(from the preface to the 2003 edition)
‘I am not so naïve as to imagine that this little book will solve the problems of our uncertain evangelical identity or our debilitating evangelical disunity, or will provide a flag under which we can all rally. Yet I do hope and pray that it will lay some misunderstandings to rest and will help us to combine a commitment to essential evangelical truth with an authentic generosity of mind and spirit.
. . . more personally, as I approach the end of my life on earth, and as I complete more than sixty years of privileged Christian discipleship, I would like to leave behind me, as a kind of spiritual legacy, this little statement of evangelical faith, this personal appeal to the rising generation. Of course I have changed over the last six decades. Yet I hope these changes have been not the denial of anything I previously affirmed, but rather the enrichment of what was inadequate, the deepening of what was shallow, and the clarification of what was obscure. The great evangelical truths remain. This is how I would wish to be remembered and judged, as I prepare to stand before the judgment seat of Christ.’
(from the preface to the 2003 edition)