Invitation To Catholic Learning
New Catholic Encyclopedia (McGraw-Hill, 1967, 15 vols., $550), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor, Christianity Today.
This treasure-trove of Catholic theology, tradition and biography—the first revision of the Catholic Encyclopedia in more than half a century—is an invitation to the world of Roman Catholic learning. Its 15,000 pages reflect in numerous essays—notably that on Luther—the changing mood of the Roman church. Some essays by Protestant and Jewish scholars are included.
Evangelical scholars will find here a vast amount of useful information, much of it within a more constructive view of the Bible than that of many contemporary Protestant critics. Essays on Jesus Christ, for example, are preferable to much of the. Christological material emanating from many Protestant seminaries.
Traditional Catholic emphases dominate the encyclopedia in the midst of its modernity. The numerous essays on Jesus fill sixty-one pages, and the Holy Spirit gets only six while the Virgin Mary gets fifty-two, including an exposition of “Our Lady’s Coredemption.” The truth that Christ alone redeemed the human race is rejected, and recent popes are cited as increasingly supportive of coredemption. Efforts to support this notion by Scripture (Gen. 3:15; Luke 1:38; 2:35; John 19:27) are likely to impress most evangelicals as barren.
There is a “new look” at Luther. Gone are those descriptions in the earlier edition that disparaged the Reformer as “psychopathic” and spoke of “sinister moods” and “exhaustless abuse and scurrility.” The evaluation now ends: “In Luther were clearly reflected the two central themes of the Reformation: the renovation of the fundamental message of the gospel and the establishment of a more practical and personal means of presenting it.”
The essay on the basic truths of Protestantism is remarkably objective and accurate, although a companion essay on contemporary Protestant theology wholly overlooks conservative evangelicals. In another essay M. B. Schepers depicts Protestant theology today as post-liberal and predominantly dialectical and existential in orientation. The essay lags somewhat behind the last decade; its assimilation of Cullmann into the dialectical camp is an oversimplification; and nowhere is there a reflection of the scholarly international and interdenominational support for evangelical perspectives. Except for past voices like Machen and Warfield, evangelical scholars are overlooked and their works largely unmentioned in bibliographies, while non-evangelical Protestants are presented. There are passing references to United Evangelical Action, the Christian Beacon, and the Christian Century (characterized as a Disciples’ publication that “seeks to implement the ideal of Alexander Campbell for a return to the Gospels without the encumbrance of confessional creeds”) while CHRISTIANITY TODAY—with a paid circulation exceeding 150,000—is unmentioned.
Two articles on “Fundamentalism” and “Fundamentalism, Biblical” needlessly overlap and do not really give a comprehensive overview of the present conflict between liberal and biblical Protestantism. Generous space is given, however, to the Pentecostal churches. Wesley, Whitefield, Moody, and Billy Graham are referred to in an essay on “Revivalism,” defined as a religious approach “appealing principally to the emotions” and little interested in social consequences. Graham’s crusades are said to be “highly organized along the lines of modern salesmanship.”
Aside from this failure to reflect their tradition in the contemporary theological milieu, evangelicals will find in these volumes much of significant historical interest. An important reference work by every criterion, this encyclopedia reflects Roman Catholic positions from the ancient fathers through Vatican II. Whether in the article by Avery Dulles on “The Theology of Revelation,” or in those by J. J. Hennesey and R. F. Trisco on Vatican Councils I and II, the reader will find much of religious value.
The essay on “Thomism” somewhat obscures the church’s official adoption of Aquinas’s teaching. For not only did the papacy declare him “the most brilliant light of the church” but Clement VIII said his work was inerrant and Benedict XIII called it “the surest rule of Christian doctrine.” Leo XIII said the fathers at Trent desired that Scripture and Summa stand together at the altar, and while this did not come about, the encyclopedia essay on “Thomas Aquinas” concedes that “for all practical purposes it might as well have.” Leo and his successors enthusiastically encouraged Thomism as offering “the soundest means of combatting modern errors and solving modern problems.” Aquinas was canonized as much for his doctrine as for his life, and the Code of Canon Law as late as 1918 prescribed that Roman Catholic priests should receive their philosophical and theological instruction “according to the method, doctrine, and principles of the Angelic Doctor.”
The volumes reflect something of the confused state of contemporary Catholic theology. Vatican I indicated that the natural knowledge of God’s existence includes also some knowledge of divine essence—at least valid judgments about God’s personal nature (R. J. Busch-miller, VI, 562b). One wonders whether the encyclopedia reflects a noticeable skepticism about Thomism in some Catholic circles. The revitalization of Thomism (by Mercier, Sertillanges, Maritain, and Gilson) is viewed as one of the main directions of twentieth-century Christian thought. B. M. Bonansea insists that the five-fold Thomistic proof for God’s existence is “still valid” (VI, 551b). But while Vatican I held to knowledge of what God is, Aquinas subscribed to the Neoplatonic view that man by reason alone can know that God is, but not what he is. And J. R. Gillis writes: “One can form true judgments about God and by a kind of circumlocution compose a concept that is literally true. And yet one does not know what God is …” (VI, 542c).
Evangelical readers will note how many long-range issues still need to be debated with Catholicism. The encyclopedia declares that “the title deed of the papacy as an institution in its claim to universality in the spiritual sphere of government is found in two crucial passages of the New Testament”—Matthew 16:18, 19 and John 21:17. The problem here is one not of weighty reliance on the Bible to erect a super-scriptural authority but rather of a highly dubious use of the texts.
The Mass is said to be “at the very heart of Christianity” and is depicted as the re-enacted sacrifice of Christ, and the whole scheme of purgatory and prayers for the dead is defended, although it is granted that the doctrine of purgatory is not “explicitly” stated in the Bible. Under “Protestantism,” Zwingli is curiously represented as a sacramentarian—an error avoided in the essay on Zwingli—and his influence is held to have worked against frequent observance of Communion.
The essays on “Vatican” disappointingly skirt the Reformation issue of the priesthood of all believers. Under “Priest and Priesthood” there is some reflection of recent interest in “a fuller concept of priesthood” than that affirmed by the Council of Trent, but there is no recognition that the laity are ideally in the priestly service of Christ. And under “Protestantism” it is questionably asserted that in Protestantism the idea “that all the people are priests came to mean … that anyone can preside over the worship of the community.”
While Tradition is as important as Scripture for establishing the norm of Catholic faith, evangelicals will be pleased with aspects of the essay on “Bible (Inspiration),” where the inerrancy of Scripture is affirmed. “The Catholic receives the Scriptures from the infallible teaching authority of the Church, but he believes them to be the word of God through the Holy Spirit who gives him the gift of faith. The Catholic doctrine of inspiration and inerrancy presupposes that God has given His revelation once and for all to chosen individuals and has so illumined their intellects that they may communicate it to others with infallible truth.” But inerrancy is then denied in matters of science and history.
The Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel is defended, with A.D. 90 as the probable date of writing. But Petrine authorship of Second Peter is disputed, and the book is dated at the end of the first century or early in the second.
Concessions to criticism are apparent in the ascription of the Genesis creation narrative to the “priestly writers”; Genesis is assertedly Mosaic in spirit rather than authorship. Building on the encyclical Humani Generis (1950), which permitted Roman Catholics to defend evolution as a scientific hypothesis, the essay on “Organic Evolution” views the Genesis teaching on science as “pious ideas” to be distinguished from theological truths.
“Human Evolution” grants the biological evolution of man and asserts that it “still continues in the human species.” What is affirmed is “at least some measure of psychic and moral discontinuity” with the lower animals. The article on “Creationism” notes that “if man evolved from lower forms … one would also expect a development of theology bordering on … original sin and Adam’s … integrity and immortality.”
“Evolutionary insights are more and more applied to theology.… The view is beginning to emerge … that revelation says less about evolution than evolution says about the theology of creation.” Such a mood would surely be good news to Marxists—although dialectical materialism is elsewhere criticized for gratuitous assumptions about man.
Reading for Perspective
CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES
• Know Why You Believe, by Paul E. Little (Scripture Press, $1.25, paperback). The Inter-Varsity Director of Evangelism compellingly presents Christian evidences that will help believers give reasons for the hope within them.
• Evangelicals at the Brink of Crisis, by Carl F. H. Henry (Word, $1.75). A hard-hitting overview, in the aftermath of the World Congress on Evangelism, of pressing concerns in theology, evangelism, social action, and ecumenism.
• The New Immorality, by David A. Redding (Revell, $3.50). A lively, informed consideration of biblical morality viewed against the backdrop of situation ethics and the varied moral decisions that confront men today.
The Priority Of Revolution
Containment and Change, by Carl Oglesby and Richard Shaull (Macmillan, 1967, 248 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Edmund A. Opitz, staff member, The Foundation for Economic Education, coordinator, The Remnant, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York.
The sponsor of this book is an organization called the University Christian Movement, under whose auspices a meeting was held at Union Theological Seminary in New York at which Oglesby and Shaull voiced their opinions about revolution and the cold war. Each man has now expanded the remarks he made on that occasion. Oglesby’s have grown into a long and tendentious critique of American history and recent foreign policy, that includes a solicitous account of Soviet Russia’s benevolent actions on the world scene and her peaceful intent today. The business sector of society, Oglesby explains, is the real cause of America’s warlike career and accounts for our involvement in Viet Nam; the elimination of this sector in Russian society explains why Russian foreign policy is geared to defense, why Russia has never been the aggressor. If students of American history and world affairs hold contrary opinions, it is because they are victimized by pocket-book and power motivations; the power structure—church, school, business, military, government—keeps the truth from the people!
Oglesby is the recent president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the most obtrusive of the campus New Left groups. He is now at Antioch College as “Resident Activist Scholar.” Surely the idea for this academic post and title was taken from some satire by Aldous Huxley! The campus radical has long been a fixture at many colleges; but now that revolutionary thought and action has achieved a consensus in academic circles so powerful and so widespread as to constitute a kind of status quo, it adds a dash of 1984 flavor to learn that some college has endowed a Chair of Revolution!
Shaull is professor of ecumenics at Princeton Theological Seminary. He has spent twenty years with student groups in Latin America, “in close contact with a revolutionary situation there … working for reform within the established order.” We are given to understand that Shaull feels himself outrun by events, “in the unenviable position of being caught somewhere between two worlds.” The result, he adds, is that “I am now obliged to give priority to revolution.” It is from this vantage point (!) that he proposes to shed some light on the nature of the revolution that is stirring up the world and agitating so many of our campuses. His explanation runs something like this: The processes of secularization have finally succeeded in eliminating the dimension of transcendence, and the traditional metaphysical world views reveal their irrelevance. With the departure of the old absolutes, the future is open and man is free to determine his own destiny: “Nation and community provide the context for human fulfillment.” The revolutionary surge moves toward the secular City of Man.
Shaull, a man of the Word, is somewhat hamstrung by the need to bring specious theological sanctions and interpretations to bear upon the revolution. Oglesby, a man of words, labors under no such handicap. His is a simplistic Marxian interpretation of history. His analytic tools are suspect, in the first place; his account is loaded with many unsupported assertions; his documentation is dubious. And he makes use of a curious ploy to “prove” his points. Here’s one example: The obliteration bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, and Hiroshima is cited as proof that America is “history’s most violent nation.” In reality, Communists, liberals, and the intelligentsia generally favored World War II and worked feverishly to get a reluctant America involved in the fighting. Once we were in, these same people nagged the Allies into fighting a ferocious war, over the protest of many Americans, and prolonged the war by demanding unconditional surrender. The left applauded the conduct of the war, except when its ferocity slackened. And now comes an intellectual heir of these Communist and liberal propagandists to charge the rest of us with the sins committed under the sponsorship of his leftist like-numbers of twenty-five years ago!
Similarly with the imbroglio in Viet Nam. The Viet Nam affair is a mixed-up mess, all right; but it is exactly the kind of foreign entanglement that we can expect to be precipitated at regular intervals by the insane foreign policy adopted a quarter of a century ago. The left loves everything about that foreign policy except its consequences; or, more precisely, they dislike its consequences in Southeast Asia, but they want to retain the policy and point the muzzle at Rhodesia and South Africa.
We know what the road to war looks like, and we know that the first steps along that road may seem innocent enough. If churchmen are to speak a healing word to the nations, they must learn to recognize those first steps for what they are. They won’t learn that in this book. But they will learn here something of what they are up against.
Are They Fundamentalists?
Fundamentalism and the Missouri Synod, by Milton L. Rudnick (Concordia, 1966, 152 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Robert Preus, professor of systematic theology, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.
It is a pretty well established fact today that the term “fundamentalist” is pejorative. It is often used to describe a wooden, insensitive, obscurantist way of reading the sacred Scriptures, a reading that ignores history and the human side of Scripture. But sometimes anyone who believes and teaches the divine origin, authority, and inerrancy of Scripture is labeled a fundamentalist, and thus a cruel caricature results. The Reformation and post-Reformation doctrine of Scripture is branded fundamentalism by such theologians as Emil Brunner and Regin Prenter.
Not unexpectedly, therefore, a church body like the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod that has sought to remain faithful to the sola scriptura of the Reformation is often portrayed as fundamentalist, as having come under the “baleful” influence of the fundamentalist movement.
Dr. Milton Rudnick believed there was some truth in this charge and decided to investigate. After a thorough study of the beginnings and development of both the fundamentalist movement and the Missouri Synod, he arrived at a negative conclusion. Fundamentalism and the Missouri Synod had no influence on each other. Their dissimilarities were many and serious, and their similarities grew out of their common Reformation heritage.
In the first half of the study, Rudnick wisely tries to get at just what fundamentalism is and who the fundamentalists were. He shows that many conservative scholars like Machen, Allis, Van Til, and Robert Dick Wilson were not fundamentalists at all, even though they spoke out during much of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy; they were, like their precursors, orthodox Calvinists. The author also makes it clear that millennialism was an important and exclusivistic tenet of the fundamentalists. Although he dwells on the negative attitude of many fundamentalists and their bitter invective against modernism and liberalism, on the whole he is quite sympathetic to their theology and concerns.
Turning next to the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod and its historical development, Rudnick shows that it would have been impossible for this church body to be influenced theologically by the fundamentalists. For the most part it was a German-speaking church, oriented toward the theological situation in Germany and reacting against the liberalism there, to a great extent unacquainted with and even uninterested in American theological trends. In its theology it closely followed Luther, the Luther confessions, and the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Lutheran theologians.
There is no evidence that the Missouri Synod theologians used fundamentalist sources; at least they almost never quoted from them. Their doctrine of Scripture agrees precisely with that of the old Lutheran dogmaticians. They were indeed aware of what many fundamentalists (at this point Rudnick calls Machen a fundamentalist) were writing against liberalism; but they were at the same time wary of the movement and frankly critical on many issues, e.g. unionism, the Reformed orientation, premillennialism, and even the preoccupation with anti-evolution legislation (a dangerous mingling of church and state). The Missouri Synod sat out the fundamentalist-modernist battle not only because it was untouched by liberalism but also because of its strong Lutheran confessionalism. Fundamentalism was not strict enough for the Missourians, who insisted on agreement on every article of faith before they could make common cause with other Christians.
I might make a couple of mild strictures. First, the statement that “a key characteristic of [Lutheran] Orthodoxy was its high estimate of human reason in preparing for and receiving God’s revelation” (p. 71), is too strong. Lutheran orthodoxy had the most negative estimate of the powers of reason of all the confessional groupings of the Reformation era (Calvinism, Romanism, Socinianism) and was aware of this. Second, the implication that Walter A. Maier held back in some of his radio preaching lest he lose financial support from many fundamentalists is, I believe, not quite fair. After all, regulations ruling all radio preaching precluded the possibility of certain direct polemics, polemics that Maier did not refrain from when he was off the air.
Ordinarily there seems to be little value in a book that proves a negative thesis (like showing that there is no relationship between the Southern Baptists and the Russian Nikonites); but this one is welcome, for it dispels a myth that was growing in popularity. It also opens up other questions that might well be investigated. Were other Lutherans in this country influenced by fundamentalism? Did neo-orthodoxy effectively defeat liberalism after the fundamentalists had failed to do so (as the author suggests, p. 64)? Offhand, I would answer the first question yes and the second no; but a thorough study of such pertinent questions might be very helpful.
The Minister And Espionage
Code Name Sebastian, by James L. Johnson (Lippincott, 1967, 270 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Clifford Edwards, associate professor of English, Fort Hays Kansas State College, Hays, Kansas.
In Code Name Sebastian, Johnson has accomplished the remarkable feat of bringing together somewhat successfully a suspenseful tale of international espionage with its inevitable subterfuge, danger, and violence; the story of the terrible ordeal of eight survivors of an airplane crash as they desperately cling to life on the cruel and pitiless Negev desert; and the story of a spiritually exhausted minister suffering from theological fatigue and the flabby muscles of an untried faith, who seeks spiritual renewal and a sense of commitment.
The center of consciousness is Sebastian, a sensitive, reflective minister unexpectedly thrust into the thankless role of leadership by an Israeli secret agent. With the exception of the protagonist, whose doubts, fears, anxieties, and frustrations are understandable and real, the characterization is weak, chiefly because each character is a foil made to represent various personality traits and attitudes—such as the skeptical empirical intellect or the Nietzschean man of powerful will—in conflict with Sebastian’s orthodox Christian conversations. Furthermore, the plot unfortunately often borders on contrivance and cannot avoid certain spy-story clichés.
The novel has much to recommend it, however. The desert wilderness with its echoes of Israel’s spiritual history and the crucial need for living water provide an apt metaphorical background for Sebastian’s trial of faith, as he staggers under the cross of unrequited personal sacrifices and compassion, and as he refuses to surrender to despair and to the voice of the Tempter. Most importantly, the ordeal enlarges his awareness of the need to share humanity’s suffering in order to minister to its needs. Although the novel has certain unexpected reversals, there are no sensational miracles, no last-minute conversions or serious concessions to sentimentalism.
Despite the well-timed criticism of the Church’s failure to penetrate the world with Christian compassion, the conclusion is disturbingly ambivalent: Sebastian’s new sense of spiritual commitment and involvement appears to owe as much to the rhetoric of Bonhoeffer’s indictment of cloistered Christianity as it does to a revitalizing encounter with the Holy Spirit in the Negev experience. Still, the novel effectively challenges the kind of piety that delicately segregates itself from the ugly reality of a godless world, and it does this in the framework of a unique and suspenseful narrative.
The New Party Line
The Converted Church: From Escape to Engagement, by Paul L. Stagg (Judson, 1967, 160 pp., $2.75, paperback), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, associate editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
From the well of modernity this author has drawn a small cup of water that he pours on the fires of the “old evangelism,” hoping to extinguish it and then ignite his own “new evangelism.” He is administrative associate of the Division of Evangelism, American Baptist Home Mission Societies, and his leader, Jitsuo Morikawa, has written the preface.
As one would expect, the book follows the Morikawa party line. It is incipiently universalistic, and the author emphasizes social action as constitutive of the Gospel. The work is a curious medley of elements put together in such a way that the unsuspecting reader might think Stagg was presenting a case for orthodoxy. For example, he says that “the gospel (evangel) is God’s good news to men, his deed in his Word, Jesus Christ, by whom salvation was wrought for the world.” But then when he tells about working to desegregate housing, he says: “I told these people simply that the phony wall dividing the races had been broken down.… For me, I said quite plainly, this is the gospel, good news to all who are excluded, news that they are accepted.”
Stagg comes down hard against pietism as he approvingly tells of a churchgoer who said he could not understand or appreciate statements “such as ‘the Bible as the infallibly inspired word of God,’ ‘the blood of the Lamb,’ and so forth.…” The same churchgoer said that when “the discussion was about Christian responsibility in such areas as industry, public school, health, or leisure [it] had great meaning.…” This Stagg cordially accepts.
He also applauds Franklin H. Littell’s statement in From Church State to Pluralism that Dwight L. Moody’s kind of revivalism, which avoided “all references to social issues, was a betrayal of the great tradition of revivalism and mass evangelism.” Students of church history will question Littell’s observation. Few, however, will be able to question the fact that Stagg’s “new evangelism” bears no resemblance to the “great tradition of revivalism and mass evangelism”—but for wholly different reasons.
Stagg discerns the presence of God “in the Freedom Movement for racial justice; in the antipoverty crusade of the nation; in the Peace Corps working among underdeveloped nations; in the new openness between men of all sorts, Christian and Jew, white and black, outsider and insider.” This is not the ‘Word of God as it is attested to in the Bible,” according to Stagg. It is “the Word of God … spoken through the world.”
He has an insight that enables him to see how in specific historical events the “Word of God” is proclaimed—not verbalized, but acted out. He mentions the march to Selma, for example, and says that “the march over the Pettus Bridge … has some resemblance to the Exodus.… The word of God was proclaimed in a new way, in a way which made decision inescapable.” All this is but a continuation of the battle over proclamation versus service, with service elevated to the status of proclamation and the Gospel itself depreciated.
This volume is to provide the undergirding for the evangelistic outreach of the American Baptist Convention in the days ahead. I for one will watch with fascinated interest to see the results. If his guidelines work, it will be the first time; what he suggests has been tried unsuccessfully before. If the guidelines do not work—and I predict they won’t—then perhaps the current “new evangelism” will have run its course. Then the Church will be left to pick up the pieces and undo the damage.
Book Briefs
“The Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible”: The Letter of Paul to the Galatians, by William Neil; The Letter of Paul to the Romans, by Ernest Best; and The Letters of Peter and Jude, by A. R. C. Leaney (Cambridge; 1967; 96, 184, and 144 pp.; $3.50 each; also paper, $1.65 each). Three stimulating additions to an excellent commentary series.
Shot to Hell, by Keith Bill (Revell, 1966, 93 pp., $2.50). The story of a Christian mission to dope addicts in London. Published in London under the title The Needle, the Pill, and the Saviour. Maybe the title writer is on the stuff.
Söderblom: Ecumenical Pioneer, by Charles J. Curtis (Augsburg, 1967, 149 pp., $4.50). A Lutheran pastor writes a sympathetic biography of the Swedish archbishop who helped lay the foundations of the World Council of Churches.
Forgive Them, by J. E. Church (Moody, 1967, 126 pp., $2.95). The gripping story of an African preacher who suffered martyrdom in 1964.
Current Philosophical Essays, compiled and edited by Frederick C. Dommeyer (Charles C. Thomas, 1966, 262 pp., $8.75). Students and associates honor Professor Curt John Ducasse with essays that tackle such problems as the commitments and function of philosophy, mind-body relation, verifiability, God and evil, and free will, the creativity of God and order.
The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake, by Thomas J. J. Altizer (Michigan State University, 1967, 226 pp., $8.50). The foremost death-of-God theologian attempts to show how Blake’s “radical and prophetic reaction to a non-redemptive God of power and judgment” led him to a vision of the omnipresence of Jesus’ passion.
Paperbacks
Biblical Studies Today: A Guide to Current Issues and Trends, by Edgar Krentz (Concordia, 1966, 80 pp., $1.75). A layman’s guide that identifies current trends in biblical studies: source and form criticism, the new quest for the historical Jesus, hermeneutical problems.
The Orthodox Pastor, by John Shahov-skoy (St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 1966, 117 pp., $2.50). A treatise on the role and responsibilities of the Eastern Orthodox pastor that could be read with profit by Western Protestant ministers.
The Testing of God’s Son, by Birger Gerhardsson (C. W. K. Gleerup [Lund, Sweden], 1966, 83 pp., 12 Sw. Cr.). A study of Matthew 4:1–11 (the temptation narrative) that claims it is highly stylized early Christian midrash.
The Other Comforter: Practical Studies on the Holy Spirit, by Theodore H. Epp (Back to the Bible, 1966, 264 pp., $1.95). The director of the “Back to the Bible” broadcast offers helpful, scriptural teaching on the Holy Spirit.
Faith and the Physical World: A Comprehensive View, by David L. Dye (Eerdmans, 1966, 214 pp., $2.95). Seeks to show how a Christian world view may be developed and applied to the physical universe as well as to theological considerations. A helpful annotated reading list is included.
