, S.J., Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA