The basis of Evangelicalism

Abstract

""Of making many books there is no end." If these words from Ecclesiastes were true in a day when the main media of written communication were the tablet and the scroll, how much more do they ring true in our day when those media are the word processor and the laser printer? We are struggling to stay afloat in the deluge of printed text which this technology is regularly churning out. Why then add more to the flood by the launching of a semi-annual journal? Well, it is the editors' hope that this journal will help to meet a genuine need on the Canadian theological scene, namely, to provide a forum for theological thinking' and reflection from an evangelical Baptist perspective. As a journal that is decidedly evangelical, it will seek to be governed by that "quadrilateral of priorities," which n.w. Bebbington, a British Baptist historian, has recently described as "the basis of Evangelicalism": a stress upon the vital need for men and women to experience conversion; a whole-hearted commitment to the spread of the gospel; a devotion to the Scriptures as the infallible Word of God; and a glorious obsession with the cross of Christ [Evangelicalism in Modern Britain]. And as a publication that is unashamedly Baptist, it will strive to be faithful to the heritage which has come down to us from such men and women as William Kiffin and Anne Steele, William Carey and Henrietta Feller, C.H. Spurgeon and R.A. Fyfe, a heritage which has been especially characterized by: an unshaKeable commitment to congregational church government and to the priesthood of all believers; a solid conviction that the local church should be a committed community of regenerate and baptized believers; and a deep-seated belief that the Holy Spirit "gently leads into all truth, and persuades men to dwell in the tents of like precious faith, which would lose of its preciousness and value, if [the] sparkle of freedom shone not in it" [The Savoy Declaration]"