Both Jewish And Christian
Hebrew Christianity: The Thirteenth Tribe, by B. Z. Sobel (Wiley, 1974, 413 pp., $12.50), and Hebrew Christianity: Its Theology, History and Philosophy, by Arnold Fruchtenbaum (Canon, 1974, 139 pp., $2.50 pb), are reviewed by Belden Menkus, Bergenfield, New Jersey.
Is the emergence of separate Hebrew-Christian congregations a legitimate development—a recapturing of a historically valid practice? Do these fellowships, with their distinctive terminology and liturgy, belong within the broad Christian spectrum? Or are they the result of some aberration?
From completely different perspectives, these two books attempt to answer these and related questions. Neither author presents his case very well.
In general, the authors do agree on the definition of Hebrew Christianity. It is a local church fellowship—possibly a formally organized congregation—composed of Christians of Jewish birth. In the minds of both authors this group appears to be distinct from the mission or evangelistic agency witnessing particularly to Jews. Yet both at times confuse the two types of organizations.
Sobel, a Haifa University sociology professor, was at one time a staff member of the Anti-Defamation League. He views Hebrew Christianity as some sort of cult or sect. Fruchtenbaum, staff editor of the American Board of Missions to the Jews, sees the Hebrew-Christian congregation as a recovery of the biblical norm.
The Sobel book appears to be an attempt to expand a 10- or 12-year-old research paper into a more substantial study. What results is something less than the structured objectivity one expects from a competent scholar. The book appears to have been a problem for both the author and the publisher. Troubled by reflections on the methods he has used to gather data on one Hebrew Christian group, Sobel recognizes that he has “knowingly entered into relations in which I did not … tell the whole truth.” And the editor of the series of which this is a part, Yale University sociology professor Irving Zaretsky, appended to Sobel’s work a chapter that attempts to compensate for the deficiencies of his study.
Sobel’s study has many defects. These are the main ones:
1. Personal bias. Early in the study he states that “in the … Hebrew Christian Alliance … there were relatively few individual participants whom I could have called healthy or normal. There were and are an inordinate number of depressives associated with the phenomenon of Hebrew Christianity, including a number of people with marked suicidal tendencies.” A scholar does not make judgments like these without documenting them or demonstrating his credentials for making them.
2. Selective distortion. Sobel quotes from Christian sources that are as much as sixty or seventy years old as though they had been published just a few months before his book went to press. And he avoids citing—or is simply unaware of—current evangelical writings. For instance, he fails to cite any of the extensive post-1948 Southern Baptist writings on Jewish/Christian relations.
3. Inadequate research. Sobel does not appear, for instance, to know the difference between “evangelical” and “evangelistic,” or to realize that ordained Baptist clergy are regular ministers and routinely perform weddings and funerals.
I suspect that Sobel would refuse to accept student work prepared this poorly.
Sobel assumes that Hebrew Christianity is some sort of aberration. By contrast, Fruchtenbaum defends it as Bible-based normalcy. His contention is fairly simple:
• The world is divided into two classes of people, Jews and Gentiles.
• This distinction carries over into the redemptive experience: there are two types of Christians, Jews and Gentiles. Fruchtenbaum concludes that a Jew who does not maintain his or her Jewish identity after becoming a Christian has not been truly redeemed.
At this point Fruchtenbaum’s problems begin. He tries to lay a biblical/historical basis for this conclusion, but it does not hang together. Spiritual gifts are not conditioned upon one’s ancestry. And he does not seem to know what to do with the Hebrew Christian’s children.
Fruchtenbaum has additional problems with two other matters.
• Church membership. He concludes that the “Hebrew Christian should be a member of the local church along with Gentile believers.” Yet his development of a distinctive Hebrew Christian liturgy (represented by a modified wedding service appended to the book) clearly suggests evolution of separate Hebrew Christian congregations.
• Jewish ceremonies. He contends that the Law of Moses does not apply to the Hebrew Christian and includes a long warning against legalism. Yet he concludes that the Hebrew Christian is obligated to observe at least the six major annual festivals of Judaism. And he suggests that some sort of Hebrew Christian Sabbath observance is called for. Frutchenbaum ignores kashruth and similar obligations in Judaism.
Frutchenbaum seems to place the Hebrew Christian in some sort of half-converted position. That poorly serves the observant Jew, other Christians, and Hebrew Christians themselves.
The Bible As Literature
The Literature of the Bible, by Leland Ryken (Zondervan, 1974, 356 pp., $7.95), Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives, edited by Kenneth R. R. Gros Louis (Abingdon, 1974, 352 pp., $6.95 pb), and Mystery of the Gospel. by D. Bruce Lockerbie (Eerdmans, 1974, 125 pp., $2.95 pb), are reviewed by Cheryl Forbes, editorial associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
Lockerbie and Ryken seem to write with two different purposes in mind; actually both try to explain the importance of imagination. Lockerbie asks, “What is creativity and why is it important to man?” In answering the question he considers Scripture first and several contemporary Christian writers—Flannery O’Connor, Graham Greene, John Updike, and T. S. Eliot—second.
Scripture tells us what place imagination has in God’s creation; certain writers show how it can be used. Ryken, on the other hand, tells us how writers of the Bible used their imaginations. He makes no apology for dealing with biblical literature in terms of modern literary criticism. Consciously or unconsciously, writers in the Bible did use certain literary forms—such as tragedy, satire, and lyric poetry—he explains.
Ryken’s first chapter tells the reader what modern critical tools and terms will be used. He relies heavily on Northrop Frye in fitting literature into four basic categories: tragedy, comedy, romance, anti-romance. The author thinks archetypal criticism is “one of the most fruitful approaches to biblical literature,” and Frye is perhaps the leading exponent of archetypal criticism. For readers who have no background in modern literary criticism, Ryken sucessfully simplifies some of its basic ideas. Even for those familiar with Frye and others, Ryken’s summary provides a good handle on the material.
Ryken is at his best in dealing with the Psalms, Job, and Revelation. Even with the most familiar Psalms his treatment brings needed freshness and emotional immediacy to a rereading of them. The final chapter, on the Book of Revelation, is a welcome change from some literalistic approaches to the book that fail to analyze the metaphorical and imagistic language. The glossary of literary terms is also helpful for the beginning student. However, Ryken is not as convincing in categorizing certain historical passages as epic, tragedy, or satire.
One of the best chapters in the collection edited by Kenneth Gros Louis is that by Ryken on “Literary Criticism of the Bible: Some Fallacies.” Ryken competently dissects the problems of so-called literary criticism of the Bible. It is not, he explains, really literary criticism. Therefore, literature teachers have no outside resources to use when teaching a course on biblical literature. The Gros Louis volume and Ryken’s book provide correctives for that problem. The former considers the Old Testament more thoroughly than the New; Ryken balances Gros Louis. Some chapters in Literary Interpretations may be too advanced for the high school student, but older students will be helped by them (e.g., “Paradox and Symmetry in the Joseph Narrative” and “The Literary Context of the Moses Birth Story”).
All three books could profitably be used together in a course on imagination and Scripture. They make familiar Bible narratives and ideas fresh and clear.
BRIEFLY NOTED
Relativism in Contemporary Christian Ethics, by Millard Erickson (Baker, 170 pp., $3.95 pb). A leading evangelical theology professor gives an informal critique of many prominent strands of current writing on morality and offers a constructive alternative.
Secure Forever, by Harold Barker (Loizeaux, 190 pp., $2.50 pb). An exegetical defense of the doctrine of the eternal security of the believer, with special attention to biblical passages that seem to point to a different conclusion.
Abortion and the Meaning of Personhood, by Clifford Bajema (Baker, 114 pp., $3.95 pb), and Abortion: The Trojan Horse, by Janet and Robert Patterson (Nelson, 178 pp., $3.50 pb). Two evangelical “right-to-life” books. Both are multi-faceted, but the former is more legal and the latter more medical.
Church Membership and Intercommunion, edited by J. Kent R. Murray (Dimension, 305 pp., $9.95). Papers presented at the tenth Downside Symposium. Concerns intercommunion among the English Free, Anglican, and Roman Catholic churches.
Is Faith Obsolete?, by Robert McAfee Brown (Westminster, 157 pp., $6.50), What to Believe?, by Carl Kreig (Fortress, 113 pp., $3.25 pb), God, by Heinrich Ott (John Knox, 124 pp., $3.95 pb), and An Introduction to Christian Theology Today, by Stephen Sykes (John Knox, 153 pp., $3.50 pb). Attempts by professional theologians to communicate with ordinary believers or seekers. There are useful insights and approaches, but the books are insufficiently biblical to be recommended for their intended audience.
Christ and Revolution, by Marcel Clement (123 pp., $6.95), The Cult of Revolution in the Church, by John Eppstein (160 pp., $6.95), and Pagans in the Pulpit, by Richard Wheeler (137 pp., $7.95). Three Arlington House books attacking the growing advocacy of socialism within Christian circles. The first two are Catholic-oriented.
Understanding Suffering, by B. W. Woods (Baker, 176 pp., $2.45 pb). The author positively approaches suffering with an examination of its perspectives, causes, role, and power. Thorough and helpful resource.
One World made its debut in November as a monthly magazine of the World Council of Churches. It intends to go behind the headlines to comment on events of significance to professing Christians everywhere. The first issue includes a report on anti-Christian and other repressive activities in Equatorial Guinea and a discussion between evangelical leader Paul Little and WCC evangelism director Emilio Castro. All Bible-college and seminary libraries should subscribe. (P.O. Box 66, 1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland; $9/year—sent airmail.)
Love and Sex: What It’s All About, by Wilson Grant (Zondervan, 172 pp., $1.50 pb), HIS Guide to Sex, Singleness and Marriage, edited by C. Stephen Board (InterVarsity, 130 pp., $1.95 pb), Two to Get Ready, by Anthony Florio (Revell, 155 pp., $4.95), and One Plus One, by Tim Timmons (Canon, 80 pp., $3.95). Four biblically based books. Grant, a physician, presents an excellent guide for young teens. The second is a collection of outstanding articles from His, a magazine for collegians. Florio makes a strong case for couples to get premarital counseling from someone who is qualified. Timmons’s is suitable for presentation by a minister to newlyweds.
The Faces of Jesus, by Frederick Buechner, photographs by Lee Boltin (Simon and Schuster, 256 pp., $35). Events of Jesus’ life depicted by artists around the world using various means from today’s felt-tip pens to medieval sculpture, with a wide range of talent. A coffee-table item that will appeal to many.
New Vision of Glory, by Richard Holloway (Seabury, 198 pp., $5.95), Myth, History and Faith: The Remythologizing of Christianity, by Morton Kelsey (Paulist, 185 pp., $4.50 pb), and A New Age in Theology: The Marriage of Faith and History and the De-ghettoization of Christian Thought, by Claude Geffre (Paulist, 119 pp., $3.95 pb). One new trend in modern theology seems to be a reawakening of belief in the resurrection of Christ. Each of these books offers a strong defense of the historicity of the act as well as varying applications of its significance. The first stresses this in theological terms and developments. The second places this in the context of the question of evil and Jesus in history. The last imposes it in the latest Catholic hermeneutical debate.
The Kings Depart, by Alyn Brodsky (Harper & Row, 298 pp., $8.95). Scholarly yet highly readable recounting of the Maccabee dynasty in pre-Roman Palestine, with an analysis of its impact on the Western world.
Make Straight the Way of the Lord (Knopf, 254 pp., $7.95), Warriors of Peace (Knopf, 226 pp., $7.95), Gandhi to Vinoba (Schocken, 231 pp., $7.95), and Principles and Precepts of the Return to the Obvious (Schocken, 157 pp., $4.95), all by Lanza del Vasto. The author is a leading French pacifist who since 1936 has attempted to practice Gandhian philosophy within a Christian context. (Vinoba is widely recognized in India as Gandhi’s successor.)
Unger’s Guide to the Bible, by Merrill Unger (Tyndale, 790 pp., $12.95). The same author has a smaller, cheaper Bible handbook from Moody. This volume incorporates the same kind of book-by-book summary but more briefly, and also includes an alphabetical dictionary of biblical terms and a concordance.
Dealing With Death
Death in the Secular City, by Russell Aldwinckle (Eerdmans, 1974, 197 pp., $3.95 pb), Dealing With Death, by D. P. Brooks (Broadman, 1974, 126 pp., $1.50 pb), The Last Enemy, by Richard Doss (Harper & Row, 1974, 104 pp., $4.95), and The Last Enemy, by Richard Wolff (Canon, 1974, 80 pp., $1.75 pb), are reviewed by Douglas K. Stuart, assistant professor of biblical languages and literature, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts.
Death as a topic is somewhat in vogue these days. Regrettably, most recent writing on death has been either descriptive, treating the stages of dying (usually: denial, anger, depression, acceptance, hope), or else merely analytical, evaluating the psychological effects of death on families or societies. Rare is any word on the ultimate meaning of death, and rarer still any firm proclamation of life after death—except from spiritualists, zany Eastern self-styled messiahs, and other cultists now farming good land abandoned by Christians who moved on in search of “relevance.”
Therefore, four new Christian books on death and dying ought to be most welcome, since with copious reference to the Scriptures and Christian theology they would speak clearly of the hope of escape from death’s sting and victory available to all who will follow Christ—right? Well, at least half right.
Two books, those by Brooks and Doss, will probably receive limited attention. Neither comes across as forceful or reassuring, and both depend more on the opinions of non-Christian American psychologists and sociologists than on the Bible or Christian theology.
Both Brooks and Doss begin with the assumption that whereas Americans once were confident in the face of death, twentieth-century Americans (including Christians) are now neurotically anxious over death, seeking to defy its inevitability, even to deny its existence.
Brooks carries this rather far. Quoting from disparate views on death by psychologists and psychoanalysts including Jung, Rollo May, Robert Lifton, G. W. Wahl, and others, Brooks soberly advances the thesis that repressed anxiety over death is at the root of “personality disorders,” “a fundamentally altered … conduct of life,” our “excessive preoccupation with sex,” “the drug culture,” “the move by young Americans … to rural areas,” “the flood of violence in our society,” and “the Vietnam War.” Apparently he really believes that such things were absent from other centuries and cultures.
Despite this shaky start, Brooks does address himself to some important topics in such chapters as “How to Relate to a Dying Person,” “Coping With Grief,” “Biblical Views of Death,” and “Questions People Ask About Death and the Beyond.” However, his exploration of these subjects is too superficial—much in the manner of a Sunday-school quarterly whose purpose is to raise discussion points but not give answers. (Brooks is an editor of church educational materials.)
Some of his assertions leave the reader hanging, waiting for an explanation or at least some definitions. He says, for example, that cremation, opposed for centuries by “Christian doctrine,” is now accepted in “Christian nations.” He states that the thief on the cross “evidently” had eternal life. He argues at length that a funeral should emphasize the finality of death, yet accepts what is normally considered a contradictory practice, open-casket wakes.
In the final (and best—most biblical) chapter, “Questions People Ask,” some doubtful reasoning supports major arguments: “Bible students are in general agreement that we will know our loved ones in eternity,” or “In view of the moral law. of the universe, surely God will provide an existence in which rewards and punishment can be continued.”
Brooks gives us structure and scope but not satisfying content. Still, his book might be put to good use were not the book by Wolff so much better.
Like Brooks, Doss finds twentieth-century Americans incapable of approaching death with composure. Since 1900, death “has become a taboo subject,” he says quoting sociologist David Fulton, and this has produced “an unhealthy neurosis.”
Although Doss teaches theology at the American Baptist Seminary of the West, his book is only partly theological. It is more often oriented toward the sociological and psychological, in the manner of much current neo-orthodox theology. Doss relies heavily on American psychologists, especially Freudians such as Elizabeth Kübler-Ross. Most of his observations about death and its meaning depend not on Scripture but on such surprisingly unified sources as “a majority of physicians,” or on “behavioral scientists [who] agree that ours is a death-denying society.” Doss’s theology is heavily existential-relational; his answers to the ultimate questions come not from Scripture but from what he calls theological reflection. He early rejects orthodox Christianity’s view of sin and death as contained in the major creeds and confessions. It “is not the gospel” but “a traditional framework no longer adequate to present either the gospel or the meaning of death to people in our secular age.” Presumably, the Gospel should be changed to appeal to non-Christians.
Doss also caricatures what he considers the negative world-and-life view of the Bible:
The thought of a human being who could have lived forever but lost his immortality by eating a piece of fruit seems incredible. And the idea that the sin of Adam became the cause of death for all men is morally reprehensible [p. 24].
Doss suggests that his own theology, which “places primary importance on man,” is more realistic since it is derived from the “formative resources of the Christian community, the Bible, experience, traditions, culture and reason.”
In chapters on “A Theological Style for Interpreting Death,” “Death and the Meaning of Life,” and “The Significance of Death,” relational language is prominent: faith in Christ gives us “an interpretive response to reality.” The central problem of modern Western man is his “experience of himself as without individual significance” (quoting Rollo May). Sin becomes “the refusal to be self-critical.” Rather than present the Gospel to the dying, we should seek to implement a “relational theology of love.” By listening to the patient and discussing “questions of immediate concern” we may enable him “to deal with the crisis of meaning.”
Doss ends with a chapter on his own belief in a life after death, described not as the supposedly neo-platonic survival or going-on found in Christian orthodoxy but as a need-fulfilling rise to “new levels of potential and creativity and fulfillment,” according to the “images and symbols” of the Scripture (rather than its actual statements).
Aldwinckle, a professor at McMaster University Divinity College in Ontario, is plainly a more skillful theologian and writer. His book is the most erudite and also the longest of the four. Subtitled “Life After Death in Contemporary Theology and Philosophy,” it presents orderly critiques of the afterlife positions of prominent theologians of the current century known for the positions on death: Altizer, Barth, Teilhard, Austin Farrer, Gordon Kaufmann, Moltmann, the Niebuhrs, Pannenberg, I. T. Ramsey, J. A. T. Robinson, Thielicke, and Tillich. Aldwinckle also reviews irenically yet incisively the positions of a number of biblical scholars, including Barr, Bultmann, Cullman, and H. W. Robinson. He provides perhaps the clearest exploration to be found anywhere of the inconsistencies of Bultmann’s attempts to redefine biblical faith in terms of existential “truth” rather than historical, factual reality.
In addition, Aldwinckle covers the major classical theological and philosophical positions (including Hume, Spinoza, Schleiermacher) and even some cosmological theories (Einstein, Gamov, and Hoyle).
On our behalf, Aldwinckle has asked and answered some basic questions: What have prominent theological and philosophical thinkers said about death and life after death? How can their positions be grouped? What are their strengths, their faults? Constantly present is Aldwinckle’s refreshing confidence that in orthodox, biblical theology we have the ultimate criteria for accepting, rejecting, or refining these positions. The result is a readable, remarkably thorough, patient, often brilliant, and sometimes devastating exposure of the current thinking on the afterlife among theological heavyweights.
A book like this is not for everyone. But educated Christians who have done a good deal of reading and thinking about death and the afterlife will receive it gratefully, and probably will refer to it regularly.
But note: Aldwinckle is not merely a commentator. He advances some tightly reasoned arguments of his own—one or two of which are at least mildly controversial. An example is his claim, in a chapter on “Hell and Judgment,” that neither Jesus nor the New Testament authors present Hell as a place of eternal, conscious punishment. Evangelicals continually need to examine the New Testament evidence for a doctrine of eternal punishment, as opposed to the Scripture’s “death” or the “second death,” as the negative corollary to eternal life.
Aldwinckle concludes with an appeal for practicality. Our hope for a just, fulfilled eternal life should guarantee not otherworldliness but just the opposite—a devotion to work all the harder in this life to hasten God’s Kingdom. Because historical progress toward social justice is at best painfully slow, a reformer who lacks confidence in God’s eventual eternal rule of justice is likely either to abandon his cause in despair or to resort to armed violence to achieve immediate results. Only the biblical Christian, with no “premature despair of this world,” need never taste the “inevitable bitterness and frustration of a hope which rests entirely on an earthly bliss which by its very nature must be transient.”
The book most likely to receive wide use by evangelicals will be The Last Enemy by Richard Wolff, a self-educated German Jew converted to Christianity. At only $1.75 it offers a concise (eighty pages) yet rarely skimpy treatment of the subject, free from American myopia.
Like Aldwinckle, Wolff writes engagingly. His historical and topical summaries are interesting. What he says reflects an up-to-date perspective, and he knows current cultural and religious trends. Wolff includes two valuable chapters on topics not treated at length in the other books: “Death in the Eastern Tradition” and “Suicide.” His views on the latter are unexpectedly compassionate. Christians have often condemned suicide as a voluntary act. Wolff, however, recognizes the non-rational, emotional basis of most suicides, although he does not mention recent evidence that a high percentage of those who take their own lives are schizophrenics, whose illness is increasingly accepted as biochemically based.
Wolff is always simple and direct. His chapter titles reflect this: “The Problem,” “Definitions,” “Evasions,” ‘The Fear of Death,” “Christian Perspectives,” among others. The final chapter surveys burial practices from ancient times to the often outrageously expensive modern American version. Because “when the influence of the church weakens, the undertaker assumes a quasi-priestly role,” Wolff urges Christians to take the lead in reviewing both customs and cost, with an eye to “simplicity, and the resurrection hope.” Here is an ally for the pastor who is fed up with the pagan funeral-home control over Christian burials, and who longs for a re-establishment of fully Christian church funerals that celebrate Christ’s decisive victory over death.
Perhaps most agreeable of all the features of Wolff’s book is his plain good judgment about the facts: Death is unpleasant; it has always been feared and avoided, not just in modern America; the Bible (contra Doss) contains a wealth of teaching on death; the often mentioned Hebrew-Greek dichotomy of viewpoints between the Old and the New Testament is illusory; and so forth. Wolff also gives some helpful statistics on such points as hospital deaths (80 per cent in the United States), attempted suicides (200,000 per year), life spans (a twenty-two-year increase since 1910), and cremation costs ($35 to $150).
The Last Enemy, one of many books Wolff has written, is certainly among his best. It ought to receive usage in church groups (at the college or adult level). Alone among the four, it would make an entirely appropriate gift to a person facing death, or to one bereaved.
