For a Better Understanding of the R.S.V.
Harper Study Bible, edited by Harold Lindsell (Harper and Row, 1964, 2,112 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by Edward John Carnell, professor of ethics and philosophy of religion, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.
Many evangelicals, including myself, were delighted when highly qualified scholars of the Old and New Testament, drawing data from the most recently discovered biblical manuscripts, placed the fruit of their labors, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, at the disposal of the Church. The King James Version of 1611, despite its long use in the Church and its occasional lofty expressions, is a time-bound translation, dotted with errors and anachronisms, which ought to be replaced by a work that has kept pace with the exciting science of manuscript study.
Nonetheless, one of the incontestable advantages of the King James Version has been the availability of the many tools for biblical study forged across the years to help the Christian, both pastor and layman, unlock the rich treasures of God’s Word to man; among these tools are the Scofield Reference Bible and Cruden’s Concordance, both of which rely almost exclusively on the received text of the King James Version.
Dr. Harold Lindsell, associate editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and former vice-president of Fuller Theological Seminary, has refused to sit idly by and do nothing about this problem. With his customary thoroughness and scholarly attention to details, he has successfully completed an attempt to unite useful tools of biblical study with the text of the Revised Standard Version. Christians now have access to a compact spiritual library in one volume, a volume aimed at the single goal of making the message of salvation in the Old and New Testaments clearer and more meaningful, and all to the glory of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
The wealth of features in the Harper Study Bible, let alone the excellent standard of printing, bears a touch that few evangelicals other than Dr. Lindsell could give. Among these features are the following: the complete text of the Revised Standard Version, with self-pronouncing language forms and large, easy-to-read type; meaty, instructive introductions to all of the books in the Bible; topical headings that help create a continuity of meaning; marginal cross-references to assist the reader in his search for biblical unity; carefully composed annotations at the bottom of the page to suggest ways in which seemingly difficult passages can be clarified; a handy index to the annotations; a useful, though by no means exhaustive, concordance of biblical terms; and finally, a set of maps, in full color, of the Holy Land and surrounding countries.
When Dr. Lindsell inserts cither a cross-reference in one of the margins or an annotation as a footnote, he is guided by the solemn conviction that the Bible contains a full and self-consistent body of revelation because its original composition was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and that it is thus free from all error in the whole and in the part. Such a conviction is worthy of the highest praise, for of what value would the Bible be if its doctrines were not true on divine authority? Secular myth and poetry may tell us how to live on this planet, but they are powerless to tell us either what constitutes the mind of God or what we must do to be saved from sin and death.
One of the most commendable qualities of the Revised Standard Version is its deliberate avoidance of the temptation to translate the Bible into the passing idioms of the day. Rather, it draws its expression from more classical usage. This means that when an evangelical becomes permanently attached to the King James Version, he not only is announcing his indifference to biblical scholarship but also is defrauding himself of the intellectual and spiritual pleasure that accompanies the reading of God’s Word in a modern translation.
Although the task of clarifying and defending the text of the Bible must continue until the Lord returns, this fact is not an excuse to neglect the use of a fresh, new translation of Scripture, as well as a fresh, new set of helps in understanding Scripture. We tend to fall into habits of all sorts, including the use of a particular translation of the Bible. Christian Scientists, for example, widely advertise their devotion to the King James Version, as if this gives an official stamp to their Sunday reading of Scripture and the correlative passages from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy. The use of a more contemporary translation of Scripture, along with contemporary assistance in the understanding of Scripture, will go far to deliver us from the error of thinking that our way of dealing with Scripture is the only one. Dr. Lindsell has provided us with this assistance, and for this we ought to be as grateful as we are for the appearance of the Revised Standard Version itself. Arise, fellow Christians, and make full use of the means for spiritual growth that God has so graciously put at our disposal!
EDWARD JOHN CARNELL
How To Spend A Billion Dollars
Protestant Worship and Church Architecture: Theological and Historical Considerations, by James F. White (Oxford, 1964, 224 pp., $6), is reviewed by Arnold A. Dallimore, pastor, Cottam Baptist Church, Cottam, Ontario, Canada.
It is incredible that although “each year a billion dollars are spent on church buildings in America, there is no book available to guide building committees, ministers, and others responsible for new churches, in the theological and historical implications of their work.” This book was written to meet this need.
The author considers first “the theological implications” of ecclesiastical design. A building that houses a church should be fashioned according to the dictates of that church’s theology; thus Dr. White, who is assistant professor of worship at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, begins with a critical analysis of the two chief Protestant conceptions of worship, seeing in the form of worship an expression of basic doctrinal beliefs. This leads to a highly readable enunciation of “The Principles of Liturgical Architecture.”
Secondly, White discusses “the historical implications” of planning a church. Modern construction materials—structural steel, laminated woods, extruded aluminum, structural and ornamental concrete, and the like—have seemingly divorced present-day architecture from any relation to that of the ages that were dependent upon timber beams and stone arches; yet White finds an abundance of lessons for today in the church builders of the past. From “Early and Medieval Patterns” and “Reformation Experiments,” he demonstrates “many liturgical factors which have affected the design of churches”; these he illustrates with sixty small diagrams of basic floor plans, showing especially the location of liturgical centers. A number of “Recent Experiments” are likewise treated, and the book concludes with a chapter on the emotive factors that enter into church construction, and an extensive bibliography.
This work, while useful to the professional architect, is planned especially for the minister and building-committee member who may have little previous knowledge of ecclesiastical design. It does not present ready-made blueprints; rather, it provides the basis for understanding the principles behind ecclesiastical design. On the negative side, it is slanted almost completely to the needs of the liturgical type of service, and a work of this price might well have been adorned with a few full-page illustrations of architectural specimens. Nevertheless, it goes far toward meeting the need created by the billion-dollar expenditure on buildings.
ARNOLD A. DALLIMORE
The Difference Is Better
Love and Sexuality, by Robert Grimm (Association, 1964, 127 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Howard Carson Blake, minister, First Presbyterian Church, Weslaco, Texas.
This one is different. Concise, well written, well translated (from French—the author is chaplain to students at the Universite de Neuchatel in Switzerland), it is refreshing. Mr. Grimm’s approach is definitely theological rather than psychological or sociological. Perhaps that is what makes it easy for anyone to understand the language. Conscientious writers often try to establish basic principles from which they will deduce their findings. Grimm does that. As you read, you feel that the man is honest. It does not seem that he began with his conclusions and then “proved” them.
Many of his viewpoints are also refreshingly different. Unlike some others, Grimm does not set about to establish a formula under which anybody and everybody, deviates included, can find pleasant justification for types of behavior formerly condemned yet now widely practiced. On the contrary, he has a good word for self-control as a form of legitimate birth control (this he discusses positively and compassionately in a carefully written chapter). He even recognizes clearly the possible spiritual values in conjugal chastity and in voluntary or circumstantial celibacy.
The author is thoroughly aware of current trends, yet advocates a high standard of disciplined living for convinced Christians. He also warns them against trying to impose these standards on an unconvinced and unwilling majority.
The author finds a basis for interpreting sexuality in the very essence of the Godhead. Without essential differentiation, personality does not find its full meaning. Grimm gives respectful, even reverential place to the human body; in this he is in company with other contemporary Christian writers, such as C. S. Lewis (in The Four Loves), and in opposition to ancient and modern gnosticism. This body becomes the instrument of self-giving by which a man or woman learns to reflect the pattern of the self-giving of God. The monogamous and exclusive character of this relation is thus derived from the God-given nature of man. Grimm devotes one chapter to the biblical interpretation of the spiritual dimension of sexuality, using Ephesians 5:21–33 and other statements of Paul.
In considering love outside marriage the author says: “Our world, surfeited with eroticism, shows evidence of having a wistful longing for purity. It looks not only for words, but for the evidence of lives that demonstrate the contemporary pattern of Christian love, a pattern that the adolescents can recognize and appreciate. What a splendid task for Christian engaged and married couples!”
An interesting analysis of the loves of Tristan and Don Juan, true “myths of love,” leads to the presentation of “fidelity” as the key to the solution of the problem of time, “the great enemy of love.” Fidelity, the temporal extension of faith, becomes possible with the help of Jesus Christ.
Dr. David R. Mace, an executive director of the American Association of Marriage Counselors, has made a free-flowing and readable translation. He also wrote a brief foreword. The sources quoted in the book are mainly European and include Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant views.
HOWARD CARSON BLAKE
A Study In Biography
Extraordinary Christianity: The Life and Thought of Alexander Vinet, by Paul T. Fuhrmann (Westminster, 1964, 125 pp., $3), is reviewed by Jesse DeBoer, professor of philosophy, University of Kentucky, Lexington.
This little book is a graceful tribute to a Swiss Protestant teacher, writer, and preacher who died a century ago, made by the professor of church history at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. Professor Fuhrmann, being of French and Swiss parentage, is concerned to honor a religious leader who was important in his own immediate tradition. Besides, he found inspiration in the study of Vinet, beginning to study him in the early 1920s and later, as he tells us, using his own manuscript “for my own spiritual upbuilding” (p. xiv). One can only approve of his intention to extend to others the benefits he thinks he derived from Vinet.
But is this book important? I am sorry to have to say that I doubt it, and I offer a few comments, based on the book, to show why. First look at Fuhrmann’s remarks on those to whom he addresses the book. These include (1) “the average man and woman who, finding local preaching inadequate or irrelevant, long for something different” (pp. xiv, xv); (2) ministers who can find in “this book” (or in Vinet?) “innumerable gems—thoughts that can be easily inserted in discourses or expanded into sermons” (p. xv); and (3) “theological students, professors, and intellectuals who may be tired of current ideas” (p. xv). These aims do not justify serious study in biography. A similar unseriousness shows itself in Fuhrmann’s remarks on uses to which his book can be put. He says that people who are “interested in ecumenicity will appreciate Vinet” (p. xvi); but I do not find the issues cleared up. Again, he says: “Professors, Sunday school teachers, and students of theology may find that Vinet corrects today’s excessive objectivism in theology.… How many theologues, after all, realize that today the great problem is not God but man?” (pp. xv, xvi). This is feeble writing, and it contains both inaccurate description and unjustified criticism.
Two final notes. First, Vinet lived from 1797 to 1847. Kant had completed his work before Vinet came to maturity; Hegel died in 1831, Schleiermacher in 1834. This book does not show that Vinet understood their work or faced their problems. Secondly, Professor Fuhrmann’s sketch of Vinet’s education, and in particular of the men who had a major influence on him, fails to recommend him to a student of the serious issues of his time. One was Mme de Stael, whose writings, says Fuhrmann, “abound in … self-contradictions” (p. 34). Two others were Thomas Erskine and P. A. Stapfer; the latter, it seems, knew a bit about Kant but was hardly qualified to cope with him. Last there was Pascal. Vinet did valuable work through papers and studies on Pascal; yet, according to Emile Cailliet (Pascal, p. 350), he did not see that Pascal seriously held to the Roman Catholic view of the authority of the Church, and he incautiously identified the promptings of the heart with the movement of the Holy Spirit. Vinet’s apparent reliance on private feeling, I would judge, is hardly essential to Protestantism. Further, there is no discussion of the logical tangles in such phrases as “heart” or “feeling.” Professor Fuhrmann has to provide us with a more fundamental interpretation of the spiritual problems of European culture one hundred years ago and of how Vinet’s work bears on them, if he is to persuade us of Vinet’s importance. It is, of course, proper to honor Vinet for his role in the history of French Protestantism. But a smaller and less ambitious book than this could do the job.
JESSE DEBOER
Commands Respect
A Psychiatrist Looks at Religion and Health, by James A. Knight (Abingdon, 1964, 208 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Orville S. Walters, director of health services, University of Illinois, Urbana.
This collection of essays is the work of a psychiatrist who is also a clergyman, trained and ordained in the Methodist Church. Dr. Knight is presently assistant dean of the medical school at Tulane University, having served for two years at Union Theological Seminary as director of the program in psychiatry and religion.
Since most of the articles have appeared previously in various journals, a certain discontinuity is inevitable. However, the essays are grouped under four headings to provide coherence and a logical sequence.
Knight takes a positive stand upon the contribution of Christian faith to mental health. He also recognizes the tendency of psychiatrists to acquire their concepts of religion from mentally ill persons. He sees the influence of humanism and reductive naturalism both in Freudian constructs and in contemporary psychiatry.
The wide scope of the essays indicates the breadth of the author’s interest in psychiatry and religion. One of the best chapters is that on Carl Jung, which includes some of the author’s first-hand experiences and impressions. A long review of suicide and several other chapters cite as illustrations the author’s own patients.
With a wealth of psychiatric wisdom and a perspective that extends across two important disciplines seldom combined in the same person, Knight’s book will attract wide interest and command respectful attention.
ORVILLE S. WALTERS
A Minister Talks Theology
Redemption and Historical Reality, by Isaac C. Rottenberg (Westminster, 1964, 224 pp., $6), is reviewed by James Daane, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
Seminary professors who teach theology to future ministers are often surprised when the student-become-minister knows some theology. Isaac Rottenberg, Jewish, fortyish, born in England, trained in the Dutch universities of Leiden and Utrecht and, in America, at Hope College and New Brunswick Seminary, is a minister in the Reformed Church in America. He should be a happy surprise to some of his former professors, for he has no doubt written a better book on theology than some of them could have done, and he has done so with a subject that is not only the central concern of contemporary theology but also one of the most difficult of theological subjects. Certainly few ministers in this country under the endless demands of the parish could have written a book of this caliber.
An estrangement between the parish and the academic theologians, Rottenberg feels, would be fatal. “It will be a sad day indeed,” he writes, “when the pastor and the professor have little to say to each other.” How right he is, for no theology is worth its salt if it cannot become a theology of the pulpit. Although he does not explicitly say so, I think we have here a clue to his interest in his subject and to his critique of some of the theologies he has known.
His subject is the nature of historical revelation, or, if you will, Heilsgeschichte. What he gives us is, in his words, a “survey” of how this has been understood by Irenaeus, Augustine, Joachim of Fiore, and that most interesting seventeenth-century theologian, Johannes Cocceius; by the theologians of historicism; and by the existentialist theologians in modern times (especially Bultmann). Here all the familiar and some not so familiar names and positions arise. One chapter is devoted to the Catholic-sacramental approach to this problem, an approach that few Protestants realize is an approach to history, one that throws light on the Second Vatican Council’s approach to the worldwide adherents of non-Christian religions. A final chapter, entitled “Word, Holy Spirit, and History,” is described by a subtitle as a search for a “via media” between a sheer historicism and the naked existentialism of the Bultmann brand. Here Rottenberg deals with Barth, Kierkegaard, and some important Dutch scholars whom many Americans could profitably know but rarely do.
Rottenberg with a grin describes his conclusions as being no more than some inconclusive comments about the direction in which we must proceed in order to find more conclusive results. Yet he admits that in writing this survey he has not kept his theological hand entirely under the table.
Early in the book he asserts that revelation is not a body of factual information to be accepted as facts. In his “Concluding Remarks,” he says that “faith does not find its ground and being in factual knowledge.” He also states that the facts of the Christian faith have come to us, not “as inspired factual reports, but as witnesses of faith,” and adds that this faith “in many instances is expressed in the symbolic language of faith.” This echoes his repeated insistence that faith is not fides historica. But here, it seems to me, lies the essential problem of Rottenberg’s approach: How can one maintain, as he does, that faith does not have its ground in factual knowledge, and at the same time maintain, as he also does, that facts do (in fact!) underlie the Christian faith, though the report of them can be uninspired and expressed in merely symbolic language. To put it differently, if faith is not fides historica, can it be faith in Heilsgeschichte, understood as the actions of God?
Whatever is historical is factual. If the task is to relate faith to history because Christianity is a historical religion, then faith as a response to historical factuality can be such a response only if it is confronted with a revelation that can be conveyed as the knowledge and truth that God has acted thus and thus in human history, and therefore revelation is not only divine action (Heilsgeschichte) but also something that can be recorded (as in the Bible), can be factual, can be an object of knowledge, and can be preached. I think that this is what Rottenberg is trying to reach by means of the via media of his last chapter. But if so, then he cannot completely reject the idea that faith is knowledge of historical truths and is grounded in historical facts. For unless faith is at least this, it has nothing to do with history, and the problem of faith and history is unreal.
In any event, I heartily recommend this book to anyone who wants to see the problem clearly, and to any professor who wants his students to see the central concern of modern theology.
Rottenberg adds a note on the theology of Paul Tillich. To abandon the God of history, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to accept Tillich’s “God of the philosophers,” would, says Rottenberg, “seem to involve a loss of meaning.”
JAMES DAANE
The Basic Intent
Church and State: The Story of Two Kingdoms, by J. Marcellus Kilt (Nelson, 1963, 150 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by V. Raymond Edman, chancellor, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.
“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.” Does this simple, non-sectarian prayer prescribed by the New York State Board of Regents for use in the public schools of that state violate the First Amendment of the Constitution? What is the basic intent of the First Amendment? Does the Constitution require a secular state, wholly irreligious?
These questions and others like them are faced by thoughtful Americans who are bewildered and, many of them, angered by the decisions of the Supreme Court against prayers and reading of the Bible in public schools. Church and State surveys in brief compass the development of the American principle of separation of church and state and thus points up the unhistorical basis of such decisions. The author aims to provide a historical outline of the two kingdoms, spiritual and secular, which have always been in conflict, from the early days of the Christian Gospel in its spread throughout the Roman empire until today. Pagan Rome protected the right of Christians to preach the Gospel as long as the Church confined its activities to spiritual matters. After two centuries of persecution of Christians there was domination of the state over the church from Constantine until the middle of the eleventh century. Then followed several centuries of papal domination over empire, epitomized in the abject surrender of Henry IV to Gregory VII at Canossa.
There came stirrings of liberty in the rising revolt against papal pretensions by Renaissance scholars and in particular by the Reformers. The author of this book should have stressed more the contribution of Lutheranism in blasting the medieval foundations of papal domination by the scriptural doctrines of justification by faith and the priesthood of every believer. This work was preparatory and indirect, while that of Calvinism, with its emphasis on the authority of the Scriptures, the independence of the clergy and the limitation of magistrates, pointed more directly to the separation of church and state. In the centuries-long struggle, biblically based doctrine broke ecclesiastical bondage to an allegedly universal church and to the political absolutism of European monarchies. The seeds of Calvinism sown in American colonial soil had, by the late eighteenth century, produced the basic constitutional provisions against the establishment of a state church and for freedom of worship.
Are the decisions of the Supreme Court based on law or on sociology? Do they represent the twentieth-century drive toward the complete secularization of the state? Church and State argues cogently that the decisions ignore the historical background and the basic intent of the First Amendment.
Pre-millennialists will not agree with the amillennial position that the covenant with Abraham and the Great Commission are fulfilled in the Christianizing of the nations. They should, however, agree with the author’s conclusions. This is an incisive historical survey against which to read the signs of secularization.
V. RAYMOND EDMAN
Not Just Another Book
All the Kingdoms of the Earth, by Norman K. Gottwald (Harper and Row, 1964, 448 pp., $7), is reviewed by Clyde T. Francisco, professor of Old Testament interpretation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.
This is not just another book on the Hebrew prophets but a work with a special purpose: to examine only those passages in the prophets that will help us understand their approach to international affairs. The problems to which the study addresses itself were first raised in 1903 by Hugo Winckler, who contended that the prophets were politicians first and religionists only incidentally. In fact, claimed Winckler, they were professional agitators who received their orders from foreign powers. In direct contrast, E. Troeltsch in 1916 claimed that the prophets were Utopians who had no real understanding of politics and who put their trust in divine miracle rather than in logical military and political strategy, thus being the despair of sensible statesmen.
Gottwald rejects both views, although he has some sympathy for certain aspects of the latter. He contends that the prophets worked from a real encounter with God that related itself in a creative way to the traditions received from Israel’s past. Rather than bringing predetermined concepts to the present historical involvement, the prophets met the tension of the moment with new insights that were rooted in the old. Thus practical theology was always being legitimately reborn.
This book is in many ways provocative. The author frequently challenges the traditional respect for Scripture by making such assertions as, “The Deuteronomist who records their [the prophets’] words has, to be sure, shaped the stories in such a fashion as to stress their cultic concerns, and he has occasionally smothered their original message in his verbiage” (p. 54). Again, he insists that Jezebel’s drive to destroy the Yahweh prophets occurred only after they tried to destroy her worship first. All she wanted was to be left alone!
However, the view most likely to cause comment is his observation that Christian expositors have lauded Second Isaiah’s missionary zeal without seeing that it is rooted in a restored Jewish community. “The same interpreters would be troubled at the suggestion that the best way the early Christians could have celebrated the resurrection of Christ was to disband their churches” (p. 346).
CLYDE T. FRANCISCO
‘I Crucified Him’
Pathways of the Passion: Daily Meditations for the Lenten Season, by Per Loaning (Augsburg, 1965, 148 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Leslie Hunt, principal, Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada.
A substantial number of Lenten books come off the presses each year, some stimulating and helpful, others making little or no contribution. Although this book covers well-trodden ground, it has much to commend it. The author is a Norwegian theologian of some repute. And since he is also dean of the cathedral in Bergen, he is in close contact with worshiping congregations who seek spiritual help. This dual background of the author is apparent in his book. While his writing has sound theological content, it is clear, crisp, and readable for people everywhere without theological training.
The author feels that full benefit of the story of the sufferings of our Lord and Saviour can come only to him who becomes an active participant, and he achieves this by drawing the reader into the drama that is being unfolded. We are not bystanders on the Via Dolorosa or mere spectators at Golgotha, nor are we permitted any cheap emotion. Says the author, “Only when I realize that it was I who dragged Jesus before the judgment, can I rightly weep over his sad fate.”
The book provides a chapter for each day in Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter. Each has its topic and just the right amount of reading material to stimulate thought and meditation.
The devotional usefulness of the book is enhanced by the relevant prayers at the end of each chapter. I believe many readers will find inspiration and insights in these Lenten meditations, and I heartily commend the book.
LESLIE HUNT
Innovator, Not Corrupter
The Theology of St. Paul, by D. E. H. Whiteley (Fortress, 1964, 295 pp., $5.25), is reviewed by F. F. Bruce, Rylands professor of biblical criticism and exegesis, University of Manchester, Manchester, England,
The author of this book, a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, has given us a fresh and comprehensive study of Paul’s theological teaching. His aim is to let Paul speak for himself, and not to impose on him the categories of twentieth-century thought. This means not only that Paul should not be judged by the standards of an age widely removed from his own but also that we need not expect him to give explicit answers to questions in which we may be more interested than he was. Some passages in his writings, for example, have come to be regarded in the course of Christian history as loci classici for the doctrine of predestination (especially Rom. 8:29 f.; Rom. 9–11; Eph. 1); we therefore tend to approach them in order to discover Paul’s answer to the question of why some men receive God’s salvation while others do not. But Paul may in fact be providing answers to quite different questions from those we put to him.
This is as much as to say that the treatment of Paul’s theology in this book is thoroughly exegetical, as indeed it ought to be. Mr. Whiteley has not only read Paul to good purpose; he has read his interpreters, too—interpreters of every school. F. W. Grosheide, Leon Morris, and John Murray come up for consideration along with commentators of Roman and liberal allegiance and others on whom it would be difficult to tie appropriate labels.
Paul’s debt to Jew and Greek, and to pre-Pauline Christianity, is discussed in a preliminary chapter in the light of such recent studies as those by H. J. Schoeps, W. C. van Unnik, and A. M. Hunter. While Jewish and Gentile thought had undergone considerable cross-fertilization in the generations before Paul, the evidence for purely Hellenistic influences on his thinking is remarkably scanty. As for his relation to pre-Pauline Christianity, he was an innovator in the good sense—“the greatest innovator the Christian church has known”—but he was no corrupter.
Paul’s theology is then studied under nine headings: (1) the created order (including supernatural beings as well as mankind), (2) the Fall and its results (under this are discussed the questions of solidarity in Adam, general revelation and natural morality, and the wrath of God), (3) preparation for the Gospel (including Paul’s teaching about the Law and about predestination), (4) the Lord and the Spirit, (5) the work of Christ, (6) the application of the work of Christ, (7) Church and ministry, (8) Pauline ethics, (9) eschatology.
How central were the “principalities and powers” to Paul’s scheme of things? What was the chief element in Paul’s Christology? Did Paul speak of Christ as “God blessed for ever”? Did he believe that all men would at last be saved? What was the baptism for the dead? Did Paul expect the Second Advent to take place within his lifetime? Is there room for a millennium in his eschatology? These and other important questions are discussed exegetically. To the last question the answer is negative. In First Corinthians 15:25 “Christ is like a general whose command lasts only during the period of the military emergency. As soon as victory is won he must hand over to the civil ruler.” In fact the verse “is really more significant for Christology, since it might appear to suggest subordinationist thought, than it is for Eschatology.”
Even when the details of Pauline theology are expounded exegetically, there will inevitably be differences of interpretation between one expositor and another, so complex is the Apostle’s personality and mind. But Whiteley has put all students of the Apostle in his debt by this careful study. Its usefulness is increased by its indexes, particularly the index of Scripture references. It is good to have a book like this which systematizes the abundant work that has recently been done on Paul and assesses it from a sympathetic and acute view of the Apostle’s writings.
F. F. BRUCE
Book Briefs
Villains on White Horses: Sermons on Passages from Paul, by W. A. Welsh (Bethany Press, 1964, 158 pp., $2.95). The author, looking back, was surprised to discover that so many of his sermons were based on Paul. Looking at the sermons, Paul would be surprised too.
The Primal Vision, by John V. Taylor (Fortress, 1964, 212 pp., $3.25). The author tries with success to make the Western Christian see reality as an African sees it. He rightly pleads for a sympathetic understanding of non-Christian religions, but he tends to undercut the character of Christianity when he claims that non-Christian religions can properly be adjudged only within and by reference to their own authentic religious content.
Administering Christian Education, by Robert K. Bower (Eerdmans, 1964, 227 pp., $3.95). A discussion of principles and methods that will make for an effective department of church education.
The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, Volume XV, edited by Charles Stephen Dessian and Vincent F. Blehl, S. J. (Nelson, 1964, 576 pp., $15). This book continues the flow of materials from the papers which the great apologete left stuffed in the cupboards of the Birmingham Oratory. The background of the Achilli Trial and of the lectures that now constitute the first part of The Idea of a University dominates this volume. It is caviar for the scholar: a unique experience, not easily procured, appetizing, rich, and pleasantly salty.
The Oxford Annotated Apocrypha, edited by Bruce M. Metzger (Oxford, 1965, 298 pp., $3.50). The Revised Standard Version of the apocryphal books of the Old Testament, with notes.
Paperbacks
The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, by Martin Kahler (Fortress, 1964, 154 pp., $1.75). Material first published in 1896.
A History of Latin Literature, by Moses Hadas (Columbia University, 1964, 474 pp., $2.45). Has a section on Christian writers.
And Pilate Asked …: Sermons for Lent, by W. A. Poovey (Augsburg, 1965, 96 pp., $1.75). Refreshing and stimulating sermonettes that turn on the role of Pontius Pilate.
Atheism, Humanism and Christianity, by Hanns Lilje, translated by Clifford Davis (Augsburg, 1964, 80 pp., $1.75). Short essays, long on value.
The Upper Room Disciplines 1965, edited by Sulon G. Ferree (Upper Room, 1964, 375 pp., $1). A devotional manual for ministers, theological students, and other church workers.
While I Live, by Otto Gruber (Cowman, 1964, 128 pp., $1.50). A book that appears to give far more than it actually does—religiously and otherwise.
The Gospel of Luke, by Bo Reicke (John Knox, 1964, 89 pp., $1). The author defends Luke on historical grounds against those doctrinal and philosophical attacks so fashionable today. Originally published in Swedish in 1962.
The Philosophy of Science and Belief in God, by Gordon H. Clark (Craig Press [Box 13, Nutley, New Jersey], 1964, 95 pp., $1.95). For the philosophically minded.
Development of Modern Christianity Since 1500, by Frederick A. Norwood (Abingdon, 1964, 256 pp., $1.95). A portrayal of the development of Christianity in the context of modern history.
