The Value Of The Old
The Old Testament and Christian Faith, edited by Bernhard W. Anderson (Harper & Row, 1963, 271 pp., $5), is reviewed by Lester J. Kuyper, professor of Old Testament, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan.
The essays in this book contribute interesting and discerning light on the much discussed subject of the relation of the Old Testament to the New Testament, or the place the Old Testament has in Christian thought. It is apparent that the Old Testament cannot be taken over bodily into our way of thought and life. In fact, some wonder whether it can contribute anything to Christians who consider the Christ-event—incarnation, death, and resurrection—as the only and final event with which we have to do.
The scheme of this book centers around Rudolph Bultmann’s teachings concerning the significance of the Old Testament. The writers of the various chapters offer their criticisms and reactions to the famous Marburg professor’s essay, “The Significance of the Old Testament for the Christian Faith,” presented as the first chapter of the book.
Bultmann’s essay surmises that since man’s relation to God is bound to the person of Jesus, the Old Testament must recede into a very secondary place. Luther observed that the Old Testament as law placed divine demands on man that made man aware of his need of the Gospel. However, this contrast of law versus grace overlooks the grace in the Old Testament and the place of law in the Gospel. Bultmann has rightly understood the element of grace in law in the Old Testament, and therefore Luther’s distinction is less than satisfactory.
Since the Christ-event is God’s final redemptive act in history, the redemptive acts in the Old Testament are no longer revelation for the Christian as they were and still are for the Jews, according to Bultmann (p. 31). The Old Testament has value only in the sense in which it brings better understanding about the New Testament. To this reviewer, Bultmann’s position is too radical a rejection of revelation in the Old Testament. To be sure, not all of it can be considered authoritative and relevant for Christians. However, even in its message to Israel, the Old Testament carries in itself the essence of validity for Christian faith and life. In fact, the record of God’s people through the long span of history reflects more clearly the relation of grace and judgment than the record of the comparatively brief history of the New Testament Church.
Cullmann’s chapter on the “Connection of Primal Events and End Events” stresses the non-historical or mythological features of these events in the New Testament. The in-between redemptive event of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is historical and projects special meaning to the beginning and end events. Jesus of Nazareth is truly historical in a way in which Adam is not a historical person. However, the intent of the New Testament is to place the non-historical beginning into vital relationship with the historical Christ. Cullmann senses the overall significance of beginning and end by placing it under the redemptive Christ-event.
Alan Richardson answers the question, “Is the Old Testament the Propaedeutic to Christian Faith?” by stating that it is that and more. And the “more” is important, since the Old Testament is the kerygmatic record of God’s redemption in history which is completed in the New Testament (pp. 47, 48). This reviewer agrees that a firm adherence to the Heilgeschichte concept of the Old Testament properly relates the Old Testament to the New Testament salvation event in Christ. Yet one may ask whether this is not propaedeutic in another form.
Carl Michalson finds that Bultmann’s use of the Vorverständnis given in the Old Testament as the proper preparation for understanding and accepting the New Testament successfully combats ancient Marcionism or the present-day “creeping” Marcionism. This chapter (3) has much material on the proper pre-understanding the believer must have to believe rightly. When the exegete makes his own Vorverständnis the “assured state of affairs,” he has perverted hermeneutics and is unable to sense the kerygma of the New Testament.
Wilhelm Vischer’s chapter, “Everywhere the Scripture Is About Christ Alone,” attempts to establish the value of the Old Testament for Christians in his opposition to Bultmann’s dismissal of the Old Testament for the new community in Christ. What value does Vischer see in the Old Testament? God’s people in history, in their election by God, rebellion against him, and consequent need of redemption, establish the pattern by which the New Testament community encounters Jesus Christ. The history of Israel was recorded for the purpose of bringing present-day man to Christ. We learn from the Old Testament that God encounters Israel in history, which is the model for God’s encounter of Israel and all people in the historical Christ-event. This reviewer is not convinced that Vischer has successfully dismissed Bultmann’s rejection of the Old Testament’s having positive value for the Christian (pp. 98–101).
Other scholars in their essays express their views on the Old Testament-New Testament relation by subjecting Bultmann’s position to critical study. Most scholars accept the “negative” values of the Old Testament; however, many search the Old Testament for the “positive” contributions it makes for Christian faith and life. I find myself among the latter.
LESTER J. KUYPER
The Full Day
The Day of His Coming: The Man in the Gospels, by Gerhard Gloege (Fortress, 1963, 302 pp., $4.25), is reviewed by Ronald A. Ward, rector, Kirby Cane and Ellingham, Bungay, Suffolk, England.
This book is a study of the “single day” of the New Testament in which the thousand years of the Old Testament are realized. Appropriately enough, a large introductory section is devoted to the intertestamental period, the special danger zone of Hellenism and the Roman Empire. Then comes the earnest search for the historical Jesus. Use is made of the critical methods of historical research and the results of modern scholarship. The assumption of form criticism that the pericopai originally circulated as independent units is accepted, in spite of the acute observation of others that only an anecdotal form has been proved by the form critics, not necessarily an existence in separation.
The author believes that the record of Jesus is so colored by the believing Church that we cannot make a clean break between his own words and those of the early Church, which misunderstood a great deal or formulated his words afresh. Our Lord’s words were shaped and filled by the community. This does not give sufficient weight to the possibility that the influence of the community may have rescued differences and “contradictions” for the record instead of manufacturing them. For our Lord, like many a preacher, must often have repeated himself with a difference. He was prevented from conducting dialogues in Socratic fashion by the authority of the law and the prophets; the truth did not tolerate any human support. Strangely enough, however, the New Testament writers are engaged in a dialogue: with their contemporaries, with one another, and with us.
I am wondering if Dr. Gloege has put his finger, perhaps unwittingly, on the great defect of modern scholarship, massive though that scholarship is. In contrast to the New Testament itself, we are interested in every possible detail of our Lord’s life: his birth, his youth, his education—in short, how he became what he was. We may, and do, understand this sympathetically; but it may be dangerously misunderstood. Exegesis itself might be helped if scholars, as scholars, determined to know nothing save Jesus Christ and him crucified. This does not mean restricting themselves to the Passion story; it does mean letting the Cross color every text.
In spite of what we have said, and in spite of the author’s apparent belief that the Bible has been taken over uncritically from a pious generation without any personal confrontation or conversation, and in spite of his attack on the “biblicists” (see Matt. 23), this is a stimulating book, full of arresting things. Sin is rebellion against God and retreat from God. Men speak and write about life but refuse to live. The man who loves lives on forgiveness. Our Lord’s words bring salvation, not solution. Jesus releases man from the curse of planning. The Gospels give no indication of a process of development (in Jesus). Bureaucracy is the secular form of theocracy.
Best of all is the interpretation of the Cross. As a man, Jesus is afraid of death and its physical pain; but “far more terrible for him is the fact that death comes to him to execute the judgment of God.… In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus was aware of the power of God’s wrath. He trembled before it.… The Cross means that God himself rejected Jesus—not for his sake but for our sake.”
The volume includes a short bibliography, an index, and an interesting epilogue on “The Rescue of Sisyphus” (Camus).
RONALD A. WARD
Militant For Peace
The Militant Ministry, by Hans-Ruedi Weber (Fortress, 1963, 108 pp., $2), is reviewed by H. C. Brown, Jr., professor of preaching, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas.
“Almost everywhere the church is becoming a minority in a world which does not stand in awe before the miracles of God but is fascinated by the miracle of Technology.” With this statement Hans-Ruedi Weber, a minister of the Swiss Reformed Church and associate director of the Ecumenical Institute at Chateau de Bossey, sets the stage to challenge the Church to a “militant ministry” in a hostile, skeptical, and unbelieving world. If the Church is to have a “militant ministry,” says Weber, it must become involved in and with the world according to that pattern found in the New Testament and in the first four Christian centuries (centuries which, according to Weber, are more relevant for the Church than is the Reformation period).
This volume defines “ministry” as “the calling and task of Christ and all members of God’s people (it is therefore often synonymous with the ministry of the laity), while the term ‘ministers’ is used in a more restricted way, designating those church members who have received a calling for a special office within and for God’s people, such as pastors, missionaries, and bishops.” Throughout this volume there is a wholesome challenge to all Christians to involve themselves in God’s work.
Five aspects of the Church’s struggle depict the “militant church”: (1) baptism as the initiation into the ranks of the militant Church, (2) the mission of peace, which shows the apostolic character and purpose of the Church, (3) the equipment of grace (given for service to each true convert and to the whole Church), which is charismatic in character, (4) the sacrificial way of life, which imparts a distinct quality of life to those involved in the battle of faith, and (5) the true Christian joy, which depicts the Resurrection victory and foreshadows the Kingdom.
In some ways this volume will impress the technical student of the New Testament, of church history, and of theology more than the pastor. But the pastor will discover fresh insights into the total involvement of all Christians as well as numerous biblical and historical illustrations that throw new light on old thoughts.
Weber adds a word of caution about his book: he is examining the New Testament and early historical use of military imagery and is fully aware that this is only one minor section of the total data. “Writing from such a limited standpoint one cannot claim to express the whole truth.” His desire is that “laymen and ministers … discern what their particular task is today in the battle of faith of the militant church.” To a considerable degree, he succeeds.
H. C. BROWN, JR.
Berlin Novel
Behind the Wall, by Robert E. A. Lee (Eerdmans, 1964, 169 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, professor of philosophy of religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.
Two worlds, two ways of life, touch each other at the Wall in Berlin. Robert E. A. Lee, executive secretary of the Lutheran Film Association, has in this work chosen two persons to dramatize the opposing ways of life: Werner Hirm, a West German Lutheran who has come to take his freedoms for granted, and Lise Lehman, an East Berliner devoted to the Communist party in the so-called German Democratic Republic.
This novel presents a series of meetings of Werner and Lise in East Berlin and Leipzig. The plot is simple: the two people are attracted to each other, but there is no place in Communist ideology for sentiment. Their contacts in Leipzig dramatize the conditions of secrecy that must surround party affairs. The fanatical devotion to the party of Lise’s mother complicates the problem. In Leipzig Werner meets the pastor who baptized and confirmed him, and he is brought face to face, perhaps for the first time, with the realities of the Christian faith that as a nominal Lutheran he has taken for granted.
In the course of the conversation, the author reveals to us the incredible hardships against which pastors must work in the East German puppet state. Werner comes from the conference challenged by Pastor Moser to “fight the good fight of faith.”
As Werner returns to East Berlin, Lise is assigned the sordid task of “softening up” a certain Comrade Blatnik from Yugoslavia. From this moment on she is torn between an innate sense of decency and the demands of the party. In East Berlin, Werner makes plans for Lise’s escape by one of the tunnels under the Wall. When at last all plans are complete, a note from Lise reaches Werner; in it she says that she has met a Frau Spier, through whom the Light of Christ has come to shine upon her heart, and that she must stay in the East to face an uncertain future for deserting her assignment for the party.
The book must be read to be appreciated. It lifts the curtains a little upon the Red world, with its intrigue, its diabolical cunning, and its war of attrition against the Church of our Lord.
HAROLD B. KUHN
He Is Not Without Love
The Unpopular Missionary, by Ralph E. Dodge (Revell, 1964, 167 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by H. Cornell Goerner, secretary for Africa, Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, Richmond, Virginia.
This book is not quite so radical as the title suggests. Written by a Methodist bishop who had fourteen years of missionary service before he was placed in charge of all Methodist work in Angola, Rhodesia, and South East Africa, it is thoroughly constructive and keenly critical.
Bishop Dodge adds his voice to a swelling chorus of protests against any lingering remnants of colonialism, racial prejudice, and the presumption of cultural superiority. With clear-eyed realism, he confesses for the Church that its missionary representatives have sometimes reflected imperfect attitudes of their own cultural background and have not always been the champions of change. His self-criticism on behalf of the missionary enterprise is the more sharp because lie speaks from the point of view of the churches in Southern Rhodesia, Angola, and Mozambique. These are the remaining strongholds of white supremacy, where missionaries find themselves caught between their desire to serve the African masses, with whom their sympathies largely lie, and the necessity of being loyal to, or at least law-abiding in, countries in which a European minority is still firmly in control of government. The only alternative open to missionaries in these territories is identification with African nationalist groups that would promptly eject them from the country in which they are serving.
It needs to be clearly recognized that the conditions in the southern part of the African continent that Bishop Dodge describes are by no means typical of the entire African continent. In the newly independent African nations of West Africa and East Africa, the situation is quite different. There is no excuse for continued racial prejudice and for attitudes of superiority on the part of the missionaries; but there is even less evidence that these attitudes are present. It would be erroneous to regard Bishop Dodge’s book as an accurate description of the attitudes and activities of Protestant missionaries in most of Africa. It would also be erroneous to suppose that missionaries are “unpopular” with the African people they are serving. Quite the opposite is true in many parts of Africa. The services that missionaries are offering in education, in medicine and public health, and in those activities directly related to the growth of the churches, are received with appreciation and gratitude by millions of African people. There is a clamor for more missionaries, and there is competition for the services of those who are available.
Books that cause us to confront the realities of our changing world and that prompt us to confess the shortcomings of methods used in the past can be wholesome for the rethinking and the reorganization of the missionary enterprise. It would be unfortunate, however, if these generalizations made with reference to one section of the African continent should be uncritically applied to the continent as a whole. Perhaps someone will now dare to write about “the popular missionary,” who is quite real in many parts of Africa today.
H. CORNELL GOERNER
Broad And Narrow
Psychology’s Impact on the Christian Faith, by C. Edward Barker (Allen & Unwin [London], 1964, 220 pp., 28s.), is reviewed by M. G. Barker, lecturer in psychiatry, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland.
The title of this book is misleading, for by psychology the author means psychoanalytic theory. The psychology of Jung and Adler and the more recent contributions of workers such as Piaget are not even mentioned in the book. This is an attempt to synthesize psychoanalytic theory and what the author considers to be true Christian faith without the accretions of Paul and the theologians. He may seem well qualified for this in that he was a Methodist minister for the first half of his working life and then, after undergoing a training analysis, became a lay psychotherapist.
The argument of the book is that the difficulties of many nervous sufferers “can be traced back, not to the teaching of Jesus himself, but to the misrepresentation of the mission of Jesus found first in the theological letters of St. Paul.” Original sin is discounted as a distortion of troubled minds, and “atonement by the blood of Christ is a theory initiated by the Apostle Paul”; while the “church is bogged down by such themes as reconciliation, forgiveness, atonement and sacrifice.”
The author divides his material into two sections. In the first he expounds his view that obsession, masochism, and distorted views of sex have clouded the true Gospel of Christ. Since Paul is subject to each of these traits, his exposition of Christian doctrine is thereby contaminated. Part II is a dull and labored reinterpretation of the biblical doctrines of man, the Kingdom, the Cross, and the Resurrection, as well as of suffering, marriage, and divorce.
This work is at times an ingenious one, but its theology will be too broad for most readers of this journal and its psychology too narrow for most psychologists and psychiatrists.
M. G. BARKER
Expositor Incomparable
A Commentary on The Holy Bible: Volume III: Matthew-Revelation, by Matthew Poole (Banner of Truth Trust, 1963, 1,008 pp., 42s.), is reviewed by A. Skevington Wood, evangelist-at-large, York, England.
We have already welcomed the reprint of the two Old Testament volumes of Matthew Poole’s Bible commentary in these pages. The appearance of Volume III, which covers the entire New Testament, completes a finely produced and exegetically valuable set. The publishers are to be congratulated.
Poole is one of the classic expositors of the seventeenth century. Indeed, Richard Cecil, the noted Anglican evangelical preacher of the succeeding century, claimed that he was incomparable. In an age like ours, when all too often faithful elucidation of the text is subordinated to critical considerations, to turn to the single-minded Poole is both salutary and stimulating. His one aim is to demonstrate what the Protestant Reformers called the perspicuity of Scripture. For this reason, he spends most time on those passages that have been regarded as hard to understand.
For example, in Philippians 2:7 he anticipates and resolves kenotic dilemmas by insisting that our Lord did not abandon the form of God when he took the form of a servant but merely veiled his majesty and power. In Romans 7:14 he recognizes the significant change of tense that supplies the clue to Paul’s self-analysis. In John 3:5 he refuses to bind regeneration to baptism in a mechanical way, while allowing that “the new birth is signified, represented, and sealed” by the ordinance. He lists the interpretations of Matthew 16:18 that identify the rock with Christ, with Peter as the typical apostle, or with Peter’s confession of faith. “In which sense soever it be taken,” he concludes, “it makes nothing for the papists’ superiority or jurisdiction of St. Peter, or his successors.”
Poole quotes William Perkins, the Puritan, as advising readers to begin with John and Romans because they are the keys of the New Testament. His own treatment of these two books is outstanding.
A. SKEVINGTON WOOD
Delightful And Disturbing
The Miracles of Christ, by David A. Redding (Revell, 1964, 186 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by James P. Martin, associate professor of New Testament, Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, Richmond.
Here is an eloquent, delightful, and disturbing volume on the miracles of Christ by the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in East Cleveland, Ohio. David A. Redding reveals his mastery of English style, his faith, and his sincere concern to communicate the wonder and offense of the miracles and, through them, the wonder and offense of Christ. His only prerequisite for this study is belief in the miracle of Christ himself. This book offers such a fascinating mixture of good and weak exposition, marvelous illustration, apologetic barbs, miscellaneous scientific support for miracles, and exhortations and challenges to faith that a complete review would demand pages of comments. We restrict our remarks to major considerations.
The style reflects more the sermon than the classroom disquisition. The delicate phraseology, the striking figures, and the illustrations that illustrate will greatly stimulate and freshen the art of preaching on the miracles. The apologetic key is frequently sounded, albeit in different notes. Rhetorical questions catch modern man off guard, prick lazy indifference and stab conceit, and skillfully direct us to think afresh of Christ. At times Redding harps on the limitations of modern knowledge; at other times he pounds directly on factualness—it happened and that’s that! This apologetic style will certainly help many, and, of course, will not help others who need a more detailed, argued, and reasoned-out approach to profound questions in a scientific age.
The convenient four-division arrangement of the miracles: Mastery of Nature, Healing of the Body, Healing of the Mind, and Raising of the Dead, examines similar materials together and allows the author to provide general information for each group. Nevertheless, scattered observations on the setting of a miracle within a given Gospel point up the fact that this topical approach cannot measure up to the demands of biblical interpretation in terms of the books in which the miracles are set. The context of the given Gospel can be of decisive importance for interpreting a miracle. The miracle at Cana (John 2), the paralytic at Bethesda (John 5), and the raising of Lazarus (John 11), cannot be understood except in terms of the total historical-theological structure of the Fourth Gospel. The horizontal line of the ministry of Jesus according to John cannot be broken without damaging individual pericopes. For example, the saying at Cana, “My hour is not yet come,” is crucial to the meaning of that miracle (sign), and the Lazarus narrative is designed by John to speak about the death of believers in view of the delayed parousia as well as to tell of an immediate cause of the final plot against Jesus.
The admirable emphasis throughout the book on the mystery of how Jesus performed these miracles and on the fact that he did (so there!) tends to obscure another equally important question—why and to what purpose? The answer to this question (on the dust jacket), that Jesus did not do these wonders as “isolated bits of magic but in a compassionate response to faith and human suffering,” is only a partial answer and does not reflect the Gospel’s proclamation of Jesus as the eschatological Redeemer. A few hints thrown in the direction of the Resurrection do not suffice to account for the gaps left in the picture of the purposeful work of Jesus. The lack of a clear note on purpose also sets in relief another problem with which the author is genuinely concerned and yet which he does not quite meet head on; that is, the problem of the relevance of miracles today in the Church’s mission as well as in her theology. A brief, questioning reference to a possible healing ministry in the Church (p. 122) does not suffice, and we are left with an odor of historicism (pastness) hanging over the miracles of Jesus. Not even the use of miracles to point up the personal miracle of Jesus himself is sufficient to answer this problem, for it annoyingly leads to a further query: Is the resurrected Christ incapable or unwilling to do for “suffering humanity” what he was so able and willing to do in the days of his flesh? The author is certainly not alone in his dilemma, and we can be thankful for the sharp manner in which he illustrates it for us. Time and again the realistic and colorful description of first-century sickness, disease, and wretchedness and their remarkable real cure by the action of Jesus, is suddenly transposed into a spiritualized application to our “unbelief” and scientific fixations. But what does the Christian say about Jesus Christ to the real and agonizing suffering of twentieth-century disease? Such a clever remark as, “Good health is not the absence of symptoms, but the beating of a thankful heart” (p. 80), does not describe the healing of the leper, nor does it suffice for the modern cancer-eaten sufferer.
Redding’s own strong belief apparently reaches its limits in the case of the demoniac Legion, who, it seems, is most probably a psychopath (à la Weatherhead’s description, p. 146), although the word “demoniac” is preserved in the description. But is psychosis a prerequisite for recognizing the transcendent (not in Bishop Robinson’s sense!) origin, holiness, and purpose of Jesus? The same feature is central in the account of the demoniac in Capernaum. The author should not dilute his rugged realism at such a critical juncture but should, in accordance with the demand he repeatedly makes upon his hearers, drink the bitter medicine of biblical realism straight. For the miracles raise not only the question of sickness but also the problem of evil in its totality. What kind of a universe is this in which man dwells, and what kind of a Saviour is Jesus Christ?
A strange omission in this book, and one that reveals a basic hermeneutical weakness related to the question of the why of the miracles, is the absence of an effective historical dimension. The Gospels set forth Jesus’ miracles, not as wonders better than Egyptian magic or good enough for twentieth-century scientists, but as the fulfillment (proleptic, or inaugurated) of the Old Testament pattern of eschatological expectation (e.g., the question of John, and the answer of Jesus in Luke 7 given in Isaianic language). Old Testament references, figures, and allusions are generally missing in this treatment of miracles. But we ignore this historical dimension at our peril, for no amount of dazzling rhetorical pyrotechnics is able of itself to keep the Church seriously concerned about the inner meaning of the miracles, namely, the cosmic and realistic salvation intended by God and to be proclaimed, offered, and realized in our misery and our time. The miracles of Jesus point to the new creation and the Last Day and are thereby imbedded in the time process.
The author may protest that this review has raised questions beyond the intention of his book, but we should be thankful that he has written so well that he compels us to think about matters basic to the Church’s message and mission. If his purpose in writing was to aid the quality of sermons on miracles, then he may rest assured of success, for his work will greatly assist a genuine wrestling with the texts and will not merely shore up preconceived agreement or disagreement with the miracles of Christ. The real test of this book is whether it will make plushy sermons on miracles an integral part of our plushy church life, or whether it will move the Church to the mission of Jesus Christ to humanity outside.
JAMES P. MARTIN
Book Briefs
And Our Defense Is Sure: Sermons and Addresses from the Pentagon Protestant Pulpit, edited by Harmon D. Moore, Ernest A. Ham, and Clarence E. Hobgood (Abingdon, 1964, 191 pp., $2.50). Selections from what is heard at the Pentagon’s weekday noon-hour program for personnel assigned to duty in the nation’s capital.
Hod-Carrier: Notes of a Laborer on an Unfinished Cathedral, by Gerald W. Johnson (William Morrow, 1964, 211 pp., $3.95). Salty reflections on American life, morals, and government.
For Preachers and Other Sinners, by Gerald Kennedy (Harper & Row, 1964, 110 pp., $3). Three-minute essays that cover the waterfront of common everyday subjects. Written with zest, they will be read with pleasure.
History of Christian Education, by C. B. Eavey (Moody, 1964, 430 pp., $5.50). A wide-ranging study with special emphasis on the part played in education by the Christian Church.
The Psalm of Christ: Forty Poems on the Twenty-second Psalm, by Chad Walsh (Westminster, 1963, 80 pp., $2.95).
Youth Looks at Love, by Letha Scanzoni (Revell, 1964, 128 pp., S2.95). The title is hardly appropriate; a loyal-to-the-Bible treatment that scarcely gets out of the Bible to the world of youth for which it was written. Endless textual references won’t encourage teen-age reading.
The Greek New Testament: Being the Text Translated in the New English Bible 1961, edited by R. V. G. Tasker (Oxford and Cambridge, 1964, 460 pp., $4.50).
Family Altar: Devotions for Everyday of the Year, by F. W. Herzberger, revised by Harry Huxhold (Concordia, 1964, 382 pp., $4.95). Brief daily devotions based on Scripture texts. 1964 edition.
Youth Seeks a Master, by Louis H. Evans (Revell, 1964, 126 pp., $2.75). A long-time friend of young people speaks understandingly and sincerely about the meaning of Christ for them.
Group Counseling, by Joseph W. Knowles (Prentice-Hall, 1964, 144 pp., $2.95). A detailed discussion of the therapeutic value of group counseling within a Christian context.
The Holy Bible, Catholic Edition, and The Holy Bible, Protestant Edition (Publishers Company, Inc., 1963, 1962, $49.50 each). A large “family Bible,” with an extensive section for recording family records, with a section of stories and a section on the Bible’s “spiritual gems,” with concordance, pictures, and large print, sometimes poorly inked. Protestant edition has the King James Version, and the Roman Catholic the Douay Version. Both are bound in white.
Minister’s Service Manual, by Samuel Ward Hutton (Baker, 1964, 224 pp., $2.95). A convenient, pocket-size book of forms and services for all occasions. Of particular value to ministers in denominations that have none of their own.
Jesus Christ, Light of the World, by Waldemar Roberts (Nelson, 1964, 96 pp., $1.95). Pictures and stories of the religious exhibits of the various Protestant and Orthodox churches at the current New York World’s Fair.
Prayers That Are Different: For Church and Home and All Times of the Year, by Frederick White Lewis (Eerdmans, 1964, 166 pp., $2.95).
Reshaping the Christian Life, by Robert A. Raines (Harper & Row, 1964, 174 pp., $3). How the Church must reshape its life to fulfill its mission in the world.
Seven Themes from the Gospel of John: A Devotional Guide, by Robert Roy Wright (Abingdon, 1964, 124 pp., $2.25). A week of daily meditations, one on each of seven of Jesus’ “I am” themes. They are exceptionally good.
The Fourth American Faith, by Duncan Howlett (Harper & Row, 1964, 239 pp., $4.50). The author turns unbelief into a fourth faith (alongside Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Judaism) and contends it could be held within existing churches.
The Virgin Birth, by Thomas Boslooper (Westminster, 1962, 272 pp., $6). A helpful history of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth by an author who believes the Virgin Birth is original with Christianity yet mythic in character and required by those who think mythically.
God’s Discipline: Romans 12:1–14:12, by Donald Grey Barnhouse (Eerdmans, 1964, 230 pp., $4.50). Another volume in a series that is one of the most exhaustive commentaries on Romans in modern times.
