FACULTY ISSUE Columbia Theological Seminary Bulletin For interested college men and women CHURCH VOCATIONS WEEK-END January 28-30, 1966 an opportunity to think together about the nature of Christian ministry and to see the place of the seminary in preparation for service in the Church. for information write to: Mr. Robert Catlin, Columbia Seminary, Decatur, Ga. 30031 COLUMBIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY BULLETIN Volume LVIII December, 1965 No. 5 Published five times a year by Columbia Theological Seminary, Box 291, Decatur, Georgia 30031. Entered as second-class matter, May 9, 1928, at the Post Office at Decatur, Ga., under the Act of Congress of August 24, 1912. Second-class postage paid at Decatur, Georgia. CONTENTS Page FOREWORD By J. McDowell Richards 3 ARTICLES "Bethlehem of Judaea: A Christmas Meditation" 4 ... By Ludwig R. Dewitz "The Creative Task of Theology" 6 ... By Philip E. Hughes "The Vacuum of Unbelief" 20 ... By Stuart B. Babbage REVIEWS William Pierce Randel The Ku Klux Klan 25 . . . By J. McDowell Richards D. F. S. Thomson (tr.) Erasmus and Cambridge: 25 The Cambridge Letters of Erasmus Margaret Mann Phillips The 'Adages' of Erasmus: 25 A Study with Translations Craig R. Thompson (tr.) The Colloquies of Erasmus 26 ... By Stuart B. Babbage Paul T. Fuhrmann Extraordinary Christianity 27 ... By Ronald S. Wallace Gerhard Kittel (ed.) 28 Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Volume II ... By Philip E. Hughes George F. Thomas Religious Philosophies of the West 28 ... By Philip E. Hughes Keith R. Bridston and Dwight W. Culver Pre-Seminary Education 29 ... By Charles B. Cousar James T. Cleland Preaching to be Understood 30 ... By Wade P. Huie, Jr. J. Gordon Chamberlin Freedom and Faith: 30 New Approaches to Christian Education Kendig Brukeher Cully The Search for a Christian 31 Education Since 1940 David J. Ernsberger Education for Renewal 3 1 Robert J. Havighurst The Educational Mission of the Church 31 Johannes Hofinger, S. J. and Theodore C. Stone (ed.) 31 Pastoral Cathechetics Robert W. Lynn Protestant Strategics in Education 3 1 Jan A. Muirhead Education in the New Testament 3 1 Massey H. Shepherd, Jr. Liturgy and Education 3 1 Gerald H. Slusser The Local Church in Transition: 31 Theology, Education and Ministry Charles R. Stinnette, Jr. Learning In Theological Perspective 31 ... By Neely Dixon McCarter Heinrich Ott Theology and Preaching 33 ... By Wade P. Huie, Jr. Ralph Moellering Christian Conscience and Negro Emancipation 34 ... By Hubert V. Taylor Erwin Panofsky Tomb Sculpture: Its Changing Aspects 35 from Ancient Egypt to Bernini ... By Stuart B. Babbage Joachim Jeremias The Central Message of the New Testament 36 ... By William C. Robinson Eugene R. Fairweather (ed.) The Oxford Movement 37 ... By Philip E. Hughes Page Albert N. Wells Pascal's Recovery of Man's Wholeness 37 ... By Paul T. Fuhrmann Jean-Paul Sartre The Words 38 ... By Neely Dixon McCarter Clyde L. Manschreck (tr. & ed.) Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine: 39 Loci Communes 1555 ... By Ronald S. Wallace William A. Clebsch England's Earliest Protestant, 1520-1535 40 ... By Philip E. Hughes Eugene Kevane Augustine the Educator 42 ... By Neely Dixon McCarter Paul H. D. Lang Ceremony and Celebration 44 ... By Hubert V. Taylor Surjit Singh Communism, Christianity, Democracy 44 ... By Harold B. Prince R. E. Clements Prophecy and Covenant 45 ... By Ludwig R. Dewitz W. D. Davies The Setting of the Sermon on The Mount 46 ... By Charles B. Cousar Leon Morris The Cross in the New Testament Al ... By William C. Robinson Dewey M. Beegle God's Word Into English 48 ... By Dean G. McKee Ronald S. Wallace The Ten Commandments 48 ... By Harry A. Fifield Christopher Hill Society And Puritanism in P re-Revolutionary England 49 Christopher Hill Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution 49 ... By Stuart B. B abb age Friedrich Kalb Theology of Worship in 17th Century Lutheranism 50 ... By Hubert V. Taylor Herbert M. Waddams Life and Fire of Love 51 ... By James H. Gailey, Jr. Jack Finegan Handbook of Biblical Chronology 52 ... By Ludwig R. Dewitz Donald J. Bruggink and Carl H. Droppers Christ and Architecture 53 ... By Mrs. James H. Gailey, Jr. John Bishop Nero: The Man and the Legend 53 ... By Stuart B. B abb age Donald Macleod Presbyterian Worship 54 ... By Hubert V. Taylor R. E. O. White Open Letter to Evangelicals 55 ... By Manford G. Gutzke John B. Cobb, Jr. A Christian Natural Theology 55 ... By Neely Dixon McCarter Cecil Northcutt Hymns in Christian Worship 56 ... By Hubert V. Taylor J. V. Langmead Casserley Toward A Theology of History 57 ... By Olof H. Lyon V. H. H. Green Religion at Oxford and Cambridge 57 ... By Stuart B. B abb age Jesse Jai McNeil Mission in Metropolis 58 ... By Cecil A. Thompson Daniel Cappon Toward an Understanding of Homosexuality 58 ... By Robert L. Faulkner SHORTER NOTICES 60 POEMS Shannon Cumming Brief Thoughts from Briefer Moments IBC Only by Thy Love FOREWORD This issue of the Columbia Theological Seminary Bulletin is expected to reach the hands of its readers at the Advent Season. It is appropriate, therefore, that it should open with a Christmas Meditation. The treatment of Bethlehem of Judaea by Ludwig R. Dewitz suggests several lines of thought which should be provocative and helpful. In his article on The Creative Task of Theology, Philip E. Hughes lays an emphasis on the centrality for Christian thought of both the Living and the Written Word of God which is also appropriate to the Season. In presenting the Reformed position with reference to Scripture as the source of the revealed truths with which the Christian theologian must work, the author clearly suggests the fact that we have not begun to exhaust those truths. but that our age is also challenged to creative study and thought upon the basis of God's Revelation to man. Stuart B. Babbage contributes a modern application of our Lord's Parable of the Empty House which further emphasizes the need of our day for a positive presentation of the Christian Faith. Two brief but moving poems have been contributed for this bulletin by Miss Shannon Cumming, a member of last year's student body who is now under appointment as a missionary of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. to the Congo. In accordance with our policy, a wide variety of new books is the subject of reviews by various members of the Faculty. J. McDowell Richards BETHLEHEM OF JUDAEA Ludwig R. Dewitz A CHRISTMAS MEDITATION Long before Mary and Joseph made their journey to their ancestral home in Bethlehem Ephratah, another famous pair whose names have never been forgotten were approaching the city from the direction of Bethel. It was obvious that Rachel could not continue to reach the city proper for the time had come that she must give birth to a son. She is afraid that death will prevail over life as the pain of bringing her child to birth seems so agoniz- ing. Into the darkness of her despair there comes the comforting message of the midewife: "Fear not; thou shalt have this son also." It is, however, at the sacrifice of her own life that her son is born. "Call him Ben-oni, son of my sorrow," she urges Jacob with her dying breath, but the father follows a different inspiration as he gives his son the name Benjamin, "Son of the right hand," a term that speaks of strength and not of weakness, of a power that upholds rather than a life that succumbs. Is it not strange that of all the sons of Jacob it is only Benjamin, born in the fields of Bethlehem, whose coming into the world is told in greater detail? As far as his brothers are concerned, only their names and parentage are given, but in the case of Benjamin the place of his birth and the circum- stances surrounding it are mentioned. Is it mere fancy, an unwarranted read- ing of the text, when we seem to hear the first harmonies of Christmas music in the sound of the narrative, when we think we can see some rays of the light that shone so brightly on Christmas night as the scene is opened up to us by the writer of Genesis? Bethlehem is brought to our notice in connection with the birth of a child; there is a strange mingling of sorrow and joy, of life and death, of fear and hope that we meet again so many years later when we witness the birth of Jesus: the mother's joy and the sword that would pierce her heart, the shepherds' fear and the angel's "Fear not," the darkness of the night and the heavenly light, the threat to the child's life and its increase in wisdom and stature. How beautiful the design of Christmas in its historical delineation! Years passed, and the people of Bethlehem shared in the joys of harvest time as well as in the sorrows of famine. Once the hunger was so terrible that whole families left the town to seek sustenance elsewhere. People still remembered the time when Elimelech and his wife Naomi had gone to Moab; ten years had passed since those days of want, and things had changed for the better. Then the day came when Bethlehem was stirred by the news that Naomi had actually returned. Those years had taken their toll; no won- der that she told her former friends not to call her Naomi any more but Mara, seeing that "the Almighty had dealt very bitterly with her." What a comfort it was to her to have Ruth, her daughter-in-law, at her side! Bethlehem, as the scholars remind us, might have been originally the place where the god Lachmu was worshipped; at any rate, to the Hebrews the sound of the word spoke of nourishment, "the house of bread," and how true this was in the case of Naomi and Ruth. It was at the time of harvest that their circumstances changed, not only in regard to physical want, but Ludwig R. Dewitz is Professor of Old Testament Language, Literature and Exegesis. 4 more so respecting their deeper needs for fellowship and life's fulfillment. Again it is the fact of the birth of a son that forms the climax in the dramatic development of the story of Ruth. "May you prosper in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem," that is the common sentiment as the people of the town greet Boaz and Ruth at their marriage. Little did the parents realize then that not many generations hence Israel's greatest king, the renowned David, would be born as one of their descendants in Bethlehem. If we find in the Bethlehem story of the Book of Ruth an atmosphere that is reminiscent of the earlier episode recorded in the Book of Genesis, and thus suggestive of the tidings of Christmas, it is apparent that in the story of Ruth a new note is added by the fact that a stranger to the common- wealth of Israel is joined to God's chosen people by what took place at Bethlehem. Many years later the light of a star was to guide wise men from the east to the city of David that there they might worship Him Who was to be not only Israel's glory, but also "a light to lighten the Gentiles." When we turn next to the chronicle of Bethlehem, we are still a long way from Christmas as far as time is concerned, but in spirit we are very close to the great event. Samuel has gone out to Bethlehem to anoint Israel's King David in the very place where one day The Anointed of the Lord would enter into this world's history that we might henceforth be able to celebrate Christmas proclaiming, as the word indicates, that The Anointed One has been sent! The very words with which the visit of Samuel to the house of Jesse closes seem to herald the event of the incarnation: "Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward" (I Sam. 16:13). Apart from the scene of anointing, Bethlehem looms large once more in the life of David. It is war time, and desperately athirst David longs for some of the water from the well of Bethlehem. Three of his valiant friends risk their lives in order to obtain the precious draught of refreshing water for their captain; to their surprise, David pours the water on the ground refusing to drink. Significantly the Chronicler says: "David would not drink of it, but poured it out to the Lord" (I Chr. 11:18). Does not Christmas tell us of the great "kenosis," the "emptying," when "the word was made flesh and dwelt among us," when divine glory was re- vealed in condescending goodness, not ashamed to call us brethren! Out- wardly there is little resemblance in the picture of Christmas and the scene of David's pouring out of the water from the well of Bethlehem, but the principle of sacrifice working a deep and lasting union is exemplified in both. In the poetry of the Psalms reference to Bethlehem is made only in passing. In the 132nd Psalm, which is a record of David's concern for the ark of the Lord, his desire to have a fitting place to bring the presence of God to the consciousness of his people, we read: "I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids, until I find out a place for the Lord, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob. Lo, we heard of it at Ephratah: we found it in the fields of the wood" (Ps. 132:4-6). It would strain the rules of sound scriptural exegesis to see in these verses a prophecy of Christmas, but might we not take the mere suggestion of Bethlehem in its relationship to David's concern for a place where God's presence might be located as a thought that well fits the context of the Christmas story? It is not at a specific geographical place that has any special sacredness attached to it that God is pleased to dwell, but it is in the Christ Who was born at Bethlehem that "all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily" (Col. 2:9). The final significance of Bethlehem is impressed on the people of the Old Covenant by the prophet Micah when he declares in a truly inspired and inspiring message: "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting" (Micah 5:2). In the Old Covenant there is the promise of the New Covenant, the breach shall be healed, for sinners there shall be a Saviour, for the helpless, redemption, for those used to bad news and much sadness "good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." Thus Bethlehem is a story of promise and fulfillment. THE CREATIVE TASK OF THEOLOGY Philip E. Hughes Creativity, properly speaking, is the faculty or process of making some- thing out of nothing. Given this definition, the cynic might be tempted to observe that the overwhelming flood of elucubrations that now pour forth from the religious publishing houses indicates that there is an astonishing number of theological technicians with a facility for fabricating intricate patterns out of nonexistent or insubstantial premises. Inventiveness, however, rather than creativity, is the category to which industry of this kind belongs. Its exponents seem intent on producing or reproducing nothing old: for them whatever is not new is dismissed as archaic and irrelevant. At the other end of the spectrum are those who seem intent on producing nothing new: for them, whatever is not old is suspect and threatening. They deal in prefabricated blocks of theological concrete. Creativity is not for them. But there is a mean between these two extremes, for we have it on good authority that the theologian who is well instructed in the kingdom of heaven is "like a householder who can produce from his store both the new and the old" (Matt. 13:52). Both the new and the old: this is the framework of theology that is truly creative. But it is important that we should understand clearly what we mean by creativity in this connection. To produce half a hundred massive volumes of divinity is in itself not necessarily creative, except (almost cer- tainly) of fatigue and boredom. Nor is the most brilliant human theorizing in the ultimate issue creative. The creative function, in its absolute sense, belongs to God, not to man. God alone is the Creator of all that exists. "By faith we understand that the world was created by the Word of God" (Heb. 11:3). This is the first of the old things that the wise theologian brings out from his storehouse. Man himself is God's creature, and he is this before he Phillip E. Hughes is Guest Professor of New Testament Language. Literature and Exegesis. This Honors' Day address, which was delivered in the Columbia Presbyterian Church, Decatur, Georgia, will shortly appear in a symposium en- titled, "Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology" (Eerdmans). can even begin to think about being in any sense creative himself. It follows that if we are to speak about creativity in relation to man and his powers the term can be used only in a secondary or derivative sense. Indeed, the creative faculty, which is one of the glories of man, is a significant aspect of the image of God in which man has been made. The Creator's mandate to man to "subdue" the earth and to "have do- minion" over the created order is in itself essentially creative (Gen. 1:28). It is an invitation to man to realize and bring to expression the creative potentialities that reside within him. Man alone of all God's creatures has the power to think, to discuss, to plan, to explore and harness the limitless forces of nature, to adapt, to build, to civilize in short, to be a cultural being. He has been given the logical capacity to investigate, systematically and scientifically, the logic of the universe, which itself is the imprint of the logic of the Divine Mind. It is the basic rationality of things which not only explains the fact that the world is a cosmos and a universe, that is, an ordered whole, but also alone makes possible the function of the scientist and the philosopher, so that, as one fact or truth leads on to another, man the thinker can penetrate ever more deeply and creatively into the logical structure of the world to which he belongs. But the exercise of the faculty of creativity, if it is to be consistently meaningful and progressive, must be fulfilled by man in constant recognition of his own creatureliness: in other words, in acknowledgment that as a finite creature he has capacities that are limited, that he is ever dependent on and indebted to his Creator for all that he is and has, and therefore that in all that he does his ambition should be to glorify and be grateful to God. Man is not God. He does not and cannot work from nothing. He works from the fundamental datum of an ordered universe which is stamped with the logic and the goodness of the divine character. But there is a second "old" thing which the wise theologian brings out of his storehouse, and that is the lamentable fact that man is a fallen crea- ture. With incredible folly he has allowed himself to be drawn by an enemy into rebellion against his beneficent Creator, in the empty expectation that by doing so, by asserting his own self-adequacy, he will become as God. But man can never cease to be what he essentially is, a creature (and all that implies), any more than the Creator can cease to be what He essentially is, God. How could man's willful attempt to overturn the true order of things have any effect other than to bring a curse on the expression of his crea- tivity? By his self-esteem and self-inversion he has introduced a dark shadow of chaos into the universe. The nemesis of frustration dogs his steps. There is evil mixed with the good of even his highest achievements. The perversion of society, which is the rotten core of every civilization, is the bitter harvest of human sinfulness. Despite all the remarkable cultural, scientific, and philanthropic advances of the centuries, man shows a malign propensity (which certainly has not decreased with the increase of knowledge) to em- ploy his great faculties neither to the glory of God nor for the benefit of his fellow men, but for the creation of falsehood and hatred and injustice and destruction. The advance of technology has not been matched by an advance of morality and magnanimity. By persuading himself, against all reason, that the image of God is the same thing as the being of God, that the reflection or imprint is identical with the reality, or, to put it in more recent language, that God is the ultimate depth of all his being, man seeks to destroy the "image" with its implications of dependence and creatureliness and shuts his eyes to the inescapable truth, so emphatically expounded by Christ, that it is precisely from the depths of his fallen nature that all the things which defile him proceed (Mark 7:21). Unable, however, to gainsay the defilement of society (of which he is part) by greed, lust, lying, and violence, he attempts to cover over his guilt by blaming forces over which he has no control heredity, environment, sick- ness, mental black-out and pleads for consolation, not punishment. This, of course, is an appalling abnegation of the proper dignity of man. It warns us that the suppression of the image of God, in which man's true dignity resides, so far from exalting man to God-like heights, plunges him into an abyss of human futility. He is conscious of the amazing creative faculties within himself; yet, instead of using them consistently and purposefully and with gratitude to the glory of God, whose image he bears, he finds himself, through his own folly, increasingly in the grip of frustration and meaningless- ness. How could it be otherwise when the true order of things, which alone can give coherence and meaning to existence, is met with denial and rebellion? This predicament of man is, of course, the setting for the Gospel. Re- demption is essential if man is to be made whole once again. And the Good News is precisely this: that "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself" (II Cor. 5:19); that through Christ's offering of Himself in man's stead the work of atonement has been achieved, so that the new man in Christ Jesus is one in whom the divine image is renewed, his dignity restored, and his personality reintegrated. Now at last such a man begins to live crea- tively and purposefully to the glory of God and the benefit of his fellow men. And this stupendous truth that, thanks entirely to the divine initia- tive on man's behalf, the grace and mercy and power of God are freely available is the third "old" thing that the wise theologian brings out of his storehouse. It is a datum, a constant, ever true and ever relevant. "Know thyself" was the Socratic principle of wisdom; but Socrates' in- terpretation of this principle was vitiated by the dualistic concept of the world which governed his thought. The dilemma he faced could be surmounted only by the abandonment of the true humanity of man, by tearing man asunder in an irreconcilable dichotomy of soul and body. The Christian understanding of man alone enables him to know himself in a manner which is free from the crippling conflicts of a dualistic world-view. While it is true that, inasmuch as he is a creature, man cannot have that completeness of knowledge which belongs to the Creator, yet the man-in-Christ has a knowl- edge of himself which is true and coherent, and indeed he looks forward to the consummation of his redemption when he will know even as he is known (I Cor. 13: 12). And to know oneself truly is also to know oneself creatively, because it is to know oneself as constituted in the image of God, which, for the believer, is reintegrated in Christ. The man-in-Christ is set free to live in joyful creativity to the glory of God. Furthermore, as the whole man is redeemed by Christ, body as well as soul, so this applies to man's being in its entirety, in every one of his activities and relationships. In no sphere, surely, does it apply more obviously than in the sphere of theology. The proper task of theology, then, is a creative task. But the theologian does not fashion his system out of thin air. Just as the scientist works with and from the given substance of the cosmos, and just as the sculptor shapes his forms from a given substance such as marble, so the theologian has a 8 given "substance" with which to work. This "substance" is the Word of God. The Word of God is indeed the creative force of the universe. The world itself is the effect of that dynamic word (cf. Heb. 11:3 already cited) and vibrates with its creative potentialities. Nor is the substance of the cosmos a mere static mass. The basis of all matter, as we know today, is energy. In every minute particle there is an unimaginable potential of dynamic force. In every structure, small and great, there is an amazing logic. The more we learn about our universe, the more conscious we become of how little we really know of the wonders of its structure and operation. Despite the spec- tacular advances of our day and the preceding centuries of intensive research, thinkers, scientists, and artists are aware that they have advanced but a short distance into the vast ocean of creativity that lies before them. The increase of man's horizon of knowledge and perception leads, indeed, not to the di- minishment but to the expansion of the creative task. In this sense at least it may be affirmed that ours is an ever-expanding universe. The scientist does not find that his creative faculties are inhibited by having to work with the given substance of the world. On the contrary, he is ever discovering that the treasures and potencies of the cosmos are inex- haustive and that his task becomes ever more demanding and exciting. So, too, the creative faculties of the theologian are not inhibited by having to work with the datum of the Word of God, but are unfailingly stretched and challenged by the inexhaustible treasures and potencies that belong to it. But what exactly is this Word of God with and from which the theo- logian has to work. It is, for all practical purposes, the Word of God written, that is, the Bible. This by itself is a blunt statement, and open to misunder- standing. It must not be taken to imply, as some have supposed it to imply, the supplanting of the authority of the Living Word of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, by the authority of an inanimate document of paper and print. The authority of Scripture and the authority of Christ are not in fact in conflict; for it is precisely the Bible that bears unequivocal testimony to the supreme Lordship of Christ. The central focus of the scriptural revelation is the person of Jesus Christ and His redeeming work. Within the framework of God's dealings in creation, judgment, and redemption with His creatures, man is placed in his world in the perspective of eternity. The Bible, indeed, in that it conveys the knowledge of God's saving deeds in Christ, plays an integral role in the divine purpose of redemption. The treasures creatively quarried from Holy Scripture are not the treasures of an inanimate object but the riches of Him who is the living Lord. The Written Word ever points us to the Living Word "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3). The authority of the Bible, moreover, rests on the fact that it bears the imprimatur of Christ our supreme authority. So plainly is this the case, that there can be no question of the authority of Christ being dependent on the word of the Bible: it is in fact the authority of the Bible which is dependent on the word of Christ. And this is true not only of the authority of the Old Testament. The crucial factor is certainly the authority of the New Testa- ment, for the authority of the Old Testament, seen in the Christian perspec- tive of fulfillment and consummation, stands or falls with the authority of the New Testament. How, then, is the authority of the New Testament to be established? The answer, already indicated, must be: only by the su- premely authoritative word of Christ. And this particular word has been preserved for us in the pages of the New Testament itself. St. John tells us how, during those sacred hours in the upper room prior to His betrayal and crucifixion, our Lord assured His apostles that after His departure the Holy Spirit, who is the very Spirit of truth, would not only be sent, but would actually dwell in them; that He would bear witness to Christ, and glorify Him, taking the things of Christ and declaring them to them; and that He would bring to their remembrance all that He had taught them (John 14: 16f., 26; 15:26; 16:13ff.). This explains the transformation in the apostles after the day of Pentecost, as seen in the Acts and the Epistles, compared with what they were before Pentecost, as seen in the Gospels. The privileged but uncomprehending years at the feet of Christ were not wasted: what before they had failed to grasp they now understood and expounded with assurance. Their teaching was not their own; it was Christ's, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It is customary to speak of the doctrine of the New Testament as apostolical; but it is something more than this, for, in the true and ultimate analysis, it is dominical: it is the doctrine of the Lord Himself. These promises of Christ, then, and their Pentecostal fulfillment con- stitute the veritable charter of the New Testament. The teachings of its pages carry the authentic ring of the voice of the Master Himself. Christ continues to instruct His Church through the writings of His apostles, who themselves were under the control of the Holy Spirit. This means, inevitably, that if the Church is to obey the authority of the Living Word it must sub- mit itself to the authority of the Written Word. This the Church appreciated from the beginning. Hence the careful sifting out of the spurious from the genuine apostolic writings. And hence the most significant development in the history of the post-apostolic Church, namely, the ecumenical acknowl- edgment of the canon of the New Testament. So far from placing itself above Scripture, the Church thereby placed itself under Scripture, saying in effect: This is the rule and standard to which the faith and conduct of the Church must conform if it is to remain genuinely Christian. The fixing of the canon was of crucial and abiding importance because it was the acknowledgment of the dominical authenticity of the New Testament. It was a clear and fully conscious marking out of the boundary line beyond which the Church was not to wander. As Oscar Cullmann has written: The fixing of the Christian canon of Scripture signifies precisely that the Church herself at a given moment traced a clear and firm line of demarcation between the period of the apostles and the period of the Church. . . , in other words, between apostolic tradition and ecclesi- astical tradition. If this was not the significance of the formation of the canon the event would be meaningless. By establishing the principle of a canon, the Church recognized in this very act that from that moment tradition was no longer a criterion of truth. She drew a line under the apostolic tradition. She declared implicitly that from that moment every subsequent tradition must be submitted to the control of the apostolic tradition. In other terms, she declared: here is the tradition which con- stituted the Church, which imposed itself on her. 1 1. "Scripture and Tradition," Scottish Journal of Theology, Vol. 6, No. 2, June 1953, pp. 126f. 10 This being so, it is undoubtedly true, as Emil Brunner has observed, that the fate of the Bible is the fate of Christianity. Christ sternly rebuked the traditionalists of His day for rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep their tradition and thus making void the Word of God (Mark 7:9ff.). And it has been amply demonstrated in the history of the Church that when the Bible has been lost from sight, overlaid with the traditions of men, Christianity has languished and sunk into ineffectiveness; but when the Bible has been restored to its rightful place then too the Church has recovered its vitality and authority and sense of purpose. It cannot be too strongly emphasized, however, that the phenomenon of Holy Scripture is a mystery. The temptation at all times is to seek, even with the best of motives, to explain this mystery which can only have the effect of explaining the mystery away and reducing the phenomenon to a category where it does not belong. The mystery in this case consists in the paradox that a book composed of the writings of human authors can yet at the same time be designated the Word of God. As with every Christian paradox, the truth lies, and only lies, in the retention and combination of its two poles. "Explanation" of the paradox solely in terms of one of its poles is nothing other than rationalization. To dissolve a mystery in this way is not to solve it. But this is what is constantly being done. Either the Bible is explained as entirely the work of God, the human writers being no more than the pens which God used, so to speak, or it is explained as merely the work of men. In either case the "solution" is neatly parcelled up in accord- ance with a particular predisposition, and the mystery of the paradox has been ignored. But nothing has been gained. Indeed, the character of the phenomenon has been violated and we are now confronted, not with a dynamic paradox, but with the static either/ or of a contradiction. It was attempts to explain the mystery of the person of the Incarnate Son, by stressing either the pole of His divinity or the pole of His humanity, that gave rise to the heresies which threatened the survival of the early Church. But the frailty of His body, which was apparent in hunger and fatigue and above all in His sufferings and death on the cross, was not in fact a contradiction of His divine sovereignty. Similarly (though, of course, the analogy does not belong to the realm of ontology) the frailty inherent in Scripture as the word of man does not invalidate it as being truly at the same time the Word of God. Like a body, the Bible in its own particular category of revelation is an organic whole. Every part has its proper place and function. The removal of a part disturbs the balance and integrity of the whole. Yet all the parts are not equally important. Just as certain parts of the human body, such as the head and the heart and the lungs, are vital and indispensable, whereas other parts are dispensable in the sense that the body can survive their loss, albeit in a maimed condition; so too some parts of Scripture are vital and indispensable, while others have a humbler function and are relatively dispensable. There is another phenomenon which is familiar to the Christian ex- perience, namely, that to the eye of unbelief the Bible may be dull and dry-as-dust, or it may perhaps be of academic and literary interest, but it is not seen as the dynamic and authoritative Word of God. To the eye of faith, however, it comes alive. Suddenly, when a man comes to faith in Christ, the Bible becomes a necessity for him. The book that before he found closed and remote he now studies with eagerness and delight. The explanation is 11 what the Reformers used to call the internal witness of the Holy Spirit: the Spirit of God bearing testimony to the Word of God in the believing heart. The reintegration, in Christ, of the image of God leads at once to a hunger for the Word of God, a strong desire for a knowledge of the things of God, which is the knowledge of absolute truth. This is what Paul is talking about when he says that "no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God," and that as believers "we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God." Indeed, through this inner working of the Holy Spirit "we have the mind of Christ" (I Cor. 2:1 Iff.). Helmut Thielicke speaks of this phenomenon in the following terms: Our deliverance lies in Him who opens our deaf ears and blind eyes that we may see Him at the vanishing point of every biblical perspective. In this sense we are always setting out toward someone who has already overtaken us and from whom we came in the first place. For, as Augus- tine said, we would not be able to seek Him if He had not already found us. . . . Therefore if there is to be such a thing as theological knowledge, an understanding of the Word and the mighty acts of God, then the analogy to God which men have given up must be restored in a new act of creation. The divine Word must create its own hearers. (For there are no longer any hearers who would understand it 'naturally'.) The theo- logical locus in which this creative function of the Word or if you will this 'creation of the hearer', is dealt with is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. For this doctrine declares that we are called to share in God's self-knowledge and thus to be put into the proper analogy. The Holy Spirit, who enlightens us, is none other than God Himself. In Him and through Him we become partakers of that which God Himself knows about Himself. For the Spirit (not man's reason, but this Spirit, the Holy Spirit) 'searches everything, even the depths of God'. 2 Scripture, indeed, belongs to the Holy Spirit. It is He, the Lord and Life-Giver, who makes real in the hearts of men the redemption procured by Christ, thereby and at the same time authenticating the genuineness of the testimony of the biblical authors; for, as the creed declares, He it is "who spake by the prophets." Should not the creed be a constant reminder to us that the mystery of Scripture belongs to the realm of faith and there- fore is accessible only to faith? I question very much whether it is right for us to propound and defend notions concerning the mechanics of inspiration. To do so is to transpose, however unintentionally, the Bible from the area of faith to the area of reason, and in this respect to place it under man instead of under God. Just at this point, it seems to me, fundamentalists have de- veloped a somewhat frenetic rationalism of their own and tend, all unwit- tingly, to conduct their warfare from the same ground as the radicals whom they oppose. Not, however, that the radicals are models of consistency, for, though they are avowedly rationalistic in their approach, yet it is their cus- tom to seek support by quoting passages from the Bible, as though from the authoritative Word of God, when it suits them to do so. If the Church has placed itself under Scripture, which, as we have seen, is the significance of the acceptance of the canon of Scripture, then it must 2. Between Heaven and Earth (New York, 1965), pp. 38, 42. 12 approve and preserve the teaching of the Bible concerning itself. As Her- mann Sasse has said: It is the Bible itself which tells me that the Scriptures are written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and are therefore the Word of God. This and nothing else is taught concerning the Inspiration in the written Word of God. This, therefore, is the dogma of the Church, to be ac- cepted by faith, just as we accept the dogma of the Incarnation or any of the great doctrines confessed in the Creed. We shall never know in this world how the Virgin Birth of Christ or His bodily resurrection was possible. So we shall never understand in this life the inscrutable miracle which is expressed in the words "according to the Scriptures," "who spake by the prophets." 3 But if, conversely, theologians and others now wish to supplant the teaching of Scripture with their own ideas and "insights," they must resist the temp- tation to use the Bible as a prop for their positions. In academic circles today the Bible is largely a discredited book. To all intents and purposes biblical studies have become a branch of technology, so much so that the electronic computer is the latest authority to make a pronouncement on questions of authenticity and authorship. All too com- monly Scripture is treated anatomically, like a corpse in pickle to be dis- sected. It has become the preserve of the expert in the laboratory. Warned that trespassing is prohibited, the ordinary man is advised that he is not competent to understand and interpret the meaning of the Bible. No one will question the necessity for an analytical approach to the text of Scripture and the immense contribution which contemporary scholarship is making to our knowledge of the semantics and linguistics of the Bible and its his- torical provenance. What is to be deplored is the loss of the sense of the mystery of Holy Scripture as dynamic and God-given, and therefore vital, and the removal of the Bible from the hands of the ordinary Christian who can make no claims to theological or technological expertise. As Alan Richardson has written: There were losses as well as gains amongst the consequences of what we may call the new historical control of biblical exegesis. Amongst the losses must be reckoned the gradual decay of the ordinary Christian's sense that he can read the Bible for himself without an interpreter and discover its unambiguous meaning. One factor at least in the decline of Bible reading on the part of individual Christians must surely be that the Bible came to be regarded as a book for experts, requiring an elaborate training in linguistic and historical disciplines before it could be properly understood; if it needed expert knowledge before it could be read, it was best to leave the Bible to the experts, like so many other things in a world of specialization. The layman would be satisfied if, every now and then, some expert would bring him up to date in the conclusions which the research workers had reached; he could thus be spared the trouble of reading the Bible for himself, since he would be unlikely to profit by his own inexpert flounderings. 4 3. "Concerning the Nature of Inspiration," The Reformed Theological Review (Australia), Vol. XXIII, No. 2, June 1964, p. 41. 4. "The Rise of Modern Biblical Scholarship," chapter VIII in The Cambridge History of the Bible: The West, from the Reformation to the Present Day (Cambridge, 1963), p. 301. 13 This is indeed a grievous loss, and it cannot be viewed with complacency, for the survival of a whole civilization built on the foundation of Scripture is at stake. While we agree that "both spiritual insight and historical under- standing are necessary for the accomplishment of sound biblical exegesis," we dispute the assertion that "today the modern reader knows that he cannot understand what Jeremiah or St. Paul is talking about because he does not know enough about the historical background." 5 Over and over again in the past, and still today in the present, the experience of any humble man or woman with the spiritual insight of faith proves that through the pages of the Bible Jeremiah and St. Paul speak the message of God with power and meaning to the believing heart. In other words, spiritual insight is es- sential for the apprehension of the message of Scripture; it does not wait on the acquisition of historical understanding, much though the latter is to be prized as an adjunct of the former. The impression given by Richardson at this point seems, however, to be corrected later in the same essay when he declares, in words with which we entirely concur: ... it is of course agreed that the prophetic and apostolic understanding of the meaning of the events of the biblical history is entirely due to the revealing action of God. Revelation is a mystery, like all the miraculous works of God. It is God alone who can open the eyes of faith, whether of the prophets and apostles of old or of those who read or hear the biblical message in subsequent generations. 6 The message of Scripture is addressed to everyman, and its focus is the person and work of Christ, who came into the world to save sinners (I Tim. 1:15). No finer or more memorable explanation has been given of the purpose of the Bible than that which was given by that great master of Holy Scripture, William Tyndale: "The Scripture," he wrote, "is that wherewith God draweth us unto Him. The Scriptures sprang out of God, and flow unto Christ, and were given to lead us to Christ. Thou must therefore go along by the Scripture as by a line, until thou come at Christ, which is the way's end and resting-place." 7 The sum of the situation is this: that biblical scholarship is not an end in itself; it belongs to the precincts, not to the sanctuary; in isolation, it will never arrive at the heart of the matter. The scholar should be combined with the preacher; the study should never be divorced from the pulpit. Thus Bishop Stephen Neill has said: The New Testament is concerned with proclamation. It is a Kerygma, the loud cry of a herald authorized by a king to proclaim his will and purpose to his subjects. It is Euangelion, good news, sent to those who are in distress with the promise of deliverance. It is the Word of the Lord and in the East a word is no mere vibration in the atmosphere, it is a living power sent forth to accomplish that for which it is sent. When the New Testament scholar has done his utmost in his sphere, his work remains lifeless, until it is transformed into the living voice of proclamation. The scholar may say, as many have done, that this is none of his business; he will scientifically make known the facts, and it will be the task of others to do with them as they will. But ... we have seen 5. Loc. cit. 6. Op. cit., p. 333. 7. Works, Vol. I (Parker Society edition, Cambridge, 1848), p. 317. 14 that many of the giants reached out beyond the study to the pulpit, be- lieving that the two are most intimately linked, and that any truth gained by the intense application of labour in the study will find its way out in living proclamation as the Word of God to men. And so, in fact, from generation to generation, the New Testament has taken on new life, as the ancient words have asserted their relevance in every changing scene of human existence, have clothed themselves afresh in human under- standing, and have come home to the heart and conscience as challenge, enlightenment and consolation. 8 Mere scholarship, however able and however worthy it may be, is not crea- tive; seen as a Christian function, it is analytical and subservient. It is in the proclamation of the scriptural message as the Word of the Living God that the creative task of theology finds achievement, and that note of procla- mation should inform the theological tome as well as the pronouncement from the pulpit. If faith is an essential ingredient of that spiritual insight which is able to understand and appropriate the message of the Bible, it is important to emphasize that faith is not something which exists antecedently or in in- dependence. Faith cannot exist or be engendered in a vacuum; for faith is response, and in particular it is response to the message of Scripture. The object of faith is the Christ to whom Scripture bears witness. To quote Emil Brunner: "The Bible is the pre-condition of all faith, that which alone makes it possible. And the whole Bible at that." 9 That is why evangelical proclamation is so indispensable an element in the fulfillment of the creative task of theology. We need, more than ever, to be reminded today, as P. T. Forsyth had to remind his generation, that "the first value of the Bible is not to historical science but to evangelical faith, not to the historian but to the gospeller," and that the theologian "should first be not a philosopher but a saved man, with eternal life work- ing in him." 10 And the following admonition, uttered by the same author, is still valid and salutary: The authority of the Bible speaks not to the critical faculty that handles evidence but to the soul that makes response. The Bible witness of sal- vation in Christ is felt immediately to have authority by every soul pining for redemption. It is not so much food for the rationally healthy, but it is medicine for the sick, and life for the dead. Even historical criticism, which is a real part of theology, should be pursued on that basis. ... It is only knowledge with a soul of faith that grasps the full scope of revelationary history. 11 Since the focal point of the biblical message is the figure of Jesus Christ, the divine Redeemer of the world, the repudiation of the authenticity of the biblical witness leads inevitably to the repudiation of the authenticity of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. This was amply demonstrated by the con- sequences of the destructive criticism which flourished in Germany during the last century and which today again is being advocated within the Church 8. The Interpretation of the New Testament, 1861-1961 (London, 1964), pp. 347f. 9. The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith, and the Consummation, Dog- matics Vol. Ill (London, 1962), p. 249. 10. Postive Preaching and Modern Mind (London, 1907), pp. 13, 305. 11. The Person and Place of Jesus Christ (London, 1909), pp. 178f. 15 on a geographical scale far surpassing that of the nineteenth century. The radicals of our century and the last have this in common, that they adopt as a fundamental premise the inadmissibility of the supernatural on the ground that it is unacceptable to the modern mind. The application of this principle to Scripture can only result in the banishment of God from His world and the rejection of such cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith as the deity and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The radicals of last century sought to dismiss the authenticity of the New Testament by relegating its writings to the second century, and thereby assigning them to the category of spurious fabrications. That, however, it was the scholarship of these radical critics and their followers which was spurious was proved with devastating conclusiveness by a theologian of such intellectual repute as George Salmon, whose learning and judgment caused him to speak with scorn of the critical speculations and manipulations as these German dreams retailed as sober truth by sceptical writers in this country, many of whom imagine that it would be a confession of inability to keep pace with the progress of critical science if they ventured to test, by English common sense, the successive schemes by which German aspirants after fame seek to gain a reputation for their ingenuity. . . ." 12 and by that prince of biblical scholars, Bishop J. B. Lightfoot, who com- posed his massively erudite work on the Apostolic Fathers with the express purpose of demonstrating the untenability of the position propounded by the Tubingen radicals: To the disciples of Baur [he wrote] the rejection of the Ignatian Epistles is an absolute necessity of their theological position. The ground would otherwise be withdrawn from under them, and their reconstructions of early Christian history would fall in ruins on their heads. On the other hand, those who adopt the traditional views of the origin of Christianity and of the history of the Church as substantially correct, may look with comparative calmness on the result. The loss of the Ignatian Epistles would be the loss of one buttress to their fabric but the withdrawal would not materially effect the stability of the fabric itself. ... I have been reproached by my friends for allowing myself to be diverted from the more congenial task of commenting on S. Paul's Epistles; but the im- portance of the position seemed to me to justify the expenditure of much time and labour in 'repairing a breach' not indeed in 'the House of the Lord' itself, but in the immediately outlying buildings. 13 Lightfoot's attitude is summarized in the Preface to his Essays on the Work entitled 'Supernatural Religion,' a crushing rejoinder to an anonymous "scep- tical writer" of his day, where he says: "I cannot pretend to be indifferent about the veracity of the records which profess to reveal Him, whom I believe to be not only the very Truth, but the very Life." It is this same issue, only in an intensified form, with which the Church is confronted today. The radicals of our age, however, no longer, for the most part, seek to depreciate the New Testament writings as forgeries of a postapostolic period. Their method, rather, is to contend that the portrait of Jesus and the sayings attributed to him in the New Testament are the prod- 12. A Historical Introduction to the Study of the Books of the New Testament (London, 1892), p. 15. 13. The Apostolic Fathers, Part II, Vol. I (second edition, London, 1889), pp. xif., xv. 16 ucts of the imagination or wishful thinking of the early Christian community, which, in the years following Calvary, gradually built up an idealized picture of the one who had been their leader and teacher. In the determination of what portions of the story may be original and authentic, the criteria applied are arbitrary and subjective in character. The conclusions reached are pre- determined by the predilections and prejudices of each individual. Novelty allied with an abstruse kind of linguistic ingenuity or an inventive historical "reconstruction" is almost always assured of academic applause. The Holy Spirit has been ushered off the stage and the human spirit dominates the scene. To the degree in which theology affirms the self-adequacy of man, or, in other words, denies man's creaturely dependence on God and asserts the human spirit in opposition to the Holy Spirit to that degree it will disallow both the nature and the necessity of Holy Scripture as the Word of, God, and to that degree also it will incapacitate itself for its distinctively creative task; for, as we have previously explained, the creative task of the- ology inheres in the capacity of man as, in the first place, created in the image of God, and now in Christ re-created in that image, to work con- structively with and from the given "substance" of the revelation of God's Word. The affirmation of human self -adequacy is but the repetition of the primeval heresy that man in himself is "as God." Like all heresy, it is not constructive (though it may wish to be) but subversive of the true nature and capacity of man, entangling him in a web of contradiction and frustra- tion of his own making. The sickness of theology in our modern age is attributable to the in- creasing extent to which it is becoming infected with the arrogance of human self-sufficiency. In many academic institutions theology has degenerated into a department of the humanities. Those who utter a word of protest are blandly assured that "man has now come of age" though this, in fact, was precisely the cry of eighteenth-century rationalism! The conclusion we are invited to draw is that twentieth-century man must be set free from the doc- trinal and ethical absolutes of Scripture, that to require belief in the super- natural is an insult to homo sapiens, that the objective otherness of God must go because God is but a synonym for man's ultimate concern, or, put in other terms, God is only a way of expressing a human value-judgment, and that the only legitimate scandal of Christianity is that Jesus Christ was a mere ordinary mortal man no different from all other human beings. This situation has elicited the following comment from Paul H. Holmer of Yale Divinity School: This complaint about the church's outmoded theology must not be taken lightly. It creates the conviction that the whole world would like to be- come Christian if only the theologians would become modern. Of course, the price is a little high: resurrection, atonement, the virgin birth, the last judgment, lately God and a few other things must go, but everything else, and especially the meaning of these, can be kept! This is what hap- pens when the responsibility is laid unequivocally on the church and the theologians the only possible way to make Christianity palatable is to strip everything from it and make its meanings coextensive with what people will discern for themselves and believe anyway. 14 14. "Contra the New Theologies," The Christian Century, 17 March 1965, p. 331. 17 In complete contrast to J. A. Froude's venerable father who believed, a hundred years ago, that "the way to heaven was to turn to the right and go straight on," the temper of the radical theology of our day is to move in the diametrically opposite direction. The anguished disillusionment of the last generation of left-wing liberals has quickly been forgotten, though it was vividly described by able men who had personally experienced it. Thus Richard Niebuhr has written: The romantic conception of the kingdom of God involved no discon- tinuities, no crises, no tragedies or sacrifices, no loss of all things, no cross and resurrection. In ethics it reconciled the interests of the indi- vidual with those of society by means of faith in a natural identity of interests or in the benevolent, altruistic character of man. In politics and economics it slurred over national and class divisions, seeing only growth of unity and ignoring the increase of self-assertion and exploitation. In religion it reconciled God and man by deifying the latter and humanizing the former. . . . For an Edwards divine sovereignty had been a hard truth to which he had slowly learned to adjust his thought and life; for liberal- ism it was an untruth. It estblished continuity between God and man by adjusting God to man. Since no reconciliation to the divine sovereign was necessary the reign of Christ, in the new interpretation, involved no revolutionary events in history or the life of individuals. Christ the Redeemer became Jesus the teacher or the spiritual genius in whom the religious capacities of mankind were fully developed. Moreover the radical revolution at the centre of life for which dynamic Protestantism and Evangelicalism had contended seemed unnecessary to a liberalism which objected not only to the identification of this revolution with mechanical conversion but also to the belief that life had been corrupted. The renovation of which it spoke was not so much the restoration of health to a diseased body as the clearing out of the accumulated rubbish of traditional beliefs or customs. Evolution, growth, development, the culture of the religious life, the nurture of the kindly sentiments, the extension of humanitarian ideals and the progress of civilization took the place of the Christian revolution. . . . A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom with- out judgment through the ministration of a Christ without a cross. 15 Unbiblical humanism, which denies the sovereignty and the otherness of God and affirms the adequacy and the centrality of man, is always present because it is the expression of original sin. And its main threat to the Church of Christ is from within. (It is far more menacing than the militant human- istic atheism which assails the Church from without and is so easily recog- nizable for what it is.) It is no new thing, but is as old as sin itself; and it is adept at ignoring the lessons of even recent history. In the fifteenth cen- tury the humanism of the Renaissance panegyrized man as the complete be- ing, the crown of the cosmos and the key to its understanding, and proudly declared that the dignity of man was so sublime that, even if he had not sinned, the Son of God would still have become incarnate in token of man's supreme excellence. It remained for the Reformation, in the following cen- tury, by its rediscovery of the Word of God and the message of redemption 15. The Kingdom of God in America (Chicago, 1937), pp. 191ff. 18 by grace alone, to recover the proper dignity and humanity of man and at the same time enthusiastically to dedicate itself to the creative task of the- ology. The benefits of that dynamic restitution are still present with us today. Of particular significance is the development by Herman Dooyeweerd of a system of Christian philosophy a work of immense erudition con- structed in loyalty to the principles of the biblical revelation which are also the principles of Reformed thought. His purpose has been to construct a philosophy which, being authentically Christian, penetrates to every sphere of human life and activity. In doing so, however, he has engaged in a tran- scendental critique of philosophy as a science in its specific manifestations throughout the centuries and has shown how the only system which is not incapacitated by insoluble inner contraditions is that which is founded on the creation-fall-redemption ground-motive of the biblical revelation. Herman Dooyeweerd has given a notable lead as with singleness of purpose and in- tellectual integrity he has devoted himself to the creative task of the Christian thinker. In the historical perspective, indeed, it is the theology of the Reformation which has most faithfully applied the scriptural principles relating to both God and man. With its evangelical emphasis, its reverence for the Word of God, and its dynamic doctrine of the Holy Spirit, it has helped to restore the right balance between the supreme honor of God and the dependent dignity of man; it has demonstrated the creative interrelationship between the grace of God and the responsibility of man; and it has pointed man to the realiza- tion of the fullness of his potentialities by the union of both mind and heart, both intellect and emotion, in the service of his fellow men and to the praise of Almighty God. On either side of the Reformed tradition, the theological process may be simplified as a see-saw between the Enlightenment and Ro- manticism, or between rationalistic and pietistic currents of thought, the former advocating the supremacy of human reason and the latter the su- premacy of human feeling or experience. Both movements have this in com- mon, however, that they are humanistic, in the sense that their approach is fundamentally anthropocentric, assigning ultimacy either to man's reason or to his sentiment. 16 The creative task of theology is, first of all, the task of the redeemed who, through the prior grace of God, have returned to the Father by the Son, and through the inner working of the Holy Spirit have been put into tune with the mind of Christ. The creative task of theology must be per- formed with the given "material" of the Word of God written, from whose pages the same Holy Spirit causes the truth to beam forth with inexhaustible wonder and beauty, so that it is always an unfinished task, and always a task with limitless possibilities ahead. And, finally, the creative task of theology is related to mankind, indeed to the whole world in which we live. The truth has to be applied once it is known, and it has to be applied in relevant and comprehensible terms. This would be impossible if the truth were something inert and static; for history is not motionless and mankind is not an undiffer- entiated mass. Just as no two fingerprints are identical, so every single per- sonality is different and sacrosanct, and every single human situation has a quality of uniqueness about it. What endless scope there is for creativity 16. A penetrating study, historical and theological, will be found in Karl Barth, From Rousseau to Ritschl (London. 1959); cf, also A. R. Vidler, The Church in an Age of Revolution: 1789 to the Present Day (London, 1962). 19 here! The truth is constant; but it is not static: it is dynamic. That is why the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ is always old, yet ever new, and must be proclaimed afresh in every generation with the creative power of God the Holy Spirit. THE VACUUM OF UNBELIEF Stuart B. Babbage Two cartoons by Sir Max Beerbohm hang in the Library of Fitzwilliam Hall in Cambridge, England. One cartoon depicts a man, prosperous and corpulent, who, with proud complacency, is gazing in a mirror at a larger re- flection of himself. The other, by contrast, depicts a man of diminutive stature, who, dressed immaculately in evening clothes and with a black crepe armband, is gazing apprehensively at the horizon, over which there hangs, like a baleful star, a giant question mark. The first cartoon represents the smug self-satisfaction of the nineteenth century; the second, the pessimistic perplexity of the twentieth. Today, the question mark bears the ominous shape of a mushroom cloud. In this twentieth century, despite the spectacular achievements of a techno- logical civilization, we live in imminent danger of nuclear destruction. In these apocalyptic circumstances we might expect advice and guidance from the colleges and universities of our land. What is their saving word for our human situation? I Sir Walter Moberley, in a book entitled, The Crisis in the University, charges that the modern university lives and moves and has its being in a moral and cultural fog. He writes: "If you want a bomb the chemists' de- partment will teach you how to make it; if you want a cathedral the depart- Stuart B. Babbage is Visiting Professor of Practical Apologetics, ment of architecture will teach you how to built it; if you want a healthy body the department of physiology and medicine will teach you how to tend it. But when you ask whether and why you should want bombs or cathedrals or healthy bodies, the university," he says, "is dumb and silent." "It can help and give guidance in all things subsidiary but not in the attainment of the one thing needful." We confine education, he rightly accuses, to the use of means as opposed to the choice of ends, to training in the handling and acquisition of tools to the neglect of the purposes for which those tools are to be used. If students cannot get guidance for action from their teachers they will seek it, he warns, from less reputable sources. It was thus that, thirty years ago, the students of Germany fell victims to Hitler. As Professor R. G. Collingwood points out, they will infer that for guidance in the prob- lems of life, since one cannot get it from thinkers or from thinking, from ideals or from principles, one must look to people who are not thinkers (but fools), to processes that are not thinking (but passion), to aims that are not ideals (but caprices), and to rules that are not principles (but expediency). II Our Lord Jesus Christ told a grim and creepy story about an -empty house and an undesirable tenant which has an immediate relevance to the 20 situation in which we find ourselves. A house, Jesus related, fell into evil hands. The owner turned the undesirable tenant out and did the place up from floor to ceiling. Then he left it, clean but unoccupied. One day the old tenant passed it again. He had found no suitable alternative home. He saw the house was empty. He went and peered in at the windows and tried the doors. Then calling to him a group of still more undesirable friends he forced his way in and took possession. And soon the house was in a worse state than ever. 1 That house, Jesus explained, was a human personality. The undesirable tenant was an evil spirit which a man had cast out of his life. The spirit came back from wandering restlessly about the desert and found an empty soul. The man had invited no good angels to tenant his life. So the evil spirit found seven other devils more evil than himself. "And they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first." Ill No one can deny that, in this twentieth century, the universities have been responsible for casting out the devils of ignorance and superstition, the devils of darkness and error, but what has taken their place? Has the house been left clean and empty? Is there, in the lives of students today, a moral and spiritual vacuum? Within this century we have witnessed the betrayal of the universities. How do we explain the fact, Sir Walter Moberley asks, that the universities of Germany, in the days of Hitler, capitulated to doctrines that were morally monstrous and intellectually despicable? How do we explain the fact that places dedicated to the pursuit of liberty and freedom surrendered to doc- trines of racial superiority and Nordic purity? And yet the German univer- sities in the days before Hitler enjoyed an intellectual prestige second to none. How do we explain the measure of their betrayal? Was it due to the fact that the German universities had no independent standards of value of which they felt themselves to be the guardians? Was this the reason that they lacked sufficient conviction and tenacity of purpose to stand against the torrential tide of Nazi tyranny? Whatever the explanation, it is an incontrovertible fact that, in the day of trial and testing, it was the Church that stood alone. Albert Einstein testifies: "I looked to the universities to defend freedom, but the universities were silenced in a few short weeks . . . Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for the suppression of truth ... I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise." IV We are, in America, rightly concerned with driving out and banishing from the lives of men the devils of prejudice and passion, of ignorance and darkness, of superstition and error. Have good angels been invited in to take possession? Or is the house swept and empty? There are other devils, more deadly than the first, waiting to take possession. Marxist Communism is ready to take possession. It is ready to take possession because there is a spiritual emptiness in the lives of many students today. "It will be hard indeed," Arnold Toynbee sadly comments, "to refill the spiritual vacuum which is being hollowed in our western hearts by the progressive decay of religious belief." 1. Luke 11:24-6. 21 The experience of Freda Utley illustrates the nature of our predicament. She was a brilliant American student who married a Russian expatriate Jew. They resolved that they would return together to Russia to serve the Soviet Fatherland. Her husband disappeared during the paranoic purges of 1937. She tells us, in her book, Lost Illusion, what moved her to embrace Commu- nism. It was, she tells us, the consciousness of a spiritual vacuum. She was looking for a faith to believe and a flag to follow and a song to sing. "The instinctive desire for religion," she relates, "was the compelling force leading me, step by step, into the communist trap." Let me call another witness. Douglas Hyde was for many years Secretary of the Communist Party in Great Britain. In his autobiography, / Believed, he explains that Communism was, for him, a substitute religion. It filled the gap. "Communism," he relates, "has had its origins in precisely that spiritual vacuum which exists all over what once was Christendom." "One has to be potentially good or intelligent," he explains, "even to be aware that it is not enough simply to drift along without sense of purpose or direction, with neither faith nor ideal. That is why Communism so often claims the best those who feel the miss. It is why it has spread in our day and no other." "I would say," he testifies, "that the majority who come to Communism do so because, in the first instance, they are subconsciously looking for a cause which will fill the void left by unbelief." Let me give a further illustration. R. H. Grossman, who is now a member of Harold Wilson's Labour Cabinet, edited, some years ago, a symposium entitled, The God That Failed. The contributors relate the factors that led them to embrace Communism, and the circumstances that eventually led them to repudiate Communism as a god that failed. Arthur Koestler testifies: "I served the Communist Party for seven years the length of time Jacob tended Laban's sheep to win Rachel his daughter. When the time was up, the bride was led into his dark tent; only the next morning did he discover that his ardours had been spent not on the lovely Rachel but on the ugly Leah. I wonder whether he ever recovered from the shock of having slept with an illusion. I wonder whether afterwards he believed that he had ever believed in it." Every revolution, Dean Inge avers, begins by proclaiming that we have nothing to lose but our chains and ends by binding our feet in fresh fetters of iron. Communism is no exception. It proclaims that man is born free and that everywhere he is in chains; it ends by enslaving men in the bitter bond- age of Animal Farm. Communists know our moral vulnerability. They know there is a vacuum left by modern unbelief. They know that the heart of western man is swept and empty. And they have been ready and eager to take possession. V But there are other devils who are also ready to take possession. Scientific Rationalism is ready to take possession. The recent flight of the American astronauts is simply a further stage in a spectacular series of steadily mounting achievements. It is not surprising that, for many, science is a god opening the door to a vista of limitless advance. John Addington Symonds, in ecstatic mood, was one of the first to hail the dawn of a new age: 22 These things shall be! A loftier race Than e'er the world hath known, shall rise With flame of freedom in their souls And light of science in their eyes. Lewis Mumford concludes his monumental study, Technics and Civilisation, with the confident declaration: "Nothing is impossible." Sir Richard Gregory, the editor of the scientific journal, Nature, says: My grandfather preached the gospel of Christ, My father preached the gospel of Socialism, I preach the gospel of Science. It is at the altar of science that multitudes today bow down and worship. And the reason is not far to seek. We have all benefited from the solid and substantial achievements of science, and, in our simple naivety, we are tempted to believe that there are no problems known to man which cannot be solved by the simple expedient of better plumbing. There are some, however, who suspect that science may equally well be our destroyer. Pierre Curie, the discoverer of radium, had serious doubts about man's moral maturity. "One may imagine," he warns, "that in criminal hands radium might become very dangerous, and that we may ask ourselves if humanity has anything to gain by learning the secrets of nature, if it is ripe enough to profit by them, or if this knowledge is not harmful." H. G. Wells, in his younger days, was enthusiastic about The Shape of Things to Come. With the outbreak of war, he saw, with incredulity and despair, science being used, not for the beneficient purposes of human wel- fare, but for purposes of diabolical destruction. He bitterly confessed: "But quite apart from any bodily depression, the spectacle of evil in the world the wanton destruction of homes, the ruthless hounding of decent folk into exile, the bombings of open cities, the cold-blooded massacres and mutila- tions of children and defenseless gentle folk, the rapes and filthy humilia- tions and, above all, the return of deliberate and organized torture, mental torment and fear to a world from which such things had seemed well nigh banished has come near to breaking my spirit altogether." After the atomic destruction of Hiroshima, J. R. Oppenheimer, the American atomic physicist, confessed: "In some crude sense, which no vul- garity, no humour, no over-statement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose." Unhappily not all scientists are willing to acknowledge the inconvenient fact of human perversity and sin. In his mordant satire, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley warns us what may happen if the conditioners of the human personality have their way. Through the awful instrumentality of a perverted science we may find, he warns, that our last state is worse than the first. VI How, then, are we to avoid the seductions of atheistic Communism on the one hand and scientific rationalism on the other? How are we going to safeguard the citadels of our personality from sabotage and attack? How are we going to avoid the corruption of truth and the conquest of evil? The house, in the parable, was swept and empty. But no good tenant had taken possession. Are we going to allow the rightful owner to come in and take possession, or are we going to allow satanic forces to subdue us and 23 destroy us? "Behold," Jesus says, "I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me." 2 If the Lord Jesus occupies the citadel of our hearts, the evil spirits of this present age may peer in at the windows, they may rattle at the doors, but they will not find an entrance. 2. Revelation 3:20. 24 REVIEWS THE KU KLUX KLAN: A Century of Infamy. By William Pierce Randel. (Chilton Books, 1965.) 300 pp. $5.95. This book should be required reading for all who believe that the Ku Klux Klan was once a worthy organization, led by noble men, and playing a necessary part in the reconstruction of Southern states after the Civil War. On the contrary, the record of the organization almost from the beginning is pictured here as one of racism, deceit, violence and cruelty. Intimidation, floggings, and murder were weapons all too freely used by those who were, or pretended to be, members of the Klan, in their generally successful efforts to defy Federal authority and to assert the principle of White Supremacy. It is hard to escape the conviction that this is a one-sided presentation of history. The author vastly underestimates the magnitude of the problems which confronted Southerners in the aftermath of perhaps the bloodiest war in history faced with the necessity for dealing with a race which had been thrust into the full privileges of citizenship with virtually no preparation for it. Other competent historians have attested the fact that these problems were very great, and that Northern leadership was too often vindictive in its atti- tude toward a conquered people. Nevertheless the facts related in this volume are too well authenticated to be explained away, and leave one with a sense of deep dismay that such things could happen here. Having largely attained its ends, the original Klan practically disappeared from the scene during the later years of the nineteenth century. The author of this volume records its revival in the nineteen twenties, its growth to a membership of nearly 5,000,000, its political activities and successes, and its later decline until the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court on segregation in public schools brought its renewal once again. It is his conclusion that the Klan continues to be a menace in American life and that constant vigilance is required on the part of those who would oppose the lawlessness and hatred which it furthers under the guise of patriotism and religion. While not pleasant reading, the book is a timely one in the light of recent events in the South, of current growth in Klan membership, and of the in- vestigation of the organization now being conducted by a committee of our National Congress. J. McDowell Richards President, Columbia Theological Seminary ERASMUS AND CAMBRIDGE: THE CAMBRIDGE LETTERS OF ERASMUS. Translated by D. F. S. Thomson. Introduction, Commentary and Notes by H. C. Porter. (University of Toronto Press.) 233 pp. $6.50. THE 'ADAGES' OF ERASMUS: A STUDY WITH TRANSLATIONS. By Margaret Mann Phillips. (Cambridge University Press.) 418 pp. $9.50. 25 THE COLLOQUIES OF ERASMUS. Translated by Craig R. Thompson. (The University of Chicago Press.) 662 pp. $15.00. The Erasmian corpus has been splendidly enriched by the publication of these notable translations and commentaries. These handsome volumes, printed by three of the great publishing presses of Canada, England and America, are an appropriate tribute to one who has been called one of the first great cosmopolitans. As Trevor-Roper has noted, he was a "cosmopolitan in an age of awakening nationalism; he was born in Holland, studied in Paris, found his intellectual home in Oxford, took his doctorate in Savoy, travelled to Germany and Italy, published his works impartially in Louvain, Paris, Venice and Basel, and had disciples throughout Europe." The volume on Erasmus at Cambridge, with its collection of sixty-four letters, provides a very human portrait. Erasmus reveals something of his monumental labours: he speaks of editing Jerome and Seneca, of working on the Greek text of the New Testament with Latin translation, of compos- ing the 'Adages', of translating Basil, Plutarch and Lucian. But he also tells us a great deal about himself: his precarious health, his fear of the plague, the chronic state of his finances, the execrable quality of the Cambridge beer, and much else besides. On the one hand, Erasmus was an indefatigible scholar, tirelessly en- gaged; on the other hand, a valetudinarian, full of querulous complaint. Dr. Phillips, in an informative introduction to the Adages, describes their successive revision. In the latter part of the book, he provides a felicitous translation of Erasmus's more extended Comments. Erasmus put everything he had into the Adages. His aim was to illuminate the current proverbs of the day by reference to the literature of the past. Erasmus did not hestitate to attack current evils: the ignorance of the clergy, the corruption of the papacy, the iniquity of war. Under a coruscating wit he cunningly disguised a purpose which was not only educational but polemical. The Colloquies were prepared, in the first place, as simple exercises for students studying Latin. Its immediate success led to its progressive expan- sion and enlargement. In its final form it consists of a series of dialogues on an extraordinary variety of subjects, both secular and sacred. Urbane and ironic, the Colloquies are a characteristic expression of the Renaissance spirit. They reveal a new independence of judgment, a new spirit of critical inquiry, a new interest in man. They are not anti-religious but they are iconoclastic. By a disconcerting appeal to the testimony of Scripture Eramus calls in question the validity of accepted practices and traditions. In the Colloquies we have the rich distillation of a highly critical intelli- gence reflecting on the human scene. That is why the Colloquies have proved a perennial source of interest and edification. Dr. Thompson has achieved a herculean task of translation and commentary with grace and distinction. Stuart Barton Babbage Visiting Professor of Practical Apologetics 26 EXTRAORDINARY CHRISTIANITY: The Life and Thoughts of Alexander Vinet. By Paul T. Fuhrmann. (Westminister Press.) 125 pp. $3.00. After reading this book we ask, Why have we hitherto heard so little about Vinet? In my student years we were taught 19th century theology by no less an authority than H. R. Mackintosh. But never once did he mention Vinet. Karl Barth also fails to refer to him in Die Protestantische Theologie. This has obviously meant injustice and loss. Dr. Fuhrmann has given us enough in this little book to show that indeed we have here a brilliant and stimulating thinker, whose contribution to thought has real relevance for our time. Vinet is of especial interest to a Scotsman. In both Scotland and Switzer- land, in the early 1 840's, there was a crisis in the relations between Church and State. Vinet, in Switzerland, played to some extent the counterpart of Thomas Chalmers, who led the "free church" out of the establishment. One significant difference, however, is that Chalmers and the Free Kirk in Scot- land held rigidly to the idea of a national and established Church, whereas, for Vinet, any alliance between Church and State was a "pure heresy" which could only bring the Church under suspicion, since the State has no con- science. Vinet may have been more far-sighted than Chalmers. [When Dr. Fuhrmann asserts that this Free Evangelical Church was the first modern Church in Europe independent of any political society, he has surely for- gotten our other Secessions in Scotland in the mid 18th century!] Vinet was influenced by a Scottish lay theologian, Erskine of Linlathen. In the style of his famous seminary broadsheets, Dr. Fuhrmann gives us an interesting brief account of Erskine (as well as of Mme de Stael, De Wette and Pascal). Erskine himself was of the School of McLeod Campbell which sought to get behind the rigid "official dramatic" doctrines of Christ's person and work in order to recover the view of Christ as entering into a real personal life-situation that involved his true humanity in feelings which sinners can understand, and themselves respond to. Vinet seems to have managed to combine the emphasis of this theology with Calvin's stress on the mystical union of Christ with His Church, in a way that later Scottish theology failed to do, either in its federal form, or in the teaching of James Denney. Dr. Fuhrmann carefully condenses and summarizes the teaching of Vinet on many important themes. "We shall see," he writes at the beginning of the book, "that, for Vinet, faith generally is not a faculty detached from other faculties of man, but a complex spiritual activity in which the whole man is engaged. Repentance, conversion, justification, regeneration, sancti- fication . . . are simply various aspects of one continuous whole, of one perpetual movement of turning to God and to things above." His later ex- position of Vinet's conception of faith is a valuable part of the book. So also is the section on Being in the Truth: "Just as truth is one and indivisible, so the whole truth is to be entered and apprehended only by the whole man. Enter the truth, and you will see from within what cannot be seen from without: practice Christianity, and you will know it," says Vinet. The sec- tion on The Evangelical Ministry is equally valuable, and those on Modern Civilization, and Art and Literature are equally fascinating, though few of 27 us would identify Socialism with both Roman Catholicism and Nationalism! Dr. Fuhrmann also gives us many of Vinet's memorable sayings, e.g. Jesus Christ is "without father, without mother, without ancestry here on earth. He does not continue, he interrupts the course of time." Vinet is obviously difficult to interpret. He believed that "words are forces to be applied according to the concrete situation." Therefore, he could say one thing in one situation, and even the opposite in another. He believed that "every complete truth has two sides, particularly in religion, for religion is essentially the mediatrix which leads all the dualities of human existence back to unity." But, with patience, deep insight, and great skill, Dr. Fuhrmann has selected and woven Vinet's thought into what is for us an intelligible pattern, without sacrificing real scholarship for the sake of being too simple. It is regrettable that the publishers could not give us Dr. Fuhrmann's constant and accurate references to Vinet's works themselves. At times we are not quite sure whether he is speaking for himself or quoting Vinet. This does not, however, detract from the intrinsic value of the book as it stands. Here we undoubtedly have Vinet speaking to us today in a way that is fresh and arresting. Ronald S. Wallace Professor of Biblical Theology THEOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT: Volume II. Edited by Gerhard Kittel; translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) 955 pp. $20.50. One is filled with wonder and admiration at Dr. Bromiley's truly aston- ishing industry as a translator of learned theological works. He must surely be a long way in front of all other competitors in this field. The appearance of Volume II of Kittell in English the best part of a thousand large pages, covering the initial letters delta, epsilon, zeta, and eta increases our in- debtedness to him very considerably, not merely for the quantity but also for the quality of his achievement. The general method and form of the articles in Kittell is already well known, as is also the wealth of contemporary German scholarship of which they are the harvest. Of the articles in this second volume those on the following words (and their cognates) are of special importance: daimon, diabolos, diatheke, didasko, dikaios, doxa, dy- namis, eikon, eirene, eleutheros, Hellen, elpis, ergon, euangelizomai, eucho- mai, zoe, and Helias (Elijah). As with the first volume, so with this one and those yet to come, pastors as well as scholars and students will find Kittel invaluable as a work of reference and instruction. Philip Edgcumbe Hughes Guest Professor of New Testament Language, Literature, and Exegesis RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHIES OF THE WEST. By George F. Thomas. (Charles Scribner's Sons.) 454 pp. $7.95. The author of this book, who is Professor of Religion at Princeton Uni- versity, is careful to point out that his purpose has not been to provide a 28 comprehensive history of religious philosophical thought, but rather "to en- gage in a critical dialogue with a limited number of thinkers who represent different types of religious philosophy and offer different answers to the basic religious questions"; and he describes his primary aim as being "to give a clear and comprehensive exposition of the religious philosophy of each thinker and sufficient evaluation to bring to light and sharpen some of the crucial issues raised by him." It is not necessary to agree with all of Dr. Thomas's presuppositions or conclusions to appreciate the worth of this work and to applaud the manner in which he has achieved the goal which he set before himself. The fourteen chapters of this book are devoted to studies of the following thinkers: Plato (Theistic Idealism), Aristotle (Ra- tional Theology), Plotinus (Neo-Platonism), Augustine (Christian Phi- losophy), Aquinas (Medieval Rational Theology), Eckhart (Medieval Mysticism), Spinoza (Pantheism), Hume (Skepticism), Kant (Critical Philosophy), Hegel (Absolute Idealism), Kierkegaard (Religious Existential- ism), Feuerbach and Dewey (Naturalistic Humanism), Whitehead (Process Philosophy), and Tillich (Philosophical Theology). One could wish that the Epilogue, on "Some Present Tendencies" (Linguistic Analysis, Existential- ism, Atheistic Humanism), has been expanded to a much fuller length. As it is, it is annoyingly brief and inadequate. It would have been interesting to have had a chapter on the distinctively Reformed philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd. The explanation that Augustine interpreted Christian beliefs in the light of Neo-Platonism should be taken cum grano salis. However difficult Augustine might have found it to rid himself of every vestige of his former Neo-Platonism, it is not correct to suggest that it remained as a principle of his thought as a Christian philosopher. Philip Edgcumbe Hughes Guest Professor of New Testament Language, Literature, and Exegesis PRE SEMINARY EDUCATION: Report of the Lilly Endowment Study. By Keith R. Bridston and Dwight W. Culver. (Augsburg Publishing House.) 257 pp. $4.75. For a number of years a large group of college and university teachers of religion have been dissatisfied with the "Statement on Pre-Seminary Studies" approved by the American Association of Theological Schools and appearing in most seminary catalogues. They particularly have objected to the exclusion of religion from the list of recommended undergraduate majors and to the recommendation of only three courses in religion during the four college years. The Lilly Endowment, Inc., in response to an overture from the A.A.T.S. and the American Academy of Religion, underwrote an in- vestigation of undergraduate studies for seminarians, the results of which are found in Pre-Seminary Education by Keith R. Bridston and Dwight W. Culver. The importance of the study lies not so much in the clear-cut answers given in regard to undergratuate education for theological students (the recommendations made, in fact, are inconclusive) but in the views of semi- narians about their own vocational choice and the influences which have led 29 them to seminary. Two samples are significant: (1) While 68% of the seminary students interviewed (of a total of over 17,000) expected to enter the parish ministry immediately after seminary, only 33% expected eventu- ally to remain in the parish (p. 227). (2) In viewing the adequacy of the minister in his home church prior to his college years, the "average semi- narian" said, "My minister was quite adequate in officiating at worship, in private devotions, prayer and Bible study, in preaching the Word, and in studying and preparing sermons in that order. He was fairly inadequate in community leadership, in pastoral counseling, in visiting church members, and in teaching in that order" (p. 39). In other words, in his predecessors he sees a competence in the private and "impersonal," the official and litur- gical functions of the ministry, and an inadequacy in those activities involving direct person-to-person relations. Charles B. Cousar Associate Professor of New Testament Language, Literature, and Exegesis PREACHING TO BE UNDERSTOOD. By James T. Cleland. (Abingdon Press.) 126 pp. $2.75. Students at Columbia Seminary are encouraged to read at least one book on homiletics each year after graduation. Such a practice can sharpen insight and skills that have been dulled by the weekly routine and will no doubt keep the preacher in touch with that series of studies which over the years have contributed so much to homiletical literature the Warrack lectures de- livered annually at two of the Scottish Universities. Preaching To Be Understood contains the 1964 lectures given by James T. Cleland, a native son of Scotland, who for twenty years has been Pro- fessor of Preaching and Dean of the Chapel at Duke University. He main- tains the high standard set by his predecessors, and his unusual gift of picturesque speech demonstrates at least one reason why he is in such demand as a preacher on college campuses. With freshness and humor, Cleland seeks to help with next week's sermon. He offers suggestions in Biblical interpretation and homiletical technique to the end that the sermon will be bifocal, with one focus clearly set on the Biblical past and the other focus forcefully set on the contemporary situation. He is concerned with the responsibility of the pew as well as the pulpit for preaching to be understood, drawing an analogy from the interplay between the baseball pitcher and catcher ("the homiletical battery"). Actually, the book appears to be a summary of homiletics as presented at Duke, and though too many subjects are dealt with for a thorough treatment of any one of them, the book can serve as a brief refresher course for the pastor involved in weekly sermonic preparation. Wade P. Huie, Jr. Peter Marshall Professor of Homiletics FREEDOM AND FAITH: NEW APPROACHES TO CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. By J. Gordon Chamberlin. (The Westminster Press.) 156 pp. $3.95. 30 THE SEARCH FOR A CHRISTIAN EDUCATION SINCE 1940. By Kendig Brubaker Cully. (The Westminster Press.) 205 pp. $4.50. EDUCATION FOR RENEWAL. By David J. Ernsberger. (The Westminster Press.) 174 pp. $4.50. THE EDUCATIONAL MISSION OF THE CHURCH. By Robert J. Havighurst. (The Westminster Press.) 159 pp. $4.50. PASTORAL CATECHETICS. Edited by Johannes Hofinger, S.J., and Theodore C. Stone. (Herder and Herder.) 287 pp. $4.95. PROTESTANT STRATEGIES IN EDUCATION. By Robert W. Lynn. (Association Press.) 96 pp. $2.50. EDUCATION IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. By Jan A. Muirhead. (Association Press.) 94 pp. $2.50. LITURGY AND EDUCATION. By Massey H. Shepherd, Jr. (The Seabury Press.) 112 pp. $3.50. THE LOCAL CHURCH IN TRANSITION: THEOLOGY, EDUCATION AND MINISTRY. By Gerald H. Slusser. (The Westminster Press.) 204 pp. $4.75. LEARNING IN THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE. By Charles R. Stinnette, Jr. (Association Press.) 96 pp. $2.50. In the discipline of theology, the system builders of the first half of the twentieth century have faded away and no new gods have appeared. So it is in the area of Christian education. There have been major reorganizations in the theoretical writings as well as in the day-to-day curricula of the churches since 1930. Today there is a quietness in the field, though there are the sounds of distant rumblings which may issue in the storms of tomorrow. One rumble in the distance is the re-evaluation of where we have been. A large number of the books reviewed here are preoccupied with this task. Jan Muirhead, Education in the New Testament, seeks to show that Christian education is an integral aspect of the life of the Body of Christ (p. 15). He attempts to establish this thesis by a New Testament study. This book is a contribution to a neglected area, but leaves much work yet to be done. Kendig Cully, The Search for a Christian Education Since 1940, re- views the work of some twenty-five Christian educators in an effort to 31 analyze the intellectual structures behind the practical changes that have taken place since 1940. Cully believes that Christian educators ought to take the history of their work more seriously. Robert Lynn does just this; that is, he provides us with a careful and creative analysis of the strategies for educating which Protestants have used in the United States since 1861. The author's insights into our dependence upon the dual system of public education and Sunday School to produce "morally educated" children explain many of our present frustrations with both institutions. Lynn has some perceptive things to say about Protestant- ism's attitude toward public education. No pastor can afford to fail to read Protestant Strategies in Education. Gordon Chamberlin, Freedom and Faith, offers us a historical study of three recent system builders in Christian education Randy Miller, Lewis Sherrill and James Smart. Chamberlin goes on to suggest some ideas which he hopes will help Christian educators unify all of the various aspects of Christian education. He deals with the nature of education, the context of our education and the aim of our work. The author sees Christian education's chief function as enabling men to wrestle with the meaning of existence in the freedom which comes to be- lievers (pp. 126, 127). His concluding chapter calls for a renewal of the forms of education. The book by David Ernsberger, Education for Renewal, does an able job of dealing with this matter. If the pastor of the local church can find time to read only one of these books, let him read Ernsberger, himself a pastor. The author states his purpose in this manner: "Books on Christian education and on the laity keep referring to lay training for ministers in all realms of secular life, but tend to leave unanswered many basic questions as to how this kind of educational enterprise is to be carried on. The extent to which the local church or some other institutional forms of the Christian mission should undertake it, and some of the resources that are available . . . (this) subject of education for leadership and service in the world outside the church has been relatively untouched. In an effort to help fill the void, this book takes up the subject . . ." (pp. 9, 10). Ernsberger is distressed that a pole of ministers indicates that they are more interested in developing loyalty to the institutional church than to Jesus Christ (p. 25). Nevertheless, the author defends the local church as a necessary instrument, but clearly calls the particular congregation to its task (chp. 3). He then devotes the remaining chapters to discussions of spe- cific ways of educating men to bear witness in the world. He calls upon the particular congregation to experiment, though he is aware of the fact that many in the church are afraid to experiment because such operations might not show results (p. 97). We are victims of the god of success who frequently pushes aside faithfulness as the criterion of the Christian life. Gerald Slusser deals with the local church also in his The Local Church in Transition, which is an attempt to "relate theology to the practice of Christian education" (p. 11). Slusser backs off for perspective giving us a thumb nail sketch of the ministry in America. He shows how revivalism detracted from both the teaching ministry and theology (pp. 34 ff). Other factors have played a part in giving us a ministry today that might be de- scribed as uneducated evangelical, or as educated pietistic (in their limited sense of educated), or as educated orthodox (meaning, a ministry indoctri- 32 nated into this or that set of creeds and confessions), or as the divine promoters. Having demonstrated that theology, education, and the ministry are re- lated, Slusser sets forth a presentation which seeks to put these three together in terms which will make sense in our time. That is to say, he wants to talk theologically for this age and show how such theology speaks to education and to the nature of the ministry. Slusser's restatement of the faith is strongly influenced by the existential- ist movement in theology. He seeks, for example, to avoid the metaphysical tangles about the nature of God by holding to an operational definition of God (p. 104). Slusser's efforts to reject metaphysics brings him close to Ritschl (see p. 168, for example). The consequences of this historical analysis and theological viewpoint is that the ministry must primarily be theological-educational, meaning that the pastor's primary role must be to educate the laity for the task of proclaiming the gospel in the world (p. 178). Modern man must be aided in his task of theologizing, i.e., making sense out of the totality of his existence. This will involve us in struggling for new ways of communication. If Christian edu- cators genuinely do this, they have to share in "the work of the exegetical and systematic scholars" (p. 184). Christian education will then become "the testing agent for theology and a bridge between the laity and the theologian" (p. 190). In the Ernsberger and Slusser books we begin to hear rumblings which go beyond a study of the past. Ernsberger is struggling to help us give a new shape to Christian education. Slusser wants the whole pastor ministry inte- grated so that its work can be meaningful today. To these must be added the book by Charles Stinnette, Jr., Learning in Theological Perspective. Stinnette is not content merely to borrow from popular learning theories; he seeks to develop a perspective on learning from a theological point of view. This does not mean that he neglects the social sciences. On the con- trary, he takes them seriously and uses them wisely. This is a most stimu- lating book. Robert Havighurst's The Educational Mission of the Church does not live up to the fine work of the author in the field of human development. Massey H. Shepherd's Liturgy and Education also is a disappointment, not because Shepherd is lacking in his grasp of liturgy, but because he fails to relate liturgy and education significantly. Hofinger and Stone, Pastoral Catechetics, have edied a volume of essays which cover the field but does not offer anything new to the discussions within the Roman Church. Neely Dixon McCarter Professor of Christian Education THEOLOGY AND PREACHING: A Programme of Work in Dogmatics, arranged with reference to Questions 1-11 of the Heidelberg Catechism. By Heinrich Ott (translated by Harold Knight). (Westminster Press.) 158 pp. $4.50. This book introduces to the American scene the successor to Karl Barth in the University of Basel. In it Heinrich Ott indicates his views as to the nature and future direction of theology. 33 Ott develops his "programme of dogmatics" from the relation of the theologizing of the Church to its preaching. His thesis is that theology (dog- matics) and preaching (proclamation) are in reality one act of the Church, at one time "immediate," at another "reflective." The function of the preacher is to expose one text to the immediacy of a concrete pastoral situa- tion while the function of theology is to reflect on the whole of the faith. This means that the preacher must learn to reflect theologically if he is to preach correctly and the theologian is to teach theology with the preaching situation constantly before him. No sharp distinction can be drawn between these two functions of the Church's one act, but the health of the Church is dependent on continuity and fluidity in their relationship. With his "programme" described, Ott then seeks to demonstrate the reciprocal influences of theology and preaching with the use of the first eleven questions of the Heidelberg Catechism. They form the basis for dis- cussing the unity of our message and the way that preachers are to under- stand and deal with sin in the pulpit. In place of the typically moralistic approach the preacher is encouraged in his categories and terminology to express the existential dimension of sin. Ott's general contention is for a theology with "a turning towards man himself," a focus which he believes goes beyond Barth and yet is not incon- sistent with Barth. He expresses deep appreciation for his former teacher, but the development of his theological position in this work would suggest strong influence from his other famous teacher, Bultmann. This mixture is at times confusing, and it is hoped that as Ott develops his own theology further he will be sharper in the distinctions he makes. In trying to find a way between Barth and Bultmann, Ott seems to waver in deciding whether the beginning point for theology and preaching is God, or man, or God and man as seen in Jesus Christ. The attention given to the Heidelberg Catechism will appeal especially to readers in the Presbyterian Church, U.S. because of the use of this catechism in the Covenant Life Curriculum and the authoritative place that it has in the Reformed Church of America, with whom union negotiations are now underway. Wade P. Huie, Jr. Peter Marshall Professor of Homiletics CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND NEGRO EMANCIPATION. By Ralph Moellering. (Fortress Press.) 214 pp. $3.75. A five year ministry on Chicago's West Side and research at Harvard University prepared Ralph Moellering, a Lutheran pastor, to challenge our conscience. His examination of the current arguments concerning Negro emancipation reveals their similarity to those heard pro and con in the nine- teenth century slavery debates. His skillful evaluation of these arguments merits study. The author's own case for completion of emancipation rests upon the teachings of the Biblical prophets and the doctrine of the com- munion of saints: God's covenant people are challenged by the prophets to worship through righteousness, mercy, and justice; the communion of the saints involves concern for the total welfare of our brothers in Christ. Non- involvement in the present struggle is therefore condemned as a policy both 34 contrary to Biblical directives and one contributing to the forces of injustice and oppression. Prayers for forgiveness and courage will rise from some readers as guilt is exposed through the historical and theological analyses spread on these pages; imprecatory prayers will rise from many who will reject this author's concept of the Church and of Christian obedience that values persons more than property rights. All who read carefully will know where we have been, where we are, and how the Christian conscience is either pricked or salved. Hubert V. Taylor Professor of Public Speech and Music TOMB SCULPTURE: Its Changing Aspects From Ancient Egypt To Bernini. By Erwin Panofsky. (Harry N. Abrams, Inc.) 319 pp. $20.00. Jessica Mitford, in her documentary, The American Way of Death, has thrown a flood of lurid light on the manner in which, in our contemporary society, morticians practice their art. She has described, with painful par- ticularity, the way the jaw of the deceased is broken preparatory to being wired, the sewing of the lips, the embalming of the body: all this as a necessary prerequisite for the public viewing of the corpse. In America, Arthur Koestler satirically remarks, "morticians endeavour to transform the dead, with lipstick and rouge, into horizontal members of a perennial cock- tail party," and he attributes this horrid pantomime to the fact that there has been a flight from the tragic facts of existence. It is an incontrovertible fact that funeral customs are reflective of meta- physical belief. Today, we seek to camouflage and deny the reality of death, and this is eloquent testimony to the fact that we have long since ceased to believe, in any real sense, in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Professor Panofsky, in this sumptuous volume, discusses tomb sculpture from the time of the ancient Egyptians to the Renaissance, and illustrates the way in which sculpture reflects the beliefs of different ages. The early Christians, he points out, eliminated from tomb sculpture the retrospective or commemorative principle. "Early Christian art emphasized not what the deceased had been or done but what would happen to him on account of his faith." Early Christian funeral art was not, he repeats, eulogistic; on the contrary, it was preoccupied with deliverance from death and sin. With the Renaissance, however, a radical change took place: "a rejection of Christian concern for the future in favor of pagan glorification of the past." Com- menting on the nature of what he calls this "revolutionary" change, Pro- fessor Panofsky writes: "Glorification of intellectual achievements and academic honors has taken the place of pious expectations for the future of the soul, and such 'immortality' as the deceased hopes for is limited to the continued reputation and popularity of his books." The text of this book was a series of four public lectures delivered at The Institute of Fine Arts of New York University in 1956. The author was persuaded to agree to their publication, and they now appear with the addi- tion of 446 superb illustrations. 35 The author concludes his study with Bernini. After Bernini, he says, "the days of funerary sculpture, and of religious art in general, were numbered." He contents himself with quoting the judgment of Henry James: "Modern tombs are a skeptical affair ... the ancient sculptors have left us nothing to say in regard to the great, final contrast." This is a work of graceful erudition, as illuminating to the student of theology as it is informative to the student of art. Stuart Barton Babbage Visiting Professor of Practical Apologetics THE CENTRAL MESSAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By Joachim Jeremias. (Charles Scribner's Sons.) 95 pp. $2.95. In the light of current obstructions by sundry scholars, Jeremias has accomplished a notable break-through, finding in the historical Jesus the author of the central message of the New Testament. From the Saviour Himself come the great evangelical notes: Abba Father, Sacrificial Death, Justification by Faith, and the Revealing Word. With Abba Father we are behind the Kerygma with Jesus in Gethsemane and with His primitive disciples in Galatia and in Rome. The fifty-third of Isaiah portrays the sacrificial death of Christ as the Suffering Servant who bore the punishment inflicted because of our transgressions. And this is the doctrine not only of Hebrews, of First Peter, and of Paul, of the most primitive Church but five lines of testimony show that the thought of Jesus goes back to Isaiah 53. Justification is forgiveness in the fullest sense. It is not my achievement, but the achievement of Christ on the cross. "Faith says: Here is the achieve- ment Christ died for me on the cross (Gal. 2:20). This faith is the only way to obtain God's grace." Moreover, this realized eschatology is not pri- marily Paul's doctrine, but one which he received from Jesus. Finally, the Logos concept played a very small role in Gnosticism. Where it does occur in the early Valentinian system it has been borrowed from John 1. Gnosticism asserts that the way of salvation is revealed knowledge, while the Gospel affirms that the way of salvation is pardon for all our sins. The Prologue to the Gospel of John is a primitive Christian hymn, com- parable to such other hymns as Phil. 2:6-11; I Tim. 3:16; Matt. 11:25-27 which latter are used by James M. Robinson to show that the historicality of Israelite religion has become a constitutive part of the historicality of Chris- tianity.* The closest key to the meaning of Logos beyond the New Testament is Ignatius. From the silence which betokens His inexpressible majesty God spoke distinctly and clearly in Jesus of Nazareth, above all, in His Cross. William C. Robinson Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Church Polity, and Apologetics *In B. W. Anderson's The Old Testament and Christian Faith, pp. 149-150. 36 THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. Edited by Eugene R. Fairweather. (Oxford University Press.) 400 pp. $7.00. The book under review is the second to appear in the series entitled A Library of Protestant Thought, the purpose of which is "to illuminate and interpret the history of the Christian faith in its Protestant expression," and to do so by allowing the voices of Protestantism to speak for themselves with- out being unduly obstructed by comments and explanations. Naturally, de- voting a single volume to a single movement means that selection has to be made from a great wealth of material, and this lays the selector open to criticism and obloquy from those who for one reason or another would have chosen differently. It is properly only the opera omnia that can be de- scribed as exhaustive and this Library has wisely set before itself the ideal of presenting those writings which are most representative and in general giving them at length rather than providing an anthology of briefer extracts. Professor Fairweather admits that there is "an element of incongruity in the appearance of a volume of Anglo-Catholic classics in a Library of Prot- estant Thought" and his attempt to justify the association does not carry much conviction. This volume, however, will serve as a useful companion to Professor Owen Chadwick's book The Mind of the Oxford Movement, which has a much more extended introduction leading to an anthology of short excerpts from the early Tractarian publications. One must certainly agree with Dr. Fairweather that the Oxford Movement "seriously altered the accepted patterns of Anglican thought and practice," but it is impossible to approve of his assertion that it "did much to prepare the Anglican Com- munion for the modern 'ecumenical dialogue'," excepting in so far as it applies in an Eastward direction; for it is precisely the rigid Anglo-Catholic doctrine of episcopacy and sacramental grace which constitutes the greatest single barrier in the way of reunion with the Free Churches. The authors represented in this selection are Newman, Keble, Pusey, W. G. Ward, Isaac Williams, and R. I. Wilberforce. The selection itself is ably assembled, though it could have been further enhanced in worth and perspective by the addition of extracts from Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua. Philip Edgecumbe Hughes Guest Professor of New Testament Language, Literature, and Exegesis PASCAL'S RECOVERY OF MAN'S WHOLENESS. By Albert N. Wells. (John Knox Press.) 174 pp. $4.25. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) planned a Vindication of Christianity in which to show the holiness and truth of our religion. Of this work, however, he left but fragments known as the Pensees. In these remains Pascal translated Christianity into terms of human experience. He proposed to follow a new course of his own, using, as a starting point, scientific induction. The given fact is human nature, which is a monstrous assemblage of contradictory ele- ments, of greatness and misery, nobility and abasement. This contradiction is resolved when a man admits that his nature is twofold; that it participates both in the nature of the fallen Adam and in that of the Redeeming Christ. 37 This strange doctrine, or hypothesis, is confirmed by religious experience: if we open our being to Grace we find the Living God of Abraham and Jacob. These adventitious and personal experiences are confirmed in living experi- ence. Human life becomes orderly and harmonious when reshaped and re- organized by Divine Grace. Conversion is a reality; by it we enter the "supernatural" order of charity where God is master again of our self which, in its turn, masters our senses and reason. In Christianity the supernatural is not superimposed upon the natural; the supernatural interpenetrates and transforms the natural. The Christian religion thus both explains and pro- vides the remedy for the evils and problems of human existence. Under the influence of A. Vinet, who was the greatest French-speaking Protestant after Calvin, Pascal became a force in Protestant theology. Albert N. Wells is an alumnus of Columbia Theological Seminary. At Princeton Theological Seminary, he concentrated on Pascal, earning a Th.D. in 1956. Paul T. Fuhrmann Professor of Church History THE WORDS. By Jean-Paul Sartre. (George Braziller.) 255 pp. $5.00. The Church's early attempts to discuss the Christian faith with the world involved her theologians with Platonism. Later Thomas Aquinas struggled to preserve the Church's dialogue with the world by reshaping the Christian message in Aristotelian concepts. In more recent days the Church has again been faced with the problem of a shifting in the world's understanding of the nature of ultimate reality. Tillich has sought to speak as a Christian to the world in terms of ontology. Bultmann has attempted to use the existentialist's stance as a frame of reference from which to articulate the Christian message. While there is presently some dissatisfaction with this approach (and a re- vival of interest in process philosophy, at least in America), existentialism has been very much in the mind and life of the Church during our generation. Although writing from an atheistic perspective, one of the most famous exponents of existentialism is Jean-Paul Sartre. His novels and plays are common knowledge among college students. His philosophical stance is widely discussed by professionals. He sometimes symbolizes leftbank pornog- raphy and decadence to those who only know his name. Yet this man declined a large sum of money (The Nobel Prize for Literature) as a matter of principle. To accept such a distinction would add the influence of the institution (The Nobel Prize, in this case) to the man's writings and prevent the reader from reading the man for the sake of his inherent qualities. The Words reveals that Sartre has many good qualities. He can write in an interesting and fascinating style. The book contains sketches, memories and comments upon his early life (until he was ten or eleven) which could easily be boring. For Sartre's early life is rather uneventful. His father having died, Sartre and his mother lived with his grandfather, a relative of Albert Schweitzer. Sartre was a lonely child who spent much time in the world of fantasy and books. He began writing when very young and declares that he was born of writing. Despite the ordinariness of these events, Sartre's story- telling ability makes them good reading. 38 The reader of this volume can perceive some of the main concerns of Sartre's later life as they appear in the process of growth. "I keep creating myself . . ." "The New is ushered in this very hour but is never instituted: tomorrow, everything goes by the board . . ." "I was led to disbelief not by the conflicts of dogmas, but by my grandparents' indifference." Yet throughout his life Sartre seems to have been possessed by the desire to read and write. The love of books and the act of writing came early to him and have never departed. "In vain would I seek within me the prickly memories and sweet unreason of a country childhood. I never tilled the soil or hunted for nests. I did not gather herbs or throw stones at birds. But books were my birds and my nests, my household pets, my barn and my countryside. The library was the world caught in a mirror. It had the world's infinite thickness, its variety. I launched out into incredible adventures." And in the conclusion, Sartre says: "I write and will keep writing books; they're needed; they do serve some purpose. Culture doesn't save anything or anyone; it doesn't justify. But it's a product of man: he projects himself into it, he recognizes himself in it; that critical mirror alone offers him his image." Perhaps the book is another eloquent reminder that Sartre's understand- ing of life can best be communicated by novel, drama and autobiography rather than logical discourse. Neely Dixon McCarter Professor of Christian Education MELANCHTHON ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE: Loci Communes 1555. Translated and edited by Clyde L. Manschreck. (Oxford University Press.) 356 pp. $7.00. Hitherto only the 1521 edition of Melanchthon's Loci has been available in English. But the 1555 edition was four times longer, and reflected changes in the author's theology. In the course of the years Melanchthon's views on the Sacraments came closer to the Reformed view. In his teaching on Natural Religion, he changed from an almost radical denial of its validity to a belief in a harmonious co-ordination of revelation with "natural light," laying the foundation for the development of a doctrine of "natural law." He also veered away from Luther's doctrine of Predestination. In recent years Melanchthon has been widely accused of breaking up the unity of justification and sanctification, found in the teaching of Luther and Calvin, and of treating each as a separate and independent act of God. It is important for us therefore to have this volume, as well as the earlier edition in our hands, so that we can know better how to assess Melanchthon. It is beautifully printed and set out. It has an interesting preface by the translator, and a good introduction by Hans Engelland. Ronald S. Wallace Professor of Biblical Theology 39 ENGLAND'S EARLIEST PROTESTANTS, 1520-1535. By William A. Clebsch. (Yale University Press.) 358 pp. $7.50. The appearance of this work by Professor Clebsch, of Stanford Univer- sity, California, is welcome both because of its own intrinsic worth as a contribution to serious scholarship and also because there is a real need for a new and thorough study of the writings which belong to the earliest tenta- tive period of the movement known as the English Reformation. (Bishop Marcus Loane's admirable book Pioneers of the Reformation in England, which in any case is executed at a more popular, biographical, level, and Professor A. G. Dickens' masterly volume The English Reformation, which is a study of historical development rather than of theological literature, were both published more or less at the same time as Professor Clebsch's work, and so could not be taken into account by him.) This is a contribution of real importance, the fruit of extensive and painstaking research in the litera- ture of the period the source material listed in the bibliography takes up no less than 18 pages, which will relieve students of at least this amount of spadework and it establishes Dr. Clebsch as an authority in this particular field. He has a proper appreciation of the indigenous influence of Lollardy as a source of the English Reformation a fact which has been amply demonstrated by Professor Dickens and also of the strong impression made, in their different ways, by men from outside, such as Luther, largely through the writings of William Tyndale, and Erasmus, through personal association at first hand. He also adds his tribute to the integrity of John Foxe as historiographer of the period. "Certainly their finest and most widely heralded monument is the English translation of the entire New Testament achieved by Tyndale," says Dr. Clebsch of the early English Protestant writers. Yet his attitude to Tyndale seems on the whole to be unsympathetic. He charges Tyndale with having shifted his theological position from an earlier and fully Lutheran "concep- tion of the gospel as liberating man from moralism and legalism" to "a moral- istic and legalistic understanding of Christianity." If it is correct, this would indeed indicate a "radical revision" and a "repudiation of Luther's theology" in fact, "a theology inimical to Luther." But is it true that "the large place accorded to the law in the prologues to the Pentateuch and to Jonah in fact contradicted the thoroughly evangelical note of the 1525 prologue to the New Testament?" Did Tyndale really, in his later years, teach a "double" or "twin" justification, "by faith before God and by works before men?" I do not find any teaching on law, grace, and justification in the Old Testament prologues which cannot be matched in the writings of Luther. Nor do I find any radical departure from Tyndale's earlier understanding of the gospel: the law and the gospel together still constitute the twofold key to unlock Scripture, the law with its demands driving the sinner to despair, and the gospel with its promises bringing him to faith and salvation. The gospel is simply the fulfilment of the new covenant, whereby the law, hitherto menac- ingly standing over against man, is now written within the believing heart, so that now, by the Holy Spirit, the believer is enabled to do what previously he could not do, namely, to walk according to the will of God. It is the unani- mous testimony of the theologians of the Reformation that good works do not and cannot precede justification, but that they do and must follow after it. The good works that flow from justification are not meritorious, .however, 40 even when we hear of rewards. As Tyndale says in the prologue to the book of Numbers: "All that I do and suffer is but the way to the reward, and not the deserving thereof." Such good works justify before men in a different sense, that is, in the sense that they bear testimony to the authenticity of the faith which is professed; and these good works have the sanction not only of Luther but also of the New Testament writers: Paul sums them up as "love," which is "the fulfilling of the law" (Rom. 13:10). The postulation of Tyndale's theological shift plays a prominent part in this volume and leads to the conclusion that Tyndale must be seen as the founder of legalistic Puritanism. It is supported by what I can only describe as a misunderstanding of an incidental saying of Luther's: "Sin boldly!" "Luther could counsel his associates to sin bravely," we are told. "Tyndale's adherents must bravely avoid sin." Again: "For Luther, faith resulted in a trust that could sin bravely, while for the Englishmen faith resulted in an obedience that could eschew sin." This, apparently, is meant in Luther's favour; but I think Luther would have been suprised at this interpretation of his saying, for he was no advocate of sinning. "Pecca fortiter!" (If my memory is not at fault) was intended as a final taunt to his friend Melanch- thon whom he had failed to dissuade from a certain course which he re- garded as sinful, and to whom he at last said in effect: "Well if, despite what I have said, you are still determined to follow this course, then go ahead and sin brazenly!" But these critical observations must not be allowed to obscure the per- vasive virtues of Dr. Clebsch's volume. His study of John Frith, martyred for his faith in 1533 as a young man of 30, who "displayed the finest mind, the most winsome wit, and the boldest spirit among the men who wrote theology in English between 1520 and 1535," is excellent and opportune in that it helps to restore to a condign place of honour a figure that has been unduly neglected. There is also a careful investigation of the writings of lesser figures such as George Joye, William Roy, and Simon Fish; and, by no means least, an admirable chapter on Sir Thomas More, friend of Erasmus and "a veritable inquisitor" in the intensity of his persecution of adherents of the Reformed faith. There were, no doubt, two sides to his character; but, as Dr. Clebsch remarks, "the fact that there were two sides to his character and career gives no warrant for interpreting one side by reference to the other . . . More reserved his tender spirit for family and friends. No Protestant ever glimpsed it." We can be happy that he made a good end, devoting his pen during his last months to devotional writings before, in 1535, he became a political victim of the scaffold for refusing to put allegiance to his king above allegiance to his pope. "His last writings," says Dr. Clebsch, "like the letters to family and friends, shine with the noble sentiment, profound thought, and complete religious dedication of the private man. Yet it was only toward the young and attractive Frith that the public More allowed humaneness to temper his hatred for heretics, and even there he failed to distinguish between the heretic and his heresy." This failure, of course, was common in those days. Yet Professor Clebsch rightly points to the contrast between More and Wolsey in this respect. The latter was gentle and forbearing in his treatment of Protestants arraigned before him. "Thanks to his humane qualities, Protestants and their sympathizers were mercifully handled, as the records of many processes attest. Under him, abjuration and 41 self-exile were the rule, execution the very rare exception. The elevation of Thomas More to the chancellorship swiftly changed all that." Incidentally, I wonder whether Dr. Clebsch is aware of the interesting fact that the Church of St. Edward King and Martyr in Cambridge (which he mentions on more than one occasion) was in the sixteenth century, and still is today, what is known as a "peculiar" that is, a church outside the jurisdiction of the bishop with the important consequence that when there was a ban on the preaching of the doctrines of the Reformation men like Barnes and Latimer were able to proclaim their message from its pulpit with immunity? The authentic sixteenth century pulpit is now back in St. Edward's (having in recent years been discovered in a side-chapel at King's College) and in regular use. Scholars will be in Dr. Clebsch's debt for a long time to come for his learned and detailed account of the battle of books and theologies during these fifteen years which were of such importance in the struggle and de- velopment of the English Reformation. Philip Edgecumbe Hughes Guest Professor of New Testament Language, Literature, and Exegesis AUGUSTINE THE EDUCATOR. By Eugene Kevane. (Newman Press.) 446 pp. $5.95. In a recent article John B. Cobb, Jr., discusses the way in which the philosophical theism of the Whitehead-Hartshorne variety contributes to his own theologizing (Christian Century, LXXXII, no. 9, March 3, 1965, pp. 265-67). Cobb's remarks are indicative of the renewed dialogue between theology and philosophy found in current American theology. As John E. Smith has said, "Religious faith and philosophical thought . . . have always found themselves in the peculiar position of not being able to get along with each other and of not being able to remain permanently apart" (Reason and God, p. ix). Concurrently churchmen are deeply involved in the debate concerning the place of religion in education. Recent Supreme Court decisions, Presi- dential bills calling for federal aid to education, and the quickening pace of university life have forced many Christian thinkers to wrestle afresh with this "Christ and Culture" issue. This book by Eugene Kevane deals with both of these pressing problems from a classical Roman Catholic position. The very outline of the book re- veals this, for the first division is given over to an interpretation of Augus- tine's early training and writing in terms of the great Bishop's educational purposes (chapter 2-5). The second part of the book is devoted to an analy- sis of Augustine's philosophy of education (chapters 6-7). The final portion adumbrates Augustine's administrative practices or his blueprint for the establishing of a new type of school (chapters 8-10). Since the latter became the seedbed of the Christian order of the centuries that followed, the author indicates in the closing chapters just how Augustine's educational approach is relevant for our work today. The book contains excellent and extensive notes as well as a lengthy bibliography. 42 Monsignor Kevane seeks to make a contribution to Augustinian scholar- ship in his first section (and in Appendix II) by showing that Augustine's educational purposes give continuity to his life and thought. The author argues cogently for the fact that Augustine's Dialogues of Cassiciocum were created as the first step in an educational corpus. This being the case, these writings do appear to be merely philosophical. But, Kevane argues, they are philosophical only for the purpose of leading young minds to perceive that God is a spiritual reality belonging to the intelligible world. Augustine had been led to see this truth by his reading of Cicero's Hortensius; this volume evoked from him a love of wisdom, which he later identified as God. In his own teaching, therefore, Augustine led students through these philosophical discussions so that they could come to see God as he was revealed in Scrip- tures. Thus Kevane declares, The Confessions are not in disagreement with the earlier dialogues (as many maintain); they are merely the preparatio evangelica while The Confessions contain a revelation-centered interpretation of Augustine's own life. Having spoken of this intellectual and moral preparation for Christian doctrine, Kevane goes on to elaborate Augustine's philosophy of education. The Bishop's intention was to restore and renew the classical education of Plato, claiming the same for the Christian cause. Augustine therefore in- cluded in his philosophy of education, music, logic, mathematics as well as philosophy and Christian doctrine. He thus developed a Christian humanism so that education once more (becomes) a true initiation of youth into the divine economy for human living and plan for human happiness, and accomplishes the reform of the heritage of education to its pristine state (pp. 258-59). Perhaps the core of this process was Augustine's understanding of history. He did not separate sacred history from secular history in that he understood the latter as well as the former to be a systematic and orderly unfolding of God's will. All of life was unified from this perspective. In his final chapters Monsignor Kevane sketches for us the decline of Augustine's doctrine of history. He tells us of the various efforts to eject God from the processes of life by Bayle, Voltaire, Comte, Hegel and Marx, so that today education consists of bits and chunks psychology over here with its presuppositions, math over there, etc. Kevane contends that a return to Augustine would enable us to hold together religion and life while making academic studies a means of grace. The book, in a sense, turns out to be an apology for the parochial school. Such an institution can offer a unified view of reality; theology can be a part of every subject as well as every aspect of the school's social life. If such a unified view of life is to be instilled in the youth of today, it will probably have to be done by the schools. Father John-Baptist Reeves said some years ago that "it is only by schools that culture is directly determined" {A Monu- ment to Saint Augustine, p. 123). Kevane ignores the weaknesses of parochial schools which some of his Roman brethren point out in Theology and the University. While this is an excellent study, this reviewer notices at least two under- lying presuppositions which raise questions in his mind. First, "underlying these educational positions is the bedrock of St. Augustine's metaphysical realism" (p. 291). Without classical metaphysics these "objective human values, morals, orders, etc." will not stand. Can we seriously hope to build 43 an educational system today on classical metaphysics? Is Christianity nothing more than applied Platonism? The second assumption is that, since Augustine might be called the father of Western Civilization, a return to his educational philosophy will restore western culture to its prime. Can we so restore western civilization? Do we even want to try? Neely Dixon McCarter Professor of Christian Education CEREMONY AND CELEBRATION. By Paul H. D. Lang. (Concordia Publishing House.) 191 pp. $4.95. Lutheran research has produced valuable works on the history, theology, rites, and music of the liturgy. Paul Lang here adds a definitive work on everything connected with the performance of a rite: bodily expressions, observance of the church year, ornaments, symbols, and material objects em- ployed in the worship such as the building, the altar, candles and vestments. What is of value here to the non-Lutheran? First, there is the justification of rites and ceremonies. Although non-liturgical churches minimize the cere- monial element they do not escape it, and understanding of theory may lead to more meaningful ceremonial. Man is both body and soul; and the body is the instrument of the soul in both directions, expression and impression. So religion is a matter of the body as well as of the heart. Moreover, we glorify and acknowledge God both with the church building and with the service of worship: cheap, ill-kept churches and slovenly services dishonour Him; our actions in the service outwardly express the faith. The faithful under- stand the symbols and are moved powerfully by them; the children learn the content of the faith through these ceremonials. Moreover, traditional actions expressive of the faith safeguard the church's doctrinal purity. Departure from traditional celebration indicates change of doctrine. Thus, says Lang, rites and ceremonies have a very real and practical value in teaching, pre- serving, recalling, familiarizing, and impressing the truths of the faith, (p. 14) Two notes here strike the reviewer as particularly important for non- liturgical churches. Lang insists that the organ be silent when parts of the service are spoken. (This would eliminate the deplorable practice of accom- panying spoken prayers with organ music or choir humming.) He also re- minds us that hymn tunes are primarily bearers of the text and not musical interpretations of the text. Thus the hymn text and not the hymn tune is the first concern of the worshipper. (What does this indicate for the practice of selection of hymns according to the popularity of the tune?) Hubert V. Taylor Professor of Public Speech and Music COMMUNISM, CHRISTIANITY, DEMOCRACY. By Surjit Singh. (John Knox Press.) 127 pp. $3.00. San Francisco Theological Seminary Professor Singh declares in this stimulating and provocative volume that communism and liberal democracy have displaced Christianity as the religions of modern man because the Church both in the East and in the West has been willing to consider 44 the Christian faith as a purely private affair with no interest in the social concerns of men today. Thus, Christianity's total claim on life has been denied : in the East the Russian Orthodox Church has always been subservient to the state, and in the West men's pursuit of selfish interests has reduced Christianity to a "Sunday religion." The Russian Church, Singh declares, must become "deeply and sacrifici- ally involved in the social revolution in Russia" and must at the same time reach out with ecumenical interest to give to and receive from Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. In America also the Church must enlarge its areas of concern : by increasing its ecumenical activity and by participating in the social revolution that is bringing such "manifestations of the Christian her- itage" as the Civil Rights Act. With a successful consummation of the American social revolution, the nation will have nothing to fear from communism, and with a more united ecumenical Church, the people of the world will be able to recognize the people of the Church as the "people of God and his Christ." Harold B. Prince Librarian PROPHECY AND COVENANT. By R. E. Clements. (Alec R. Allenson, Inc.) 135 pp. $2.85. As the title of Dr. Clements' study suggests, the author seeks to show the close relationship which exists between the message of the prophets, in particular the pre-exilic ones, and the covenant traditions as connected with the Patriarchs, Sinai, and the house of David. Dr. Clements presents a synthetic picture of Old Testament religion in which the legal traditions, the cult and the message of the prophets are seen as mutually interacting, the message of the prophets being the genuine in- terpretation of the covenant so that the light which they shed on the past and the present does enable Israel to face the future with a new understand- ing of the covenant. Two quotations from the concluding chapter of the book will show the author's understanding of the problem of Prophecy and Covenant: The prophets, therefore, only reveal their significance to us when we understand them in the light of the wider history and traditions of Yahwism, which they shared. They neither created a new religion, nor introduced a new morality. To regard their achievement primarily as the introduction of ethical monotheism is to see them out of relation to their religious heritage. Wherein then lay the distinctiveness of the canonical prophets? We have sought to show throughout this study that it lay in their particular rela- tionship to, and concern with, the covenant between Yahweh and Israel. Their preaching was felt to bear a unique quality as a witness to what that covenant meant both by way of demand upon Israel, in the realm of morality, and also by way of promise for the future. Dr. Clements has written his book in a style that will please the expert in the field of Old Testament studies as well as the layman. Ludwig R. Dewitz Professor of Old Testament Language, Literature, and Exegesis 45 THE SETTING OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. By W. D. Davies. (Cambridge University Press.) 547 pp. $12.50. This book is no bedtime story. None of the books of W. D. Davies are. He is the kind of writer who investigates the theme or problem thoroughly, weighs all the arguments pro and con, and arrives at judicious conclusions. The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount is so well documented and so full of pertinent facts that it will go on the shelf reserved for reference books and will constantly become a source for help in rightly understanding the background of Matthew 5-7. Davies has left no stone unturned in his "examination of influences, within and without the church, which led to the concentrated presentation of moral teaching known as the Sermon on the Mount" (p. IX). The book does not seek to survey the content of the Sermon or its significance for doctrine or ethics, but rather to investigate the circumstances of its emer- gence and formulation. This is not to indicate that it is a study in source criticism or form criticism or liturgy; instead it seeks to understand the his- torical milieu in which the Sermon arose and to which it speaks. The author rightly begins by investigating the setting which the Sermon has in the Gospel of Matthew. He understands the writer of the first Gospel not as an editor pasting together snippets of fragments garnered from the early church but rather in a real sense as an author who has, to be sure, used sources, but has used them for his own ends. His conclusion is that Matthew does not set forth the Sermon on the Mount as a new, revolutionary law in sharp antithesis to that given on Sinai but as a "Messianic Torah," new in the authority with which it interprets the Old Law ("You have heard it said . . . but I say unto you . . ."). Were there stimuli from outside the church which in any way determined Matthew's presentation of the Sermon on the Mount? After surveying the Messianic expectation of contemporary Judaism and the movements which were active in first century Palestine, Davies concludes, particularly in the light of the Council of Jamnia, that "it was the desire and necessity to present a formulation of the way of the new Israel at a time when the Rabbis were engaged in a parallel task for the old Israel" (p. 315). As for internal stimuli Davies does not feel that this Sermon arose out of any sort of practical necessity on the part of the church, such as cate- chesis or paraenesis, but rather because these words of Jesus were an indispensible part of the gospel itself. They clarified the moral and ethical seriousness of the gospel and therefore were essential as revelation. To say that the Christian faith is no more than a statement that God appeared in human history in the form of a particular man, that he lived and taught and died and was raised again is to reduce the faith to a mime. Instead, Davies suggests, it should be understood as a drama in which the words of the chief actor are essential to the action of the story. The chief actor of course is not to be severed from the words which he spoke. In the light of the gospel the imperatives of the Sermon become themselves indicatives; they prevent the gospel from the danger of abstraction from life; they make concrete the meaning of the kerygma. The Sermon thus becomes a kind of bridge span- ning the arch between grace and law, between Paul and James. The chief value of this book is its enormous contribution to the relation- ship between Christianity and Judaism in the first century. This is Davies' 46 forte, and The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount will stand alongside his Paul and Rabbinic Judaism as a monumental work. There are a number of significant by-products which the book also provides, namely a valuable study of the Council of Jamnia and a sympathetic critique of the approach to the gospel tradition by Riesenfeld and Gerhardsson. Charles B. Cousar Associate Professor of New Testament Language, Literature, and Exegesis THE CROSS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. By Leon Morris. (William B. Eerdmans.) 454 pp. $6.95. Principal Leon Morris here adds to his great doctoral study on The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross this exegetical and doctrinal study of The Cross in The New Testament. These two works bracket Morris with James Denney whose two books on the same theme mightily re-inforced the Gospel preaching of the last generation. Like Denney, Morris is a top-flight Greek scholar with the rare gifts of careful analysis, discerning judgment, and pre- cise language. With an outreach that is encyclopaedic, the author has enriched his presentation with quotations from most modern and many ancient writers. These citation are generally positive, evidencing a rare facility for finding good things even in "bad" books. The exception to this positive mood is found in Morris' treatment of G. S. Hendry's The Gospel of the Incarnation. Of this book, Morris writes: it attributes "no particular significance to the death of Christ." In the last resort, he says, it is hard to see what difference there is between the Jewish view of forgiveness and Professor Hendry's For Morris, man's sin and guilt have put him into such a serious plight that his salvation can only be wrought by God. Accordingly the New Testa- ment writers see the cross of Christ as God's great act, which is efficacious for man's salvation. The sin of man aroused the ire of the Almighty, but through the blood of the Cross that Divine enmity was removed and recon- ciliation was accomplished. Outside of Christ, Paul sees no hope of forgive- ness. All that Paul was and all that he hoped for centered in the action of God on the Cross. There God was propitiated, the world reconciled, man forgiven. According to the Epistle to the Hebrews "Christ has dealt with sin by bearing to the full all that it means. He has taken upon Himself God's judgment. He stood in our place that we might go free." "No matter how sin is understood, Christ is the answer." It is a pleasure to endorse Morris' well substantiated conclusions. "In the New Testament there cannot be the slightest doubt that the Cross is the great central divine act which brings men salvation." "In His death Christ made Himself one with sinners. He took their place." "By His life, death, resurrection and ascension, Christ triumphed over Satan and sin and every conceivable source of evil." "Not only did Christ win a victory, but he se- cured a verdict. He wrought salvation powerfully, but also legally." "In His death Christ is man's supreme example: inviting a threefold response in repentance, faith and holy living so that there is a cross for the Christian as well as for Christ." "While the many-sidedness of the atonement must be borne in mind, substitution is at the heart of it." "Man can do nothing to 47 bring about his salvation, but must rest on what God has done for him" in Christ. William C. Robinson Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Church Polity, and Apologetics GOD'S WORD INTO ENGLISH. By Dewey M. Beegle. (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) 230 pp. $2.25. (Paperback) Many developments in recovering a more authentic text, the increasing pace of language change, so much unnatural, frequently obscure, and some- times ambiguous, misleading and inaccurate wording these are only a few of the reasons set forth with generous illustrative evidence for the urgent necessity of each generation having a fresh translation of the Bible in a reasonably contemporary vernacular. Half the book, first published in 1960, is given to appendices reprinting pertinent documents and to a description and critical estimate of nine major translations and two reprints issued between 1960 and 1964. The reading of this fascinating, informative and yet complicated story of the problems of putting Scripture into understandable English should renew our confidence in the evangelical and pedagogical soundness of regu- lar use in pulpit and pew, in classroom and home, of an up-to-date transla- tion. How long will God's Word be fettered and thus abused, especially for our youth, for new Christians and for not-yet Christians, by the clinging to obsolete versions? Dean G. McKee Professor of Biblical Exposition THE TEN COMMANDMENTS: A Study of Ethical Freedom. By Ronald S. Wallace. (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) 181 pp. $3.95. More than a rigid legal code, demanding the strictest compliance under threat of dire penalty for failure, the "Ten Commandments usher us into a world dominated by a living Lord who desires to enter personal communion with His people and to give personal guidance to them when they are in every situation involving moral decisions," says the author of this little book. Few contemporary writers on the Decalogue rise with any great strength to counter the challenge of the so-called "new morality." Ronald Wallace's book is the exception. Here is a fresh and forceful approach to the Com- mandments which studies them in the light of Biblical themes necessary to their understanding, interprets them in the light of the New Testament, and applies them with an insight as contemporary as are the morning headlines. So, for example, the threat of idolatry to the new young Israelite nation is vividly described, but no less vivid is the description of the idols men worship today. And then there is the clear portrayal of the only Image of Himself that the mercifully jealous God permits us. The study of the Sabbath Day, 48 its practices and perversions, from the creation story to the New Testament Lord's Day is clear and succinct, but its timely meaning for today is emphatic summoning man from his absorption in creation, not just to relax, but to step back from his busy preoccupation, discover God's company again, and in it the whole reason for his existence. So for each of the Ten Commandments, Ronald Wallace leads his readers through solid Biblical scholarship to a clear Christian interpretation of the Decalogue with convincing and fresh applications for a day desperately groping for moral certitude. This is a book that should be in every preacher's library. Harry A. Fifield Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Ga. SOCIETY AND PURITANISM IN PRE-REVOLUTIONARY ENGLAND. By Christopher Hill. (Schocken.) 520 pp. $10.00. INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. By Christopher Hill. (Oxford University Press.) 333 pp. $7.20. Christopher Hill has recently been elected to the coveted position of Master of Balliol College, Oxford. His special field of interest is the English Revolution and its antcedents. The works under review are an impressive addition to his earlier works in this field: The English Revolution 1640; Economic Problems of the Church from Archibishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament; Puritanism and Revolution; Oliver Cromwell, 1658-1958; and The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714. Dr. Hill is an accurate and meticulous scholar. In the first of the two volumes under review he points out that the puritans were often supported by the industrious sort of people for a variety of non-theological reasons, and that no account of puritanism is adequate which neglects the part played by these non-theological factors; in the second volume, he discusses the part played by ideas in relation to the political changes of the seventeenth century ("After two decades of economic interpretations of the English Civil War, the time, I believe, is ripe for a revival of interest in the ideas that motivated the seventeenth century revolutionaries"). The author demonstrates, by a wealth of apposite quotations, that there was no hard and fast agreement as to the meaning of the term "puritan." It was, of course, used pejoratively, but the overtones were sometimes political, sometimes social, sometimes ecclesiastical, depending upon the individual's prejudices and predilections. (Shakespeare makes Maria say: "Sir, some- times he is a kind of puritan." To which Sir Andrew replies: "O, if I thought that, I'd beat him like a dog!") The one thing the term "puritan" did not mean, the author says, is the accepted stereotype of an embittered killjoy. ("The Puritan," Macauley satirically observes, reflecting the views of a later time, "hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.") In his second volume Christopher Hill 49 makes a further comment: "Very few of the so-called 'Puritans' were 'Puri- tanical' in the nineteenth century sense of that word, obsessed by sex and opposed to fun: 'Puritanism' of this sort was largely a Post-Restoration creation. The body of ideas which has to be called 'Puritan' . . . was a philosophy of life, an attitude to the universe, which by no means excluded secular interests.") With a wealth of superb documentation the author discusses the life of the industrious sort of people, and the way in which considerations of eco- nomic advantage conveniently combined with theological conviction to justify resistance to autocracy in Church and State. Christopher Hill has a barbed wit. Commenting on the royal appointment of bishops, he cynically notes: "Bishops appointed by the Crown very rarely forget their maker." He speaks of the degradation of the word "charity": "It used to be the holiest, of the three, holier than hope or even faith: it has become a crust of bread handed to the poor man at the gate." Concern- ing the maypole (abhorred by the puritans for its phallic associations) he observes: "It is one of history's little ironies that the liberty poles of the American Revolution descended from the maypole." The author shows the way in which theology tended to adjust itself to changing social realities. "When both the discipline and Calvinist theology lost their grip in the conditions of relative freedom of the sixteen-forties, the sects formed new voluntary communities. In them the emphais moved away from discipline to social services and communal self-help, just as the theo- logical emphasis shifted from the eternal decrees to the perfectibility of man." This is a learned work which demands, and deserves, careful and critical study: its merit is that it raises, in the sharpest form, inescapable questions concerning the relationship between theology and society. In his second volume the author discusses the contributions of Bacon, Ralegh, and Coke, in relation to science, history, and law. The puritan em- phasis upon personal experience ("True knowledge of Christ," wrote Thomas Taylor, "is experimental") accorded with the new reliance on experiment in relation to science. Science, history, law, "all three provided ideas for the men who hitherto had existed only to be ruled, but who in the sixteen-forties would help to take over the government. Together with the Puritan sense of destiny and emphasis on self-help, they prepared men for revolution." The two volumes, taken together, illustrate the unsuspected ramifications of puritanism in every field of thought and activity. They are a notable achievement. Stuart Barton Babbage Visiting Professor of Practical Apologetics THEOLOGY OF WORSHIP IN 17th CENTURY LUTHERANISM. By Friedrich Kalb. Translated by Henry Hamann. (Concordia Pub- lishing House.) 192 pp. $3.95. Those concerned for both orthodoxy and liturgy will welcome Friedrich Kalb's study. His question is who was responsible for deviation from class- ical Lutheran worship in the 17th century. His research indicates Orthodox 50 dogmaticians were unable to maintain inherited forms against the attacks of Pietism and Rationalism. Orthodoxy supported the classical concern for the whole man. Its the- ologians discussed worship as an integral part of dogmatics (p. 41). They had no split between liturgies and dogmatics, between religion and piety. These were inseparables for the entire life of the Christian was worship. Neither a few acts of an external nature performed in a worship service, nor the private devotions of a devout individual, fulfilled worship (pp. 8, 9). Intellectual grasp of doctrine and complete life service were interdependent, not exclusive, parts of Christian life. Internal devotion of the heart led to participation in external public rites witnessing to the reality of the internal attitude but not substituting for it. Pietism fragmented man into spirit and body. Primary emphasis was placed upon personal experience and congregational rites were minimized. Conversion was substituted for confirmation, private baptism was practiced, efforts were made to hold communion services in private homes. The doc- trine of justification by faith was levelled against liturgical actions for some might consider the latter works of merit. Searching the Scriptures for clear directives Orthodoxy built a legalistic defense for classical Lutheran forms. This helped resist the inroads of spiritualizing and individualizing tendencies, but it did not prevent decay. Its inadequacy is evidenced in part by its failure to recognize the excellencies of Schutz and Bach, "the real pinnacles of Orthodox church music." (p. 150) The demand that worship music must accompany a Biblical text left the "wordless" music of Bach outside the province of worship. The critical and negative dogmatic of Orthodoxy was incapable of meeting the problems of the new age. Lutheran struggles of the 17th century cast light upon similar Reformed tensions in that period and also point directions for those seeking true faith and right worship today. Kalb calls for positive understanding of the rela- tionship of outward forms to the Gospel and for use of psychology and aesthetics to determine the value of our forms for the worshipper. His study warns us again of the dangers of legalism, traditionalism, and subjectivism. His evidence is convincing. Hubert V. Taylor Professor of Public Speech and Music LIFE AND FIRE OF LOVE: Prayer and its presuppositions. By Herbert M. Waddams. (S. P. C. K.) 242 pp. 18s. 6d. Canon Waddams contributes a study of the Christian life and of prayer which concentrates heavily on the inner life of the person who prays. The first half of the book deals with what the subtitle apparently intends by the word "presuppositions," but the author more accurately defines his theme as "ascetical" or "mystical" theology. Instead of attempting a portrayal of the God to whom the Christian prays, Canon Waddams urges that "all Christians . . . can and must aspire to the mystical life," but he cautions that "they cannot aspire to any particular mystical experiences." (p. 16) 51 In succession he discusses the will, the mind, and the feelings of the one who prays, and then he enlarges upon the aspect of discipline in the Christian life, drawing throughout from the New Testament and from the experience of Christians through the ages. In the second part of the book Canon Waddams defines three ways of prayer, which many Christians will understand only with difficulty. He then discusses various circumstances and their effect on the life of prayer. A brief appendix deals with the problem of quietism, and the book concludes with extracts from various spiritual writers. Much of the terminology and many of the distinctions which occupy Canon Waddams will be a foreign language to the typical activist American Christian. Perhaps some prayer meeting groups will be ready to explore the deeper refinements of his theme, but the fact that most Sunday morning Christians would find it difficult to complete the reading of the book is an indication of the shallowness of the life of the Spirit among us. James H. Gailey, Jr. Professor of Old Testament Language, Literature, and Exegesis HANDBOOK OF BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY By Jack Finegan. (Princeton University Press.) 338 pp. $8.50. Dr. Finegan's work should prove a valuable addition to the library of any person interested in studying the historical framework of the Bible. It is primarily a handbook, i.e., a work of reference to which one may turn for certain information regarding the chronology of the Bible. However, it is also advantageous to read through the book as a whole since only then one becomes acquainted with the various problems of reckoning time in the ancient world and its relation to Biblical events and our own calendar. The book is conveniently printed in numbered paragraphs which yet form a synthetic whole dealing with systems of reckoning time in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece and Rome; proceeding to a survey of the chronographies of Africanus and Eusebius, dealing finally with the internal problems of Old and New Testament chronology. One wonders whether the proportions of the various parts of the book might not have been adjusted a little better since Part I is nearly double the length of Part II, and some of the tabulations appear rather repetitious; the 40 pages dealing with the Chronicle of Eusebius might in the opinion of this reviewer also have been condensed profitably. Clarity is one of the admirable features of the book which is evidenced, for example, in the following excerpt dealing with the important matter of regnal years: "In the accession-year system the portion of a year from the accession of the king to the end of the then current calendar year is only his "accession year" (and for chronological purposes remains a part of the last numbered regnal year of his predecessor), and the new king's Year 1 begins only on the first day of the new calendar year after his accession. In the nonaccession-year system the portion of a calendar year, no matter how brief, remaining from the accession of the king to the end of the then current calendar year is treated not as an uncounted accession year but as already Year 1 of the new king; therewith the preceding king fails to be credited 52 with that calendar year as a regnal year in which he does not live out a full year on the throne." The section dealing with chronological problems of the New Testament, such as the significance of the Star of Bethlehem, the problem of Synoptic and Johannine reckoning of time in Passion week, and the dates concerning the careers of Peter and Paul, are most illuminating. Ludwig R. Dewitz Professor of Old Testament Language, Literature, and Exegesis CHRIST AND ARCHITECTURE: Building Presbyterian/Reformed Churches. By Donald J. Bruggink and Carl H. Droppers. (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) 708 pp. $20.00. Christ and Architecture is a magnificent plea for theologically oriented church architecture. After the hymns are sung and the sermon spoken the church building can itself stand as a witness to Christ. The possibilities and impact of this visual witness unfold in the readable, informative text and photographic record of witnessing churches. The wholeness and oneness in Christ become a seen and felt experience as the word and sacraments are expressed in sensitively designed communion tables and baptismal fonts. The careful design of these objects is a dynamic heritage of Christianity growing from the desire of Christians to allow Christ to speak in every feature of the sanctuary. After the experience of the first half of the book seeing Christ mani- fest in His church structures the second half of the book deals marvel- ously with all the practicalities, such as selection of the architect, church neighborhood surveys, site selection principles, the overall cost picture, the contractor, maintenance, depreciation, the shape of the church building, and even the organ. Christ and Architecture is absolutely indispensible reading and resource for every church, minister, session, building committee and responsible lay- man, since many who are not building need to reconsider the witness of their sanctuary. Mrs. James H. Gailey, Jr. NERO: The Man And The Legend. By John Bishop. (Robert Hale, London.) 208 pp. 21s. The Professor of Classics in the University of New England (in Aus- tralia, not America), advances two novel interpretations: the first, in rela- tion to the part played by Christians in the Fire of Rome (A. D. 64); and secondly, in relation to the legend of Nero Redivivus. Tacitus, in a well known passage, asserts that Nero, to deflect suspicion from himself, accused the Christians of responsibility for the appalling con- flagration, punishing them with appropriate ferocity. The Christians, while not responsible for starting the fire, Professor Bishop suggests, were never- theless responsible for spreading the fire. They believed in the imminent 53 return of their Lord, which return, they taught, was to be preceded by a great fire presaging "the day of judgment and the perdition of ungodly men" (2 Peter 3:7). "On that July night in 64 the Christians, eager and expectant for the return of their Lord, alerted by the hedonistic passions of the pagan Romans around them, recognizing in them the signs of decay that were to herald the end, were suddenly confronted with the pagan heart of the Empire in flames. Forgetful of their duty to obey civil authorities as far as they could in civil matters . . . they threw themselves with enthusiasm into the task of helping to prepare the way for the Lord." There is only one difficulty about this hypothesis: the alleged conduct of the Christians violates every accepted principle of Christian morality. The author's interpretation is ingenious but incredible. Secondly, the author argues that Nero was not the object of universal detestation tradition has represented him to be. "The Nero Legend is a fact of history: men in their thousands held his memory dear enough to await with a thrill of loyal anticipation the return of an Emperor who had looked after them well." The legend of Nero Redivivus, however, may have been the product, not of eager expectation, but of hysteric fear: and this, in the light of Nero's known character, is the more probable explanation. Stuart Barton Babbage Visiting Professor of Practical Apologetics PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP: Its Meaning and Method. By Donald Macleod. (John Knox Press.) 152 pp. $3.25. For Presbyterian theological students and pastors seeking specific meth- ods and procedures for the ordering of public worship, the administration of the sacraments, and the conduct of weddings and funerals this is the long- awaited book. Amid the current restudy of worship (new Directory for Worship and Work, experimental Service for the Lord's Day) church officers and teachers will find here a helpful guide to the why and how of changes their pastors propose. The glossary of terms will serve to prevent breakdowns in current dialogues on worship. Macleod first traces the theological and historical foundations of current worship theory and then erects a tripartite order for morning service : Prepa- ration, Proclamation of the Word, Fellowship of Prayer. Each portion of the service is discussed and suggestions for procedure are offered. Chapters on the sacraments both expose the meaning of these symbols and indicate their appropriate administration. Would that Macleod had provided more adequate guidance to the excellent literature now available on worship! Readers stimulated by his laconic excursions into meaning could then have pursued further study readily. Why not an annotated bibliography? Worship practice should rise out of thorough understanding of worship theory for without theory practice becomes routine and pastors become imitators, not creators of significant forms. One misses here adequate discussion of prayer, especially of the im- portant prayers at the Lord's Table. More thought could well be devoted to the significance of the offering in the service, and some will disagree with Macleod's insistence that the offering should never be placed upon the Table. 54 This first comprehensive handbook on Presbyterian worship published since C. W. Baird's Presbyterian Liturgies (1855) deserves a place on many Presbyterian shelves. Hubert V. Taylor Professor of Public Speech and Music OPEN LETTER TO EVANGELICALS. By R. E. O. White. (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) $4.95. The title of this volume (a commentary on the First Epistle of John) indicates its basic thrust. Dr. White expounds the Scripture focusing the attention of the reader upon the passage being studied. By a unique organization of the treatment the reader is led along a sound procedure in exposition. Part One is a clear, concise exposition of the obvious thought of the epistle, directing attention to what is written without distrac- tions of critical questions or argument for or against some current theory of interpretation. It appears as a careful study of the text in its own movement of thought. Part Two is a very rewarding group of six essays discussing contemporary problems in evangelical thought in the light of I John. Part Three serves as an appendix comprised of scholarly and critical notes on problems implicit in the commentary as presented. The reading of this volume will not only enrich understanding of I John, but it will afford wholesome examination of contemporary evangelicalism, as well as familiarize the reader with a sound procedure in dealing with Scripture. Manford Geo. Gutzke Professor of Biblical Exposition and Christian Education A CHRISTIAN NATURAL THEOLOGY: Based on the thought of Alfred North Whitehead. By John B. Cobb, Jr. (The Westminster Press.) 288 pp. $6.50. Certainly the influence of Kierkegaard has been dominant in contempo- rary theology. The emphasis among theologians has been more and more upon personal, vital faith. Bultmann and some of his diciples have all but declared metaphysical statements to be demonic. This preoccupation with the historic and personal has made it difficult if not impossible to speak meaningfully of God's relation to the non-personal. Theologians have moved back over a familiar route which ends in man's subjectivity. We should not be surprised, therefore, to find today a lively group of Feuerbachians (the God-is-death theologians). There have been a number of theologians who have tried to see God's relation to the whole of reality, not just to the subjectivity of the individual. But to describe God's relation to the world is not easy in today's technological world. What terms shall we use? Can we speak of God being out there, etc.? In addition when one makes statements about God or Christ, one does pre- suppose certain things about the nature of reality. These assumptions need to be clarified. John Cobb refers to this task as the work of Christian natural 55 theology. Cobb grants that one can have faith in God through Christ without this intellectual exercise; nevertheless, this intellectual undertaking must be done. It is Cobb's commitment and his desire to be a theologian which pushes him to deal with philosophy (p. 14). Cobb is a true post-Barthian; he takes the recent criticisms of natural theology seriously (pp. 259ff). Nevertheless he is not satisfied either to use just any philosophical categories or to try to create a Christian philosophy. It is more realistic, he believes, to modify an existing philosophy. The major part of the book is devoted to explaining, correcting and adding to Whitehead's metaphysics. Many will be surprised to see how con- genial Cobb's version of Whitehead is with Biblical faith. The arguments for understanding God as personal and Cobb's own warmth as a theologian will no doubt contribute to the growing dialogue between the Christian faith and Whiteheadian philosophy. Neely Dixon McCarter Professor of Christian Education HYMNS IN CHRISTIAN WORSHIP. By Cecil Northcutt. (John Knox Press.) 83 pp. $1.75. This thirteenth volume of Ecumenical Studies in Worship follows the recommendation by the World Council of Churches' 1963 Faith and Order Conference that varied elements of worship be studied with a view to im- proving our ability to communicate the Gospel to our contemporaries and to share our Christian life in worship. It succinctly deals with what hymns communicate and with attempts to communicate this content more effectively. Northcutt defines a hymn as "singable praise, and for the Christian that means praise to God for His mighty acts in creation and Christ, a salute in song to the events of the Gospel both in the Old and the New Israel. It is an objective announcement in song of certain events in history, and of the believer's experience concerning them." The Christian hymn has thus tradi- tionally celebrated the great affirmations of Scripture. At its best moments the Church has insisted upon song Scripturally true and doctrinally pure. The hymn, therefore, has become a conservative force that preserves the faith of the past and passes it on to new generations "even more pungently and personally than the creeds themselves or indeed any other statement of Christian belief." The reader may be surprised to find the author linking contemporary jazz experiments in hymnody with the nineteenth century "Gospel song," yet Northcutt recognizes both as attempts either to reach the non-religious or to retain the interest of the religious by the introduction of familiar styles of music into worship. Although he recognizes some value in both efforts, he doubts that either will develop a new style of hymnody matching the universal appeal of classical hymnody. He approves the use of hymns at such gatherings as sporting events and the "house church" because the power of Christian song links the sacred and secular spheres in life: "People sing hymns because they want to and like to, wherever they happen to be." Pastors and parishioners will profit from study of this work. Its size and cost make it available for all. Both may come to regard Christian song as 56 "an act of the Church at worship and not simply the individual believer sing- ing a pious and independent solo." Hubert V. Taylor Professor of Public Speech and Music TOWARD A THEOLOGY OF HISTORY By J. V. Langmead Casserley. (Holt, Rinehart and Winston.) 238 pp. $6.00. Dr. Casserley, who has already given us an important work in his The Christian In Philosophy, in this turns to the problem of the relationship between Christianity and history. He is an original thinker and while he is very critical of some of the contemporary work done in this field he is con- structive rather than polemic. "The Christian tradition cannot tolerate the scandal of irrational, un- theological religion," he says, and then argues that "our doctrine of revela- tion implies . . . some events . . . have an intrinsic, objective meaning of their own." He then goes on "to argue that Biblical typology (carefully purged of all allegorical elements) is a genuine historical method" and demonstrates what he means by this by seeking to show that Toynbee, for example, does this in his historiography, that is, Toynbee treats historical events and interprets them in precisely the same way as events are interpreted in the Bible. He recognizes, of course, that Toynbee does not take a Christian point of view and makes a sharp criticism of the Toynbean synthesis by saying, "We find in Toynbee the paradox of the historian who insists on taking a religious view of history while resolutely declining to take a his- torical view of religion." The task which Casserley sets out for himself is to take a religious view of history (justified by Toynbee's example) but from the point of view of a genuinely historical, but critical, understanding of those events upon which Christian faith is founded. While Toynbee in this is not necessarily saying anything "new" he does make his argument in an original manner and in a very helpful way. In replowing all of the ground that is involved in a theology of history Casserley leaves for us a well prepared seedbed within which our own think- ing can come to better flower. Olof Harvard Lyon Dean of Students and Director of Field Education RELIGION AT OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE. By V. H. H. Green. (S. C. M. Press.) 392 pp. 42s. Dr. Green, in this scholarly volume, comments on the way in which Christianity, within the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, has been subject to progressive secularisation. In effect, he provides us with a cap- sulated history of Christianity in England as it has been played out on the stage of these twin centres of ancient learning. Dr. Green seeks to explain why evangelicals, in their day, failed to make a more lasting and effective impact on their intellectual peers. "The more obvious defects of the Evangelicals, then and later," he observes, "were their 57 instinctive conservatism, which made them fight shy of radicalism in politics or religion, and, although they numbered some able minds, their intellectual poverty." He speaks of their "distinctively antiseptic view of pleasure," their censorious condemnation of those from whom they differed, their neglect of the social dimensions of the gospel. "Even their jocularity could possess a rebartative brightness, and their charm appear synthetic." Nevertheless, evangelicals, he concedes, took the initiative in promoting missionary in- terest and enthusiasm, and individual evangelicals played a notable role in the realm of humanitarian reform. Concerning the situation today, Dr. Green finds little room for optimism. There is, he notes, an almost complete divorce between the university and religion. Scientific humanism is the predominant influence today. If a pro- fessional don seeks to integrate his field of study into a religious apologetic he tends to be regarded with suspicion. "C. S. Lewis," he comments, "for long a fellow of Magdalen, Oxford, and latterly the Professor of Mediaeval and Renaissance English Literature at Cambridge, though very highly re- garded as an English scholar, lost some respect in his own university for his work in Christian apologetic." This study inevitably invites serious reflection on the validity of our contemporary strategy in relation to the evangelisation of the sceptical in- telligensia of our day. Stuart Barton Babbage Visiting Professor of Practical Apologetics MISSION IN METROPOLIS. By Jesse Jai McNeil. (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) 148 pp. $3.50. "Redemptive involvement" is the theme of this book. With one foot on a solid scriptural and evangelical foundation and the other on a keen dis- cernment of the sociological problems involved, the author discusses Mission in Metropolis. Institutionalism, conformity, indifference, tradition, and unconcern must be replaced by redemptive involvement, creative initiative, adaptability, and the compassionate concern of the Living Christ. This book should stir the more conservative, and stabilize the more liberal, churchman. The Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, the Risen Christ must guide in the complex problems of race, immorality, poverty, and indifference in the inner city church and community. Urban pastors Read and Heed! Cecil A. Thompson Professor of Evangelism and Missions TOWARD AN UNDERSTANDING OF HOMOSEXUALITY. By Daniel Cappon. (Prentice-Hall.) 302 pp. $6.95. "There are no homosexuals only people with homosexual problems. No person with a homosexual problem, however deep or extensive, is merely 58 an aberrant creature or a totally pathological specimen. Such a person re- mains, first and foremost, a person." From this hopeful and theologically tenable position Dr. Cappon, an analytical psychotherapist, launches a work that should be found in every pastor's or counselor's library. His book is an important contribution in that it stands almost alone as a comprehensive, well balanced survey of the best of contemporary thought in the difficult area of homosexuality. This is no small achievement when the topic is such a controversial one, so laden with centuries of bias and confusion, and illuminated by so few candles of real factual knowledge. The fact that the book is directed toward the pastoral counselor is a bonus of questionable value. Dr. Cappon writes in a style the well trained minister can understand, but, in his concept of the minister as a moralist rather than a pastor, he denies him the right ever to become an adequate counselor. Robert L. Faulkner, M.D. Graduate Student 59 SHORTER NOTICES THE PERSONAL HERESY: A CONTROVERSY. By E. M. W. Till yard and C. S. Lewis. (Oxford University Press.) 150 pp. $1.50 (Paperback). This reprint of a famous debate on the nature of poetry between E. M. W. Tillyard and C. S. Lewis (both of whom are unhappily deceased) is most welcome. Is poetry an expression of the poet's personality, or is poetry con- cerned with objective reality? C. S. Lewis, who subscribes to the latter view, believes that the answer to this question has metaphysical implications. All who enjoy the delights of lucid thought, pungent expression and hard-hitting debate will respond to the thrust and parry of this classic con- troversy. Of C. S. Lewis, Tillyard testifies: "He is, indeed, the best kind of opponent, good to agree with when one can, and for an enemy as courteous as he is honest and uncompromising; the kind of opponent with whom I should gladly exchange armour after a parley, even if I cannot move my tent to the ground where is own is pitched." THE BROKEN WORLD OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS. By Esther Merle Jackson. (The University of Wisconsin Press.) 179 pp. $5.75. Tennessee Williams, the author says, "conceived for popular theatre an ancient purpose: the exposure of human suffering." Each play, for Williams, "represents a glimpse of reality, a momentary image drawn out of the flux." Williams is committed to an ethic, Dr. Jackson argues, "which regards man as a sinner, as a transgressor whose salvation is dependent on his personal recognition of his condition." To achieve this end he seeks to shock the spectator into a recognition of his moral condition by exposing both his public and private sins. (In this connection, Sartre argues that the theatre has usurped the function of the church in exposing the guilt of man.) Dr. Jackson, in this brilliant analysis, concludes that "Williams has at- tempted to restore to the theatre not only its creative power but also its moral function and its ritual power of carthasis . . . He comes to define the condition of man in terms very much like those of orthodox Christianity and to pose, therefore, for human redemption and reconciliation, the for- giveness of God." RACE: A STUDY IN SUPERSTITION. By Jacques Barzun. (Harper and Row.) 263 pp. $5.00. An important work, first published in 1937, by one of America's leading cultural minds on the most pressing social question of the present day, written with the objective of showing "how equally ill-founded are the com- monplace and the learned views of race." In his preface to this new edition Dr. Barzun strikes out at "the danger and the folly of thinking that groups are made up of identically hateful or identically lovable people." "We must learn," he says, "to see and to believe that generalities about groups, even 60 when true, tell us nothing about the individual, and that it is the individual we must judge." JOHN KNOX. By Lord Eustace Percy. (John Knox Press.) 343 pp. $4.50. A standard and sympathetic biography of the great Scottish Reformer which has done much to re-establish the true stature of John Knox as a national leader and man of God in the troubled times in which he lived. THE PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM. By C. H. Dodd. (Charles Scribner's Sons.) 176 pp. $1.45. A celebrated study of the Parables in which the doyen of British New Testament scholars expounds his thesis of the "realized eschatology" implicit in the teaching of Jesus. IRONY IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. By Edwin M. Good. (The Westminster Press.) 256 pp. $6.50. It is very easy to miss irony or to misunderstand it. Perhaps the reason no one has written on the irony of the Bible is that the Book has been taken so seriously and so literally that it did not seem proper to look for irony in it. Professor Good has looked for and found irony in the Old Testament. His definition of irony is broad enough to take in both the tragic and the comic, in fact, to take in quite a range of rhetorical devices with ironic aspects. Since irony springs from a vision of truth, it is funda- mentally in harmony with the motives which produced the Bible and the study of it can lead to new insights. Drawing on studies of Jonah, Saul, Genesis, Isaiah, Qoheleth and Job, Good concludes that Biblical faith liberates men to an obedience to God's demands that has room for the expression of irony. "The urgency lies with faith, not with the faithful." As a result the faithful may turn irony against themselves as well as against the many incongruities of life. CHRISTIANITY AND THE VISUAL ARTS: STUDIES IN THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF THE CHURCH. Edited by Gilbert Cope. (The Faith Press.) 107 pp. 42s. A variety of contributors discuss changing styles of art down the ages, with particular reference to the interpretation and portrayal of Christ. Gilbert Cope discusses the nature of contemporary architecture in relation to Coven- try Cathedral. The illustrations splendidly illuminate and clarify the text. This book has the merit of raising fundamental questions in relation to theology and liturgy. 61 THE GRACE OF THE LAW: A STUDY IN PURITAN THEOLOGY. By Ernest F. Kevan. (The Carey Kingsgate Press.) 294 pp. 30s. The Bible recognizes that the law serves three different purposes: there is the civil use of the law to restrain evil men; there is the use of the law as a "schoolmaster" to convict men of sin and lead them to Christ; there is the use of the law as a guide to the Christian life. Dr. Kevan, in this doctoral study, is primarily concerned with the third purpose, illustrating his theme by reference to a host of seventeenth century puritan writers. This study has an immediate relevance to current discussions concerning "the new Morality" and the relationship between law and love. ADMINISTERING CHRISTIAN EDUCATION: PRINCIPLES OF ADMINISTRATION FOR MINISTERS AND CHRISTIAN LEADERS. By Robert K. Bower. (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) 227 pp. $3.95. Deriving his principles from several areas (including the commercial, the military and the ecclesiastical) Dr. Bower organizes administrative procedures into planning, organizing, delegating, staffing, coordinating and controlling. The book does not deal with nurture; encounter with Jesus Christ is the sole goal of Christian education. Success of one's administrative work is de- termined by efficient operation and numerical growth. The lack of either is cause for replacement or retraining of personnel. One wonders if this is a sufficiently total concept of the Church. Can one adequately derive admin- istrative procedures for the Church by adopting those of business and the military, even if they are checked for harmony with Scriptural ideals? THE CREATIVE ERA: BETWEEN THE TESTAMENTS. By Carl G. Howie. (John Knox Press.) 96 pp. $1.45. "The creative era" is a happy designation for the relatively little known period between the Old and New Testaments. In a brief but highly pertinent survey Carl Howie covers the history of the period from the rise of Cyrus and the Persian Empire to the birth of Jesus. The true creativity of the period is not to be found in the erection of the Hasmonean kingdom or in Herod's magnificent building program, but in the probing of the theological and practical consequences of the idea that One God has created the whole world and rules it. In a way that should appeal to laymen as well as ministers Howie traces the changing forms of faith which prepared the stage for the proclamation of God's action in Christ and for the call which the early Christians issued in His name for men to unite in the new Kingdom of love. 62 HENRY THORNTON OF CLAPHAM 1760-1815. By Standish Meacham. (Harvard University Press.) 206 pp. $4.95. This is a biography of one of the notable members of that coterie of evangelical churchmen familiarly known as the "Clapham Sect", so-called because of their residence near Clapham Common. The book is marred by the intrusive introduction of gratuitous polemics. "We lose patience," he protests, "with righteous zeal." Their achievements, he says, "appeal least to the modern temper." "Evangelicals," he relates, "carried Christianity to the heathen" (in a sentence in which the rules of grammar are recklessly disregarded), "forced Christianity upon him, and made him lie down upon their Procrustean bed." Their "buoyant optimism," he tells us, "sounds almost fatuously naive." Perhaps it is the author's lack of imaginative sympathy which makes this biography dull. It is based on a careful examination of the sources; never- theless, it profoundly disappoints. The explanation is not far to seek: the author is at odds with his subject. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE: THE KNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN. By Edward Wagenknecht. (Oxford University Press.) 267 pp. $6.00. The author of Uncle Tom's Cabin wrote: "This story is to show how Jesus Christ, who liveth and was dead, and now is alive forevermore, has still a mother's love for the poor and lowly, and that no man can sink so low but that Jesus Christ will stoop to take his hand." Lincoln once sug- gested that Mrs. Stowe's famous novel caused the Civil War. Wagenknecht, in this useful and informative biography, studies Mrs. Stowe as wife and mother and writer and reformer. THROUGH TEMPTATION. By James H. Hansom. (Augsburg Publishing House.) 78 pp. $1.50. A penetrating analysis of temptation in the light of Genesis 3 and Mat- thew 4. THE HOLOCAUST KINGDOM: A MEMOIR. By Alexander Donat. (Holt, Rinehart and Winston.) 361 pp. $5.95. A stark account of the harrowing sufferings of a Jewish family who miraculously escaped living incineration in the Warsaw Ghetto only to ex- perience the further horrors of Auschwitz, Dauchau and Ravensbruck. The way in which certain representatives of the church sought to exploit the plight of the sufferers for sectarian advantage is as incredible as it is shame- ful. 63 FAITH AND FICTION: CREATIVE PROCESS IN GREEN AND MAURI AC. By Philip Stratford. (University of Notre Dame Press.) 345 pp. $5.95. Professor Stratford's purpose in this book is to delineate the "complex interplay of faith and fiction" because, he states, the tension that results from the unresolved conflict between faith and fiction gives singularity and distinction to the creative works of Green and Mauriac. The most common trait between Green and Mauriac, he explains, is their concern to create a fictional world in which theological concerns, sin, grace, commitment, be- come real in the characters. Jean Paul Sartre has criticized Mauriac for controlling the destiny of his characters and depriving them of real freedom. Stratford insists, however, that it is only as these authors control their characters and their destiny with a view to propound doctrine that they succeed as artists. Stratford is concerned with a matter of fundamental importance the relationship between faith and the act of artistic creation but he makes the basic mistake of starting with a conclusion and then seeking to prove his thesis instead of creatively searching for a real relationship. NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SEMINAR July 2 -August 28, 1966 The Near Eastern Archaeological Seminar offers an unusual overseas educational program for students of history, archaeology, anthropology, ge- ography, and theology. The program consists of academic courses combined with actual participation in archaeological work as field experience, traveling through historical countries and the visiting of ancient sites. Professor James H. Gailey, Jr., Columbia, will teach the History of Palestine and Professor Immanuel Ben Dor, Candler School of Theology will teach Archaeology of Palestine. for information write to: Professor James H. Gailey, Jr., Columbia Seminary, Decatur, Ga. 30031 64 BRIEF THOUGHTS FROM BRIEFER MOMENTS I flew to Chattanooga Sunday last. The flight was late And noon was long since past. The light fell slanting and though dim, Revealed the snow-draped fields below. The snow was tan, not glistening white; The dark red Georgia earth showed through. I thought how often the men we really are show through The robes of righteousness we wear. Shannon Cumming ONLY BY THY LOVE Oh Lord, My God, I stand in awe before Thee, My knees give way, my heart is sore distressed. I pray Thy peace, Thy grace and mercy to me, Thy strength and power for one by troubles pressed. May yet my soul sing "Glory, Hallelujah," My lips speak out Thy praise to all mankind. For Thou art great and holy beyond measure; I bow to Thee my heart and soul and mind. The angels bow in holy awe before Thee. How then may I, a sinful man, rejoice? When all creation honors and adores Thee, How dare I lift a single trembling voice? My God, my Christ, my Savior Thou and Master, My sins are washed away within Thy blood, So stand I clean within Thy glorious presence. My lips are opened only by Thy love. Shannon Cumming