The Church: A New Basis Of Certainty?
The Church and the Reality of Christ, by John Knox (Harper & Row, 1962, 158 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by L. B. Smedes, Associate Professor of Bible, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
When you accept the conclusions of radical historical criticism, do you lose hold of the reality of Jesus Christ? Dr. John Knox thinks not, and tells us why in his latest book. One can know the objective reality of Christ, he argues, if he is willing to recognize the priority of the Church. His basic thesis is that the mighty act of God for man’s redemption, the salvation Event, is the bringing into being of the Church. This is the basis on which he attempts a reconstruction of the divine reality of Jesus Christ within the apparent vacuum left by a demythologized Gospel. It is a challenging, sometimes brilliant, but frustrated effort at a post-Bultmann revision.
The reality of Jesus is found, first of all, not in some isolated historical facts which are at best meagre, but in the memory that the Church has of Jesus. The reality of Jesus must be defined in terms of what is real for the Church, not in terms of what is real for the historian. What is real for the Church is its memory. Whether this memory coincides with historically verifiable facts is beside the point. The memory of a person, certainly of this Person, is far richer and more meaningful than mere facts about his birth, life, and death could possibly be. Not only is the memory all we have, it is all we need to have. Provided we are part of the agapic fellowship which shares this memory, we have in it the Jesus of the past.
But the memory of Jesus past arises and becomes powerful only as we share in the reality of Christ present. That is to say, we share the memory of Jesus only as we live in the reality of the Church. Dr. Knox’s thesis that the Church is prior to the memory and the affirmation of Jesus Christ works itself out to the thesis that the Church is Christ in the most literal sense possible. The incarnation, for example, is not something that happened to Jesus prior to the Church. It is the Church, for the Church is “the historical locus, the ‘embodiment’ of God’s saving action in the temporal order.” The Church remembers Jesus as a good man living among ordinary men; the Church knows the “Word become flesh” in its own existence. The atonement is not to be pinpointed on the calendar at one particular moment of the past. The atonement is the divine work of reconciliation that takes place in and through the Church. The Church remembers a man dying on a Roman cross; the Church becomes the atoning Event when it begins to exist as the community of reconciliation. The resurrection—the one event, according to Dr. Knox, without which the Church is inconceivable—is not to be identified with a corpse coming to life. The resurrection is the Church’s experience of the Spirit of God as the presence of Jesus in its midst. The Church remembers the indestructible personality of Jesus. The Church becomes the risen, living body of the Christ through its possession of the Spirit whom it identifies as the mysterious presence of Christ. In this way, then, the believer shares in the reality of Christ when he shares the spiritual reality of the Church.
The great miracle, then, is the creation of the Church. All that one has perhaps thought was necessarily real about Christ in His own unique right is sucked into the greater reality of the Church. Anything miraculous about Jesus is superfluous and irrelevant in the light of the far greater miracle of the rise of the Church as the saving Event in history. If anyone should suggest to the author that he tends to subjectivize the reality of Christ, the author would insist that his intent has been lamentably misunderstood. We need not question his intent to present an objectively real Christ. But what about his success?
Dr. Knox’s effort is fatally hurt by a nagging ambiguity. He consciously refuses to consider seriously the difference between the memory and affirmation of a past event and the occurrence of that past event. When he says that the Church remembers and affirms Jesus Christ only because the present reality of the Church exists, he is saying something to which we need not object. But the question is what did the Church affirm? Did not the Church affirm in all seriousness that an event took place prior to anyone’s believing it, prior to anyone’s experiencing it, and prior to anyone’s affirming it? Peter would not have proclaimed what he did, probably, had not the Spirit come into the midst of the company, but what he proclaimed had to do with something that really did happen on a particular Sunday to one particular Person, apart from and prior to Pentecost and the experience of the Spirit. Dr. Knox reminds us of something true when he says that the reality of Christ must not be isolated in one particular moment of history. But he is surely wrong when he asks us to understand that the Church itself, at its own creation, did not look backward to one particular event, as a sine qua non.
The important question that Knox lays on the table is so big that it needs an incalculably greater argumentation than is possible in a brief review. Indeed, it is probably the question that the next generation will still be busy with. But the entire enterprise must be gotten at, not in Dr. Knox’s way, on the basis of what is real about Christ after the critics have had their say, but by examining what the early Church itself, with its apostles, meant by proclaiming the Event of redemption in Christ. The author presents his argument in this book, as in his others, in a most able and disarmingly gracious manner. He also serves us with a reminder that we must include the wonder of the Church’s rise into existence in our consideration of the reality of Jesus Christ. But in the end, one must ask whether Dr. Knox’s major premise that the reality of the Church defines the reality of Christ is the premise made by the early Church itself when it proclaimed that Jesus Christ—not the Church—is the Word made flesh, that it is he who, risen on the third day, is Lord over the Church in his own concrete reality.
L. B. SMEDES
Justice And The Neighbor
The South and Christian Ethics, by James Sellers (Association, 1962, 190 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by T. B. Maston, Professor of Christian Ethics, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas.
The author of this book is the Southern-born, -reared, and -trained Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Theology at Vanderbilt University Divinity School. His book is not a study of Christian ethics in general but of race as the major ethical issue of the South. There are other ethical problems in the South, but the author suggests that more of an impact will be made if he concentrates on just one. One thing can be learned from the social gospel; it concentrated on one issue (the evils of an industrial society).
Professor Sellers suggests also that the social gospel was effective because of its close relation to the theological movement that spoke the language of its day and to the cultural situation of a particular area at a particular time. Similarly, if an ethic for the South is to speak effectively to the South, it must be related to the theological climate of the day and to the culture of its area with its distinctive problem. The author’s theological perspective is neoorthodox. He fails to recognize that traditional orthodoxy, still very prevalent in the South, speaks some language in common with neoorthodoxy, and is in general more acceptable than neoorthodoxy to the people of the South.
The main purpose of the book is to say something helpful about how men “of the next generation” may become better neighbors, how men on both sides—white and Negro—can learn “to treat each other as human beings” (p. 9). Professor Sellers suggests that so far the white people of the South have simply co-existed with the Negro; they have not lived with him, for that would mean recognizing his humanity. He believes that men cannot be real neighbors across the high fence of segregation, but the elimination of the fence will not automatically mean the achievement of meaningful neighborliness. The former is the work of justice, “but justice alone is never enough.” It is at most “a forerunner of neighborliness … a setting of outer conditions for the inner growth of charity” or love (p. 166). The Church’s chief concern is “more than objective justice; it is for fellowship” (p. 175). This should be the chief concern of the Church, not only after desegregation but also during the struggle to achieve it.
T. B. MASTON
Communism And Conduct
Communism: Its Faith and Fallacies, by James D. Bales (Baker, 1962, 214 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Lester DeKoster, Librarian, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Mr. Bales, who is professor of Bible at Harding College, has written a generally sober and well-informed book which can be read with profit.
The author is at his best in dealing with the phenomenology of Communism, its dominant characteristics and results, and its impact on modern life. He points up the practical implications for the life of Everyman which are implied in the doctrines of the Marxists and embodied in the practice of Communist Russia and Communist China.
Probably his discussion of Marxist atheism—a subject upon which Professor Bales has written before—is the strongest theoretical section of the book. However, though atheism is, as the author says, fundamental to Marxism and constitutive of its whole orientation to man and to history, the disproportionate space allotted to its discussion in this volume produces some imbalance in the structure of the whole. This fact illustrates the want of an organic development in Mr. Bales’s treatment which leaves him generally confined to a treatment of successive phenomena of Communism.
Reading for Perspective
CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:
★ The Reformation: A Rediscovery of Grace, by William Childs Robinson (Eerdmans, $5). With an eye on ecumenical dreams of union with non-Reformed churches, the author uncovers the centralities of Reformation theology.
★ The New Delhi Report, edited by W. A. Visser ’t Hooft (Association, $6.50). Basic documents, discussions, decisions of the World Council of Churches’ meeting at New Delhi, with day-by-day account by S. McCrea Cavert.
★ The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, edited by Charles F. Pfeiffer and Everett F. Harrison (Moody, $11.95). Entirely new, one-volume, phrase-by-phrase exposition of the entire Bible by 49 American conservatives.
The reader will appreciate the scores of references to Communist and other literature, including useful quotations from Chinese Communist writers. It must be added, though, that in a semi-popular exposition like this one, the large number of footnotes may dismay the readers for whom the volume is chiefly intended; and the notes frequently tend to confuse an otherwise easily readable and usefully subdivided typography. Moreover, the reader will do well to discriminate, so far as he can, the gradations of authority represented by the extensive and varied sources employed.
In these days of flamboyant and irresponsible anti-Communism, it is refreshing to find so serious and thoughtful an attempt as Mr. Bales has made to deal constructively with the clash between Marxism and Christianity. That the author gives here more of his attention to Communism as conduct rather than as ideology is but an indication that he might want to shift that emphasis in a companion study. Until then, however, the reader who wishes even to begin to investigate the leads opened here by Mr. Bales’s wide reading will be usefully employed.
LESTER DEKOSTER
Windows On Churchmanship
Worship and Theology in England: From Newman to Martineau, 1850–1900, by Horton Davies (Princeton University Press, 1962, 404 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Philip E. Hughes, Editor, The Churchman, London, England.
Like its predecessor, which covered the period 1680–1850, this superbly produced volume is full of fascination and instruction, providing an engagingly portrayed perspective of churchmanship in its great variety of forms—Evangelical, Anglo-Catholic, Roman Catholic, Non-conformist, Unitarian—as manifested in England during the Victorian era. The trends of ecclesiastical architecture, particularly the theologically significant abandonment of the Grecian for the neo-Gothic style, are described and illustrated. The age was one of outstanding personalities—such men as Newman, Dale, Spurgeon, and Robertson, whose preaching is carefully analyzed and assessed with respect to style as well as content, and, not least, Edward Irving, the wayward one-time assistant to Thomas Chalmers and one of the founders of the Catholic Apostolic Church (the adherents of which were also known as “Irvingites”).
Of course a book of this nature is necessarily selective, which means that it would not be difficult for different persons to complain of gaps and deficiencies according to their particular predilections. There are certain places, however, where the author’s qualities of discernment seem to fail him. He shows, for instance, an inadequate understanding of the truly Reformed nature of the worship of the Book of Common Prayer; and Congregationalist though he is, he evinces a surprisingly uncritical admiration for the worship of Roman Catholicism. There is also a tendency to repetitiousness: for example, the epigrammatic but not original inversion “the holiness of beauty” crops up three times; a story told on page 229 is rehashed on page 289; the Gorham case is explained twice, on pages 116 and 202; and a saying of Forsyth’s given on page 83 is repeated on pages 203 f. Repetitions are not crimes, only irritations, but they should have been noticed and removed at least at the proofreading stage. It should be pointed out, incidentally, that the mixing of water with the wine at Communion is not “intinction” (p. 125).
This, however, is a book to please and inform all who respond to a cultured mind and have a feeling for the pattern of history.
PHILIP E. HUGHES
Rediscovery Of Love
On the Love of God, by John McIntyre (Harper, 1962, 255 pp., $4), is reviewed by James Daane, Editorial Associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
The word “love” has been debased in modern usage. For the serial-story writer, love is a sickly saccharin; for the realistic novel writer who has forgotten “that the function of the Id is to remain hid,” love means behavior unseemly even in a bedroom. For some psychologists it is merely a glandular-induced physical disturbance, while for some theologians love is merely one of many characteristics attributable to God.
In view of the popular debasement of the word, how shall the Church effectively communicate that love of God revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ which, says McIntyre, is the sum and substance of the Gospel? How shall the preacher of Christ convey the truth that “in love we were created; by love we were redeemed; through love will we be ultimately sanctified”?
The answer, asserts McIntyre, is to free the term of its modern encrustations and spell out the meaning of divine love anew. He himself does so in terms of God’s concern, commitment, communication, community, involvement, and identification. Wearing his learning lightly and moving with ease in critical appraisal of various theological positions, McIntyre defines God’s love by each of these terms, shows how each term leads on to the next and how the whole series has its fulfillment and actualization in God’s redemptive love in Jesus Christ.
He then begins at the end of the series and, moving toward the beginning, spells out the nature of the Christian’s response and responsibility to God’s love in Christ. Here too he shows, in reverse order, that each term involves the succeeding one and that all of them taken together spell out the meaning of man’s love for the God who first loved him.
Let none think this nothing but a contrived, pat little scheme. The author’s treatment has the body of theological substance, the warmth of a personal confession of faith; it is studded with relevant applications to modern personal and social problems, and freighted with ideas that beg to become sermons. The book issues from a consciously possessed theological position and perspective. It will help the minister and the student who have only fragments of unrelated theological commitments to achieve a consciously held theological standpoint of their own, and thus enable them to preach out of a definitive theological commitment.
No reader will agree with everything McIntyre asserts, but none will go away empty handed. My only real criticism of his treatment as a whole is that he is all but silent on the consequences that follow upon a man’s rejection of God’s love. This is a deficiency in a treatment of the love of God by an author acutely aware that divine love can so easily be reduced to a divine sentimentality that knows nothing of the “wrath of the Lamb.”
This is one of the finest up-to-date treatments of the love of God.
JAMES DAANE
One Last Word
Christian Devotion, by John Baille (Scribner’s, 1962, 119 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by David A. Redding, Minister, Glendale Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.
One might expect Christian Devotion to be the bottom of Baille’s barrel, scraped together by the publisher to squeeze the last penny from the fans of the famous author of A Diary of Private Prayer. Surprisingly, this little volume of sermons shows Baille at his best. Bonus: the book is introduced by a charming and intimate little biography.
I heard John Baille speak shortly after I left seminary, and I was completely disarmed. That inspiration sent me immediately to the bookstore to get everything else he had written. Our Knowledge of God, The Belief in Progress, What is Christian Civilization, And The Life Everlasting still stand on my shelf as a landmark in my Christian upbringing. I know that for many the name Baille means Donald, John’s brother. I do not wish to deny Donald the distinction he has won, but while reading Christian Devotion I was struck once again with John Baille’s extraordinary insight into the modern temper, and the pains he took, and the great mind he had to make the Gospel so gentle and yet so gripping. His cousin sheds some light on this by saying, “He was an adoring father, but even against small Ian his study door was locked from nine to one each day.” But Baille was broad as he was deep, ecumenicist as well as Scots student. As Hugh Montefiore wrote about Donald, he “was not just a Presbyterian Divine: Like all the Saints he belongs to the whole Church of God.”
DAVID A. REDDING
The Generating Situation
The Birth of the New Testament, by C. F. D. Moule (Harper and Row, 1962, 252 pp., $5.00), is reviewed by Robert C. Stone, Professor of Classical Languages, North Park College, Chicago, Illinois.
The publishers have designed this volume “as a general introduction to Harper’s New Testament Commentaries,” and it admirably fulfills this function. Departing from the usual format of the “introduction,” the writer seeks to explain the content of the New Testament in relation to the needs of the early Church, both internally and externally. The result is a very readable account which will appeal to scholar and layman alike.
Moule adopts the general standpoint of “form criticism” in that “it is to the circumstances and needs of the worshipping, working, suffering community that one must look if one is to explain the genesis of Christian literature.” He is careful to point out, however, that he discards or qualifies many of the assumptions that usually go with it. He makes it very clear that the guidance of God was operative in the production of the material itself and in the process by which it was collected into Christian scriptures. He insists on the “primacy of the divine initiative.” Throughout the book there appears a reverent regard for the Word of God.
Readers at one extreme of the theological spectrum will no doubt feel that Moule has conceded too much to the divine initiative. Readers at the other extreme will insist that he makes the New Testament too much a human product. In reality the broad thesis of the book can certainly be fitted into the framework of a conviction that the New Testament is an inspired book, the very Word of God, and at the same time serve as a corrective to the view held at least tacitly by some, that in some mysterious way the documents of the New Testament appeared ex nihilo and almost in vacuo. It gives the impression that here were real people with real problems which they confronted with humble dependence on God’s Spirit. The fact that there are concessions throughout the volume to the liberal point of view does not destroy the value of the book in this respect.
Of special interest are chapters IX and X, dealing respectively with “Variety and Uniformity in the Church” and “Collecting and Sifting the Documents.” The former impresses the reader with the extraordinary unity of the Church in spite of the real differences of doctrinal emphasis and practice encountered in the various communities. The latter is a succinct account of the problem of the Canon which the serious student of the New Testament will appreciate.
For those who wish to probe more deeply into some of the more technical problems involved in the subject, there are four excellent excursuses at the end of the book.
ROBERT C. STONE
For Greater Discussion
Ethics and Business, by William A. Spurrier (Scribner’s, 1962, 179 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Sherwood E. Wirt, Co-editor, Decision.
As the author of Power for Action Spurrier made a contribution to Christian ethics from the neoorthodox perspective. In this latest book he invades a field most ministers avoid like the plague: the business world. It is a work designed for easy reading by laymen, and is structured as a series of letters to merchants and businessmen on such problems as price decisions, public relations, labor-management, advertising, and production goals.
The book—certain to stimulate animated discussion—raises two serious questions to this reviewer.
First, I am disturbed by a feeling of insecurity that pervades the work. The author determines to be realistic, but in doing so gives away much of the ground he stands on. When he speaks about the Church, he prefaces it by saying, “Let me begin by acknowledging all the weaknesses of the Church.… For every weakness the outsider can mention, we who are on the inside can name ten more.” Not a very businesslike approach! What about the Church’s strength? One yearns here for a sharp, clear denunciation of the evils of commerce in the tradition of Amos, and in the name of the Lord. Again, we are told that a Christian is not permitted the luxury of an easy conscience. In that case the New Testament would never have been written. Jesus Christ either frees a man from sin and guilt or he does not. I say he does, and that he even saves us from our ambiguities.
My second concern is harder to express, since I also am a clergyman. I have a feeling that the Christian printers, paper salesmen, and other businessmen whom I meet daily would find some of these pages naïve in spite of the well-rounded discussions of moral and ethical problems in the mercantile world. They do not agonize hourly over the question, “Am I doing the right thing?” They are men whose integrity is based on personal behavior, whether in business or out of it. To them a dirty deal is a dirty deal—and they shun it accordingly. But “Am I giving my customer what he wants? Am I doing the best job I can for him?”—these are relevant questions of business ethics they ask themselves every day.
For them the business world is not a playground or a Sunday school; it is a rough and brutal field in which anything can happen. The way to bring moral principles to bear on it, they would say, is to get people of common interests to draw up their own self-enforced codes and rules. Ministerial advice is gratuitous, church pronouncements by and large superfluous; but Christian laymen, indoctrinated in the Bible, can and should establish ethical principles to cover the whole business field, and make them work.
If this book stimulates discussion to that end it will have served a useful purpose.
SHERWOOD E. WIRT
Barth In The Balances
Christianity and Barthianism, by Cornelius Van Til (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962, 450 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, Editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
Dr. Van Til remains as implacable a foe as ever of the theology of Karl Barth. The judgment Van Til pronounced against the theology of crisis in his earlier The New Modernism is in fact reinforced and deepened in this latest work. For, says Van Til in Christianity and Barthianism, the Barthian theology is simply “a higher humanism,” or “a man-made religion … using the language of Reformation theology” (p. 446). Barth’s modifications of his position are considered quite inconsequential.
Now if one wishes—as Dr. Van Til apparently does—to take liberties with the definition of humanism (so as to include some advocates of supernaturalism, special revelation and redemption, and a unique divine incarnation in Christ), that is perhaps his prerogative. But those who have switched theological sympathies to Barthianism (whatever its serious defects) seem to us rather to be in revolt against humanism and liberalism (in the generally understood sense of those terms)—although they are not on the basis of such revolt entitled to capture and appropriate the term “evangelical theology.”
Doubtless intentionally, the title of Van Til’s book recalls the earlier work by J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism—which seems to us superior for its orderly and logical demolition of the liberal viewpoint. Van Til’s work, on the other hand, is difficult reading, in part because the sustained commentary approach sometimes obscures for the moment just who is speaking. The appraisal tends still to read Barth in terms of the consistent outcome of his presuppositions even where Barth vulnerably prefers inconsistency.
Yet the fact remains that Van Til strikes hard against vulnerable and non-evangelical elements in Barth’s dogmatics—his refusal to identify any history, and the Scriptures, and Jesus Christ, directly with revelation; his dismissal of divine wrath as a mode of grace; his espousal of a doctrine of grace that implies universalism (his notion that Jesus Christ is the only elect man and that all men are elect in him); his ambiguous connection of Christ’s revelation and history.
Van Til concedes that “no more basic criticism of Barth’s theology can be made” than G. C. Berkouwer’s, that it permits “no transition from wrath to grace in history” (p. 113). One of the most useful sections of Van Til’s study is the survey of criticisms of Barth’s views made by a number of Reformed theologians—G. C. Berkouwer, Klaas Runia, Klaas Schilder, A. D. R. Polman, among them—and by several Christian philosophers. A good subject index would enhance the value of the work.
Van Til’s basic complaint is that Barth’s theology is “dialectical rather than biblical in character” and hence is “essentially a speculative theology” (p. 203). Its informing principles are therefore apostate, and it is more deeply speculative than Romanism (p. 239).
The work skips lightly (pp. 341–43) over what in this reviewer’s opinion must remain a basic issue in assessing Barth: whether Barth’s claim that faith seeks understanding—that is, genuine knowledge of the Religious Object—is worked out by Barth so as to assure knowledge that is universally valid apart from subjective decision. Van Til is sure Barth does not succeed, but Barth’s argument (particularly its professed larger scope for reason) needs to be dismantled (and it can be).
Hence one must at least share Van Til’s conviction that Barth’s announced intention of “achieving an evangelical theology which can stand worthily against Roman Catholicism which I hold to be the great heresy” (in Theologische Blätter, 1932) remains unfulfilled. One may be forgiven, however, for refusing to say with Van Til that “in the last analysis, one must take his idea of revelation in Christ from Scripture as the direct expression of that revelation or one has to project his Christ from his own self-sufficient self-consciousness” (p. 135). It is just possible—and, in fact, is often the case in theological development—that powerful thinkers blend the two motifs. Even if men thereby sacrifice an objective, authoritative theology, the surviving biblical elements in their thought should be recognized for what they are, and should be welcomed and reinforced in the light of scriptural truth.
CARL F. H. HENRY
Paul In Context
St. Paul and His Letters, by Frank W. Beare (Abingdon, 1962, 142 pages, $2.75), is reviewed by E. Earle Ellis, Visiting Professor of New Testament, New Brunswick Theological Seminary, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
This publication is an elaboration of radio talks given in Canada in the spring of 1961. It summarizes each of the letters, giving a sympathetic portrayal of the apostle’s battles, burdens, and joys, with appropriate quotations of the most significant passages. Readable throughout, it is not infrequently enlivened by a sparkling comment: “An exaggerated asceticism may impress people as a superior piety, but it is really an inverted worldliness” (p. 107).
The critical tone of the book is reminiscent of the old Chicago school. Ephesians and the Pastorals are omitted as non-Pauline, and the former is (cautiously) suggested to be a later introduction to the Pauline collection. On the other hand, Acts is used as a frame for Paul’s life, and the traditional Roman dateline for the prison letters is accepted. The author takes a developmental view of Paul’s eschatology in which the resurrection of the body at length loses its relevance (P. 84).
The book is strongest in making Paul’s letters live within their historical setting. It is here that the general reader, for whom the book is intended, will find the comment most helpful. Negatively, one could wish that Professor Beare had made his readers more aware of critical conclusions differing from his own. (The Pastorals and especially Ephesians have better Pauline title than his cursory dismissal of them would suggest. Nor is an emerging Platonism the most likely understanding of Paul’s eschatology.) But this is a liability under which all popular presentations must labor, and Professor Beare has labored better than most.
E. EARLE ELLIS
Critical And Devotional
Song of the Vineyard, by B. Davie Napier (Harper, 1962, 387 pp., $5.50), is reviewed by David A. Hubbard, Chairman, Division of Biblical Studies and Philosophy, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.
In this “Theological Introduction to the Old Testament” Professor Napier (Yale Divinity School) surveys the writings under four headings: (1) Creation: Order Out of Chaos (the Pentateuch and Jonah); (2) Rebellion: Chaos Out of Order (Judges—II Kings); (3) Positive Judgment (the pre-Exilic prophets); (4) Existence: The Meaning of Yahwism (post-Exilic prophets and wisdom writings).
In a vigorous and graphic literary style that at times borders on the racy, the author expounds the theological ideas of the biblical writers against their historical backgrounds. He packs a great deal of helpful insight into his pages because he assumes his reader has read the relevant passages. His handling of the Old Testament is both critical (e.g. Esther is Maccabean) and devotional. If at times he does not put sufficient emphasis on the historicity of the biblical accounts, at least he reminds us that they are seen through the eyes of faith—they are a record not only of what happened but of devout men’s interpretation of these happenings. Though conservatives will take exception to many statements, few books will give a more gripping presentation of the teachings of the Old Testament and the trail they blaze for the New.
DAVID A. HUBBARD
Book Briefs
Printer’s Devil from Wittenberg, by T. J. Kleinhans (Augsburg, 1962, 207 pp., $3.95). A novel for teen-agers; the story of a young man caught up in the religious struggle of Luther’s Wittenberg.
To Know Christ Jesus, by F. J. Sheed (Sheed & Ward, 1962, 377 pp., $5). A running presentation of the life of Christ by a Roman Catholic “for the great mass of people … who … barely know him.”
Papyrus Bodmer XVIII (Deuteronomy I–X, 7), edited by Rodolphe Kasser (Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, Cologny-Geneva, Switzerland, 1962, 228 pp. and 49 plates, 65 Swiss francs). Part of the most important manuscript discovery of the century.
The Epistles of John, by Lehman Strauss (Loizeaux Brothers, 1962, 188 pp., $3). Competent devotional studies. He who can read can understand.
The Sacrament of Penance, by Paul Anciaux (Sheed & Ward, 1962, 190 pp., $3.50). For those who desire to understand the Roman Catholic sacrament of penance. First published in French.
The Shape of the Past, by John Warwick Montgomery (Edwards Brothers, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1962, 382 pp., $5). An introduction to philosophical historiography in which the author seeks to present a view of history from the Christian perspective. First of a projected five-volume series.
These, Too, Were Unshackled!, by Faith Coxe Bailey (Zondervan, 1962, 127 pp., $1.95). Fifteen dramatic stories of men and women freed by the power of the Gospel in the Pacific Garden Mission. Adapted from the radio scripts of “Unshackled.”
The Lady General, by Charles Ludwig (Baker, 1962, 93 pp., $1.50). A story of Evangeline Booth of Salvation Army fame; written for children.
I Believe in the American Way, by James H. Jauncey (Zondervan, 1962, 128 pp., $1.95). An American minister, Australian born, declares his happy faith in the land of Old Glory.
Flesh and Spirit, by William Barclay (Abingdon, 1962, 127 pp., $2). An examination of the fruits of the spirit and those of the flesh in terms of the Greek word for each. Detailed, substantial study of Galatians 5:19–23.
A History of Christianity, Volume I, edited by Ray C. Petry (Prentice-Hall, 1962, 561 pp., $8.50). Readings in the history of the early and medieval Church; first in a two-volume endeavor.
Luther: Early Theological Works, Volume XVI of The Library of Christian Classics, edited by James Atkinson (Westminster, 1962, 400 pp., $6.50). In addition to Luther’s commentary on Hebrews, the book includes also his “The Disputation Against Scholastic Theology,” “The Heidelberg Disputation,” and “The Reply to Latomus.”
Fundamentals of Voluntary Health Care, edited by George B. de Huszar (Caxton Printers, Caldwell, Idaho, 1962, 457 pp., $6). Physicians and others present a symposium critical of compulsory health care and positive about the methods and contributions of voluntary health care.
Essential Christianity, by Walter R. Martin (Zondervan, 1962, 114 pp., $1.95). A handbook of basic Christian doctrines; brief, readable treatments.
Prayer, by Olive Wyon (Muhlenberg, 1962, 68 pp., $1). Brief, refreshing, highly readable essays on the practice and value of prayer.
Philippians (New Testament Commentary), by William Hendriksen (Baker, 1962, 218 pp., $5.95). A good evangelical commentary which just misses excellence through occasional muffling of exegesis by theological commitments.
Who Was Who in Church History, by Elgin S. Moyer (Moody, 1962, 452 pp., $5.95). Approximately 1,750 entries about people who played a role in the history of the Church. Especially good for those wanting bits of biographical information.
The Gifts of Christmas, by Rachel Hartman (Channel, 1962, 125 pp., $2). Lyrical and joyful ways and means of celebrating Christmas this year.
Paperbacks
Sermons of the Great Ejection, Introduction by Iain Murray (Banner of Truth Trust, 1962, 220 pp., 3s. 6d.). Two thousand ministers of the Church of England were driven from their livings in 1662 for conscience’s sake. A good introduction to Puritan character and thought.
Reinhold Niebuhr, essays in tribute by Paul Tillich, John C. Bennett, and Hans J. Morgenthau (Seabury, 1962, 126 pp., $2). Brief papers, questions, and discussions on the thought of R. Niebuhr by friends gathered in his honor. A candid close-up of the men and the issues.
1001 Sentences Sermons, by Croft M. Pentz (Zondervan, 1962, 61 pp., $1). Modern proverbs for fillers. Scarcely “sermons”; some will fill space but little else. Sample: “Easy street is a blind alley.”
Seeds in the Wind, by Frank S. Cook (World Radio Missionary Fellowship, Box 691, Miami, Fla., 1961, 187 pp., $1). The story of the radio Voice of the Andes and its 30 years of mission effort.
The Mastery of Sex, by Leslie D. Weatherhead (Abingdon, 1962, 192 pp., $1). A sane, candid, comprehensive discussion of the direction and control of sexuality. First printed in 1959.
The Problem of Pain, by C. S. Lewis (Macmillan, 1962, 160 pp., $.95). An examination of human pain by the well-known writer of popular theology. First printed in 1940.
The Suburban Captivity of the Churches, by Gibson Winter (Macmillan, 1962, 255 pp., $1.45). An analysis of Protestantism’s severance from and responsibility to the expanding, sprawling metropolis.
Letters and Papers from Prison, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Macmillan, 1962, 254 pp., $1.45). Smuggled from prison, these last works throw a candid light on the person and thought of a disturbing theological mind. First printed in 1953.
A Layman’s Guide to Protestant Theology, by William Hordern (Macmillan, 1962, 222 pp., $1.45). A lucid introduction to the developments which led to modern-day theology. First printed in 1955.
The Ethics of Paul, by Morton Scott Enslin (Abingdon, 1962, 335 pp., $2.25). An analysis of Paul’s ethics which seeks to answer the question of his debt to Judaism, Stoicism, and Oriental mysteries. First printed over 30 years ago.
Christmas: An American Annual of Christmas Literature and Art, Volume 32, edited by Randolph E. Haugan (Augsburg, 1962, 68 pp., $3.50). An artistic production with stories, poetry, music, and art from home and abroad. A nice Christmas gift.
How To Organize Your Church Library, by Alice Straughan (Revell, 1962, 64 pp., $1). Just what the title claims.
