Window On The World
The World Book Encyclopedia (Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1967, 20 volumes, $182.30, deluxe binding), is reviewed by David E. Kucharsky, associate editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
An encyclopedia can break a budget, pad a library, illustrate a sermon, settle an argument, help make up for a scanty education, or prove you’re not an obscurantist. The World Book Encyclopedia can also add prestige to a home or a pastor’s study, though not as much as Britannica. But the reason for owning an encyclopedia is that regular referral cultivates the mind. And no encyclopedia invites continued use more than World Book.
World Book is currently the world’s best-selling and most widely used encyclopedia. It is a family encylopedia that is comprehensive and scholarly without being stuffy, and it is a delight to read. It costs less than a color TV or a good set of china or wall-to-wall carpeting, and it rates financial priority over all these.
But there is the theological problem. Can the evangelical trust World Book for balanced treatment of key issues in Christian thought and experience? Perhaps no better test could be applied than the question, “What think ye of Jesus?” Judge for yourself:
“Jesus Christ was the founder of the Christian religion. Christians believe that He is the Son of God who was sent to earth to save mankind. Even many persons who are not Christians believe that He was a great and wise teacher. He has probably influenced humanity more than anyone else who ever lived.…”
It is a succinct handling, though attributive in describing the most significant aspect of Christ’s person. The following passage from World Book’s article on the Reformation has a much surer construction:
“In Germany, the Reformation began in the heart of an Augustinian monk, Martin Luther. Luther based his thinking on the Epistles of St. Paul. They led him to conclude that only faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, rather than priests, sacraments, or good works, could ensure salvation. He also concluded that only the Bible, not the pope, was infallible, or free from error.”
It is gratifying to report that World Book editors have the help of some competent evangelical scholars. Among the 2,700 authorities who shape the content are Bruce M. Metzger of Princeton Theological Seminary, Earle E. Cairns of Wheaton College, Gleason L. Archer of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and Merrill F. Unger of Dallas Theological Seminary, all of whom are in the conservative Protestant tradition.
Jewish scholars Cyrus H. Gordon and Nelson Glueck are among the consultants and contributors. Top editorial rank among religion specialists belongs to William A. Clebsch, associate professor of religion at Stanford.
Assessing current ideologies, World Book takes a hard line against Communism:
“We call Communism totalitarian because it is total in two ways. (1) It controls and dominates all human thoughts and actions. (2) It uses any means to achieve its goals. Communism tries to regulate every part of a person’s daily life. It has no respect for family life or for religion.”
The article on evolution is a fairly typical modern secular treatment, but it is supplemented with a column headed “Unsolved Problems of Evolution.” A three-point indictment of the theory of evolution on religious grounds includes the assertion that “if man is in the process of evolving from a lower state, sin tends to become mere imperfection, and the Gospel of redemption from the guilt of sin tends to lose all meaning.” Objections to evolution on scientific grounds are noted also.
World Book is largely non-committal on the historicity of the Bible, except to cite the consensus of scholars. For example, the article on Isaiah says, “Scholars have agreed that it was written by a number of persons.” The repeated indication that current scholarly opinion is the final word is a weakness of World Book.
The big theological cleavages of our day have not yet found their way into this encyclopedia. The article on Karl Barth, however, does include an analysis of his thought, and runs a marked contrast to the article on Paul Tillich, which is mere biography.
A most rewarding aspect of World Book is its attempt to simplify the complex and to show rather than tell. Some may be repelled by what they consider oversimplification, but one can well argue that this extreme is preferable to incomprehensibility (an option more common than one might think).
World Book offers good Canadian coverage. It digs into obscure topics as well as offering fresh insights into the familiar. It includes review questions and helpful bibliographies, and is self-indexed. The current set is lavishly illustrated—25,000 illustrations with 7,300 of them in color and 1,900 maps. An exclusive feature is that its content is based on exhaustive research of school curriculums and informational needs in libraries and homes. It is also up to date and is continually being revised, going to press two or three times each year. And the World Book annuals help to keep the set current.
Churches would do well to seize the service opportunity offered by the fact that World Book is available in Braille and large-type editions. The Braille edition, a praiseworthy sign of the leadership of World Book publishers, is the largest project ever accomplished in Braille.
That the evangelical is taking an increasingly important part in the cross fire of intellectual conflict is evident in World Book. To be sure, the encyclopedia does not have anything resembling the Christian world view undergirding its treatment of the various disciplines. But here and there encouraging recognition is given to evangelical thinking. The entry on the ecumenical movement, for example, refers the reader to an article on the Evangelical Alliance as well as to one on the World Council of Churches. As evangelicals continue to make gains in the realm of ideas, recognition by the secular media will increase.
Christ Or Buddha?
Buddhism and the Claims of Christ, by D. T. Niles (John Knox, 1967, 96 pp., paper $1.75), is reviewed by Lit-sen Chang, lecturer in missions, Gordon Divinity School, Wenham, Massachusetts.
In the West there are increasing signs of a revolt against the uniqueness of Christianity, and a chase after exotic religions. There is an attempt to set aside the finality of Jesus Christ and to reduce Christianity to an ethnic basis in harmony with non-Christian religions. In the wave of humanistic syncretism and the advance of the philosophy of meaninglessness, this book, first published in Ceylon in 1946 for catechumens with Buddhist background, has become timely for the West, where Buddhism has been gaining converts.
Dr. D. T. Niles, author of many books on Christian missions and Oriental religions, is Ceylonese by birth, but he received his higher education in the West and has traveled extensively throughout the world. Out of this background that combines Eastern religious experiences with Western academic training, he is able to present Christianity in fresh thought forms as it encounters the essential tenets of Buddhism. By becoming a Buddhist to the Buddhists, he strives to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ in language familiar to and significant for Buddhists, with an understanding and friendly spirit, yet without compromise.
In the strategy of missions today, there are two extreme approaches. The “eclectic” approach overemphasizes general revelation at the expense of special revelation, and stresses the similarities of all religions, overlooking their striking differences. This approach inevitably leads to syncretism and creates the erroneous view that all religions are simply different paths to the same God and that the Church is “latently present” (as Paul Tillich puts it) in paganism. Thus it sets aside the uniqueness of Christianity. The “exclusive” or “expulsive” approach denies the value of general revelation and its relation to special revelation, and thus weakens the basis for meaningful discussion with non-Christians. This approach tends to suspend Christianity in the air and makes it appear irrelevant to the life of the world.
Niles’s approach is neither wholly “eclectic” nor wholly “exclusive.” Without attempting syncretism, he uses the cardinal concepts and idioms of Buddhism to convey the Christian message to Buddhists so as to help them “enter into a personal relationship with God in Christ Jesus.” Without completely denying the truth in Buddhism, Niles points out that it is the truth as man sees it from his predicament as man. It is only a protest, and no protest, however profound, can be turned into a true religion or can give hope to this perishing world.
Reading For Perspective
CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:
• The Wycliffe Historical Geography of Bible Lands, by Charles F. Pfeiffer and Howard F. Vos (Moody, $8.95). An informative text, excellent photographs, and useful maps highlight this reference work on ten Bible lands.
• Run While the Sun Is Hot, by W. Harold Fuller (Sudan Interior Mission, $3.95). Fuller’s challenging incidents and stories, gleaned from his travels to SIM fields in Africa, will create greater appreciation for the work of missions.
• Set Forth Your Case, by Clark H. Pinnock (Craig, $1.50). These studies in Christian apologetics offer solid evidence for the integrity of the historic biblical Gospel and show it to be rationally compelling and vastly superior to existential aberrations in contemporary theology.
Starting without a God and from a false perspective on life, Buddhism denies the relevance of the divine side of life. Once God is ruled out, death becomes the boundary of life. So Buddha, who claimed to be the “Enlightened One,” had never really been enlightened, for he knew only the law of death and not the Way of Life. The basic difference between Christianity and Buddhism, according to Niles, is this: Buddha saw that life was meaningless and set out to rescue men from this meaninglessness; Jesus, on the other hand, saw that life could become meaningful in God and set out to call men to share this meaning. “I am come,” he said, “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
Although this book offers a valuable refutation of Buddhism, it is not without weakness and distortion. As Niles strives to use the cardinal Buddhist terms to convey the Christian message, readers should always be aware of the risk of identifying Buddhism with Christianity. For instance, the author says: “For a Buddhist, taking ‘Pansil’ seems to have the same emotive value as the taking of Holy Communion for a Christian”; but actually the two rites have nothing in common.
In the latter part of the book, Niles says: “God forgives when I repent—that is Old Testament teaching; God has forgiven, before I repent—that is New Testament teaching (Romans 5:8).” This view dismembers the organism of Scripture. For God has a unified approach in his redemptive plan for mankind. Both in the Old Testament and in the New, God’s grace always precedes man’s action; nevertheless he also demands man’s repentance. When Niles speaks of redemption, reconciliation, justification, and propitiation, he emphasizes in each case that “it has been done.” Although he uses such terms as “conversion” and “evangelism,” he gives them special connotations. So to illustrate conversion he uses not the case of the prodigal son but rather that of the leper who had already been healed and simply “came back and gave God thanks.” This implies universalism, the dangerous notion that all men have already been saved—a great distortion of the Gospel.
Subjectivism Run Riot!
The Church Unbound, by Norman K. Gottwald (Lippincott, 1967, 188 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Edward J. Young, professor of Old Testament, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
What is the proper relation between Church and culture? By carefully examining the relation between Israel and the nations “in biblical terms,” Professor Gottwald has produced an interesting and thought-provoking discussion of the question. On the basis of a study of certain passages from the Old Testament, he considers the Church as distinguished from culture, culture as attracted to the Church, the Church incorporating culture, and culture approximating the Church. This historical study is then made the basis for a consideration of Church and culture in our day.
That the study is grounded upon acceptance of the dominant school of prophetic study is bound to affect the author’s conclusions and his application of prophetic teaching to the present day. I myself am unable to accept any view of the prophets that does not regard them as spokesmen, who not only thought they were messengers (Bote) of the Lord, but had in actual fact received special revelation from the one living and true God. Therefore I cannot agree with the basic understanding of the prophets found in this work. I cannot accept the view that there was an “Isaiah of the exile,” for the whole denial of Isaianic authorship of the prophecy is based on a misunderstanding of the teaching of the book as well as on a flat repudiation of what the New Testament says about the book’s authorship. Nor can I accept what appears to be a false universalism. “If the covenant circle includes me in spite of my limitations and rebellion, in principle and intent it includes everyone.”
Gottwald’s view of the Church is not that of the New Testament. The Church, he says, is not limited to an institution or to Christians; “the church’s invisibility also refers to the activity of men in culture at large, which is in the character of the church but which is not consciously identified with the historic church.” Thus “the civil rights revolution may be church. Community organization of the poor may be church. Centers for dope addicts and alcoholics may be church. Student activities to gain constitutional rights on campus and to acquire a significant share in educational policy-making may be church.” But enough! “In each case the criterion for judging participation in causes must be the activity of God as best the committed church can discern it.” This is subjectivism run riot.
Strangely enough, the “activity of God” seems to be limited to causes that are presently dear to the hearts of political liberals. Would the “activity of God” ever be seen, for example, in an effort to protect the rights of property owners or to protect hard-working taxpayers from being compelled to support wasteful “welfare” projects that seem principally to benefit the shiftless, the irresponsible, and the indifferent? I have my doubts.
Far more serious, however, is the fact that this work does not recognize that man is a fallen creature who loves darkness rather than light. No human church or humanitarian effort can ever meet the deep-seated need of fallen man. “Cease ye from man,” said the Holy Spirit through Isaiah, “whose breath is in his nostrils.” From the easygoing humanism of Gottwald’s work we turn to the words of the late J. Gresham Machen: “Human goodness will avail nothing for lost souls; ye must be born again.”
Once Over Lightly
Highlights of Christian Missions, by Harold R. Cook (Moody, 1967, 256 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, professor of Bible, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.
This book has a special purpose: to give Moody Bible Institute students a quick survey of missionary endeavor from the days of the apostles. Within the limits the author sets, he fulfills his purpose.
The volume is divided into three sections. One treats the expansion of Christianity historically—in ninety pages. The treatment is consistent with the purpose: it is panoramic and thus sketchy. The second section deals with home missions and is oriented primarily to the American scene. It is quite general and is descriptive rather than analytical. Some basic problems are mentioned, but not much by way of solution is offered. The third part of the volume sketches the geography and missionary work of the Church in Africa, Asia, and so on. A short bibliography is appended.
The author hopes his book will be used in local congregations and has written in non-technical language. It is a good book for the lay reader who wants a quick, easily read overview of missionary endeavor. It is not useful to the informed reader or the specialist.
The publisher has done the author a disservice by overstating the usefulness of the volume on the jacket. It is hardly a “valuable resource volume,” and to call it “a comprehensive view of missionary endeavor which includes little-known men and events as well as those more widely reported” is to embarrass the author, whose own preface says something quite different. The blurb writer might have spent his energy more profitably in editing the book itself.
Conviction, Compassion, And Style
A Varied Harvest: Out of a Teacher’s Life and Thought, by Frank E. Gaebelein (Eerdmans, 1967, 198 pp, $4.95; also in paper, $2.45), is reviewed by Emile Cailliet, Stuart Professor Emeritus of Christian Philosophy, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.
The browser who grazes among the shining leaves and twigs of our day’s inflationary output of printed matter is likely to ignore this title, possibly with the thought that here is another bundle of essays and addresses gathered together by one of those emeriti who cannot bear to think that any of their productions might be lost to posterity. Very well, then! Let prejudice have its way. We judge books. By certain books we are judged. Frank E. Gaebelein’s A Varied Harvest is a book for discriminating readers.
It has rightly been said that “the style is the man.” A personality comes to expression in these pages—one of the strongest, most persuasive leaders of evangelical Christianity in our day. From his early childhood his nurture has been Holy Writ. For forty years he was headmaster of the Stony Brook School, and during these years he came to grips with the problems raised by Christian education and youth, and coped with the intricacies of public affairs and social concern, of culture and taste. When he retired from academic life, CHRISTIANITY TODAY invited him to serve as co-editor, which he did from 1963 to 1966. He has occupied many pulpits in churches, colleges, and universities. Throughout this rich career he has been led to achieve a most impressive integration of evangelical thought in action, and it is this that comes to expression in A Varied Harvest.
No wonder the book is so strongly articulated. The sturdy, impelling ways in which paragraphs and chapters press forward the case for a working faith well bespeak the character of the fully surrendered soul who tells the story. We see him plotting a strategy for Christian education, taking full advantage of the educating power of the Bible, rallying men of good will with the outcry, “What are we doing to our youth?,” pleading for Christian compassion, exalting the Christian’s intellectual life, pleading for a recovery of taste, enthusiastically magnifying the Church and its ministry at work and, above all, the truth of God’s Word and the majesty of Jesus Christ.
Well might the reader get out of breath keeping pace with the man on his way, illustrating as he does Kierkegaard’s description, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” Happily he gives the reader an opportunity to go with him on a vacation, and the section on mountain climbing makes for pure delight. But even then, the evangelical teacher allows his companions no rest from Christian instruction. The memory of a treacherous ascent of the East Ridge of the Grand Teton, alternating between difficult rock and precipitous snow as a storm howls along the sky, invites the “lesson” that “sometimes God puts us in places of severe testing.” There is no harm in this to be sure, except that one wishes at times through these particular pages that happenings might be allowed to speak for themselves. A point is reached where lecturing carries its stumbling block within itself. But then, to quote Kierkegaard again: “Purity of heart is to will one thing.”
Jaspers’ Wistful Dialogue
Philosophical Faith and Revelation, by Karl Jaspers (Harper & Row, 1967, 394 pp., $15), is reviewed by Stanley Obitts, assistant professor of philosophy, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.
Karl Jaspers’ Philosophical Faith and Revelation, translated by E. B. Ashton, is the eighteenth volume in Harper & Row’s prestigious “Religious Perspectives” series. The purpose of the series is to “present the numinous reality within the experience of man.” This work, described by Hannah Arendt as “the only authentic philosophy of religion written in the twentieth century,” is the final and systematic form of the octogenarian Jaspers’ almost wistful dialogue within himself between the siren call of the Christian believer’s cognitive revelation of God and the unescapable but philosophically limiting method of modern science.
Jaspers decides that the true philosopher seeking the whole of Being will neither ignore the two sides of the dialogue nor relinquish to either one his freedom of intellectual struggle. The withdrawnness of “transcendence” requires a “philosophical faith” in which the choice of what a man “will live by and for is his to dare and to destine,” declares this German existentialist. As anyone familiar with Jaspers knows, the notion of a “philosophical faith” is designed to avoid, on one hand, the irrationalism of Kierkegaard’s religious faith, with its “leap,” and, on the other hand, Heidegger’s curtailment of metaphysical speculation about the Being of the things-that-are to transcendental horizons projected by the self.
The more rational and optimistic Jaspers sees the self’s reading of its “general situation-limits” as directing its attention away from the “Encompassing” that it is and toward the other “Encompassing” that is Being itself, of which the self is a part. This latter, the Transcendent, is, as Heidegger would agree, not man’s object; but neither is it, contrary to Heidegger, just man’s creation or “interpretation.”
The person rightly beginning his quest for truth with the facts of empirical existence handled so well by the sciences soon discovers these to be only appearances of a Being continually eluding his grasp. The signs of the Transcendent’s manifestations must be read as “ciphers.” At this point the unwary may be deluded by the pretense of a historically factual revelation, the truth of which is authenticated by the witness of the Holy Spirit. But being unable to predict or comprehend revelation, reason cannot sit in judgment on it. God’s revelation, if it came, could never be enmeshed by the general concepts employed in philosophy. Hence, philosophy’s faith springs neither from the factual source and exact procedures of the sciences nor from the faith in revelation of theology. It is its own source; it is “philosophical faith”; and as faith in reason, it is affected by its opposite, faith in revelation. The two faiths must forever be willing to learn from each other, counsels Jaspers, even though neither one will be fully scrutable to the other.
He eloquently portrays the nihilistic bondage of man resulting from the scientific superstition and technological dominance of our day. But how free is a man, really, who is told that God is beyond all objects, “ciphers,” and categories of thought? If, as Jaspers claims, Being speaks in the ensuing silence as Transcendence “reconstitutes itself for Existence” and reaches those who have a “readiness for existential action in the world” within and without, philosophy being a “liberating force in its negations,” then what keeps Jaspers’ “philosophical faith” from becoming either a kind of epistemological voluntarism or else an incipient mysticism? If twentieth-century philosophy of religion in the Occident is as beholden to the post-Kantian tradition as Jaspers appears to think, then it is little wonder that the “honest” generation is giving Eastern religious thought such a serious look. But perhaps Augustine’s use of the Christian revelation as a basic source for philosophy, binding together philosophy and faith in revelation, is still a viable alternative.
The Cullmann Slant
Oikonomia: Heilsgeschichte als Thema der Theologie, edited by Felix Christ (Herbert Reich Evang. Verlag, Hamburg, 1967, 412 pp., DM 40), is reviewed by Ralph P. Martin, lecturer in New Testament studies, University of Manchester, England.
The name of Oscar Cullmann is internationally known among students of Christian theology. It is a further tribute to his fame and scholarship that after the publication of an important Festschrift to honor his sixtieth birthday there appears this volume to mark his sixty-fifth year. The earlier volume was entitled Neotestamentica et Patristica and was written by a representative group of international scholars. This new book covers a wider field, from Old Testament to dogmatics, from ecumenical studies to practical theology. And most of the writers are, it seems, scholars who have come under Cullmann’s direct influence. Indeed, most of them write from a distinctive Cull-mannian slant, expressed by the conviction that the magic word to solve the mysteries of the Bible and theology—and even some thorny matters such as the veneration of Mary—is Heilsgeschichte (salvation history).
Of the thirty-six essays (written in English, French, and German) that make up this tribute, we may select the following as representative, though not necessarily the most important. The opening contribution (in German) surveys the three motifs of Old Testament theology and history in the light of Heilsgeschichte, and finds that the ideas of creation, election, and exhortation in the Law were capable of perversion by exposure to the clangers of paganizing, ritualizing and legalizing. A discussion of the Temple-theology by Lloyd Gaston throws light on a central issue in Jesus’ ministry and early Christianity, while Robert Meye’s treatment of the messianic secret in Mark attempts to take the matter beyond where Wrede left it. Other studies in biblical theology are competent and full of insight. There are treatments of the wedding in John 2 and of the imagery of the vine in John 15, as well as of Paul’s apostolic awareness and teaching.
In the area of historical theology I. J. Hesselink offers a new understanding of Calvin, whose notion of “suspended grace” provides the clue to his view of the Old Testament as a preparation for Christ. The points of contact between second-century gnosticism and Bultmann’s theology (alleged by Cullmann) are examined (in German) by W. Rordorf. (A translation of this important study is in New Testament Studies, 13). T. F. Torrance has a long, erudite article on Clement of Alexandria’s knowledge of God. A critical inspection of Cullmann’s functional Christology is made by David Wallace from the standpoint of the Chalcedonian formula, though his discovery of “Hebrew metaphysical affirmations about God” sounds strange.
Two studies on the Virgin Mary make for unusual reading, and the attempt to find her a place in the heilsgeschichtlich program is not overly convincing. On the level of practical theology there are contributions on preaching as storytelling (in German), the place of the sacraments, and even the Passion music of Bach.
In all, this is an interesting compilation in honor of a prominent theologian, even if no single essay can be judged world-shaking.
Book Briefs
Dictionary of Christian Ethics, edited by John McQuarrie (Westminster 1967, 366 pp., $7.50). A useful book mostly by non-evangelical contributors, on ethical terms, concepts, and viewpoints; bibliography references reflect few conservative works.
Count It All Joy, by William Stringfellow (Eerdmans, 1967, 101 pp., $3). Against the backdrop of the Book of James, the author-attorney offers somewhat unsatisfying observations on wisdom, doubt, and temptation. Along the way he takes potshots at sectarianism as secularization, evangelistic crusades, pietism.
The Ongoing Purpose of God, by William H. Clark (California Lantern Press, 1967, 147 pp., $3.95). Strong sermons that bristle with faith and conviction from a respected Presbyterian missionary and pastor.
Hostage in Djakarta, by Harold Lovestrand (Moody, 1967, 215 pp., $3.95). A TEAM missionary vividly describes his imprisonment in an Indonesian jail. An inspiring story of a man’s faith and God’s faithfulness.
Alcohol Problems: A Report to the Nation, prepared by Thomas F. A. Plaut (Oxford, 1967, 200 pp., $4.75). That controversial report!
Peloubet’s Select Notes, 1968, by Wilbur M. Smith (W. A. Wilde, 1967, 432 pp., $3.25).
Christian Worship: Its Theology and Practice, by Franklin M. Segler (Broadman, 1967, 245 pp., $4.95). A sensible and practical book on worship: its biblical foundations, its theology and psychology, its forms and order.
The Apostolic Fathers, Volume V, by William R. Schoedel (Nelson, 1967, 130 pp., $5). A new translation with commentary of Polycarp to the Philippians, Martyrdom of Polycarp, Fragments of Papias.
In Defense of the Faith, by W. A. Criswell (Zondervan, 1967, 88 pp., $2.50). In five lucid sermons the pastor of one of the world’s largest churches confronts atheist, liberal, Communist, materialist, and sinner with the Gospel. Preached during the 1967 Easter season.
Paperbacks
Outside the Gate, by Carl McIntire (Christian Beacon Press, 1967, 351 pp., $1). A distorted and unreliable attack on the World Congress on Evangelism and particularly on its leaders, set to Carl McIntire’s theme song, “Only the ACCC is left” (or right)!
For God’s Sake Faugh!, by Nelvin Vos (John Knox, 1967, 75 pp., $1.50). From a Christian perspective, Vos examines the vital role of laughter in life. He views human laughter as a means of self-discovery and a balm of healing because God really has the last laugh. Incisive, stimulating, and entertaining.
A Comparison of World Religion, by Henry J. Heydt (Christian Literature Crusade, 1967, 112 pp., $1.75). An oversimplified survey of the history and literature of eleven world religions that compares their teaching on important topics and shows Christianity’s distinctives.
A Reader in Contemporary Theology, edited by John Bowden and James Richmond (Westminster, 1967, 190 pp., $1.95). A sampler of selections by Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians (Barth, Bultmann, Rahner, Van Peursen, Buber, and others) that consider biblical interpretation and the doctrine of God.
The Church: Design for Survival, by E. Glenn Hinson (Broadman, 1967, 128 pp., $1.95). A well-balanced book that rejects the current emphasis on secularization of the Church and points up the need for an adaptable and flexible Church that views its present mission in the lights of its biblical and historical backgrounds.
For All the World: The Christian Mission in the Modern Age, by John V. Taylor (Westminster, 1966, 92 pp., $1.45). A call for involvement by the whole Church in God’s mission to the world through proclamation, witness, and service.
Barth’s Soteriology, Bultmann’s Demythologized Kerygma, and Brunner’s Dialectical Encounter, by Robert L. Reymond (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967, 41 pp., 30 pp., 29 pp., $.75 each). A scholar committed to the authority of an infallible Bible offers three penetrating critiques of crucial aspects of the views of Europe’s three most influential twentieth-century theologians. Recommended.
The Reluctant Worker Priest, by Eugene P. Heideman (Eerdmans, 1967, 106 pp., $1.45). Experiences of a Protestant pastor who takes an industrial job and finds it an avenue to Christian ministry.
