Using a three-column format in the front part of this issue enables us to publish what is by far the largest ever of our annual surveys of books on religion. Even so the writers had to be selective in their choices and terse in their comments. There were hundreds of books that we just didn’t have space to mention. With only a handful of exceptions we have confined ourselves to books issued in the United States for the first time during the last calendar year. Moreover, we have concentrated on books for the more serious reader, in keeping with our general essay style. By excluding such types as popular works of inspiration or biography, study manuals, and fiction we do not mean to deny their helpfulness. Advertisements for these books are in abundance.
We lead off this year with surveys on practical subjects, hoping to entice some readers into looking at the book evaluations who otherwise might skip them. Placing the surveys of books on the Bible further back does not mean any de-emphasis on the foundational importance of the Scriptures.
Perhaps a by-product of the energy crisis is that would-be wanderers who are “stuck” at home will take more time to read. We hope that Christians will use their limited reading time for the best books in their areas of interest. Our surveyors have tried to help them make such choices. We apologize for unintentional or unjustifiable omissions, and we cordially thank the publishers who cooperated most willingly in sending us review copies. The Book Editor welcomes suggestions for improving this annual feature.
If there are any remaining clouds of doubt in the minds of evangelicals that “the Church is back,” the literature of 1973 should blow them away like a strong west wind. Over seventy-five titles made the “finals” of my selection process, though not all seventy-five will appear in the following paragraphs.
In the process of elimination, those books that endured to the end generally had these qualities: the author’s apparent grasp of his material, reasonable comprehensiveness without damaging gaps, and usability in contemporary church life. With a word of appreciation to publishers who provided review copies, and a word of apology to any whose worthy entries may have been omitted for some reason, here is my proposed list of the better books of 1973 on the Church’s life and service.
AGE GROUP MINISTRIES Moody’s “Effective Teaching Series” introduced two new units last year following up on You the Teacher (1972). Larry Richards wrote the first and second volumes and is coordinating the series. You and Youth offers the teacher helpful material for his task as does You and Children co-authored by Richards and Elsiebeth McDaniel. The ideas are not new but are reworked and most practical, though the publisher over-advertises the books on the back cover. Similar but even more elementary is a four-volume series published by Standard, Teaching Preschoolers, Teaching Primaries, Middlers, Juniors, Teaching Junior Hi’s and Senior Hi’s, and Teaching Young Adults and Adults.
Strommen’s Bridging the Gap (Augsburg) is the only youth volume of consequence, and his studies are limited to self-report data from Lutheran youth. The book is church-oriented with a focus on pastors and parents.
Christian parents will welcome Gil Beers’s series “Learning to Read From the Bible” (Zondervan). Four titles are available: God Is My Helper; God Is My Friend; Jesus Is My Teacher; and Jesus Is My Guide. The books, prepared for children’s use, have solid bindings, attractive art work, theological summaries, word lists, and guidelines for use with the beginning reader.
BIBLE STUDY AND TEACHING It was a slow year for books on teaching/learning principles and techniques, though Larry Richards’s 69 Ways to Start a Study Group (Zondervan) has the sparkle and practicality we have come to expect from him. Sunday-school teachers will appreciate Successful Bible Teaching (Baker) by Sue Uys, but “a creative approach” is too strong a subtitle.
Media enthusiasts should welcome Multi-Media in the Church (John Knox) by W. A. Engstrom and Landing Rightside Up in TV and Film (Abingdon) by G. William Jones, although neither volume compares to the Getz book reissued by Moody last year. Using Biblical Simulations (Judson) by Donald Miller, Graydon Snyder, and Robert Neff is a genuinely fresh approach to Bible teaching. Perforated pages can be torn out to give each student his part. Evangelical teachers will need to rework portions of the eleven units because of their infection with negative critical assumptions.
This latter problem also qualifies our use of Mastering New Testament Facts (John Knox), a series of four programmed workbooks prepared by Madeline Beck and Lamar Williamson, Jr. Used with guidance, this set will be ideal for new converts’ classes or entering seminary students whose lack of biblical background places them at a disadvantage in classes.
CHURCH DOCTRINE, RENEWAL, AND WORSHIP Everything from how to choose a church board to how to conduct a local church self-study floats by in Leslie Parrot’s Building Today’s Church, a former Beacon Hill title reissued last year by Baker. Of less practical value but thoroughly documented in research is the fourth annual ALC/LCA “Yearbook in Christian Education,” How Persons Grow in Christian Community (Fortress) by William A. Koppe. Pastors and church leaders who want to confront their people with a biblical ecclesiology without frightening them with a sizable tome on systematics can give them John Mac-Arthur’s The Church, the Body of Christ (Zondervan), usable also for discussion groups, Sunday-school classes, and supplemental reading in college and seminary. It’s a great little book, warm and biblical, reflecting genuine love for the Church. So does Oswald Hoffmann’s God’s Joyful People (Concordia), which is less thorough than MacArthur but just as concerned with the reemergence of a vibrant communal love in Christ’s body.
Renewal books of merit were down to three last year, of which my preference runs toward B. J. Chitwood’s What the Church Needs Now (Revell). There is no slashing sarcasm in these pages; Chitwood offers a general overview of the renewal movement and discusses some often omitted matters such as church discipline. Unfortunately, the book is an overpriced hardback. Ralph Neighbor’s The Seven Last Words of the Church (Zondervan) is the record of how renewal came to West Memorial Baptist Church of Houston. Neighbor writes well and draws helpful principles from his experience, but I think he falls into the trap of the flagrant overstatement, so typical of renewal writers of two and three years ago (e.g., the church is “not anxious to observe the opportunities to repair the needs of people who pass us by”). Judson offers the creatively written An Exodus For the Church by William F. Keucher, who traces renewal motifs by comparing geographical points of biblical and church history (“A New Exodus From Egypt to Emmaus”).
In an interesting little booklet entitled Biblical Foundations For Christian Worship (Herald), Millard C. Lind finds the Old Testament basis for worship in the covenant and the New Testament basis in a “new theo-political structure.” New Ways to Worship (Revell) by James L. Christensen provides stimulating suggestions for a contemporary approach to worship services.
ORGANIZATION, ADMINISTRATION, AND LEADERSHIP Two Zondervan hardbacks make a contribution in this area, though their differences point up divergent approaches. Organization and Leadership in the Local Church by Kenneth Kilinski and Jerry Wofford lays the biblical foundation and then builds a treatment of organization. This is a very good book, and my only complaint is that the chapters too clearly show the expertise of each author. Management chapters are weak in theology and vice versa. Richard LeTourneau’s Management Plus speaks to the Christian executive in the business world; he develops eighteen chapters of general administrative theory and practice, then adds three chapters on “the spiritual dimension of leadership” like the wax on a floor.
Four paperbacks will be helpful to lay leaders in churches and other Christian organizations. Paul Madsen’s The Person Who Chairs the Meeting (Judson) and Effective Committees and Groups in the Church (Augsburg) by Ed and Nancy Barmann both deal with formal group work procedure, whereas Church Worker’s Handbook (Judson) by Godfrey Robinson and Stephen Winward and my own So You Want to Be a Leader! (Christian Publications) attempt to provide general guidelines for leadership development in the Church and are written for training classes as well as individual readers.
PASTORAL MINISTRY AND PREACHING With the renewed popularity of the Church comes a renewed interest in the pastorate, and some big names wrote for pastors in 1973. Well-known pastors Howard Sugden and Warren Wiersbe give young ministers practical advice in When Pastors Wonder How (Moody), eighteen chapter-topics based upon questions they have received in pastor’s conferences. Another practical overview comes from the Pentecostal tradition, The Effective Pastor (Gospel Publishing House), edited by Zenas Bicket. Bibliographer Wilbur Smith has been writing about books again, and the result is The Minister in His Study (Moody), particularly helpful to college and seminary students.
Lyle Schaller and Donald P. Smith speak to the matter of the pastoral role in relation to the laity in Schaller’s The Pastor and the People (Abingdon) and Smith’s Clergy in the Crossfire (Westminster). Neither author explores the biblical issues, but Schaller is more practical and closer to the life of the evangelical pastor. Marvin Judy disappointed me a bit with The Parish Development Process (Abingdon), since both his previous book and the title of this one seem to promise more than just an exegesis of the cooperative parish plan.
How long has it been since you’ve seen a really significant book on establishing new churches? Now we have four, led by Donald MacNair’s The Birth, Care and Feeding of a Local Church (Canon). MacNair is thorough on establishment, but the title is misleading, implying that he will deal with general parish nurture over the long haul, which he doesn’t. A more accurate title might be “The Conception, Delivery and Weaning of A New Church.” Two helpful paperbacks support the MacNair work: A Guide to Church Planting by Hodges and Building Town and Country Churches by Harold Longnecker, both from Moody, the latter being a retitled reprint. Missiologist Donald McGavran applies church-growth principles to North American ministry in How to Grow a Church (Regal).
Just when some had concluded that preaching was an anachronism in the media age we get some top books on pulpit ministry from evangelical authors. Both R. E. O. White in A Guide to Preaching (Eerdmans) and Lloyd M. Perry in Biblical Preaching For Today’s World (Moody) serve up traditional homiletics, though Perry does include ten pages on dialogical preaching. Pulpit Giants (Moody) by Donald Demaray presents a study of preachers rather than preaching, exploring the characteristics of twenty-five outstanding pulpiteers from Augustine to Stott.
Two other books on preaching are worth mentioning, though disturbing because of their theological poverty. Since adequate pulpit ministry must be based upon solid biblical foundations, both of these are playing ball with a broken bat. Merrill Abbey applies communication theory to preaching in Communication in Pulpit and Parish (Westminster); the early chapters on process are good but come at too high a price because the end result is too much McLuhan and too little MacClaren. Preachers who can sift through the chaff for some wheat will find creative sermonizing ideas in Experimental Preaching (Abingdon), twenty-one “relevant” sermons on everything from Christianity to “Clockwork Orange.” Editor John Killinger’s introduction lays the groundwork for the license that some contributors used and seems incompatible with his own books.
Objective bias leads one to proclaim Craig Skinner’s The Teaching Ministry of the Pulpit (Baker) “book of the year” in this category. I’m not alone. In his foreword Faris D. Whitesell says that the book “covers more territory and makes more useful contributions than any other book on preaching I have read in a long, long time.” Personally, I would have reversed the page allotments between the first two sections (“Perspective from History” outdrew “Perspective from Theology” by twelve pages), but no matter, Skinner has done expository preaching a service in this book. He tends to overwork authorities who agree with his position (one Lightfoot book gets more than one-third of the first-chapter citations), but that is probably as common to authorship as writer’s cramp.
PERSONAL CHRISTIAN GROWTH As the Church becomes more people-centered we will doubtless see more literature on individual renewal. Three titles I want to mention are devotional, intended for personal use of new Christians wanting to grow in the faith-life: Becoming Transformed by Orien Johnson (Judson), Let Yourself Grow! by Joe Ellis (Standard), and Kenneth Kinghorn’s Dynamic Discipleship (Revell). Two paperbacks deal with the psychology of Christian experience particularly as it relates to other people, and, though neither is genuinely scriptural in approach, I prefer Lloyd Ahlem’s Do I Have to Be Me? (Regal) to The Love Fight (Herald) by David W. Augsburger. Unique in this category is For Men Only (Tyndale), edited by J. Allan Peterson. Pastors who face the problem of matriarchal leadership in their congregations will welcome this collection of forty articles by male leaders. The strength is as variant as the articles, bringing together such men as Joel Nederhood and W. Clement Stone between the covers of one volume, and for a bargain price.
SPECIALIZED CHURCH MINISTRIES This category is a catch-all for some varied titles:
CAMPING:Family Camping—Five Designs For Your Church (H. M. Ham) by John D. Rozeboom.
MUSIC: Rethinking Church Music (Moody) by Paul W. Wohlgemuth.
CREATIVE CRAFTS AND ACTIVITIES:Take It From Here (Judson) by Glen Yoder and Creative Handcrafts, four volumes dealing with preschoolers, primaries, juniors, and youth (Regal) by Eleanor Doan.
CHURCH NURSERY SCHOOL:Weekday Ministry With Young Children (Judson) by Martha L. Hemphill.
SPECIAL EDUCATION:Help For the Handicapped Child (McGraw-Hill) by Florence Weiner (essential resource for churches with classes for handicapped).
CHRISTIAN HIGHER EDUCATION:HOW to Choose a Christian College (Creation) by Robert Webber.
Thus endeth another year in books on congregational life and ministry. And the Lord of the Church must be pleased that we are once again groping with the major matters of life and love in the body, that our sociological analysis has turned to redemptive concern, and that empty criticism can be replaced by focus on the proclamation of the truth. It was an encouraging year.
Christian psychiatrists and psychologists seem increasingly bent on developing a thoroughly biblical approach to counseling and evaluating secular thinking in the light of Scripture; this is a most welcome trend. In The Kink and I (Victor), Christian psychiatrist James Mallory reflects this trend by convincingly showing that neurotic problems or “kinks” can be fully resolved only in Jesus Christ. Heavily sprinkled with personal, amusing anecdotes, the book engagingly and warmly communicates profound thinking about the nature of man, his needs, and how to meet those needs. The only drawback is a rather rambling style, which sometimes makes it hard to catch the main points.
FOR PASTORS AND CHURCH LEADERS Gary Collins’s four-volume series “Psychology for Church Leaders” (Creation) gives busy pastors an easy-to-read summary of the insights of modern psychology as they relate to the needs of the modern church. Man in Transition discusses the needs of people during normal development, Fractured Personalities gives help in recognizing and understanding abnormal behavior, Effective Counseling is a useful introduction to standard counseling procedures, and Man in Motion discusses the psychology of individual differences, motivation, and interpersonal discord.
Helping the Helpers to Help by Ruth Caplan (Seabury) describes a model of professional mental-health consultation for the pastor; the many specific examples of consultant interaction should stimulate workable ideas for tapping local mental-health resources. Glenn Whitlock’s Preventive Psychology and the Church (Westminster) covers similar ground but adds a helpful section on crisis-intervention counseling, including material on handling suicide threats. Other useful books in this category include Counseling by Lars Granberg (Baker), fifteen brief, to-the-point articles by leading pastoral counselors on a wide range of subjects; Hospital Chaplain by K. R. Mitchell (Westminster), a narrative account of hospital work that should help those involved in this ministry to clarify their role and responsibility; and The Little White Book by Facius, Noer, and Stage (Harold Shaw), a hardhitting, brief account of the Christian position on subjects like morality, drugs, and the occult. Pastors might want to make the latter book available to their young people. A beginning text by James Hamilton entitled The Ministry of Pastoral Counseling (Beacon Hill) deserves mention.
FOR THE FAMILY Three “must” books stand out: Heaven Help the Home by Howard Hendricks (Victor), Christian Living in the Home by Jay Adams (Presbyterian and Reformed), and An Ounce of Prevention by Bruce Narramore (Zondervan). These, along with Larry Christianson’s The Christian Family, should be required reading in every home. Bruce Narramore’s reputation in this field is already established by his widely commended Help! I’m a Parent. Hendricks presents the biblical basics of a happy home in warm, humorous style and gives practical ideas for promoting family togetherness. Adams, in his characteristic shape-up, no-nonsense style, begins by pointing out that a Christian home is where active sinners live, then outlines principles that Christians must responsibly follow.
The Christian Home in a Changing World by Gene Getz (Moody) is an academic, almost impersonal study of the subject; Getz’s expository style is best suited for Bible-study groups. A brief restatement of standard but useful thoughts is offered by Richard Dobbins in Train Up a Child (Baker). Sex education in the Christian home is given excellent treatment in From Parent to Child About Sex by William Grant (Zondervan); a good section on sexual development in children supports his suggestions on what to say and when to say it. At least as good is Sex Is a Parent Affair (Regal) by Letha Scanzoni. Her helpful, scripturally based guidelines are punctuated with illustrative stories.
It is unfortunate that Sidney Craig in Raising Your Child Not By Force But By Love (Westminster) insists on a few non-biblical assumptions (e.g., children are basically good). Much of what he says penetrates into the real problems in many parent-child relationships, but some could overlook the good because of strong disagreement with his questionable positions. A more acceptable but less useful book entitled Why Can’t I Understand My Kids by Herbert Wagemaker (Zondervan) is heavy on the obvious—little that is new but some old ideas worth a rehearing. Solving Problems in Marriage by Robert Bower (Eerdmans) has good material, especially on the problem of communication. One could wish for a clearer statement of the biblical position on such matters as headship in the home and for a greater reliance on spiritual resources in solving problems such as the need to find self-acceptance and personal identity.
FOR WOMEN ONLY Two excellent books deal with biblical answers to the modern woman’s questions about her identity, purpose, and function. To Have and to Hold by Jill Renich (Zondervan) and The Total Woman by Marabel Morgan (Revell) both describe woman’s role in marriage. The former relies heavily on Scripture and presents a warm, interesting, mature discussion. Marabel Morgan sprinkles a few Bible quotations through the book and saves a clear gospel presentation for the last chapter. Her book will be criticized by some (not me) as too frank, flippant, and flamboyant. But the reasonably well-adjusted woman whose marriage is mediocre and dull is likely to react with productive enthusiasm to the wealth of practical ideas for generating happy sparks in her marriage.
GENERAL Paul Tournier’s latest work, Learn to Grow Old (Harper & Row), is a sensitive, personal, yet scholarly treatment of the subject appropriate for the aging or for those counseling with the elderly. Tournier’s contributions to a biblical understanding of people and their problems are helpfully summarized in The Christian Psychology of Paul Tournier by Gary Collins (Baker). By highlighting Tournier’s biography, synthesizing his ideas on theology and psychology, and critically evaluating his thinking, Collins does for Tournier what Clyde Kilby has done for C. S. Lewis.
Rollo May’s Power and Innocence (Norton) is often subjective and operates from a non-biblical base, yet is full of provocative insights about man’s need for self-esteem and the relation of that need to the feeling of power. A major work by Morton Kelsey entitled Healing and Christianity (Harper & Row) argues for a view of man as more than merely physical by tracing the history of healing within Christianity. Robert Webber offers practical help for the Christian young person in How to Choose a Christian College (Creation); specific facts about such matters as course offerings and majors in various colleges make this a useful tool. Although Karl Menninger in Whatever Became of Sin (Hawthorn) offers a diluted definition of sin, his emphasis on the reality of sin and guilt is a refreshing departure from the more common conscience-soothing approach of psychiatry.
Pastors would do well to take special notice of the “out of it” lonely people in their congregations by reading Marion Leach Jacobsen’s Saints and Snobs (Tyndale). Two books about alcoholism will be helpful for counselors or families involved with the problem: I’ll Quit Tomorrow by Vernon Johnson (Harper & Row) and The 13th American by Pastor Paul (David C. Cook). The latter is a true story of a minister’s successful battle with the bottle.
Two collections of essays are especially noteworthy. Dynamic Interpersonalism For Ministry, edited by Orlo Strunk, Jr. (Abingdon), consists of fifteen essays honoring Paul Johnson of Boston University School of Theology. Part One looks at the relationships between Johnson’s approach and related disciplines. Part Two examines the differing kinds and settings of counseling. Psyche and Spirit, edited by John J. Heaney (Paulist), collects classic and significant articles from a variety of sources to serve as a book of readings for a survey of psychology and religion.
Finally, one of the best-known teachers and writers in the field, Wayne Oates of Southern Baptist Seminary, has systematized his reflections on The Psychology of Religion (Word). (A companion volume on pastoral counseling is forthcoming.)
The paper shortage did not seem to affect the number of books published on evangelism and missions during 1973. Among these books two themes stand out. The first is related to the World Council of Churches meeting in Bangkok on the nature and meaning of salvation. In Salvation Today Arne Sovik (Augsburg) finds the mission of the Church within the creative liberation movements of our time. The Evangelical Response to Bangkok, edited by Ralph Winter (William Carey [533 Hermosa St., South Pasadena, Cal. 91030]), is a collection of articles describing why evangelicals were in conflict with the directions taken at Bangkok.
The second theme is the renewed interest in missions to the unreached peoples of the world. In December, 1972, leaders of the major denominations met in Chicago to consider the priorities of evangelizing the “frontier” people. The papers from the conference were published in The Gospel and Frontier Peoples, edited by R. Pierce Beaver (William Carey). In preparation for the International Congress on World Evangelization (to be held in July in Lausanne, Switzerland) came Unreached Peoples: A Preliminary Compilation (MARC [919 W. Huntington Dr., Monrovia, Cal. 91016]). The missionary outreach of churches that many still view as the object of missionary responsibility is documented in Missions From the Third World by James Wong, Peter Larson, and Edward Pentecost (William Carey).
REFERENCE BOOKS The use of computers has accelerated the production of directories and reference books concerned with missions and evangelism. These books are primarily useful for libraries and mission boards. Those interested in the translation of the Scriptures will enjoy The Book of a Thousand Tongues (American Bible Society); it gives examples of translations and other information for each language in which portions of Scripture exists. The William Carey Library published four directories related to missions: The World Directory of Theological Education by Extension by Wayne C. Weld, The World Directory of Mission-Related Educational Institutions by Raymond Buker, Sr., and Ted Ward, The World Directory of Religious Radio and Television Broadcasting by International Christian Broadcasters, and An American Directory of Schools and Colleges Offering Missionary Courses by Glenn Schwartz, who simply photoreproduced college catalogue pages and provides no evaluation. From Britain there is the UK Protestant Missions Handbook by P. W. Brierley (Evangelical Missionary Alliance [19 Draycott Place, London SW3 2SJ]), which lists most of the missionary sending agencies of the United Kingdom. Especially important was the Mission Handbook (MARC), edited by Edward Dayton, with data on more than 600 North American agencies plus interpretive essays.
MISSION THEOLOGY AND STRATEGY There was again a lack of good theological books. The majority again reflected the emphasis of revolution and liberation. Such books most naturally arise out of a revolutionary setting, as evidenced by the contributions of writers from Latin America. Through translation we now have The CommunityCalled Church and Grace and the Human Condition, both by Juan Luis Segundo (Orbis), and A Theology of Liberation by Gustavo Gutierrez (Orbis). From the American scene we have a counterpart in Liberation Theology by Rosemary Ruether (Paulist). In The Shape of the Question (Augsburg) Kent Knutson analyzes the mission of the Church in a secular age from the perspective of the viability of Lutheran Reformation theology. From the perspective of the anthropologist there is Verdict Theology in Missionary Theory by A. R. Tippett (William Carey).
Horace Fenton, Jr., head of the Latin America Mission, offers an excellent corrective to many Myths About Mission (InterVarsity). A similar attempt at clarification is Peter Wagner’s Stop the World I Want to Get On (Regal). Both books are good for awakening and focusing missions interest. A substantive call to return to the strategy of the Apostle Paul is Breaking the Stained-Glass Barrier (Harper & Row) by David Womack.
The Church Growth approach continues to produce the greatest number of works on mission strategy, and the man most responsible for this broad influence is Donald McGavran. It is most fitting, therefore, to take note of the essays published in his honor. God, Man and Church Growth, edited by A. R. Tippett (Eerdmans), stands as a testimonial to a man who has deeply affected missiology. A Manual For Evangelism/Church Growth by Vergil Gerber (William Carey) is designed to help the pastor or missionary analyze the growth (or lack of it) in his church. Conversational style marks How to Grow a Church by Donald McGavran and W. C. Arn (Regal). Church-growth studies of specific areas are ProtestantsinModern Spain by Dale G. Vought (William Carey), Brazil 1980: The Protestant Handbook by William Read and Frank Ineson (MARC), and The Unresponsive: Resistant or Neglected?, the story of the Hakka Chinese in Taiwan by David C. E. Liao (Moody). An important book dealing with the problems of the large cities is An Urban Strategy For Latin America by Roger S. Greenway (Baker). Winds of Change in the Christian Mission by J. Herbert Kane (Moody) is an honest book about real missionary problems, but the problems may be yesterday issues.
WORLD RELIGIONS Several books about non-Christian religions are of interest. Stories of the Hindus by James A. Kirk (Macmillan) is well written and useful. Three books on Oriental religions that should be of interest are Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia by Robert Lester (University of Michigan), Oriental Thought by Yong Choon Kim (Thomas), and Japanese Religion, edited by Hori Ichiro (Kodansha). For those interested in the Islamic world there is God and Man in Contemporary Islamic Thought, edited by Charles Malik (American University of Beirut). A valuable reference book by a leading authority is Dictionary of Non-Christian Religions by Geoffrey Parrinder (Westminster).
EVANGELISM In the area of personal evangelism there were again some “how to” books. Using the Sunday school for evangelism is discussed in Teaching For Decision by Richard Dresselhaus (Gospel). How to Win Souls and Influence People For Heaven by George Godfrey (Baker) is in the “made easy” tradition that sees evangelistic success in the use of the right techniques. In contrast, Witness Is Withness by David Augsburger (Moody) emphasizes the necessity of developing proper interpersonal relationships in evangelism. A balance between showing and telling is the theme of Do and Tell: Engagement Evangelism in the 70’s by Gabriel Fackre (Eerdmans). The same emphasis is in Evangelism For Today’s Church by Leslie Woodson (Zondervan). In Soul Winning in Black Churches (Baker) J. Herbert Hinkle, a black pastor, looks at the evangelistic work in black churches and suggests how black churches can get on with evangelizing. Roger Greenway discusses the critical issue of evangelism in the cities in Calling Our Cities to Christ (Presbyterian and Reformed); he analyzes the situation from a Reformed theological viewpoint and offers a comprehensive approach that includes both social ministries and proclamation.
Several other books on evangelism are worth noting. The evangelistic potential of youth is portrayed in The Reproducers by Chuck Smith and Hugh Stevens (Regal) and in an account of the large youth gathering in Dallas, The Explo Story by Paul Eshelman (Regal). A practical book on using the media is Dennis Benson’s Electric Evangelism (Abingdon).
It is a pleasure to announce that surpassing all the currently available Bible handbooks in form, content, and accuracy is the newly published Eerdmans’ Handbook to the Bible, edited by David and Pat Alexander with assistance from a panel of biblical scholars. This volume should be of interest to everyone who reads English—even to small children who cannot yet read, since it is full of superb color photographs and illustrations. The illustrations are excellently chosen to illustrate the biblical text, as are the numerous maps (168 in all). Twenty original, multi-color charts outline the history of Old and New Testament times, indicate the nature of biblical weights and measurements, line up Israel’s history with that of other ancient civilizations, and so forth. Teachers in particular should find the charts very useful. The body of the handbook provides the student with brief introductions to each book of the Bible and also a brief outline of and mini-commentary on its contents. Although the text is the work of Mrs. Alexander, she has made good use of the right authorities and has also had her work carefully checked by experts; therefore, the work avoids the normal weaknesses of one-man productions. As an added treat, there are more than fifty brief but excellent essays by a group of evangelical scholars who are, for the most part, closely connected to the British Inter-Varsity Fellowship. If you buy one book this year for yourself or a friend, this should be the one.
GENERAL Answers to Questions by F. F. Bruce (Zondervan), the well-known evangelical scholar, is a selection of replies to questions submitted by readers of a Christian periodical in England over a period of twenty years. The answers are arranged in two sections, according to topic and Scripture reference. If you have always wanted to know what Bruce’s views on Karl Barth, eschatology, fundamentalism, healing, typology, and women in the ministry are, you will find the answer here. Or if you simply wish to read illuminating comments by a lifetime student of the Bible on these and many other topics, you will find this book helpful. The answers concerning specific passages of Scripture serve as a commentary on many of the difficult texts that are sometimes skipped over in the normal commentaries. A book to help you dig into the Scriptures and come up with your own answers is How to Study the Bible, edited by John B. Job (Inter Varsity). Here are very simple introductions for the beginning Bible student on how to analyze a book or a smaller passage of Scripture, how to do a character study, how to study words, themes, and roots, and guidance concerning the Bible’s application to personal problems. This could be put into the hands of any young Christian or could be used as an adult textbook for a Sunday-school term.
Two well-known Bible dictionaries were released with major revisions last year. The New Harper’s Bible Dictionary (Harper & Row), originally prepared by Madeleine and J. Lane Miller, has been thoroughly updated under the direction of the publishers. It reflects a moderately critical stance in those articles where such distinctions are pertinent. An enlarged and better indexed Dictionary of Biblical Theology (Seabury), based on the French edition edited by Xavier Leon-Dufour, is representative of the best of Roman Catholic scholarship and will be a valuable aid for the theological student.
The popular Scottish Bible teacher William Barclay offers help for the layman with a new book, Introducing the Bible (Westminster). As usual, he shows real ability in putting very technical material into language that the non-specialist can not only understand but enjoy. Along similar lines is The Bible:AModern Understanding by J. Lindblom (Fortress). The author, now professor emeritus of Old Testament at the University of Lund in Sweden, deals with matters related to the canon, the texts and languages of the Bible, the literary genres of the Old and New Testaments, principles of interpretation, the relation of the two testaments to each other, and the religious message of the Bible. Although evangelicals will find some of Lindblom’s views a little too “critical” for their liking, none will fail to benefit from the mature reflections of a scholar who has devoted his entire life to the careful study of God’s written word. The Bible in the Modern World by James Barr (Harper & Row) is a rather different book. The author attempts to expound a view of the Bible that will allow it to continue to serve as a source of authority in the Church while avoiding what he regards to be the errors of both evangelicalism and liberalism. The result is a work that is quite superficial and not really worthy of the famous Manchester professor. Despite his assertion that he has studied the works of the evangelicals, he shows little acquaintance with any of the scholarly statements of the evangelical position that have appeared in recent years.
The Bible in Human Transformation by Walter Wink (Fortress) is a slim paperback by an angry young scholar who begins with the provocative statement: “Historical biblical criticism is bankrupt.” He launches an impressive attack on “objectivism” and pleads for an approach to the Bible that takes seriously what the Bible might say to the human situation. What he argues for is not a return to an acceptance of the Bible as God’s word of revelation to man but rather a new paradigm for biblical study based on the models of personal interaction as used by social scientists, especially psychotherapists. Although Wink’s protest is refreshing and may provide some valid criticisms of historical biblical criticism as it is practiced by those who believe that the Bible is merely a human book, it is unrealistic to think that his new paradigm will really supplant current critical methodology. A more effective corrective from the evangelical perspective will be found in The Challenge of Religious Studies by Kenneth G. Howkins (InterVarsity). Intended for young people who take religion courses at college, Howkins’s book gives stress to such basic issues as the place of miracles and the supernatural, the resurrection of Christ, the nature of biblical criticism, and the purpose and the use of the Bible. This is an excellent aid for the student of religious studies or theology.
BIBLICAL BACKGROUNDS A major release jointly from Baker and Canon is George A. Turner’s Historical Geography of the Holy Land. Departing from the usual plan of following the periods of biblical history, Turner chooses George Adam Smith’s approach of dealing with the land area by area. The intended audience is the scholar in need of reference, the student who needs a textbook, the preacher looking for a guide to exposition, and the tourist requiring expert information. A notable feature is the inclusion of historical data right up to the present time. Although the photographs are not so good as those of the Eerdmans’ Bible Handbook mentioned above and a few minor inaccuracies were noted, we predict a long and useful life for this volume. Charles F. Pfeiffer’s Pocket Atlas of the Bible (Baker) is truly pocket-size and contains a useful collection of historical data, maps, and photographs. It is a basic sketch of Israelite history into which were inserted occasional facts of Bible geography.
A fine addition to the “Studies in Biblical Archaeology” series edited by Charles F. Pfeiffer comes in the form of a work on The Archaeology of the Jordan Valley by Elmer B. Smick (Baker). A geographical survey of the Valley and a discussion of the origin of its name is followed by a historical outline of life in the Jordan Valley from Old Testament times through the Byzantine period. The amount of biblical history compressed into this relatively inaccessible area is surprising, and Smick’s study is as good a place as any to begin to study its history. Cities in the Sand by Aubrey Menen (Dial) offers a journalist’s-eye-view of some of the ruins of ancient cities in the Eastern Mediterranean world. It is not a scholarly work, but it is interestingly written and may serve to whet the appetite for further study.
BIBLE PROPHECY Once again the study of biblical eschatology has come to the fore in many Christian circles, and a spate of books has hit the bookstores. The most substantial in scholarship and in sheer bulk is the Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy by J. Barton Payne of Covenant Seminary (Harper & Row). Payne describes prediction of what from the prophet’s vantage point was in the future, and it is only this aspect of prophecy with which he is concerned. He sees predictions in the form of oracles, figures, symbols, and types. Fulfillments are similarly catalogued, with few possibilities overlooked. Following this, all the predictive prophecies of the Old and New Testaments are enumerated in order, with the total dealing with 737 matters, or 8,352 verses out of the total of 31,124, or 27 per cent of the whole Bible! If, however, the types are eliminated, the number drops by one-third. One of the first prophecies concerns Adam: “In the days of Adam’s eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he should ‘surely die,’ ” fulfilled a bit later when Adam ate. The book is a marvel of statistics; we can only salute the author’s energetic capacity for such matters in seeing this massive volume to its conclusion. Perhaps he will undertake as a sequel a similar study of the important non-predictive elements in biblical prophecy.
While Payne was at work on all the prophecies, that indefatigable collector and correlator of the biblical “alls,”Herbert Lockyer, was producing yet another volume, All the Messianic Prophecies of the Bible (Zondervan). His work is divided into specific messianic prophecies and symbolic messianic prophecies, the latter incorporating those identified as “figures, events, and types” by Payne. Although we may balk at the author’s enthusiastic handling of some of the material and his readiness to find prophecies of Christ in the most obscure places, it is noteworthy that he calls for caution lest we “impose” rather than “expose” the Scripture.
A good introduction to the varying positions taken by evangelicals is A Survey of Bible Prophecy by Raymond Ludwigson (Zondervan), which the novice should read before reading books advocating only one position. Ludwigson discusses such topics as antichrist, Armegeddon, judgments, kingdom, millennialism (all kinds!), rapture, resurrection, and tribulation, in alphabetical order. This book will give perspective on the positions taken by different Bible students and will give aid to the bewildered reader who happens to confront some of the many books that treat the subject as if no legitimate differences of interpretation were possible.
MISCELLANEOUS An important comparative study comes from the pen of Leopold Sabourin in the book entitled Priesthood (Brill). He begins with a careful analysis of various ancient priestly orders, including in his study very primitive societies as well as the more advanced civilizations of Iran, India, Greece, and Rome. A special section is devoted to Israel’s nearer neighbors: the Mesopotamians, Canaanites, Hittites, Egyptians, and Arabs. Israelite priesthood is then observed, though in a less comprehensive manner than by the earlier study of A. Cody, A History of Old Testament Priesthood (1969). Finally, Jewish priesthood from the time of Jesus and the High Priestly role of Jesus (especially as outlined in the Epistle to the Hebrews) rounds out the monograph. Sabourin’s discussion of the perplexing questions surrounding Israelite priesthood fails to cover much new ground; for a more imaginative handling of the data one should read the essays in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (see page 52).
An item that will interest those concerned with bibliographical research is an extensive Biblical Bibliography by Paul-Émile Langevin (Les Presses de L’Université Laval). Included in this 950-page work are numerous listings, primarily Roman Catholic, related to the study of the Bible. Popular as well as scholarly books are included, and all are arranged under useful headings and thoroughly indexed. This volume should be added to all theological libraries.
After the abundant materials of 1972, 1973’s Old Testament offerings may seem slender, but there are some works of real quality, particularly in history and backgrounds. Another plus for 1973 is the number of good devotional works, especially in the realm of commentaries. Again this year I am going to designate with a following asterisk (*) all those books suitable for a reader without a theological education. But enough of the preliminaries; onward to the books.
COMMENTARIES Pride of place among the year’s commentaries belongs to a two-volume work by A. A. Anderson in the “New Century Bible” entitled Psalms* (Attic). These volumes, which are dedicated to the author’s colleague, F. F. Bruce, begin with a fine introduction to current Psalm study, in language understandable by any intelligent layman. Anderson assumes a moderating position in such matters as the use of Psalms in enthronement festivals, after which he discusses special subjects like Hebrew poetry and the Psalm titles. The commentary itself concentrates on giving help in understanding the text, though each individual Psalm is seen first in whatever historical context seems possible for it. Scholarly positions are well represented, and use of the Psalms in the New Testament is reflected in the commentary.
Four other books on the Psalms appeared in 1973. Psalms 1–72* by Derek Kidner in InterVarsity’s “Tyndale Old Testament” series (TOTC) is a worthy addition to the literature on the subject. Kidner’s introduction is, if anything, better than Anderson’s, and readers will especially appreciate his sections on the “Messianic Hope” and “Titles and Technical Terms.” In the latter, each of those troublesome titles and terms often merely transliterated is clearly identified or described. Kidner’s addition to the TOTC keeps up the high standard being set by editor Donald Wiseman for the series. Psalms in a Minor Key* (Moody) by Carl Armerding (my uncle) is the fruit of a lifetime of inspirational preaching on thirty-three selected Psalms. The author is well schooled in the Hebrew text, but this work grows out of living in light of the devotional and practical lessons of these poems. Similarly devotional and practical is the fine little work by pastor Ray C. Stedman, Folk Psalms of Faith* (Regal). Nineteen Psalms are treated, some with strong Messianic flavor. Finally, a critical edition of an old commentary has been made available in J. Baker and E. W. Nicholson’s The Commentary of Rabbi David Kimhi on salms 120–150 (Cambridge). Current exegesis, which is rediscovering its roots in Calvin and Luther, could do well to use this volume as an introduction, particularly for non-Jewish scholars, to the works of a representative and imaginative rabbi of the late Middle Ages.
Turning to other parts of the Old Testament, we note the continuing stream of brief commentaries in the “Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible” (CBC). Robert Davidson’s Genesis 1–11*, though committed to standard documentary positions (albeit far removed from Well-hausian days), is marked by a commendable scholarly caution. His introductory section describing for the layman the ways in which scholars understand “myth” is a model of clarity. His handling of Genesis 1:1 (a crux interpretum) preserves the high theology of the chapter over against Near Eastern creation myths, a feature representative of the author’s handling of his material generally.
Exodus* by R. Alan Cole (InterVarsity) is another TOTC addition. The short section on the theology of Exodus is almost worth the price of the book, while the commentary itself will be found most useful. Wisely, the TOTC series has not attempted to reprint the biblical text, thereby permitting space for double the commentary available in the comparably sized CBC.
C. H. Mackintosh’s familiar Notes on the Pentateuch* (Loizeaux) has been reset in a single well-bound volume after nearly a century of sales in six small volumes. Two brief commentaries on the historical books are J. Robinson’s First Book of Kings* (CBC) and Peter R. Ackroyd’s I and II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah* (SCM) in the “Torch Bible Commentaries.” First Kings is set in the framework of a Deuteronomic School of writings, composed in the first instance during the reign of Josiah and reedited during the exile. The introductory material is most helpful, but the commentary, though useful, is far too brief. Ackroyd, in the second book, first shows why the Chronicler’s work is a necessary theological supplement to the earlier accounts of the same material in Samuel-Kings, and then goes on to give what, for a small book, is a surprisingly complete layman’s commentary on the text of the RSV. That he places Ezra later than Nehemiah will be troublesome to some and is indicative of the author’s general attitude toward the historical problem of Ezra and Nehemiah. But the commentary represents current historical scholarship at its best and is a worthy supplement to Ackroyd’s own Israel Under Babylon and Persia (1970) in the “New Clarendon Bible” (Oxford).
Four brief volumes on Job have been issued recently. An intensely personal statement is David M. Howard’s How Come, God?* (Holman), in which the author’s experiences as a missionary with the Latin America Mission provide the framework for reflections on the experience of Job. Dave Howard learned both that there are no easy answers to some questions and that there is still no shortage of “Job’s comforters” for whom the pat answer, glibly offered, is the solution to any and all enigmas of life. Far less personal, though equally practical, is Robert N. Schaper’s Why Me, God?* (Regal). A third recent book on Job that we have not previously noted is a collection of essays edited by Nahum Glatzer entitled Dimensions of Job* (Schocken). Glatzer’s extensive introduction is not merely to the Book of Job but more to the point of how Job has been interpreted, first by classical Judaism and Christianity, and secondly by moderns. The bulk of the book consists of essays representing each tradition, from Martin Buber and Robert Gordis to Ernest Renan, Rudolf Otto, G. K. Chesterton, Sören Kierkegaard, and Archibald MacLeish. A final work on Job began as a prize essay in the English department at Harvard. Jon D. Levenson’s The Book of Job in Its Time and in the Twentieth Century* (Harvard) studies Job from the perspective of three recent writers, H. G. Wells, Archibald MacLeish, and Robert Frost. Levenson’s pessimistic conclusion is that none of the three, nor indeed any possible successor, can recreate either Job or Job’s God in the twentieth century, chiefly because Job’s theistic premises, which created the tension in the first place, are themselves generally discredited in the eyes of contemporary man. The essay will certainly provoke thought.
Isaiah 1–39* (CBC) by A. S. Herbert follows the format of the series and adds little to Isaiah scholarship. Introductory matters are well handled, though recent challenges to the late dating of some chapters (notably S. Erlandsson’s work on Isaiah 11; 13, and 14) might have been given more credence. Two very useful works on Jeremiah appeared in the year just past. In the TOTC series, R. K. Harrison’s Jeremiah and Lamentations* (InterVarsity) packs more into its slender frame than many a commentary double its size. Harrison takes seriously Jeremiah’s role in reenforcing the covenant ideals of Deuteronomy for his own time, and effectively links that prophet to the historical period in which he ministered. The short commentary on Lamentations beautifully expresses the theology of divine vindication highlighted by that book, and draws out the picture of Lamentations as a corporate counterpart to the individual complaint of Job. A second book on Jeremiah is not a commentary but an inductive self-study guide. F. Ross Kinsler’s Inductive Study of the Book of Jeremiah* (William Carey) was originally designed for use in Latin America, but the translation will be a great help to English-speaking readers as well. In over five hundred pages, solid help is given to the serious student interested in knowing the text of the prophet, and we applaud this endeavor, already being repeated for other books of both testaments.
On Daniel, a major commentary from a dispensational stance comes from the pen of Leon Wood. Daniel* (Zondervan) is the work of a trained Semitics scholar, a fact reflected in the careful handling of exegetical points in the text. Wood’s positions on critical matters are, as might be expected, staunchly conservative, if not at times a bit overly defensive. This book will inevitably be compared to the recent commentary of John Walvoord (Moody, 1971), a volume that takes the same basic theological stance. Walvoord is stylistically superior and hence better reading, but Wood’s independent exegesis in the original text probably makes his the more valuable of the two.
Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk* by Hobart E. Freeman in Moody’s “Everyman” series provides a brief, better than average layman’s treatment of the Hebrew text, though it completely ignores critical questions. Freeman, who is clearly a premillennialist, generally avoids speculation on possible contemporary fulfillment and has given us a most helpful volume. An older work, The Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Kregel), is newly available in a reprint edition. The author, David Baron, was a Jewish Christian. He focuses on the messianic theme so prominent in Zechariah.
Rounding out the fare in the commentary section are two volumes of the CBC on the Apocrypha. John R. Bartlett writes on The First and Second Books of the Maccabees* while J. C. Dancy has contributed The Shorter Books of the Apocrypha*. The short, pithy comments will be greatly appreciated by those wishing a nodding acquaintance with these ancient writings. A coffee-table type of volume on The Maccabees* (Macmillan) by Moshe Pearlman is worth mentioning, especially for its illustrations.
SPECIAL BIBLICAL STUDIESGENERAL. Another brief introduction to the literature and themes of the Old Testament (see for comparison H. L. Ellison’s The Message of the Old Testament or Jacob M. Myers’s Invitation to the Old Testament) comes from the pen of Heidelberg scholar Hans W. Wolff. The Old Testament: A Guide to Its Writings* (Fortress) combines standard critical conclusions with contemporary German interests in biblical theology to make a most readable, though not always conservative, introduction.
WISDOM LITERATURE. Perhaps the most important work on biblical wisdom to appear for many years is the English edition of Gerhard von Rad’s Wisdom in Israel (Abingdon). A brief introduction to the sources of wisdom (court education) and its forms (proverbs and poetry) is followed by an extensive investigation of the essence of wisdom itself. The liberation of reason and its search for the rules by which reality is understood are set in the context of an Israelite commitment to God’s sovereignty as both Creator and Sustainer of the universe. It is this commitment of the biblical writers that, for von Rad, makes it so difficult for contemporary intellectuals to understand Hebrew wisdom. We simply do not, in our own rationality, share their presuppositions. Here is a book that meets a long-felt need for a major treatment of the subject.
A second book on wisdom is at once more superficial and more practical. Walter Brueggemann’s In Man We Trust (John Knox) is concerned to correct the claimed imbalance in both evangelical and neo-orthodox theology in which sin and salvation dominate. He sees in the more “worldly” emphasis of the wisdom writers a background of the same struggle we face today: the issues of power, freedom, and responsibility. Whether the wisdom traditions are incompatible with an emphasis on Pauline theology (as the author seems to believe) can safely be left for the reader to judge; in any case, the challenge to think through our preaching and activity in light of biblical wisdom is clearly needed.
PROPHETS. A helpful layman’s introduction to each biblical prophet is given by Eugene Skelton in Meet the Prophets* (Broadman). The book’s unique feature is a conversation with each of the prophets in which the message of the prophet is paraphrased in a graphic and penetrating style. A second volume from Southern Baptist circles is Eric C. Rust’s Covenant and Hope* (Word). Rust is much more the scholar, and his opening study of Hebrew prophetism is followed by chapters on Amos, Hosea, Isaiah of Jerusalem, Ezekiel, Deutero-Isaiah, and the post-exilic prophets. In the title of the book we have Rust’s conclusion as to the dominant themes of the entire prophetic movement.
Two scholarly studies in the prophets add to the considerable literature on the subject. A reworked dissertation (Louvain) by Anton Schoors entitled I Am God Your Saviour (Brill) is a form-critical study of the two main genres (according to the author) in Isaiah 40–55. The words of salvation and the polemic genres, which form the center of the study, are helpfully set in their context, and some attempt is made to relate them to the overall message of the prophet, something that form critics have been notably slow to accomplish. A second volume, also a dissertation (Catholic University), is Joseph Jensen’s The Use of ‘torâ’ by Isaiah (Catholic Biblical Quarterly). Jensen builds on earlier studies (e.g., William Whedbee’s Isaiah and Wisdom) and specifically here argues for the sense of “wisdom instruction” in the five uses of the term torâ in Isaiah of Jerusalem. Rounding out the prophetic offerings is Hans W. Wolff’s Amos: The Man and His Background* (Fortress), a translation of a book whose German title means “Amos’s spiritual home.” For Wolff this home is the wisdom circle of writers rather than the schools of the prophets, a contention that is given much support in the text of that prophet.
PENTATEUCH. Academic studies of the book of Exodus have long been concerned with the relation between the Exodus and Sinai traditions. While conservatives have never had problems seeing a relation between the two, and the same group of people involved in both, such a conclusion has been far from axiomatic among critics. E. W. Nicholson, in Exodus and Sinai in History and Tradition (John Knox), rehearses the evidence both for separating the two and for combining them, and finally draws his own conclusions. Neither form-critical nor traditio-historical evidence (so Nicholson) drives us to separate the original traditions, and from this a number of most satisfactory historical conclusions result.
In a less academic context there have been a number of new offerings in the general area of Pentateuchal studies. In the creation-evolution debate, two volumes argue for strongly fundamentalistic positions. In Jesus Christ Creator (Creation-Science Research Center) Kelly Segraves argues for a young earth, a universal flood, and a theistic, Christocentric creation. Scientific Studies in Special Creation (Baker) edited by Walter E. Lammerts brings together more than thirty essays from the pages of the Creation Research Society Quarterly. As in Segraves’s volume, the essays are more concerned with science than with Genesis, though there is some stimulating material for the biblical student in each. Very different from either is Richard S. Hanson’s The Serpent Was Wiser* (Augsburg). Hanson’s goal is to take a new look at Genesis 1–11, and this he does by turning to the categories of myth and drama to draw out the theology of the passages in question. It is only with difficulty that we can read Hanson and the previous volumes and remember that they are dealing with the same original text.
A fascinating study of Egyptian ways of death and embalming has been provided by John J. Davis in the slender book Mummies, Men and Madness* (BMH Books). The volume is a well illustrated and reasonably non-technical introduction to the subject, and concludes with a chapter relating the death of Jacob and Joseph to the Egyptian Middle Kingdom period.
Conservative as well as liberal ethicists today are asking, “Are the ten commandments still valid?” In God Speaks to an X-Rated Society (Moody), edited by Alan F. Johnson, a resounding “yes” is given by ten members of the faculty at Wheaton College. Although we may wonder how Wheaton faculty know so much about “X ratings,” we can only be thankful for this up-to-date and penetrating look at each of the ten commandments.
HISTORY OF ISRAEL Our leading work this year is a monumental five-volume Old Testament History* (Alba) by Austrian Redemptorist scholar Claus Schedl. Schedl’s work is much more than a history; it includes also an introduction to each book of the Bible (including the Apocrypha) as well as extensive material on such introductory subjects as creation. The first volume is marked by a somewhat curious system of numerology, though this does not detract from the worth of the set. The work is of special interest to evangelicals, for it represents moderate Roman Catholic scholarship, and the critical positions taken often (though by no means always) mirror those of evangelical Protestant Old Testament scholars.
Newly issued is the complete one-volume edition of Charles F. Pfeiffer’s Old Testament History* (Baker and Canon). Most of the volume was previously available in separately issued parts, all of which (unfortunately) remain virtually unchanged, supplemented only by new materials on the conquest and settlement. Pfeiffer’s approach is cautious; his book combines a clear text with helpful archaeological and historical backgrounds. The one-volume edition, unlike its predecessors, is beautifully laid out and supplemented with excellent photographs.
Two books for scholars, both of which deal with history, criticism, and the theological implications of both, are George E. Mendenhall’s The Tenth Generation (Johns Hopkins) and Frank M. Cross’s Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Harvard). Both men are former students of William F. Albright, and each one’s book will stimulate much discussion on the origins of Israel and her traditions. Mendenhall’s work is more directly connected with origins and stands as something of a reaction to much current scholarship. In place of traditional literary and form-critical methods, Mendenhall wishes to substitute the functional methodology that looks at things in a way consistent with the viewpoints of ancient man. The book that follows is a collection of essays designed to prove that Israel’s covenant-league, formed in the period of the Judges as a rejection of Late Bronze Age political values, was the great synthesis that provided a basis for all biblical ethics. The rejection of God as King in the monarchy, like the politicizing of Christianity under Constantine, ended not only Israel’s formative period but also her contribution to true religion.
Cross, in the second volume, sees in almost all of Israel’s cultic life a tension between the historical motifs of Exodus and Sinai and the mythical motif of royal kingship. He labels the so-called historical material of the Old Testament essentially “epic,” a theme with which he unifies his entire treatment. The scope of the work is broad. Subjects include everything from the religion of the patriarchs to the rise of the apocalyptic community at Qumran.
Two additional books cover aspects of history. The first, a detailed study of a putative secret chronological system behind the Old Testament, may go down as merely a historical curiosity. Nevertheless, Gerhard Larsson’s The Secret System (Brill) does present an intriguing thesis, drawn from the researches of one Knut Stenring, who asks us to believe that the present biblical chronology was a mysterious system used in the post-exilic period to tie together the disparate writings into an authoritative canon for the Jewish initiate. A second book, unlike the first, presents no claims but merely illustrates The Old Testament in Living Pictures* (Regal). David S. Alexander has combined some magnificent photographs with random excerpts from the biblical text in a volume that is a pleasure to peruse.
ANCIENT NEAR EAST Our top offering in this field is again a new volume of the revised “Cambridge Ancient History” (Cambridge). Edited by I. E. S. Edwards et al., Volume II, Part 1, The Middle East and the Aegean Region, c. 1800–1380 B.C., covers the period from about the time of Joseph to the eve of the Exodus (late dating). The patriarchs, wandering in Canaan and Egypt, were very much a part of that world, and both history and archaeology have gone far in illuminating the accounts in our books of Genesis and Exodus. This third edition of the familiar Cambridge history will be the standard treatment of the subject for years to come.
The latest in a series of valuable books from the members of the British Society for Old Testament Studies is called Peoples of Old Testament Times* (Oxford) and is edited by British Assyriologist Donald J. Wiseman. Designed for the educated layman (though a few chapters are a bit stretching), the book deals successively and succinctly with the Hebrews, Canaanites, Philistines, Egyptians, Amorites, Arameans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Hittites, Moabites, Phoenicians, Arabs, and Persians. The strength of current evangelical scholarship in the field is illustrated by the presence of at least four prominent evangelicals among the contributors.
A useful synthesis is found in Helmer Ringgren’s Religions of the Ancient Near East (Westminster). The author is a prominent Scandinavian biblical scholar and author of a study of Israelite religion, so it is not surprising to find that his interests run to religious parallels with the Old Testament. Chapters cover Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian, and West Semitic religion. Such favorite Scandinavian themes as cultic kingship emerge in the study, with the conclusions of the book generally a bit more cautious than we have come to expect from members of this school.
Two very technical monographs deal with periods of Egyptian history. In a reworked dissertation John D. Schmidt has provided a detailed chronological study of the reign of Ramesses II (Johns Hopkins). Although Israel is never mentioned, nor is the Exodus, it is during the time of this king (ca. 1290–1224 B.C.) that many scholars date the departure of the Israelite tribes under Moses. Much more directly concerned with biblical events is the massive work of Kenneth A. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100–650 B.C.) (Aris and Phillips). More than one hundred biblical citations are listed in the index, and a major emphasis of the book is its synchronism between Egyptian monarchs and the rulers of Judah and Israel from the years of David and Solomon through the fall of the Southern Kingdom. Particularly noteworthy is Kitchen’s categorical rejection of the two-campaign theory for the time of Hezekiah. The problem of Tarhaka’s age and his designation as “King of Kush” is resolved, and the single campaign in 701 B.C. (the most obvious conclusion from the text in Second Kings 19 and Isaiah 37) is considered fixed. It will indeed be difficult for any biblical scholar to hold such an alternate view in the future (cf. John Bright’s History of Israel, second edition, pp. 296–308, for the development of that position).
TOPICAL MONOGRAPHS Two short monographs come from Mennonite circles and discuss current topics in light of Old Testament data. The Christian and Warfare* (Herald) by Jacob J. Enz sees in Old Testament warfare two strains, the former the winning of victories without battle, as exemplified by the Exodus and the period of the Judges. The second, the pattern throughout the monarchy, glorified standing armies but forgot the Lord of Hosts. The business of the New Testament church, claims Enz, was demilitarizing Old Testament battle songs. This is a stimulating discussion, though its selectivity with regard to data will probably render it less than fully convincing. The second brief paperback from Herald Press is Millard C. Lind’s Biblical Foundations For Christian Worship*. This paper, written for a discussion of the subject in the Mennonite Church, views worship as essentially a political act, which is another way of saying that Old Testament believers were expressing God’s rule in their commitment to the covenant cultic system. The same principle is seen as evident in the New Testament community, where the rule of God is likewise to be the rule of the community.
Three additional monographs are written for a scholarly audience. The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and the Old Testament (Harvard) by Richard J. Clifford works chiefly with Ugaritic and biblical materials to develop the idea of Zion as a mountain of the far north. El, Baal, and Yahweh are each seen as a resident king of a court situated on this “cosmic” mountain. The second volume, The Old Testament Sabbath (SBL) by N. A. Andreasen turns away from extra-biblical solutions to the problem of the origin of the Sabbath. The author seeks to show, through a study of the tradition itself as it develops within the Old Testament, what place the Sabbath had in Israel and its life. A third book picks up themes popularized in recent years by the work of G. von Rad, R. Smend, G. E. Wright, and F. M. Cross. Patrick D. Miller’s The Divine Warrior in Early Israel (Harvard) concentrates on the early poetry of Israel (see D. A. Robertson’s thesis at the end of this article) and discusses the mythological-theological conceptions associated with Israel’s early wars.
PREACHING A powerful and fresh volume, in the tradition of John Bright’s The Authority of the Old Testament (1967) and Brevard Childs’s Biblical Theology in Crisis (1970), is Elizabeth Achtemeier’s The Old Testament and the Proclamation of the Gospel* (Westminster). Achtemeier, who has taught at both Lancaster and Union of Richmond seminaries, agrees that the Biblical Theology movement failed in North America (see Childs’s book), but she faults not so much its methodology as the failure to communicate that methodology to the average pastor. In the face of all humanistic and popularistic alternatives, she calls for a return to an historically based and dynamic biblical proclamation of the Gospel, especially from the theology of the Old Testament. The book is an advance on both Bright and Childs in its more extensive illustration of the solution through sample outlines and sermons.
A second volume on preaching is really an attempt to formulate a set of theological values by which the entire Old Testament may be preserved and taught. In The Old Testament in Contemporary Preaching* (Baker), Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., first discusses the question of the validity of the Old Testament, after which he sets forth his “promise” doctrine as the unifying theme of Old Testament theology. Four lectures follow in which law, history, prophecy, and wisdom are seen as expressions of the promise theme. While we still await a complete Old Testament theology from Kaiser, this short book will serve as an introduction to his method and approach.
LANGUAGES J. H. Hospers has put all subsequent generations in his debt with A Basic Bibliography For the Study of the Semitic Languages (Brill). Volume 1 covers every phase (bibliography, philosophy, literature, cultural history, atlases) of the study of all the major Semitic languages except Arabic. More than four hundred periodicals, series, collective works, and manuals have been indexed covering Akkadian, Sumerian, Hittite, Hurrian, Urartian, Elamite, Persian, Ugaritic, Phoenician-Punic, Canaanite, Hebrew (down through modern), Syriac and Aramaic, Old South Arabian, and Ethiopic. A closing section deals with comparative Semitics.
A major work representing a lifetime study is Peter Walters’s The Text of the Septuagint (Cambridge), edited and published ten years after Walters’s death by David W. Gooding. The work has two parts, the first dealing with grammatical corruptions and the second with Semitisms in the Greek text. This work, though never completed, will form a valuable part of the preliminary research toward a new critical edition of the Greek Old Testament.
A Harvard dissertation by Kevin G. O’Connell entitled The Theodotionic Revision of the Book of Exodus (Harvard) is a detailed study of the state of various Palestinian revisions of the Septuagint in the first centuries B.C. and A.D. The work is a splendid addition to the technical literature available on early texts, not only in Greek but in the Hebrew from which the Greek versions were taken. A second dissertation in the same series by J. Gerald Janzen entitled Studies in the Text of Jeremiah discusses an old problem in light of new evidence from Qumran. His conclusions, based in part on a theory of local texts proposed by F. M. Cross, generally uphold the shorter readings of the Septuagint, though recognizing a host of exceptions dealing with individual problems.
More to the point for contemporary translators is The Hebrew Text of the Old Testament (Oxford and Cambridge) by L. H. Brockington. Arranged by book, chapter, and verse, this volume collects only the variations found in the third edition of Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica, which were adopted by the translators of the NEB.
A Yale dissertation entitled Linguistic Evidence in Dating Early Hebrew Poetry (SBL) comes from the researches of David A. Robertson. As a first attempt to consider systematically all the claims for early dating of such poems as Genesis 49; Exodus 15; Judges 5 and Deuteronomy 32, this study is certain to meet a need. Instead of selecting random examples from cognate literature, Robertson has done a careful comparative study of Hebrew forms themselves, with the cautious conclusion that only Exodus 15, Deuteronomy 32, and Job resemble early poetry, and only in the case of Exodus 15 is the evidence unambiguous.
Pride of place goes to The New International Version: The New Testament (Zondervan). Translated by a panel of evangelical New Testament scholars working under the sponsorship of the New York Bible Society, the NIV aims at being “idiomatic without being idiosyncratic, contemporary without being dated.” The result is a translation of the New Testament that is neither excessively literalistic (like the New American Standard Bible) nor paraphrastic (like The Living Bible). It is generally more idiomatic than the Revised Standard Version but not nearly so free as the New English Bible or Today’s English Version. The care with which the production was made, being reviewed at each stage of translation by numerous scholars and literary experts, should make it superior to most other recent translations. All who love the Word of God and rejoice in the current upsurge in Bible reading will want to wish the new version every success. Meanwhile we anxiously await the Old Testament, scheduled for publication three or four years hence, which will probably be the key to its general acceptance in the churches. Also appearing in 1973 was a thoroughly revised edition of The New Testament in Modern English, a widely respected translation by J. B. Phillips (Macmillan).
GENERAL The New Testament in Living Pictures: A Photo Guide to the New Testament by David S. Alexander (Regal) offers very beautiful and appropriate pictures to illustrate the historical and geographical setting of the New Testament writings. In view of the fact that all are in full color, the price is extremely reasonable. Each photograph is accompanied by a small map indicating the precise geographical location of the item photographed and also a biblical text and brief comment. This volume should be in every church library. Any student of the New Testament would find it useful.
Mastering New Testament Facts (John Knox) is the title of a four-volume study guide to the New Testament written by Madeline H. Beck and Lamar Williamson, Jr., designed to be used with Today’s English Version (=Good News For Modern Man). By working carefully through the New Testament with the help of a series of programmed reading, art, and activities tests, the beginning Bible student teaches himself the basic contents and message of the New Testament. Mastering New Testament Facts could well be used as a basis for youth and adult Bible classes and for catechism classes. The aim is to get the student into the Scriptures rather than to indoctrinate him with conclusions about them.
Four introductions to the New Testament for the layman that appeared in 1973 are In the Midst Stands Jesus: A Pastoral Introduction to the New Testament by Josiah G. Chatham (Alba), Beginnings in the New Testament by Howard F. Vos (Moody), The New Testament: A Guide to Its Writings by Günther Bornkamm (Fortress) and, best of all, The Message of the New Testament by F. F. Bruce (Eerdmans). The first is written from a biblically oriented Roman Catholic point of view; the second, from a conservative evangelical perspective; the third, with a liberal-critical orientation; as for the fourth, most readers know the treat awaiting them. Each is excellent in its own way, though each has the danger of becoming a substitute for the New Testament rather than a guide through its pages. Also for the layman is Personalities Around Paul by D. Edmond Hiebert (Moody), a Mennonite scholar’s discussion of the less familiar features of New Testament study.
For the serious theological student, four offerings stand out: David M. Scholer, A Basic Bibliographic Guide For New Testament Exegesis (Eerdmans); Werner Georg Kümmel, The Theology of the New Testament (Abingdon); Robert Morgan, The Nature of New Testament Theology (SCM); and Hans Conzelmann, History of Primitive Christianity (Abingdon). Scholer’s bibliography presupposes a basic knowledge of Greek and should find a welcome on the bookshelf of all serious students; librarians will find it a helpful check list for indicating the adequacy of their holdings in New Testament. Kümmel offers an exposition of the message of the Synoptic Gospels, Paul, and John. Although conservatives will think he has pressed the diversity of the various writers a little too hard, few will fail to benefit immensely from the profound insight of one of the leading biblical scholars of our day. Morgan’s work consists of translations of two classic German essays on the subject by Wilhelm Wrede and Adolf Schlatter, representing a radical and conservative approach respectively, together with a lengthy introduction. Careful study of the observations of Wrede and Schlatter will give the student a good idea of the similarities and differences of these two approaches. Conzelmann offers a brief introduction to early Christian history from a radical-critical point of view. Since the author rarely makes so much as an allusion to the opinions of conservative scholars, the reader will be well advised to compare his views with one of the more conservative New Testament histories by Reicke, Filson, or Bruce.
Of special interest to teachers of biblical languages will be William Sanford LaSor’s Handbook of New Testament Greek (two volumes, Eerdmans). LaSor uses the inductive approach to the study of Greek, based on the first seventeen chapters of Acts. The use of rather technical linguistic and grammatical terminology makes it more useful as a textbook than as a “teach yourself” guide. Compared to the traditional approach, the inductive approach has the advantage not only of getting the student immediately into the Greek Testament—the only purpose for which most theological students study Greek—but also of becoming progressively easier. After beginning with Acts, the student finds the rest of the New Testament a pushover! LaSor’s handbook includes all words used ten times or more in the New Testament, cross references to the New Englishman’s Greek Concordance (published last year by William Carey), and indexes to the Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich lexicon and Moulton-Geden concordance. Also of primary emphasis to Greek teachers and students is a new Greek-English Synopsis of the Four Gospels, edited by Kurt Aland (American Bible Society). This synopsis has been available for a decade without the English parallels. In its expanded form it will undoubtedly become the standard synopsis used by students.
COMMENTARIES Two works intended primarily for preachers lead the list of valuable new commentaries published this year. The first is an Exposition of the Gospel According to Matthew by William Hendriksen (Baker), a prince among Reformed expositors. The eighth volume to appear in the author’s “New Testament Commentary,” it is a storehouse of more than a thousand pages of exegetical information and homiletical hints. The discussion of the Synoptic problem in the lengthy introduction is as lucid an account as one could imagine of such a difficult subject. One longs for the day when would-be ministers of the Word in the pulpits of our land begin to give their congregations a diet of solid biblical exposition exemplified by this work! Briefer in scope but of the same high quality is the exposition of Colossians by Ralph P. Martin (Zondervan). Subtitled “The Church’s Lord and the Christian’s Liberty,” Martin’s work reflects the most up-to-date scholarship but also a pastor’s heart, concerned to bring the message of Paul’s letter to life for the reader. No gift you could give your pastor this year would make him happier than a present of these two books.
Other important commentaries published during 1973, the majority of interest primarily to theological students and scholars, include the following: ACommentary on the First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians by Ernest Best (Harper & Row), the latest addition to “Harper’s New Testament Commentaries” and by far the most thorough work to date in English on these letters; The Johannine Epistles by Rudolf Bultmann (Fortress) in the “Hermenia” series, a translation of the second edition of his German commentary in the Meyer series (1967), which makes no mention whatsoever of the famous commentary by Westcott (nor of the works of any other conservatives); Romans by Matthew Black in the “New Century Bible” (Attic), less technical than others that have been mentioned so far but none the less valuable; and An die Römer by Ernst Käsemann (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck]), an important and eagerly awaited commentary by Bultmann’s most famous disciple, for all who read German. At a more homiletical level and representing an entirely different approach from the volumes by Black and Käsemann, but nonetheless carefully exegetical and profoundly theological, is Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s exposition of Romans six entitled Romans: The New Man (Zondervan). (It is the third of his volumes on Romans.) The same can be said of John Stott’s exposition of Second Timothy entitled Guard the Gospel (InterVarsity).
A Translator’s Handbook on the Letters of John by C. Haas, M. De Jonge, and J. L. Swellengrebel and ATranslator’s Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Romans by Barclay M. Newman and Eugene Nida (both from American Bible Society) are inexpensive aids that will be of interest to all who seek to understand Johannine and Pauline idioms, not only to Bible translators, for whom these volumes were designed. Intended for the layman are Ray Summers’s Commentary on Luke (Word), Anthony L. Ash’s The Gospel According to Luke (two volumes, Sweet), and Earle McMillan’s The Gospel According to Mark (Sweet). Each of these is non-technical in format and conservative in conclusions but based on solid scholarship. Two commentaries on Acts intended for the general reader, each excellent in its own way, are The Acts of the Apostles by William Neil (Attic) and Church Alive by W. S. LaSor (Regal). Both authors are careful scholars who take Acts seriously as “a basically accurate account of what happened” (Neil) and who have a gift for making rather complex material easy to digest. Although the works themselves have been around for a long time, the appearance of the final three volumes in the Torrance translations of John Calvin’s New Testament commentaries, The Synoptic Gospels and the Epistles of James and Jude (Eerdmans), must by no means be overlooked.
THE GOSPELS Jesus and the Gospel is the appropriate title for a collection of essays by the distinguished director of the École Biblique in Jerusalem, Pierre Benoit (Seabury). Included are astute reflections on the “form critical” method, a discussion of the divinity of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, a note on the date of the Last Supper, and other essays centering in the last days of our Lord’s life on earth. The author weds a mature scholarship with genuine piety and thus provides a model for those who accept both the supreme authority of the Bible and the validity of biblical criticism. Two other works written in a similar vein are Jesus’s Audience by J. Duncan M. Derrett (Darton, Longman and Todd) and Mark: Evangelist and Theologian by Ralph P. Martin (Zondervan). Derrett turns the searchlight of a profound knowledge of the world of the ancient Near East on the teaching of Jesus, this time for the general reader rather than the specialist, in an extremely original and refreshing work. Martin’s work is more technical, focusing on a review of current scholarship as related to the study of the Second Gospel and attempting to suggest the historical background that led to its being written. It is encouraging to find a major work like Martin’s in an inexpensive paperback edition and thus within the book budget of every Bible student.
Jesus by Hans Conzelmann (Fortress) offers in English dress a classic study from a major German theological encyclopedia. If you wish to understand the basic presuppositions and assumptions of Bultmannian criticism, this small book is required reading. It is unfortunate that the editors failed to include in their extensive bibliography the criticisms of Conzelmann’s approach by F. F. Bruce (see his “History and the Gospel” in Jesus of Nazareth: Savior and Lord, edited by C. F. H. Henry). Victory Over Violence: Jesus and the Revolutionists by Martin Hengel (Fortress) is a welcome antidote to the superficial use of the New Testament made by representatives of the “theology of liberation.” Hengel provides the reader with a balanced discussion of Jesus’ political stance and an evaluation of the work of those who have sought to identify him with the Zealots of his day. Jesus as Seen by His Contemporaries by Etienne Trocmè (Westminster) is a popular exposition of some of the chief features of the life and teachings of Jesus as understood by a French New Testament scholar. The author’s stress on the “mystery of Jesus” and his hesitancy to affirm historicity of the Gospels will not go down well with evangelicals; still, there is much of value in his work for all students of the Gospels, regardless of their theological views. Jesus on Trial by Gerard Sloyan (Fortress) and First Easter by Paul Maier (Harper & Row) focus on crucial events. The latter is especially suitable for laymen, combining historical scholarship with Christian faith and offering choice photographs.
BACKGROUNDS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT For nearly a decade now the scholarly world has awaited the revised edition of Emil Schürer’s justly famous The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus. Volume one, revised and edited by Geza Vermes and Fergas Millar (T. and T. Clark), has finally appeared! It deals with the history of Judaism from the time of the Maccabees to the Bar Kokhba rebellion (175 B.C.–A.D. 135). Working with numerous other experts, the revisers have done a splendid job, incorporating the results of some sixty years of scholarship since Schürer’s original version without losing anything significant of the original. The price is high, but so is the value, since the book is tightly packed and contains much foreign-language material. This work is a “must” for all university, seminary, and Bible-college libraries, as well as for the personal libraries of biblical scholars. The editors and publishers are to be congratulated for the production of such a magnificent volume. The second and third volumes, which will treat Jewish institutions and literature, are in preparation.
Two works of a totally different nature that provide the non-specialist with vivid but not always strictly accurate images of the milieu of early Christianity are The Jews in the Roman World by historian Michael Grant (Scribner) and When Jerusalem Burned by Gerard Israel and Jacques Lebar (Morrow). The first book is the more scholarly of the two, being written by one who specializes in interpreting the ancient world for the general reader; but the second, about the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in A.D. 70, makes by far the most exciting reading. “Exciting” is not exactly the word to describe Jesus and the Pharisees by John Bowker (Cambridge), but it is nonetheless an important work. It consists of translations of the major historical sources that shed light on the Pharisees, in particular as these sources in turn shed light on the pages of the New Testament, together with an introduction. These documents and accompanying notes will be of vital interest to all students of gospel origins. Representing the Hellenistic background to the New Testament is an important monograph by a younger evangelical scholar, Pre-Christian Gnosticism by Edwin Yamauchi (Eerdmans). The author surveys the various strands of evidence presented by scholars for the existence of Gnosticism prior to the advent of Christianity and for its influence on the thought-forms of the New Testament. His conclusions are basically negative in regard to the alleged influence of Gnosticism on the New Testament. This is by far the best introduction to the subject and is highly commended to theological students who are grappling with the topic.
MISCELLANEOUS Two important studies of Luke-Acts are Jacob Jervell, Luke and the People of God (Augsburg), and S. G. Wilson, The Gentiles and the Gentile Mission in Luke-Acts (Cambridge). The first is a collection of essays by the professor of New Testament at the University of Oslo, who places a series of interesting question-marks over many of the assumptions of certain contemporary Lucan scholars. His first essay demonstrates the absurdity of the suggestion sometimes made that Luke had no available traditions for Acts like those he used in writing the Third Gospel; Jervell points to the many places in Paul’s letters where he indicates that traditions concerning the founding of new churches formed a part of the early Christian preaching (kerygma). Although the author does not argue for an early date for Luke-Acts, nor even the Lucan authorship of this two-volume history of early Christian origins, his understanding of the theology of Acts and the problems facing the author certainly tends to favor an early date. The monograph by Wilson was written as a Ph.D. thesis at Durham University under C. K. Barrett and is published as a Society for New Testament Studies Monograph. The author has provided students of Luke-Acts with a valuable exercise in “redaction criticism” that will undoubtedly be the center of some debate among scholars in the future.
The Use of the Old and New Testaments in Clement of Rome by Donald A. Hagner (Brill) is not limited to the study of the New Testament, but it is a masterly work that makes an important contribution to our understanding of the New Testament canon as well as early Christian hermeneutics. The Old Testament in the Book of Revelation by Ferrell Jenkins (Cogdill) is considerably less technical but is also helpful in understanding the relation of the two testaments. Festschrift to Honor F. Wilbur Gingrich, Lexicographer, Scholar, Teacher, and Committed Christian Layman (Brill) is the unimaginative title of a volume of essays dedicated to the well-known co-translator and editor of the English edition of the famous lexicon by Walter Bauer. Of special interest are details concerning the origin of the Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich lexicon, further linguistic notes on Acts by H. J. Cadbury, a discussion of the terminology of the papyri and inscriptions as a background to Paul’s understanding of Law and Gospel in Romans (F. W. Danker), and provocative suggestions concerning the unfinished task of New Testament lexicography (O. A. Piper). Three fairly non-technical studies appearing in paperback are The Worship of the Early Church by Ferdinand Hahn (Fortress), an important study by a leading German Neutestamentler;Peter in the New Testament, edited by Raymond E. Brown, Karl P. Donfried, and John Reumann (Augsburg and Paulist), a jointly written Lutheran-Roman Catholic effort representing, for the most part, fairly extreme criticism; and Gifts and Ministries by Arnold Bittlinger (Eerdmans), a perceptive study of the New Testament concepts of charisma and ministry by a theologian who is within the so-called charismatic movement but who is also in dialogue with mainstream exegesis. This book has much to teach both charismatics and non-charismatics.
A leading Dutch New Testament specialist in our time who has contributed much toward a positive and constructive understanding of the Bible is W. C. Van Unnik. Unfortunately, most of his writings have been essays tucked away in the pages of journals, Festschriften, and sometimes rather obscure volumes of collected essays. Thus it is with sincere appreciation that we note the appearance of Sparsa Collecta, Volume One (Brill), which includes his major essays on the Gospels, the letters of Paul, and Acts. It is of interest that more than half the items included are on Luke-Acts, concerning which the author takes an essentially conservative approach. Van Unnik’s essays should be in all college and seminary libraries without exception, as well as in the personal libraries of scholars.
HISTORICAL CURIOSITIES The two most recent of the perennial attacks on Christianity to receive extensive notice in the media are The Secret Gospel by Morton Smith (Harper & Row) and The Jesus Scroll by Donovan Joyce (Dial). Although Smith is a professor of ancient history at Columbia University and would no doubt claim that his work is in a different category from that of Joyce, a journalist, most scholars would agree that the two books are cut from the same cloth. Having rejected the claims of historic Christianity concerning the origin of the Gospel, both seek desperately to find an alternative explanation of the historical data surrounding Jesus and the early Church. The hypothesis of each is so fantastic that the faith of believers can only be strengthened—if this is the best that can be done, why should anyone ever doubt the original version!
Morton Smith thinks he has found a fragment of a letter written by Clement of Alexandria, a Christian theologian of the late second and early third century. (This is the only point of his thesis that will probably be accepted by other scholars, though many would deny even this claim!) The alleged letter of Clement speaks of a longer version of Mark’s Gospel that was used in heretical circles. Smith argues that this longer gospel was the original one and contained secret teaching of the early Christians that was omitted from the abridged version. By a series of ingenious arguments, he goes on to reconstruct the true origins of Christianity. Jesus becomes a magician who taught his disciples secret rites (involving homosexual acts) and an essentially antinomian ethic. For those who wish to see for themselves the flimsy evidence upon which Smith has built his case, he has published a more technical work entitled Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Harvard University). The reader would do well to begin with the text of the fragment itself and then pass on to the comments of Smith, so that his interpretation is not colored by the author’s adroit reconstructions. If the reader is not himself equipped to evaluate the technicalities and feels overwhelmed by Smith’s erudition, he should find consolation in the fact that hardly any reputable scholar—there may be one somewhere, since it is usually possible to find a scholar to support almost any position, but I have not heard of him yet!—would concur with his conclusions. One wonders how long the author’s academic reputation can survive such sensationalism.
Donovan Joyce’s work lacks the scholarly apparatus of Smith’s, but his theory is equally fantastic. He tells of an alleged scroll found at Masada, the last stronghold of the Jewish rebellion after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, by an archaeologist operating under an assumed name (who subsequently disappeared). The scroll—now in the hands of the Russians (who else?)—purportedly portrayed Jesus as a revolutionary who, by a clever trick, did not die on the cross but lived to write his own autobiography and died fighting the Romans at Masada at the age of eighty. This work too has doubtlessly fattened the wallets of both author and publisher and strengthened the prejudices of many people who have already rejected Christianity and who prefer to believe fantasies like this rather than to investigate the actual historical roots of the faith. It has done nothing to advance the cause of truth.
1973 was not a very systematic year. Its offerings in theology and closely related fields include a few sharply focused monographs and a number of imaginative books, some brief, some less so, attempting to couple or integrate two or more varied issues or aspects.
Without a doubt, the most impressive theological work of 1973 is Rousas J. Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law (Presbyterian and Reformed), a compendious treatment of a whole gamut of questions in governmental, social, and personal ethics from the perspective of the principle of law and the purpose of restoration of divine order in a fallen world. Rushdoony’s approach may be open to the charge that it does not adequately demonstrate that which is specifically new in the New Covenant, but this is a monumental work that should give invaluable help for constructive thinking and practical conduct.
GENERAL R. C. Sproul offers a brief and clear presentation of fundamental doctrines in The Symbol: A Contemporary Exposition of the Apostles’ Creed (Craig), useful as a forthright introduction to basic Christianity. In Story and Promise by Robert W. Jenson, Fortress presents what it calls a “one-volume dogmatics” that “leaves no element of the Christian faith untouched.” Indeed it doesn’t. Based largely on German speculation from Hegel to Heidegger.
The academic discipline of theology is ably introduced in The Living God (Baker). Editor Millard Erickson has collected thirty-three essays, mostly by twentieth-century writers, under the headings “What Theology Is,” “How God Is Known,” and “What God Is Like.” What distinguishes this volume is that the best of evangelical scholarship is included along with a good representation of the men with bigger reputations in the academic world. Illustrated with positions reflecting a middle-of-the-road Episcopalianism is a workbook (twenty lectures, questions and suggestions, bibliography) by Owen C. Thomas, Introduction to Theology (Greeno, Hadden). In Scripture and Confession: A Book About Confessions Old and New (Presbyterian and Reformed), edited by John H. Skilton, several Westminster Seminary professors deal with the historic and spiritual significance of creeds and confessions. Frederick Buechner’s Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (Harper & Row) is a dictionary of theological terms with free-wheeling definitions. In Shaping Your Faith: A Guide to a Personal Theology (Word), C. W. Christian presents another theological workbook, one that owes more to the evangelical tradition than Thomas’s but is surprisingly mushy on central doctrinal issues.
Moving over to the question of how God is known and what is known about him, another workbook, Robert P. Lightner’s The First Fundamental: God (Nelson), is biblically much solider, goes into considerable detail about the doctrines of God’s nature and his works, and yet is straightforward enough to be understandable to the interested layman. The most genial of the general works is without a doubt J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity), a thorough, gracefully written, and well documented treatment of the way we know God, his nature and attributes, and his attitude toward us (the doctrine of redemption).
Students bewildered by the multitude of theologians passing as “biblically centered” (Christian uses this term to describe Barth, Brunner, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Tillich) will receive easily digestible, reliable help from Harvie M. Conn in Contemporary World Theology: A Layman’s Guidebook (Presbyterian and Reformed). Conn analyzes and criticizes men and movements from neo-orthodoxy to the theology of hope, and follows a few kind words for fundamentalism with some sharp remarks about “neo-fundamentalism” (dispensationalism) and more about “neo-evangelicalism.” Unfortunately, he has less to say on contemporary theologians we may like better, such as Van Til, Ramm, and Schaeffer. Basic issues such as the Bible, dogma, the doctrine of God, and the Church are dealt with from the perspective of moderate Anglicanism and in the light of what R. P. C. Hanson calls The Attractiveness of God (in drawing us into theological inquiry) in a book whose subtitle is Essays in Christian Doctrine (John Knox). In Body Theology: God’s Presence in Man’s World (Harper & Row), high Episcopal bishop Arthur A. Vogel uses truths of Christian doctrine and from spiritual experience to propose practical ways to live before and with God in a rapidly changing world.
PARTICULAR DOCTRINES If Thomas, Buechner, and Christian offer a weak approach to Scripture in the course of their systematic presentations, we find little that is better in Dewey M. Beegle’s updating of his 1963 work on inspiration under the title Scripture, Tradition, Infallibility (Eerdmans). He tries to preserve the substance of the biblical tradition by leaving several vexing questions slightly out of focus. Another Eerdmans title, Robert P. Roth’s Story and Reality, does not deal directly with the question of inspiration but gives so much weight to the literary and psychological story-aspect of Scripture that little is left for Scripture as truthful communication in propositional form. A significant book on the Bible’s place and authority is James Barr, The Bible in the Modern World (Harper & Row). Barr trenchantly analyzes the babble of confusion over the nature and reliability of biblical revelation, and exposes many flaws in the positions of widely celebrated non-evangelical theologians. As to those who hold to the absolute trustworthiness of Scripture (“fundamentalists”), Barr finds them naïve and occasionally more bound by dogmatic presuppositions than they like to admit, but on the whole closer to reality than their more sophisticated detractors. The “fundamentalists” can take heart, though: Christ and the Bible (InterVarsity) by John W. Wenham takes its cues from Jesus’ attitude towards the Old Testament and gives ample reason why his authority and the Bible’s reliability should be acknowledged.
Dealing more specifically with God and his works, James Daane takes up the question of The Freedom of God: A Study of Election and Pulpit (Eerdmans). Daane very capably discusses the Calvinistic, Reformed emphasis—sometimes excessive, he believes—on the eternal decrees of God and their conformity to human rationality. He also proposes some clarifications and modifications more in line with a biblical rather than philosophical picture of God’s sovereignty. Unfortunately, this significant work only touches upon the practical implications of election for preaching. Wolfhart Pannenberg’s The Idea of God and Human Freedom (Fortress) is a collection of essays including useful ones on myth in biblical and Christian tradition and on the atheist criticisms of Christianity. John Reumann, Creation and New Creation: The Past, Present and Future of God’s Creative Activity (Augsburg), is an eclectic philosophical-literary interpretation of the themes of creation, redemption, and the last things, revealing remarkable breadth of knowledge and considerable imagination in dealing with the theme.
Norman F. Douty followed his late 1972 book, The Death of Christ: A Treatise Which Answers the Question, “Did Christ die only for the elect?,” with Union With Christ (Reiner), a treatise on the nature of man and the two natures of Christ. Strongly based on the Bible and on wide reading, especially of Puritan and Reformed authors, Union With Christ also deals at length with the believer’s relationship to Christ in theological and experimental terms. What Douty says is orthodox, scholarly, and practical. Roman Catholic biblical scholar Bruce Vawter, in This Man Jesus: An Essay Towards a New Testament Christology (Doubleday), accepts the results of demythologization and attempts to preserve the reality and significance behind New Testament concepts by what he calls “remythologization.” His frequently valuable exegetical and theological insights do not compensate for the book’s clearly unsound presuppositions.
Also dealing with the person and work of Christ is A Process Christology (Westminster) by David R. Griffin, the most comprehensive, systematic, and thorough development of the implications of Whitehead’s process philosophy for theology. It shows that process theology need not eventuate in death-of-God ideas, and it is more intelligible than Tillich, less skeptical than Bultmann, more theological than White-head. In The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Judson) Gerald O’Collins, S. J., surveys several modern critics of the bodily resurrection, capably refuting many of their arguments and generally if somewhat ambiguously putting forward a more or less traditional faith. Far less tolerant of modern theology and theologians is Resurrection! Essays in Honor of Homer Hailey (C. E. I. Publishing Company), essays by Church of Christ theologians edited by Elmer Fudge; they contain readily understandable and useful confrontations with the erroneous views of several cults.
John A. T. Robinson’s The Human Face of God (Westminster) is a pathetic rehash of the ex-bishop’s attempts to prove that Jesus was most remarkable but that there’s no need to worry about having to answer to him on Judgment Day. Ex-Jesuit Malachi Martin’s Jesus Now (Dutton) is an extremely curious attempt to write a history of world civilization and self-understanding in terms of various ages’ and movements’ supposed images of Jesus and of self; blasphemous in form if not necessarily in intent, it by no means lives up to its publisher’s claim of lucidity. Jürgen Moltmann’s The Gospel of Liberation (Word) is only a collection of topical sermons. Wilfried Daim, in Christianity, Judaism, and Revolution (Ungar), provocatively explores what he thinks to be unrecognized Jewish elements in Christianity, considers many instances of church opposition to social change, and hopes that Christianity will further the cause of a non-revolutionary socialism.
Two books on the Holy Spirit from an evangelical perspective are David M. Howard, By the Power of the Holy Spirit (InterVarsity), and Frank Stagg, The Holy Spirit Today (Broadman). Both authors maintain that the baptism of the Spirit takes place at conversion, while showing appreciation for Pentecostals and their convictions. Howard’s book contains much autobiographical material and deals at length with his and others’ experiences; Stagg’s concentrates more on the Bible. Speaking in Tongues: Let’s Talk About It (Word), edited by Watson E. Mills, contains scholarly, readable essays, the majority by Southern Baptists, on several aspects of tongue-speaking, including the relation of tongues to real language and the phenomenon of Pentecostalism among Roman Catholics.
With so many ecclesiastical officials and theologians tending to identify salvation with some form of politico-economic liberation, 1973 brought three noteworthy books on salvation as traditionally understood: Robert Glenn Gromacki, Salvation Is Forever (Moody), Leslie H. Woodson, Hell and Salvation (Revell), and John Killinger, The Salvation Tree (Harper & Row). Both Gromacki and Woodson clearly and straight-forwardly expound the biblical teaching on salvation, in the process refuting a number of fashionable misconceptions, and—as Woodson’s title indicates—both deal squarely with the reality of eternal punishment. Gromacki’s book goes into greater detail on the relevant Scripture passages, while Woodson includes a helpful treatment of universalism. Killinger, by contrast, jettisons the “simple” teaching of his childhood about salvation as a “temporal” (i.e., eternal) affair and sees it in “spatial” terms, with “change,” “revolution,” “group encounter,” and many other clever discoveries all part of it. Jacques Ellul, in Hope in Time of Abandonment (Seabury), gloomily paints the condition of a fallen, apostate world and suggests that the God in whom we rightly believe doesn’t promise any deus ex machina solutions to get his worshipers out of the mess they have created by disregarding him.
PARTICULAR MOVEMENTS Several Roman Catholic authors wrote on the Church in 1973. On the Church of Christ (Notre Dame) by the late Jacques Maritain is at once the most noteworthy and most conservative treatment of the Church’s place in theology. Dutchman Edward Schillebeeckx, in The Mission of the Church (Seabury), deals largely with the question of finding a place for an institution that is no longer sure of its raison d’être. F. X. Durwell addresses himself to the same problem, more specifically in the context of evangelism, in The Mystery of Christ and the Apostolate (Sheed and Ward), but his implicit universalism hamstrings his efforts. Juan Luis Segundo published the first two volumes of A Theology For Artisans of a New Humanity (Orbis): Volume I, The Community Called Church, and Volume II, Grace and the Human Condition, hailed as doing justice “to both the particularity of Christianity and the universality of God’s saving work” (John C. Bennett), but in fact characterized by the universalism so prevalent in the “theology of liberation” of which Segundo is an outstanding exponent. Karl Rahner’s The Priesthood (Seabury) deals more with the theme of priesthood in the life of Christ and of every Christian, and only secondarily with the institution. Joseph Powers, Spirit and Sacrament: The Humanizing Experience (Seabury), deals primarily with the inwardness of contact with the Holy Spirit and with Christ through the Eucharist, and relies more on speculation than on biblical authority or the Catholic doctrinal tradition.
William R. Jones, Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology (Anchor) is the effort of a competent Unitarian-Universalist scholar to tell the white church how to change. He does this by describing the experience and ideas of a number of leaders who may all be black by race but whose theologies vary from the recognizably Christian to the indisputably pagan. This way of stating the question and organizing the discussion promotes confusion rather than understanding.
Carl F. H. Henry gathered sixteen other evangelical scholars representing various disciplines to write on Quest For Reality: Christianity and the Counter Culture (InterVarsity). The result is a good basis for critical reflection on long-term trends that submerge from time to time but are never far beneath the surface. Even more comprehensive is Os Guinness’s widely lauded The Dust of Death: A Critique of the Establishment and the Counter Culture—and a Proposal For a Third Way (InterVarsity). The “third way” is, of course, biblical Christianity.
In the area of comparative theology, Stuart P. Garver gave us Watch Your Teaching! A Comparative Study of Roman Catholic and Protestant Teaching Since Vatican Council II (Christ’s Mission), a valuable contribution to knowledge in an area where a generous optimism clouds many real problems. The New Man: An Orthodox and Reformed Dialogue (Agora), edited by John Meyendorff and Joseph McLelland, is an effort to resume the abortive Calvinist-Orthodox conversations of the sixteenth century and should help familiarize evangelicals with scarcely appreciated aspects of Eastern Orthodoxy. Donald G. Bloesch, The Evangelical Renaissance (Eerdmans), is a well written, subtle, and alert appraisal of the intellectual, spiritual, and social revival of conservative Protestantism. It attempts to place that revival in context with its heritage and hoped-for future. Contains a useful discussion of Barth and pietism. In Liberal Christianity at the Crossroads (Westminster), John B. Cobb, Jr., calls on his fellow liberals to tread a distinctive path without climbing back into traditional orthodoxy or sliding further into humanism.
PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY Passing over into the area where philosophy and theology overlap, Ninian Smart offers The Phenomenon of Religion in Seabury’s “Philosophy of Religion” series under the general editorship of John Hick. Smart’s work is a balanced, urbane attempt to understand and appreciate the contribution of “religion” in all its manifold variety to human culture, without subscribing to any particular convictions; he is reacting against the trivializing of religion by the linguistic analysts. Gerhard Ebeling, a pupil of Bultmann who has moved from exegetical to philosophical considerations, offers an Introduction to a Theological Theory of Language (Fortress), an eloquent testimony to the author’s fascination with words as events rather than with the question of reliably reporting events in words. Considerably superior to Ebeling’s reminiscent ruminations is Robert Allen Evans’s Intelligible and Responsible Talk About God: A Theory of the Dimensional Structure of Language and Its Bearing Upon Theological Symbolism (Brill), a carefully constructed, detailed examination of language, symbol, and reality, and of the way in which transcendent reality can validly be communicated. Highly theoretical, yet very useful in a context of discourse rather jaundiced by a decade of linguistic priggishness of the Flew-Wisdom variety. Wider ranging and more speculative, Rodney Needham’s Belief, Language and Experience (University of Chicago) comes to more pessimistic and paradoxical conclusions about the valid content of the language of belief and religious experience. Theology and Intelligibility (Routledge and Kegan Paul) by Michael Durrant is a careful philosophical exercise by which Durrant claims to prove that we cannot intelligibly speak of God as the “last” (chief) end of creatures or of the Trinity, but really shows us more about the limitations of “objective” philosophizing.
The nature of man is the subject of several inquiries. In an important book, The Struggle For Human Dignity (Nash), psychologist Leslie H. Moser attacks B. F. Skinner’s superficial understanding of human dignity as well as criticizing other contemporary threats from violence, economic and political oppression, and sexual obsessions. James B. Ashbrook, though nominally a Christian theologian, draws on a Babel of variant traditions, ancient and modern, in Humanitas: Human Becoming and Becoming Human (Abingdon). His attempt to present man as the image of God by relying not on biblical revelation but on anthropology, comparative religion, symbolism, literature, and art, among other things, is massive and impressive, but at bottom it is futile. Frank Stagg, the prolific New Testament scholar mentioned earlier, is on solider ground in attempting to unravel the Polarities of Man’s Existence in Biblical Perspective (Westminster), bringing biblical teaching and contemporary developments in philosophy and the sciences into dialogue, though at times he becomes mired in ambivalence. Humanism and Beyond (Pilgrim) by Robert A. Johnson describes the history and present prosperity of humanism, which he calls “the only faith of millions” today, and then patiently but firmly points out its inadequacy and the tremendous superiority of faith in Christ and in authoritative biblical communication. The most authentic and also the most readable of the books dealing with man’s nature is Charles Martin, How Human Can You Get? (InterVarsity). Martin specifically challenges the humanist view of man as well as the reductionist ideas of the “naked ape” school, and presents instead a sound, biblical picture of man’s unique position and promise. Written specifically against biologist Jacques Monod’s Chance and Necessity, Roman Catholic priest-psychiatrist Marc Oraison’s Chance and Life: Faith as the Living Reality (Doubleday) attempts to carve out some room for personality and meaning without rejecting Monod’s basic naturalistic position.
PARTICULAR THEOLOGIANS Wolfhart Pannenberg’s work and person were described twice, briefly and competently by Don H. Olive in the Word series “Makers of the Modern Mind,” and at greater length by E. Frank Tupper. Olive’s Wolfhart Pannenberg is sympathetic, at times moderately critical, and does not alert the reader to the significant points at which Pannenberg stands closer to the skeptical than to the evangelical tradition, especially in his views of Scripture. Tupper, in The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg (Westminster), a first-rate, dissertation-quality treatment, reveals incidentally how Pannenberg may appeal to wavering conservatives as an academically respectable and spiritually somewhat serviceable alternative to traditional orthodoxy.
Also in the Word series, Alan Gragg’s Charles Hartshorne is a concise, friendly, but moderately critical analysis of a philosopher who has greatly influenced contemporary theology. Arthur Koestler (Judson) by Wolfe Mays deserves mention as a short and very helpful introduction to one of our age’s most original thinkers. Because analytical philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is so important to the anti-religious language philosophy movement, and has also been pressed into service for apologetic purposes by Christians such as J. W. Montgomery, Anthony Kenny’s basic, scholarly, and reliable study of his philosophy, Wittgenstein (Harvard), deserves commendation. William Young’s treatment of Hegel’s Dialectical Method (Craig) is a thorough if brief treatment of the man who deeply influenced philosophical, economic, political, historiographic, and theological development. Firmly grounded in Reformed theology, Young decisively rejects Hegel’s method and his results without overlooking his positive aspects.
Two books on Paul Tillich, one by his widow, Hannah, From Time to Time (Stein and Day), and another by a friend, Rollo May, Paulus: A Personal Portrait of Paul Tillich (Harper & Row), make it appear that it was not only his theology that represented a licentious travesty of biblical Christianity. Evangelicals are not the only scandalous religionists, though journalists sometimes give that impression. The Hebrew Humanism of Martin Buber (Wayne State University) by Grete Schaeder could be called a philosophical biography; it is an unusual piece of work imparting a great deal of information and insight about Buber’s religious and philosophical thought in the course of interesting narration. Although a Jew, Buber appears as a much better model for Christians in his approach to religious problems and in his personal life than the nefarious Tillich. In C. S. Lewis: Mere Christian (Regal), Ann Lindskoog in simpler fashion does something similar for admirers of C. S. Lewis, placing his work in the context of his personal life and giving the reader a good introduction to his unique contribution to Christian thought and life. There is a very helpful bibliography.
APOLOGETICS Following with the general trend of 1973 books to fall into more than one traditional area, many of the books mentioned in previous sections could just as logically have been considered primarily apologetic in intent. The most straightforward work of apologetics comes from a traditional Roman Catholic, John D. Sheridan. The Hungry Sheep: Catholic Doctrine Restated Against Conservative Attacks (Arlington) is interesting for what it says and also because it is written by a layman in an age when so many priestly works are more or less modernist. Paul Kurtz and Albert Dondeyne have edited A Catholic/Humanist Dialogue (Prometheus), in which the humanist contributors veil their intention, explicit elsewhere, to stamp out religion, and the Catholics minimize their differences with man-worship.
A really good book of biblical, Christian answers to traditional issues raised by science, philosophy, and experience is Pillars of Faith: Biblical Certainty in an Uncertain World (Baker), edited by Herman O. Wilson and Morris M. Womack. The ever-productive John Warwick Montgomery answers How Do We Know There Is a God? and Other Questions Inappropriate in Polite Society in a brief tract and edits the lucubrations of several young scholars from his courses at Trinity seminary in Christianity For the Tough Minded (both Bethany Fellowship). Calvin Miller’s A Thirst For Meaning: In the Face of Scepticism and Doubt (Zondervan) is an attractive, gracefully written essay in evangelical apologetics dealing chiefly with objections of a subjective and psychological nature. William M. Justice, Our Visited Planet (Vantage), brings a new freshness to the defense and exposition of basic doctrines.
Eastern Orthodox archbishop Anthony Bloom, in God and Man (Newman), gives solid material on apologetics, prayer, and discipleship derived from the central theme of the Incarnation of Christ. Roman Catholic Juan Arias’s The God I Don’t Believe In (Abbey) is passionate but universalistic, more humanist than biblical. Ladislaus Boros explores the question of the Hidden God (Seabury) in thoughtful reflections valid for apologetic or devotional use. Why Me? (Christian Literature Crusade) by A. J. Matthews is a simple but clear and helpful Christian answer to questions raised by the pervasive experience of pain and death. The Children of Darkness: Some Heretical Reflections on the Kid Cult (Arlington) by Richard S. Wheeler (one of the few Puritans still alive and well among the Congregationalists) is an argument on behalf of the Christian remnant and in defense of the contribution of Christianity to making society civilized and “human,” and secondarily an indictment of the unthinking cult of Juvenility.
A topic of vital interest in the apologetic dialogue is discussed in Evolution: Possible or Impossible? (Zondervan) by James F. Coppedge, an extremely valuable contribution in view of the reign of naturalistic evolution at most levels of education. Denis Alexander’s Beyond Science (Holman) is an important evangelical contribution to the unfortunate but perennial conflict that many perceive between God’s revelation in Scripture and in nature. Alexander interacts with the recent non-religious challenges to science. Critical Issues in Modern Religion (Prentice-Hall) by Roger A. Johnson, Ernest Wallwork et al. is a textbook by highly qualified academicians of indeterminate belief. A farther-ranging textbook of considerable objectivity, balance, and value is Geddes MacGregor, Philosophical Issues in Religious Thought (Houghton Mifflin). Traces of God in a Secular Culture (Alba), edited by George F. McLean, offers readings in process theology, existentialism, and linguistic analysis bearing on current theological debate. The Sense of God: Sociological, Anthropological and Psychological Approaches to the Origin of the Sense of God (Oxford) by John Bowker is a careful, tentative inquiry that ends with the interesting suggestion that scientific approaches to the understanding of religion and religious behavior should bring us back to, not dispense us from, asking about the reality of the object of faith.
Zen, Drugs, and Mysticism (Pantheon) by R. C. Zaehner, sympathetically examines alternatives to Christian belief popular today, especially among the young, identifies them as dead-end roads, and diffidently suggests giving some kind of Christianity another chance. Harvey Cox’s The Seduction of the Spirit: The Use and Misuse of People’s Religion (Simon and Schuster) is a theological autobiography.
ETHICS, GENERAL The field of ethics was highly productive in 1973, with several seminal books. Carl F. H. Henry edited a Dictionary of Christian Ethics (Baker and Canon), a very useful handbook covering the field and deserving of wide circulation as representative of informed evangelical reflection on topics from abortion to Zen. Certainly one of the most important theoretical books is that by a militant atheist, Walter Kaufmann: Without Guilt and Justice: From Decidophobia to Autonomy (Wyden). America’s most gifted anti-religious philosopher shows that not only guilt feelings but also the very concept of justice have religious roots, and proposes that as modern grown-ups we ought to do away with all three. Since the solution of autonomy he proposes founders on the fallen nature of man, Kaufmann’s book prompts readers aware of that nature to reconsider the necessity of faith for justice, even in a secular society. Beyond Right and Wrong: A Study in Moral Theory (Free Press) by Harry K. Girvetz analyzes the contemporary moral impasse in sociological terms and proposes that people by now ought to be mature enough to recognize the importance of the ethical. A wiser recommendation is made by David Baily Harned in a shorter book, Faith and Virtue (Pilgrim), concerned with showing the importance of virtue, the necessity of faith for virtue, and why Christians should work for stable, as well as just, social order. Several essays in Religion and Morality (Anchor), edited by Gene Outka and John P. Reeder, Jr., also explore their interrelationship and come to a positive conclusion, in effect recommending both. Bernard Häring, in Faith and Morality in the Secular Age (Doubleday), reaffirms in considerable detail the basic substance, uniqueness, and authority of the Christian faith, with a reasonably favorable assessment of the Protestant variety, and calls upon the Church to recognize contemporary secularism and learn how to present Christian imperatives undiluted across the cultural gap. J. L. Houlden, Ethics and the New Testament (Pelican), believes in a wide variation of ethical standards in the New Testament and seeks to go behind it to discern the teaching of Jesus himself.
Thoroughly secular views are put forward by Burton M. Leiser in Liberty, Justice, and Morals: Contemporary Value Conflicts (Macmillan); Leiser puts the case for a moderate libertarianism about as well as it can be put and at the same time fairly states the arguments against it. Kai Nielsen dreams of Ethics Without God (Prometheus) in an effort to further the illusion that morality does not require religious convictions.
Standing squarely on the contrary set of presuppositions, i.e., faith in the personal God who reveals himself clearly and authoritatively in Scripture, Harold Lindsell discusses The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (Canon) and how to avoid their traps; the book is a practical guide to Christian living. In The Christian Ethic of Love (Zondervan), Norman L. Geisler accepts the claim that love is the only absolute but then turns to biblical teaching about God and his will to define love, and subsequently deals biblically with familiar ethical problems. William Stringfellow offers An Ethic For Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (Word), based on his demonizing of the state, particularly the American state, and his conspiracy view of American history. In God Speaks to an X-rated Society (Moody), edited by Alan F. Johnson, ten evangelical thinkers address themselves to the Ten Commandments, showing their continuing validity today. Leslie H. Woodson presents a theological/ethical workbook, A View From the Cornerstone (Moody), largely concerned with establishing a perspective for Christian thinking and priorities for action. In The End of the Taboos: An Ethics of Encounter (Fortress), Gérard M. Fourez, a Belgian Catholic, asserts his belief that we are at the end of prescriptive ethics (“taboos”) and his hope that somehow we can salvage some of their values in a fluid society.
PARTICULAR ETHICAL TOPICS Last year a very helpful reference book appeared, A Selected Bibliography of Applied Ethics in the Professions, 1950–1970 (University Press of Virginia), by Daniel Gothie. Among the professions treated are business, government, and health and social sciences.
The individual topics that received most attention in 1973 were what we might designate as the ethics of peace/non-violence and of lawful killing, including euthanasia and abortion, and the related field of ethics for medicine and science. Shalom: The Search For a Peaceable City (Abingdon) by Jack L. Stotts is more a meditation on the word “shalom” as popularized by contemporary ecclesiasts than an ethical program. John Macquarrie examines The Concept of Peace (Harper & Row) and concludes that violence remains an inescapable reality in which the Christian may sometimes have to engage. Frank Epp, a Mennonite scholar, offers A Strategy For Peace: Reflections of a Christian Pacifist (Eerdmans); it is less a restatement of the traditional peace churches’ position than a critique of the peculiar injuries done to peace by the United States and, to a lesser extent, Canada. In Peace and Non-Violence: Basic Writings by Prophetic Voices in the World’s Religions (Paulist), editor Edward Guinan gives us representative samples of non-violent protesters from Victor Hugo to Thich Nhat Hanh. And in Religion and Violence (Westminster), Robert McAfee Brown double-thinkingly concludes that a revolutionary but non-violent stance is appropriate for white, middle-class churches but not necessarily for others.
Turning from generalized to individual violence, we find that capital punishment received considerable attention. Elinor Lander Horwitz writes with dismay in Capital Punishment, U.S.A. (Lippincott) a history of the practice and description of modes; she seeks to arouse sentiment for abolition by association rather than by reasoned argument. William H. Baker in Worthy of Death: Capital Punishment—Unpleasant Necessity or Unnecessary Penalty? (Moody) gives a closely reasoned biblical presentation of the affirmative position. In a somewhat obscure essay, Cutting the Monkey-Rope: Is the Taking of Life Ever Justified? (Judson), John Galen McEllhenney evokes some imaginative biblical themes and argues in answer to his title question that it is not, though he curiously devotes himself most specifically to abortion and euthanasia rather than to capital punishment and war. Your Death Warrant? The Implications of Euthanasia (Arlington), edited by Jonathan Gould and Lord Craigmyle, shows that legal license to do away with the unwanted old and infirm may be closer than we think, and that the license may rather quickly be followed by the obligation. In The Soul, the Pill and the Fetus: An Examination of Abortion and Contraception in Relation to the Scriptural Concept of the Total Person (Dorrance), John Pelt offers new insight into the beginning of life and strongly urges strict limitation of abortion. Abortion, Society, and the Law (Case Western Reserve), a compendium edited by David F. Walbert and J. Douglas Butler, gives most of the standard arguments of lawyers and doctors in favor of abortion, one Jewish and two Catholic demurrals, and the text of the infamous Supreme Court decision. Politics, Medicine, and Christian Ethics: A Dialogue With Paul Ramsey (Fortress) by Charles E. Curran presents the famous ethicist’s strong opposition to abortion in the context of a much wider concern for the stewardship of human life, and is especially illuminating—and disquieting—in the discussion of medical ethics. Human Medicine (Augsburg) by James Nelson is a helpful introduction to medical ethics.
Is It Moral to Modify Man? (Charles C. Thomas), edited by Claude A. Frazier, has noted scientists writing on a variety of medico-ethical topics. Rather more theoretical and concerned with general principles is The Scientist and Ethical Decision (InterVarsity), edited by Charles Hatfield. The fourteen contributing scientists and scholars are all evangelicals.
Jay E. Dailey in The Anatomy of Censorship (Dekker) is outraged by any suggestion of censorship. Christians John W. Drakeford and Jack Hamm in Pornography: The Sexual Mirage (Nelson) are outraged by pornography. Twenty-two contributors to The Case Against Pornography (Open Court), edited by David Holbrook, present calm but impressive arguments. Also comprehensive and balanced, with the added advantage of an evangelical perspective, is Perry Cotham, Obscenity, Pornography, and Censorship (Baker). Drakeford and Hamm’s book is worth reading, though a bit shocking, and that edited by Holbrook makes a case for restrictions that ought to impress libertarians as well as Christians.
Turning to economic issues, Richard K. Taylor’s Economics and the Gospel: A Primer on Shalom as Economic Justice (United Church) is a noteworthy religious call for economic changes but is marred by dependence on leftist analysis and evaluation. Gary North, a Calvinist economist and forthright defender of the free market and of hard money, presents An Introduction to Christian Economics (Craig), particularly useful because of the paucity of biblically based thinking of any stripe on economic issues today and for its disquieting interpretation of currently popular tends, such as “controlled” inflation and state planning. Roberto Vacca, in The Coming Dark Age (Doubleday), gives us an alternative nightmare to that of Ellul’s Technological Society: the breakdown of technology and developed industrial life. He calls for the formation of committed communites akin to the early monastic orders to preserve cultural and spiritual values and scientific knowledge.
Writing from no evident religious perspective, George F. Gilder in Sexual Suicide (Quadrangle) shows many of the destructive and decivilizing aspects of the women’s liberation movement. He believes it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and of the value of human traditions and will, if uncorrected, turn society into a battleground and reduce civilization to a shambles. This is certainly one of the most important secular studies bearing on ethical and spiritual issues published in 1973.
Topics A variety of themes were treated through several centuries of Christian development. Woman in Christian Tradition (Notre Dame) by George Tavard is obviously timely and is competently done. The Lady Was a Bishop (Macmillan) by Joan Morris is a misleadingly entitled study of abbesses and some other women with church authority chiefly in medieval Europe. Nancy van Vuuren’s title more accurately reflects her tone: The Subversion of Women as Practiced by Churches, Witch-Hunters, and Other Sexists (Westminster).
Healing and Christianity (Harper & Row) by Morton Kelsey is a thorough, documented study of attitudes toward a subject both controversial and pervasive. The author’s own views are prominently displayed. The same can be said of The Story of Faith Healing (Macmillan) by Sybil Leek, a witch and psychic. She ranges the globe to demonstrate that healings occur in a wide range of religious traditions. For the Christian this confirms what the Bible teaches: healings do not necessarily validate the message.
A splendidly illustrated guide to The Holy Land (Holt, Rinehart, Winston) is provided by a leading authority, Michael Avi-Yonah. He focuses on its art and architecture, from the Canaanites to the modern Israelis. Moving from holy land to holy living, we find three books of note: Georgia Harkness dips through the centuries and around the world to provide material for a discourse on Mysticism: Its Meaning and Message (Abingdon). The book is chatty and comments on varieties of contemporary mysticism instead of just venerating the past. A Dominican, Philip Mulhern, gives a more systematic overview of monasticism in Dedicated Poverty: Its History and Theology (Alba). Naturally the focus is on Roman Catholicism, but Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism are mentioned. Aelred Squire, also a Dominican, gives guidance on prayer by Asking the Fathers (Morehouse-Barlow) what they have had to say about it over the centuries.
From a Roman Catholic perspective came a worthwhile survey of religious education in the West down through the centuries, The School of Jesus (Alba) by James Mohler. A more comprehensive study of the Roman church through the centuries is Pilgrim Church (Fides) by William Bausch. It is easy to read and very sympathetic to the Catholic side. (Interestingly, a book with the same title published several years ago surveyed groups over the centuries that have been persecuted by Rome.)
A fine study of the Christian view of history from Eusebius to T. S. Eliot with special focus on the Renaissance is The Grand Design of God (University of Toronto) by C. A. Patrides. Somewhat similar ground is covered on a semi-popular level and from the viewpoint of “process theology” by the prolific Norman Pittenger in Christian Faith and the Question of History (Fortress).
Books on Western occultism in one form or another have been streaming from the publishers in recent years. Few of them merit any notice. Occultism represents both pre-Christian and anti-Christian elements. In some respects it can be treated as another religion, like Judaism or Hinduism, but in other respects it is a deliberate perversion of the Christian faith and life. In any case it has been around as long as the Church has, and three books provide evidence for this. The best is John Montgomery’s Principalities and Powers: A New Look at the World of the Occult (Bethany Fellowship). Montgomery avoids the unwitting tendency of many evangelical writers on the occult to make the subject alluring. Yet he also provides his customary full documentation rather than simply denunciation. A standard older study, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (Routledge and Kegan Paul) by Montague Summers, is now back in print. A lavish but not lascivious illustrated study of largely occultic practices from classical times to the present is to be found in Beyond Science: A Journey Into the Supernatural (Grosset and Dunlap) by C. A. Burland.
The opposing religions that are more “orthodox” than occultism are ably served by a very good reference book, A Dictionary of Non-Christian Religions (Westminster) by Geoffrey Parrinder. The five- to twenty-line entries on topics ranging from Adonis to Zombie will authoritatively tell most users all they care to know on those topics.
EARLY AND MEDIEVAL CHURCH The outstanding book in this area was Jean Daniélou’s Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture (Westminster), the second volume of his massive “History of Early Christian Doctrine Before the Council of Nicaea.” Daniélou refutes the common assertion that Christian theology is the result of the Hellenization of the apostolic message. From an Anglo-Catholic stance O. C. Edwards tells in simple language How It All Began: Origins of the Christian Church (Seabury). A very useful collection of documents from the four centuries surrounding the birth of Christ was compiled by Howard Clark Kee; The Origins of Christianity (Prentice-Hall) provides sources that enable us better to understand various aspects of the Jewish, Greek, and Roman cultures in which Christianity arose. There is an academic movement that seeks to erase the traditional distinctions among apostolic, sub-apostolic, and heretical literature; for example, Joseph Tyson’s A Study of Early Christianity (Macmillan). Various versions of the faith were contending for acceptance in the beginning even as now. What is called “orthodoxy” happened to triumph, so it is contended, not because it was right but because it happened to obtain an informal majority or at least plurality. While such a view must be countered by sound scholarship, one cannot help observing the attractiveness it holds for those who have departed from historic trinitarianism, yet still wish to be considered Christian. A specialized study of the first two centuries appeared in English translation, The Worship of the Early Church (Fortress) by Ferdinand Hahn.
A very good overview of the eastern Roman Empire throughout the Middle Ages is available in Byzantium (Harper & Row), edited by Philip Whitting. The Monastic Achievement (McGraw-Hill) by George Zarnecki is a copiously illustrated survey. John O’Brien attempts to understand and explain but not to defend The Inquisition (Macmillan). Intended for the serious reader and not just the scholar, O’Brien’s book is not sensational but is extremely sobering. “Nothing was left undone to squeeze out the last bit of pain from the writhing victim,” he says. Contemporary crusaders for a return to Christian civilization need to be reminded that the Inquisition was for several centuries, at least, an inseparable element of the attempt to have Christianity regnant in society. The martial “achievements” of Christendom were demonstrated in a popular survey of The World of the Crusades (Harper & Row) by Joshua Prower.
Noteworthy specific studies include Friar Thomas D’Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Works (Doubleday) by James Weisheipl; Saint Francis: Nature Mystic (University of California) by Edward Armstrong; and The Becket Conflict and the Schools: A Study of Intellectuals in Politics in the Twelfth Century (Rowman and Littlefield) by Beryl Smalley.
THE REFORMATION Yet another general book on the Reformation appeared, The World of the Reformation (Scribners) by Hans Hillerbrand. Roland Bainton, whose skill at both enchanting and accurate writing has not diminished with age, presented us with Women of the Reformation in France and England (Augsburg) to complement an earlier volume on Germany and Italy. Another Bainton book was enlarged and revised by Eric Gritsch, Bibliography of the Continental Reformation (Archon). The entries are confined to books and periodical articles in English, and there are many helpful brief annotations.
A dozen previously published miscellaneous selections are collected by H. G. Koenigsberger in Luther: A Profile (Hill and Wang). The Massacre of St. Bartholomew and the European Conflict, 1559–1572 (Barnes and Noble) is studied in considerable detail by N. M. Sutherland. To match the collection on Luther, there also appeared a dozen miscellaneous studies on The Heritage of John Calvin (Eerdmans), edited by John Bratt. These essays were originally delivered at a lectureship at, appropriately, Calvin College. Many of the key writings of a major Reformer were translated by David Wright and published under the title Martin Bucer (Sutton Courtenay). The translator provided a long introduction to the man and a lengthy bibliography of works by and about him. A sixteenth-century figure who remained loyal to Roman Catholicism is treated in a major biography: St. John of the Cross: His Life and Poetry (Cambridge) by Gerald Brenan. John’s complete poems are given in Spanish with an English translation.
From mysticism within the mainstream of Christendom it is but a short leap to Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideology and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century (Yale) by Steven Ozment. The author investigates one prominent anonymous writing and seven individuals, mostly Anabaptists in some sense, including Müntzer, Hut, and Denck. The Theology of Anabaptism (Herald Press) is systematically and sympathetically presented by Robert Friedmann. Writings by one of the Anabaptists are introduced and annotated by John Yoder in The Legacy of Michael Sattler (Herald Press).
Another survey of The English Reformation, 1529–58 (Rowman and Littlefield) appeared, this one by David Pill. There is a first-rate introduction to Puritans and Calvinism (Reiner) by Peter Toon and an interesting glimpse by John Leith at what went into the Assembly at Westminster (John Knox) and emerged as the English-speaking world’s most famous confession of faith. In addition there were five noteworthy books on prominent figures of one or another phase of the English Reformation: Cromwell: A Profile (Hill and Wang), edited by Ivan Roots; John Foxe and the Elizabethan Church (University of California) by Norskov Olsen; Studies in Richard Hooker (Case Western Reserve), edited by Speed Hill; God’s Statesman: The Life and Work of John Owen (Zondervan) by Peter Toon; and Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter-Reformation (Cambridge) by Dermot Fenlon. The last named traces the career of an Englishman to illuminate developments in Italy.
MODERN CHURCH No comprehensive books on Christianity since the Reformation appeared; however, a few thematic studies crossed continental boundaries. Bernard Ramm’s The Evangelical Heritage (Word) is an attempt to explain evangelicalism rather than to give a detailed survey of the movement’s development. He does, however, develop his definition historically, concluding with a chapter on “The Future of Evangelical Theology.” The book merits thoughtful reading by both evangelicals and non-evangelicals. Last year brought a very competently done survey of English Biblical Translation (Andre Deutsch) by A. C. Partridge. Robert Torbet updated his standard work, A History of the Baptists (Judson); the book remains much more satisfactory for developments prior to 1900. Toward the other end of the denominational spectrum, José Sànchez reports on Anticlericalism (Notre Dame) in reference to Roman Catholicism. After a general overview he focuses on six Latin countries of Europe and America since the French Revolution.
J. Edwin Orr gives a documented accounting of evangelical awakenings around the world in The Flaming Tongue: The Impact of Twentieth Century Revivals (Moody). A different kind of impact is presented by Donald Treadgold in a two-volume study of The West in Russia and China: Religious and Secular Thought in Modern Times (Cambridge). For each country he traces the influence of Western ideas, especially religious thought, from the sixteenth century to the Communist revolution. A brief, popular-level survey, Bright Wind of the Spirit (Prentice-Hall) by Steve Durasoff, takes a world-wide look at Pentecostalism. It adds little to what is already available.
The first general secretary of the World Council of Churches, W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, published his Memoirs (Westminster); they serve as much more than autobiography and are a major contribution to the history of the ecumenical movement. A major, popular-level biography of an equally important ecumenical figure, Pope John XXIII, was published: I Will Be Called John (Reader’s Digest) by Lawrence Elliott. A review of what has been happening in Roman Catholicism since John with suggestions for its future is presented in The Remaking of the Church (Harper & Row) by Richard McBrien.
A different perspective from that of the historian but one that makes a major contribution to the portrayal of Christian life is made more accessible through a classified but unannotated bibliography of more than 1,000 items: Religion in Contemporary Fiction: Criticism From 1945 to the Present (Trinity University), compiled by George Boyd and Lois Boyd.
EUROPE SINCE THE REFORMATION Although subsequent religious movements have not had the abrupt rending impact upon Europe that the sixteenth-century upheaval did, the situation has been far from static. Blaise Pascal represented a concern for renewal within post-Tridentine Catholicism, and Christians of many varieties have profited from his writings ever since. Last year Charles MacKenzie added another to the many books about the great Frenchman, Pascal’s Anguish and Joy (Philosophical Library). The book is about both his life and his thought.
At the close of the long turbulence in England there emerged the group whose present descendants would never have warranted the descriptive nickname the founders received. Early Quaker Writings, 1650–1700 (Eerdmans) is a much needed compilation by Hugh Barbour and Arthur Roberts. The focus is on writers who are not nearly so well known now but were influential in their own time. An equally important study of William Penn and Early Quakerism (Princeton) by Melvin Endy, Jr., focuses more on Penn’s religious thought than do numerous other biographies. It offers a different understanding of Penn and early Quakerism that merits careful study.
It can be argued that the eighteenth century did more to shape subsequent Christian development than had the sixteenth. On the one hand there emerged a gradual break not just within the Church but from the Church. A translation of an important essay, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment: The Christian Burgess and the Enlightenment (MIT) by Lucien Goldmann, represents that break. On the other hand, the insistence upon personal conversion (rather than simply acquiescence to the state church and its current dogma) reached far beyond small “sects” to become a major current in active Christianity. Last year saw the publication of one of the best studies in English of German Pietism During the Eighteenth Century (Brill), by Ernest Stoeffler. Nine Public Lectures (University of Iowa) by one of whom Stoeffler writes, Nicholaus Zinzendorf, are introduced by George Forell, who succinctly demonstrates the crucial importance of the man and then lets him speak for himself.
One of the men who were greatly influenced by Zinzendorf both directly and indirectly was John Wesley. Six books about Methodism that deserve mention appeared last year. John Drakeford looks on a popular level at Wesley’s generally unfortunate, in the short run, trip to Georgia, 1736–37, in Take Her, Mr. Wesley (Word). It’s about his dilemma over marrying a certain Sophia (he didn’t). More substantive studies are: The Church of England, the Methodists and Society, 1700–1850 (Rowman and Littlefield) by Anthony Armstrong; John Wesley on the Sacraments (Abingdon) by Ole Borgen; John Wesley: A Theological Biography, Volume 2, Part 1 (Abingdon) by Martin Schmidt; The Methodist Revolution (Basic Books) by Bernard Semmel; and A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism (Beacon Hill) by Mildred Wynkoop. The last named author, a Nazarene theologian, has made an important contribution to the understanding of biblical holiness as proclaimed by Wesley and by a vital part of the movement that bears his name today.
Three rather different studies of nineteenth-century England are a scholarly survey, Religion and Society in England, 1790–1850 (Schocken) by W. R. Ward; a scholarly biography, Cardinal Newman in His Age: His Place in English Theology and Literature (Vanderbilt) by Harold Weatherby, who finds Newman’s theology leading to modernism even though he remained professedly orthodox; and Searchlight on Spurgeon (Pilgrim Publications), in which Eric Hayden has taken numerous autobiographical references from Spurgeon’s sermons and arranged them in chronological order, interspersed with background and transitional information. It serves a purpose similar to that of the Newman volume in showing that Spurgeon has not always been interpreted correctly either.
The most important 1973 book on Christianity in continental Europe last century is the unabridged translation of Karl Barth’s Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Judson). Of course, as Germans are wont to do, Barth largely overlooks non-German theology; but for its purpose this volume is superb. Three studies of particular theologians are: Schleiermacher: Life and Thought (Fortress) by Martin Redeker; David Friedrich Strauss and His Theology (Cambridge) by Horton Harris; and Kierkegaard: A Biographical Introduction (Scribners) by Ronald Grimsley. Two detailed ecclesio-political studies are Revolution and Church: The Early History of Christian Democracy, 1789–1901 (Notre Dame) by Hans Maier and Church and State in France, 1870–1914 (Harper & Row) by John McManners.
The accelerating decline of practicing Christianity in twentieth-century Europe and the continent’s preoccupation with war is reflected in the relatively few books of recent history. Beauduin: A Prophet Vindicated (Newman) by Sonya Quitslund is about a Roman Catholic priest who was ahead of his time in ecumenical activity. True Patriotism (Harper & Row) is the third volume of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s collected works and consists of letters, lectures, and notes from 1939 until his death in 1945. A non-professional theologian whose influence may be more pervasive and last longer than that of any of the other post-Reformation thinkers referred to so far was the subject of two books in 1973: C. S. Lewis: Mere Christian (Regal) by Kathryn Ann Lindskoog seeks to introduce the whole range of Lewis’s writings in the context of his life, and C. S. Lewis: Images of His World (Eerdmans) by Douglas Gilbert and Clyde Kilby makes the context even more vivid through splendid photography of where Lewis lived accompanied by expert commentary.
Steve Durasoff gives a competent introduction to the Pentecostal movement in the Communist nations of Europe in Pentecost Behind the Iron Curtain (Logos). Two post-war ecclesio-political studies are Religion and Soviet Foreign Policy, 1945–1970 (Oxford) by William Fletcher and The Churches and Politics in Germany (Wesleyan University) by Frederic Spotts. Both studies are well written and well documented.
ASIA AND THE PACIFIC A popularly written but reliable book on the early and mid-nineteenth century efforts to evangelize the Pacific islands is Company of Heaven (Nelson) by Graeme Kent. The book covers the whole range of Christian denominations and is well illustrated. Much more recent activities are described in Indonesia Revival: Focus on Timor (Zondervan), a balanced assessment by George Peters, missions professor at Dallas Seminary. Genuine revival has occurred, but the author seeks to separate fact from fabrication and exaggeration. New Testament Fire in the Philippines (William Carey) is a descriptive study of the Foursquare Church in that land.
Missionary stories that are often exciting and inspirational regularly issue forth from denominational and certain non-denominational publishers. Among last year’s offerings two of the better ones were An Hour to the Stone Age (Moody) by Shirley Horne, about work in a portion of the Indonesian (western) half of New Guinea, and Daktar/Diplomat in Bangladesh (Moody) by Viggo Olsen, which combines autobiography with the account of medical missionary work in the former East Pakistan and the struggles connected with independence.
Japanese Religion (Kodansha), edited by Hori Ichirō et al., is a government-sponsored survey of the many religious groups including Christianity and is indispensable for those who are interested in ministry to the Japanese.
What was one of the first of the numerous books reflecting the “church growth” viewpoint is now back in print: Church Growth and Group Conversion (William Carey) by J. W. Pickett et al., originally published in 1936 is about peoples movements in central India.
The reopening of American contact with mainland China has been marked by three especially interesting books on nineteenth-century missionary contacts with that vast land. To China With Love (Doubleday) by Pat Barr tells of European and North American Protestant missionaries to China from 1860 to 1900. Two pioneering American missionaries had biographies: The Seed of the Church in China (Pilgrim Press) by Muriel Boone, who writes of her father, William J. Boone, and Peter Parker and the Opening of China (Harvard) by Edward Gulick. A biography of a Chinese Christian, Stephen Wang (1900–1971), also appeared: Stephen the Chinese Pastor (Tyndale) by Mary Wang. Wang was abroad when the Communists took control and was never able to return, so ministered to his compatriots around the world. There is a need for many more such biographies of non-Western Christians. China: Christian Students Face the Revolution (InterVarsity) by David Adeney is a brief look at how one group has fared with Communism in control.
Two books on southwestern Asia do not deal with Christianity but provide useful background for those concerned with the tiny Christian presence there. The Islamic World (Oxford), edited by William McNeill and Marilyn Waldman, is a helpful collection of sources from Muhammad to the present. The Coming Crisis in Israel (MIT) by Norman Zucker was not a prediction of the Yom Kippur war but a study of the continuing conflict between religious and secular elements in Israeli government and society. Christians are well aware how these conflicts affect evangelistic work.
AFRICA The most comprehensive book on Christianity in the continent was The Missionaries (Lippincott) by Geoffrey Moorhouse. It is not so broad as the titles suggests, however, since it is chiefly on Protestant missionaries who came from Britain to Africa during the last two centuries. But what he includes, Moorhouse, a professional writer, treats well. He does not solely lambast or laud, but gives a balanced assessment of the strengths and weaknesses, achievements and failures. The most important of the missionaries from the viewpoint of awakening interest by outsiders was undeniably David Livingstone. Coinciding with the centenary of his death was the publication of David Livingstone: His Triumph, Decline and Fall (Westminster) by Cecil Northcott, Livingstone (Putnam) by Tim Jeal, and Livingstone: Man of Africa (Longman), edited by Bridglal Pachai. The first is brief, balanced, and has good maps; the second is long and overly critical (but not more extreme in its way than were the earlier laudatory accounts in theirs). The third is a collection of essays. All are indispensable for Africa studies collections.
Specific studies of African Christianity in this century include: Born at Midnight (Moody) by Peter Cotterell, about southern Ethiopia; Lardin Gabas (Brethren Press), edited by Chalmer Faw, about northeastern Nigeria; The Prophet Harris: A Study of an African Prophet and His Mass-Movement in the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast, 1913–1915 (Oxford) by Gordon Haliburton; Cross and Sword: The Political Role of Christian Missions in the Belgian Congo, 1908–1960 (Hoover Institution) by Marvin Markowitz; Basic Community in the African Churches (Orbis) by Marie-France Perrin Jassy, a study of indigenous denominations among the Luo of Kenya and Tanzania; Nigerian Harvest (Baker) by Edgar Smith, about a portion of Northern Nigeria; and British Protestant Missions (Longman) by A. J. Temu, about the first quarter of this century in Kenya.
A much needed corrective to overly optimistic reports about the progress of Christianity in Africa is provided in African Traditional Religion: A Definition (Orbis) by Bolaji Idowu. The preference by the author, a Nigerian professor, for the religion he describes does not lessen the value of coming to terms with what he relates. Of equal importance is The Historical Study of African Religion (University of California), edited by R. O. Ranger and Isaria Kimambo. Thirteen essays sample the range of religious expression on the continent.
LATIN AMERICA A Yankee Reformer in Chile: The Life and Works of David Trumbull (William Carey Library) by Irven Paul is a carefully documented biography of a nineteenth-century American Protestant missionary. Look Out! The Pentecostals Are Coming (Creation) is a catchy title for a serious book by Peter Wagner, a Fuller Seminary missions professor who served many years in Latin America. The phenomenal growth of Pentecostalism on that continent is reported, analyzed, and used as a basis for suggestions on evangelistic work in general. Of more specialized interest is Church and Power in Brazil (Orbis) by Charles Antoine.
NORTH AMERICA No book in 1973 even began to rival the scope of the previous year’s award-winning Religious History of the American People by Sydney Ahlstrom. However, as usual, studies of one aspect or another of American Christianity were published in great abundance. A second edition updated Winthrop Hudson’s Religion in America (Scribners), which is comprehensive but concise. American Religious Thought: A History (University of Chicago) by William Clebsch chose to focus on Edwards, Emerson, and William James as men who are still worth reading and who, in the long run, proved to reflect changing theologies. A meandering essay, Dissent in American Religion (University of Chicago) by Edwin Gaustad, tries to show diverse kinds of dissent and how American dissent differs from European dissent. Scores of dissenters are mentioned, with the inevitable omissions. Reinhold Niebuhr and Daniel Berrigan make it, but not Billy Sunday or Carl McIntire.
The most important book covering the whole period of American history is The New Heavens and the New Earth: Political Religion in America (Harper & Row) by Cushing Strout. The complex and persistent intertwining of religion and politics from the Puritans to the New Pluralism is set forth in highly readable yet well documented form. Somewhat similar ground is covered in The Idea of Fraternity in America (University of California) by Wilson McWilliams, but with a more explicit concern to show the inadequacy of widely varying views on the contemporary political spectrum, especially when compared with the more realistic view of human nature conveyed through the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Several studies cover larger or smaller groups from about a century ago to the present. Of widest interest should be George Dollar’s A History of Fundamentalism (Bob Jones University). Dollar is a fully qualified historian who freely expressed his own convictions but yet is able to talk about “The Prima Donnas of Fundamentalism” (one of his chapter titles) and to convey enough of the facts to enable readers to draw conclusions that differ from his own. His book is a reference tool as well as a history that will infuriate (or amuse) but will also inform.
Volumes two and three of Presbyterians in the South (John Knox) by Ernest Trice Thompson bring the story from 1861 to 1972 in about as complete a form as anyone could wish. Even more detailed proportionately is The Holdeman People: The Church of God in Christ, Mennonite, 1859–1969 (William Carey) by Clarence Hiebert. What the denomination lacks in size it compensates for in earnestness. A movement both large and earnest is the Mormons. Two volumes, Joseph Smith and the Restoration by Ivan Barrett and Ensign to the Nations by Russell Rich (both Brigham Young University), give detailed, documented accounts by insiders. The first goes up to 1846, shortly after the murder of Smith, and the second begins then with the epic migration to Utah and carries the story of worldwide expansion to the present. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union published a brief chronicle of itself to celebrate its centennial, Heritage of Dedication by Agnes Hays.
Among studies confined to the colonial period, the most inclusive is Puritanism in America: New Culture in a New World (Viking) by Larzer Ziff. He portrays Puritanism as a revolutionary alternative culture (a counter-culture, if you please) to that which dominated the English-speaking world at the time. Ziff offers many needed correctives to the overly intellectualized portrayal of Puritanism stemming from the influence of Perry Miller. More specific studies to note are: The New England Mind in Transition: Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, 1696–1772 (Yale) by Joseph Ellis; The Ethics of Jonathan Edwards: Morality and Aesthetics (University of Michigan) by Clyde Holbrook; The Shattered Synthesis: New England Puritanism Before the Great Awakening (Yale) by James W. Jones; School of the Prophets: Yale College, 1701–1740 (Yale) by Richard Warch; Statism in Plymouth Colony (Kennikat) by Harry Wand; and (yes, there is something not on Puritanism) Religion and Trade in New Netherland: Dutch Origins and American Development (Cornell) by George L. Smith.
A fine study that covers both sides of the ocean and before and after the struggle for American Independence is Pilgrimage of Faith (Scarecrow) by Steven O’Malley. It is a scholarly investigation of several members of the Otterbein family and their role in German-speaking Reformed orthodoxy of the pietistic variety. Their influence was great in Europe and in America, both among those who remained simply Reformed and through Philip Otterbein, a co-founder in 1800 of the United Brethren in Christ (now largely part of the United Methodist Church). Another ethnic group is studied biographically in Segregated Sabbaths: Richard Allen and the Rise of Independent Black Churches, 1760–1840 (Oxford) by Carol George.
The Churches Militant: The War of 1812 and American Religion (Yale) by William Gribbin is a fine historical study, but parallels with more recent controversial wars come to mind. Gilbert Haven, Methodist Abolitionist: A Study in Race, Religion, and Reform, 1850–1880 (Abingdon) by William Gravely and Abraham Lincoln: Theologian of American Anguish (Harper & Row) by Elton Trueblood look at the greatest American travail through individuals caught up in it.
Communes have always been part of American life, and so has writing about them. Many of the books simply copy from one another, but a new contribution is made by Raymond Muncy in Sex and Marriage in Utopian Communities: Nineteenth Century America (Indiana University). The author, a professor at a Churches of Christ college, writes not to titillate but to inform with restraint. The one-sixth of the book devoted to Mormonism is a revealing contrast to the semi-official Mormon histories mentioned earlier.
An inspiring saga is narrated authoritatively in two volumes, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and the Opening of Old Oregon (Arthur H. Clark Co.) by Clifford Drury. The Whitmans were pioneer missionaries who were also involved in gaining the Pacific Northwest for the United States instead of Britain.
The period from the Civil War to the First World War saw The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life (University of California), which Stephen Gottschalk narrates and documents excellently. An equally good study of the larger New Thought movement of which Eddy’s church is the best known is Mind Cure in New England: From the Civil War to World War I (University Press of New England) by Gail Parker. The same time span saw also the gigantic swarming of peoples from the old world to the new. The response of one Anglo-Saxon denomination is portrayed in Immigrants, Baptists, and the Protestant Mind in America (University of Illinois) by Lawrence Davis. Evidence is marshalled to disprove both hostile charges of pure nativism and friendly claims of impartial welcome. Meanwhile, internal tensions, not related to immigration, were afflicting another large Anglo-Saxon denomination; David Harrell, Jr., tells authoritatively about The Social Sources of Division in the Disciples of Christ, 1865–1900 (Publishing Systems).
On the furthest frontier, Damien de Veuster, a Belgian Catholic, had a ministry to lepers from 1873 to his death from the disease in 1889 on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Holy Man (Harper & Row) by Gavan Daws and A Man For Now (Doubleday) by John Beevers are about him.
We close out the nineteenth century with a commendation to Baker for reprinting in inexpensive format the finest biography of one of the foremost Christians of his time: Dwight L. Moody: American Evangelist, 1837–1899, by J. F. Findlay, Jr.
Contemporary American Protestant Thought: 1900–1970 (Bobbs-Merrill), edited by William R. Miller, collects essays from twenty-three authors; the essays are hardly representative of biblical and Reformational theology. A capably done history of the Pentecostal Holiness Church (which had some 70,000 members in the United States in 1973, its seventy-fifth year) by Vinson Synan is entitled The Old-Time Power (Advocate Press). One aspect of a much larger body is studied by George Kelsey in Social Ethics Among Southern Baptists, 1917–1969 (Scarecrow).
Sociological studies of current beliefs and practices include: Religion Among the Unitarian Universalists (Seminar Press) by Robert Tapp; Ethnic Diversity in Catholic America (Wiley) by Harold Abramson; Organizational Climates and Careers (Seminar Press) by Douglas Hall and Benjamin Schneider, based on studies of the priests of the Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford; and The Ministry in Transition (Pennsylvania State University) by Yoshio Fukuyama, based on the education and role conflicts of United Church of Christ ministers.
Alfred Hero, Jr., compares and contrasts numerous subdivisions of religious Americans and makes a major contribution with American Religious Groups View Foreign Policy: Trends in Rank-and-File Opinion, 1937–1969 (Duke). More narrowly focused is Hertzel Fishman’s American Protestantism and a Jewish State (Wayne State University).
In The Preachers (St. Martin’s) James Morris discusses nine men, including Billy Graham, Carl McIntire, and Herbert Armstrong, and one woman, Kathryn Kuhlman. Individual biographies and autobiographies include: Father Coughlin: The Tumultuous Life of the Priest of the Little Flower (Little, Brown) by Sheldon Marcus; Kahlil Gibran: Wings of Thought: The People’s Philosopher (Philosophical Library) by Joseph Ghougassian; The Religious and Philosophical Foundations in the Thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Vantage) by Ernest Lyght; Bishop to All Peoples (Abingdon), an autobiography by Arthur Moore; and The Story of My Life (Word) based on writings and sermons of Aimee Semple McPherson as edited and arranged by Raymond Cox.
Brief examinations of current activities, largely impressionistic but useful until the passage of time allows for more thorough investigation, include: The Fire We Can Light: The Role of Religion in a Suddenly Different World (Doubleday) by Martin Marty; The Evangelical Renaissance (Eerdmans) by Donald Bloesch; The Holy Spirit in Today’s Church: A Handbook of the New Pentecostalism (Abingdon) edited by Erling Jorstad; One Way: The Jesus Movement and Its Meaning (Prentice-Hall) by Robert Ellwood, Jr.; RevivalFires in Canada (Kregel) by Kurt Koch; and Catholic Charismatics: Are They For Real? (Creation) by Douglas Wead.
To conclude our section on North America we mention a few of the numerous books published on what seem to the authors to be, and usually are, exotic forms of Christianity and of other quite different religious traditions. Those Curious New Cults (Keats) by William Petersen is the best brief discussion of some sixteen such movements including witchcraft, Armstrongism, Scientology, and Maharishi Mahesh. A revised edition of Eric Lincoln’s classic The Black Muslims in America (Beacon) appeared. The Communal Experience: Anarchist and Mystical Counter-Cultures in America (Harper & Row) by Lawrence Veysey selects a few communes of a few decades ago to compare with some contemporary ones. Mystery, Magic, and Miracle: Religion in a Post-Aquarian Age (Prentice-Hall), edited by Edward Heehan, is a collection of ten essays. Going Further: Life-and-Death Religion in America (Prentice-Hall) by John Snook and A New American Reformation: A Study of Youth Culture and Religion (Philosophical Library) by James Drane suffer from trying to cover too much ground in too little space.
MISCELLANEOUS For the reader who has persevered to the end we have reserved mention of six books that do not fit into any temporal or geographical classification. They are the work of social scientists who have ranged widely in their quest to understand and describe religious behavior. The Interpretation of Cultures (Basic Books) by Clifford Geertz is a collection of essays over a fifteen-year period by a leading anthropologist. Beyond the Classics? (Harper & Row), edited by Charles Glock and Phillip Hammond, looks at developments since the seminal works of men such as Freud, Weber, H. Richard Niebuhr, and William James. Religion in Sociological Perspective (Wadsworth), edited by Charles Glock, is a collection of twenty-one essays. A Sociology of Religion (Basic Books) is a textbook by a British scholar, Michael Hill. Then we have a book whose title names two of the best-selling religious book topics today. Bryan Wilson’s Magic and the Millennium: A Sociological Study of Religious Movements of Protest Among Tribal and Third-World Peoples (Harper & Row) will not itself be a best seller but is an excellent book. Finally, Religion, Altered States of Consciousness, and Social Change (Ohio State University), edited by Erika Bourguignon, is a very important investigation of ecstasy—a feeling to which one who has read all these survey articles is now entitled.
