A Lasting Tribute
Science, Faith and Revelation, edited by Robert E. Patterson (Broadman Press, 1979, 371 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Bernard Ramm, professor of Christian theology, American Baptist Seminary of the West, Berkeley, California.
This volume is a festschrift of 19 essays honoring Eric C. Rust upon his retirement from the faculty of Southern Baptist Seminary. Festschriften are difficult to review because of the diversity of the essays. There are some rewarding ones in this volume: the one on Troeltsch, for example, by John Powell Clayton, is a work of painstaking research in the German sources with elaborate documentation. But we shall limit our remarks to Rust (chapters 1, 9, and 12 are devoted to his thought).
Rust was born and educated in England and began his teaching ministry there. His theological heritage was moderate British Baptist evangelical, and the impression gained from reading about Rust is that he, too, was a moderate theologian. He was read in all the latest trends but he never became “trendy.” He read Barth and Brunner with appreciation but never became neoorthodox. He read the radical theologians and the process theologians without becoming a card carrier of any of these theologies. He has maintained through the years a belief in divine revelation, the concept of salvation history, historic Christology, classical theism, Augustinian insights on sin and revelation, and the core of evangelical doctrines.
According to editor Patterson, Rust is the great reconciler. I would add to that mediator and correlator. His writings reveal one dominant trend: to correlate modern learning (scientific, philosophical, theological, biblical) with his moderate British evangelicalism. Educated in science, he has attempted to correlate scientific knowledge with theological knowledge; he thinks that the final word of interpretation on the universe must be theological. In biblical studies he has been a reconciler. He educated himself in biblical knowledge without becoming a biblicist: on the other hand, he was not willing to hand over the Bible to the specialists and their critical theories. Influenced by H. Wheeler Robinson, he maintains a strong view of revelation. But in his opinion the strong propositional view of revelation overstates the case and the existentialist view of Bultmann washes it out.
Rust has not been the kind of theologian who makes the headlines. He has never been the doctrinaire theologian: his sense of solid scholarship and responsible thinking have prevented that. He has put in a lifetime of solid, academic work attempting to clarify and to defend his moderate evangelical Baptist faith; for that he is to be commended.
This book will be a lasting and valuable tribute to a man who contributed a great deal to theology in our century.
Christian Mission Classics
Classics of Christian Missions, edited by Francis M. DuBose (Broadman Press, 1979, 462 pp., $10.50), is reviewed by Arthur F. Glasser, dean, School of World Missions and associate professor of missions, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.
It is a delight to commend this book. Not only does it reflect careful craftsmanship by an outstanding evangelical missiologist, it makes available in one volume excerpts from the primary writings of the church’s great apologists for missionary obedience.
The vision of Dr. DuBose was to range widely over the classical writings on Christian mission and select the most significant. Biblical studies, historical records, missionary journals, hagiographic biographies, personal diaries and letters, missionary tracts and sermons, academic discourses, conference reports from all segments of the church—all were carefully sifted to ascertain which were “classical” in their insight and influence. There was also an awareness during this selection process that each distinct period in the expansion of the Christian movement should be represented. As a good historian, Dr. DuBose was concerned that Christians today should become more aware of their sense of belonging to a long and complex continuum. Hence, he provided a brief introduction to each separate “classic.”
All too often writers of church history are tempted to indulge themselves in “retrospective rationalizations and reconceptualizations.” One becomes suspicious of their penchant for knocking down straw men and showing how “our side was right and invariably did right.” But DuBose is no special pleader. He is concerned with the ongoing of the Christian mission and wants all those who are caught up today in the witness of the church to be informed about its past.
Does this compilation have weaknesses? Only that perhaps someone’s favorite hero was omitted. But who can fault DuBose for the selection process he designed and followed? He involved a large number of well-informed scholars in this process, and the result points to his wise choices and catholicity of spirit. Moreover, he has provided us with first-class documentation, an excellent bibliography and—what is a delight to any teacher of mission—both a subject index and a person index.
The Best On Spirituality
Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal, by Richard F. Lovelace (InterVarsity Press, 1979, 455 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by George M. Marsden, professor of history, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
What makes churches grow? The evangelical marketplace in recent years has been glutted with advice on this subject, suggesting everything from how to lure children onto buses to how to organize effective prayer cells. While I have not read most of such literature, and would not deprecate the value of much of it, I am confident even the best of these works will seem a bit pale beside Dynamics of Spiritual Life. This is must reading for evangelical pastors or for any informed and active layperson.
Yet to classify this volume as an essay on church growth is misleading; it is much more. It is most essentially a handbook of Protestant spirituality, a book about spiritual growth.
It is a theological book, yet that designation would be misleading also, since the theology is never divorced from the practical. Lovelace’s model is Jonathan Edwards, who in Religious Affections analyzed true revival and true spiritual life both biblically and practically.
Lovelace, a theologian in the Puritan-pietist-Edwardsian tradition, is more generous theologically than some of his spiritual progenitors. His outlook is genuinely ecumenical, not looking for the lowest common denominator theologically, but rather ready to say that we each should learn from the partial insights of the traditions of others. Non-Calvinists who suppose the Reformed tradition is inherently either intolerant or lifeless especially should read this book. Lovelace suggests that to choose one, the intense stress on God’s grace in the Reformed tradition can have the practical effect of providing the sense of security necessary to abandon our narrow, psychologically or culturally conditioned ways of living that stand in the way of properly serving God.
One thing that makes this vision grand is Lovelace’s profoundly biblical view of history. He is perhaps the first twentieth-century evangelical American historian to integrate a sophisticated biblical vision of historical dynamics with sophisticated historical scholarship. He offers evangelicals something they have sorely lacked—a sense of belonging to a positive historical-spiritual tradition. Most contemporary evangelical histories have been largely self-critical, in part an exercise necessary to cut through some debilitating traditions of the past hundred years. Lovelace, however, goes back further—taking the pietist era of Spener, Francke, Zinzendorf, Edwards, and Wesley as his model and claiming this positive tradition for twentieth-century evangelicalism. Perhaps, more importantly, borrowing the insight again from Edwards, Lovelace places the spiritual history of evangelicalism in a strikingly biblical framework. Ultimately the forces at work are spiritual. On one side are God the Father, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the myriads of angels and humans who serve them. In opposition are Satan, his minions and his cohorts who, throughout church history, as during the entire history of redemption, seem to make countermoves to thwart every spiritual advance.
If the book has a flaw it is that some of the practical observations in its latter sections are open to question.
Lovelace’s volume is hardly the usual fare on church growth. It is a handbook of spirituality, yet a theology, yet intensely practical, yet a new framework for evangelical historical understanding. It certainly is one of the most significant evangelical publications of the past decade.
The Conversion Phenomenon
To Be Born Again, by David Poling (Doubleday, 1979, 150 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Wallace Carr, professor of counseling, Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson, Mississippi.
To Be Born Again is neither a theological nor psychological analysis of conversion. It is a pastoral letter. Its format is to discuss nine separate topics related to the new birth phenomenon. The author seems to function as a bridge, addressing on the one hand that rapidly increasing number of persons who know from first-hand experience what it means to be “born again”; and, on the other hand, the “mainline” churches to whom most of these people will turn for help in finding “the full experience of Christ in their daily lives.”
The impetus for this work is the author’s personal experience. Dr. Poling was called to leave an executive position with his denomination to accept the pastorate of the First United Presbyterian Church of Albuquerque, New Mexico. “My faith seemed like a middle-aged car with a flat tire!” “I was literally driven to my knees …” That is the spirit and the heart of this book. The author blends Scripture, a vast acquaintance with relevant literature, and the born-again experiences of a number of well-known personalities into an intimate, open, and conversational commentary on the new birth. At times the author’s personal concerns lead him into digressions from the main theme—but they are always interesting and add a flavor of genuineness and “humanness” to the overall work.
Chapters one and two establish the scriptural validity of the “born-again event” and the importance of the Christian community in “validating and authenticating” this event. In chapters three and four the author makes observations from his personal acquaintances. Chapters five, six, and seven address both the new convert and the established, “mainline” churches, encouraging them to a “grand alliance of self-assertion and dependence.” In chapter nine the author develops the theme of the church as a holy nation.
As one moves easily through the 150 pages of this pastoral letter, it is with an increasing awareness of the developing power of the message beneath the surface. The Spirit of the living God is actively at work among us “proclaiming the reality of a joyous, triumphant kingdom.” And, “despite the weaknesses of over-commercialized evangelistic efforts” it is time for the press/mass media and religious establishment to drop their sophisticated sneers and accept reality: “the Cross has become central again.”
Music In The Church
A Gift of Music, by Jane Stuart Smith and Betty Carlson (Cornerstone, 1979, 256 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by J. B. MacMillan, Nyack College, New York.
Among the great arts of mankind, music has received the least attention from evangelical writers. The appearance of this concise volume is an encouragement to one who is enthusiastic about the music of the great masters. Its authors are active in L’Abri Fellowship, and it comes with an introduction by Francis Schaeffer.
After a chapter acknowledging briefly the age-long influence of the Psalms in Western music, a chapter is devoted to each of 20 composers from the seventeenth century to the middle of the twentieth. The first choice is Heinrich Schütz, 1585–1672, a devout Lutheran; he was a genius and a noble character, whose great achievement in sacred music is all too little known today. The last mentioned is Francis Poulenc, 1899–1963, one of the French group known as “Les Six.” Much of his prolific output is exceptionally accessible to the average listener, and often brims over with wit and joie de vivre.
Perhaps no critic could agree entirely with the authors’ choices. Faced as they were with such an embarrassment of riches, their selection seems well considered and comprehensive. But no American appears—and where is Ralph Vaughan Williams? I share their reservations about the trends of modern culture, but feel they press their views a bit too hard. Their joyous enthusiasm, however, should serve to ignite the curiosity of many readers and lure them on to sample more liberally the magnificent sound structures of Bach and Handel, Haydn and Mozart—not to mention both their forerunners and their heirs.
The authors have endeavored to avoid technical language that might repel the uninitiated reader, but their efforts have not always been completely successful. A glossary, which would bear moderate expansion and some rewording, is provided at the end of the book. There is a book list at the end of each chapter, followed by titles of recommended recorded works; however, a little more specific data that would not have expanded the size of the book would have been helpful here.
The tune, but not the words of the “Doxology” came from Calvin’s Geneva, and Haydn’s great tune was written for the Austrian emperor’s birthday, but soon was adapted to sacred words in England; these are all slips, but they are minor defects. It is heartening to recommend such a book by knowledgeable musicians who are also believers.
Israel And The Church
But As For Me: The Question of Election in the Life of God’s People Today, by Andre Lacocque (John Knox, 1979, 191 pp., $13.00), is reviewed by Donald A. Hagner, associate professor of New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.
In this provocative book, Lacocque, professor of Old Testament at Chicago Theological Seminary, undertakes to provide a theology of the election of Israel and the church that stresses their essential oneness. This is a viewpoint that has great importance for contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue. In a heavily dialectical argument, Lacocque begins with a focus on the uniqueness of Israel. This is the most satisfying part of the book, as it is full of rich theological synthesis and occasionally brilliant insight. When Lacocque turns to the church, however, he will leave most Christian readers confused and frustrated. Part of the reason for this is that Lacocque’s Christianity is a far cry from what is usually meant by the word. The real Jesus is described as “the central Jew” and “the omega point of Judaism.” Several times he is ranked with other reformers of Judaism. The death of Jesus is put alongside the death of other Jewish martyrs. The resurrection appears to be a matter of “faith” rather than an event that happened. The New Testament writings represent one (but not the only) way of understanding the Old Testament, but because of their occasional nature should never have been categorized as Scripture alongside the Old Testament.
Lacocque’s dialetical analysis involves tensions and paradoxes—but at some points he asks us to believe too much. Judaism is right, he argues, in faulting Christianity for its claims regarding fulfillment, since the world has not basically changed. Yet at the same time, Judaism’s failure to arrive at fulfillment, Judaism’s defeat, frustration, and anguish, are repeatedly set forth in the book as Judaism’s victory. The lesson of Judaism to the world is that victory does not lie beyond defeat, but is in the defeat itself. This strikes me as neither biblical nor Jewish; Lacocque is guilty here of the spiritualization he criticizes Christians for elsewhere. When he presses this idea to conclude, as by sleight of hand, that Auschwitz was a victory for Judaism, I do not think he will convince many Jews.
This book will undoubtedly be regarded as an important contribution to Jewish-Christian dialogue. For me, however, Lacocque does dialogue a disservice because he calls for Christianity to give up its distinctives: “the church must revise all her notions, all her dogmas, which may have had their uses, but which do not always correspond to the truth proclaimed by the nation of God” (p. 150).
There is much that is good and worthwhile in this book, despite Lacocque’s unorthodox Christianity. It is a pity that most orthodox Christians will be unable to benefit from it because of the author’s basic orientation.
Christianity In Africa
A History of African Christianity, by Adrian Hastings (Cambridge University Press, 1979, 336 pp., $9.95); A Distant Grief, by F. Kefa Sempangi with Barbara Thompson (Regal, 1979, 192 pp., $3.95 pb); The Clash of Cultures: Christian Missionaries and the Shona of Rhodesia, by Geoffrey Z. Kapenzi (University Press of America, 1979, 104 pp., $7.00 pb); A Christian Approach to Muslims: Reflections from West Africa, by James P. Dretke (William Carey Library, 1979, 263 pp., $3.95 pb); are reviewed by Richard V. Pierard, professor of history, Indiana State University, Terre Haute.
The remarkable expansion of Christianity in Africa during the last few years has led some observers to predict that within a short time it will possess the largest percentage of Christians of all the world’s continents. The rapid change and enormous diversity within African Christianity has prompted an outpouring of literature, of which these new books are representative. Father Adrian Hastings’ historical survey of Christianity in Black Africa during the third quarter of this century helps us to comprehend its extent. His 20 years of service in Africa and prodigious scholarly output about Christianity there enable him to speak with empathy and authority.
The book is structured into three eight-year sections in which the evolution of politics and church-state relations is discussed and then related to developments within the historic churches and the new “independent” communions. Those evangelicals who feel Hastings pays too much attention to Anglican and Roman Catholic matters will find some help from Peter Falk’s The Growth of the Church in Africa. This work, however, spans the entire two millennia of Christian history there and does not subject the recent period to the careful analysis of Hastings’s work.
A Distant Grief is the first-person account of a vibrant African Christian who founded and pastored the Redeemed Church of Uganda in Kampala, and who barely escaped martyrdom at the hands of Idi Amin. He records in detail the bitter sufferings of his people under the cruel tyranny of a modern-day Hitler and gives eloquent testimony to the power of evil and darkness in the world. At the same time, we see that God will not leave his people comfortless and the victory ultimately is his. Stripping away the Western cultural accretions that have crippled the working of Christianity in Africa, Sempangi penetrates to the very heart of the faith by showing it is self-giving love that makes no distinction between the spiritual and physical dimensions of human need. He now directs Africa Foundation, an organization that channels aid to Christian ministries in Uganda, and he is personally involved in the new government as deputy minister of rehabilitation.
Methodist Geoffrey Kapenzi evaluates the work of missions among his own people, the Shona of Zimbabwe (Rhodesia). He argues in The Clash of Cultures that through proper religious education and the use of traditional modes of expression, it is possible to integrate Christianity into African society without necessitating the acceptance of Western institutions, thereby deepening Africans’ understanding of the faith and the quality of their own culture. Once past the lengthy first chapter—a dull, cliché-ridden, and not always accurate recounting of the arguments against missions in Africa—it is possible to gain some useful insights.
Whereas Kapenzi’s work is somewhat superficial and polemical, the thoughtful, Lutheran missionary and Islamic specialist James Dretke’s irenic A Christian Approach to Muslims reflects a deep and refreshing understanding of the two faiths locked today in competition for Africa. He analyzes carefully the differences between Christianity and Islam, showing the principal difference to be the conception of law and gospel. He shows that Christians can break through the barriers of superiority, suspicion, and antagonism as they seek to introduce their Muslim neighbors to the living Christ.
If the patterns described in these works indicate the continuing drift of African Christianity, the Cross may be triumphant there, and we in the West may increasingly look to our African brethren for guidance in ways to improve the quality of our own Christian experience.
Briefly Noted
Wesleyana
John Wesley (Collins) by Stanley Ayling is a serious, scholarly attempt to understand Methodism’s founder by seeing him as part of (rather than opposed to) his age. His success was due to his genius and zeal. This is a balanced, excellent treatment. Strangely Warmed: The Amazing Life of John Wesley (Tyndale) by Garth Lean is shorter and more popular, but does not suffer by comparison. Its clear, anecdotal style makes for absorbing reading with a stress being placed on Wesley’s spiritual qualities. Oxford University Press continues the production of Wesley’s works in The Works of John Wesley, Vol. 25: Letters I, 1721–1739, edited by Frank Baker. A brilliantly done, 140-page introduction says all that is needed to introduce the letters, and copious notes do the rest. An indispensable book for Wesley studies. Robert L. Moore’s John Wesley and Authority: A Psychological Perspective (Scholars Press), is a densely written treatise using “psychoanalytic ego psychology … to perceive the dynamic infrastructures manifest in Wesley’s personality.” Wesley would hardly recognize himself. From the Apostles to Wesley: Christian Perfection in Historical Perspective (Beacon Hill of Kansas City) by William M. Greathouse is a readable history of the doctrine of perfection; its thesis is that the teaching of Christian perfection derives essentially from Scripture and Wesley’s doctrine is not sectarian but a unique synthesis of grace and holiness.
Scarecrow Press (Box 656. Metuchen, N.J.) continues its excellent work with Vol. 4 (Do-Fy) of the Methodist Union Catalog: Pre-1976 Imprints, edited by K. E. Rowe. It is to be a 20-volume set dealing with Methodist subjects drawn from over 200 libraries, worldwide.
Feminist/Women’S Literature
What Every Woman Still Knows (Bantam) by Mildred Cooper and Martha Fanning, a moderate guidebook, is now available in paperback. Virginia Leih offers reflections from Proverbs 31 in Portrait of a Fulfilled Woman (Tyndale). Six new books offer guidance for growth: Women Who Win (Revell) by Mary Crowley; The Unabridged Woman (Pilgrim) by Bobbie McKay; Last, Least, and Lowest (New Leaf, Harrison, Ark.) by Julia Taylor; Discover Your Worth (Victor) by Miriam Neff; Freedom Is an Inside Job (John Knox) by Mary Verstermark and Vera Channels, and The Worth of a Woman (Logos) by Iverna Tompkins.
More meditative and personal are: Please, Lord, Don’t Put Me on Hold (Concordia) by Jane Grover; Do You Feel Alone in the Spirit? (Servant) by Ruth Sanford; A Piece of Me Is Missing (Tyndale) by Marilyn Donahue.
Some very interesting biographical or autobiographical material can be found in Cameos (Harvest House) by Helen Hosier; You Can Too (Revell) by Mary Crowley; and Our Struggle to Serve (Word) by Virginia Hearn.
For a biblical or theological treatment of the subject, there is God Said: Let There Be Woman (Alba House) by James Fischer; Women, Law and the Genesis Traditions (distributed by Columbia University Press) by Calvin Carmichael; Biblical Affirmations of Woman (Westminster) by Leonard Swidler; and Women of Spirit (Touchstone) by Rosemary Reuther and Eleanor McLaughlin.
Rather radical feminist literature, some attempting to look at things spiritually, some not, is: Diving Deep and Surfacing (Beacon) by Carol Christ; Women and Anxiety (Delacorte) by Helen Derosis; Womanspirit Rising (Harper/Forum), edited by Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow; Gyn/ecology (Beacon) by Mary Daly; Changing of the Gods (Beacon) by Naomi Goldenberg; and Woman and Nature (Harper & Row) by Susan Griffin.
A very sympathetic and useful book is Stopping Wife Abuse (Anchor/Doubleday) by Jennifer Fleming. An interesting and informative general work is The Nature of Woman: An Encyclopedia and Guide to the Literature (Egepress, Inverness, Calif.) by Mary Anne Warren.
