GABRIEL FACKRE HAS FOR MORE THAN FOUR DECADES WORKED graciously as an evangelical theologian with ecumenical sympathies. In Restoring the Center he takes stock from the lessons of a lifetime, sagaciously describing the church's challenges and opportunities as it moves into a new millennium.

Despite much fragmentation and conflict, Fackre sees the church potentially recovering its christocentric emphasis in congregations and seminaries. He assesses evangelical accomplishments in the recent resurgence of systematic theology, augurs the future of evangelicalism, weighs the possibilities of a new ecumenism and probes currently pressing ethical issues.

Throughout, Fackre's insightful essays exemplify a care-fully modulated Christian hope-hope that is genuine because it is based on the kingdom already come, but real-istic because it is based on the kingdom not yet fulfilled.