A Spring Forecast
A casual survey of publishers’ “Spring Lists” indicates that 1960 will be another year in which religious books will maintain top priority in number of new titles on the American reading market. As the sage of Ecclesiastes said, long ago, “Of the making of books there is no end.”
A dip into the tides projected for the first six months whets the appetite of the bibliophile. Some of the forthcoming books are noted in the following sampler list. While including only a mere fraction of the planned output and without attempt to pre-evaluate, the list bristles with the prospect of stimulating reading. In due time CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S 100 capable reviewers will report on these volumes furnishing skilled guidance in their specialized fields.
Since the LENTEN season is just around the corner these titles bid for immediate attention: Herschel Hobbs’ Messages on the Resurrection, Ralph Turnbull’s The Pathway to the Cross, G. Hall Todd’s Culture and the Cross—all three from Baker. Crowell offers The Dark Road to Triumph by Clayton E. Williams. Abingdon Press announces Lynn Radcliffe’s With Christ in the Upper Room; Eerdmans, A Working Faith by Joost de Blank; Seabury, Peter Day’s Saints on Main Street; Revell, And Still He Speaks, by Edward L. R. Elson; Concordia, The Crowds Around Calvary, by William F. Beck and Paul G. Hansen.
A classification by fields of interest may serve as a forecast framework:
In the field of SYSTEMATIC AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY Eerdmans promises Divine Election by G. C. Berkouwer, Old Testament View of Revelation by J. G. S. S. Thomson and From Eden to Eternity by Howard Hanke, a treatise on the unity of the Bible. Abingdon offers John Wesley’s Theology Today, by Colin Williams and Providence of God by Georgia Harkness; Oxford, The Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr by Gordon Harland; Knox, The Humanity of God, by Karl Barth; Broadman, Faith to Grow On by Joseph Green. Westminster, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by John Godsey. Evangelicals will enthusiastically welcome a volume which is long overdue, the Dictionary of Theology edited by Everett Harrison, Geoffrey Bromiley and Carl F. H. Henry (Baker).
Books on APOLOGETICS AND PHILOSOPHY include John H. Gerstner’s Reasons for Faith (Harper); W. E. Sangster’s Questions People Ask about Religion (Abingdon); Albert Schweitzer’s The Light Within Us (Philosophical Library); Murdo Macdonald’s The Need to Believe (Scribners). Merrill C. Tenney edits The Word for this Century (Oxford) in which Wheaton College scholars speak of evangelical certainties in an age of conflict. John H. Gerstner has another book coming from Harpers, Theology of the Major Sects. Then there is The Religion of Israel, by Yehezkel Kaufmann (University of Chicago) considered a blow to the Wellhausen theory.
The long-awaited definitive volume on Seventh-day Adventism by Walter R. Martin will be released by Zondervan on March 15.
CHURCH HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY is rich with promise. Kenneth Scott Latourette will be adding another volume to Christianity in a Revolutionary Age (Harper). Abingdon offers The History of Christianity in the Middle Ages, by William Cannon. Standard has a new comprehensive history of the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ by James DeForest Murch; Bethany, The Restoration Principle by Alfred DeGroot. American Christianity by Smith, Handy and Loetscher will be published by Scribner. Life stories of Martin Buber: Jewish Existentialist by Malcom Diamond (Oxford); Heinrich Schutz by Hans J. Moser (Concordia); George Matheson, the Blind Seer by John Crew Tyler (Philosophical Library); Abraham Kuyper by Frank Vandenburg and Makers of Puritan History by Marcus Loane (Eerdmans) are “in the works.” Eerdmans also offers in this field the Story of the Scottish Reformation by A. M. Renwick, and Zondervan, They Found the Secret by V. Raymond Edman.
In the area of NEW TESTAMENT Broadman promises a verse by verse treatment of Ephesians under the title Pattern for Christian Living by Ray Summers; Eerdmans lists Robert Mounce on The New Testament Herald. Two titles in OLD TESTAMENT from the presses of Harper are: The Old Testament Speaks by Samuel Schultz and another especially addressed to laymen, M. A. Beek’s A Journey Through the Old Testament.
In GENERAL BIBLE STUDY evangelicals will welcome Holman’s three-volume work The Biblical Expositor, edited by Carl F. H. Henry and Wilde’s Treasury of Books for Bible Study by Wilbur Smith. Only a few of many other volumes can be listed: God and Ourselves, Norman Cox (Broadman); The Church in the Thought of Jesus, Joseph Clower (Knox); The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians, R. P. Martin, and Commentary on Romans, John Murray (Eerdmans).
Turning to PASTORAL PROBLEMS the air is filled with promise: Abingdon promises Andrew Blackwood’s The Growing Minister; Knox, Luthi and Thurneyson’s Preaching, Confession and the Lord’s Supper; Concordia, a symposium on The Pastor at Work; Macmillan, D. R. Holt’s Church Finance; Bethany, Charles Kemp’s The Pastor and Community Resources; Zondervan, Mark Lee’s The Minister and His Ministry; Revell, Arnold Prater’s Seven Keys to a More Fruitful Ministry and Clyde Narramore’s Psychology of Counselling; Westminster, James D. Smart’s The Rebirth of Ministry.
In this connection we might mention some books in the growingly popular area of PSYCHIATRY AND CHRISTIAN LIVING. Richard K. Young has done a book, Spiritual Therapy, for Harper. Abingdon has a trio: Beggars in Velvet, by Carlyle Marney; When Trouble Comes, by James E. Sellers, and Point of Glad Return by Lance Webb.
And then there is SERMONIC literature: Broadman will issue Southwestern Sermons, edited by H. C. Brown, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, containing 32 sermons by current and emeritus professors. Macmillan—Religion that is Eternal by G. Ray Jordan. Abingdon—Sermon Outlines from Sermon Masters, by Ian McPherson and Sermons on the Prodigal Son by Thomas Whiting. Harper—Great Sermons of George Morrison, compiled by George Docherty of Washington’s New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, and in the field of hermeneutics, God’s Word in English by Richard Young. Revell—a new volume of sermons by Robert G. Lee, and in the sphere of homiletics, Dynamic Preaching by James W. Clarke. Westminster—Steps to Salvation by John H. Gerstner—the evangelistic message of Jonathan Edwards.
In LITURGY AND WORSHIP: Massey Hamilton Shepherd’s Liturgical Renewal (Oxford); Laliberte and West’s de luxe volume History of the Cross (Macmillan); Fred Cealy’s Let Us Break Bread Together (Abingdon); Geoffrey Bromiley’s Christian Ministry (Eerdmans); Massey Shepherd’s The Paschal Liturgy and James Sydnor’s The Hymn and Congregational Singing (Knox).
ETHICAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS: God and Man in Washington by that doughty freedom fighter Paul Blanshard (Beacon); What Shall We Say About Alcohol? by Carradine Hooton (Abingdon); Population Explosion and the Christian Response by Richard Fagley (Oxford); Social Problems in Our Time by K. Weinberg (Prentice-Hall).
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION in the local church has its share of new books such as The Pastor in Christian Education by Peter Person (Baker); Religious Education, edited by Marvin J. Taylor (Abingdon); What’s Lutheran In Education? by Allan Hart Jahsmann (Concordia); Train up a Child by William Barclay (Westminster), and the related Church and Secular Education by Lewis Bliss Whittemore (Seabury). There are new books of Sunday School methods and aids galore.
Of ECUMENICAL interest there is Stephen Neill’s Brothers of the Faith (Abingdon) and Matthew Spinka’s The Quest of Church Unity (Macmillan).
A number of substantial projects are under way in the field of evangelical literature, some as yet to be announced. A better balance still needs to be achieved between liberal and evangelical in the many works flowing from the presses of religious publishing houses. Many titles in this forecast will prove less than evangelical, and sometimes error will be clad in literary artistry more attractive than the truth. But the power of the evangelical pen is increasing in the theological crisis of our time. As always in the spring, hope lights the horizon.
JAMES DEFOREST MURCH
An Ecumenical Model?
Religion and Culture, Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich, edited by Walter Leibretch (Harper, 1959, 400 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by William W. Paul, Professor of Philosophy, Shelton College, and currently Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Wheaton College.
The motivation behind much contemporary theology is apologetic: it begins with man and an assessment of his spiritual need, and with this is correlated a religious message that the “modern mind” is supposed to accept as meaningful. No one has pursued this goal with greater zeal and breadth of vision than has Paul Tillich, and for this he deserves the honor which the 25 notable contributors to this volume bring him.
Since discussion of the diverse material contained in Religion and Culture is quite impossible, we shall confine ourselves to those ideas which point up Tillich’s own philosophical theology.
Editor Walter Leibrecht, director of the Evanston Institute for Ecumenical Studies, gives a useful summary of Tillich’s synthesis of Greek wisdom with Christian faith in an opening chapter, “The Life and Mind of Paul Tillich.” Leibrecht has high praise for his former colleague at Harvard: “with candor he has approached every facet of our tangled lives and has been a true guide to the perplexed in our century” (p. 4); he has thus become “the theologian for Everyman in the predicament of his existence” (p. 10), and he has laid the ground work for “a truly ecumenical theology” by establishing bridges between Catholic sacramentalism and Protestant prophetism, and between the spiritual worlds of the Continent, America and the Orient (pp. 17, ix).
Informed readers of Tillich will admit that he provides no simple, easy road for the spiritually perplexed. There are times when his way of stating his vision of God as “ultimate reality” becomes itself very perplexing. This is due in part to Tillich’s desire to combine so many diverse insights from philosophy, psychology, and theology. Leibrecht’s review of some of this background material will be helpful. He explains that Tillich is an ontologist inquiring into the meaning of Being, an existentialist exploring man’s anxiety about the meaningfulness of his own existence, an idealist who sees man’s spiritual problem as calling for a return of the soul from estrangement to its true essence, and a romanticist who uses his creative spirit to reinterpret the symbols of traditional religion in an effort to make their truth meaningful to the perplexed.
As important as philosophical theology is in Tillich’s system, it is not necessarily responsible for his more popular influence. In Germany, his theory of the interrelation of religion and culture drew attention. The contributions in social theory to Religion and Culture by Karl Jaspers, Karl Heim, Reinhold Niebuhr, John Bennett, and Charles Malik reflect this same interest. Before leaving Germany in 1933 Tillich had worked out his ideas for a “religious socialism” which included a “Protestant protest” against the withdrawal of the church from socio-economic concerns and an attempt to put some religious depth into the socialist movement. He had been predicting the coming of a kairos—a “right time” for the manifestation of something divine (a “theonomy”) in cultural affairs, but the “demonic” in the form of Hitler’s national socialism appeared instead. After coming to Union Seminary in New York, Tillich worked closely with Niebuhr on matters of social policy and, as Niebuhr explains, they came to realize early in World War II that radical socialism was not going to remove sin from the world.
Leibrecht indicates that Tillich increased his influence in the United States by applying insights from Jung’s depth psychology as well as from existential analysis to illuminate man’s estrangement from a meaningful life and from his ideal “essential” self. Erich Fromm provides the reader with a clear evaluation of the possibilities and limitations of the psychoanalytic side of Tillich’s program for the healing of the soul. There can be no doubt that Tillich combines psychology and ontology into a striking apologetic for reaching the unchurched and the perplexed of our day with his religious message.
The less inclined one is to follow the Reformers in their conviction of the full authority of the written Word, the more challenging Tillich’s reinterpretation of the biblical symbols may appear to be. He looks upon traditional Lutheranism as “crystallized,” and speaks of doctrines like the Virgin Birth as “beyond salvation”; but Leibrecht insists that Tillich has “never sought to eliminate any of the classic Christian doctrines” and hence should not be called “liberal” (p. 19). Tillich, however, readily admits that he is a neo-liberal. Instead of eliminating biblical symbols like the old liberals and like Rudolf Bultmann with his method of demythologizing the Scriptures, Tillich finds it more pragmatic to put new meaning into old symbols, new wine into old skins. Conservatives may join an outsider like Walter Kaufmann (Critique of Religion and Philosophy) in questioning the honesty and justification for such a procedure, but there can be no doubt that Tillich is quite open about the whole business. Furthermore he and numerous followers see it as the only way of making the Bible meaningful today, the only way of exalting the “core” of the Christian message which is what Tillich calls “the Jesus which is the Christ.”
Although it is true, as Liebrecht indicates, that religious myths and symbols are viewed by Bultmann simply as expressions of man’s existential attitudes, while Tillich takes them as pointing to the Ultimate, still in practice the views of the two men converge. Bultmann’s contribution to this Harper volume, for example, presents the purpose of preaching as laying bare the depths of human existence and proclaiming “Jesus Christ as Lord.” But both men would hold that when one makes a decision for Christ, doctrinal and historical questions about Christ are quite irrelevant. In volume two of Systematic Theology Tillich makes it clear that his “Christ of faith” can be experienced by those who have doubts about Jesus of Nazareth and about the Christ of the Gospels. It is enough for Tillich that Christ should “become historical” for the faithful as he becomes the meaning-giving-Center for their lives and history.
Those who are sympathetic to such an approach would do well to read the chapter by Japanese Philosopher Takeuchi in which Tillich’s insights are set forth within a Buddhist framework and then ask themselves “Why ‘the Christ of faith’ rather than the Buddha?” The excellent studies dealing with the Christian’s approach to the historical by Gustave Weigel and Georges Florovsky show how vital it is to a genuinely Christian faith that the Lordship of Christ be correlated with the historical God-man (cf. the present writer’s discussion in the Journal of Philosophy, Oct. 8, 1959). The big risk for Tillich as for Bultmann is that the historical is on the verge of being dissolved by the existential.
Tillich states the meaning of salvation in ontological terms when he speaks of the Christ of faith as the bearer of the grace of New Being, “the redeeming creative power in reality” (p. 21). In psychological terms this means that the New Being is the power of healing reconciling what each man is existentially (symbolized for Tillich in the myth of the Fall, i.e., the daily experience of “falling” away from what one should be) with what God creatively intends each man to be. In quasi-historical language the editor tells us,
This concept of New Being means that, for Tillich, history is in its essence the history of salvation (Heilsgeschichte): the continuous transforming action of the New Being. The New Being is not, as in Barthian theology, the Logos, limited to one particular, unique Christ-event; but, as the power of being, is the essence of all history (p. 21).
If such a generalization is helpful in working out a psychology of healing or a philosophy of history, it nonetheless obscures the uniqueness of the Christ of history. One does not have to be a Barthian to see that danger in Tillich’s theology. (It is unfortunate, however, that Karl Barth has written on Mozart rather than meeting Tillich’s criticism for this volume.) Existentialist theology allows each man to evaluate Christ subjectively and for Tillich this means understanding that “Jesus became the Christ by sacrificing that which was Jesus in Him to that which was the Christ.” Leibrecht, on the other hand, apparently prefers to appeal to the declarations of the Church to overcome the difficulties arising from a weaker view of the Scriptures than that maintained by the Reformers.
It is true that Tillich has increasingly emphasized that the healing of man’s soul requires that the sinner be accepted within God’s redeeming love, but even here it is a continuous process of crisis and reconciliation that is behind his thinking. On Tillich’s view, Leibrecht recognizes, within the Trinity tragedy is conquered by love but is never really overcome (pp. 16, 25). The sinner is never really sure of the victory Paul experienced when he was made a “new creature in Christ Jesus,” in and through the finished work of the God-Man.
We return now to Tillich’s basic apologetic objective since he has come to America. Tillich has been exercised to find some middle ground between philosophical naturalism and the purely transcendent kind of “supranaturalism” which he ascribes to Barth. He does not find the solution in the kind of “Christian pantheism” which Charles Hartshorne again pushes in this volume. Nor would he stop with Nels Ferré’s supernaturalism in the chapter “Christian Presuppositions for a Creative Culture” since Tillich sees the Transcendent as immanent everywhere in cultural life and not alone in Christ. Actually Tillich calls himself an “ecstatic naturalist” and, as Leibrecht says, condemns supernaturalism for “objectifying God” (p. 5), making God just one more being alongside other beings. What the editor fails to point out is that when the Reformers, for example, spoke of God as a Person they surely were not reducing him to the level of man-made deities. Like Isaiah of old they were drawn to the person of the Mighty God and Everlasting Father. Like Paul they experienced the saving work of the Person of the Son of God and the security of his sanctifying Spirit.
This is the truly ecumenical message which has stood the test of time. In the work under review, Wilhelm Pauck claims that American Protestantism has been too preoccupied with evangelism, archaic orthodoxy, and denominationalism to develop an ecumenical theology. It is surely true that Protestantism has too frequently departed from its main task of declaring the whole council of God in a needy world. But it is that Faith which must be proclaimed and must be made relevant to every dimension of reality and cultural life. Cannot the simple language of Scripture be made meaningful to young and old today with greater ease and quickening power than “Being-itself” or the “Unconditioned?” If nothing else, the writings of Tillich should make Christians realize how challenging is the task of taking the incorruptible seed, the Word of God, to the intellectuals of our day.
WILLIAM W. PAUL
SCIENTIFIC BUT BIASED
The History of Religions, Essays in Methodology, by eight authors, edited by Eliade and Kitagawa (University of Chicago Press, 1959, 164 pp., $5), is reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Butler University.
Should the History of Religions be included in the university curriculum as a department independent of philosophy, sociology, psychology, and related subjects? To evaluate religions is certainly philosophy, not history. Further, evaluation and philosophy are not sufficiently objective and scientific, while the History of Religions ought to be. On the other hand, some say that it is too objective because it looks on religion from the outside and therefore cannot understand its own material. All these objections the authors face, and they conclude that universities should have such an independent department.
In describing the particular details of the several world religions, the History of Religions does not give up the search for types of universals; but these are not to be located in a few clear moral principles nor in national common denominators. The subject should not endorse any one religion nor offer a universal synthetic religion. Neither should it examine a foreign religion as a commander of an invading army investigates enemy territory. The History of Religions is to be a science, a single science, and not a collective title for the History of Islam, the History of Hinduism, and so on. It is neither normative, nor solely descriptive, but lies somewhere in between. Just where the author unfortunately does not say.
This book suffers from a defect common to many books on religion. It does not state what religion is. The authors show a sympathetic attitude toward religions, especially non-Christian religions; but there is difficulty in identifying religion. This difficulty appears clearly in Smith’s chapter on Comparative Religion. The gentleman is arguing that the representatives of various religions should gather in a friendly way to exchange ideas and understand each other. They should approach each other in humility and love. But there is one phenomenon (shall we call it a religion?) to which this lovely principle does not apply. That is fascism. The difference between fascism and religion is so axiomatic that the author cannot foresee any practical problem here. But only a few pages later he includes communism as a religion along with Christianity and Hinduism. By what principle is fascism ruled out, evil as it was, and communism lovingly and humbly accepted, infinitely more evil as it is?
These UNESCO writers are not so unbiased as it might appear at the beginning. The book ends with a plea for a universal religion based on the History of Religions, which has scientifically shown that the gloomy theories of Christianity do not correspond to the truth (p. 136).
GORDON H. CLARK
Free Discussion Tabu?
God and Man in Washington, by Paul Blanshard (Beacon, 1960, 251 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Joseph M. Dawson, former Executive Director of the Joint Committee on Public Affairs for Baptists of the United States.
It is not surprising that Paul Blanshard, called the dean of American controversy, should be appalled at the silence which now cloaks vital issues in Washington and the nation, that is, vital issues in our society connected with Church and State relations. This, he says, grows out of the fact that politicians and the press regard religion as too delicate a matter to touch. Their respect for tolerance is exaggerated since their conception of “tolerance is absence of criticism of any standard religion.” Yet free discussion is the essential of democracy without which our present successful Church-State relationship cannot survive.
Blanshard agrees with Cardinal Manning that religion is eternally relevant to politics and politics is eternally relevant to religion. To whatever degree the author argues in his book, he is fair, factual, and objective, and properly documentative. He proceeds to picture clearly the attitudes of the justices of the Supreme Court, members of Congress, and occupants of the White House toward the vital issues currently at stake.
Throughout this candid book the reader sees the prevalence of full religious liberty in the United States. But he sees also that the distinctive American principle of separation of Church and State, as defined by the Federal Constitution and interpreted by the Supreme Court, does not prevail and is in eminent danger. He contends that Washington is You; and unless you are alert and active, we shall lose our priceless heritage through erosion of the principle if not by bold destruction.
In answer to the hot question “Can a Roman Catholic be elected president?” Blanshard replies that one can; but more likely this will happen if the parties decide that the country must recognize a Catholic political party. Then the nominee would be for the vice presidency. He has only kind words for Senator John Kennedy, but points out the unescapable necessity of facing up to the Roman church’s position on six crucial questions which the church cannot maintain in a pluralistic society.
One of the most helpful features in this provocative book is the author’s demolition of six popular clichés which bar free discussion of the vital issues confronting us. If such a book cannot induce candor and courage in citizens, one does not know what can.
JOSEPH M. DAWSON
Universalism Of Future Life
The Preacher’s Calling to be Servant, by D. T. Niles (Harper, 1959, 144 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by G. Aiken Taylor, Editor of The Presbyterian Journal.
In this sequel of The Preacher’s Task and the Stone of Stumbling, the new Secretary of the East Asia Christian Conference treats of the ministry rather than the message of the preacher. According to the author, the Church is not an extension of the Incarnation itself but rather of the ministry of Him who became incarnate in order to serve. Our calling is to be servants.
“The calling of a preacher is not simply a call to preach, with his task to be understood in terms of preaching as such. Rather the calling of a preacher is like every Christian calling a call to share in the continuing ministry of the risen and ascended Lord.… When we surrendered ourselves to Him we surrendered ourselves to become His servants. And it is right that it should be so. For He himself is Servant, so that we as servants of the Servant can have no other career.”
Dr. Niles is one of the most effective writers in the religious field today. The only discordant note is in his introduction of universalism which, interestingly enough, does not affect his evangelistic zeal. His is a universalism of the future life, not of this present one. For him Christ is the only answer to the abundant life here and now, and men must be won to him if they are to participate in it. However, those that miss him in this life, though they miss much now, will meet him in eternity, for, as the author wrote to this reviewer, the Scripture says, “I will seek my sheep until I find it.”
G. AIKEN TAYLOR
The Body Politic
Science, Medicine and Morals, by Charles E. Raven (Harper, 1959, 189 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Orville S. Walters, Psychiatrist, Urbana, Illinois.
The diseases of the body politic should be the next field of conquest for the medical profession. What medicine has done in the field of individual psychology should be extended into the area of corporate psychology. This is the thesis of Canon Raven’s Markle Lectures given at the College of Medicine of the University of Cincinnati in 1958.
Subtitled “A Survey and a Suggestion,” the lectures first range through a broad historical summary of scientific thought and give special notice to the contribution of medical men. Then there is a consideration of the contribution that medical science can make in helping modern man adjust to the new look upon the universe.
The medical profession must turn from the individual and his disease to a broader concern with health and the environment. The doctor cannot be content with adjusting his patient to social norms. He cannot be content with healing the individual and neglecting to treat society. The concept of medicine must be enlarged to include the epidemic madnesses and the misapplication of our corporate capacities. The doctor’s skills of diagnosis and treatment should be joined to sociology as they have to psychology.
The book’s sweeping chronology offers an imposing demonstration of the author’s erudition. This, together with his discursive style, makes for slow movement in a century-hopping panorama.
While all will agree that society desperately needs treatment for its ills, the proposition that medicine as a scientific discipline can swing the balance is as dubious as the author’s faith that “the process of evolution does tend towards the emergence of more and more freely responsible creatures.”
ORVILLE S. WALTERS
Final And Dynamic
Ideas of Revelation, An Historical Study A.D. 1700 to A.D. 1860, by H. D. McDonald (Macmillan, 1959, 300 pp., $6.75), is reviewed by William Childs Robinson, Professor of Historical Theology, Columbia Theological Seminary.
This is a carefully documented and thought out presentation of the problem of revelation. It begins with the fundamental contrast between the view of the deists that God is an inference from a rational consideration of the external world, and the assurance of an inner light for the enthusiasts who know God by heart intuition. The true Christian position is that one begins neither with the world without nor with the world within, but with the Word. “In Christ God did not simply countersign the best intuitions of the heart or the highest products of reason.” The order of clauses in the great Trinitarian Benediction is significant: the grace of the Lord Jesus stands first, followed by the love of God and closing with the communion of the Holy Spirit.
The extreme emphasis on the external world made of natural religion a vast tome and of supernatural revelation a small pamphlet republishing the law of nature with a few added duties. In our day, the German Christians stressed theism, yet repudiated Christ and the Church. On the opposite side the Ranters became antinomian, while the Quakers more circumspectly held to the light within. Much rational orthodoxy followed the former. The advocates of the Spirit within the heart were supported more recently by the stress on divine immanence and are represented by Schleiermacher, Coleridge, Maurice, and the neo-orthodox. In some cases, studies in psychic processes have led students to become more ministers of religion than ministers of Jesus Christ.
This exhaustive historical study is properly balanced by a thoughtful and worthwhile conclusion. However, the stresses have varied; there has been a recognition that God has made a self-disclosure to men which is adequate and available. The relations of the objective and the subjective aspects of revelation may not be reduced to a neat formula. But something of a synthesis may be attempted. This may be suggested by representative men such as Charles Simeon, the evangelical who stressed Revelation in the Word through the Spirit, and John Wesley, the Methodist leader (and friend of Simeon) who taught Revelation by the Spirit and through the Word. Even though the full truth must be stated in antinomies, neither element is to be rejected. Revelation is both in Scripture and in Spirit, both final and dynamic, propositional and personal, communication and communion, mediated by the Word and made immediate in experience by the Spirit, both in words and in the Word, and is the Christ of the New Testament who lived, taught, died and rose, and the exalted present Christ who encounters men today. There is both the stability of the scriptural revelation and the activity of the Holy Spirit in giving this revelation efficacy for our salvation now. God is Spirit and we must worship him in the Holy Spirit and in Christ the Truth. The careful student will find no better study than this work of Professor McDonald to guide him into such a genuine expression of Christian faith.
WILLIAM CHILDS ROBINSON
Brilliant Encounter
Protestant Thought: from Rousseau to Ritschl, by Karl Barth, translated by Brian Cozens (Harper, 1959, 435 pp., $7), is reviewed by Robert D. Knudsen, Instructor in Philosophy at Westminster Theological Seminary.
In sparkling prose Karl Barth guides us through the enchanted world of the liberal theologians with whom he himself has spent the greater part of his life disagreeing. The English edition is composed of the translation of 11 major chapters of Barth’s justly famous German work: Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century. These well-translated chapters offer the intelligent reader a brilliant and fascinating survey of liberal Protestant thought from the viewpoint of the dialectical theology in an important historical period.
Barth strikes the keynote in the opening chapter, as he traces the development in the eighteenth century of the idea of absolute man, which later is to dominate liberal theology. The orthodox reader will be able to agree at least formally with this characterization; nevertheless, he must feel uneasy when he reflects that, because of his belief that God has revealed himself directly in history, he will be placed by Barth on the side of autonomous man, along with the liberal who holds that God’s revelation can be identified with the advance of human culture. It is well known that Barth denies that God reveals himself directly in history and that the Bible is the Word of God. The reviewer once asked Barth to defend a theological position in the light of two Bible texts, whereupon Barth immediately spoke of him as a “Fundamentalist,” the greatest reproach that can be lodged against one in the majority of theological schools today. Though Barth would uphold his own view of the Word against the orthodox view and also against the liberal thinkers whom he treats in this book, he seeks to treat the liberals fairly. He accords to each one a place in the church of Christ and feels himself obliged as a theologian to be stimulated by his thinking. A similar magnanimity is not necessarily foreign to orthodoxy. Though his attitude would have differed in important points from that of Barth, the Reformed theologian Charles Hodge said of his personal friend and theological opponent, Friedrich Schleiermacher, “Tholuck said that Schleiermacher, when sitting in the evening with his family, would often say, ‘Hush, children; let us sing a hymn of praise to Christ.’ Can we doubt that he is singing those praises now? To whomsoever Christ is God, St. John assures us, Christ is a Saviour” (Systematic Theology, II, p. 440).
Barth’s volume is a brilliant encounter with the liberal theology; nevertheless it may be pointed out that Cornelius Van Til in his New Modernism, Richard R. Niebuhr in his Resurrection and Historical Reason, and now, in echo, Willis B. Glover in his article, “The Irrelevance of Theology” (Christian Century, Dec. 30, 1959), have suggested that the structure of Barth’s theology may after all not he so far removed from the liberal “consciousness theology” that he has so vigorously repudiated.
ROBERT D. KNUDSEN
BOOK BRIEFS
African Nationalism, by Ndabaningi Sithole (Oxford University Press, 1959, 174 pp., $3.25)—A moderate view of rising nationalism in the Dark Continent by a native Christian educational leader.
Collectivism in the Churches, by Edgar C. Bundy (Church League of America, 1958, 354 pp., $2)—Paper back edition of a documented account of the political activities of the National Council of Churches.
I Have Called You Friends, by Dr. Francis C. Anscomhe (Christopher, 1959, 407 pp., $5)—The well-documented story of Quakerism in North Carolina.
The Pastor’s Public Relations, by Eugene Dinsmore Dolloff (Judson Press, 1959, 188 pp., $3)—ABC’s of public relations for busy ministers.
Meet the Twelve, by John H. Baumgaertner (Augsburg, 1960, 122 pp., $2.50)—Character sketches of the twelve disciples.
Seven Times He Spoke, by Olfert Ricard (Augsburg, 1960, 82 pp., $1.75)—Sermons on the seven words of the Cross by a leading pastor in Denmark.
Devotional Introduction to Job, by Andrew W. Blackwood, Jr. (Baker Book House, 1959, 166 pp., $2.95)—A commentary with distinctive devotional and homiletical values.
Sermons on the Prodigal Son, by Thomas A. Whiting (Abingdon, 1959, 111 pp., $2)—Rich in theological and psychological truths.
Baptist Confessions of Faith, by W. L. Lumpkin (Judson Press, 1959, 430 pp., $6)—Compilation of great Baptist documents with interpretations in the light of historical settings.
The Crowds Around Calvary, by William F. Beck and Paul G. Hansen (Concordia, 1960, 120 pp., $1.50 paper)—Scripture readings and sermons for the Lenten season.
Christendom, by Einar Molland (Philosophical Library, 1959, 418 pp., $10)—A Norwegian scholar looks at the churches of Christendom.
Missionary Life and Work, by Harold R. Cook (Moody, 1959, 382 pp., $5)—Advice to missionaries and candidates for the mission field by a leading evangelical authority in that field.
God’s Healing Power, by Rev. Edgar L. Sanford (Prentice Hall, 1959, 224 pp., $4.95)—Spiritual therapy for the sick and unfortunate with a wealth of examples of healing.
Major Religions of the World, by Marcus Bach (Abingdon, 1959, 128 pp., $1)—A popular liberal study in comparative religions.
Into the Light of Christianity, by William J. Schnell (Baker Book House, 1959, 211 pp., $2.95)—Gripping testimony of a convert from Jehovah’s Witnesses with refutations of the basic doctrines of this sect. A companion book to the author’s Thirty Years a Watchtower Slave.
Caspar Schwenckfeld on the Person and Work of Christ, by Paul L. Maier (Christian Book Center, Kalamazoo, Mich., 1959, 115 pp., $1.75)—A study of the theological core of Schwenckfeldism.
