Some people don’t like published collections of essays or articles – butI’m not one of them. When you get a book which has gathered into apermanent form a collection of thought-provoking and importantpieces, it becomes an invaluable resource.

That is what this book is – an important collection of some fifteenpieces exploring the legacy of the Reformation, and urging theevangelical church to recover its roots in the theological revolution ofthe sixteenth century.

In the foreword, David Wells reminds us of why this exercise isimportant: ‘The truth of the matter is that the fraying at the edges of the evangelical worldhas now turned into an unraveling at its center. First came the new definitions about whoevangelicals were. Then the boundaries were shifted. Then they were crossed. And now thereality of God is redefined and made altogether more accommodating to our postmodernculture. It is for these reasons that I believe evangelicalism is now in a free fall’.

The burden of the contributors, therefore, is that the evangelical church needs to recover itsReformed legacy and return to its roots in the Bible-based movement we know as theReformation. So topics covered include such issues as the malaise of postmodernism, thethreat of open theism, the nature of the Bible’s authority, the nature of the Christian ministry,and the legacy of the Puritans.

Some may regard the book as being imbalanced – but with any collection of this kind there isbound to be an asymmetry in the presentation. However, there is much that is thought-provoking here, and much that is of fundamental importance to the church at the present time.

In the introduction, Gary Johnson states: ‘Evangelicals are at a crossroads. Will they return totheir Reformational roots or will they abandon them?’ Only we can answer that question.Hopefully we will decide in favour of the Reformation, as this volume encourages us to.