A Roman Witness To Christ
A World to Win: The Missionary Methods of Paul the Apostle, by Joseph A. Grassi, M.M. (Maryknoll, 1965, 184 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Arthur F. Glasser, home director, Overseas Missionary Fellowship, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
I heartily recommend this book. It could be used in our evangelical training schools as a text to introduce would-be missionaries to the methodology of the Apostle Paul. Almost devoid of quotations, it is a Bible-study book through and through that is refreshingly different, though somewhat similar in thrust to the work of missiologist Roland Allen at his best.
And yet, this is a Maryknoll publication, written by a Roman Catholic priest, published under the imprimatur of Cardinal Spellman, and concluded with an epilogue that relates the Apostle Paul’s total involvement with preaching the Word of God to De Ecclesia, a pronouncement of Vatican Council II.
Grassi is the professor of New Testament theology at the Maryknoll Major Seminary. He is a product of Manhattan College, of various Catholic seminaries—especially the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome—of a three-year term of missionary service in Guatemala, and of the grace of God. One wonders whether he is representative of the new type of missionary priest the Roman Catholic Church is sending to Latin America. If so, the future of that church is not going to resemble its past!
The book is well organized. It centers attention on those basic issues Paul had to face after he accepted his role as an apostle to the Gentiles. What goal should he set for his labors within the framework of God’s purpose in history? How should he personally regard the possibility of his being a co-laborer with God? Would it be possible for him to subordinate all evangelistic and discipling ministries so that nothing would interfere with his key task of multiplying congregations? What place would suffering have in his identification with the Christ who suffered to serve his generation? How would he establish contact with the idolatrous Gentiles to whom God was sending him? Could he be sure his preaching would elicit their response? Would prayer become his sharpest missionary weapon? Why are co-laborers so crucial to effective church planting? What strategic use should he make of households and family units? How could he, the outsider, identify with those he would seek to win? How could he avoid rigidity and proclaim not just another legalism but true freedom in Christ? What should he do to make certain that the new churches would be fully indigenous, and their leadership vital? How could he impart his missionary vision to them?
Although Grassi gives familiar answers to all these questions, his treatment of them is refreshingly different. He should be read alongside Bavinck. What makes the book especially helpful is that each chapter concludes with suggested applications of Paul’s methods to the missionary task today. Of course, one will not agree with every detail, nor with all the emphases of this book; but as a simple introduction to a very important subject, it is superb. It may surprise some to learn that in De Ecclesia, more than 150 Scripture quotations were used to present arguments for “reform within the Church” along some of the lines described by Grassi.
All this raises a question. We continually pray that God will bless his Word to all mankind. Here is the witness of a man who thinks like a Protestant and handles his Bible like an evangelical. But what of the almost uniform testimony of evangelical societies laboring in Latin America today? Almost none would say that any of their converts from the Roman church had had any experience of Jesus Christ before they were contacted by evangelicals. After reading this book, one cannot but conclude that among the Roman Catholic priests there are those who have a clear witness to Jesus Christ.
ARTHUR F. GLASSER
The Offense Remains
The Life and Teaching of Jesus, by William Neil (Lippincott, 1965, 190 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by David H. Wallace, professor of biblical theology, California Baptist Theological Seminary, Covina, California.
This little volume is one of the series entitled “Knowing Christianity,” of which four volumes have been published and several more are in preparation. The author of this book, who is lecturer in biblical studies at the University of Nottingham, is also the editor of the series.
Dr. Neil begins his discussion by reviewing the problem of faith and history as they relate to Jesus Christ. After a cursory treatment of the issue, he concludes that radical criticism, stemming mainly from Germany, has severely overstated the fruitfulness of form criticism and that in fact the Gospels evince far more credible historical detail than some form critics allow. The author is himself guilty of sweeping statements, such as the assertion that “no scholar today subscribes” to the reconstruction of Albert Schweitzer (p. 14). Again, his argument is too generalized when he implies that German scholars as a class are skeptical (pp. 17 f.). He rightly holds that the gospel narratives put the reader in contact with the mind of Jesus himself, and not merely the minds of the evangelists.
After this analysis of faith and history, two chapters are devoted to the evidence for the appearance of the gospel tradition that takes its rise from the life and ministry of Jesus and is preserved and augmented by the evangelists. The second major section summarizes the cultural setting in which the Christian faith arose, especially in respect to the Judaic, Greek, and Roman strands of life in that day. The third section contains eight chapters on the life of Christ and opens with a statement about the Resurrection. Thus is reflected the theological influence of Martin Kähler. The justification for this theologically informed approach is that the Resurrection is the key that unlocks the meaning of Christ, sets his life and ministry uniquely apart from other men, and provides the sanction of God upon the life, passion, and teaching of our Lord. Neil affirms that the Resurrection is a historical fact, not a myth, and that its final sense is apprehended by faith. The balance of this part of the book is a somewhat standard treatment of the data of the life of Jesus as drawn from the gospel records. In the chapter on miracles, Dr. Neil interestingly suggests that Bultmann may be right in “demythologizing” the demons that are alleged to be responsible for illness, but he defends the nature of Jesus’ cures as authentic miracle. Miracles are a sign of Jesus’ messianic office.
The last section briefly takes up the teachings of Jesus, which must never be hardened into an ethical system but must, if their vital quality is perceived, be lived out in a context of love and obedience. The Sermon on the Mount and the Lord’s Prayer are given a short but illuminating analysis that makes use of the best of contemporary scholarship.
“The Meaning for Today” is the title of the final chapter, and the author poses the obvious problem of the great cultural gap that separates the world of Jesus from our own, a gap so wide as to endanger faith in the scientific age. With sound judgment he points out that the problem of faith and commitment was not invented in and by the twentieth century but rather has been a constant problem in the entire life of the Church. The modern redefinitions concerning God, Christ, and man are not necessarily an advance in clarity but may serve on occasion merely to darken counsel with catchwords and new slogans. There is a persistent and ineradicable mystery in the very character of God and his acts in Christ, and these were as much an offense in the first century as in the twentieth. This is to say, then, that God still confronts man with the claim that the Gospel is his authentic Word; man has but the choice either to believe or to reject this claim. The new learning and scientific advance have not set aside this fact.
This book does not break new ground for the professional theologian. It does, however, cover the familiar ground quite competently, and it will prove of merit for the interested layman who desires to enlarge and clarify his understanding of the person of Christ. Therefore the book deserves a wide reading in adult classes for Christians who seek a clear statement on this subject.
DAVID H. WALLACE
A Long Way To Go
Christian Conscience and Negro Emancipation, by Ralph Moellering (Fortress, 1965, 214 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Floyd W. Thatcher, vice-president in charge of publications, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Today none but the hopelessly naïve can fail to take notice of the current social revolution—a long overdue movement aimed at exposing the corrosive evil of favoring some persons because of the color of their skin. The revolution is here. And there are no alternatives to a sober confrontation of the conscience of the Christian community with a culture that continues to support the social bondage of millions of its citizens.
This is one of the most trenchant and provocative books to cross my desk in some time. With scalpel sharpness and precision, Moellering cuts through and peels back layer upon layer of devious white rationalization, prejudiced misuse of Scripture, pompous pietistic sermonizing, and self-induced blindness to moral responsibility. Speaking of the dynamiting of a Baptist Sunday school in Birmingham in which four Negro children were decapitated, he quotes the question of Charles Morgan, Jr., “Who threw that bomb?,” and the sobering answer, “We all did.”
The author devotes considerable space to a rehearsal of the sorry record of the Christian Church on slavery, racial equality, and integration. The fact that this backward look sometimes appears excessive in its scathing condemnation certainly does not negate the guilt that the Christian conscience must bear for its past apathy and hypocrisy. Far too often the Church’s thought has been molded by the misuse of Scripture and by the venomous myths of social inferiority and the “curse of Ham” as applied to the Negro race.
But, as the author points out, there have been and are dedicated people of God who assert that “the presence or absence of living faith in Christ is the only biblical criterion for separation among people.” Although large segments of the Church have abdicated their Christian responsibility in race relations out of prejudice or fear of the social gospel, a growing number of persons firmly believe that “all are one in Christ.” For these, and others yet to join them, Moellering describes in detail patterns of behavior for both the individual and the church that can lead to the total emancipation of the Negro and erase forever the color line in association between Christians.
Under no circumstances should this book be regarded as an attack on anything but evil. It is a powerful and practical polemic for Christian social responsibility in interpersonal relationships. The author’s insights in examining the past and present stance of the Church contribute to a perceptive view of a possible future. If his purpose was to incite emotion and creative tension, he has succeeded admirably in doing so, and in producing a work worthy of sober consideration by every layman and every minister of the Gospel.
FLOYD W. THATCHER
A Couple Of Religious Beeps
The Beloved Invader, by Eugenia Price (Lippincott, 1965, 284 pp., $4.50), and Olympia: A Novel of the Reformation, by Florence Whitfield Barton (Fortress, 1965, 256 pp., $4.95), are reviewed by Roderick Jellema, assistant professor of English, University of Maryland, College Park.
These two novels are a couple of beeps out of this year’s snarling and tumultuous traffic in “religious literature.” Religious-literature-in-quotation-marks, I should add, is a thriving business. The annual writers’ market handbooks always have plenty of tips on what they call “the Religious Market.” One such book on my shelf advises writers to “get in on the boom while it lasts.” Every time the word religious comes up, the handbooks and the publishers seem to wink. Religious: something simple, earnest, “decent,” aspiring, sentimental, uplifting—and unreal. The winks ring like cash registers.
Florence Barton’s Olympia is not all that bad. Let me come back to it. Miss Price’s The Beloved Invader is the real merchandise. It will, I fear, sell well in the Religious Market (place). It will be embraced by women who have read the pale fantasies of Grace Livingstone Hill Lutz during adolescence, have discovered that life is nothing like a Lutz novel, and now need a sedative for the pain of disillusionment. The easiest sedative is, of course, another dose of the same twilight unreality. In this way the traffic in the Religious Market, like the traffic in the dope market, becomes a traffic in addictive substance. After the first injection of its escapist euphoria, it creates and multiplies the need for more. The women who are hooked will clutch such books as Miss Price’s as a junkie clutches a freshly drawn hypodermic needle. Often unwittingly, a novelist in this marketplace becomes a kind of pusher. The publishers, shrugging and talking about popular demand, are the peddlers.
I have singled out women for a simple reason: I cannot conceive of any normal-minded male fighting his way through this kind of book. It is like thrashing and flailing one’s way through honey. It will drive him to the ball park, or to the Dow-Jones averages, or to TV westerns.
The hero of Miss Price’s book, the “beloved invader” who is more eulogized than created, is as unlike the average reader’s husband as is possible. He is, naturally, a minister. True to fictional type, he is innocuous and inoffensive (presumably so that we can love him); there are in him no such complications as a theologically disciplined mind or a tendency to talk about Christ and redemption; he is all human-nobility and natural-goodness and tree-hugging, God-in-the-leaves romanticism. Will he marry his beloved Ellen? Will they together rebuild the Civil-War-torn church on St. Simon’s Island? Will he win the affections of the mistrustful islanders and bring peace to his demented enemy? Of course, of course. And Anna, the plain, simple island girl who loves him, will get her pie, too. The love triangle dissolves in bliss when Ellen dies a conventional sad-and-beautiful death on her honeymoon in India, first having met “the same God” in the Taj Mahal and having written down in purple prose her spiritual legacy of courage, culled from the scriptures of that soaring old fakir, Thomas Carlyle. The indulgence in grief and morbidity, which never rises to drama, crawls at the pace of the nineteenth-century ships that carry hero and casket from India to Georgia. But it all ends sweetly. Ellen soars off to the book’s unmediated, pantheist heaven, where I imagine her in earnest quest of an autograph from St. Ralph Waldo Emerson, and patient, loyal, equally good but less ethereal Anna gets Ellen’s man. The hero gets both women—decently, of course.
In this never-never land of wish-fulfillment there are stock characters, unmixed human motives, simple issues, a diluted God, happy Georgia Negroes of the 1870s singing, of all things, Stephen Foster melodies to the rich Yankee, and an “uplifting religious tone” (wink, rinnng) throughout.
Olympia is much healthier, much more ambitious—but still not much more memorable. It brings to life its sixteenth-century setting, with vivid glimpses of courts and scholars and people caught in the confusions of the Reformation era. Idealization of character is compensated somewhat by a richness of social and historical texture. But the heroine, Olympia Morata, an Italian court poet who married a German Protestant, is more idolized than realized. Her poetry suggests that in more settled times she might have become a sort of sixteenth-century Phyllis McGinley with classical overtones. The only real worth of the book is its ability to evoke, by way of detail, style, and structure, something of the tensions of the age that forms its backdrop.
But it must be said that this is not enough. Although the book earns its way into homes and church libraries, it does so as subliterature. It reduces “literature” to the status of the old sugar-coated pill—in this instance, something that makes Reformation history palatable. Surely the novelist—particularly the Christian novelist—has a higher calling than that.
Each of these books works a different side of the street in the Religious Marketplace. When it comes to the essentials of art, neither of them is sufficiently serious, sufficiently dedicated to a Christian ideal of literature. But if that is an indictment, it is an indictment not so much of writers and publishers as of the Christian public. We don’t really seem to want anything more than beneficial doses of history or lulling injections of sentimentality. The Religious Market, after all, is the religious public; its books mirror that public. So long as the split between Christianity and culture is maintained, we can expect a continued flow of bad novels like The Beloved Invader and good subnovels like Olympia.
RODERICK JELLEMA
History Sans Sex
The Origin of I Corinthians, by John C. Hurd, Jr. (Seabury, 1965, 355 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by William L. Lane, associate professor of New Testament, Gordon Divinity School, Wenham, Massachusetts.
Dr. John Hurd, associate professor of New Testament at the Episcopal Theological School of the Southwest (Austin, Texas), has prepared a major and radical study of First Corinthians. The book bears the marks of a Ph.D. thesis, with long German quotations within the text, full footnotes (not all valuable), appended notes to chapter I giving extensive documentation for positions discussed, and an impressive bibliography (pp. 306–34).
Hurd’s purpose is a fresh approach to the epistle in the light of the background from which it arose. To clear the way for the acceptance of his thesis, he feels it necessary to show the falsity of some of the commonly accepted axioms of Pauline research. He therefore urges that it is not merely unnecessary but untenable to fit the letters of Paul into the framework of Acts, and he challenges the assumptions underlying the usual dating and sequence of the Pauline letters. On nearly every major critical question Hurd has followed the positions articulated by his former teacher, Dr. C. H. Buck, Jr. These positions are basic to his thesis, which is that by working from later to earlier stages it is possible to reconstruct Paul’s dialogue with the Corinthian Christians, and thus to reach a stage of Paul’s thought that is earlier than the usual date given to First Corinthians.
Hurd’s study is detailed and creative, displaying exact, demanding scholarship. It is also disturbing: the Paul of the first stage of contact with the Corinthians is presented as being much like the ascetic whom we encounter in the apocryphal Acts of Paul. This “early” Paul would prefer men never touch a woman and urged “spiritual marriages”; in fact, he may have been instrumental, says Hurd, in introducing such relationships as an expression of the angel-like existence thought to befit the Kingdom of God now come. The willingness of couples to take the vow to pursue a “spiritual” relationship was a token of that extraordinary enthusiasm thought to exist at Corinth and manifested in their worship, in their contempt for the present age, and in their intense expectation that the Lord would speedily return. The biblically perceptive reader will not be surprised to read, “this reconstruction of the sexual morality of the community established by Paul contrasts sharply with the scholarly opinions summarized in Chapter 4” (p. 277). The reason for this contrast? Scholars have usually taken first Corinthians seriously, that is, as a statement of Paul’s fundamental presentation, and thus not as a revision of his understanding of the Gospel.
There are in this book many solid insights into the epistle, but also much that has been gleaned from an ingenious reading between the lines. Hurd’s format, his carefully constructed reconstruction, and Seabury’s price will largely limit this volume to the specialist only.
WILLIAM L. LANE
Sound Scholarship
Vox Evangelica: Biblical and Historical Essays, edited by Donald Guthrie for the London Bible College (Epworth, 1965, 64 pp., 65.), is reviewed by Philip H. Buss, tutor, London College of Divinity, Northwood, Middlesex, England.
This year’s volume, number 4 in the series, illustrates two of the strengths of the London Bible College: wide scholarship and sound evangelical faith. Three papers deal with positions evangelicals have long sought to defend, and the fourth is the editor’s selective survey of “some recent books on the Gospels.”
In the first paper A. E. Cundall calls for a fresh look at the Book of Deuteronomy in the light of Israel’s faith and history. He argues for the basic Mosaic originality and finds the widely accepted seventh-century date unlikely from the point of view of contents, purpose, and recent scholarship. The legislation in chapter 12 concerning the central sanctuary is not absolute nor at variance with Exodus 20.
J. C. Connell argues forcibly for retaining, in the presentation of the Christian message, the “propitiatory element of the Atonement.” In examining the evidence he finds himself allied to Forsyth and Morris over against Westcott. Dodd, and Taylor, who have sought to extract from the Bible all ideas of God’s personal anger and from Christ’s death the ideas of substitution and satisfaction.
O. J. Thomas presents the scriptural case for the doctrine of “irresistible grace,” maintaining the pastoral as well as the dogmatic importance of this doctrine.
PHILIP H. BUSS
Conservative Or Liberal?
William Jennings Bryan, Volume I: Political Evangelist, 1860 to 1908, by Paolo E. Coletta (University of Nebraska, 1964, 486 pp., $6.50), and Defender of the Faith, by Lawrence W. Levine (Oxford, 1965, 388 pp., $7.50), are reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, professor of history, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.
William Jennings Bryan, who in the eyes of most evangelicals was for nearly forty years the hero in the fight against the forces of evolution, comes to life in these two biographies in a striking way. But the portraits will not please many of those who have claimed him as the champion of theological and social conservatism.
Professor Coletta has done a masterly reconstruction of the first forty-eight years in the life of the Great Commoner. He vividly recounts the events of the Democratic convention of 1896 that reached their climax in the “Cross of Gold” speech, and presents the other aspects of that convention as well. In his full treatment of the 1900 and 1908 conventions, he portrays Bryan as a political figure of continuing leadership and power. Coletta’s description of these conventions has no real rival among recent treatments of Bryan or of the forces struggling to gain control of the party.
The author has thoroughly mastered the large sources at his command and has achieved what seems to be an unusual insight into the real Bryan. He draws particular attention to the fact that Bryan never centered his interest in monetary problems to such an extent that he lost sight of the other issues of the day. Coletta very carefully traces Bryan’s relation with the Populists, proving that he accepted many of their ideas on government ownership of railroads and on the necessity of democratizing the Constitution to meet the changing needs of the new century. The author’s admiration for Bryan leads him to conclude that Bryan was to the Democratic Party from 1898 to 1908 what Theodore Roosevelt was to the Republican Party from 1900 on. Though the reader may not fully agree, he will be forced to admit that even in defeat Bryan was a powerful voice in Democratic policy.
Levine is as good as Coletta in portraying Bryan in his political activities, and he shows a greater awareness of Bryan’s religious and theological interest. He repudiates the usual picture of Bryan, 1915 to 1925, as a social and economic reformer transformed into a champion of reactionary religious and social views. And he presents a very convincing case for his idea that Bryan’s opposition to Darwinism was largely motivated by his social views. Levine is convinced that it was the popularity with the protagonists of Big Business and monopoly of William Graham Sumner’s interpretation of Darwinism, and not Bryan’s fidelity to the inerrancy of the Scriptures, that caused him to take up the cudgels against Darwinism.
Compared with Coletta, Levine shows a much greater sensitivity to the tension between Bryan’s religious conservatism and his political and economic liberalism. Both authors agree, however, that in his political life Bryan spoke for the West rather than for the East, whose big cities and policies he neither understood or trusted. This reviewer will await with great interest the appearance of Coletta’s second volume to see to what extent he agrees with Levine.
C. GREGG SINGER
Realized Forgiveness
The Dynamics of Forgiveness, by James G. Emerson, Jr. (Westminster, 1964, 203 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Lewis B. Smedes, professor of religion and theology, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Forgiveness does have a dynamic. Forgiveness is not just a word spoken, not even a divine word. Nor is it just a word to which a person assents. The reality of forgiveness is not achieved when one man says to another: I forgive you. Nor is its reality merely an objective state of affairs between a forgiving God and the forgiven man. Forgiveness that is real and free is one that costs the forgiven person a great deal. Unless forgiveness is creatively realized in the penitent life of the forgiven, it is abortive, a word in the air, an empty state of affairs. This is the burden and the truth of Emerson’s book.
He says that there are three foci of forgiveness, two of which have tended to preempt the field in both theology and pastorate, leaving the most crucial facet undeveloped and unrelated to the others. The first two he calls the “context” and the “instrumentality” of forgiveness. The “context” is the divine act of grace. The “instrumentality” (though not clearly explained) is the word spoken to relieve a person of guilt; it is either proclaimed from the pulpit or spoken in therapy. The facet Emerson is burdened with is the whole experience of renewal within the life of the forgiven person. This is “realized forgiveness.” And his argument is that without the experience of renewal, forgiveness is not realized even though it may be verbalized.
The theology of the Word, Emerson fears, makes the alleviation of guilt the whole of forgiveness. While it may be true that what God does for us is more important than what we do for ourselves, and while it is true that what God thinks of us is more important than what we think of ourselves, it is also true that there are two parties involved in the transaction of forgiveness. The action is not completed until the whole experience is realized in the total life of the forgiven man. The burden of the Gospel, says Emerson—rightly, I think—is the attainment of realized forgiveness.
Regrettably, Emerson overstates his case, thereby weakening his chances of getting his message across to the “objectivists” who need it most. The truth that the divine gift really does take precedence over human appropriation, and that the objective state of affairs that God created in Christ is really of paramount importance, gets lost in the author’s enthusiasm for the critical importance of the realization of forgiveness in the life of people. For instance, he wants pastoral theology to be a prolegomena to systematic theology. Here he may be tipping his hand. Parts of his own book are Exhibit A against the case for the priority of clinic over Word. But this does not prevent him from scoring a point that can be overlooked only to the great harm of the Church. Emerson may be weak on what he calls the “context” of forgiveness, the divine act of grace. But he warns us earnestly against abortion in the forgiving action. That is, he tells us not to let forgiveness be conceived but then not born alive and whole in the life of the forgiven.
LEWIS B. SMEDES
Book Briefs
Secular Salvations: The Rites and Symbols of Political Ideologies, by Ernest Koenker (Fortress, 1965, 220 pp., $3.75). The author observes and analyzes the new secular religions which call for blind, uncritical faith and unlimited loyalty and commitment, and which have offered millions more human lives on their altars than were offered by the persecution of Christians in ancient Rome. Worth reading and study.
Resurrection Messages, by John M. Gordon (Baker, 1964, 141 pp., $2.50). Good, lucid sermons, all on the Resurrection.
Today: Meditations for Every Day of the Year, edited and compiled by Reuben K. Youngdahl (Fortress, 1965, 394 pp., $3.50). Three hundred sixty-eight contributions by as many ministers of the Lutheran Church in America. The biblical character of some is a bit spotty.
Concilium, Volume IV: The Church and Ecumenism, edited by Hans Küng (Paulist Press, 1965, 215 pp., $4.50). Roman Catholic essays that could enlighten many Protestants about denominationalism and church union.
The Last Years: Journals 1853–1855, by Sören Kierkegaard, edited and translated by Ronald Gregor Smith (Harper and Row, 1965, 384 pp., $6.95). The rich material of Kierkegaard’s journal writings, most translated here into English for the first time.
The Shoe-Leather Globe: A Life of William Carey by Saxon Rowe Carver, illustrated by Paul Granger (Broadman, 1965, 183 pp., $2.95).
The Vision Which Transforms: Is Christian Perfection Scriptural?, by George Allen Turner (Beacon Hill, 1964, 348 pp., $3.95). In arguing for the possibility of Christian perfection in history, the book is strong in that it indicates that the idea is not so “far out” as some Christians assume, but weak in that it selects biblical material that appears to support the thesis but almost wholly ignores material that appears to prove the opposite.
The Last Revolution: The Destiny of Over-and Underdeveloped Nations, by L.-J. Lebret (Sheed and Ward, 1965, 213 pp., $4.50). A disturbing discussion of a world social situation in which many societies and nations are no longer willing to accept poverty abjectly.
He Came from Galilee, by Daniel A. Poling (Harper and Row, 1965, 246 pp., $3.75). First published in 1931 under title Between Two Worlds, later as The Romance of Jesus, and now under its third title. As good now as then.
Man Through His Art, Volume I: War and Peace, by Anil de Silva, Otto von Simson, and Roger Hinks (New York Graphic Society, 1964, 64 pp., $7.95). The story of war and peace told through commentary on twenty works of art.
Concilium, Volume V: Moral Problems and Christian Personalism, by Franz Böckle (Paulist Press, 1965, 183 pp., $4.50). Distinguished Catholic moral theologians explore the religious and moral implications of the Christian faith in order to clarify Christian life and action in today’s world.
Alcoholism: Its Facets and Phases, by Marvin A. Block (John Day, 1965, 320 pp., $5.95). This book approaches alcoholism from almost every angle in discussions free of technical language and understandable by laymen.
The Freedom Revolution and the Church, by Robert W. Spike (Association, 1965, 128 pp., $2.95). A tract whose announced intention is to guide the Church in the race issue in the days ahead. A welterweight book that punches like a heavyweight—though its comments on “propositional theology” resemble shadow boxing. The language is crisp, the style forceful; but the author’s ideas of revelation and of Christ as they appear in his chapter. “The Power Beyond the Churches” are far left of the Bible.
Paperbacks
Another Foundation: The Presbyterian Confessional Crisis, by Edmund P. Clowney (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1965, 25 pp., S.50). A very sober, sane, and telling critique of the United Presbyterians’ proposed new Confession of 1967. Its departures and differences from the Westminster Confession are made very clear. The author’s central criticism of the proposed confession’s “theology of reconciliation,” on which its idea of the Church and its calling rests, loses some of its force because his own interpretation of Second Corinthians 5:18–20 is somewhat vague on the precise point at issue.
The Christian Encounters the World That Is, by B. F. Kurzweg, The Christian Encounters the World of Pop Music and Jazz, by William Robert Miller, The Christian Encounters the New Leisure, by Rudolph F. Norden, and The Christian Encounters Politics and Government, by Paul G. Elbrecht (Concordia; 1965; 95, 112, 105, and 95 pp.; $1 each).
The Search for Jewish Identity in America, by Stuart E. Rosenberg (Doubleday, 1965, 300 pp., $1.45). Originally published as America Is Different, from which it differs but little.
Missionary Legal Manual, by Crawford M. Bishop (Moody, 1965, 158 pp., $2.50). Useful legal information for foreign missionaries.
Protestant Concepts of Church and State, by Thomas G. Sanders (Doubleday, 1965, 388 pp., $1.45). A scholarly, competent, lucid discussion. Good reading.
Politics as a Vocation, by Max Weber (Fortress, 1965, 57 pp., $.85). A famous essay by one of the greatest sociologists of the twentieth century.
Luther’s World of Thought, by Heinrich Bornkamm, translated by Martin H. Bertram (Concordia, 1965, 315 pp., $1.95). Excellent studies on various thoughts and ideas of Martin Luther.
Israel in Christian Religious Instruction, edited by Theodor Filthaut (University of Notre Dame, 1965, 125 pp., $1.25). Five Roman Catholics add to the swelling literature on that truth about the Jew which is a part of Christian theology and the Christian faith. Recommended reading.
The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Anti-Semitism, by Edward H. Flannery (Macmillan, 1965, 332 pp., $1.25). A Catholic priest writes the whole sorry story of the history of anti-Semitism from its earliest appearance. A painstaking and scholarly contribution, which strangely lacks a biblically grounded critique of anti-Semitism.
Of Test Tubes and Testaments, by John R. Holum (Augsburg, 1965, 70 pp., $1.50). Good reading for young Christians troubled by religion-science conflicts.
Churches in North America, by Gustave Weigel, S. J. (Schocken, 1965, 152 pp., $1.75). The Protestant churches of America, plus some that are neither Protestant nor churches, described by the late Father Weigel, who was well known and loved by many Protestants. First printed in 1961.
