Your Word Is Truth, edited by Charles Colson and Richard John Neuhaus and The Free Church and the Early Church, edited by D.H. Williams

Protestants are not characteristically staunch upholders of tradition. Nor do they instinctively appeal to "tradition" when faced with life's crises. Even evangelical Protestants, though they view themselves as preservers of classical Christian orthodoxy in the face of the evils of secularism and liberalism, have been conditioned to look askance at appeals to "tradition" as antithetical to the great Reformation principle of sola scriptura.

The situation, however, is changing. A growing chorus of Protestants has been calling for a rediscovery of the creeds, worship and spirituality of the early church and, in some cases, even of the medieval church. Signs of the slow gestation of a new attitude toward tradition abound among evangelicals too. Many evangelical writers call for a new appropriation of theologies and practices that predate the Reformation. Evangelical presses publish commentaries on the exegetical offerings of patristic thinkers. And evangelical leaders engage in theological conversations with their Roman Catholic counterparts, no longer as adversaries but as colleagues in search of ways to express a common faith that not only takes scripture seriously but church tradition as well.

At the heart of these two volumes is the idea that the deposit of tradition is a treasure that all Christians own in common. This belief leads to an implicit optimism about the role that tradition can play in the life of the church today. Moreover, the writers share the conviction that only a retrieval of tradition can provide the needed stability to anchor the church--whether Roman Catholic or free church Protestant--in the midst of the storms endemic to contemporary Western culture.