Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church (Evangelical Ressourcement: Ancient Sources for the Church's Future)

Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church
By D. H. Williams

For those Protestants who have their reservations about the Christian tradition (largely quite "unProtestant") this book is for them. The author is himself a Baptist and very well-versed in both Church history and the Church Fathers. His goal is fourfold: 1) Demonstrate that Scripture and early tradition go hand in hand and that Scripture is part of tradition, given by the Church to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ correctly., 2) theology exists as a part of the worshipping community, and not as an abstraction. Without right worship, there is no right doctrine 3) our personal liberty in the Holy Spirit is a corporate liberty. That is, we exist as "members one of another" who cannot go off and "do our own thing" 4) the Protestant tradition must be reintegrated into the greater catholic tradition to properly understand itself and the Gospel. In short, the author doesn't try to make a Protestant into a Catholic, but to dispel the myths surrounding the Tradition to show the Protestant what it means to be a Christian in context.

I would recommend the author's other book, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants, more than this book, good as it is.