ABSTRACT
This book is a positive engagement with evangelical thought and offers a fresh contribution to contemporary evangelical theology. The topics covered in the book (both individually and collectively) are far from exhaustive. Instead, at some level, the chapters provide an agenda for contemporary evangelical theology. The nature of this agenda is considered in this introductory chapter through a discussion of each of the words of its title. Each essay included in this book is discrete in itself. In different essays, different amounts of emphasis will be placed on each of the themes outlined below. Some chapters will return exegetically to the tradition and engage in reparative reasoning with our history and theology (as perhaps most emphatically in the chapters by Ben Fulford, George Bailey and Simeon Zahl),2 while others address in an exploratory manner areas and themes often neglected in classical evangelical discourse (as is the case in the chapters by Jason Fout, Sarah Snyder and Glenn Chestnutt). Some chapters are more scholastically and technically framed (as with Paul Jones’ and Paul Nimmo’s), while others more prophetically critique and offer imperatives to evangelicals (as in those by Elizabeth Kent, Andi Smith and Tom Greggs). A number of the chapters engage with practical Christian living (as in those by Donald MacFadyen and Elizabeth Kent), while still others aim to be directive and programmatic for theology (perhaps most strongly felt in that by Richard Briggs, which begins this book). There are undoubtedly elements of each of these approaches in each of the chapters, but the balances shift between them. However, the overall concern of each of the chapters (regardless of these differing and shifting balances) remains the same – as younger scholars, to articulate a new perspective post-critically on each of the topics tackled for evangelical theology. This involves, therefore, a certain level of programmatic, performative and creative engagement with the tradition, and a sense – in a manner which pervades all of the chapters – of the way in which the Christian life and Christian doctrine interrelate.3
