Political Science: A Christian Estimate
Independence and Involvement: A Christian Reorientation in Political Science, by Rene de Visme Williamson (Louisiana State University Press, 1964, 269 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Edward P. Coleson, chairman, Department of Social Science, Spring Arbor College, Spring Arbor, Michigan.
Professor Williamson prefaces his volume with an urgent plea that Christian scholars relate both their religious convictions and their secular learning to the task of seeking “an adequate frame of reference or approach within which we can work out solutions to our problems.” He therefore offers his book to members of the learned community as a contribution “to the great task of re-thinking their professional fields and occupational problems in terms of the Christian faith.”
The book offers much of value. The minister who may not be interested in the soul-searchings of political scientists will yet find large sections of the book interesting and useful, such as the study of the relation of church and state. He will enjoy and profit from the well-documented discussion on the religious views of the Founding Fathers, including some who are less well known. The Christian whose “image” of George Washington is that of a fervent Christian, on his knees in the snow outside the camp at Valley Forge, may be shocked with Williamson’s characterization: “Washington, too, was a Deist with a strong sense of Providence and religious feeling, but there was nothing specifically Christian about his convictions.” It must not be assumed, however, that the author de-emphasizes the importance of our Christian heritage: as he points out, even “worldly” members of the Constitutional Convention, whose personal lives were shocking then and would still be to most of us, still held, as did Gouverneur Morris, that “the most important of all lessons is, the denunciation or ruin to every state that rejects the precepts of religion” (p. 223).
For those less interested in beginnings there is a lively discussion of civil rights. Since Dr. Williamson comes from the “Deep South” and even believes, quoting Calvin, that the Southerner should not attempt to escape from the dilemma by moving to areas where civil rights is not an issue, his thoughts on the subject are fascinating. However, extremists on either side of the issue will find little comfort in his words.
Scholars in several fields, from the social sciences to philosophy and religion, will find much in Professor Williamson’s book to challenge them and hold their interest. Since he has attempted a synthesis of political thought in the light of Christian principles, his work is necessarily wide-ranging both in time anti in treatment of contemporary scholarship. Persons who are interested in the problem and in the general area of study but lack a background in the field will also find the book readable and helpful. Those acquainted with social theory generally will find much that is familiar: Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, Burke, and others, and the practical outworking of their social philosophy in our institutions down to the present. Philosophers and theologians will meet familiar figures from Moses and the Church Fathers to Tillich, Barth, Brunner, and Father Murray, a contemporary Catholic scholar who has “assigned himself the formidable task of proving that Roman Catholicism and the American tradition are compatible.” The reader must not assume from this implied criticism of the Catholics that the author is narrowly sectarian. He states that it is his purpose to make common cause with Christians of all persuasions in the task of “Christian reorientation,” although he is convinced “that this basic Christian core is purest in the evangelical Calvinist Reformed tradition.”
Although the author’s candor and forthrightness may be offensive to some, I appreciate it, even when I do not share his views. There has been too much of a tendency in our time to blur lines and confuse issues. Williamson suggests that he will be stepping on toes, as indeed he will. And since he covers a large field, many toes will be involved. He points out the failings of the Christian community down across the centuries quite frankly, including the shortcomings of his Calvinist brethren; yet he is sure that applied Christianity is the hope of the world. And he does not confine his critical attention to the Church. He discusses the contradictions of conservatives and the limitations of liberals.
In view of his general practice of pointing out the shortcomings of almost everyone, it is interesting to know where he himself stands politically. He is “a lifelong Democrat,” not surprising in the Deep South, and “has generally supported liberal candidates for office and the liberal side of most public issues.…” However, he does “not share the liberal philosophy.” He finds himself “more in sympathy with conservative philosophy” but is repelled by conservative candidates and policies.
As a minor criticism, and disregarding politics, I might say that the author’s remark about Hoover’s “heartless and rigid cast of mind” is unfair, as is evident from Hoover’s notable record as relief administrator during World War I and in Russia. No doubt he was confused after 1929 and ineffective, confronted with problems quite beyond him. But certainly a reasonably objective evaluation of Franklin D. Roosevelt, again forgetting politics, does not come out as favorably as Professor Williamson gives it. It may be argued that no one can be objective about such matters, but comparing the revival of Western Germany under much less favorable circumstances certainly leaves little ground for enthusiasm—if the reviewer may be allowed an opinion. At least, even the most ardent New Dealers (this does not include Professor Williamson) have never called the New Deal “F. D. R.’s Miracle.” Nor do these remarks grow out of any unqualified admiration for the Republicans. They do point out the need of further investigation of our problems in the light of Christian principles—which may well be a task for some of the rest of us.
EDWARD P. COLESON
He Ministered To Evangelicals
The Christian World of C. S. Lewis, by Clyde S. Kilby (Eerdmans, 1964, 216 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by C. J. Simpson, professor of English, Whitworth College, Spokane, Washington.
Chad Walsh certainly was right when he called C. S. Lewis “apostle to the skeptics,” and he was the right man to compose the book by that name. Lewis was also minister to some already committed men; Clyde S. Kilby was the right man to approach the works from that point of view.
Though not really their apostle, Lewis appeals to a company of lively evangelicals for a variety of reasons. They like his content. They enjoy the vigor and the wit of his writings, especially when he employs it to challenge shallow believers and recalcitrant unbelievers. They admire a thorough commitment to high competence in literary scholarship that in him is compatible with deep religious conviction. They respond to his willingness to accept biblical images of revelation directly—though not materialistically—without reasoning them out of all heart power.
Kilby is one of these lively evangelicals. In The Christian World of C. S. Lewis he makes his own position clear; at the same time, with clarity and perception he talks about the several ways that Lewis made manifest his own response to the faith. For general or for scholarly readers, for those committed or not committed to Lewis’s sort of Christian view, the book supplies much of real value.
First is the significant factor that often justifies the making of another book: new or remote materials not readily available elsewhere. Both in the text and in the annotated list of sources Kilby employs letters, conversations, and unpublished papers and theses that add detail to the Lewis portrait and helpful material for the discovery of meaning. Thus the book contributes to evidence as well as to conclusions in Lewis scholarship.
Again, there is a rather thorough review of those of Lewis’s works that relate to a Christian position. Probably many readers have been inclined, as I have been, to scatter the reading of the works over almost as long a period as Lewis took to write them. With sufficient summaries to bring specific recall, The Christian World helps the reader to view the total production with something approximating equal freshness of memory. Some, I suspect, will not be satisfied now until they have reread some of the earlier writings, particularly the fiction. In any event, whether these pieces are reviewed or reread, the total understanding will be greater.
Finally, to aid this total view Kilby brings the good fruit of his long, appreciative study of Lewis. He interprets and synthesizes, moving in a connected way through Lewis’s logic and doctrine, his realism and fantasy, to discover valid patterns of meaning. Here, of course, is the open end of the book. Like the ghost in Hamlet, the meaning of an inspired man’s composition is too elusive and too sacred to be contained by another man’s propositions. We do it violence when we consummate the judgment; we give it its due when we explore and respond with mind and heart.
Kilby’s book is of a certain magnitude and is a complete work. But more needs to be done elsewhere with the start that has been made in The Christian World. As that book indicates, there is a Lewis-made literary world that exists because the author wanted to discover more and to reveal more about the total world that God has made. Kilby helps us to be somewhat more at home in that Lewis world, but his work must be accepted as just one way of our becoming conversant with the guides that Lewis has provided for an extensive, ongoing exploration. Lewis’s total work will be significant here; critical ideas regarding myth will cut some trails. And as both Walsh and Kilby have intimated, we may be surprised by the way space fiction anti stories that seem to be for a little child will lead us.
C. J. SIMPSON
Reporting The Gospel
Christian Primer: Adult Answers to Basic Questions About the Christian Faith, by Louis Cassels (Doubleday, 1964, 108 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by John Frederick Jansen, professor of New Testament interpretation, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Austin, Texas.
A distinguished journalist who has himself “arrived at the household of faith after a very long detour through the wastelands of skepticism” offers this little volume to others who have not yet found answers to their basic questions about the Christian faith. Mr. Cassels, religion columnist for the United Press International, has read widely and well, and he knows how to put the insights of the theologians into simple language. It seems that George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis are among his favorites, but he draws from many others also.
In eleven chapters the author deals with faith in God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, miracles, prayer, worship, and life after death, as well as with such persistent problems as the mystery of evil and with such contemporary ethical concerns as foreign aid. A lively style (“Could you pray for a first class stinker?”) does not call attention to itself because often a few words grasp a profound truth (“How long does it take to become a Christian? A moment—and a lifetime”).
The book expresses a warm evangelical faith. It does not denude the supernatural character of Christian faith, nor does it reduce this faith to purely existential terms (witness the criticism of Bultmann’s demythologizing). The author rightly sees the Resurrection of Christ as the foundation of Christian certainty and life. While gladly accepting the Virgin Birth as event rather than legend, he deplores the manner in which this doctrine has been distorted by its friends and by its foes. In regard to the chapter on the Bible this reviewer would ask whether the author’s intention is not obscured somewhat by language that suggests a different orientation (“It is to be expected that the Bible will show an evolutionary progress in man’s ideas about God …”). Rightly insisting on the place of critical study, one may ask whether putting it as the author does is helpful (“But to those who take the Bible seriously without taking it literally, it is both right and necessary to apply the tools of literary and historical criticism to the task of extracting its real message”). After all, the author makes it quite plain that he takes the Bible literally where it calls for literal acceptance. What he means to say is clear enough—the Bible is both the word of man and the Word of God. (“Why God should choose to communicate with men through the pages of this particular book is a question that Christians cannot answer. They can only affirm that it happens, and invite skeptics to try for themselves whether it be so.”)
In any case, it would be manifestly unfair to ask for a full discussion in a primer of such brief compass. Mr. Cassels knows what the Christian faith is, and he knows how to communicate this faith with persuasive simplicity and directness. May his tribe increase!
JOHN FREDERICK JANSEN
No Room For Syncretism
No Other Name: The Choice Between Syncretism and Christian Universalism, by W. A. Visser t Hooft (Westminster, 1963, 128 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by James Daane, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
Concerned over syncretistic efforts to create a single religion that will provide a single ethos for one world, W. A. Visser t Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, presents a brief survey of syncretism, past and present, and against all syncretism asserts the unique and universally valid claim of Christianity.
Syncretism is defined as the view that denies that any religion has a unique and final revelation of God and asserts that all world religions are particular and partial manifestations of religion-in-general.
Visser t Hooft sees four periods of syncretism and sketches each. The first occurred during the century prior to the Jewish Babylonian exile; the second, during the time of the Holy Roman Empire; the third, in eighteenth-century Europe. The fourth is the one facing Christianity today and is motivated by the desire to find an ethos that will give unity to the world as it becomes, to use Bishop Newbigin’s term, one neighborhood.
The author believes that syncretistic efforts today are a far greater peril to Christianity than is atheism. D. H. Lawrence, Carl Gustav Jung, Professor F. S. C. Northrop (The Meeting of East and West) of Yale, Professor W. E. Hocking, Arnold Toynbee, the Bahai movement, and Ramakrishna, all come up in the discussion of current syncretistic efforts. The author even cites former President Eisenhower, quoting his remark, “Our government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith—and I don’t care what it is.”
Is the New Testament a product of syncretism? Was its borrowing of concepts from non-Christian thought syncretism? Visser t Hooft answers these questions with an emphatic No. He sees the threat of syncretism in the uneasy concern of the Colossian and Ephesian churches over the “elemental spirits” (stoicheion) and points out that Paul allays these fears by urging the cosmic significance of Christ, who is Creator and Lord of all.
Visser t Hooft pleads for a rejection of any and all attempts to syncretize Christianity with other world religions on the ground that Christ is the unique, once-for-all revelation of God, and the one who died for all, the one for the many. As such, Christ, and he alone, has universal significance for all men. If this is regarded by others as intolerance, says Visser t Hooft, “then Christians must accept the accusation of intolerance.” To surrender the universal character of Christ is to give up Christianity.
This understanding of Christ, of the implied unity of mankind, and of the corresponding nature of the Church and its mission to the world has come to greater clarity, says the author, through the ecumenical movement.
The book traces the history of the interrelations of the International Missionary Council, Life and Work, and Faith and Order, and shows that their history was the process in which this deeper understanding of the universality of Christ emerged.
This is a valuable and informative book. The argument is tight but lucid, and its author leaves no doubt where he stands. Examples of clear conviction: “The Christian Church must make it unmistakably clear that it believes in a universalism which has its one and only centre in the work of Jesus Christ. At this point there must be no compromise of any kind. We cannot participate in the search for a common denominator of all the religions, because the one foundation has been laid and the edifice of humanity comes tumbling down when that foundation is undermined.” Christianity, he urges, is not “a species of the genus religion … a subdivision of the general human preoccupation with the divine.” The furor created by the morality of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover betrayed the fact that even Christians failed to see the pagan religious syncretism of the book. “It is high time,” he asserts, “that Christians should rediscover that the very heart of their faith is that Jesus Christ did not come to make a contribution to the religious storehouse of mankind, but that in him God reconciled the world unto himself.”
JAMES DAANE
Faulty Perspective
Concise History of Israel: From Abraham to the Bar Cochba Rebellion, by M. A. Beek (Harper & Row, 1964, 224 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by R. Laird Harris, professor of Old Testament, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.
This is an interesting book, well written, compact, and often original in its approach. The viewpoint is that of higher criticism. Beek is from the University of Amsterdam (not the Free University) and is somewhat in line with the school of Alt and Noth in Germany.
Like Noth, Beek is a good historian at those points where he trusts the biblical sources. His reconstruction of the battle of Michmash, for instance, is very well done (pp. 64 ff.). He calls Second Samuel “a unique document in the biographical literature of the old world” (p. 73). Unfortunately, he mistrusts almost all the history of the first seven books and finds them full of legend and superstition.
The treatment of the history that falls between the Testaments is good. Since this book confines itself to the Jews, the New Testament history is understandably lacking, although the story does extend to A.D. 132.
The usual higher critical statements appear. We cannot reconstruct the story of the patriarchs (p. 14). Genesis was written “long after the events described” (p. 26). The Balaam story is a “legend” (p. 44). But Beck’s criticism is modern: Jeroboam’s calf was only a pedestal for the invisible deity (p. 95—but cf. Hos. 13:2). Elijah’s pouring water on the sacrifice on Mt. Carmel was a “strange water rite” to bring rain (p. 102)! The date of Deuteronomy seems to fall into the time of the Captivity, in distinction to the older critical date of 621 B.C. (p. 137). Our ideas of heaven and hell come from the Persian religion (p. 141). Daniel is, of course, of late origin (p. 168).
There are about thirty-five pictures and several helpful sketch maps. But a dozen or more typographical errors mar the text.
Beek gives us some new and helpful insights. For example, he suggests that Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 3 is a pseudonym for Nabonidus (p. 151). He holds that Ezra preceded Nehemiah, as has historically been held (p. 149), and says that the early Israelities were an “exceptionally literate” people (p. 59)—a judgment that is contrary to oral tradition theories. The book also is valuable in its citations from recent Continental literature. But its perspective is faulty.
R. LAIRD HARRIS
To Help The Pastor
Ministering to the Grief Sufferer, by C. Charles Bachmann, and Counseling with Senior Citizens, by J. Paul Brown (Prentice-Hall, 1964, 144 pp. each, $2.95 each), are reviewed by Frank Bateman Stanger, president, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.
These two books belong to the “Successful Pastoral Counseling Series,” of which Russell L. Dicks is the general editor. This library of pastoral care covers the major problems that most pastors encounter in their ministry and has been prepared for the non-specialized minister serving the local church.
The twelve books in the series that have been published thus far deal with the following subjects: pastoral care, pastoral counseling, group counseling, the physically sick, the alcoholic, marital counseling, the childless couple, premarital guidance, the dying, deeply troubled people, and the two areas covered by the books now being reviewed. Five other volumes that are being prepared for publication concern preaching and pastoral care, teen-agers, college students, the unwed mother, and the serviceman.
C. Charles Bachmann, author of Ministering to the Grief Sufferer, is chief Protestant chaplain of the E. J. Meyer Memorial Hospital in Buffalo. New York. He writes out of a background of extensive training in psychology and pastoral care and wide professional experience as a chaplain and as a supervisor of institutional chaplains.
Bachmann believes that there are at least three requisites for the pastor’s effective ministry to the grief sufferer: (1) he must know about the grief process; (2) he must know and master himself; (3) he must have some mastery of the techniques of dealing with grief sufferers. To help the pastor be informed about the grief process, the author devotes the opening chapter, “The Meaning of Grief,” to a careful discussion of the varied reactions to grief and the necessary steps for the mastery of grief. Much attention is given to the subject of the pastor’s self-knowledge and self-mastery. The author contends that it is impossible for the pastor to help others unless his own self is whole. And concerning the third requisite, the author discusses extensively pastoral techniques for grief management, constructive and destructive ways of handling grief, and what to do when grief is denied or delayed.
A chapter is devoted to grief resulting from causes other than the death of a relative or friend, with particular attention to personal rejection as an occasion of grief. And as a sort of an appendix, the three final chapters discuss “The Meaning of the Funeral,” “The Pastor and the Funeral Director,” and “Current Parish Patterns and Practices” in relation to grief reactions, death, and funeral practices.
I would offer but one criticism of the book. Does the author mean to give the impression that grief can be dealt with competently merely in compliance with sound psychological principles? Does he give enough emphasis to the necessity of the divine resources that are offered to the grief sufferer through Jesus Christ?
The author of Counseling with Senior Citizens, the Rev. J. Paul Brown, has served as the minister of pastoral care at First Methodist Church of Houston, Texas (7,000 members), since 1950. In his preface, he states his purpose: “The questions raised in this book are those I have faced while counseling with senior citizens. The answers are based on authentic information obtained through research and from applying the principles of pastoral care.… The book has been written with the intention that it be used as a guide for ministers, physicians, social workers, lawyers, senior citizens, and family members who are earnestly seeking to enrich the later years for the increasingly large number of aging persons among us.”
The author first discusses the role of religion in relation to the aging process and the emotional factors that arise with aging. He then goes on to offer detailed and practical suggestions to the pastor as he seeks to relate his church program to the aging, to meet the problems that arise in “the three-generation family,” to assist in the selection of a senior citizens’ home, to aid in the solution of the marital problems of senior citizens, to help in the financing of senior years, and to encourage the senior citizen to help himself.
There is an insistent emphasis upon the responsibility and privilege of both the pastor and the church to help senior citizens make their retirement years a time of fun, purposeful activity, service, satisfying personal adjustment, and continuing growth in mind and soul.
I recommend both of these books to every pastor. Their contents are spiritually motivated, practically oriented, pastorally reinforced, and clearly communicated. Each contains an extensive and valuable bibliography.
FRANK BATEMAN STANGER
Once Inside, Now Outside
Beyond Fundamentalism, by Daniel B. Stevick (John Knox, 1964, 239 pp., $5), is reviewed by Vernon C. Grounds, president, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.
How does fundamentalism look to an outsider who was once an insider? Reared within a tradition he now considers to be a kind of moss-covered, life-stultifying monastery, Daniel Stevick has, as he says, “leaped over the wall” and today enjoys the freedom of ecumenical Christianity. But he and some of his friends, both insiders and outsiders, have continued to discuss among themselves the foibles, merits, and disvalues of fundamentalism, and the result is this book—sympathetic, understanding, quite dispassionate, generally judicious, occasionally ironic. Throughout it is a sharp indictment of the monastic archaism from which Stevick advises disgruntled insiders to escape.
He does not write off fundamentalism as a cultural fossil. On the contrary, he recognizes that it is very much alive, a variant of the Christian faith cherished by millions of devoted believers whose fervor and sincerity are admirable, who have a “sheer passion” for their Saviour, many of whom are “kindly, gentle” people, “men and women of prayer, deeply taught by the Spirit.” Indeed, Stevick points out that fundamentalism has even been experiencing an intellectual renaissance under second-generation leaders characterized by scholarship, humility, and intelligence.
Yet while he acknowledges an “infinite debt” to this vigorous species of American Protestantism, Stevick emphatically rejects it. He can no longer tolerate its legalism, its pugnacity, its isolation, its narrowness, its anti-intellectualism, its suspiciousness, its obscurantism, its social unconcern, its “bad manners,” its unthinking clichés and stereotypes, its dismal architecture, its shallow worship, its insipid music, its unrealistic ethics, and so on! Granted that fundamentalism to its everlasting credit has “a firm hold on the essential Gospel,” it is nevertheless a system of theology and life that prides itself on being “irreformably” fixed, once-for-all-delivered.
More serious than all of this, however, in Stevick’s opinion, is its “sub-Christian concept of revelation.” Fundamentalists, even the enlightened, progressive “revisionists” among them, hold that the Bible communicates truth both propositionally and inerrantly; and Stevick brings up his heaviest guns to pound away at this bastion. What really makes fundamentalism an impossible option for Stevick is what he calls its unbiblical view of an inscripturated Book exempt from anything like historical blunder or factual blemish. Hence he argues that fundamentalism is not only graceless and irrelevant; fundamentally, he insists, fundamentalism is untrue. Its basic premise, an errorless Bible, is indefensible.
How does this criticism by an ex-insider strike fundamentalists who still find their spiritual home in what Stevick considers a stultifying monastery surrounded by a fog of illusory infallibility and finality? Some of them, he admits, are poignantly sensitive to the excesses and deficiencies of fundamentalism. And courageously, outspokenly, they have criticized themselves and their fellow fundamentalists. They have contended that in its essence fundamentalism is historic Christianity and that—Stevick also perceives this—what passes for fundamentalism in America today is all too often a neo-fundamentalism, a degenerate form of the faith championed by the original fundamentalists—Warfield, Orr, Griffith-Thomas, Machen, E. Y. Mullins, and others of similar stature. Thus the “revisionists” are battling to redeem contemporary fundamentalism from a crippling neo-fundamentalism that caricatures biblical faith. And they know what a desperately difficult fight they are carrying on—denounced from the right as Quislings, classified by the left as obscurantists. But they are persuaded that they must remain inside the framework of fundamentalism because the claims of truth compel them to do so.
Central to their understanding of truth is that very doctrine of a propositional, inerrant revelation against which Stevick fulminates. Curiously, the one place where he forsakes his objective stance is in attacking inerrancy: “Man was not made for the Bible, but the Bible for man! This logic decrees that God instead of submitting to tire law of the human, temporarily overrode it. In order to produce an errorless book, He carried these writers outside the human condition. He destroyed ‘the form of a servant,’ and then, the writings done, he remade it. Strange, capricious God! Strange, improbable doctrine! Heresy! Begetter of heresies!” (pp. 169, 170). But as “devout, brilliant and well informed” adherents of “verbal inspiration” (these are Stevick’s words) see the situation, if the doctrine of a propositional, inerrant revelation is abandoned, the seamless robe of Christianity will inevitably ravel out into the demythologized subjectivism of Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, or John Robinson. Fortunately, however, there is no reason to abandon that doctrine. Denying this, Stevick has moved “beyond fundamentalism.” Affirming this, the insiders refuse to move. Fundamentalism, especially neo-fundamentalism, admittedly has its vexatious problems, woeful shortcomings, and depressing blindspots. Yet fundamentalism, even when spurning its own heritage, is at least seeking to preserve the truth that has by grace been entrusted to it. And to move beyond God’s truth is eventually (watch what happens to second-generation disciples of ex-fundamentalists) to move beyond Christ.
VERNON C. GROUNDS
Business—Under God
The Christian as a Businessman, by Harold L. Johnson (Association, 1964, 188 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Earle E. Cairns, chairman, Department of History and Political Science, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.
How does the Christian in business reconcile theoretical theological ideals with the practical realities and problems of business? Can Christianity and commerce be reconciled without rationalization, compartmentalization, withdrawal, or compromise (p. 31)? This book suggests answers to these questions in business, defined in terms of decisions of policy for profit maximization (pp. 18, 19).
Business is pictured as an area of grateful service to God for his redemption. This doctrine of Christian vocation puts God at the center of existence. Christian love will lead to “enlightened unselfishness” in decision-making. Company rules, department, or organization will thus be means, rather than ends catering to self-centeredness. Business can also be an avenue of fulfillment of the divine order to master nature by technology in order to promote human good. Finally, in seeking profits the Christian businessman will practice stewardship of capital, labor, and raw materials in order to produce needed goods. Such is the author’s main rationale for Christian participation in business.
Because the Christian recognizes human sinfulness, the author believes he will accept countervailing forces of unions and government in a free market system. Here is something of a paradox that is not yet solved in this country. One feels that the author also goes beyond biblical truth with his assertion that man’s character is basically good (p. 154). Perhaps he confuses human depravity with human finity. Nevertheless, the Christian troubled by ethical problems he does or will face in business can read this book with profit and pleasure.
EARLE E. CAIRNS
Views Of The Kingdom
The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus, by Norman Perrin (Westminster, 1963, 208 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Bastiaan Van Elderen, associate professor of New Testament, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Norman Perrin, assistant professor of New Testament at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, has with this volume made a significant contribution to the study of the Kingdom of God concept. The value of Perrin’s book, similar to Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus, lies as much in his summaries and evaluations of various twentieth-century scholars’ interpretations of the concept as in his own views on it (in which he has been greatly influenced by his teacher, Joachim Jeremias).
Perrin deals with his subject in ten chapters. The first presents the background for the twentieth-century discussion: the coming of konsequente Eschatologie. In the next two chapters he presents the subsequent discussion from two focal points: (1) the Anglo-American liberal response to the challenge of Weiss and Schweitzer, and (2) the denial and triumph of apocalyptic. In the fourth chapter the author presents the “Realized Eschatology” of C. H. Dodd; although he appreciates Dodd’s contribution, Perrin offers some pertinent criticism of his emphasis. In Chapter V, “The Kingdom of God as both Present and Future in the Teaching of Jesus,” the author discusses the views of Cadoux, Guy, Hunter, Taylor, Fuller, Jeremias, Kümmel, and Cullmann.
Subsequent chapters are devoted to the theme “Son of Man,” to the views of Bultmann and the “Bultmann School,” to the Parousia, and to the American view of Jesus as a prophet. In each of these chapters, various views are presented fairly and with cogent evaluations and criticisms.
The tenth chapter deals with three significant areas in which further discussion is needed. The author here presents his own understanding of the Kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus as something involving a tension within human experience between present and future. “Far from discussing the manner and time of the consummation in the way so popular in Jewish apocalyptic—and in Mark 13 and its parallels—the teaching of Jesus seems to be concerned much more with the consummation as a certainty of future human experience, as it is concerned also with the present manifestation of the Kingdom in human experience” (p. 199). In this chapter the author also sets forth an attractive eschatological interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer in a discussion of the relation between eschatology and ethics in the teaching of Jesus.
Since the Kingdom of God concept has been extensively discussed in the twentieth century, it is inevitable that not every scholar’s viewpoint will appear in such a summary. Perrin has presented a representative survey.
This reviewer is not ready to accept all Perrin’s conclusions regarding the secondary nature of certain materials in the Gospels, e.g., Mark 13 (pp. 131–34). However, his arguments are well-formulated and challenging. His refusal to go to the extremes of Bultmann and others is highly appreciated. Some of the exegetical analyses in the final chapter are certainly provocative. It is doubtful that Perrin’s emphasis on human experience exhausts the meaning of Jesus’ teaching.
In the teaching of Jesus, the Kingdom of God concept is central. Dr. Perrin has performed a real service in bringing within the compass of 200 pages a resumé of the twentieth-century discussion. Evangelical scholars will do well to face the provocative approach set forth by Perrin and Jeremias to a concept frequently neglected or given a one-sided emphasis. A person seeking light on this concept will find this book valuable and intriguing.
BASTIAAN VAN ELDEREN
Book Briefs
The Chronology of the Amarna Letters, by Edward Fay Campbell, Jr. (Johns Hopkins, 1964, 163 pp., $5). Late Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian chronology discussed in the light of the Amarna letters. Campbell evaluated evidence for a co-regency of Amenophis III and Akhenaton, seeking to determine the length of the co-regency and the period of Akhenaton’s independent rule. Emphasizes the need for new information to dispel the “almost incredible ambiguities” in present evidence before an exact chronology can be established.
Sermons Preached without Notes, by Charles W. Roller (Baker, 1964, 145 pp., $2.50). Evangelical sermons presented not merely for their content but for their demonstration of the principles, procedures, and homiletical devices that make for good sermonizing.
Beside All Waters, by J. H. Hunter (Christian Publications, 1964, 245 pp., $3.95). The story of seventy-five years of worldwide ministry of the Christian and Missionary Alliance.
A Survey of Syntax in the Hebrew Old Testament, by J. Wash Watts (Eerdmans, 1964, 164 pp., $3.95). A revision of the original edition published in 1951. A helpful work for the serious student of Hebrew.
Old Testament Light: A Scriptural Commentary Based on the Aramaic of the Ancient Peshitta Text, by George M. Lamsa (Prentice-Hall, 1964, 976 pp., $8.95).
Living Personalities of the Old Testament, by Hagen Staack (Harper & Row, 1964, 147 pp., $3.50). Material presented by the author, under the auspices of the National Council of Churches, on a television series carrying the same name.
Observer in Rome, by Robert McAfee Brown (Doubleday, 1964, 271 pp., $4.95). An observer who attended the entire second session of the Vatican Council gives his first-hand account.
The Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Bible, translated and adapted by Louis F. Hartman (McGraw-Hill, 1963, 2,633 pp., $27.50). A valuable and scholarly dictionary of the Bible, produced by Roman Catholics, which will throw light on many Roman Catholic matters for Protestants. Translated and adapted from A. Van Den Born’s Dutch work.
