Modern Theologies: As Seen From The Gospel
Christian Faith and Modern Theology, edited by Carl F. H. Henry (Channel, 1964, 448 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Addison H. Leitch, professor of philosophy and religion, Tarkio College, Tarkio, Missouri.
Once again Dr. Henry has gathered together some evangelical scholars, and we are indebted to him and to them for this excellent book. Increasingly, by way of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and by these publishing opportunities, Carl Henry is giving self-consciousness and self-respect to one of the major trends in modern theology. He has become a rallying point in another kind of ecumenical movement, and the world of theology is more and more appreciative of his efforts.
This book is made up of twenty chapters in which twenty authors seriously approach what the title of the book indicates. After a chapter by Hermann Sasse introducing us to twentieth-century European theology, a chapter by James I. Packer on twentieth-century British theology, and a chapter by Eugene Osterhaven on twentieth-century American theology, the authors pursue the important subjects that normally appear in any systematic theology. The opening chapters of historical setting are excellent and in my estimation would have great value published as a separate book or booklet. They are, of course, an excellent introduction to the remainder of this book.
It is impossible to give a critical analysis of each of the chapters. Of most value to me was the effort to relate evangelical theology to the great movements in modern theology. Nearly all the authors not only face such men as Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, Tillich, Niebuhr, and Kierkegaard, but face them fairly, with many fresh insights and, I think, with a strong apologetic for the historic Christian faith. I believe that any reader can from this one book find a clue or a focus for the almost overwhelming impact of modern theological movements. We all remember with gratitude the primary effort of Hordern in his book A Layman’s Guide to Protestant Theology. Here in this volume we have a better approach and one with considerably greater depth. It seems to me that careful reading of this book could be for every man a first step in the understanding of the theology of our day. And theological education being what it is, this book could also be highly instructive to the new seminary graduate by impressing him with the scholarship and appeal of the evangelical approach, so frequently neglected in the seminaries. One is constantly impressed by the balance of these writers and the irenic spirit with which they approach their work.
Certain points for negative criticism come to mind. The first is to be expected in a book of this type with a variety of authors and approaches (even though their unanimity is amazing): it would have been helpful if each author, without becoming too mechanical, had followed something of a loose basic outline. After a number of chapters in which each theological subject is lined up against modern theologians, we then have chapters where these theologians are almost entirely neglected. This makes for some imbalance and left me with some feeling of frustration. I think of this particularly in the chapter by Roger Nicole where he makes his point of departure primarily the works of Dr. Vincent Taylor. He has every reason, of course, for choosing Taylor as representative; but in company with the other authors, even though he makes his own case, he does not help us see questions of redemption over and against Barth, Bultmann, and the like, as clearly as was done in the other chapters. This occurs also in Vernon Grounds’s thesis supported, as it is, primarily on the work of Kierkegaard. Here Kierkegaard is highly relevant, and the thesis has worked out splendidly; but the chapter does not follow the general thrust of the book.
It seems to me that there could have been closer “working agreement” among C. Gregg Singer in his particular approach to history, John Gerstner in his approach to the Scriptures, and Gordon Clark in his approach to the sciences; not that the three should necessarily find complete agreement, but that some of the standards or viewpoints they set up might be closer to those of the other contributors. For my own education I felt that Gordon Clark’s chapter was the best. Those who follow him in the text do not always look at things as he does, and the total impact of the book or of the evangelical cause is in my estimation thereby weakened. The “showdown” in the evangelical approach lies not so much in the authority of the Scriptures (this comes through strongly in every page) but in the specific questions of inspiration and inerrancy. Closely allied is the question of the use of reason over against the more intuitive approach. I am not satisfied that in this volume one can find the establishment by reason of either inspiration or inerrancy, although such is generally assumed. If these things are to be “proved” by reason, then they must stand on reason whether a man is committed to the Christian faith or not. I cannot feel that the Reformed tradition can argue Scripture apart from the combination of Word and Spirit; but as Seeburg has said, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is “the Achilles’ heel of Protestantism.”
None of these writers would deny this work of the Spirit in the use of Scripture; but as soon as we open the door to the Spirit on the Word, we open the door to the very sort of thing that Barth and company insist on establishing. Can a man without the blessing or the guidance of the Spirit of God accept the authority of Scripture? Does this action of the Spirit come by reason or by evidence, or does it not come by the free hand of God directly to the mind and heart of a believer? This whole area needs to be reworked with great care in modern evangelical theology.
Time and space prevent my more personal comments on the chapters. Every writer has given us the gifts of his mind and heart to our profit. This is a good book, and once again we are in Carl Henry’s debt.
ADDISON H. LEITCH
St. Augustine And Apartheid
The City of God and the City of Man in Africa, by Edgar H. Brookes and Army Vandenbosch (University of Kentucky, 1964, 144 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, chairman, Department of History, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.
This small volume, containing two lectures given at the University of Kentucky by Dr. Brookes of the faculty of Natal in South Africa and two supplementary chapters by Army Vandenbosch, is one of the finest expositions of the plight and promise of contemporary Africa that this reviewer has seen. It is not difficult to understand why these two lectures left such a deep and abiding impression on faculty and students who were fortunate enough to hear them, for their effect is in no way lost on the printed page. Dr. Brookes, an associate of Alan Paton in the activities of the Liberal party, which advocates the abandonment of the apartheid policy in South Africa, analyzes the woes and the problems of that state and its people with a fairness and sympathy of understanding that is most unusual in attempts to deal with the racial unrest for which South Africa has become famous, or infamous. Although he at no time seeks to justify its stringent policy of racial segregation and subjugation, he is careful to give an accurate portrayal of how Smuts and the other liberal leaders of the early decades of the present era fell into the predicament. But even in his indictment of the apartheid policy, Dr. Brookes breathes a certain warmth and understanding that allows the American reader, perhaps for the first time, to comprehend the depth of the problem and the difficulties that lie in the way of a solution.
The title of the book is derived from the events of the fifth century, when the people of North Africa received from St. Augustine a vision of the City of God that made them determined, according to the authors, to acquire the freedom to realize their vision of the City of Man. The authors find a parallel between the Africa of that era, which was facing the inroads of the barbarians, and the Africa of the twentieth century, which is engaged in the task of freeing itself from the yoke of European colonialism. Indeed, the intense feeling of nationalism may yet make a mockery of the vision that the African leaders have received from St. Augustine. The only real weakness of this book is its misinterpretation of St. Augustine and its forced application of Augustine to the present conditions of Africa.
The book is almost mandatory reading for anyone who seeks to understand contemporary Africa, whether he be liberal or conservative in his theological and social views. The tremendous insights of this little work far outweigh the defect mentioned above.
C. GREGG SINGER
Different Eyes: Same Vision
Slavery, Segregation and Scripture, by James O. Buswell III (Eerdmans, 1964, 101 pp., $2.50), and My People Is the Enemy: An Autobiographical Polemic, by William Stringfellow (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, 121 pp., $3.95), are reviewed by Tunis Romein, professor of philosophy, Erskine College, Due West, South Carolina.
Relating these authors to each other and to their books is like playing fruitbasket upset: Professor Buswell, an expert in anthropology, assumes the role of a Bible student, and Mr. Stringfellow, a lawyer, writes with unapologetic flourish about theological issues. Although the two authors share more or less the same side of a common subject, they seem uncommonly different in background and outlook. Harvard-trained Stringfellow seems to be perfectly relaxed when discussing his theology over beer, whereas Buswell, educated at an evangelical stronghold where he now teaches, Wheaton College, could conceivably feel a bit awkard with such easy-going informalities.
Buswell, educationally nurtured in the North, centers his attention on racial bias in the South; in this he is somewhat like old Amos, who left his sycamore trees in the South and bore down on social injustices in the Northern Kingdom. Likewise Stringfellow centers his book on a cultural setting much different from his own background; his writings are infused with a first-hand forcefulness by virtue of a seven-year residency in the notorious New York community of Harlem. Stringfellow’s account, which he terms an “autobiographical polemie,” is personal and aggressive, whereas Buswell’s book reflects more the impersonal, scholarly, and perhaps scientific demean of a professor carefully documenting his work and methodically developing his arguments with a minimum of personal reference.
Buswell’s book is an interesting counterpart to Thomas Gossett’s recently published account of the history of race in America, with a similar historical approach and comparative study between prevailing points of view both past and present. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of Buswell’s book is the comparative study between early Southern justification of slavery and contemporary Southern justification of segregation. Interesting, too, are the similarities between early abolitionist impatience and the impatience of today’s radical integrationists; both groups exhibit a seemingly misguided impetuosity that tends to botch up the works.
Stringfellow’s book is a worthy counterpart to a widely read earlier book on Harlem, Come Out of the Wilderness, which reported on the Parish Ministry. Stringfellow was introduced to his work in Harlem by the Parish group—all of which suggests some kind of social-gospel setting in the sense of a vigorous crusade against economic, social, and political injustices, by means of which cometh the Kingdom of God. But, surprisingly, not so with Stringfellow. Although he says he is as much for correcting these injustices as the next man, first things must come first: it is wrong to assume that the Church must correct social and economic evils before the Gospel can be preached; it is wrong to assume that one must feed people before preaching to them. The Gospel, Stringfellow argues, is relevant to all sorts and conditions of men in all times and places. The churches have also supposed that “mission follows charity. They have favored crusades and abandoned mission.… Mission does not follow charity; faith does not follow works.… On the contrary, mission is itself the only charity which Christians have to offer the poor, the only work which Christians have to do.…” Speaking of the Bible, the author, while paying his respects to critics and specialists, offers a lively testimony to the Word of God as the common man knows it, and to the fact that it “lives by God’s own initiative and generosity in this world, apart from whether or not men listen … apart from human wisdom and scholarship, apart from tampering with or manipulation of the Bible, apart from the interesting and even sometimes true view and opinions of men, apart from any hardness of heart.…”
A final comparison of these two vigorously anti-racist books points up an ironic twist: My People Is the Enemy seems to have its origin in a liberal setting but winds up with rugged, old-fashioned biblical doctrines about faith and salvation; whereas Slavery, Segregation and Scripture, elaborated from a clearly conservative Protestant perspective, ends with a climactic chapter defending contemporary anthropological theories against reactionary attacks, with the “Scripture” part somehow lost in the shuffle, but surely not intentionally. In some ways perhaps academic pilgrimages through cloistered halls of ivy are equally as hazardous as walking the darkly violent streets of Harlem.
TUNIS ROMEIN
Step Right Up, Folks …
Psychotherapy: A Christian Approach, by E. N. Ducker (Allen & Unwin [London], 1964, 123 pp., 21s.), is reviewed by Philip G. Ney, resident psychiatrist, Allan Memorial Institute, Montreal, Quebec.
The author of this book professes “to present the comparatively new science of Psychology as a handmaid of Religion,” and claims that his material comes from practicing psychotherapy for twelve years in this “specialist service as part of the Ministry of the Church.” There are chapters dealing with the Christian’s fear of psychotherapy; the Church’s legitimate role in psychotherapy; the bad effects of authority, parental inconsistency, and self-punishment upon personality; fantasies; and the effects of emotion in the production of physical illnesses. There is finally a criticism of Bishop Robinson’s controversial book, Honest to God.
The book is of limited value. To an apprehensive religious person it may act as a “softening up” introduction to psychology, and to church people it may be a stimulus to discuss psychology. Unfortunately its main appeal lies in those segments of case histories and dreams about which almost any generalization can be made. The main value of the book is that it nicely illustrates what a book on Christian psychotherapy should not be. It is poor Christianity and poor psychotherapy.
Although this may be one Christian’s approach to psychotherapy, there is actually nothing distinctively Christian about it. The author uses biblical symbols and sees great religious significance in dreams, but for the rest his book is a mixture of Freudian, Kleinian, and chiefly Jungian theories of psychology. He claims great effectiveness for his treatment: “I have treated many cases of asthma and in every case with finished treatment, they have become free from their complaint, through psychotherapy.”
From what the present reviewer can infer, the author does not use the accepted method of interpreting dreams but simply appeals to Jungian archetypes and says that they obviously mean “thus and so.” At the same time he states, “In the course of analysis the Christian therapist will studiously avoid any imposition of his view.” He grossly oversimplifies the relation of physical disease and emotions when he asserts that “the physical aspect entirely disappears when the patient attends to his emotional problems,” and that “sufferers from specific disorders reveal a definite character pattern.”
What will disconcert most medical experts is the author’s apparent inability to discern who should receive his psychotherapy. He asserts that the therapist should be trained to recognize problems he cannot deal with, but he himself offers his therapy to one who believes she is impregnated by the Holy Spirit. Patients with such delusions may become worse with the type of psychotherapy this writer appears to offer.
He finally states his view of God, which is not Christian but Jungian: “God is the archetype of Being at its fullest and richest and as such it is indispensable to man.”
Christian psychology should be encouraged, but it needs the rigorously controlled research of science and the insights God himself provides. Those who are seriously interested in this field may learn a lot about how not to do it from this book.
PHILIP G. NEY
The Heidelberg Catechism
Guilt, Grace and Gratitude, edited by Donald J. Bruggink (The Half Moon Press, 1963, 226 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by James Daane, editorial associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
This book is a new commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, which had its 400th anniversary last year. The Reformed community owes its authors, all men of the Reformed Church in America, a debt of appreciation for commemorating this event in such a substantial way.
The Heidelberg Catechism was originally composed to heal the breach between Calvinists and Lutherans. Though it failed in this, it is the finest religious document to come out of the Reformation. For a very long time it was employed to instruct men in the essentials of the Christian faith and served as a basis for preaching from the pulpit. Although it bears marks of its historical origin, its use today as a basis and guide for preaching would bring considerable more substance to many a pulpit.
The title of this book is taken from the three divisions of the catechism. The first deals with man in sin; the second with man in grace; the third with the manner in which the sinner should show his gratitude for being saved by grace.
The approach of the Heidelberg Catechism is pedagogical and confessional. It presents the Christian man from within faith asking questions and giving answers about his sin and God’s grace.
Thus the first section shows that the knowledge of sin comes, not from experience or from reading the newspaper, but from divine revelation. The knowledge of sin no less than the knowledge of grace is given by God. The second section deals with the Apostles’ Creed and the sacraments and shows that salvation comes by God’s grace in Christ. The third section deals with the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. The last is said to be the “chief part of thankfulness,” and both are discussed from the viewpoint that gratitude for God’s gracious redemption in Christ is the motivation for all Christian living.
All the material of the catechism is treated by nine men; every treatment is new, fresh, and confessionally true. Howard Hageman’s general introduction is excellent, and Donald J. Bruggink’s treatment of the sacraments especially perceptive. At least one man’s treatment is more apologetic than expository.
This is an excellent little commentary. Some of the exposition is rightly and fruitfully critical. It touches on, rather than explores, the full rich dimensions, of the teaching of this catechism. Yet it gives as much as one could expect from a brief commentary; perhaps it will also trigger a more massive, contemporary commentary on this catechism which for all its age is still highly relevant for today.
Many a teacher or pulpiteer would become more relevant if he were less afraid of being regarded as a bit “old-fashioned.”
JAMES DAANE
A Special Language?
The Language of the Gospel, by Amos N. Wilder (Harper & Row, 1964, 143 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Samuel J. Mikolaski, professor of theology, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Professor Wilder’s book, sub-titled “Early Christian Rhetoric,” reflects his dual interest in poetry and the New Testament. In seven brief chapters (six of which were the 1962 Haskell Lectures at Oberlin College) he discusses the literary forms of the New Testament such as dialogue, poetry, parable, story. This is not an exercise in historical literary criticism but a discussion of certain affinities between the message and language literary forms.
A chief value of this book by the Emeritus Professor of New Testament Interpretation from Harvard is the presentation of a highly personal, mature interest in the relations between Christianity and its literary forms. For this readers will be grateful.
Crucial to his argument is the primacy of oral utterance to early Christians; yet much of the book concerns literary forms and habits. There is a certain unevenness of historical allusion and logical structure. To be sure, this need not indict the chapters as individual essays, but there is some difficulty in regarding them as a sustained argument.
A number of propositions seem hard to accept without more argument to support them. Do New Testament glossalalia mean simply increased power of language (p. 13)? Does primitive man call an obect into being by naming it, rather than seeing and naming it, and is this what the naming in Genesis means (p. 14)? The view that the literary modes of the New Testament throw light on its faith and sources of faith requires larger development. Need it be claimed that New Testament literary forms are novel to accommodate its message, any more than that the koiné is not Holy Ghost language as was once thought (pp. 18, 26, 50)? So far as it goes, the argument that forms of early Christian literature were determined by the life-orientation, world-view, and social patterns of those times is unconvincing. The suggestion that the personal dramatic (oral?) character of the Gospel necessarily involves confrontation, “not instruction in the ordinary sense” (p. 62), seems to imply that Christians were dramatized, mesmerized, or un-manned into the Kingdom—an idea clearly inconsistent with Professor Wilder’s considered theological judgment. Why is it that in the nature of the case the Gospel demands parabolic form (p. 79)?
But as an introduction to the position that for the Christian, gospel language is more fundamental than graphic representation, and that faith and hearing are more important than sight and touch, the book should whet the appetite of many for further inquiry. Correlation of the spoken and written forms of the word so far as the truth-functions of language for revelation are concerned awaits fuller development in our day.
SAMUEL J. MIKOLASKI
Keep Em Guessing
Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, by C. S. Lewis (Geoffrey Bles, 1964, 159 pp., 12s. 6d.), is reviewed by J. D. Douglas, British editorial director, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
To inflict this book on a conventional type of reviewer is mental cruelty, for here is C. S. Lewis at his most maddening. Right away he draws the fangs of potential critics by employing the device (found also in The Screwtape Letters) of giving only one side of a correspondence. When he adds the occasional reminder that he is no theologian, Lewis has built the kind of platform most suitable for an individualist, and one from which can issue his best and his most exasperating talk.
In this present volume he is again both the despair of the rigidly orthodox and the scourge of liberalism. He twists the tail of the prudish by a casual remark about something profound a friend had made to him “in the pub at Coton.” He shows his low opinion of the New Morality by the merest side-glance at “the poor Bishop of Wool wich.” Novelty in worship is especially abhorrent to him, and he quotes approvingly the man who said, “I wish they’d remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks” (p. 13).
When the reviewer is made uncomfortable by catching a fleeting glimpse of his own face in the glass (and Lewis is an adept at that), he is tempted to conclude that the mirror is distorted, and to take refuge in the reassuring thought that Lewis of the unique pilgrimage is not always orthodox. And indeed he is not. He admits he prays for the dead (p. 138), and couples this with an engaging plea for something akin to purgatory. Nevertheless, the conservative who takes a long hard look at the final chapter will find a scathing attack on “liberal Christianity,” which, says the writer, “can only supply an ineffectual echo to the massive chorus of agreed and admitted unbelief.” Lewis asks if we have ever met, or heard of, anyone who was converted from skepticism to a “liberal” or “de-mythologized” Christianity. (Well, have we?) He had earlier stressed that fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom, and denied that he had ever encountered a single person “who fully disbelieved in Hell and also had a living and life-giving belief in Heaven.”
Letters to Malcolm cannot be skimmed over, or the reader is likely to miss thought-provoking, sermon-inspiring statements like this from page 83: “For most of us the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model. Removing mountains can wait.” This book calls also for discernment in that Lewis curiously takes advantage here and there of his non-professional status theologically to get across views not always either systematic or logical. Yet one is never quite certain in such places that he is not writing with tongue in cheek, and we are left guessing to the end. Knowing Lewis, it seems likely he intended it that way.
J. D. DOUGLAS
How They Dig Up A City
Gibeon, Where the Sun Stood Still: The Discovery of the Biblical City, by John B. Pritchard (Princeton University, 1962, 176 pp., $5.75), is reviewed by Bastiaan Van Elderen, associate professor of New Testament, Calvin Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
One of the major problems in any science—a problem that is too often ignored out of sheer frustration—is the presentation of the scientist’s endeavor in a way that is comprehensible to the layman. Attempts to do this generally fail either because the scientist finds his material too technical for anyone but a person educated in his field or, more simply, because he can’t write.
This problem is no doubt complicated in archaeology because of the aura of the mysterious and romantic in which this science is shrouded; the general public conceives of archaeology as a consistent series of exciting finds and is often disappointed to discover that much of it is meticulous, painstaking (and even dull), hard work.
Professor Pritchard, who possesses an excellent gift of communicating, has proved in this book that, although archaeology is not particularly glamorous, it is significant. He does not gloss over the scientific detail of the excavation at Gibeon but employs a narrative style so effectively that one is inclined to read the entire book at one sitting.
The book synthesizes the results of four seasons of excavation at el-Jib, the site of Gibeon, a city that is referred to some forty-five times in the Old Testament and is possibly most noted for the ingenious strategem by which its citizens thwarted the unsuspecting Joshua in his conquest of Canaan (Josh. 9). Pritchard begins by describing in some detail the process of excavating and the identification of el-Jib with Gibeon. In the second chapter he examines the biblical references to Gibeon. In four succeeding chapters he reports the results of the four seasons of excavation—specifically the water system, the winery, the general indication of everyday life as revealed in house and wall structures, and the necropolis. The final chapter presents a history of the city drawing upon literary and archaeological sources.
As a book “written for the general reader who is concerned with the contribution that archaeology has made to the biblical history of the site” and “offered to the archaeologist and biblical historian with the hope that it may be of service to them” (preface, p. viii), Gibeon succeeds admirably. It is to be hoped that this success will inspire other archaeologists to do the same sort of thing. However, it is not only in its obvious, immediate relevance to the excavation at Gibeon that the book has value. As a description of archaeological procedures and the disappointments and rewards of an excavation, it can serve as a technical introduction to the subject for the layman, as well as providing valuable comparisons of methodology for the advanced student or archaeologist.
In a review of Pritchard’s The Ancient Near East in Text and Pictures in the Saturday Review, Nelson Glueck said that working through that two-volume set was “the next best thing to going on a fascinating archaeological expedition.” Perhaps that credit belongs even more to Gibeon.
BASTIAAN VAN ELDEREN
Timely Subject
The Second Coming, compiled by H. Leo Eddleman (Broadman, 1963, 112 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by Glenn W. Barker, chairman. Biblical Division, Gordon Divinity School, Wenham, Massachusetts.
Nine popular messages on the coming of Christ are contained in this interesting little book. Seven of the authors are recognized leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention, three being past presidents. The other two contributions come from the editor and the executive editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
Although the men are premillenarian, this is not the concern of their presentation. They desire rather to express, over against an eroded view of liberalism, what the promise of Christ’s return means in terms of a view of the world, history, the Church, and the everyday behavior of the believer. Naturally not every effort in the book is equally helpful in this regard. Some of the authors, despite their desire, end in the periphery of the discussion. Whereas there is a wholesome dependence on the Word of God to support the visible and personal return of Christ, there is less success in determining from the Scriptures the precise significance of the event.
It should be remembered, however, that most of the men are not professional scholars but ministers to the Church. If defects are thought to appear in their presentations, the faults may be due not so much to the contributors, themselves as to the failure of evangelical scholars to provide a comprehensive biblical approach to this subject. The least that these men have accomplished is to remind the evangelical church that Christ’s return is a primary tenet of the Christian faith and informs the whole of Christian truth.
The timeliness of the subject matter, the obvious rhetorical skill of many of its proclaimers, and the need by those in the pulpit for a sane biblical approach to the topic will give this publication significant circulation among the preachers of the land.
GLENN W. BARKER
Book Briefs
Mission in the Making, by F. Dean Lueking (Concordia, 1964, 354 pp., $7.50). The missionary enterprise among Missouri Synod Lutherans, 1946–1963.
Mandate to Witness: Studies in the Book of Acts, by Leander E. Keck (Judson, 1964, 173 pp., $3.75). Prepared for study groups by an author who feels that our century, like the first, is one in which the task of witness must be carried on in a non-Christian milieu.
The Analyzed Bible, by G. Campbell Morgan (Revell, 1964, 600 pp., $8.95). Not really a Bible at all but an excellent book-by-book analysis and condensation.
Theological Investigations, Vol. II: Man in the Church, by Karl Rahner (Helicon, 1963, 363 pp„ $7.50). One of the most competent Roman Catholic theologians deals with questions concerning “man in the Church,” and raises questions about the Christian who is not a member of the Roman Catholic Church. For the professional theological student.
Black, White and Gray: 21 Points of View on the Race Question, edited by Bradford Daniel (Sheed & Ward, 1964, 308 pp., $5.95). Including those of Governor Wallace, Martin Luther King, Jr., Harry Golden, Roy Wilkins.
The Christian in the Material World, by Giovanni Battista Cardinal Montini, now Pope Paul VI (Helicon, 1964, 72 pp., $1.95).
The Relevance of Apocalyptic: A Study of Jewish and Christian Apocalypses from Daniel to the Revelation, by H. H. Rowley (Association, 1964, 240 pp., $5.95). Revised; first published in 1944.
The Twilight of Evolution, by Henry M. Morris (Baker, 1963, 103 pp., $2.95). The author contends that evolution is declining in status with men who hold biblical presuppositions.
Personality and Sexual Problems in Pastoral Psychology, edited by William C. Bier, S. J. (Fordham University Press, 1964, 256 pp., $5). Proceedings of the Institute of Pastoral Psychology held in 1955 and 1957 at Fordham University. An aid for pastors.
Preaching Values from the Papyri, by Herschel H. Hobbs (Baker, 1964, 123 pp., $2.95). Forty chapters discuss forty New Testament Greek words found in the papyri for the purpose of throwing light on their New Testament usage and meaning.
Persons Can Change, by F. Gerald Ensley (Abingdon, 1963, 128 pp., $1). The author in the name of Christianity counters the old claim: people don’t change.
Modern Religious Poems, edited by Jacob Trapp (Harper & Row, 1964, 304 pp., $4.95). Some of the best religious poetry of the twentieth century.
Paperbacks
New Theology No. 1: Its Vitality and Variety Demonstrated in Fifteen Recent Articles, edited by Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman (Macmillan, 1964, 256 pp., $1.95). Various articles gathered from various publications; from the pens of Protestants, one Roman Catholic, and one Jew. A good sampler of what is being said across the theological board.
Missionary Principles, by Roland Allen (Eerdmans, 1964, 168 pp., $1.45).A very sound discussion of very basic missionary principles.
Baptists—North and South, by Samuel S. Hill, Jr., and Robert G. Torbet (Judson, 1964, 143 pp., $2). A Southern Baptist and an American (Northern) Baptist discuss their differences.
The Revelation of St. John, by Abraham Kuyper (Eerdmans, 1964, 360 pp., $2.25).A significant, highly devotional commentary on the last book of the Bible and the last literary production of a competent Christian scholar.
Death of a Myth, by Kyle Haselden (Friendship Press, 1964, 175 pp., $1.75). Author seeks to destroy the myth that Spanish-American people are compatible with Roman Catholic but not Protestant Christianity.
Infant Baptism and Adult Conversion, by O. Hallesby (Augsburg, 1964, 109 pp., $2).A popular but scholarly Lutheran defense of infant baptism.
Ecumenism and the Bible, by David Hedegard (Banner of Truth Trust [London], 1964, 240, 4s. 6d.). A critical evaluation of the ecumenical movement by a conservative. First printed in 1955.
Paul and His Interpreters: A Critical History, by Albert Schweitzer (Schocken Books, 1964, 255 pp., $1.95). First published in 1912.
The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus’ Messiahship and Passion, by Albert Schweitzer (Schocken Books, 1964, 275 pp., $1.95). First published in 1914.
Why Love Asks You to Wait, by Irene Soehrcn (Concordia, 1964, 24 pp., $.25). An excellent discussion of premarital sex addressed to young people.
The Origins of Sectarian Protestantism: A Study of the Anabaptist View of the Church, by Franklin H. Littell (Macmillan, 1964, 231 pp., $1.45). First printed in 1952 under the title, The Anabaptist View of the Church.
Church and World Encounter, by Lee J. Gable (United Church Press, 1964, 111 pp. $1.60). A study of the evangelical academies that arose in response to the post-war German situation, which reflect light on the German churches and echo a warning for the future of American churches.
