Spurring Christians To Action
Help! I’m a Layman, by Kenneth Chafin (Word, 1966, 131 pp., $3.50); How to Give Away Your Faith, by Paul E. Little (Inter-Varsity, 1966, 131 pp., $3.50); and The Christian Persuader, by Leighton Ford (Harper & Row, 1966, 159 pp., $3.95), are reviewed by Robert L. Cleath, editorial assistant,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
Three new books dedicated to the proposition that all Christians are equally responsible for bringing the truth of Jesus Christ to the world just may have what it takes to spur ministers and laymen to vital evangelistic action. Although they write from different perspectives, Chafin, Little, and Ford all appeal to every believer to come out of his shell and witness effectively for Christ in every area of life. Showing a keen understanding of our time, these men advance a Christ-centered, Bible-based, man-related, and socially sensitive approach to evangelism that could, under God, alter the course of human events.
Kenneth Chafin is that rare seminary professor with the common touch that enables him to communicate effectively with laymen. Calling for “a new layman for a new age,” he stresses that the laity must use enlightened imagination to make Christ known in new ways—outside the church house, before student audiences, through community-service projects, by means of mass media, in witness to special groups, and with inspired use of the arts. Personal evangelism is underscored as the most important type of witness. Chafin wisely rejects the use of set techniques for manipulating people and advises laymen to follow Jesus’ pattern of dealing with people. Such witnessing takes place in the normal course of life, shows respect for personality, and uses flexible methods appropriate to the occasion.
At times Chafin’s book lacks originality, as he re-echoes themes that have been bouncing around American seminaries in recent months—Christianity vs. “folk religion,” the church in the secular city, the “creative tensions” of the Christian life, and the need for a “space age church” (whatever that is). Yet his sound ideas and his strong desire to inspire and equip believers for service to Christ and the world make this book valuable for the many laymen who need help in their Christian life and witness.
Paul Little’s book leaves few doubts of his skill at adapting the Gospel to intellectually oriented persons. His concepts of Christian witnessing, gained from years of experience as director of evangelism for the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, make this the most practical book on personal evangelism written in many years. It provides foundations, methods, and motivation for winning men to Christ.
Little shares Chafin’s disdain for mechanical procedures of witnessing but sets forth seven principles for action derived from Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman. He also dares to suggest how to handle ticklish social situations, such as saying grace before a meal in public, when diversionary tactics (“Shall we scratch our eyebrows?”) are often employed.
His best chapters are those on the basic facts of the Gospel, the most frequently asked questions and how to answer them, and the major needs of life that Jesus Christ satisfies. His consideration of worldliness is valid but somewhat out of place in this context, and might well have been omitted. Little concludes his 130-page volume by stressing the indispensability of faith and inner spiritual reality for effective witness in a pagan world.
As an associate evangelist with Billy Graham and the leader of many crusades in Canada, Leighton Ford discusses evangelism from a broader vantage point than the two previous authors. He implores believers to recover the urgency for evangelism and not be stifled by deadening influences of universalism, mechanical ecclesiasticism, distorted Calvinism, or a cold, eccentric evangelicalism. Evangelism must be a passion before it is a program. It must focus on Jesus Christ and be founded on biblical theology.
Writing in a style characteristic of Graham’s preaching—a lucid outline supported by abundant biblical references and pertinent illustrations—Ford highlights the need for a total strategy for evangelism. This strategy will have as its goal, the penetration of the whole world; as its agents, the whole Church; and as its tactics, every legitimate method. While Christians must not change their message, they must not refuse to change their methods. Ford cites Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost to show the context and content of the evangelistic message. The hallmarks of this sermon should characterize the evangelistic witness of today: it appealed to Scripture, centered in Christ, brought conviction of sin, and called for immediate and definite response. Ford also effectively refutes criticisms of mass evangelism. Finally, he shows how Christian conversion has a profound effect on both the individual life and society.
Ford is persuasive, not only because he writes with confidence and passion, but also because he is an able theologian who shows deep knowledge of the Bible, an awareness of contemporary theology, and an acute grasp of the demands of our day. He is a far cry from obscurantist evangelists of previous generations.
The books of Ford, Little, and Chafin should be read by every Christian at this critical hour when the Church must boldly assume its evangelistic responsibilities or watch the rapid erosion of Christian faith in the world. All three convey the urgent concern and honest realism the Church needs if it is to carry out its supreme task of world evangelization.
ROBERT L. CLEATH
No Water-Tight Compartments
Issues in Science and Religion, by Ian G. Barbour (Prentice-Hall, 1966, 470 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, professor of philosophy, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana.
Ian G. Barbour, with a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago and a B.D. from Yale, currently chairman of the Department of Religion and professor of physics at Carleton College, addresses himself to relating a specific philosophy of science to a specific type of religion.
Science and religion, he holds, cannot be separated into water-tight compartments because there is a single world of which they are both parts. One world requires an integrated, coherent worldview. God is the God of the physical world also, not merely of inner experience; therefore metaphysics cannot be avoided, although religion should not be tied too closely to the details of a metaphysical system.
Through chapters two to five Dr. Barbour surveys the development of European civilization from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. As might be expected from his academic preparation, he writes a very clear and competent account. Yet I would question his assigning the concept of mass to Galileo; and his liberal theology leads him to the blunder (honestly retracted by Emil Brunner in his later writings) that Luther and Calvin were “somewhat flexible in biblical interpretation. For the locus of authority was not the verbal text itself” (p. 29).
From the survey of science the author comes to the position of critical realism. The aim of science is understanding rather than prediction. He defends the use of models against Duhem and others, though he seems to undermine his argument by warning that models are not to be understood literally as visible, mechanical models. (Surely Lord Kelvin would have been puzzled by this qualification.) Against operationalism he argues that scientists discuss “evidence for and against the validity of a theory, not just for or against its use” (p. 166).
For those of us who incline toward operationalism these arguments are unsatisfactory (“Atoms are as real as tables,” p. 169); and the problem of the relation of religion to realistic science does not arise.
Neither does the author’s precise problem arise for those who do not share his religion. Barbour seems to be a sort of sociological Schleiermacher. Quoting Whitehead with approval—“the dogmas of religion are the attempts to formulate in precise terms the truths disclosed in the religious experience of mankind”—he asserts that “theology … interprets the experience of the worshipping community” (p. 210). “It was through response to events in history, not to theological principles [italics mine], that the community came into being” (p. 215).
To the reviewer this appears as a false disjunction, with the essential half denied. People can react to historical events in divergent ways. Some people rejoice at an event, some bemoan it. Those who individually adopt a particular interpretation may then form a community. The theological (or other) principles come first; the community, those who have these principles in common, comes second.
Part Three discusses indeterminacy, life and mind, evolution and creation, and God and nature. The problems are important, and the author’s discussion is keen, rather more difficult than the earlier section on physics. After all, biology is considerably more complicated than physics.
Two related limitations, however, remain: He is interested in only one view of science and one view of religion, and this produces certain liberal blind spots. Let the author believe, if he wishes, that “the doctrine of creation is not really about temporal beginnings” (p. 368); but surely he cannot properly represent this view as biblical. Similarly, how can a person who reads say “creation out of nothing is not a biblical concept.… At the opening of the Genesis story there is a primeval sea, a background of darkness and chaos” (p. 384)? The author must have been reading Hesiod by mistake.
Declaring that “foreordination is not compatible with the existence of open alternatives [to which proposition the reviewer agrees] … Man is free to reject God’s purposes.… Not all that happens is God’s will [a proposition which the reviewer and the Bible reject] (p. 457), Barbour stresses God’s immanence in natural processes, processes that are open and spontaneous because organismic. Nature is indeterminate; there are levels. “A metaphysics of levels [is] more consonant with ‘critical realism’ ” (p. 455).
On the whole, from a religious point of view, it is hard to see any great difference between this critical realism and the Hegelian immanentism that Barth so vigorously exploded. And one suspects that the undefined terms “organismic” and “levels” hide rather than solve some very old philosophic difficulties.
GORDON H. CLARK
Reading for Perspective
CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:
• Jesus of Nazareth: Saviour and Lord, edited by Carl F. H. Henry (Eerdmans $5.95). Sixteen evangelical scholars enter the current christological debate to assess the failure of Barthian and Bultmannian perspectives, and to present the case for the historical basis of biblical Christology.
• How to Give Away Your Faith, by Paul E. Little (Inter-Varsity, $3.50). A down-to-earth book on witnessing by an Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship leader who draws from his experience in ministering to college students and presents a biblically sound approach to personal evangelism.
• Unger’s Bible Handbook, by Merrill F. Unger (Moody, $4.95). A treasury of biblical data—commentary, historical backgrounds, textual criticism, maps, charts, and outlines—that will aid every student of Scripture.
Three Major Issues
Concilium, Volume 15: War, Poverty, Freedom, edited by Franz Böckle (Paulist, 1966, 163 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Edmund A. Opitz, staff member of The Foundation for Economic Education, and coordinator, The Remnant, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York.
A substantial publishing effort has followed in the wake of Vatican II. War, Poverty, Freedom is Volume 15 in a series designed to explore the many facets of a resurgent theology in the Age of Renewal. It opens with a brilliant short commentary by John Courtney Murray on the document, “The Declaration on Religious Freedom.” Fr. Murray here returns to some of the issues he treated at greater length in his little book, The Problem of Religious Freedom. Christian freedom is a gift of the Holy Spirit; it is to be asserted over against all earthly powers and also within the Church. The medieval doctrine of a monolithic sacred society has been outgrown and has been replaced by a “rightful secularity of society and State, as against the ancient sacral conceptions” (p. 9).
The parallel essay, which voices the Protestant position on freedom and tolerance, is by Roland Bainton, and is more hortatory than analytical. Professor Bainton believes in state neutrality toward all religious groups, arguing that “constraint of sincere conviction is incompatible with the mind of Christ” (p. 18). His conclusion is quite unexceptional, that “the principle of religious liberty calls for a spirit of moderation, respect and persuasion rather than coercion” (p. 29).
Everyone expects and tolerates a certain unevenness in both treatment and expertise in a symposium, and indeed the third and fourth papers stand in marked contrast to the first two. A Dutch Redemptorist teaching in Brazil writes of the Third World—those peoples who are neither of the West nor of the Russia-China-Cuba axis—putting his stress on Latin America. He calls for revolution in this sector, that is, “the building of a new order” (p. 35), and does not “exclude a priori the legitimate of temporary recourse to illegality and violence” (p. 42).
The yoke to be thrown off is a thing Fr. Snoek mislabels “liberal capitalism”; this is the villain “most to blame for the profound social irregularities of the present time” (p. 44). Fr. Snoek fails to realize that capitalism, in the Adam Smith sense of limited government and the free market, never secured a toehold in South America; cartelization was there from the beginning. A cartel is an arrangement between selected purveyors of commodities and a government that guarantees them a monopoly by excluding or limiting competition. It is akin to the mercantilism of a former day and is the antithesis of liberal capitalism. Today’s collectivist movements represent little more than cartelization carried to a bitter conclusion.
Fr. Snoek rightfully deplores the lot of the masses in Latin America, but when he tries to diagnose the causes of their misery he is mistaken. His remedy, in consequence, would only aggravate the disease. Parenthetically, must we not also in good conscience deplore the fate of the victims of Communist aggression—the millions who barely survive and the millions who have perished? Ecclesiastical concern for these people is muted, to say the least.
The famed French Dominican, Yves Congar, writes of “Poverty in Christian Life,” and the first half of his paper is a fine piece of exposition. But when he comes to the contemporary war on poverty, another Fr. Congar seems to take over. He claims that non-Communist countries are in the grip of an “economic system which, by itself, works for the increasing enrichment of the rich and the increasing impoverishment of the poor” (p. 65). Not so in Russia, for “it is an established fact that communism has set up, on the level of whole populations, a social system almost wholly free from the motives of personal profit and the pursuit of money” (p. 66). A ritual demurrer is inserted, acknowledging “grave denials of liberty and dignity,” but the alleged Communist hostility to religion is discounted. Christianity is a revolutionary thing, and the Communists are wrong in regarding it as merely a prop to an exploitive economic order.
In every system of privilege—the ancient regime, an interventionist economy, modern collectivism—a man’s economic status reflects his place in the power structure: wealth is a function of rule rather than a consequence of pleasing consumers. In a market economy, by contrast, the masses are the customers whose purchases have made many people well to do. It is mass consumption that makes mass production possible; to assert that the rich profit from the poverty of the poor, as does Fr. Congar, is to assert that sellers benefit from consumers who are too poor to buy!
After two papers of passing interest, the final fourth of the book is taken up by three bibliographical surveys of pacifism—in England, in Holland and France, and in Germany. Continental literature on peace and war is not readily accessible to the American reader, and the latter two summaries seem reasonably impartial.
Not so, however, the survey of English writings on pacifism. The author believes that “war is an issue which radically and communally is the test of whether Christianity is truly relevant or not … a matter of whether Christ himself is genuinely significant for this world or not” (p. 115). Thus, this survey appears to be one-sided, and a book like Ramsey’s War and the Christian Conscience, which does grapple seriously with the issues of war and peace but which does not come up with an all-out pacifist answer, is brushed aside with a slighting reference.
EDMUND A. OPITZ
The Need For Firearms Control
The Right to Bear Arms, by Carl Bakal (McGraw-Hill, 1966, 392 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by David O. Moberg, professor of sociology and chairman, Department of Social Sciences, Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota.
The daily average of gunfire killings by homicide, suicide, and accidents in the United States is about fifty, and the total each year is over 17,000. Over 750,000 such deaths have occurred since 1900. (By comparison, battlefield casualties in all wars of our nation from 1775 through 1965 totaled only 529,460, and 1,365 Americans died in combat in Viet Nam in 1965.) In addition, untold millions have been wounded.
When brutal slayings were reported in the news on December 2, 1958, the author, a magazine writer with military background, began a file that grew to 10,000 clippings of such items as “Boy, 1½, Shot Accidentally by Babysitter” and “Ex-Mind Patient Slays Four Sons, Husband and Self.” The actual or attempted assassination of seven presidents and frequent spectacular murders have helped to focus popular attention on this problem.
My first impression of this book with its red dust jacket and propagandistic tone was that it should be discounted as sensational yellow journalism. However, although it does plead a cause, it does so with a wholesome realism that shows Mr. Bakal is not an irresponsible single-cause reformer: “No law … is completely effective, but all the evidence, both from this country and abroad, indicates that licensing or registration requirements will reduce homicide, and cut other crimes as well as accidental tragedies and suicide, by making it more difficult for unscrupulous and irresponsible people to get guns” (p. 271). The book is an excellent, though popularized, case study of propaganda, lobbying, and social problems in our democratic society.
The carnage from gunfire has led to attempts to control the problem by law. With rare exceptions, chiefly of bills that were emasculated before passage, the firearms interests have successfully blocked such legislation. Despite the tremendous increase in population, the strengthening of law-enforcement agencies, and the fact that firearms are no longer a major means for obtaining food, “our firearm laws in most areas of the country are scarcely more stringent than they were in the frontier days. No other lobby can claim such a record in its particular sphere of interest” (p. 129).
In most states weapons may be purchased by children, criminals, the mentally ill, people seething with angry passion, the visually handicapped, and others with shocking ease and without adequate registration of the buyer’s identity, the gun’s serial number, and other information that would help law-enforcement officials control abuses of the right to bear arms.
The firearms lobby of conservation clubs, wildlife federations, ammunition and firearms manufacturers, and other organizations is headed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) with 700,000 registered members. Bakal describes in detail the tactics it has used since its founding in 1871. Though subsidized with federal funds and not registered as a lobby, the NRA centers many of its activities around serving as the “guardian and bulwark against the forces of anti-gun sentiment in the United States” and “lobbying against virtually all legislation that would in any way restrict in the slightest the sale and use of firearms” (p. 133).
Analysis of NRA tactics reveals specious logic, hypocrisy, and a sorry case of deceitful and unethical practices. Statements from the FBI and other sources are twisted by quoting out of context. For instance, the NRA makes it appear that criminologist M. E. Wolfgang opposes legal controls on firearms; but in fact he favors very restrictive legislation. Statistics are distorted to present a misleading picture of the relative scope of firearms deaths and other accidents. The lie that Hitler used firearms registration lists to disarm and conquer Europe and other lies are panned off as fact. Switzerland, “the nation of riflemen,” is applauded by the NRA as having “the lowest crime rate in Europe”; but investigation shows that eight European nations have lower rates of homicide, two have the same, and only six have higher rates. (Only four have higher suicide rates, and, aside from France, Switzerland has the highest rate of accidental deaths due to firearms.)
Although 78 per cent of the population favored requiring a police permit for the purchase of a gun, it was impossible to get Senator Dodd’s 1963 bill to control mail-order firearms out of committee. His 1965 bill was greatly distorted in a letter sent by the NRA to all its members. Requests that a new mailing be sent to correct mistakes were unheeded, and distortions were repeated in subsequent publications of the firearms lobby. Letters based on these misinterpretations descended by the tens of thousands upon congressmen, and the bill was quietly buried.
The NRA and other firearms interests have falsely claimed that bills to control firearms are part of a Communist conspiracy to disarm and conquer America, are supported by armed criminals, and violate the citizen’s constitutional right to bear arms. Bakal indicates clearly that none of these charges is justifiable. Article II of the Bill of Rights states, “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” It is a favorite among firearms fanciers, but they do not quote the first part. The right to bear arms is contingent upon the maintenance of a militia; is granted to “the people,” not individual persons; protects against a central tyranny by allowing for state militia; pertains to “bearing arms” for military or police purposes, not to “carrying weapons”; and in no way prevents the control of firearms by federal powers to regulate commerce, to tax, and to specify what arms are to be used by the militia.
Bakal’s book is not a flawless exposé, but the errors are few and unimportant in regard to his basic message.
In 1966 as in previous years the chances of new federal legislation to control firearms are very slim, although Senator Dodd’s bill as amended by the Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee still awaits action. Legislative lethargy reflects public apathy. As long as the NRA, weapons dealers, and manufacturers of firearms and ammunition drown out the voices of the law-enforcement officials who speak for realistic controls, the tragedy of lives needlessly taken by firearms will continue.
This book poses significant moral questions. What is the price of a human life? How much of our freedom to bear arms are we willing to give up in order to prevent the death annually of an estimated 10,000 persons whose lives would be saved by adequate firearms controls? Do we care enough to express our concern as good citizens in political channels that will offset the organized pressure of the gun lobby?
DAVID O. MOBERG
Playing It Straight
Courtier to the Crowd: The Story of Ivy Lee and the Development of Public Relations, by Ray Eldon Hiebert (Iowa State University, 1966, 351 pp. $6.95), is reviewed by David E. Kucharsky, news editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
The late Ivy Ledbetter Lee was the father of modern public relations, now a two-billion-dollar-a-year industry. His impact upon the Church may not be accurately gauged until many more years have passed, but of the basic fact of that impact there should be no dispute. The documentation is in this first biography of Lee, written by Dr. Ray Eldon Hiebert, head of the new Washington Journalism Center and chairman of the journalism department at American University.
Lee, the Georgia-born son of a Methodist minister, did not set out to influence the Church as such. The influence he had was mostly a by-product of his role in society as a whole. Before he died at the age of fifty-six, Lee had won the ear of an amazing number of the world’s most famous people, from Carnegie and Rockefeller to Hitler and Mussolini, to every president from Cleveland to Franklin Roosevelt. Basically he tried to persuade such men—with some success—that they should play it straight with the public.
The people of a democracy are able to make sound judgments, Lee would say, but only if they have access to the necessary information. A good press, on the other hand, is obtained not by bribing reporters with passes but by providing them with the information they need to write their stories and perform their jobs.
The most conspicuously religious aspect of Lee’s influence was his making twentieth-century Protestant liberal thought more palatable to the masses. On a broader scale, he made the whole Church more aware of the mass-media potential and the means by which it could be tapped.
Lee was the man most responsible for the fame of Harry Emerson Fosdick. He got the idea of circulating Fosdick’s sermons widely among top American opinion-makers, something that at that time few preachers had thought of doing. Lee wanted Rockefeller to underwrite the sermon distribution; and when to avoid controversy the mogul deferred, Lee did it himself.
Lee also directed publicity of a group that championed the syncretistic Re-Thinking Missions by W. E. Hocking, and Heibert concludes that the effort had much to do with the success of the group. In addition, Lee used his offices to aid the fund-raising for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York and the Riverside Memorial Church, where Fosdick ultimately landed after having to leave the Old First Presbyterian Church during the fundamentalist-modernist controversy.
The extent of Hiebert’s research on Lee is impressive. The material is arranged well and plainly presented. Here and there Hiebert strains a bit to uphold Lee against criticism; but he does ascribe to his subject “a tragic flaw, perhaps,” namely, Lee’s “wholehearted acceptance of the traditional democratic belief in the innate goodness of man and the American virtues of working hard, thinking shrewdly, and rising to the top.”
Lee tried to stretch his great optimism and penchant for conciliation even to the forces of Hitler in the early thirties. Though absolved by the House Un-American Activities Committee, he suffered a smear in putting too much faith in the German people.
Nonetheless, by the time of his death in 1934, Lee had made an indelible impression on society. Indeed, says Heibert, “much of the public relations field has not yet caught up with Ivy Lee,” for “much that parades under the title of public relations today is nineteenth century press agentry in bankers’ clothing.”
In recent decades religious institutions, taking their cue from the rise of public relations in government and business, have come a long way toward better rapport with the secular media. There persists, however, a claim to privacy that is unbecoming the Church. Practitioners of church public relations favor for the most part more candor. Ecclesiastical officialdom is more comfortable making decisions behind doors marked, “Closed to the Press.”
DAVID E. KUCHARSKY
Doors Off Their Hinges
African Diary, by Wayne Dehoney (Broadman, 1966, 157 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by George A. Dunger, professor of missions, North American Baptist Seminary, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Mr. Dehoney has done a fine job of writing his African diary. And by doing so he has performed a valuable service for everyone interested in that continent, especially those concerned with the African and with missions.
African Diary covers a large geographical area and gives intimate glimpses of large population centers as well as the hamlets by the wayside, the church, the school, the hospital. Dehoney writes of such places as Nairobi, Kenya; Kampala, Uganda; South Africa; the Congo; Lagos, Nigeria; Accra, Ghana; and Monrovia, Liberia. Occasionally the history of the land and the people, the economy and culture, spring to life and make reading the diary a realistic experience for the reader.
The book is a diary in the real sense. It reveals the things done and seen by the author—and they are exciting enough! It comes alive when, in conversation with the East African pastor or the President of Liberia, the author reveals himself as a Christian who cares, or, elsewhere, when he rather innocently speaks of “jiggers, little worms that lodge themselves under the toenail of barefoot children, laying and hatching out other worms.”
This diary is readable, realistic, informative, and stimulating. Contemporary Africa comes to life with intimacy and warmth of heart—the kind that reflects the love of the Christ who cares. The book makes one want to go to Africa, to be friends and fellow workers with God and the African—for the advancement of the African and for the glory of God.
The author reveals that he has caught one of the most significant facts of Africa when he says, “… the doors in Africa are not only open, they are off their hinges!” Cultural changes, racism, Communism, neo-colonialism, missions, paganism, Islam, poverty, and great intellectual and spiritual hunger—these challenge the Church to enter with the transforming power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. African Diary is a renewed call to missions in a continent in need.
GEORGE A. DUNGER
Book Briefs
Luther’s Works, Volume 8: Lectures on Genesis Chapters 45–50, translated by Paul D. Pahl (Concordia, 1966, 360 pp., $6). Luther’s faith and scholarship shine brightly in this readable translation, the eighth volume in a series of fifty-five.
Law and Conscience, by Franz Böckle, translated by M. James Donnelly (Sheed & Ward, 1966, 139 pp., $3.75). A comparison of Roman Catholic and Protestant views on law and gospel, natural law, and ethics, by a Catholic professor.
Life in the Spirit: Christian Holiness in Doctrine, Experience, and Life, by Richard S. Taylor (Beacon Hill, 1966, 221 pp., $2.50). A plea for personal holiness based on inward affinity and outward conformity to the will of God.
What’s Best for Your Child—and You, by David Goodman (Association, 1966, 192 pp., $3.95). Practical, warm-hearted wisdom on discipline, adolescence, schooling, morality, family tensions, and other matters of parent-child relationships.
Invitation to the Old Testament, by Jacob M. Myers (Doubleday, 1966, 252 pp., $4.95). A non-technical discussion for the serious Bible student.
Concilium, Volume 16: Is God Dead?, edited by Johannes Metz (Paulist Press, 1966, 181 pp., $4.50). Roman Catholic and Protestant authors tackle the task of justifying faith in the face of contemporary atheism.
A Classified Bibliography of Literature on the Acts of the Apostles, compiled by A. J. Mattill, Jr., and Mary Bedford Mattill (E. J. Brill, 1966, 514 pp., 44 guilders).
Living Creatively, by Edmund G. Kaufman (Faith and Life Press, 1966, 169 pp., $2.95). Essays of a long-time college president who wrote with an eye on students.
The Lively Function of the Gospel, edited by Robert Bertram (Concordia, 1966, 197 pp., $5). Essays in honor of Richard R. Caemmerer on his completion of twenty-five years as professor of practical theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.
The Lord Is My Council: A Businessman’s Personal Experiences with the Bible, by Marion E. Wade, with Glenn D. Kittler (Prentice-Hall, 1966, 178 pp., $3.95). The founder of a multi-million-dollar business tells how biblical principles have guided his life. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale will enjoy this.
Foundations of a New Humanism, 1280–1440, by Georges Duby (World, 1966, 222 pp., $21.50). The story of the art of the fourteenth century as it moved from religious control to secular freedom. With its handsome reproductions of classic art, this volume is itself a thing of beauty.
Paperbacks
Devotions and Prayers of Richard Baxter, compiled and edited by Leonard T. Grant (Baker, 1964, 119 pp., $1). Classic devotions for all adult Christians.
Israel: A History of the Jewish People, by Rufus Learsi (World, 1966, 715 pp., $3.45). A Jewish author writes of the faith, land, and people of Israel from Abraham to the present and claims that the accounts of Jesus’ death “strain ordinary credulity to the breaking point.”
Christ and the New Nations, by Martin Jarrett-Kerr, C.R. (Morehouse-Barlow, 1966, 120 pp., $1.95). A Britisher argues for Christian involvement in “culture-change.”
The Christan Parent Teaches about Sex, by Edsel Schweizer (Augsburg, 1966, 102 pp., $1.95). Good advice on how the Christian parent should approach sex instruction.
Judaism, by Stuart E. Rosenberg (Paulist Press, 1966, 159 pp., $.95). A Rabbi describes the growth of Judaism, its worship, and the religion of the Jewish home. Informative reading for Christian people.
A Bibliography of New Testament Bibliographies, by John Coolidge Hurd, Jr. (Seabury, 1966, 75 pp., $2.50).
Natural Law and Modern Society, edited by John Cogley (World, 1966, 285 pp., $1.75). Robert Hutchins and his intellectual riot squad from the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions have a go at defining and applying the concept of natural law: that a moral order exists which man can discover through reason.
That I May Know and Teach Me Thy Way (Christian Reformed Publishing House, 1966 and 1965, 137 and 192 pp., $1.50 each). Excellent evangelical material, the first for twelve- and the second for ten-year-olds.
More Than a Man Can Take: A Study of Job, by Wesley C. Baker (Westminster, 1966, 154 pp., $2.25). A breezy treatment of Job as a poetic-drama of the collective experience of many generations of the Jewish community; written in eight days by one whose contemporary theological position entertainingly dulls the cutting edge of Job.
