2
this successionist view back to the era of the Reformation. Melanchthon conceived Luther to have been
part of such a gospel succession when he eulogized him at his death:
"After the apostles comes a long line, inferior, indeed, but distinguished by the divine
attestations: Polycarp, Irenaeus, Gregory of Neocaesarea, Basil, Augustin, Prosper, Maximus,
Hugo, Bernard, Tauler and others. And though these later times have been less fruitful, yet God
has always preserved a remnant; and that a more splendid light of the gospel has been kindled
by the voice of Luther cannot be denied."
3
Under this understanding, evangelical Christianity was biblical, doctrinal and experiential Christianity in its
most vital and hardy form i.e. the "faith once delivered to the saints". Often submerged in centuries
gone by, it had inevitably resurfaced again as it could not help but do, since it was, after all, the cause
of God. This then is the way that evangelicals regularly thought about the preservation of a gospel
succession across preceding centuries until they were called up short in 1989.
The Modern Challenge to Successionism
Yet, in 1989 there appeared a challenge to this way of thinking in the form of Dr. David
Bebbington's Evangelicalism In Modern Britain: A History from the 1730's to the 1980's.
4
This massively-
researched and winsomely-written volume allowed that there
had been documented use of the term
evangelical in English extending back to the polemical writings of Thomas More in 1531
5
and other early
movements such as the Continental Reformation which had been typified as evangelical in the sense "of
the gospel". Nevertheless, Bebbington insisted that the term
evangelical ought to be reserved for
movements of much more recent times. The reader of this fascinating volume is told that: "Evangelical
religion is a popular Protestant movement that has existed in Britain since the 1730's"; that "The
Evangelical Revival represents a sharp discontinuity in the Protestant tradition; it was formed by a
cultural shift in the English-speaking world, the transition from the Baroque to the Enlightenment" and
that "The Evangelical version of Protestantism was created by the Enlightenment"
6
Though it would be
possible to understand Bebbington as arguing for such a story of Evangelical origins
only with reference
to Britain (this was, after all, the subject underlying his book) a careful reading of his work does not
sustain this narrow interpretation. This theme of an evangelicalism `de novo' has been argued out by him
3
Philip Melanchthon, "Funeral Oration Over Luther" (1546) reprinted in Lewis W. Spitz, The Protestant
Reformation: Major Documents. (St. Louis, Concordia Publishing House), 1997, p. 70
4
(London, Unwin and Hyman, 1989). An American edition was produced by Baker Books, Grand Rapids, in 1992.