Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 36:1 (Mar 1993)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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JETS 36:1 (March 1993) p. 77

Book Reviews

The Logic of Evangelism. By William J. Abraham. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989, 245 pp., $17.95 paper.

This extremely thoughtful and theologically astute consideration of evangelism is an attempt to wed theological concepts with evangelistic practice. To some degree the author succeeds.

In a chapter entitled “Evangelism and Modern Theology” he surveys the existing literature on the subject. Predictably, he concludes that little serious literature is at hand.

Discussing “The Gospel,” Abraham focuses on the coming of the kingdom. The gospel is, in his view, a declaration of the kingdom and the application of this to life. “Whatever evangelism may be, it is ultimately related to eschatology” (p. 38).

Two modern models of evangelism are proclamation and church growth. He defines euangelizomai as being much larger than preaching because it involves teaching and living the gospel also (pp. 43- 44). Church growth, according to the author, is far too statistical and sterile (pp. 80-81).

For Abraham evangelism is initiation into the kingdom. This is no simple commitment to a body of doctrine or a group of believers. “Initiation involves a complex web of reality that is at once corporate, cognitive, moral, experiential, operational, and disciplinary” (p. 103).

Conversion commences with baptism, and it is expressed in a kingdom morality. Taking his model from Wesley, Abraham concludes: “The kingdom of God is a new power let loose in the world, and those who enter into it gladly embrace an ethic of active love toward God and neighbor” (p. 137).

The ethic of love is cultivated by careful catechism. It is founded upon the creeds as normative statements of the Christian faith. It is fostered by the immediate working of the Holy Spirit in the lives of kingdom people (p. 157).

In evaluating evangelism in the modern world, Abraham interacts with F. Brown, Secular Evangelism (London: SCM, 1970). Abraham suggests that Brown makes too many concessions to the secularism of our age (p. 195).

Abraham concludes with an appeal for authentic evangelism, which rests “not on an analysis of our modern world but on the internal logic of the Christian gospel” (p. 204).

Surely Abraham has made a positive contribution in redirecting evangelism from the human axis to the divine. He has struck the right tone in pleading for a credible communication of the gospel by the whole community of believers. But one sometimes feels that he is adopting Bushnell’s view of evangelism by education without conversion.

Wayne A. Detzler
Temple Baptist Seminary, Chattanoo...

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