The Church In American Society
Religion and Society in Tension, by Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark (Rand McNally, 1965, 316 pp. $6), is reviewed by $. Richey Kamm, professor of history and social science, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.
If a book can be both valuable and ambiguous, this volume is just that. It is valuable for its studied attempt to revive the scientific study of religion as a social phenomenon in American society. Viewed from this perspective, the early chapters dealing with conceptual problems in the social-science approach to religion as a social phenomenon are invaluable.
The ambiguities of the volume arise out of this studied attempt to follow a behavioral approach to scientific study. The use of the term “religion” suggests a concept of universal cognition. Actually, the authors indicate near the close of the volume that they have been concerned primarily with Christianity as practiced in America, an admission amply borne out by the data presented throughout the fifteen chapters of the study. The title is ambiguous in that it suggests a study of conflict between religion and social institutions. The entire thrust of the study is to show that, contrary to expectation, little tension exists between the organized church and American society.
The general reader will be most interested in Parts II, III, and IV, in which the authors seek to describe: 1) the role that the Church plays in American society and the internal tensions that characterize its institutional existence; 2) the role of the Church in social and political change in Western society; and 3) the tension between those committed to a religious framework of thought and those devoted to scientific inquiry in American communities.
Evangelical Protestants will not be surprised to learn that the major denominations are “undergoing a transformation of their theology towards an increasingly less orthodox and more secularized faith” (p. 84). Some evangelicals may be surprised to be informed that articulate groups of orthodox believers continue to remain in most of the major denominations. They will find their observations about the growing decline of Christian values in American culture increasingly confirmed by these studies. They will be forced to admit, however, that they share with their less orthodox brethren common problems concerning the role of the parish church and the work of its pastor.
The wide spectrum of theological belief now tolerated within most of the major denominations raises serious questions about the future of Protestant Christianity in America. The “New Denominationalism,” as the authors term it, fragments the very core of the Christian perspective. The pattern of belief is so diverse that to use the term “Protestant” as indicative of a unified religious viewpoint is to “spin statistical fiction.” The implications of such findings for the current ecumenical movement are intensely provocative.
The prophetic role of the Christian Church in society, conclude the authors, has largely given way to one of peacekeeping. This shift of institutional role from transforming agent to conserving institution has made it necessary for advocates of change to renounce church affiliation and to embrace one or more of the modern ideologies that seek to implement change. The evidence cited in this study in support of this generalization is the least acceptable of any given in support of pertinent findings. The strongest support for the contention that leadership in social reform has passed from the organized church is more clearly inferred from the concluding observation of chapter 14, which identifies the scientific scholar as the cultural hero—“the presiding genius of progress.”
Evangelical Protestants will be inclined to reject the general thesis laid down in this study; that religious experience is socially conditioned. They are too well schooled in the importance of historical forces and group tradition to accept the environmental explanation without qualification. Yet informed evangelicals will welcome the effort of Professors Glock and Stark to enlarge the theory of deprivation as the basis of religious group origins to include philosophical and doctrinal issues.
The concluding observation—that the growth of the scientific outlook, both natural and social, tends to restrict the role of organized religion—may be alarming at first reading. Religious leaders will do well, however, to recognize this state of mind in American society and plan their program of evangelization and church extension in the light of it. The authors of this study decline to be pessimistic about the future role of the Church. For, say they, if social science seems to narrow the role of free will in the life of a man or a woman, the very challenge that this presents to the Christian Church opens the way for a clearer understanding of the work of God in the life of men.
S. RICHEY KAMM
Catholic Scholarship’S New Look
Introduction to the New Testament, edited by A. Robert and A. Feuillet (Desclee, 1965, 912 pp., $15.75), is reviewed by Charles B. Cousar, professor of New Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.
Protestants are naturally interested in the revival of biblical studies going on within the Roman Catholic Church, a revival that is an exciting feature of the “new look” of that communion. Are Catholic biblical scholars taking seriously the work of their Protestant counterparts? What relation do they have to the Pontifical Biblical Commission and its pronouncements? What do Protestants have to learn from them? Some answers are offered in this translation from the French of Introduction to the New Testament, which was edited by A. Robert and A. Feuillet and represents the best scholars of the French-speaking Catholic world (such as A. Tricot, X. Leon-Dufour, L. Cerfaux, J. Cambier, M. E. Boismard, and J. Bonsirven).
The book follows the usual format of New Testament introductions, with the added feature of a 150-page “conclusion,” which in effect turns out to be a rather full statement of New Testament theology (though the authors disclaim such a grand description). Each section of the book is preceded by a brief but helpful bibliography covering a wide area of concern, nationally, theologically, and ecclesiastically.
Leon-Dufour’s work on the Synoptic Gospels shows an amazing breadth and depth. A master at surveying varying positions, he deals appreciatively but discerningly with the work of the form critics and those seeking to solve the problem of literary dependence. He himself, however, offers a via media to the extremes of “everything is the effect of oral tradition” and “it is all the result of literary dependence.” He suggests that there was first a crystallized oral tradition that was systematized into written form as Aramaic Matthew. The authors of Greek Matthew (not a translation but an “adaptation of an Aramaic original”), Mark, and Luke had access to this source, which accounts for their similarities. Yet each also gleaned from oral traditions that had been modified in the various communities of origin, a fact accounting for the Gospels’ differences.
Such a position tends to downplay literary dependence and to emphasize the place of the community in transmitting and interpreting the data. Leon-Dufour has obviously learned his lesson well from the form critics. For him, however, the community turns out to be the holy Mother Church, which prevents any serious deformation of the original traditions.
Despite the clumsiness of the translation at times, the survey of the Graeco-Roman and Jewish worlds by A. Tricot, the study of Hebrews by J. Cambier, and the work on John by A. Feuillet and M. E. Boismard make this a book to stand beside Wiken-hauser’s as a major contribution to New Testament history and criticism.
CHARLES B. COUSAR
Jungle Church Planting
The Condor of the Jungle, by C. Peter Wagner and Joseph S. McCullough (Revell, 1966, 158 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Donald McGavran, dean, School of World Mission, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.
This highly readable story tells of Walter Herron, an effective and colorful missionary who first went to Bolivia in 1933, lived a life packed with adventure, service, and achievement, was awarded “The Condor of the Andes” medal by the Government of Bolivia for his untiring humanitarian services, and in 1964 died in the line of duty. He worked in El Beni, the Amazon jungle that comprises the northeast quarter of Bolivia. Here this church planter and evangelist also established a leprosy colony and commended Christ to the leaders of the land.
The authors have written with enough detail to make their characters live. Circumstances of evangelical mission work in the frontier lands of Latin America, clashes of personality, and dangers of fire and wild beast, flood and fanaticism, are related vividly. Yet frustration, routine, and defeats provide the contrasting background needed to present a true picture.
Walter Herron, a dedicated Christian who trusted God, and loved the Word, wrote, “To reach these people of the Beni means suffering and sacrifice, but we who are soldiers of the King of Kings, must get to them with the Word of God.” He learned to see a fatherly providence in reversals and delays, tragedies and death. He won hundreds of souls to Christ and planted eight churches.
Herron was a pioneer and expert flyer whose planes added stature to his service. His courage and kindliness, his selflessness and good sense shine through the whole story. Here is a moving saga of missions. Read it with pleasure and give it to young men deciding how to invest their lives. It will kindle a responsive flame in many readers.
DONALD MCGAVRAN
Does Morality Require Autonomy?
A Defence of Theological Ethics, by G. F. Woods (Cambridge, 1966, 136 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, professor of philosophy, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana.
The author, professor of divinity at the University of London, addresses himself to a carefully restricted aim. Without going into metaphysics or theology, he considers only the moral challenge to Christianity. The challenge is that morality requires the autonomy of ethics, the autonomy of the moral agent, and is therefore inconsistent with the existence of God, or at least with the ideas of grace and immortality.
Toward the end of the book Mr. Woods makes the excellent point that secular ethics cannot explain the disappearance of autonomy in those cases where we know what we ought to do but have not the power to do it. Autonomy is also curtailed when we are unable to discover what we ought to do. These facts of experience are secularism’s great weakness.
Furthermore, the author defends ethics against the charge that the reward of a future life is immoral. Unfortunately, this section is a bit awkward, because Woods seems to agree with the secularists that morality must have no reward. He does a little better with the idea of grace as the creative, recreative, perfecting will of God.
By way of criticism: determination to keep the discussion within narrow limits allows the author to waste seventy-five pages warning us of the dangers of analogical language—a moral standard is neither a standing flagpole nor a literal yardstick. All this is as useless as it is obviously true. The same narrow limits prevent him from doing more than suggesting that theism is a more promising thesis than secularism. The main issues are not substantially considered.
GORDON H. CLARK
The Reality Of The Resurrection
Easter Faith and History, by Daniel P. Fuller (Eerdmans, 1965, 279 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by John H. Rodgers, Jr., assistant professor of systematic theology, Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia, Alexandria.
This book is difficult to review because of its comprehensiveness. First, there is an original study on the purpose of Luke in writing Acts. Since this book was also a doctoral dissertation in the field of New Testament, the reader can be assured that here he will find serious and significant New Testament exegesis (see chapter 7).
Second, Dr. Fuller presents a long section on the exegetical-dogmatic treatment of the role of historical evidence in theological argumentation as it has centered in the resurrection of Jesus. This covers the period from the Enlightenment to the most recent theological writings (see chapters 1–7) and shows an almost incredible amount of research by the author.
Third, there is the author’s overarching purpose, which is present in his critical and constructive remarks throughout the book and which comes to fulfillment and summary statement in the last chapter (8). The thesis of the book is that by starting with the historical evidence supplied by Luke in Acts, one can provide a logically compelling argument for the reality of the resurrection of Jesus by God the Father that only a fool or one in the grips of sinful blindness could refuse, and only at the price of irrationality. This is ultimately an apologetic concern.
Thus the author has put us in his debt in three areas: New Testament exegesis, theological methodology, and apologetics. I will attempt to make a few remarks about each of these areas.
First, in his exegetical work in Luke, the author contends that the five major emphases of Acts disclosed by both older and modern scholarship need to be related to one basic purpose in the mind of Luke, and that precisely here most recent interpretations of Luke fail, especially with regard to the purpose of chapters 20 to 28. The author believes that his interpretation of Luke explains his purpose better than any other yet advanced. What is this purpose? It is to give later Christians assurance of the resurrection of Jesus by showing that the Gentile mission as carried out by Paul, a Pharisee, and agreed to by Peter (both were good Jews) could not be explained by any other factor than the actual resurrection of Jesus and the presence in the Spirit of the Risen Lord. Thus the ongoing Gentile mission is the fulfillment of the resurrection and leads to “certainty” of Jesus’ resurrection. A careful reading of the prologue to Luke’s Gospel substantiates this in the mind of the author.
Whether or not the reader is convinced by all of Fuller’s position, he will have to admit that the author has shed great light on Luke’s use of the resurrection in Acts 20 to 28. I feel that Fuller’s position is somewhat restrictive and anachronistic. I wonder whether for Luke, who did not yet face Lessing’s “ugly ditch,” the certainty of which he spoke in the prologue did not refer to a firm, accurate account of the historical events of the ministry, life and death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ and to the events of God’s working in the early Church, more than to a proof of the resurrection. Did Luke even feel he needed to prove the resurrection of Jesus? Resurrection was not the problem then that it is in our naturalistic age. Also, I would like to see a fuller study of the Lukan use of the word “faith” to see whether it will bear the definition of resting in the rational evidences. A revised edition of this book might well include such a study.
Second, we can only be grateful to the author for his careful and well-presented survey of the theological, historical treatment of the resurrection of Jesus since the Enlightenment. This section alone is worth the price of the book.
However, I have two minor questions. First, why were the significant works of Adolph Schlatter, J. Gresham Machen, James Orr, and Walter Künneth omitted? If one is going to use historical investigation to justify the heavenly origin of Paul’s theology, who is more pertinent than Machen? And Orr’s study, The Resurrection of Jesus, is still of first importance, perhaps even more than ever now that naturalism is so strong.
My other question is whether the author is not too restrictive in his use of the phrase “no historical support.” Often the men considered allow historical evidence as part of the pattern of revelation, much like circumstantial evidence in a court of law. What the author should say to this is that they allow historical support but not compulsive proof. For example, two lawyers can argue from the same evidence in the light of different convictions or hypotheses about the guilt of the defendant. Each one seeks to “reveal” the truth.
Finally, while I agree with the author that the Christian reading of the biblical testimony to the resurrection of Jesus is literally true, I do not agree that faith rests solely upon empirical evidence. The empirical, historical data is part of a larger whole, of the Old and New Testament proclamation of the revelation of God that illuminates the evidence from a particular point of view. In my opinion, the historical evidence is a “sign” that points to and finds its true interpretation in Christian faith but does not rationally “compel” assent. Oliver Quick, in his book Doctrines of the Creed, has shown how a man can admit the adequacy of the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and still not be a Christian nor even a theist.
I feel that Fuller moves toward this more broad epistemological basis for faith in God in Christ in the last part of chapter 7, when he discusses Barnabas. It was the changed life of Barnabas that gave credence to his Gospel. But this is no longer simple historical evidence. It implies some internal awareness on the part of those that saw Barnabas, and also a willingness not to let the disgraceful lives of some of those who professed faith in Christ destroy their faith in God’s revelation in Christ. (Please note that I have not attempted to reproduce the author’s arguments in these remarks.)
I consider this book a most significant study. It discloses the dogmatic air that so often accompanies a rejection of the resurrection of Jesus; it shows that much that claims to be new and advanced in contemporary theological skepticism is really “old hat,” repeated many times over; it shows that only a supernatural theism can do justice to the New Testament interpretation of the resurrection of Jesus; and it shows a new strand in the already strong historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.
Yes, the evidence can be denied, but only by a dogmatic presupposition that “It couldn’t have happened.” And if the resurrection is accepted and interpreted in the light of the Old and New Testament testimony, cannot any man in repentant faith claim the promise that He will come and dwell within as Lord and Saviour? In the light of the Christ who indwells in the Spirit, the evidences glow as tokens and signs of God’s love and care, given at a cost beyond measure.
To read this book is to be refreshed and provoked to deeper thoughts. I recommend it highly.
JOHN H. RODGERS, JR.
No Concentric Circles
Circles of Faith: A Preface to the Study of the World’s Religions, by David G. Bradley (Abingdon, 1966, 240 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Leonard T. Wolcott, professor of missions, Scarritt College for Christian Workers, Nashville, Tennessee.
Are different religions merely different paths to the same ultimate truth? Can they be harmonized?
Many books on world religions are being published, and not a few of them are superficial “collections of ethnological curios.” Some lay a sentimental stress on apparent similarities in religions. In Circles of Faith Dr. David Bradley, professor of religion at Duke University, looks at the differences in world religions. Trained in biblical theology, Dr. Bradley ponders the basic concepts of his and other religions. Each religion has unique teachings whose uniqueness grows out of the presuppositions that are peculiar to each religion. “The basic axioms for each of these world views,” Bradley writes, “are irreconcilable with those of others.”
His thesis is that a person who tries to understand a religion other than his own tends to interpret it from his own “circle of faith,” to identify its concepts from the point of view of his own religion’s basic assumptions about God, man, the cosmos, salvation and so on. To correct this tendency, the author suggests that we attempt to understand the teachings of each religion in terms of that religion’s own “self-evident presuppositions.” In this “preface to the study of religion,” Bradley examines each major religion’s assumptions about God, salvation, ethics, and human destiny, as well as the “founders” and outreach of each religion. The “circles of faith” of different religions may partially overlap but they never coincide, since their centers differ widely. The larger overlappings are within the three groups: religions from biblical lands, religions of India, those native to China and Japan.
Such a brief study as this unavoidably oversimplifies its description of religious beliefs. This the author readily acknowledges. He does not examine the ramifications of basic religious ideas, nor the tendency among adherents of all religions to cling to primitive religious holdovers. He does not discuss the influence of modern secularism and syncretism on the circles of faith. Nor does he consider the possibility that many people’s basic religious assumptions may actually be closer to the normative circle of faith of some other religion than to the classic expressions of the religion with which the people are associated.
As a “preface to the study of religion,” however, the book is to be recommended as a companion to any textbook on world religions. It will serve as a useful corrective to the popular presentations of world religions as assorted pathways to one God. It will also stimulate a more careful evaluation by the reader of his own religious assumptions and of the true nature of each world religion.
Intercommunication with other religions can be found only, the author reminds us, as we honestly examine the deep differences that separate us from them and the presuppositions that make for these differences.
LEONARD T. WOLCOTT
The Pressures Of Confinement
Shantung Compound: The Story of Men and Women Under Pressure, by Langdon Gilkey (Harper & Row, 1966, 242 pp., $4.95) is reviewed by Ernest Gordon, dean of the chapel, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.
In this book Langdon Gilkey, professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School, tells of his experiences in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. For 2½ years he lived in this prison compound along with 2,000 others—men, women, and children. Compared with Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, this compound was almost ideal. The administration was relaxed; the guards were not brutal; the rations, though meager by American standards, were adequate by most others; housing was crowded but not impossible; and tortures, enforced slave labor, and segregation of the sexes were not practiced. In so many ways it could have been the scene of a developing Christian community.
What marked this compound society as different from that of Main Street, U. S. A.? It was the awareness of confinement. Men are all confined, controlled, and circumscribed, but they seldom realize it. The author, in a quiet, reflective way, sees this particular circumstance of confinement as a laboratory for the study of human behavior. During his confinement he was able to keep a journal out of which he has constructed this book.
The way of life of the 2,000 internees was the way of life of all men, give a little and take a little. They acted in ways that were not particularly bad, yet not particularly good. They did what men do daily in prosperous society and think nothing of. The difference was that there and then in the Shantung Compound the evil was more noticeably evil and the good more noticeably good. The psychological avenues of escape were more limited. The situation was more consciously constant, and the conditions of confinement more evident. The question was thus more obvious: “How do men live in their confinement, their prisonhouse of freedom?”
The young American teacher who had been nourished on a diet of nineteenth-century liberalism and academic abstractions soon lost his faith in man as a reasonable, rational, and nearly divine being. He had to live with people as they are, and not as they appear to be in the mind of a dreaming idealist. He found his colleagues to be full of contradictions. They chose to do what suited their self-interest; yet at the same time they went to great lengths to justify the rightness of their deeds. The believer and the unbeliever were equally guilty. “Me first, at all times, and at all costs” was the unspoken slogan that controlled the compound, causing jealousy, hatred, and division.
The reader may well find himself asking what he would have done had he been there. What would he have done, for example, if his country had sent a large consignment of food parcels for U. S. citizens? Would he have urged that they be shared with those of other nationalities, or insisted that they be kept by the U. S. citizens for purely legal and moral reasons?
Young Gilkey learned that men have an enormous capacity for doing the wrong things for what they presume to be the right reasons. They lack, however, the capacity to do what they know to be right. Of this discovery St. Paul had already written with searching insight in Romans 7:7–25.
The understanding of the true nature of men indicated the wisdom of the rule of law, for by this rule men were saved from themselves and their own demonic freedom. Law democratically conceived and executed seemed to suggest part of the answer to the human contradiction. By the democratic process, men are reminded that those they blame for society’s ill are their elected men, representing them for what they are, both good and evil.
The compound, despite its need of law, was not without the signs of grace, grace that came illogically through unlikely agents. Along with the mysterious working of grace was the working of Providence—God present in creative power at unexpected times in strange situations to redeem the moments of human folly.
Perhaps Professor Gilkey could have told us a little more of the sacraments of grace and the distinction between the believer’s and the unbeliever’s understanding of them, or of the ways in which the missionaries witnessed redemptively to the leadership of Jesus Christ, or of the new understanding of sin and grace granted by the Gospel that in turn demonstrated the relevance of the Gospel to the human circumstance. But at least he has told us enough to help us realize that the Church must always be reforming and always relevant. The arrant individualism of Protestantism may have contributed greatly to the rise of economic affluence in the good old U. S. A., but it was conspicuously ineffective in the Shantung Compound. The Roman Catholic missionaries had more to offer the inmates of the compound in the matter of how to live as sinful people with sinful people. The communal discipline of the monks and their understanding of the life in common had a distinctly more Christian ring.
Professor Gilkey’s book is yet another dealing realistically with the authentic human situation as it is experienced in a compound of confinement. Perhaps one of these days our theologians will take such literature seriously and consider the claim of the transcendent God, who enables the prisoners of life to transcend the limitations of their imprisoning environment.
ERNEST GORDON
Inside The Religious Press
Across the Editor’s Desk: The Story of the State Baptist Papers, by Erwin L. McDonald (Broadman, 1966, 128 pp., $1.50), is reviewed by David E. Mason, associate director, Laubach Literacy, Inc., Syracuse, New York.
Erwin L. McDonald, able editor of the Arkansas Baptist Newsmagazine, opens the door and admits the reader to the inner circle of those who know the ins and outs of the religious press. Intimately, informally, and with gentle humor, the editor chats frankly about the joys and frustrations of his ministry.
Although Across the Editor’s Desk is specifically the story of the Southern Baptist state papers and magazines, its contents can be applied to the religious press as a whole. Beginning with the answer to “What does an editor do, anyhow?” the author proceeds to discuss criticism, readers’ expectations, and the past and future of the press.
Since there is a dearth of books on the religious press, this little volume is particularly welcome. The world is becoming smaller. Everyone’s concerns reach far beyond his local community, and so the function of the press is constantly expanding. Reaching beyond the limits of a local pulpit, the printed word can inspire, inform, and persuade a constantly growing “congregation.” In this informative book the author takes a subject that ordinarily would have limited reader interest and presents it in an interesting and inspiring manner. It can help both minister and layman respect and appreciate the press.
McDonald speaks forthrightly on a number of significant issues—particularly in his chapter “In Glass Houses,” where he discusses the handling of controversy. His style is fresh, light, and fast-moving. He has done an excellent job of selecting brief and pointed anecdotes to liven the text. The pace of the book slackens only in the latter chapters when he quotes freely from other editors and somewhat dilutes the force of his own stream of thought.
Across the Editor’s Desk is one of a series of books in the Broadman Readers Plan—a “book-of-the-month” type of program initiated by Broadman Press two years ago.
DAVID E. MASON
An Act Of God
The Meaning of Salvation, by E. M. B. Green (Westminster, 1966, 256 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by E. Earle Ellis, guest professor of New Testament, New Brunswick Theological Seminary, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
With the general Christian public in mind, the author examines a number of terms used to express the biblical writers’ views of salvation. He devotes two chapters to the Old Testament, two to the first-century world, and six to the New Testament. The volume concludes with an application of the biblical data to three current issues: spiritual healing, universalism, and the perseverance of the saints.
Michael Green, tutor and registrar of the London College of Divinity, is not only a writer but quite clearly a preacher as well. His competent and lucid survey is not infrequently combined with edifying commentary designed to make the biblical message come alive in modern idiom and practical application. Although Calvinists will question some of the theological presuppositions (e.g., pp. 234 ff.), one can heartily agree with the major thrust of the book. Salvation is the act of God in the context of history, dependent on neither works nor cult. Thus, also, there is “no justification whatever for the disjunction between the physical and the spiritual … that has long typified the Church doctrine of salvation” (p. 120).
Yet it is just here that the reader wonders whether these insights are always properly applied. Two examples of this may suffice.
First, Green rightly avoids a radical dichotomy between prophetic and apocalyptic strains in the Jewish hope of salvation. Nevertheless, following the schema of T. C. Vriezen, he at times associates future eschatology with a transcendental goal, a “life beyond,” divorced from time and history (pp. 102, 182 ff.). This leads him to the conclusion that for Paul “nakedness” (2 Cor. 5:3) was a disembodied existence from which he shrank but was, at the same time, “far better” (Phil. 1:23).
A second example may be found in the engaging topic, salvation and healing. Green has some good cautions to raise about the practice of healing in the Church today. Certainly he is correct in opposing the unthinking and unbiblical view that abstinence from medicine is an evidence of faith (p. 223). Certainly, too, Christ gives one Christian to be a “sign of the Cross” in sickness even as he gives another to be a “sign of the Resurrection” in healing: no Christian can choose either sign as his right. However, the author’s theme would have been better served had he accentuated the positive, the meaning of the Holy Spirit’s healing activity, e.g., as “the proleptic deliverance of the body” (Cullmann).
Despite such questions, however, this well-documented volume will be an informative addition to the library of pastor or student.
E. EARLE ELLIS
Work Or Vocation?
Theology of Work, by Edwin G. Kaiser, C.PP.S. (Newman, 1966, 522 pp., $10.50), is reviewed by Sherwood E. Wirt, editor, ‘Decision,’ Minneapolis, Minnesota.
This careful piece of scholarship, written within the framework of the Roman Catholic Church, provides a solid groundwork for a study of man’s work. The author distinguishes between work and labor and presents generally a Catholic picture of work as a virtuous undertaking of man, ordained by God, for the blessing of the social order.
There are some well-documented discussions of slavery, ancient and modern. The slave-owners’ total subordination of human considerations to economic necessity is starkly brought out. There are also important treatments of the strike problem, of automation, and of featherbedding. No easy solutions are offered, but heavy emphasis is placed upon the teaching of the papal encyclicals.
As a son of the Reformation, I am amazed that such a thoroughgoing study of the nature of man’s work could so completely ignore the concept of vocation. I realize that the vocatio in classic Roman theology is limited to the “religious,” but surely in recent years there has been a loosening of this rigid application.
The Reformation took the concept of God’s call to a life mission out of the monastery and released it to provide joy in a man’s daily stint, because in that stint the worker is called to serve and glorify God. There are a good many theological questions connected with the linking of work with vocatio, and there is need for a fresh restatement of the problem. But as long as work and vocation are separated, our understanding as Christians of the nature of man’s work remains impoverished.
SHERWOOD E. WIRT
Book Briefs
Facts and Faith, Volume 1: Reason, Science and Faith, by J. D. Thomas (Biblical Research Press, 1965, 302 pp., $4.95). A popular presentation prepared particularly for students.
A Comparative Study of the Old Testament Text in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the New Testament, by J. De Waard (E. J. Brill, 1965, 101 pp., 25 guilders, also Eerdmans, $10).
Preaching and Community, by Rudolf Bohren, translated by David E. Green (John Knox, 1965, 238 pp., $4.95). A stimulating and hard-hitting discussion of the nature and purpose of preaching.
God Beyond Doubt: An Essay in the Philosophy of Religion, by Geddes MacGregor (Lippincott, 1966, 240 pp., $3.95). An apologetic discussion of the reality of our experience of God; not always biblical but always provocative.
A Jew in Christian America, by Rabbi Arthur Gilbert (Sheed and Ward, 1966, 235 pp., $4.95). A warm, kindly, and eminently irenic discussion of Jewish and Christian beliefs and relationships.
A History of Christian Thought, Volume II, by Otto W. Heick (Fortress, 1966, 517 pp., $7.75). This extensive revision of J. L. Neve’s book will be of value to students of theology, especially Lutheran ones. Some readers will react to the “Christ died for all men reading of the Canons of Dort,” and T. F. Torrance will probably react to the book’s assertion that he died in 1913.
The Old Testament in Modern Research, by Herbert F. Hahn, with a Survey of Recent Literature, by Horace D. Hummel (Fortress, 1966, 332 pp., $2.75). An attempt to suggest the main trends of Old Testament research in order to show the effect of each approach upon the interpretation of Old Testament religious history.
A History of Early Christian Literature, by Edgar J. Goodspeed, revised and enlarged by Robert M. Grant (University of Chicago, 1966, 214 pp., $5.95). Recent discoveries and fresh studies of older works are used to advantage in this study of writings from the time of the New Testament through the early fourth-century Fathers.
Paperbacks
Composition and Corroboration in Classical and Biblical Studies, by Edwin Yamauchi (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1966, 38 pp., $.75). An expanded revision of a paper read at the twentieth Annual Convention of the American Scientific Affiliation.
Take Hold of God and Pull: Moments in a College Chapel, by Calvin Seerveld (Trinity Pennyasheet Press, 1966, 173 pp., $2.50). Fresh and colorful devotional essays.
The Christian Confrontation with Shinto Nationalism, by Kun Sam Lee (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1966, 270 pp., $3.75). An analysis of the history of Shintoism and its confrontation with Christianity.
Biblical Separation Defended: A Biblical Critique of Ten New Evangelical Arguments, by Gary C. Cohen (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1966, 83 pp., $1.50). A critique of “cooperative evangelism,” specifically as defended in Robert O. Ferm’s Cooperative Evangelism: Is Billy Graham Right or Wrong?
A Manual of Simple Burial (Third Edition), by Ernest Morgan (Celo Press, 1966, 64 pp., $1). A discussion of the needs and problems of families at the time of death.
Charles Williams: A Critical Essay, by Mary McDermott Shideler (Eerdmans, 1966, 48 pp., $.85). A competent author deals with the extraordinary Williams.
Herbert W. Armstrong and the Radio Church of God, by Walter R. Martin (Christian Research Press, 1966, 31 pp., $.60). A critique of the theology of H. W. Armstrong’s Anglo-Israelite theology and an exposé of its errors and heresies.
God’s Truth Made Simple, by Mrs. Paul Friederichsen (Moody, 1966, 256 pp., $.89). Just what the title claims.
Marriage and Family Among Negroes, by Jessie Bernard (Prentice-Hall, 1966, 160 pp., $1.95). A study of the Negro family that will help to correct some current and widespread misconceptions about Negro family life.
Christianity and African Education: The Papers of a Conference at the University of Chicago, edited by R. Pierce Beaver (Eerdmans, 1966, 233 pp., $2.65).
Reprints
Grace Abounding and The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan (Oxford, 1966, 412 pp., $7). A fine scholarly edition of John Bunyan’s two greatest works with a brief but enlightening introduction. Especially helpful are its indexes to the contents of these two enduring Christian classics. Its publication this year, the tercentenary of the first edition of Grace Abounding, is appropriate.
