Something Happens On The Way To The Pulpit
Bachelor of Divinity, by Walter D. Wagoner (Association Press, 1963, 159 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Wick Broomall, minister, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Augusta, Georgia.
The purpose of this brief book is to set forth the problems, frustrations, and possibilities of present-day seminarians as they train for and enter the work of the gospel ministry. Wagoner describes the material gathered in his book as resulting from “administering for eight years three very significant fellowship programs of The Fund for Theological Education: The Rockefeller Brothers Theological Fellowship Program, The Rockefeller Doctoral Fellowships in Religion, The Protestant Fellowship Program” (p. 10). These programs, plus collateral activities, gave Wagoner “a staggering amount of empirical evidence concerning what is going on in theological education, the younger clergy, and the church” (p. 10).
That the picture here given of much of theological education is authentic can be doubted only by those who have no firsthand knowledge of what happens to the young man who leaves the cloistered shelter of his home and church for the three-year exposure to “history, myth, kerygma, demythologizing,” and to such men as “Barth, Bultmann, Bornkamm, and Buri” (p. 74).
In addition to the confusing and conflicting theories concerning the Bible and Christian truths, the seminary student of today faces a bewildering array of personal problems caused largely by early marriage, family responsibilities, and his divided loyalty between his duties in the classroom and his duties as supply pastor of some near or distant church.
In such a hurried and confused state of existence, torn relentlessly between domestic duties and theological problems, the young man preparing for the ministry finds that he has little time to develop his devotional life; and it appears, from Wagoner’s survey, that the average seminary gives scant attention to this important facet of a preacher’s life. Thus the young man preparing for the ministry inevitably comes up against the question as to why he should be in the ministry rather than in some other profession. Some answer this question by deciding to enter some non-ministerial field of activity.
Wagoner’s delineation of the impact of the ecumenical movement on ministerial education shows plainly that most young seminarians leave their divinity schools with little reason left in them for their denominational preference or loyalty. Either because of a commonness of theology, including a common ordination and liturgy, or because of the impact of the one-church idea firmly impressed upon their minds, most seminary graduates today, it appears, could just as easily serve in one or another of the major Protestant denominations.
As already indicated, there can be no doubt that this book gives a fair picture of the atmosphere prevailing in most theological seminaries in America today. One wonders, however, if the author’s conclusions are not largely drawn from such divinity schools as those connected with Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Seminaries of a distinctly conservative and evangelical slant seem to have been left out of this survey.
This book diagnoses, on the surface, the disease affecting theological education; but it does not dig down below the surface to ascertain what are the real causes of the spiritual deadness so prevalent in seminaries and churches today. And if this investigation were ever consummated, one result would surely show that the dominance of a critical and unbelieving approach toward the Bible is at the root of theological education today.
WICK BROOMALL
Sermons As They Can Be
No Uncertain Sound, by R. L. Small (T. & T. Clark, 1963, 182 pp., 15s.), is reviewed by P. W. Petty, deputy warden of St. Ninian’s Training Centre, Crieff, Scotland.
The contents of this book merits its title. These sermons are not the work of a man determined to make the headlines at any cost and on any pretext, nor are they fiery exhortation more remarkable for heat than light, nor yet the easy platitudinous utterances of a man who has remained safely in his study and has not grappled with the perplexities and worries of life. Here we have the work of someone who knows what he believes without believing that he knows all the answers, a book that it would do anyone good to read. There is solid teaching here; but it is not dry, nor is it unrelated to life. Throughout, the different themes are handled with a competence and verve which make one envy alike the ability of the preacher and the congregation privileged to hear these words.
The book falls into three main headings: six sermons on the challenge of suffering, these all inspired by the Book of Job; four on the great festivals of the Church; seven on our response to all that God has done for us. All are magnificent; yet if the congregation privileged to hear such preaching needed the first sermon to be preached to it, “Missing Notes in Contemporary Christianity,” what hope is there for the rest of us? Are we in these days asking the sermon to do what it can no longer do? In the old days in a rural community, the sermon was discussed half the week; now it cannot be. What might the results be if the young people, whose needs are brought so vividly before the congregation in the last of these sermons, could really meet the members of that congregation and talk together of the great problems and issues of life in the light shed by the Word of God and by these pages?
P. W. PETTY
Usefully Used
The Marked Chain-Reference Bible, edited by J. Gilcrist Lawson (Zondervan, 1963, 995 pp., plus 554 pp. of study material, 17 maps; black leatherette, $14.95), is reviewed by John G. Johansson, production manager, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
This work has a fine appearance, and its many pages of study material make it a useful tool for a better understanding of the Scriptures. The four-color scheme for marking references to the Holy Spirit, prophecy, salvation, and to temporal blessings will, no doubt, appeal to many readers. The (60,000 cross-references in the center columns seem excellent, although some bear off to a point where there is very little left of the thought of the initial reference. The Bible Readers’ Aids contain much interesting information about the Scriptures, such as various tablets or stones from Bible lands and reproductions of several codices and manuscripts.
Formerly published by the John C. Winston Company as The Marked Bible, this work suffers because the old plates were used. This reviewer found broken letters on every page examined (in one place there was nothing left of two letters). Regrettable are: (1) the old KJV spelling and accentuation, instead of the modified spelling of today; (2) the many incorrect word divisions (mo-ther, ene-mies, hea-vens); (3) such plural spellings as “Ziphims,” “cherubims” (but “cherubim” in the encyclopedia part), and “Zuzims” (in the encyclopedia—but “Zuzim” on the map); (4) the use of Ussher’s outmoded chronology with its date of 4004 B.C. for the creation story; (5) the use of the old encyclopedic information (some of the copyright dates go back to 1937 and 1895), spelling “Selah” in 2 Kings 14:7 the same as the well-known “Selah” in the Book of Psalms instead of “Sela” (rock) as in more recent translations without any explanations as to difference in meaning.
The use of this work would be greatly enhanced if the publisher would go to the expense of resetting the type and revising the encyclopedia.
JOHN G. JOHANSSON
Haunted By The Divine Absence
The Failure of Theology in Modern Literature, by John Killinger (Abingdon, 1963, 239 pp., $5), is reviewed by Calvin D. Linton, dean of arts and sciences, The George Washington University, Washington, D. C.
Many men, including some of the more sensitive of modern writers, are finding this an increasingly lonely planet to live on. The population explosion neither alleviates nor intensifies the mood, for it is not people whom men miss. Rather, it is God, whose terrifying policy it is to withdraw from those who do not wish his presence—and our age, by and large, has not wished it. As did the Gadarenes, we have besought him to depart from us, for we are taken with great fear.
Modern literature, therefore, is often haunted—haunted by an Absence. And just as a close examination of the place where something weighty has long rested will suggest what was once there, so modern literature can teach much of God in its silences and its vacancies.
This, really, is Mr. Killinger’s theme: “What has happened to literature since Dante, since Spenser, since Milton and Bunyan? Why do we not continue to have literature of the first magnitude that is total and coherent in its witness to the Christian faith?” He is, however, more concerned with answering the first question—what has happened—than the second, why. Consequently, his title is a little misleading, since it is not theology that has failed in modern literature but modern literature that has neglected theology.
Mr. Killinger brings to his task several notable strengths. For one thing, he knows what Christianity is—not a codification of the social and psychological benefits man has decided over the years he would like to enjoy, but a divine intervention into human history, an Incarnation, bearing cosmic implications and radical solutions to the predicament of man. Hence Mr. Killinger does not find a Christian under every benign humanist he scratches, as have some recent writers on the same subject. Second, he brings an impressively broad and deep background of literary and theological knowledge, buttressed by formal graduate study, private reading, and teaching. Third (and most happily if not most significantly), he knows how to write, a rather rare trait in contemporary criticism.
Also unlike many other recent books on the same general subject, his volume is effectively organized around unifying ideas, and does not comprise merely a series of disconnected essays on certain modern writers. We have become too familiar with the kind of book that utters a few generalities at the beginning; examines half a dozen or so modern writers, rather laboriously summarizing plots and themes; and concludes each section with a more or less obvious summation of what the work “says” about religion. This author knows enough (in both senses) to stand, as it were, in the middle of a concept and to range out widely but selectively, weaving all of his data functionally about his major themes. Of the latter, there are seven, all basic doctrines of Christian theology: the doctrine of God, of Man, of the Church, of the Sacraments, of the Ministry, of Last Things, and of Atonement.
No one can speak of “modern literature” as if it were a unity, expressive of a homogeneous sensibility. There are too many contradictions, ramifications, and echoes. But one can fairly assess a few of the features which set modern Western literature apart from equally apparent and prevalent features of earlier periods. One of these is that modern writers are the first to write, as a group, “on the tacit or declared premise that there is no God.” (The words are Edmund Fuller’s.) If we adopt the popular Jungian word “myth” to denote the prevailing faith (possibly unarticulated and even subconscious, but real) of any age, we may agree with Mr. Killinger in his identification of the modern “myth” as that of “the Absence of God.” This produces a far grimmer mood than that of the purest paganism, either the stoic’s awareness of “whatever gods there be,” presumably dark and malign, or the epicurean’s pantheon of divine delinquents, fashioning man with weeping and laughter, loathing and love. This, rather, is the Myth of Emptiness. In that hollow round of nothingness there is not silence, but whispers and echoes, fragments of former faiths, remnants of earlier beliefs, symbols of abandoned worship. “The numinous is there,” writes Mr. Killinger, “but the Christian construct is missing. It is a demonic world.” The vertiginous nausea of a Sartre; the absurdity of a Camus; the jungles of Conrad and Greene; the madness and despair of Beckett—“I cannot think, I do not know, therefore I am—or am I?” One cannot objectively deny that here is evidence, not of a mood of serene acceptance of the “fact” that man is the highest being in the universe, but one of defiance, of rage against an Enemy; just as the world of James Joyce is not the vaunted “new creation” of a “liberated” writer, with the godlike author seated in the midst of his world paring his fingernails, but a mere inversion of another world, the world Joyce grew up in, of Christian faith and Roman Catholic ritual.
It would be misleading, however, to suggest that the tone of the book shares the assertiveness of these sentences. On the contrary, it is descriptive, objective, and scholarly. Only in the final chapter, on “The Christian Artist,” is there an element of special pleading, to which the reader might like to request “equal time” for reply. After quoting Tom F. Driver, for example, to the effect that Christian art “is always less clear [as to theology and dogma] than is that of preaching and discursive literature.” the author observes: “Certainly there is no such priority of verbal over sensory communication as Protestantism has asserted. Such a priority is merely a historical accident.…” Surely not. Philosophically and practically, the word must take priority over the artistic symbol in the central role of the Church.
A good index and useful footnotes (from which may be derived a selected bibliography, though none is printed separately) enhance the value of the volume.
CALVIN D. LINTON
The Shape Of Glory
Them He Glorified, by Bernard Ramm (Eerdmans, 1963, 148 pp., $3), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, professor of the philosophy of religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.
One is astonished when he realizes that there has been to date no volume devoted wholly to a systematic exploration of the doctrine of glorification, or even of the rich range of usages that the term “glory” and its cognates have in the Christian Scriptures. Professor Ramm’s present volume points up the vastness of the materials in Holy Writ on this subject, and promises to achieve and hold a place of leadership among further studies in this area.
It must be left to the reader to discover the meticulous research that has gone into this work, which is biblically based from first to last. The most that a reviewer can hope to do is to indicate the major lines of the author’s thought and the range of Christian truth he relates to his study of the terms “glory” and “glorify.” With respect to the person and work of our Lord, Dr. Ramm notes the centrality of the Cross as it relates to the manifestation of the essential glory of the Eternal Son. He notes the entire sphere involved in His glorification, avoiding on the one hand the vagaries of “incarnational theology” and emphasizing on the other the contribution of Transfiguration. Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension (as well as the Parousia) to the total structure of glorification.
The volume emphasizes, of course, the general pattern of Christian evangelicalism, including a strong stress upon an objective atonement. In relation to the manward thrust of Christian redemption. Professor Ramm is sensitive to the whole range of applied soteriology; he emphasizes the dimensions of moral freedom and personal responsibility no less than the glory of the “inheritance restored.” He seeks at each point in his presentation to add perspective to the Christian doctrines that he discusses. He sees clearly the element of discontinuity involved in the final and full renewal of man in Christ, as well as in the world-renewal. It goes almost without saying that he envisions the redemption of the whole man, including the body, and explores the Christian hope of a final reconstitution of a redeemed and glorious “communion of saints.”
This reviewer has not read a discussion of the “glorification passages” of the Book of Revelation that can approach, in quality and depth, that of Dr. Ramm, as he surveys with sober insight the rich range of prophecies and promises given to the Exile on Patmos so long ago. This treatment should effectively disarm those who regard the Apocalypse as fantastic or unworthy of credence by intelligent persons.
Dr. Ramm works within the framework of a frank Christian supernaturalism, and pursues his work with a painstaking reverence. This reviewer found the volume to be delightful reading: the author has himself found his work to be delightfully adventuresome and has succeeded well in imbuing his volume with that spirit. Them He Glorified is a work which not only merits, but cordially invites, reading and re-reading.
HAROLD B. KUHN
Walk With Me
Varieties of English Preaching 1900–1960, by Horton Davies (Prentice-Hall, 1963, 276 pp., $6.60), is reviewed by Ben Lacy Rose, professor of pastoral leadership and homiletics, Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia.
When one walks with great men he seeks almost unconsciously to match their stride. Here is a book which allows the reader to walk with some of the noblest souls of this century, to see some of their strengths and their weaknesses, and to be infected by their passions and guided by their hopes.
The author, the Putnam Professor of Religion at Princeton University, has selected fourteen men as representatives of preaching in England during the twentieth century. While he concentrates on the religious thoughts and style of preaching, Professor Davies sets forth salient and interesting facts about the life of each man. Choosing persons from many denominations, including Congregational, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Roman Catholic, the book reveals the vast differences between men whom God uses in a single generation to bring his message to men. The full list of preachers includes: J. H. Jowett, Bishop Henson, Dean Inge, Dick Sheppard, G. A. Studdert Kennedy, Monsignor Ronald Knox, Leslie D. Weatherhead, B. L. Manning, C. S. Lewis, Campbell Morgan, W. E. Sangster, J. S. Stewart, William Temple, and H. H. Farmer.
Professor Davies discovers six distinct types of preaching within the group: devotional, reasonable, liturgical, psychological, expository, and apologetical. To these are added two general categories: lay preaching and the preaching of truth through personality. For each type and category at least one and sometimes three examples are presented and analyzed.
The style of the book is popular and readable. The author, himself a son of an English manse, shows an understanding of and an appreciation for the pulpit work of each of the fourteen personalities, but his treatment of each is clear-eyed and impersonal. He faithfully reveals the failings of a man when this is necessary for the proper appreciation of his work and character. The truth is never lost in adulation and praise.
The author has no thesis to prove, no pet peeve to unload, no ax to grind. In a day when so many books are being written in an “accusative” mood, it is refreshing to read this book which introduces with proper enthusiasm men who did (or are doing) their task well and by whom all may be taught. It is not heavy reading, but it is profitable for any person, preacher or layman.
BEN LACY ROSE
God’S Own Theodicy
Acquittal by Resurrection, by Markus Barth and Verne H. Fletcher (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963, 192 pp., $4.75), is reviewed by James Daane, editorial associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
This is a book of more than ordinary significance for both theology and ethics. It will have a long discussion, large influence, high praise, and sharp criticism. I can here only hint at the book’s overall position and rich content.
In the first section, Markus Barth, son of Karl, puts his eye unabashedly on Rudolf Bultmann and begins with a strong argument for the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection. The Resurrection is not a postulate of faith, nor the product of the creative faith of the primitive believing community. On the contrary, so unwilling were the disciples of Jesus to believe in the Resurrection that they preferred to believe in ghosts. Nor is the Resurrection a myth inviting demythologizing or spiritualizing interpretations. It is an event which occurred at a given time, at a specific place, before chosen witnesses. “There is no difference between the factuality, reality, actuality of the crucifixion and of the resurrection events. They possess the same historicity.” Even more pointedly, “Had the New Testament writers known of the devices of the twentieth century, they would perhaps have insisted upon the confirmation afforded by a camera, a recording machine, or a newspaper reporter.” Barth further adds, “If the essence of history should be sought and found not in an infinite becoming and dying … but in God’s struggle and care for man, then the resurrection is to be considered at least as historical, if not more so [this may raise questions], as the death of Christ suffered from the hands of his enemies.” Anything less than a truly historical Resurrection would fail to support Barth’s thesis that the Resurrection alters the whole universe in all its time and history. To show that in biblical thought the Resurrection has anchorage in history, Barth gives extensive exegetical treatment to those New Testament passages which deal with the Resurrection, and particularly to those which implicitly or explicitly contain Old Testament texts. His purpose is to show that the Old Testament no more than the New allows the Resurrection, as in Bultmann, to be regarded as a mere postulate of faith.
While Western theological thought, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, associates justification specifically with the Cross, and sanctification with the Resurrection, Barth points to those biblical passages which make the reverse association and present the Resurrection as a divine act of justification or acquittal. Here the Resurrection is understood not merely as the justification of sinners, but as a public annunciation of God’s justification of himself. Barth writes, “By the resurrection God not only reveals what he is pro me; he manifests also what he is in himself.… God manifests not only that he ‘makes righteous’ but also and foremost that ‘he is righteous’ (Rom. 3:26). Unless the resurrection is explained as a deed by which God manifests, distinguishes, and describes himself, even his love and power, his holiness and righteousness, his mercy and grace—it is not explained at all.” Thus the Resurrection is also God’s justification of himself, of all his ways and works with men, specifically of his election of Israel, his promises to her, his covenant with her, and his call of Israel to service. In New Testament language, the Resurrection is God’s vindication of his amazing act of justifying the ungodly! Thus the Resurrection is theodicy—something which theologians and philosophers usually associate with the problem of evil rather than with that righteousness of God which triumphs over evil and justifies the ungodly.
The Resurrection as theodicy is, moreover, as every theodicy must be, total. It means the justification of all men, not merely of those who believe; the forgiveness and renewal of all things, of the entire cosmos, of all principalities and powers, which Barth defines as the state (Romans 13 is said to have a Christological foundation), as any structured power such as labor unions or political parties, or even the powers that inform an age or a culture. The Resurrection is a justification of all these things, for all things are made new, and a justification of God himself for his gracious acquittal of all men and all things. This is known, of Course, only in the Church, for the meaning and the fact of the Resurrection are known only by those who in faith participate in it. The Church’s task is to announce this hidden truth to all the world, to live according to this fact, and to gratefully praise God because it is true.
At this point the Resurrection becomes ethically relevant for politics, the state, for labor, culture—for everything. Here, too, the question of universal salvation arises, one which the book neither explicitly urges nor, indeed, in any way concerns itself with.
Barth’s argument is that the universal import of the Resurrection must be understood within a juridical context in which Jesus Christ appears as the legal basis for the justification of all men and of God himself for his act of justifying the sinner. And it is presented with massive exegetical and biblical interpretation. The questions and problems which it raises will not be resolved by the recitation of orthodox slogans or isolated texts—if for no other reason than that texts can be cited against every theology that has ever been constructed. The issues Barth raises can be successfully met only by an equally massive theological effort. Markus, it seems to me, stands in the tradition of his father, and his simpler style only makes his theological heritage the more powerful. In new and forceful ways he raises old questions: How can one construct a theology informed by an unlimited atonement and by a limited Resurrection? How can one avoid a theological, inverse version of Bultmann, a theology which posits the historicity of the Cross and Resurrection, but makes their effectiveness contingent upon the human response of faith?
Fletcher, in the second section of the book, indicates the sweeping ethical implications of this cosmic interpretation of the Resurrection for all areas of life: politics, law courts, and all structures and formations of power. He urges that the secular world is no subordinate, lower, natural kingdom (à la natural theology, or world versus Church), but the one realm for which Christ was bodily crucified and physically raised, and in which he therefore now reigns as Lord. On the basis of Markus Barth’s understanding of the Resurrection as acquittal, Fletcher argues that capital punishment is unchristian. The state may punish to protect itself against evil and evil men, but it may not demand the death of a murderer, since Christ already died in his stead. How can the state rightly ask for the life of a murderer when Christ has already given his life for the murderer’s deed? Fletcher’s discussion of the ethical obligations of nations who possess abundance in a world of poor and undeveloped countries, is no less provocative.
On the basis of biblical teaching, there can be no doubt that the physical, historical Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the justification both of sinners and of the God who thereby justifies them. Where this book rightly interprets this truth, it is right in a big way; where it is wrong, it is wrong in a big way. The theological task of discerning where the one ends and the other begins is equally big.
JAMES DAANE
Memorable Journey
Landscapes of the Bible, by Georg Eichholz, trans. by John W. Doberstein (Harper and Row, 1963, 152 pp., $8.95 until Dec. 31, 1963, then $10), is reviewed by Frank Farrell, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
The title suggests the content though it does not exhaust it. The reader is taken on a tour of the Bible lands, not simply from Dan to Beersheba but from the Euphrates to the Nile. The narrative follows 104 color photographs, chosen to illuminate the terrains of biblical history.
Avoided is the motley array of commemorative structures which tends to obscure rather than enhance the biblical scenes. The photographs, many of them stunningly beautiful, are largely original in perspective and manage to capture the unexpected. In these pages one may view the mammoth monuments of the Pharaohs, gaze up at the towering columns of Baalbek, roam the forbidding fastnesses of Qumran, enter the gates of Jerusalem to the brilliant-hued Dome of the Rock, wander among the golden columns of sun-drenched Palmyra astride the Syrian desert in isolated splendor, then watch the sun set over the crusader castle which dominates Sidon’s harbor.
Tour guide Georg Eichholz is professor of theology at Kirchliche Hochschule in Wuppertal, Germany. He writes simply and includes archaeological data along with basic facts of geography. All of this serves to give colorful background for Bible study and should serve as a considerable incitement for such when placed in the hands of the layman.
In covering such a wide geographic area, the author has had to be very selective in his choice of sites for illustration and comment. One may be disappointed at omissions, but what is included is treated gracefully. Lessons of providence and history are not neglected. On the place of Israel among the nations, Professor Eichholz says: “This [Isa. 43:1–4] tells us what makes Israel Israel: the incomparable wonder of the elective love of God. This is the royal theme of its history, even though Israel itself often fails to recognize it. Knowing that theme, we hold Israel’s history no far-off thing, but history that is near to us, just as surely as Israel’s God is the God of all the world. Knowing this theme, we know that Israel’s history is not a triumphal march in the midst of world history, but rather the story of God’s meeting with his people.”
FRANK FARRELL
