Kenneth Stewart: In Search of Ancient Roots

Kenneth J. Stewart, In Search of Ancient Roots: The Christian Past And the Evangelical Identity Crisis (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017).

The author of In Search of Ancient Roots, Kenneth J. Stewart, professor of theological studies at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, maintains that the roots of the evangelical tradition goes further back than the 17^th and 18^th centuries and even the Reformation era of the 16^th century and be found as early as the middle of the 3^rd century when Cyprian, about A.D. 280, questioned the authority of a single “pope” in his The Unity of the Church (De Unitate Ecclesia, PL 4.502).

Stewart is a specialist in the history of Christianity from the Reformation to the present, with particular interest in the development of the evangelical movement as it arose soon after the 16^th century Protestant Reformation. Stewart holds a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh, and has been a contributor to the Blackwell Dictionary of Evangelical Biography. He bases his argument for an ancient heritage for Evangelical Christianity upon the work of a prior researcher, John Jewel, who in his preaching in England in the late 16^th century gave reference to Cyprian’s De Unitate Ecclesia in which this Church Father argued against the need of a pope and for the need of a plurality.

This reviewer feels that Stewart could not have done a better job of referencing. The reason for this reviewer’s praise is that as a student at the Divinity School of Duke University, this reviewer had the opportunity to read in Cyprian’s works in a Historical Theology class. Cyprian maintained that “upon this rock [petra]” did not refer to Peter since the feminine form for “rock” referenced his confession. Cyprian must have had Paul’s letter to the Corinthians alongside his other reading where Paul stated that no other foundation can be laid for the church than that of faith in Christ Jesus. That, in and of itself, is sufficient as an evangelical contention.

Chapter two of Stewart’s In Search for Ancient Roots traces the evangelical message as a recurring occurrence from the very beginning. In Chapter 3, Stewart addresses the need for appraising the Christian past prior to the 19^th 18^th, and 16^th centuries and not treating evangelical Christian faith as product of the camp meetings of the early 1820’s and the later emergence of both Charles Finney and Dwight L. Moody. Chapter 4 does just that by examining the use of the past by Protestants beginning with present-day Protestant denominations and working backwards to the 16^th Century and credits the advent of “type-setting” by Johannes Gutenberg (d. 1468) as enabling mass circulation of the writings of both the early patristic era of the church and of the classical writers of the Graeco-Roman era.  Stewart found that among the most used by the Reformers was the Comminatory of Vincent of Lerian composed in the early 5^th century.

Chapter 5 gives a history of the impact of the Renaissance years between 1460 and the early Reformation era (1517-1568) in bringing to the forefront the writings of Clement, Ignatius of Antioch, Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Cyprian, Athanasius, and Augustine. Stewart identified the 17^th century as witnessing the most voluminous printing of volumes of the earliest writings of the church. Nonetheless, the influence of Matthias Flacius Illyricus’s (1520-1575) project of 13 volumes, The Magdeburg Centuries (1559-1574), and John Foxe’s (1516 -1587) Chronicles of the early Christian Martyrs caught the Roman Catholic Church of the 16^th century completely off-guard.

The discussions of each succeeding chapter is thorough and informative in its search for the ancient roots of Evangelical Christianity. There is one little fact left unsaid. It is worth noting that the first use of the term “evangelical” was used by the Lutherans. It is also worth noting that the terms “Protestant” and “Pro-test” do not imply or suggest “being against” but “being for.” It was first used to designate “The Protest of Spey[i]er”, a formal statement made by several German princes and electors in 1529 for the toleration of the Lutheran believers in Roman Catholic territories and the toleration of Roman Catholics in Lutheran enclaves. It was later extended to include the Reformed and Anabaptist reformers who identified more with John Calvin, Zwingli, and Menno Simons, who, while agreeing with Luther, went further with what was needed for the renewal of the church.

Aside from the foregoing discursus, Stewart’s book is worth serious consideration on two aspects. Each chapter in each of the book’s four parts closes with questions for discussion and consideration with respect to the total mission of the Church with particular attention to the worship of the church.

Evangelical Christianity, by its very nature, is “Word” centered with respect to its preaching and the use of the Bible thus leaving a void on the side of the church’s worship and “body” life.

Stewart is very much aware of this void and he addresses the issue in the closing chapters of the book when he discusses the role of worship and the role of the evangel or “preached Word.” For the most part, Stewart’s book is addressed to the churches of Lutheran/Evangelical and Reformed heritage (Calvin/Arminian) of the 16^th century Reformation. The Anabaptists (Mennonites/ Amish/ Hutterites) are discussed briefly on two pages of the book and both the German and Dutch Pietists (p.2) and the Moravians (p. 80) are each given one page.

What we have in Stewart’s In Search of Ancient Roots is a call for Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Methodists, and their “off-springs” to recover their ancient roots. Part three of In Search of Ancient Roots discusses some contemporary trends that “should give us pause” and part four focuses on three challenges which remain for the evangelical tradition of the church.

In reading through the succeeding sections and chapters, this reviewer sees a dominant concern throughout In Search of Ancient Roots. The apparent concern is that it is “the evangel” that determines the liturgy and the corporate life of the church, not the other way around. The “Good News” (Evangel/euangel) determines the liturgical life of the church. The shepherds heard the evangel, then they worshiped the baby Jesus. The Magi saw the message in the heavens, then they worshiped. The shape of the liturgy is determined by the evangel. The identity crisis for the evangelical church today is the loss of what comes first. Getting back to the roots would decrease the number of evangelicals crossing over into the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and High Anglican Churches.

Similarly, the corporate life of the church is best determined by the Evangelical message by enabling the church to function as an organism rather than a corporation. When the Catholic missionaries went into India and China, they were instructed by the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Gospel to be sensitive to the indigenous situation of the lands they entered and not impose a European-style of church life. The church is to function as an organism that lives the “evangel,” not a self-propagating corporate entity. The quest for the ancient roots is a quest for the heart-beat of the evangelical church, which is the Evangel itself, the Spoken Word of God. This was what Vincent of Lerian, in his Comminatory, sought to do in the 5^th century; to make explicit the essential Word of God as preached and taught irrespective of any corporate, liturgical, or lingual differences whether it be proclaimed in Eastern Europe, Asia, or Africa, or other ends of the earth. Vincent had a missionary’s vision when he wrote. For Stewart, this is the reason for In Search for Ancient Roots. The evangelical identity crisis is the loss of its essential identity as an organism with a missional imperative. To quote a statement that Martin Luther made in reply to Frederick, the Elector of Saxony, in February 1520: “The Word of God can never advance without whirlwind, and changes.”

In the eyes of this reviewer, Stewart’s book needs to be read by ministers and church teachers. Tolle Lege [Pick up and read.]

Reviewed by Woodrow E. Walton

 

Publisher’s page: https://www.ivpress.com/in-search-of-ancient-roots