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Christianity Today, February, 2008 |

The Future Lies in the Past

Why evangelicals are connecting with the early church as they move into the 21st century.

Chris Armstrong | posted 2/08/2008 10:01AM

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This is the road to maturity. That more and more evangelicals have set out upon it is reason for hope for the future of gospel Christianity. That they are receiving good guidance on this road from wise teachers is reason to believe that Christ is guiding the process. And that they are meeting and learning from fellow Christians in the other two great confessions, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, is reason to rejoice in the power of love.

Chris Armstrong is associate professor of church history at Bethel Seminary, and former managing editor of CT sister publication Christian History & Biography.

Related Elsewhere:

"Monastic Evangelicals" is a sidebar to this article. Mark Galli looked at "Ancient-Future People" in Inside CT.

Christianity Today editor in chief David Neff interviewed Webber in 2006 about the AEF Call.

Neff blogs at AncientEvangelicalFuture.blogspot.com.

CT briefly reviewed Ancient-Future Evangelism in 2004, briefly excerpted Ancient-Future Faith in 2000, and briefly profiled Webber's work on "blended worship" in 1997.

Other Christianity Today articles on reclaiming ancient church practices and Robert Webber's Ancient-Future theology include:

A Higher Ecclesiology for Evangelicals | Bryan Litfin, author of Getting to Know the Church Fathers, says that we need to reclaim our spiritual heritage. (October 26, 2007)

Spirituality Squared | Webber's Divine Embrace touches both head and heart. (July 26, 2007)

The New Monasticism | A fresh crop of Christian communities is blossoming in blighted urban settings all over America. (September 2005)

Looking Back to Go Forward | Robert Webber urges churches to catch the spirit of the ancient model. (February 1, 2004)

Advent's Spiritual Pilgrimage | The birth of Christ is only the final stop when meditating this holiday season. An excerpt from Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality Through the Christian Year. (Robert Webber, December 1, 2004)

Remonking the Church | Would a Protestant form of monasticism help liberate evangelicalism from its cultural captivity? (August 12, 1988)

The Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, Northern Seminary, and AncientFutureWorship.com have more on Webber. Northern also hosts Webber's "Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future."

Christian History & Biography has many issues on the early church.

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February 2008, Vol. 52, No. 2

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Wolf von dem Beck

Posted: February 10, 2008 1:45 AM


excellent !

David Armstrong

Posted: February 09, 2008 5:27 PM

I enjoyed your article. An an evangelical, I grew up with no knowledge of Church history before the reformation, almost as if that was when the Church began. I then fell in love with a Roman catholic girl who I thought I would be able to "educate" about the real faith. It was too my great surprise, not only was she evangelical, but she introduced me to a great body of Christian thought going back to the early church fathers which had been neglected or written off. It has been a major catalyst of growth in my Christian life, rooting my faith in historical origins and giving much expanding insight into scripture, and will be a powerful renewing movement in the evangelical church if we too can leave behind our pre-conceiving notions of pre-reformation Christian faith. Well done on the article.

Ephrem Hagos

Posted: February 09, 2008 6:25 AM

How long is it going to take us before we start right at the beginning? The only way out of the evangelical identity crisis we are facing is to reconstruct backwards the strategies of evangelism as taught and put in place for posterity by the LORD Himself. A natural place to start is at the corner- stone of Paul's ministry to the Gentiles, back to the first Pentecost and the 40-day rehearsal after the death of Jesus. All point to a single common platform for evangelism, viz.: the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ per se as the greatest "defining moment" of divinity in all power and glory for all times. The complete absence of this currency today explains the series of crisis which evangelical Christians are facing. Continued reconstruction with new insight takes us back to the summary chapters of the Gospels, and to the Great Day of the LORD on the cross with works that continue to witness loud and clear in the light of all the teachings of the LORD. This is discipleship training!

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