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As he nears his eightieth birthday (he was born in 1921), John R. W. Stott gives the worldwide evangelical communion this latest gift as one of its elder statesmen. This pithy book offers us what he calls a "little statement on evangelical faith," a faith that he has done more to promote than anyone else in this century save Billy Graham.

Stott articulates these commitments in what is, indeed, a "personal plea" marked by both the strengths and, to some extent, the limitations of the evangelicalism he has represented and fostered. It stands as an important text both for what it says and for what it signifies: both as a helpful teaching of Christian truth and as an illustrative token of a particular "take" on Christian truth.

In his characteristically square-edged and lucid style, Stott affirms three core commitments of evangelical Christianity. Then, in the manner of many theologians today, he finds a Trinitarian link with this trio. Thus he suggests that evangelicals might profitably "limit our evangelical priorities to three, namely the revealing initiative of God the Father, the redeeming work of God the Son, and the transforming ministry of God the Holy Spirit. All our other evangelical essentials," Stott asserts, "will then find an appropriate place somewhere under this threefold or Trinitarian rubric."

Stott proceeds to deal first with the revelation of God found in the Bible, particularly as it testifies to Jesus Christ. Stott patiently defines "revelation" in its typical categories of "general" and "special" revelation, and then devotes most of the chapter to discussing the inspiration and authority of the Bible. He dedicates this longest of chapters to the Bible because, he writes, "the primary question in every religion relates to the topic of authority: by what authority do we believe what we believe?"There are few surprises here. Stott is "uncomfortable" (his word) with the term "inerrancy," but he affirms the entire truthfulness and supreme authority of the Bible for Christian life. The Bible is God's Word as it was "originally given," that is, "as it was written down by its author." (Stott presumably means "in its canonical form" since he is no foe of reverent historical study of the Bible that shows some biblical books—the Pentateuch, for example—almost certainly did not come down to us verbatim from the pen of a single author.) Though he eschews any form of deconstruction and other forms of hermeneutical anarchy, he still advocates serious exegesis of even seemingly obvious interpretations as they "remove from us some of the easy certainties which our critics suggest we are longing for."

Despite the many strengths of this section, a few concerns come to mind. First, one looks in vain for a complementary exposition of God's revelation of himself in Jesus Christ. Stott does affirm that "the climax of God's revelation was his incarnate Son," but then goes on to stress that the Bible is our main source of information about Jesus. Stott therefore concentrates on the Bible in a chapter on revelation.

Yet evangelical theology rests on the affirmation that Jesus shows us the very face of God, teaches us the truth of God, and models for us the life of godliness as God incarnate. Stott's subsequent chapter on Jesus focuses almost entirely on the atonement made for humanity in the Cross. But what about the conviction, so dear to evangelical piety, theology, and apologetics, that in Jesus of Nazareth we have more than a prophet, we have God himself? Where is the instruction in how to look properly at Jesus, learning all we can about God and applying all we can to our lives?This focus on Scripture also leaves out the Holy Spirit's universal work in testifying to the truth of God. Enoch, Job, Melchizedek, Abraham, and Moses learned what they knew of God outside of the Bible and the Christ. The world knows what it knows about truth, beauty, and goodness only from the Holy Spirit of God. These questions are crucial, particularly as evangelicals interact with people of other faiths.

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February 7 2000, Vol. 44, No. 2