Orthodox Anti-Semitism?
Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism, by Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark (Harper & Row, 1966, 290 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by James Daane, director, Pastoral Doctorate Program, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.
This is the first of seven projected volumes on “Patterns of American Prejudice,” based on five years of research conducted by the University of California Survey Research Center at Berkeley, with a $500,000 grant from the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Since, as the book shows, anti-Semitism is a widespread sin among Christians, it is disturbing that this first scientific research study into the religious roots of anti-Semitism was conducted not by the Church but by a secular institution and was financed by Jewish monies.
Glock and Stark are both professional sociologists; the former is a member of the American Lutheran Church, and the latter, a onetime Lutheran, is now unaffiliated. They admit that their findings, gleaned from responses to very long questionnaires by almost 3,000 people in the San Francisco Bay area, indicate that there is a high degree of anti-Semitism in the churches, although no church is deliberately fostering such prejudice. Their findings also reveal that there are several sources of Jewish prejudice (people dislike Jews because they allegedly are crooked in business, control international banking, are sinister conspirators against the rest of the world), and that a small percentage of Christians have anti-Semitic feelings but do not translate them into aggressive action. This latter fact confronts Glock and Stark with a phenomenon they admittedly cannot explain. Yet it does not long deter them, for they are quite willing to admit that even sociologists cannot explain everything.
This group ought not to be so easily dismissed, however, for it is sand in the book’s smooth working thesis. The thesis is that orthodoxy (a religious faith with a doctrinal content) involves particularism (if my faith is true, all others are untrue) and that this combination of orthodoxy and particularism spawns religious prejudice, which when directed toward the Jew is anti-Semitism. The authors, it should be noted, tentatively adopted their thesis and then formulated their questions. The nearly 3,000 responses confirmed what they suspected. The most orthodox Christians, those holding Christian doctrines as alone valid and salvation-bringing, were the most hostile toward the Jews. Who were they? The Southern Baptists and the Missouri Synod Lutherans. Whether this distinction of being the most orthodox and particularistic is to their discredit or credit depends on one’s appraisal of the researchers’ questions and particularly of their method.
The questions were necessarily geared to provide data that would either support or invalidate the projected thesis. This is not to say that the questions were loaded but to suggest that many of them were ambivalent and unfitted to a yes or no answer. The most critical questions concern Jewish responsibility for the Cross and the divine reaction to their role in the Crucifixion, particularly as both relate to the modern Jew. I suggest that from the biblical perspective of the orthodox Baptist and Missouri Lutheran, many of the questions could not be properly answered by a simple yes or no. Anyone acquainted with God’s dealings with the Jew and Gentile as taught in the New Testament, particularly in Paul’s description in Romans of the logically elusive and zigzag divine method of dealing with them, will recognize the impossibility of answering simply yes or no or even perhaps to questions about this method. The logic of divine grace in its historical workings is not suited to such questions and answers.
Serious questions can also be raised about Glock and Stark’s methods. These researchers were careful enough to recognize that the discovered correlation between orthodoxy-particularism and anti-Semitism might not be causal. They therefore put their thesis to test again, this time checking the attitudes of the same adherents of the orthodoxy-particularism to the Negroes. But their thesis held, for the responses showed no significant equivalence to the responses of the same people toward Jews. They also tested the possibility that the anti-Semitism of the polled people was due to any one of a long list of non-religious causes. But again their findings supported the thesis that religion was the chief source of anti-Jewish prejudice, and that the more orthodox-particularistic the higher the prejudice.
Nonetheless, the method remains open to serious question. Indeed, the book itself prompts the question and leaves it without a clear answer. Does this method show that Christianity per se fosters anti-Semitism? Or does it merely show that Christians, even the most orthodox, are also sinners? The first page of the first chapter (entitled “Orthodoxy”) asserts that “religion is many things,” and that for all these many things theology is “the bedrock,” and that, therefore, “if religious roots for anti-Semitism are to be uncovered, the place to begin the search is in this bedrock of theology, in the doctrines and dogmas making up the Christian solution to questions of ultimate meaning.” Aside from the pragmatic overtones of this assertion, the intended affirmation is correct. The Christian faith is a certain response to something, namely truth and dogma. This is correct. Moreover, this response is particularistic in Glock and Stark’s sense, namely in believing that no other truth will do.
Yet the last part of the book, while conceding the impracticability of asking Christians to give up that claim to truth on which they stake their lives, also suggests that anti-Semitism would be alleviated if Christians would be less insistent on orthodox-particularity. To this suggestion is attached the claim that in being less insistent, Christians would give up nothing essential to their faith. This is manifestly untrue. Furthermore, Stark, in his comments to a group of Jews, Roman Catholics, and Protestants that met in New York in May to discuss this book, broadly suggested that the findings of the five-year research were sociological and not theological; that is, the findings showed, not that Christianity per se spawned anti-Semitism, but that Christians, particularly the more orthodox kind, for whatever reasons did reveal a higher degree of anti-Semitism. Thus the first part of the book seems to support the thesis that an orthodox-particularistic Christianity spawns anti-Semitism, while the last half contains the suggestion that anti-Semitism is only a sociological Christian foible that could be abandoned without the surrender of anything essential to the Christian faith. At this crucial point of what the five-year research actually shows, the book is ambivalent. If the contention of Glock and of the first part of the book is true, then the anti-Semitism found among Christians could be eliminated only by the surrender of Christianity’s claim to be the unique saving truth; if, on the other hand, the suggestion of Stark and of the last part of the book is to be taken as true, then anti-Semitism within the Christian churches is not spawned by Christianity but is rather an incidental product, resulting from the failure of Christians to live up to the demands of Christianity. The difference is vast.
Christians of the orthodox-particularistic type would find the thrust of the latter part of the book theologically acceptable, for while it points up their anti-Semitic sin, they can admit sin without violating Christianity. They will, however, be initially jolted on discovering that the first part of the book was written by Glock, a member of a Christian church, and the last part by Stark, who is no longer affiliated with a church. All this is, at first thought, most confusing; for Glock is right in his presupposition that the Christian faith is orthodox and particularistic but wrong in his conclusion that Christianity per se spawns anti-Semitism, while Stark is correct in allowing the possibility that anti-Semitism has its roots not in Christianity but in sinful Christians.
I find myself more in sympathy with non-church member Stark’s sociological understanding than with church member Glock’s theological understanding of their research and its results.
It should be noted that the formula “orthodoxy and particularism produces religious prejudice” is a general formula having no special bearing on the unique relationship between Christianity and the Jews. This appears to me to be a flaw in a method to uncover the peculiar phenomenon of anti-Semitism.
Thus the book leaves us in confusion as to whether Christianity as an orthodox-particularistic religion spawns anti-Semitism or whether anti-Semitism stems from the Christian’s sin and lack of Christianity. This confusion may tend to make the book a contributor to rather than a solvent of anti-Semitism. And this is profoundly regrettable.
The book’s greatest value may well lie in its unintended disclosure of the beliefs—or lack of them—of church members. Here it is far more convincing than in its disclosures about anti-Semitism.
Finally, it is also regrettable that the writing is often something less than scientifically cool and objective. Judgmental assertions—that persons holding to an orthodox-particularistic religion are “self-righteous” and “think of themselves as having a patent on religious virtue and hence discredit all persons who do not share their faith,” and that their view of their religious status “implies invidious judgments of the religious legitimacy of persons of another faith”—are neither true to fact nor indicative of the kind of objectivity one expects in a scientific study. At these points somebody’s religious prejudices were showing.
JAMES DAANE
Feast Of Good Things
The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, by Joachim Jeremias (Scribners, 1966, 278 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by William Childs Robinson, professor of church history, church polity, and apologetics, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.
This is a translation of the third German edition, revised and expanded, of this work by our leading authority in the investigation and recovery of the very words of Jesus. In this study he finds that First Corinthians 11:23–25 was written in 54 but goes back to the usage in Antioch before 45, while the Markan form comes from the first decade after the death of Jesus. “We have every reason to conclude that the common core of what Jesus said at the Last Supper is preserved for us in an essentially reliable form.”
As to the Saviour’s meaning, Jeremias finds that “Jesus speaks of himself as a sacrifice.” In terms of Isaiah 53, the saving power of Jesus’ death is in the phrase “his blood.” “This is therefore what Jesus said at the Last Supper about the meaning of his death: his death is the vicarious death of the suffering servant, which atones for the sins of the ‘many,’ the peoples of the world, which ushers in the beginning of the final salvation and which effects the new covenant with God.” By their eating and drinking Jesus gives his disciples a share in the atoning power of his death, and they become part of the redeemed community. “Table fellowship with Jesus is an anticipatory gift of the final consummation. Even now God’s lost children may come home and sit down at their Father’s table.”
Among the illuminating sparks that fly from Jeremias’s anvil are the discernment of Eucharistic words and their meaning in John 6:51c–58, of the eschatological implications of the Lord’s dealing with the Canaanite woman (Mark 7:24–30), of the Aramaic original shining through First Corinthians 15: 3 f.; and of “in remembrance of me” as an appeal to God to remember the Messiah in that he causes the kingdom to break in by the Parousia.
But taste of this feast of good things for yourself!
WILLIAM C. ROBINSON
Evolutionary Salvation
The Appearance of Man, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, translated by J. M. Cohen (Harper & Row, 1966, 286 pp., $5), is reviewed by Boelo Boelens, pastor, Hessel Park Christian Reformed Church, Champaign, Illinois.
In evangelical circles, opponents of the theory of evolution hold that the Bible teaches creation rather than evolution, and proponents say that evolution was, and still is, the way of creation. The former, in other words, take it that the concepts of creation and evolution are mutually exclusive; the latter, that the concept of evolution is simply the philosophical counterpart of the doctrine of creation. Either group, however, in trying to prove that Holy Scripture is on its side, often seems to have forgotten that Scripture, by virtue of its very nature as witness to Jesus Christ, as the Word of God proclaiming salvation to believers and non-salvation to non-believers, neither explicitly affirms nor explicitly denies the validity of any philosophical concept. The Bible is not primarily concerned with philosophy and metaphysics; it deals with relationships. Only by way of inferences, and therefore never conclusively, can we “prove” from it the truth or the falsehood of philosophical and metaphysical assertions.
Teilhard de Chardin is, needless to say, one of the most vigorous proponents of the theory of evolution. The Appearance of Man is a series of essays he wrote on the subject between 1913 and 1955, the year of his death. Some of them are highly technical; all are an elaboration of Teilhard’s basic conviction that one day, and quite naturally, science and dogma will agree that man was created “not precisely from a little amorphous matter but by a prolonged effort of ‘Earth’ as a whole” (p. 32).
Humanity, according to Teilhard, is born from the prolonged play of the forces of cosmogenesis (p. 210). Over some billions of years the stuff of the universe has been ceaselessly weaving itself (p. 211), forming at last, and only recently, a thinking envelope around the earth, a new skin (p. 222), the Noosphere, mankind. It is not possible, of course, by virtue of this evolutionary principle, to consider our planet as the only planet with Noosphere; on the contrary, planets with Noosphere are quite simply the normal and ultimate product of matter carried to its completion (p. 229), which is another way of saying that there must be other inhabited worlds (pp. 229, 230).
What point has our own Noosphere reached in its evolution? One thing, in Teilhard’s opinion, is perfectly sure: the evolution of Homo sapiens, having hitherto been expansive, is now beginning (!) to become compressive; that is, it is drawing nearer (under the impact of collective reflection) to some supreme and saving pole of super-consciousness, to an ever-increasing biological selfunification, indeed to a peak of hominization called the point Omega, i.e., the Universal Christ.
Teilhard’s concept of mankind as having first evolved from the stuff of the universe and now concentrating itself irresistibly into the reality of the Universal Christ, consistent and fascinating though it may be, seems to this reviewer a blik (Hare) rather than a clearly discernible biblical concept or a clearly defined philosophical theory. It is an interpretation of world history and of the meaning of human life that is undoubtedly of the utmost importance and relevance to him who believes it, but that nevertheless is unverifiable as well as unfalsifiable from either a biblical or a philosophical point of view. For, on the one hand, as already remarked, the Bible is not primarily concerned with ontological concepts, and, on the other, ontological concepts cannot be shown conclusively to be in harmony with the Bible.
Yet speaking strictly theologically, Teilhard’s blik does leave us with some pertinent questions, particularly his blik of the future.
1. Mankind, says Teilhard optimistically, is irresistibly concentrating and internalizing itself into the Universal Christ, i.e., in biblical terms, into salvation. The first question is, Can nothing go wrong in this happy evolutionary process? What about the reality of man’s sinful nature, a sinfulness of which the biblical authors say that its wages are not salvation but non-salvation, indeed death (Rom. 6:23; James 1:15)? Is there any biblical justification for Teilhard’s belief that a sinful mankind will change into the Universal Christ simply and merely because of “the existence of the flux of biological convergence in which we are swimming” (p. 253)? Is, in other words, salvation also a matter of evolution? Must we take it that evolution is not only the way of creation but also the way of re-creation? But even if this were true, how could we avoid the unbiblical notion of universal salvation, that is, of salvation for all men? Behind Teilhard’s evolutionary concept of salvation there seems to be not only an inescapable universalism but also an unmistakable Roman Catholic optimism with regard to human nature.
2. A second question concerns Teilhard’s belief that one day, and “quite naturally” (p. 32), science and dogma will reach agreement in the burning field of human origins. Does Teilhard mean that one day and “quite naturally” science as such will come to recognize the reality of the Creator; that science as such will naturally find God; that one day it will adore the Universal Christ, the “Word incarnate”? But, first, how does Teilhard know that it is the “Word incarnate”—that it is, indeed, the biblical Christ—toward whom mankind is biologically converging? And, secondly, even if it were the biblical Christ, how is science as such ever to recognize and adore him? Is recognition of Christ a matter of study, thinking, reasoning? Is it not rather a matter not of what science is doing but of what the Spirit is doing (John 3:3, 5)?
3. Deism claims that God is transcendent; pantheism, that he is immanent; theism, that he is both. Evolution, as Teilhard conceives of it, is God’s immanency, his creative (and re-creative?) activity within the structures of our world. Thus it is a secular concept, a concept likely to be meaningful and relevant to a great many people in the midst of a world in which it has become increasingly difficult to grasp the supernatural. But to what extent can one couch the Christian message in terms of evolution and still be loyal to traditional theism? Has one perhaps, in doing so, become automatically and inevitably a “non-theist” and prepared the way for an ever further-going secularism? These questions, of course, are not meant to suggest that Teilhard ever intended to be a “non-theist” or to give any initial support to the rise of a death-of-God movement. They merely suggest that, unless some basic problems are sufficiently thought through and satisfactorily solved, we must be careful not to swallow Teilhard’s evolutionary system hook, line, and sinker.
BOELO BOELENS
Nothing Fixed
Theological Ethics, by James Sellers (Macmillan, 1966, 210 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, professor of philosophy, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana.
The value of any theological ethics depends on the kind of theology and the kind of ethics. First, the ethics.
The norms of ethics, according to this author, change. Dr. Sellers, professor of Christian ethics and theology at the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University, acknowledges no fixed principles. “We need a new morality,” he declares (p. ix), and, quoting from Paul Ramsey with approval, “At the level of theory itself, any formulation of Christian social ethics is always in need of reformulation” (p. 39).
For the present, at least, the main norm is “wholeness.” What the author means by wholeness and what actions the principle of wholeness requires are difficult to see. The term is vague, but it has something to do with the appropriation of secular culture (pp. 44, 49–51, 147, 151). For the most part, however, the author prefers to leave the details as vague as the principle. From page 146 on (“Operating Concepts for Fulfillment,” “Realization as End of Action,” “Sanctification and Eschatology”), the concepts of Calling, Compromise, Commonwealth, Kairos, and Sanctification permit trivialities only and prove concretely inapplicable.
The author’s defense against the charge of having omitted all concrete ethics, except civil rights, may be that his aim is to insist that ethics is based on theology. This is an excellent aim.
However, it is not surprising that a changing ethics is based on a changing theology. Most of the book is an attack against the Bible and Reformation theology. “We cannot rely on … the unilateral authority of the Bible” (p. 22); “To say sola fide is to invoke an obsolete view of human capacity” (pp. 43, 47, 48); “We can replace the limp passivity of older theology with a stout doctrine of human ability” (p. 60); “Worse, in some places where it is not silent, [the Bible] gives us advice that is manifestly bad.… As to the theme of race relations I am prepared to defend my own morality over that of the authors and editors of this portion of the Gospels” (p. 88).
Of course parts of the Bible, if not literally interpreted, are of use in ethics; but this source must be supplemented by “the Judeo-Christian tradition,” the “Church” (the author does not say which one), “natural human activity,” and the directive that “our guidelines should be aimed at shaping human wholeness and that alone” (p. 147). Such a combination is obviously impossible as a basis for theology, since it includes no criterion by which we can decide to accept one part of a component and reject another part. Indeed, if we had a criterion, the combination would not be needed.
Throughout the whole argument the author displays a vast ignorance of historic Protestantism. Queer misinterpretations abound. For example, “Protestantism normally has taken for its critical standard … faith” (p. 32). Normally, historically, the criterion of both theology and conduct—i.e., the critical standard—has been the Scriptures alone.
In rejecting sola Scriptura, the author misappropriates the Westminster Confession X, 2, which does not say “that natural man is ‘altogether passive’ until he has been ‘quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit’.” This section of the confession concerns effectual calling, something that God does, and therefore man “is altogether passive therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call.” By omitting the italicized words, Dr. Sellers alters the meaning completely (p. 43).
Later, when he contrasts the Protestant principle with Romish tradition and Quaker mysticism, he reworks it to fit neo-orthodox novelties. Historically Protestantism never said that “the written word” is “a witness to the revelation of God to man” (p. 93). The written word is itself the revelation, and Dr. Sellers has distorted history. He even alleges that “a better description of [Protestantism’s] emphasis than sola Scriptura might be scriptura prima inter pares” (p. 94). But he offers no support from Luther, Calvin, Knox, Turretin, Quenstedt, or any of our founders to support his allegation.
Finally, eschatology is redefined so as to refer not to the ultimate outcome of history but to matters of ultimate importance at present. It is true that Dr. Sellers regards Bultmann, whose phrases these are, as too existential; but Alan Richardson “is even worse: ‘The scene of the final salvation must be beyond earth and beyond history in the world to come’ ” (p. 193). The author seems to have no place for the life to come at all. Eschatology has to do with human action, not divine intervention. Eschatology is not eschatology. What wonders can be done with Christian terminology by giving it secular meaning!
GORDON H. CLARK
Book Briefs
Christ the Center, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Harper & Row, 1966, 126 pp., $3). Lectures on Christ, reconstructed from student notes, that cast a fuller light on Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity.”
Words of Life, edited by Charles L. Wallis (Harper & Row, 1966, 248 pp., $4.95). A religious, inspirational album containing 1,100 quotations from writers of twenty centuries; illustrated by scenes of the Holy Land. For the coffee table of the thoughtful.
The World of the Bible (five volumes) (Educational Heritage, 1964, $49.50). Two thousand full-color illustrations with an accompanying scriptural verse for each and illuminating historical and archaeological data that create a sense of the world of the Bible.
The Child’s World (eight volumes), Anne Neigoff, managing editor (The Child’s World, Inc., 1965, $59.50). Well-written, well-illustrated books for children on such subjects as plants and animals, countries, and the arts. Except in religious matters, of which there are few, these are excellent; parents may forget they are for children. Revised edition.
Theology of Revelation, by Gabriel Moran, F.S.C. (Herder and Herder, 1966, 223 pp., $4.95). Revelation as understood by a Roman Catholic.
Analytical Philosophy of History, by Arthur C. Danto (Cambridge University, 1965, 318 pp., $10). A speculative philosophy of history is precluded because “we are temporarily provincial with regard to the future.” The “inevitability” of history is attributed solely to “the fact” that by the time men know what they have done, “it is too late to do anything about it.”
That Girl in Your Mirror, by Vonda Kay Van Dyke (Revell, 1966, 123 pp., $2.95). Comments and opinions from a Miss America for whom beauty is more than skin deep. For teenage girls.
Monastic Spirituality, by Claude J. Peifer, O. S. B. (Sheed and Ward, 1966, 555 pp., $12). An expansive explanation of the theory of monastic life, a force in the life of the Church for seventeen centuries; for the purpose of contributing to monastic aggiornamento.
Mani and Manichaeism, by Geo Widengren (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965, 168 pp., $6). The story of Mani, “Apostle of Light,” and the religion he founded.
The Vatican Council and Christian Unity, by Bernard Leeming, S. J. (Harper & Row, 1966, 333 pp., $7.95). A commentary on the Decree on Ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council, with a translation of the text.
In Holy Marriage: A Guide to Making Marriage Work, by George E. Sweazey (Harper & Row, 1966, 114 pp., $2.95). A running comment, sometimes wide-ranging, on the wedding service of the United Presbyterian Church.
Southerner, by Charles Longstreet Weltner (Lippincott, 1966, 188 pp., $3.95). A candid and compassionate examination of the South and its problems by a Georgian deeply committed to justice and opportunity for all Southerners.
Thomas Jefferson, by Stuart Gerry Brown (Washington Square, 1966, 247 pp., $3.95). Gives some glimpses into Jefferson’s religious life.
The Martyrs: Sixteen Who Gave Their Lives for Racial Justice, by Jack Mendelsohn (Harper & Row, 1966, 227 pp., $5).
Studies in the Bible and Science, by Henry M. Morris (Baker, 1966, 186 pp., $3.50). An engineer discusses problems of religion and science.
To Conquer Loneliness, by Harold Blake Walker (Harper & Row, 1966, 172 pp., $3.95). Good reading.
Popes from the Ghetto: A View of Medieval Christendom, by Joachim Prinz (Horizon Press, 1966, 256 pp., $6.50). For the scholar only.
What Is Sin? What Is Virtue?, by Robert J. McCracken (Harper & Row, 1966, 94 pp., $2.95).
Understanding the Old Testament (second edition), by Bernhard W. Anderson (Prentice-Hall, 1966, 586 pp., $10.60). A scholarly work for the critical student. Told with dramatic effect.
This We Believe: Meditations on the Apostles’ Creed, by John A. Ross (Abingdon, 1966, 143 pp., $2.75). Good meditations.
God’s Man, by Lynd Ward (World, 1966, 279 pp., $5.95). A Faustian tale of an artist who sells his soul for a magic brush. Told entirely in woodcuts of varying merit. No text.
God’s Love for a Sinning World: Evangelistic Messages, by Charles G. Finney (Kregel, 1966, 122 pp., $2.50). Five good evangelistic sermons of a former day.
Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich, edited by George L. Mosse (Grosset and Dunlap, 1966, 386 pp., $6.95). For those who want to see the quality of daily life in Hitler’s Germany.
Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen, by Henry Chadwick (Oxford, 1966, 174 pp., $4). A cross section of the dialogue that took place between the early Church and the Greek world.
This Way to the Cross, by C. A. Roberts (Broadman, 1966, 83 pp., $1.95). The ways of life that led to the Crucifixion are still operative today. Light and brief.
Body, Soul, Spirit: A Survey of the Body-Mind Problem, by C. A. Van Peursen (Oxford, 1966, 213 pp., $4.80). A profound theological-philosophical study. Translated from the Dutch.
Funeral Meditations, by William R. Baird, Sr., and John E. Baird (Abingdon, 1966, 128 pp., $2.50). Evangelical funeral sermonettes that show fhe blessing of death.
Paperbacks
How the Catholic Church Is Governed, by Henrich Scharp (Paulist Press, 1966, 128 pp., $.75). An account of how the total power of the pope is structured in the Roman Catholic Church, plus a sketch of a pope’s typical day.
The Anarchists, by James Joll (Grosset and Dunlap, 1966, 303 pp., $2.45). A very fine study of anarchism as a religious faith and as a rational philosophy.
What Jesus Had to Say About Money, by Frank C. Laubach (Zondervan, 1966, 64 pp., $1). The “Apostle to the Illiterates” argues that anyone who has a bank account or property, or an automobile and a house, is rich.
Living Room Dialogues, edited by William B. Greenspun and William A. Norgren (National Council of Churches and Paulist Press, 1965, 256 pp., $1). A guide for discussion among Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant laymen.
Essays Presented to Charles Williams, edited by C. S. Lewis (Eerdmans, 1966, 145 pp., $2.45). First published in 1947. Good reading for the literary-minded.
Reprints
Light from the Ancient East, by Adolf Deissman (Baker, 1965, 535 pp., $7.95). A classic. First published in 1922.
A Historical Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, by William M. Ramsay (Baker, 1965, 478 pp., $6.95). A commentary not on the text but on the complex of historical problems associated with Galatians. From the 1900 edition.
A System of Biblical Psychology, by Franz Delitzsch (Baker, 1966, 585 pp., $8.95). A book of considerable historical interest by an author whose Platonism often shines through. First printed in 1855.
The Creeds of Christendom, Volume III: The Evangelical Protestant Creeds, with Translations, by Philip Schaff (Baker, 1966, 966 pp., $12.95). A very valuable classic long out of print. There is still no substitute for it.
The Beginnings of Christianity, Part I: The Acts of the Apostles, Volume IV: English Translation and Commentary, by Kirsopp Lake and Henry J. Cadbury (Baker 1965, 423 pp., $7.95). Far better than the average.
