In a world marked by relativism, individualism, pluralism, and the transition from a modern to a postmodern worldview, evangelical Christians must find ways to re-present the historic faith.

In his provocative new work, Ancient-Future Faith, Robert E. Webber contends that present-day evangelicalism is a product of modernity. Allegiance to modernity, he argues, must be relinquished to free evangelicals to become more consistently historic. Empowerment to function in our changing culture will be found by adapting the classical tradition to our postmodern time. Webber demonstrates the implications in the key areas of church, worship, spirituality, evangelism, nurture, and mission.

A substantial appendix explores the development of authority in the early church, an important issue for evangelicals in a society that shares many features with the Roman world of early Christians. Students, professors, pastors, and laypeople concerned with the church’s effective response to a postmodern world will benefit from this paradigmatic volume. Informative tables and extensive bibliographies enhance the book’s educational value.

The Agenda for Theology, which I attempted to set forth in 1979, is here being significantly extended by Robert Webber in 1999 in a way that is profoundly gratifying.–Thomas C. Oden, professor of theology, Drew University

With his customary lucidity and catholicity, but in a way that cuts deeper than his earlier writings, Robert Webber substantiates the vision of an anciently-rooted and forward-looking evangelicalism that marks all of his work. Ancient-Future Faith works as a narrative-oriented Christian primer and as a road map to the promise of catholic evangelicalism. For the theologically inclined, it also works as a Gadamerian exercise in the fusion of theological horizons, showing how the Christus Victor Christocentrism of ancient Christianity might reshape the faith that Christians live and claim in a postmodern context. Webber shows what it means to take seriously the character of Christian testimony as Christ-following church-formed story.–Gary Dorrien, author, The Remaking of Evangelical Theology