The Free Church and the Early Church: Bridging the Historical and Theological Divide.

The Free Church and the Early Church: Bridging the Historical and Theological Divide. Edited by D. H. Williams. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2002. xiii and 183 pages. Paper. $24.00.

D. H. Williams of Baylor University has invited several academicians of the Free Church persuasion to restate, from their perspective, the relationship of their heritage to the church of the first centuries. The essays are written by well-known authors who represent several denominations in the Free Church tradition: D. Jeffrey Bingham, Everett Ferguson, E. Glenn Hinson, Frederick W. Norris, Phyllis Rodgerson Pleasants, Gerald W. Schlabach, William Tabbernee, and Williams himself. The essays were not written for popular consumption but are uniformly of a scholarly level. Indeed, the subject itself requires such an academic analysis.

Being from the Free Church tradition and one who writes often on the early church, I had expected, from the title, a group of essays that pointed, in light of recent research on the New Testament, to new directions for the Believers' Church tradition. I was wrong. The primary intent of the essays is to determine the appropriate function of early patristic writings and the earliest creeds in Free Church thinking. In order to do that, the writers, in various ways, had to address the nature of authority, the function of Scripture, and, of course, the role of Tradition.

It is inappropriate to summarize the primary intent of a book with eight authors, but readers of Currents may be interested to know the major motifs without my attempting specific summaries of separate articles.

Regarding authority, the Reformers rejected a single ecclesiastical magisterium in favor of a commission. The radical Reformation (Free Church) insisted that the magisterium was the faith community itself (Pleasants, pp. 94-98).

In regard to Scripture, both the Reformers and the Free Church accepted later tradition (creeds and patristic writings) to a limited extent. It was only in conflict with the Council of Trent that the Free Church insisted on Scripture as the only authority. That post-Tridentine, or post-Reformation, development led to a biblicism, even Fundamentalism, in the Free Church that was not originally intended (Williams, pp. 118-26; Hinson, pp. 150-53). The eight authors wish to correct that distortion.

Granted, most Free Church leaders were willing to accept Tradition up to about the time of Augustine, but they were selective. Most of them accepted tradition and creeds only as they contained and were in agreement with the apostolic witness. Medieval traditions and councils were rejected as pagan (Hinson, pp. 154-61).

Not every essay strictly adheres to these topics. For example, the venerable Everett Ferguson writes on ordination and the authority of the congregation in the early church. Ordination of bishops, and even ministers, was a congregational decision. A bishop could not carry the ordination from one congregation to another or one area to another (pp. 129-40).

This book is not for everyone. It best helps leaders and teachers in the Free Church tradition understand authority and Scripture in terms of their historical and theological roots. These issues are critical for American church life. Leaders and teachers in a variety of churches will learn much about the source of denominational differences.

Graydon F. Snyder

Chicago, Illinois