Book Briefs: March 31, 1967

A Statesman’S Secret Faith

Dag Hammarskjöld: The Statesman and his Faith, by Henry P. Van Dusen (Harper & Row, 1967, 235 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Sherwood E. Wirt, editor, “Decision,” Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This is a moving book about a great spirit of our time. As far as I know, only one man was fully aware of Dag Hammarskjold’s secret faith before the appearance of the spiritual diary he kept for thirty years. That man was Billy Graham. The evangelist had learned in private conversation what none of the personnel of the United Nations secretariat, over which Hammarskjöld presided for nearly a decade, had apparently discovered: that the lonely Swede had a strong personal faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. This fact was brought out in Graham’s statements at the time of the African plane tragedy, when the evangelist’s tribute, unlike others from around the world, referred to Hammarskjöld’s deep devotion to Christ.

In this volume Van Dusen helpfully documents the evidence of Hammarskjöld’s faith by relating the entries in Markings (the diary) to significant events in the statesman’s life. He shows that a “crisis” and a “conversion” seem to have come late in 1952. “I said Yes to Someone,” Hammarskjöld wrote of the experience. It was about this time that Hammarskjöld became General Secretary of the United Nations.

Van Dusen notes that from this period scriptural references began to proliferate in the diary. Curiously, there were no references to the Apostle Paul; yet the four Gospels were quoted repeatedly, as were the Psalms. “The God whom Hammarskjöld knew,” concludes Van Dusen, “was the God of the Psalmists and of Jesus Christ.”

Hammarskjöld also leaned heavily on certain Christian mystics, notably Thomas a Kempis, John of the Cross, and Meister Eckhart. He was captivated by the poetry of T. S. Eliot. The profundity of his devotion to God, as it comes through in ejaculation found throughout the Markings, puts to shame much of our conventional evangelical patter. He writes:

Thou

Whom I do not know

But Whose I am.

Thou

Whom I do not comprehend

But Who has dedicated me …

Van Dusen is at some pains to establish the lack of resemblance between Hammarskjöld’s mature faith and the Lutheran piety of his parents (his father was prime minister of Sweden front 1914 to 1917). Difference there was; and yet in Hammarskjold’s own single public confession he said, “Experience and honest thinking has led me in a circle; I now recognize and endorse, unreservedly, those very beliefs which were once handed down to me.” He wrote in his secret diary, “Only one thing counts: faith … which reality seems so thoroughly to confute.”

Charles Malik of Lebanon and others have drawn attention to the gaps in Hammarskjöld’s expression of that faith. Admittedly, he was not a brand-name Protestant. But in the diary that forms the basis of this interpretative volume, he was not seeking to witness to men about his love for God. He was actually communicating with God and trying, in some measure, to jot down what God was saying to him. No wonder Markings became a best-seller!

Van Dusen, president emeritus of Union Theological Seminary, has done his work well. His commentary on the diary, his painstaking research into Hammarskjöld’s life, and his defense of the man’s personal character are a notable contribution. The world that Hammarskjöld tried so valiantly to hold together owes a debt to Van Dusen for giving us this perceptive insight into his life.

‘Christian Atheism’ In Canada

A Church Without God, by Ernest Harrison (McClelland and Stewart, 1966, 149 pp., $4.50; also Lippincott, 1967, $3.95), is reviewed by J. Berkley Reynolds, Canadian editorial representative,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The Rev. Ernest Harrison is Canada’s own God-is-dead theologian. His chief responsibility when he headed the religious education department of the Anglican Church of Canada was the production of the Anglicans’ new Sunday school curriculum, and on his recommendation Pierre Berton was commissioned to write The Comfortable Pew.

Harrison is the advocate of a “new freedom” and is bent upon eliminating historic creeds and ancient liturgies of the Church. The church to which he addresses himself in A Church Without God is obviously not one of strong evangelical growth. He calls her “Mother Church.” And he claims she is now dead. Her authority is gone. The hospitals and schools she built are operated by the state, and nobody takes seriously her self-created creeds. People are free to think for themselves.

After he has asserted his views on the death of “Mother Church,” Harrison goes on to proclaim his own “Christian atheism.” In this he goes beyond Robinson, Altizer, and Hamilton, who created problems by believing in a onetime existence of God. Says Harrison, “I am on the staff of an Anglican parish in Toronto. I claim to be a Christian and an Anglican; yet I can say, in all seriousness, that there is no God.”

Harrison gives five choices for Christian atheism, which includes the belief “that there never was a God, that there is no God now, and that there never will be.” Strangely enough, this is followed by the call to “walk more freely into the presence of Jesus Christ.” He doubts whether this Jesus believed in God or arose from the dead. He suggests that perhaps Christ had sexual intercourse with women “and maybe got drunk.”

Not surprisingly the direction Harrison has chosen soon leads him to discard the Bible as objective revelation. The Bible is only one of the many contexts in which we live our lives, and the Christian must be free even to reject the Bible as a context. Harrison sees as the converse of this a literalistic interpretation and fails to deal with the conservative evangelical approach.

Having pushed the Bible aside as God’s norm or standard, he very easily moves into the new morality and an espousal of situational ethics. The Ten Commandments are relative. Love is the rule. “Every situation must be judged on its merits, and there is only one test which may legitimately be applied: is love fulfilled?” Any action is right by any standard, if there is trust and love. He miserably fails to define love or to indicate its source. Marriage no longer provides a true test for the rightness or wrongness of sexual intercourse. The real point is whether or not it is meaningful to both parties.

As a striking example of current “Christian atheism,” this book is an eye-opener. Besides the pathos that is very evident in Harrison’s own religious life, his book also reflects the lethargy of his own church, which he feels is incapacitated. Evangelicals should take warning from this author lest they substitute forms for the pure content of the Gospel and end up with “A Church Without God.”

Acclaim For A Christian Poet

The Dumbfounding, by Margaret Avison (W. W. Norton, 1966, 99 pp., $4.50; also, George J. McLeod, $5.75), is reviewed by David D. Stewart, associate professor and chairman, Department of German, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario.

The most recent book by Margaret Avison offers what most of us have learned to do without. Here is first-rate Christian poetry, received with enthusiasm by avowedly secular critics such as A. J. M. Smith, who calls The Dumbfounding “the most significant book of poetry published by a Canadian since the modern movement got under way more than a score of years ago” (Canadian Forum, September, 1966).

One is struck by the range and concreteness of Miss Avison’s verse. She has observed keenly and compassionately the world around her, and combines unobtrusive scholarship with a fine, pawky humor. Very many of the poems in this volume describe commonplace sights and situations: bleak city rooms (“the taps listen, in the unlighted bathroom”), seeds in their store-bins, biding their time; weary winter trees; pigeons in the morning park (“… and beauty/is fan-tailed, gray and dove gray aslant, folding in / from the white fury of day”). At the same time, this is distinctly “poésie engagée.” It does not get stuck in the foreground of description and detail; rather, it reveals a very large poetic vision, which shows us the world so well because the poet has seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ: “In thy light we see light.”

One of the many graces of Miss Avison’s book is that there is no discontinuity in vision or style between the poems that treat things of the everyday world and the more obviously metaphysical ones, such as “The Word” and “The Dumbfounding,” in which Christ is addressed in worship. Just as it is in our here-and-now language that the incarnate Saviour meets us, so for the poet there is no hermetic Christian diction of piety.

Running through the collection is a “metaphorical counterpoint” based on the images of man’s lost estate and God’s redemptive coming used by John in the first chapter of his gospel: word, life, light, face. Thus in “The Earth that Falls Away” Miss Avison sketches the ancient and modern ways in which men enact John’s statement about loving darkness rather than light. When Christ comes we fear his gaze: “In the intolerable hour / our fingers and fists / blunder for blindfolds / to have you in our power!”

In one of her most searching poems, “The Mirrored Man,” published before her conversion in her collection Winter Sun, Miss Avison had written:

All of us, flung in one

Murky parabola,

Seek out some pivot for significance,

Leery of comets’ tails, mask-merry,

Wondering at the centre

Who will gain access, search the citadel

To its last, secret door?

And what face will the violator find

When he confronts the glass?

This motif of facelessness, being finally left alone or unnoticed in the universe, is picked up, now in Christian affirmation, in the poem “… Person, or A Hymn on and to the Holy Ghost”:

Let the one you show me

ask you, for me,

you, all but lost in

the one in three,

to lead my self, effaced

in the known Light,

to be in him released

from facelessness,

so that where you

(unseen, unguessed, liable

to grievous hurt) would go

I may show him visible.

Because this poet has seen and knows modern secular man so well, capturing his self-awareness in her verse, both Christian and non-Christian readers alike will be prepared to follow her when she tells us what she knows of God. And it is a very great deal indeed.

In The Cultural Context

Ancient Orient and Old Testament, by K. A. Kitchen (Inter-Varsity, 1966, 191 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Marvin R. Wilson, chairman, Division of Biblical Studies, Barrington College, Barrington, Rhode Island.

Here is a scholarly work that merits the attention of every serious student of the Old Testament. K. A. Kitchen, lecturer in the School of Archaeology and Oriental Studies at Liverpool University, invites the reader to “view afresh the Old Testament writings in their proper Ancient Near Eastern context.” This book is not an exhaustive treatment of the subject; rather, it aims to give some idea of the kind of contribution a study of the Ancient Orient ought to make to the study of the Old Testament by employing a wide sampling of cultural, historical, critical, and linguistic topics. In this task Kitchen succeeds admirably. His work is extensively documented, and the copious, up-to-date bibliographical listing are alone well worth the price of the book.

Kitchen is interested in re-examining the foundations through an inductive approach based upon a personal control of much of the primary source-material. His discussions are candid, forthright, and for the most part dispassionate. He interacts to a considerable degree with the pertinent Egyptological data bearing on the Old Testament, an area too often neglected in the past. In my opinion, however, he passes over too lightly the evidence accumulated by Professor Cyrus Gordon of an East Mediterranean cultural continuum shared by both Hebrew and Greek civilizations (cf. p. 81).

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

• Christian Reflections, by C. S. Lewis (Eerdmans, $3.95). The devout faith and brilliant intellect of the late Cambridge scholar and Christian apologist illuminate vital topics of culture and religion. A must for C. S. Lewis enthusiasts.

• A Christianity Today Reader, edited by Frank E. Gaebelein (Meredith, $7.95). An inviting sampler of choice articles, editorials, news stories, book reviews, and features published in CHRISTIANITY TODAY during the past decade.

• Theology of the English Reformers, by Philip Edgcumbe Hughes (Eerdmans, $5.95). A compendium of writings by English reformers (e.g., Tyndale, Latimer, and Cranmer) that shows the biblical basis of their teachings.

In developing his thesis, Kitchen takes several chapters to discuss Hebrew chronology. Since, in his own words, “no appeal whatsoever has been made to any theological starting point,” he feels free to go where the evidence leads him. Kitchen dates the patriarchs from 2000 to 1700 B.C. He prefers to date the Exodus after the accession of Rameses II and sets the limits for the Exodus as roughly 1290 to 1260 B.C. and for the beginning of the conquest about 1250 to 1220 B.C. The resulting interval about 300 years between the Exodus and the early years of Solomon (c. 971/970 B.C.) is explained on the basis of other lists of kings in the Ancient Near East, which are not “synchronous histories” (as found in the Book of Kings) but rather contemporary or partly concurrent (not all consecutive) lists. Kitchen deals with First Kings 6:1 by stating that “in the Ancient Orient, chroniclers and other writers often used excerpts from fuller records and this might explain the 480 years—a total of selected figures (details now unknown) taken from a larger total.” The reader can appreciate the author’s approach to the solution of a complex problem whether or not he fully accepts his conclusions.

In addition to historical problems, Kitchen discusses Hebrew contacts with Near Eastern religions. His treatment of the Sinai Covenant, which interacts favorably with Mendenhall’s view, is most enlightening. In later chapters the author deals with matters of literary criticism (documentary hypothesis, form criticism, and oral tradition), linguistic study (Ugaritic contributions are particularly noted), and related topics.

Kitchen’s volume is a significant stride in the direction biblical studies must take if they are to keep abreast with recent discovery. In reading this work, one is impressed anew that the Old Testament Scriptures can be properly understood as biblical revelation only when they are viewed as part of the warp and woof of the East Mediterranean culture in which the Hebrews dwelt.

Canadian Church Growth

The Church Grows in Canada, by Douglas J. Wilson (Ryerson Press, 1966, 224 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Donald C. Masters, professor of Canadian history, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario.

Dr. Wilson, editor of religion for the Montreal Star, has produced a useful volume tracing the establishment and development of the various religious groups in Canada, not only Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists, but also non-Christian cults like the Unitarians, the Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. He begins with the church in New France and ends with the Canadian Council of Churches.

Although his own viewpoint is obviously liberal, Wilson makes a commendable attempt to be fair to everybody. He is reasonably fair to the Salvation Army and the Pentecostals and very favorable to the Unitarians, of whom he writes:

Though the Unitarians as a body may be cool or often uncommitted to basic Christian tenets, they are warmly alert to the needs of suffering humanity, always seeking to add service to their avowed goal of a fellowship in widening experiences. Personal and social integration dominate their questing search.…

He devotes a great deal of space to the movement toward church union in Canada and is a strong advocate of the great instrument of cooperation between some of the Protestant Churches, the Canadian Council of Churches. “The separate denominations and churches,” he says, “will have to dwindle in importance, while concerted efforts through the Canadian Council of Churches or other national bodies will have to increase.”

In my opinion, Wilson does not give enough recognition to the role played by the more scholarly exponents of conservative religious opinions. Anglican evangelicals like Bishop Benjamin Cronyn, Edward and S. H. Blake, and James P. Sheraton, Presbyterians like D. H. MacVicar and Sir William Dawson, and comparable figures in other denominations made an important contribution to Canadian Protestantism in the nineteenth century. They have had many worthy successors in our century who have exercised a profound influence in the work of interdenominational bodies such as the Canadian Bible Society, the Gideons, and the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. Wilson’s book contains a section on the liberal Student Christian Movement but does not mention the conservative IVCF.

In his section on “The Task Ahead,” the author gives a sympathetic account of “the message” of the early Christian Church. In these days of radical theology, it is encouraging to read of the earliest Christians that “supremely it was in the Incarnation that they found the unique and perfect climate to these divine interventions [the mighty acts of God in human history].” I wish Wilson had seen fit to include a clear reference to the Atonement, a doctrine so basic in orthodox Christian thinking. His failure to do so is probably indicative of his differences with conservative Christians.

An Excellent Appetizer

The Cross in Canada: Vignettes of the Churches Across Four Centuries, edited by John S. Moir (Ryerson Press, 1966, 247 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Clarence M. Nicholson, principal, Pine Hill Divinity Hall, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The Canadian Centennial has occasioned a great deal of historical research in Canada, and this useful, sometimes amusing book is one of its ecclesiastical products. We are given selections from records of our past, from the coming of Jacques Cartier to our present ecumenical endeavors.

American readers will be struck by the similarity of the story of the labors and adventures of Canadian pioneers to their own sagas of early days, both east and west. Alongside Captain John Smith, there is the even more heroic figure of Father Brébeuf. Rand and Evans are Canadian counterparts of Williams and Brainerd. We even have a Canadian copy of William Jennings Bryan in the exuberant William (Bible Bill) Aber-hard.

Yet, as John Webster Grant points out in his introduction, there is a significant difference in the relation of the Canadian churches to the national community, when compared with the American experience. The theory of the relation of the church to the state was developed within a different historic situation here. As Grant says of the Canadian churches, “While abandoning claims to the privileges of establishment, they remained National in conception.”

John Moir has selected the documents with competence and a light hand. Echoes of the church union debates of the 1920s are balanced by a gentle caricature of Canadian churchmen done by Stephen Leacock. This is an excellent appetizer for a larger course in Canadian history.

Evangelical Impact—Then And Now

Protestant Church Colleges in Canada: A History, by D. C. Masters (University of Toronto, 1966, 225 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Leslie K. Tarr, administrator, General Baptist Seminary, Toronto, Ontario.

“Higher education in Canada owes a tremendous debt to the Christian churches.” After reading Dr. Masters’ history, one can hardly contest his conclusion. The book is a documented tribute to the influence of Canadian churches upon higher education. As the foreword points out, “all but a dozen of the universities of Canada had their origins as church-sponsored institutions.”

The study shows that most of the Protestant church colleges were established by persons committed to an orthodox viewpoint. The present picture? “There are few advocates of the older Evangelical position in the independent or affiliated church colleges. With the possible exception of Waterloo Collge [Waterloo Lutheran University], most of the church colleges, in so far as they were concerned with religion at all, were liberal, neo-orthodox, or existentialist in tone.”

Today only four of the original nineteen church-related liberal-arts colleges are independent—Acadia, Bishop’s, Mount Allison, and Waterloo Lutheran. (And are there not rumblings at Acadia?)

In sharp contrast to the strong evangelical roots of Canadian higher education is the present lack of evangelical impact. Probably the greatest influence is had by men—like Dr. Masters—who are teaching liberal-arts subjects in the secular universities.

Masters’ fair and thorough treatment should impress any reader. He has obviously studied his sources and has delved even into the student publications, which often reflect faculty thinking.

One suspects that the tribute paid to the early professors at Brandon College could have been paid to many of these Canadian educational pioneers: “They were contributing their brilliant talents … with a zeal as great as that of any missionary, and under conditions similar in primitiveness and stringency.”

As a Baptist who has a reputation (totally undeserved!) for loving contention, I did miss mention of the Crowe case at United College in Winnipeg and the more recent scuffle at Acadia. Were these incidents not related to the church-academic tension in higher education?

Masters’ fine study is one of three in a series. The others will deal with English and French Catholic colleges.

Three Centuries Of Evangelism

History of Evangelism, by Paulus Scharpff, translated by Helga Bender Henry (Eerdmans, 1966, 373 pp., $5.75), is reviewed by Mark W. Lee, chairman, Department of Speech, Whitworth College, Spokane, Washington.

The subtitle of Scharpff’s work clarifies the scope of his study: “Three Hundred Years of Evangelism in Germany, Great Britain and the United States of America.” Consequently, readers should not expect a report on the leading evangelistic efforts of the early centuries of the Church or on striking occurrences in modern times (e.g., the Swedish movement in the latter part of the nineteenth century or the Korean early in the twentieth). A closing section written by Kenneth L. Chafin provides a short summary of evangelism in America during the last fifty years.

The translation into English of History of Evangelism appears at a time when recent high-level discussions of the need for total Christian witness have had broad circulation among laymen. Numerous ministers have reported the happenings of the World Congress on Evangelism and the NCC convention in Florida. Nearly all significant religious journals and many secular ones have reviewed these meetings also. Scharpff’s book may contribute to the enthusiasm that will rise, it is hoped, from this investigation of evangelism.

The pietism that arose in Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is the starting point for Scharpff, although he includes a short beginning review of several important movements during the centuries from about 1000 until 1600. He believes that evangelism, as we know it, could not function fully in earlier times because of the prevailing religious and political restrictions.

Scharpff reveals his understanding of the use of the various means of sacred persuasion. Tracts, Bible portions, and hymns, as well as preaching, have been important methods for evangelism. Luther’s hymns, for example, were considered as effective as his sermons. But in every period, preaching has been the dominant means.

In my opinion, Scharpff’s style either was not fully developed or suffered in translation. The use of superlatives and descriptions that are not discreet in meaning, the phrase interpretations, and extraneous remarks suggest that his editing of his work was inadequate. And the repetition of a number of religious clichés suggests an unimaginative approach. Sometimes compact, sometimes comprehensive, the book is not consistent in those virtues; it is unevenly written. Many passages are pedantic and deal with minutiae rather than movements, causes, and effects. Although one can be inspired by Scharpff’s vignettes and instructed by his references to the origin of various methods, the book lacks the strength of unity. Revision would have given him a much better work, but the illness that led to his death must have prevented final editing.

Much of what is written by evangelicals lacks literary craftsmanship; perhaps this pernicious weakness is itself a barrier to effective evangelism.

History of Evangelism has striking omissions, such as the story of evangelism among Pentecostal groups and in small evangelical denominations. Furthermore, in order to communicate effectively the story of evangelism, a Christian scholar will have to wrestle with the repeated questions being raised about the matter. Note the book by William G. McLoughlin, Jr., Modern Revivalism: Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham, and others. Some of the questions are: Why are there so many excesses related to evangelistic efforts? Why are the movements so often ephemeral or transitory? Yet perhaps Scharpff was interested, not in answering questions, but in sharing an inspiration he had felt for decades.

Book Briefs

Thy Kingdom Come, by John E. Hines (Morehouse-Barlow, 1967, 123 pp., $3.95). The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church invites men to a new life in the Kingdom of God. A popular presentation—interesting but superficial.

Pew Asks: Pulpit Answers, by W. R. Clarke (Christopher, 1967, 161 pp., $3.95). Actual questions posed by contemporary laymen answered candidly and sensibly by a Presbyterian pastor.

Faith and Philosophy, by James Richmond (Lippincott, 1966, 224 pp., $3.95). A discussion of the contribution of philosophy to religion, from Hume and Kant to Barth and Braithwaite.

Creeds, Councils, and Controversies, edited by J. Stevenson (Seabury, 1966, 390 pp., $9). A collection of documents that illuminate church history, A.D. 337–461.

The World Treasury of Religious Quotations, compiled and edited by Ralph L. Woods (Hawthorn, 1966, 1,106 pp., $15). Fifteen thousand dandy bits of knowledge and opinion that could brighten dull sermons and add luster to any minister’s reputation for erudition!

The Art of Being a Sinner, by John M. Krumm (Seabury, 1967, 128 pp., $3.50). With biblical insights and literary allusions, Krumm fascinatingly discusses the meaning, effects, and cure of sin.

God with Us: A Life of Jesus for Young Readers, by Marianne Radius (Eerdmans, 1966, 286 pp., $4.50). An attractive, readable, and challenging presentation of the life of Christ for young people.

Beacon Bible Commentary, Volume IV: The Major Prophets, by Ross E. Price, et al. (Beacon Hill, 1966, 694 pp., $5.95). A sound exegetical exposition of the major prophets by Church of the Nazarene scholars. Upholds such traditional views as the unity of the Book of Isaiah and sixth century B.C. dating of Daniel.

Preaching as Counseling, by Edmund Holt Linn (Judson, 1966, 159 pp., $3.95). A study of Harry Emerson Fosdick’s pulpit theory, which centered on a specific problem in the life of the individual. His sermonizing method includes many sound principles but does not achieve the immediate and long-range results that expository preaching achieves.

Paperbacks

The Christian Alternative to Socialism, by Irving E. Howard (Crestwood Books, 1966, 155 pp., $2.50). From a Christian perspective Howard defends free-market capitalism and criticizes planned economies.

Youth in Crisis, edited by Peter C. Moore (Seabury, 1966, 146 pp., $2), Charles Malik leads off a series of essays on the crisis facing young people and the responsibility of the schools to them. Be sure to read Frank Gaebelein’s address, “The Christ of Crisis,” but go easy on the immature ramblings of William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

The Grace of God, by Samuel J. Mikolaski (Eerdmans, 1966, 108 pp., $1.65). An excellent study of the centrality of grace in the relation between God and man. Considers Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox doctrines of grace along with that set forth in Scripture. Recommended.

Freeway to Babylon, by Talmage Wilson (self-published, 1966, 312 pp., $1.50). The second edition of a book written and published by an experienced Presbyterian missionary in which he calls attention to the deterioration of theology in his church.

Doomsday Cult, by John Lofland (Prentice-Hall, 1966, 276 pp., $3.75). An illuminating sociological study of the functioning of an unidentified cultic group: steps in conversion, methods of proselytization, and maintenance of cultic life.

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