Lewis’S Letters To A Widower
A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken (Harper & Row, 1977, 238 pp., $6.95). is reviewed by Cheryl Forbes, assistant editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
About twenty years ago Sheldon Vanauken’s wife Davy died of liver failure. She was in her thirties. This moving story recounts Vanauken’s life with her, and the death of their earthly love. It also tells how these two pagan lovers are converted, partly through the influence of C. S. Lewis.
At the beginning of their love, Vanauken and Davy erect a Shining Barrier, a wall to keep out anything that might come between them—other people, children, careers—anything that the two of them couldn’t share together. If one of them read a book, the other read it, too, or they read it together. Incredibly, even the books they had read separately before they met and married were read by the other. They planned the kind of life many lovers dream of but never realize. Even World War II did not come between them. Right before they were to leave on a honeymoon to Florida Vanauken was called to active duty and was sent to Pearl Harbor. Three months later—the couple’s longest separation—Davy joined him. When the war ended they picked up where they left off—and went to Florida. They lived on and sailed in a small sloop, only coming to shore long enough to earn money for more jaunts. Vanauken wrote stories for a yachting magazine.
From Florida they moved to Yale, and then to Virginia, and finally to Oxford, where something unforeseen happened to breach their Shining Barrier. Christ entered their lives. And with him, or perhaps before him, C. S. Lewis. The couple became fast friends with the man who influenced them for Christ’s sake.
The publicity for this remarkable tale hinges on the seventeen previously unpublished letters by Lewis to the author. Many of the letters merely restate what Lewis has said in books and essays. But at the heart of the book is what Vanauken calls Lewis’s Severe Mercy Letter, which he wrote to Vanauken not long after Davy’s death.
Lewis clearly saw what I think makes this tale so remarkable: that the love of Davy and Vanauken was real and deep and very successful, particularly in this century, but that it also was totally selfish: it could not sustain itself forever. Lewis tells Vanauken that it had to die and that God had visited him with a severe mercy in allowing it to die in a physical death, rather than in the innumerable petty or not-so-petty ways that it might have if Davy had lived.
And the other remarkable thing about this tale is that Vanauken comes to agree with Lewis and that he outlines for his readers just what the possibilities could have been. Davy in the end gave him more than her love; she gave him his spiritual life at the expense of her physical one—a great sacrifice, indeed.
The power of this spiritual journey comes through forcefully, despite some poeticized prose and some awkward juxtapositions of slang and stilted language: “Grey light fell upon the room from the skylight. The fire of course was cold and dead. Finally I got it together enough to go down and get some coal and make a fire.” That 1970’s phrase “got it together” is jarring. And for me there are too many “whilsts,” “amongsts,” and “wonts” scattered throughout the book. The structure, too, is a little awkward at times, causing Vanauken to repeat himself. But his descriptions of life with Davy on the schooner and his retelling of their hospital days make up for the other deficiencies.
Here is a book for anyone who has truly loved another person, which is, after all, an intimation of Christ. And for anyone who has ever known the loss of a loved one, A Severe Mercy would be of more help and comfort than many a book intended for the grief-stricken.
A Challenge To Biblical Scholarship
The End of the Historical-Critical Method, by Gerhard Maier (Concordia, 1977, 108 pp., $4.50 pb), is reviewed by David T. Priestley, pastor, North Sheridan Baptist Church, Peoria, Illinois.
This is a provocative, instructive, and encouraging paperback that deserves more care in the translation and publicizing than it seems to have received.
Maier, whose doctorate is from Tubingen, begins by arguing that the historical-critical method, or “higher criticism,” is intrinsically impossible. Its stated aim is to discover the “word of God” within Scripture. Yet, Maier asserts that (1) the method necessarily cannot discover or agree on a reliable key to distinguish between “word of God” and “Scripture.” This is partly because (2) Scripture itself suggests no such separation between human and divine; (3) Scripture offers personal encounter with God, not a stockpile from which facts on the subject of God can be extracted; (4) the method establishes a conclusion prior to the interpretation, despite all its claims to scientific objectivity; (5) in practice the results have been either useless or harmful to the believing church—useless because inapplicable, or harmful because they destroy the clarity and sufficiency of Scripture and, consequently, the certainty of faith.
Maier finds these objections to the historical-critical method unwittingly substantiated in an exegetical and theological anthology edited by Ernst Kasemann (Das Neue Testament als Kanon, Göttingen. 1970). Maier summarizes these essays by fifteen higher critics to display the nature and bankruptcy of the method. For 200 years the historical-critical method has set reason as arbiter over Scripture; in Maier’s opinion its demonstrated failure to agree on results and to contribute positively to the life of the church now necessitates the development of a method that sets Scripture as judge and teacher over reason.
The method he proposes is a historical-biblical one. The method has some admitted “dogmatic prejudice” that evangelicals will welcome. First, there is no compelling principle of analogy; the scholar destroys the Word of God if he accepts as probable only what is analogous to normally observed and experienced phenomena. God, after all, is the supernatural, the unconditional, the analogyless. Second, his sovereignty to act without conforming to our opinion of the possibility or wisdom of his words and ways must be a fundamental assumption of biblical study. The believing church confirms these two axioms by its experience of the unity, authority, and efficacy of Scripture (compare Jesus’ only methodological principle, John 7:17).
This raises the question of the authority of Scripture that Maier discusses at length. Scripture is itself revelation, not merely a “witness” to revelation. The doctrine of inspiration must be accepted in its traditional form prior to exegesis or interpretation. Tradition, history, and comparative religions may help us understand but can never prove or explain Scripture; Scripture is the only refuge for certainty, the only reliable interpreter of itself.
Maier’s methodological proposal is bland only if one disregards the spiritual humility with which he calls us to exercise it. Too rarely are we reminded that the scholar and teacher must demonstrate a lifestyle obedient to Scripture.
The method itself demands that the text be respectfully and carefully established and translated with all the help of archaeology and linguistics available. Archaeology and history, comparative religious studies, even literary and form criticism can assist in the interpretation of Scripture. He proposes that the Bible should be classified by “epochs in the history of God’s dealings with man.” Typical concerns can be brought out by comparisons of parallel passages from the various epochs. This verifies the unity and unfolding of revelation. The procedure concludes with a formal “analysis” that summarizes the primary content and scope of the text and applies its conclusions. “An analysis becomes theological only when the interpreter gives expression to what God here wants to say to all men” (italics in original).
Maier is in obvious agreement with the “no other Gospel” movement that, since the early 60’s in Germany, has taken scholarly and polemical issue with contemporary biblical scholarship. Our fascination with German studies ought to include knowledge of the German controversies around that scholarship. Concordia can be thanked for providing us with a teutonic antidote to our teutonic malaise.
Two criticisms of the American publisher’s work must be noted, however. Again and again I was struck by the stiltedness of “translation English,” making it seem hastily done (why otherwise use two translators?). The book deserves rewriting for future printings. Second, the bibliography and footnotes give no indication that any of the materials are available already in English translations (they don’t even cite Concordia’s own editions of Luther’s works). The serviceability of the book is markedly weakened by this failure to help the reader ignorant of German to locate materials in English, all the more so as the author writes for a theologically alert audience.
Biographical information in the book would legitimize the author for his English-speaking audience. Maier (b. 1937) pastored in Baiersbronn, Württemberg, for five years, during which time he received his ThD. Then in 1973 he became leader of studies at the Albrecht Bengel House in Tübingen. This is a pietist study-center for 160 university students that provides seminars, workshops, counsel, fellowship, and practical work in churches in the province to supplement university studies. He also lectures and evangelizes in churches whenever possible.
This publication of a formal German alternative to the historical-critical method should be followed up, perhaps by an anthology of periodical writings, some of which Maier cites, that carry on the debate with higher criticism.
The service of The End of the Historical-Critical Method is the compactness and availability of a sober and sensitive criticism of and alternative to the all-pervasive higher critical approach. Evangelicals sometimes seem at a loss against the “assured result,” even though they know how transient those conclusions are. We retire into simplistic biblicism or adopt the method for evangelical purposes. Maier frees us from the dominion of higher criticism by showing us a considered alternative.
Theology And The Tube
Television: A Guide for Christians, by Edward N. McNulty (Abingdon, 1976, 99 pp., $3.50 pb), and Television: Ethics for Hire?, by Robert S. Alley (Abingdon, 1977, 192 pp., $4.95 pb), are reviewed by Pamela K. Broughton, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Television, to view or not to view, has been a topic debated among Christians since its invention. Should we allow television to influence us? And the more we watch it, the more influence it has over us, whether or not we admit it. Aren’t there moral and ethical questions involved here? Television: A Guide for Christians ignores these questions.
McNulty intends this book to be a study guide for groups discussing the differences between life on the tube and life in the Bible. This could have been an interesting and helpful book, but it ends up as a short course in media techniques. The theatrics and the shallowness of the questions posed to the group lead me to wonder if this study is seriously aimed at adults. However, a study of this type might be helpful to the junior- and senior-high-school-age groups. And perhaps with more thought-provoking questions, McNulty’s premise would encourage more informed viewing on their part.
Robert Alley would certainly applaud McNulty’s effort at innovation. Both men feel that television has a great deal to say to the church. It deals with questions that people once thought the church could answer.
Alley’s book purports to examine the people who produce TV shows to determine whether the shows are written from a materialistic or didactic point of view. His answer is somewhat muddled as he vacillates between television as a reflector of culture and television as a cultural leader. His terms are not clearly defined. Alley seems to have written his own screen play. In his view there are the “Good Guys,” the creative writers, producers, and directors who are fighting the “Bad Guys,” i.e. the three Networks, whose only motive is profit and who stifle the creative community by censoring their material by sneaky methods such as Family View Time. The hero is Norman Lear, characterized by Alley as the modern American moralist. Alley contends that Lear’s comedies “reflect a remarkable respect for monogamy, marital fidelity, and family unity.” Censorship threatens “many of the newer representations [that] are significant though unrecognized forms of the prophetic tradition of the Bible.” I think that these forms are “unrecognized” because they are, in fact, not samples of biblical tradition, but of a humanistic position that has been confused with Christianity.
Uncharted Territory
The Nature of Man: A Social Psychological Perspective, edited by Richard L. Gorsuch and H. Newton Malony (Charles C. Thomas, 1976, 224 pp., $12.75), is reviewed by Lewis Rambo, assistant professor of psychology, Trinity College, Deerfield, Illinois.
The Nature of Man is based on a series of lectures delivered by R. L. Gorsuch and the detailed responses of H. N. Malony, R. D. Winter, P. K. Jewett, D. R. Matthews, and H. B. Venema. In Gorsuch’s three one-hour lectures he sought to delineate the findings of empirical social psychology that have to do with human nature. The three focal points are the finitude of human judgment, the relation of the individual and society, and human beings’ capacity (or lack of capacity) to direct their future.
Gorsuch points to research that shows people’s inability to make accurate evaluations of a wide range of situations. This inability is due to bias, inadequate gathering of information, and immature cognitive processes. Gorsuch further shows that people are almost totally controlled by the groups to which they belong, but he does not believe that conformity is necessarily bad, because groups can influence people to good as well as to evil. Indeed, he urges that churches become self-conscious in their task of providing strong groups that will sustain Christians in the midst of other group pressures deemed destructive.
Paradoxically, Gorsuch argues that vigorous groups can help individuals develop deeply held convictions that will enable them to be among the few who transcend group conformity to shape their own lives. These persons who move beyond conformity to the group have highly developed value systems that allow them to make ethical decisions based on their moral and religious principles instead of on the exigencies of the immediate situation.
The respondents (from the fields of theology, history, and psychology) to Gorsuch’s presentation offer many cogent criticisms. For instance, they think Gorsuch is too optimistic in believing that social psychology can improve the human condition. They also find him too distrustful of non-empirical disciplines of scholarship (especially theology). Nevertheless, it seems to me that often the responders did not engage Gorsuch on the issues that he isolated and that are within the bounds of his limited time and subject matter. Interdisciplinary discussion is imperative on such an important topic as human nature, but some scholars seem to be unwilling or unable to interact with other disciplines.
My dissatisfaction with the book may stem more from the format than from the substance. The brief presentations, the responses, and the questions and answers are stimulating, but another format and further research and writing are required for a fuller elaboration of the contributions to be made by theologians, anthropologists, psychologists, and others. The reader of this book will often feel frustrated by the quickly raised and quickly dropped issues.
In the past, theologians and philosophers but too few psychologists have probed psychology in order to discern the implicit views of human nature. Gorsuch should be praised for venturing into uncharted territory. By bringing together the results of research in social psychology and focusing those findings on the question “What does all this mean for our understanding of human nature?” he has effected a shift in the way human nature can be studied. But The Nature of Man is only a beginning.
The Many Branches Of Catholicism
Profiles in Belief. Volume I: The Religious Bodies of the United States and Canada, by Arthur Carl Piepkorn (Harper & Row, 1977, 324 pp., $15.95), is reviewed by David F. Wells, associate professor of church history, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.
This volume, by Arthur Piepkorn, published posthumously with small editorial changes by John Tietjen, is the first in a seven-volume series projected by the publisher. The aim of the series is to provide a comprehensive survey and analysis of North American religion, from the traditional Christian bodies to Oriental sects and humanist organizations.
This first volume breaks no new ground from an interpretive point of view, nor does the author seem interested in or acquainted with the new historical concerns, especially those from the angles of sociology and psychology. Piepkorn as we see him here is a theologian who works with traditional theological categories, which he simply imposes on his material. Where he really shines is as a collector of facts, a sifter of documents, a painstaking unraveler of traditions, an uncoverer of organizational differences and distinctives. In the process he makes no concessions to the reader, but then, neither does so highly useful a document as the telephone directory.
Piepkorn here surveys the beliefs and organizational structure of Roman Catholic, Old Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox bodies in the United States—no small task with such diverse and multiform traditions. The Orthodox churches, for example, are broken down into thirty-one branches, many of them out of communication with one another; in addition there are twelve derivative bodies. The opinion that these groups are “obscure” may be nothing more than an admission of ignorance, the appropriate penance for which is careful study of this volume. Here you will find everything you had never tried to find out about the Byelorussian Autocephalic Orthodox Church, the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Church, the African Orthodox Church, the Universal Shrine of Divine Guidance of the Universal Faith (Apostolic Universal Center), and many other groups.
The same extraordinary diversity and splintering is meticulously recorded in Piepkorn’s treatment of the Old Catholics. They are divided into sixteen branches, ranging from the more conventional such as the Old Catholic Church in America to the more exotic such as The Brotherhood of the Pleroma and Order of the Pleroma, Including the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light (formerly the Brotherhood and Order of the Illuminati); Pre-Nicene Catholic (Gnostic) Church.
Within Roman Catholicism itself there is no organizational splintering, but the monolithic structure, Piepkorn notes, actually masks considerable diversity in belief and practice, especially subsequent to Vatican II. Having observed that the heart and not merely the face of Roman Catholicism is changing, Piepkorn is not always able to trace the newer undulations very successfully. Part of the difficulty, I believe, is his rather flatfooted and insensitive method of analysis. He simply adopts the traditional categories of theological discourse—God (in his activities of creation, providence, and revelation), man (in his nature and sin), Christ (in his Person and work)—and then funnels his material on Catholicism in one end of the analyzing process. What emerges at the other end is what Catholic theologians think on these subjects. What is missed in the process is the fact that contemporary Catholic theologians are very often doing their theology in an untraditional fashion; the old categories no longer fit the new method.
Furthermore, Piepkorn seems to assume that by reading what the theologians write or a church teaches, one has immediate access to what the laity believes. All too often, however, there is a great gulf fixed between them. When one compares this volume with Andrew Greeley’s The American Catholic, for example, one derives two totally different pictures of the same reality. Greeley’s study, which is equally meticulous but done from a sociological perspective, has shown that the matter of birth control is so central to the American Catholic psyche that it actually underlies the whole catastrophic decline in authority, as a result of which only one-third of the laity now believes in papal infallibility. Piepkorn has only one brief paragraph on the subject of contraception, and its ramifications in Catholic belief and outlook are not perceived.
The many differences like this between the two studies leave one with the distinct impression that Piepkorn’s rigid system of analysis is not always able to come to terms with the inner dynamics of the traditions he is reviewing. On the other hand, one wonders how many people would even dare to attempt a study like this, let alone succeed to the extent to which Piepkorn has.
Periodical Notes
Unofficial journals of opinion and analysis within two of the more important religious traditions in the United States should be received by all major theological libraries as well as concerned members of the specific communions. Agora began with the summer issue as a quarterly journal treating issues within the Assemblies of God primarily, and broader Pentecostalism secondarily. The contributing editors are mostly associated with colleges and seminaries. (See our Sept. 9, 1977, issue, pp. 64–69 for something of the background to Agora. Subscriptions are $5 per year from Box 2467, Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626.) New Oxford Review is a monthly by Anglo-Catholics who are disenchanted with the Episcopal Church. It has articles of interest to other orthodox Catholics and Protestants. It is successor to The American Church News and its new name and editorship reflect changes both within the Episcopal Church and the special interest group known as the American Church Union. The executive editor, Dale Vree, had an article on Harvey Cox in our August 26, 1977, issue, and a book by him was reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry in the issue before that. Subscriptions are $6 per year; write 6013 Lawton Ave., Oakland, California 94618.
Filmstrips
Christians need to remind themselves that they begin not with issues but with faith. That is the intent of the thoughtful filmstrip Christians and Politics from Alba House (Canfield, OH 44406). The narration explains that Christianity and partisan politics don’t belong together, but that individual Christians ought to be active in one of the major political parties. Christians can bend the curve that becomes the shape of things. A different producer translates its politics into four filmstrips on pollution, population, poverty, and power. The series is called Crucial Concerns of the 70’s from Family Films (14622 Lahark St., Panorama City, CA 91402). They are realistic presentations that relate Christianity to people and their impact on each other and on the environment.
War and the Christian Conscience is from Thomas Klise (Box 3418, Peoria, IL 61614). Extremely well done, the two-part series raises provocative questions within a clearly stated Christian position. Part one unfortunately refers to the U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia in the present tense. And it is debatable that “World War II was a social war from the standpoint of Hitler’s Germany. It was Hitler’s complaint that the German people—following the treaties after World War I—had insufficient living space.” Recent studies of that period challenge this simplification. Part two examines the traditional concept of the “just war,” stresses the altered situation since the advent of nuclear weapons, and notes the variety of pacifistic stances. Although Klise takes note of other Christian churches, the Roman Catholic context is paramount. But the subtitle involves us all in “War, Civil Unrest, and the Conscience of the Christian.”
The concept of peace, as expressed in the Hebrew word Shalom is the thrust of a Family Films production with that title. A number of denominations are cooperatively developing Shalom curricula; they and others will find this filmstrip helpful.
The preservation of religious freedom in America is the theme of Family Film’s four filmstrips, One Nation Under God. The first three filmstrips are an informative, accurate outline of the torturous advance of religious freedom, often threatened by those who wanted that freedom only for themselves. The last filmstrip brings the viewer up to 1972, but is vague about specific threats to religious freedom today.
The European quest for religious freedom brought our ancestors into conflict with the first Americans whose Native American Heritage was all but obliterated. Between the first and last filmstrips, entitled “The Old Ways” and “The New Ways,” there are three that explore the Indians’ beliefs and ceremonies, art, and their long struggle for survival from the fifteenth century to Wounded Knee in 1974. The beliefs-and-ceremonies segment notes the influence of Christianity on the heterodox Native American Church in which visions are induced by cactus peyote, and “… peyote songs are prayers to Jesus.” The producer is Encyclopedia Britannica (425 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611) and their first-rate photography, artwork, and text make the set invaluable.
Africa Astir is produced by CROP (Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46514) and related to Church World Service (CWS). It is the inspiring story of how CWS funds and personnel have alleviated desperate needs in several African countries. Worthy as this all is, it is depressing to note that not once, on four filmstrips, is Jesus Christ mentioned.
Ironically there is a great need for nutrition information in our incredibly food-rich continent, where many people are both overfed and undernourished. Snack Facts is the answer of Encore Visual Education (1235 S. Victory Blvd., Burbank, CA 91502). The filmstrip has won numerous awards.
DALE SANDERS
Portland, Oregon
