The Occult: A History, by Colin Wilson (Random House, 1971, 601 pp., $10), The Occult Explosion, by Nat Freedland (Putnam’s, 1972, 270 pp., $6.95), Probing the Unexplained, by Allan Spraggett (World, 1971, 256 pp., $6.95), What Witches Do, by Stewart Farrar (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1971, 211 pp., $5.95), The Weird World of the Occult, by Walker Knight (Tyndale, 1972, 128 pp., $1.25 pb), Demons, Demons Demons, by John Newport (Broadman, 1972, 159 pp., $4.95), Christian Counseling and Occultism (fifteenth edition), by Kurt Koch (Kregel, 1972, 297 pp., $4.95 pb), Occult Bondage and Deliverance, by Kurt Koch (Kregel, reprint 1970, 198 pp., $1.25 pb), Mind, Man and Spirits, by J. Stafford Wright (Zondervan, reprint 1971, 190 pp., $.95 pb), Christianity and the Occult, by J. Stafford Wright (Moody, 1972, 160 pp., $.75 pb), and Psychic Phenomena and Religion, by H. Richard Neff (Westminster, 1971, 176 pp., $3.50), are reviewed by J. Gordon Melton, director, Institute for the Study of American Religion, Evanston, Illinois.
America is in the midst of an occult-psychic-charismatic explosion, and this explosion of paranormal phenomena indisputably has some significance for Christian faith. Just what that significance is, is the subject of a wide range of books. Is the psychical an alternative to Christianity, a part of its essential nature, or just some natural event like the mixing of sodium and chlorine to make table salt?
The wide range of aspects of the psychic and the wide range of views on it create much confusion for the casual reader just trying to locate solid and clear information. By its very nature—mysterious, unknown—the psychic becomes an arena for exploitation, half-truth, and the unthinking mixture of scientific exploration and religious speculation.
For an overview of the world of the paranormal, three new books are outstanding. The authors approach the field in different ways, but all are open and sympathetic to their subject.
In The Occult, A History, Colin Wilson approaches the psychic community with the perspective of history. Beginning in the ancient world, he traces the major threads in the psychic fabric in the West. He postulates a Faculty X, an instinctive ability in man, which others have called the psychic sense. Man’s creativity is connected with his ability to reach and cultivate this Faculty X.
At a shallower level is Nat Freedland’s report on the contemporary psychic scene, The Occult Explosion. Within these 270 pages will be found references to almost every significant person and group in almost every aspect of psychic research, spiritualism, the occult, magic, and some of the new Eastern religions that emphasize meditative consciousness. I found only two weaknesses in the work. First, Freedland relies almost completely on New York and Southern California for his examples. While these are the most developed areas of psychic exploration, they are by no means the only ones. Second, he is not careful to differentiate between the varying stances of the many groups. The American Society of Psychical Research and the National Spiritual Association of Churches are concerned about the same phenomena, but they differ widely in attitude and manner of approach.
The third worthwhile survey to appear in recent months. Probing the Unexplained, was written by a Toronto newspaperman and talk-show host who has become a journalist-expert on the psychic. Allan Spraggett surveys not the whole psychic community but the major issues of debate within it. The latest confirmation of astrological claims, the power of prayer to affect the growth rate of plants, psychic discoveries in Russia, and precognition are all covered in this very readable, wit-enlivened account.
Witchcraft appears to be much larger than it actually is because it makes good copy for secular media and is an agreed upon enemy of the conventionally religious world. What Witches Do by Stewart Farrar is an attempt, by a practicing witch, to tell the witches’ story straight. Farrar is a journalist who joined the coven of Alex Sanders, reputed king of the British witches.
While this book is not recommended reading for the average layman, the serious student will find valuable information for understanding witchcraft. Much Christian polemic confuses witchcraft with Satanism, black magic, and black masses. Witchcraft is an old, pagan, polytheistic cult. Instead of being directly anti-Christian, as the Satanists are, it is pre-Christian and stands in relation to Christianity much as Zoroastrianism or Hinduism does. If one is to present the claims of Christ to those involved in the revived paganism (their own word for it) of witchcraft, a book like Farrar’s is a good sourcebook, to be used much as a missionary in Egypt might use the Koran.
The theological enterprise has been caught with its blind eye showing by the revival of mystic religion in a non-Christian form. The psychic provides a whole new realm within which to theologize, but as yet the best theologians still regard psychical data with scorn. The Christian community has been left with a mass of shallow literature to guide it in its contact with the occult. The Weird World of the Occult by Walker L. Knight is a good example. Originally written as a series of magazine articles, the book betrays only a surface knowledge of psychic reality and includes a number of factual errors and half truths. If the occult world was really as Knight portrayed it, it could never find popular appeal. His theology is just as simplistic.
Demons, Demons, Demons by John P. Newport rises slightly above Knight’s efforts. Newport is more careful with factual data and has a much wider knowledge of psychical research. Despite the title, the author has a good theological understanding of the “demonic” and the more than remote possibilities of demonic subjection of individuals. He does, unfortunately, confuse anti-Christian Satanism with non-Christian witchcraft, and then the whole of the psychic community is unfairly judged in the light of this small minority of members.
Three authors have risen above all others in their ability to interpret the psychic to the Christian community: Kurt E. Koch, J. Stafford Wright, and H. Richard Neff. Koch, a German theologian, writes out of his vast experience as a pastoral counselor dealing with problems that arise from tampering with the occult. His Christian Counseling and Occultism and Occult Bondage and Deliverance are highly recommended for use in seminary counseling courses.
Koch points out that theology has nothing to fear from parapsychology, for it can only gain from more exact knowledge. Such knowledge can save one from naively accepting natural psychic events as spirit encounters. On the other hand, the pastor does learn of spirit encounters through troubled parishioners who come to him for counsel. He should deal with such disturbances by helping the person toward wholeness in Jesus Christ, bringing to bear firm knowledge of the psychological complexities involved. Techniques for helping those afflicted with “occult subjection” are given in the counseling book.
Koch is also one of the few to recognize the psychic nature of Pentecostal phenomena—going so far as to label Oral Roberts and William Branham mediums. While this label is much too strong, there can be little doubt that the phenomena of tongues, healing, clairvoyance, telepathy, and even the visualization of spirits (angels?) are the same within the Pentecostal-charismatic community as within the psychic-occult community. Only the context and theology differ.
The writings of J. Stafford Wright are among the finest theological reflections on psychic phenomena ever written. Wright, a product of ghostly England, has had his own psychic experiences, including encounters with spirit beings. Accepting the non-supernaturalness of most psychic events, he approaches the psychic through a thoroughly evangelical anthropology. He asks questions about the nature of man in the light of his psychic sense. Wright shows a thorough grasp of the psychic world in his use of terms, in his ability to separate the psychic and the occult, the scientific and the crypto religious, and in his familiarity with the best writers on psychic reality from Jung to Hereward Carrington.
Not content merely to quote condemnations of spirit phenomena, Wright hits at the true weakness of spiritualism: “Why dabble with inferior spirit powers when we can go to the Fountainhead?” He understands the essential gnosticism of “Christian” spiritualism that denies the incarnation in favor of the idea of a Christ-principle within. Wright understands also the rising interest in psychic reality as a rejection of the reduced world of materialism and is quick to offer the wholeness and fullness of the Christian life and hope as an alternative to both.
If one book can be called the single best book on Christianity and the occult world, it is Psychic Phenomena and Religion by H. Richard Neff. Neff, a Presbyterian minister, recounts his growing interest in the psychic and describes its value in understanding and interpreting the Christian faith. Beginning with the best data of contemporary psychical research, Neff moves on to consider this research in light of effective prayer, a ministry of healing, our faith in an unseen world, and the essentially spiritual nature of man. Of particular interest is the final chapter, in which Neff sums up his beliefs about the psychic and his own faith and answers objections.
Like Koch and Wright, Neff approaches the psychic first with the objectivity of the scientist looking for facts. Unlike Koch and more so than Wright, Neff follows his science lessons by positively looking for the valuable facts of psychic reality to help him better understand and appropriate both life as God’s creature and the fullness that comes through Jesus. He bases his psychic paradigm, not on the few Satanists and witches, but on those who have a brush with the psychic world and find it a useful tool to deepen Christian experience, as did Wesley, Fox, and others before them. The growing membership of such groups as the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International, the Order of St. Luke, and Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship is ample testimony to this possibility.
NEWLY PUBLISHED
Early Christian Art, by Pierre du Bourguet (Morrow, 219 pp., $35). The first four centuries of the Church (before imperial dominance) receive well deserved attention in this large-page art book. There are sixty-one color plates. Highly recommended for theological libraries and Christian art lovers.
No Pat Answers, by Eugenia Price (Zonervan, 145 pp., $3.75). A stimulating, freshly thought-provoking discussion of some of the most painful questions Christians face. She includes such issues as grief, the elderly, death, and failure. A bright new look at the darker side of living.
Church Union at Midpoint, edited by Paul A. Crow, Jr., and William Jerry Boney (Association, 253 pp., $7.95 pb). An ecumenical line-up (Marty, Rose, Fackre, for instance) in an overpriced volume that purports to be a “past, present, future” study of COCU. The book is really trying to revive interest in an all but dead movement.
Guidebook For the New Christian, by Ernest Gordon and Peter Funk (Harper & Row, 145 pp., $4.95). An insightful, concise handbook for all new believers and those in need of renewal. Provides sound help and honest discussion on such topics as witnessing, living in community, growing in faith, and knowing God’s will.
Bunglers and Visionaries: Christian Labour at the Crossroads, by James Olthuis and Gerald Vandezande (Wedge [229 College St., Toronto 2B, Canada], 38 pp., $1.50 pb), A Christian Political Option, by Bob Goudzwaard (Wedge, 66 pp., $2.75 pb), and Worship and Politics, by Albert Gedraitis (Wedge, 92 pp., $2.75 pb). More representatives of the evangelical social thought associated with Toronto’s Institute for Christian Studies.
Your Child and Religion, by Johanna L. Klink (John Knox, 247 pp., $5.95). “Cute” sayings by Dutch children intersperse this scrapbook-style collection of divergent quotations and essays about children.
Foundations of Mission Theology, edited by SEDOS (Orbis, 168 pp., $3.95). SEDOS, a Catholic interinstitutional organization founded after Vatican II, was designed to provide its members with information, documentation, and studies to help them in their work. More than ten theologians from various countries have contributed to this study of the emerging national church. Conference discussion is included with individual discourses.
Pastoral Care With the Poor, by Charles F. Kemp (Abingdon, 128 pp., $2.45 pb), and Poor People and Church-Goers, by William H. Jennings (Seabury, 128 pp., $2.75 pb). These volumes are too theoretical; they lack specific suggestions for applying the theory. As in such areas as race and aging, the time is past for the Church to talk theory about poverty. It’s time for faith with works to take over.
Our American Catholic Heritage, by Albert Nevins (Our Sunday Visitor, 383 pp., $20). Well illustrated review of the positive highways and byways. For Catholics who want a pat on the back.
Reinhold Niebuhr: Prophet to Politicians, by Ronald H. Stone (Abingdon, 272 pp., $8). A balanced, thorough, and generally sympathetic treatment of America’s politically most influential modern theologian; does not deal in any detail with Niebuhr’s theological position.
What’s a Nice Church Like You Doing in a Place Like This?, compiled by Wayne Robinson (Word, 125 pp., $3.50). Essays by such men as William Coffin, Gregory Baum, and Robert Raines explore conditions of the “successful church” of the seventies. The essays range widely without penetrating deeply into the issues.
The Explo Story, by Paul Eshelman (Gospel Light, 116 pp., $1.45 pb). The understandably enthusiastic general director of Explo ’72 relates the story of what some have called the most significant Christian event since Pentecost. Ample photographs, astonishing statistics, and graphic illustrations help to recapture the historic gathering in Dallas.
A Colloquy on Christian Education, edited by John H. Westerhoff, III (Pilgrim, 254 pp., $5.95). A significant if eclectic collection of articles addressing a three-dimensional crisis faced by Christianity: in faith, in the local church, and in Christian education. It is intended to engender hope as well as stimulate thinking and planning for the future.
One Woman’s Liberation, by Shirley Boone (Creation House, 230 pp., $4.95). The other half of her husband’s A New Song.
Protestantism, by Martin Marty (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 368 pp., $8.95). Impressions of religious practices, stressing the convergences rather than differences, arranged under such topics as the Bible, baptism, race, the arts, man’s destiny. A valuable bibliographic essay takes 100 pages.
Give the Winds a Mighty Voice, by Daniel P. Fuller (Word, 247 pp., $5.95). The biography of Charles Fuller, written by his son. A well told testimony of one of God’s great men in this century.
Groups, Gimmicks, and Instant Gurus, by William Coulson (Harper & Row, 181 pp., $5.95). An informed critic explores the distortions and values of encounter groups, intending to restore some of the original freshness that has been lost in the proliferation of techniques, gurus, and recognized centers for human potential. Readable and provocative.
A Study of History, by Arnold Toynbee (American Heritage, 576 pp., $35). A revised and abridged text of the famous historian-philosopher’s masterwork; beautifully illustrated.
Contemporary Christian Trends, edited by William M. Pinson, Jr., and Clyde E. Fant, Jr. (Word, 217 pp., $5.95). An eclectic collection of perspectives on what is happening in the Church. Elton Trueblood, Martin Marty, and Donald McGavran are only a few of the contributors on such topics as “The Ecumenical Movement,” “Missions Today and Tomorrow,” and “Pastoral Care in a New Age.” Informative and wide-ranging.
On Becoming a Musical, Mystical Bear: Spirituality American Style, by Matthew Fox (Harper & Row, 156 pp., $5.95). Not on how to become a bear but on how to make prayer “a radical response to life.” Believing that the Church is catering to children instead of adults, Fox prescribes a prayer life that may be musical and mystical but is certainly not scriptural.
Nothing Left to Lose: Studies of Street People, by Jeffrey D. Blum and Judith E. Smith (Beacon, 143 pp., $6.95). Two Harvard/Radcliffe students give a fresh and poignant description of encounters between counselors (the students) and clients (the street people) in a paraprofessional counseling center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The Supernatural, by J. P. Kenny, S. J. (Alba House, 150 pp., $4.95). A thorough, rather technical presentation of the concept of the supernatural in Christian theology, especially medieval and Roman Catholic thought. Ends in an appreciative analysis of the anti-supernaturalist (as usually understood) thought of Teilhard de Chardin, with an attempt at mediation between Teilhard’s ideas and the teachings of traditional Catholic scholasticism.
The Big Umbrella, by Jay E. Adams (Baker, 265 pp., $3.75 pb). Attempts a biblical, common-sense approach to counseling. Adams says that sin, not sickness, is at the root of emotional disturbance. He provides case studies to illustrate his contention. His treatment of shock, grief, pain, and failure provides important background for anyone interested or involved in Christian counseling.
Word Studies in the New Testament, by M. R. Vincent (two volumes, Associated Publishers and Authors [4309 Kirkwood Hwy., Wilmington, Del. 19808], 1,222 pp., $17, $9 pb). Nearly ninety years old (but here newly typeset), this verse-by-verse explanation for the English reader of selected Greek words and phrases has proved to be of enduring value.
Is There Healing Power?, by Karl Roebling (Cook, 112 pp., $.95 pb), and Your Power to Heal, by Harold Sherman (Harper & Row, 246 pp., $6.95). The first is a potpourri of healing ministries alive today. Tells in a lively, unusual style just what’s happening in the field in which Oral Roberts was once the biggest name. The second insists that the power for healing lies within all men—not just Christians.
American Civilization, edited by Daniel Boorstein (McGraw-Hill, 352 pp., $35). Sumptuous coffeetable book in which thirteen authorities (including Marty on religion) discuss various aspects of American life.
The Biology of the Ten Commandments, by Wolfgang Wickler (McGraw-Hill, 198 pp., $6.95). From a fundamentally behavioral stance, this author posits a biological foundation for most ethical and moral standards. In the animal world he finds norms analogous to the Ten Commandments—norms dealing with aggression, intercommunication, property rights, and sexual partnership. A surprising but unscriptural thesis.
Children of Doom, by John W. Drakeford (Broadman, 143 pp., $4.95), and That New-Time Religion, by Erling Jorstad (Augsburg, 143 pp., $2.95 pb). Drakeford writes about the Children of God, interspersing his comments on the group with historical comparisons of other religious communes. A rather favorable treatment of a dangerous sect. One wonders if Drakeford knows enough about the children to write even a short book. Jorstad brings together most of the material written on the Jesus movement, and creates a short resource-type history. He footnotes copiously.
Real Righteousness?
The Meaning of Righteousness in Paul: A Linguistic and Theological Enquiry, by J. A. Ziesler (Cambridge, 1972, 255 pp., $17.50), is reviewed by Donald W. Burdick, professor of New Testament, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.
A glance at the subtitle of Ziesler’s monograph rightly suggests that the book was not designed for bedtime reading. It was the author’s Ph.D. thesis at London University and is now published as the twentieth volume in the “Monograph Series” of the Society for New Testament Studies.
Ziesler teaches New Testament at Trinity College, Auckland, New Zealand. As groundwork for this study he thoroughly analyzed the Hebrew and Greek terms of righteousness in the Old Testament and other pre-Pauline Jewish writings. He found that the Hebrew and Greek verbs tsadiq and dikaioo generally are used in a forensic sense while the noun and adjective forms are usually ethical and behavioral in meaning. The forensic uses, however, do not describe an imputed, contrary-to-fact righteousness: when a person is declared to be righteous, it is because he is in fact righteous.
With this investigation as a background, Ziesler then proceeds to analyze the concept of justification and righteousness in the writings of Paul. His argument is: first, that Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith is the doctrine traditionally held by Reformed theologians; and second, that Paul also had a doctrine of ethical or behavioral righteousness through faith that is inseparable from justification by faith. Ziesler ties these doctrines to the idea of the “Corporate Christ.” The believer is in Christ, in the new humanity, or, to put it differently, he is in the body of Christ, the Church. This relation involves dying and rising with Christ and thus means power to live a new life of righteousness.
All of this sounds very traditional until we examine the author’s position in greater detail. In the first place, Ziesler does not actually hold to the full Reformed position of justification by faith. He denies the positive aspect of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer, and thus reduces justification to its negative aspect of acquittal. He rejects the idea that God imputes righteousness to those who are not in fact righteous, referring to such a suggestion as a fictional view of justification.
In the second place, the author uses the term “righteousness” to express what has traditionally been included in the doctrine of progressive or experiential sanctification. He insists that justification (acquittal) is necessarily accompanied by righteousness—not imputed righteousness, but the righteousness of “leading a new life in Christ.” Since this is true of the believer, he can correctly be declared righteous.
In reality, Ziesler’s position is not far removed from the Wesleyan view that in justification God not only declares the believer to be righteous but actually imparts righteousness to him. Nor is the author’s conclusion far from the Roman Catholic doctrine that “justification is both an acquittal and a making righteous in the full ethical sense.”
Help For Helpers
Pastoral Care in the Modern Hospital, by Heije Faber (Westminster, 1972, 148 pp., $4.95), Pastoral Care and Pastoral Theology, by Ian McIntosh (Westminster, 1972, 160 pp., $5.50), Holiness and Mental Health, edited by Alfred R. Joyce and E. Mark Stern (Paulist, 1972, 135 pp., $2.25 pb), and Door of Hope, by Louise Long (Abingdon, 1972, 189 pp., $2.95 pb), are reviewed by Robert N. Schaper, dean of students and associate professor of practical theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.
The influence of Seward Hiltner in pastoral theology is evident in two recent books on pastoral care. To one he writes a foreword. The other is dedicated to him. The first, Pastoral Care in the Modern Hospital, is the more useful to the pastor. Faber clearly analyzes the problems of the hospital, the medical team, the patient, and the minister. Most of all he helps clarify the pastoral role and the ways in which the pastor can move between the patient and his special needs and the hierarchical and often impersonal staff of the hospital. Faber says that the doctor should in all cases be the one to acquaint the patient with the seriousness of his situation, and that the minister should be the companion of the sick in this discovery.
The other work, Pastoral Care and Pastoral Theology, gives a fairly detailed account of a number of conversations in a hospital between the author and a husband and wife. Related observations and analyses are presented under the headings “Pastoral Care” and “Pastoral Theology.” It is difficult to see the benefit of the detailed analysis for the average minister, and the material borders on the picayune. Moreover, Dr. McIntosh admits that he is beyond the pale for one who adheres to a confessional type of Reformed theology (what other kind could there be?) and that his “pastoral theology” is shaped by evidences from pastoral care. This makes the book of interest only as a demonstration of the work of a skilled, sensitive, slightly modified Rogerian.
I found most interesting and helpful Holiness and Mental Health, a small collection of essays from the Journal of Pastoral Counseling. Although the orientation is Roman Catholic, the helps for pastoral counseling are more widely applicable. In good biblical fashion the authors emphasize wholeness as a major facet of holiness. The goal for the articles is to help open the ways in which the individual—more precisely, the Christian—can rise above the restrictive conditioning that an unhealthy society may have imposed upon him and his aspirations.
The articles are of rather uneven quality, but the book is worth its price if for nothing more than the article by Joan Bel Geddes Ulanov, “Charity Really Does Begin at Home—With Oneself.” Her pilgrimage—often hindered by religion, unfortunately, and assisted by psychotherapy—speaks loudly to many questionable drives for “holiness.” How many can or should echo her complaint, “I wasn’t getting any ‘nicer’ as a result of getting ‘holier’ ”? The minister very much needs to keep a critical watch over the brand of holiness to which he calls himself and his congregation. Other essays, on such topics as conformity, normal and neurotic religion, and counselor responses, are of some help. “The Grace to Be Well,” by the noted Catholic theologian Gregory Baum, is an interesting indictment of asceticism as a basic contradiction of justification by faith.
Louise Long’s Door of Hope is purportedly for all who counsel, but its major thrust is for those in service to the more deeply disturbed. Miss Long writes to describe what to look for rather than how to deal with it, but it is always difficult to separate these. Although it is amazing to find her offering an almost uncritical rehearsal of Freud as the pattern for understanding problems of the human psyche, she does offer many excellent examples of wise counseling, as well as some good attempts to link these to various Bible stories or principles.
Contentless Mysticism
The Other Dimension: A Search for the Meaning of Religious Attitudes, by Louis Dupré (Doubleday, 1972, 565 pp., $10), is reviewed by Clark H. Pinnock, professor of theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.
This large book is an extended study of the dimensions of religious experience in relation to the continuing secularization of our culture and the critical condition of the traditional faiths. Its author is professor of philosophy at Georgetown University and is president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. Despite its length—not altogether justified, in my opinion—we are informed that it is “no more than an introduction.”
Dupré is convinced that religious institutions, practices, and past ideas are in trouble, but holds simultaneously that religious concern is more alive now than in any other period since the sixteenth century. “To situate religious faith and its essential aspects of human life has been the main objective of this study.” He aims to understand the religious act, not as a simple experience, but as a complex movement by which the mind discovers a new reality that, though lying beyond the phenomenal and contrasting with it, ultimately integrates all reality in a higher synthesis.
The question that impelled Professor Dupré to his study arose out of the tension he experienced between the need for faith to be the meaning factor of existence, a need difficult to fulfill in the secular oriented life of the present, and the impossibility for faith to survive if relegated to the status of a particular aspect of life.
On the one hand, the author accepts the notion that religion is not needed to uphold the basic values of a society or to support social institutions. Modern life can operate quite nicely on its own. On the other hand he accepts without hesitation the idea that faith can have an all-integrating function. There is something missing in contemporary experience. People are beginning to feel once more that their lives cannot be truly human without another dimension. What Christian thinkers must do (and Dupré addresses himself to the general, learned public, not the strictly philosophical world) is to interpret faith in a way that meets the peculiar challenge of our times.
This book is something of a Catholic parallel to Langdon Gilkey’s Naming the Whirlwind, which also seeks to show that the radical secularity of modern life does not exclude the dimension of transcendence. And because it begins with human experience and ends with a demythologized revelation it cannot avoid culminating in a contentless mysticism.
Reviewing this volume was wearisome to the flesh. At first this was due to the author’s habit of touching upon every major thinker and subject that figure in the intellectual history of recent times, interspersing his discussions with proverbs in Latin, Dutch, German, and Italian, without however driving toward a view of faith which was recognizably Christian or particularly intelligible. But as I plodded ahead it became increasingly clear just how various Dupré’s idea of faith is. He is another Catholic author who, with Bultmann’s demythologizing of the New Testament for his guide, has begun his pilgrimage to the contentless mysticism of the East. We cannot speak of what God is in himself. There are no supporting evidences that might validate for us the truth claims of religion. We must not commit ourselves to biblical teachings as they stand, but must drive toward the deeper existential meaning of its mythical symbols. “All communication from God bears the mark of ultimate incommunicability.” We are not surprised to discover that the last third of the book is devoted to texts out of the East.
This book is yet another sad monument to the move within modern Catholicism toward the theological ambiguity that has been the blight of protestantism. It will add still more confusion to the American church of the Roman tradition.
IN THE JOURNALS
The Autumn, 1972, issue of Abingdon’s quarterly Religion in Life has a very interesting article on ‘The New Evangelicalism,” by Donald Bloesch. Most current evangelical theologians are mentioned, along with many thinkers and movements from previous generations. (201 8th Ave., S., Nashville, Tenn. 37202; $1.50/copy.)
Theological Studies, the Jesuits’ quarterly, devotes more than 150 pages of the September, 1972, issue to articles and bibliographies on recent developments in the genetic revolution and their ethical dimensions. (Box 1703, Baltimore, Md. 21203; $2.50/copy.)
Some Christian artists have recently begun publishing a quarterly, For the Time Being … The first issue includes poetry, visual art, and reviews. To encourage this venture and obtain a subscription, join the Fine Arts Fellowship (Box 1269, Grand Rapids, Mich. 49501; $10/year).
Institutional libraries will want to consider subscribing to a new monthly abstract journal, The Alcoholism Digest. More than 1,200 summaries per year are planned of articles and other publications that “are informative and relevant about detection, treatment, counseling, and rehabilitation of alcoholism.” (Box 6318, Washington, D. C. 20015; $75/year.)
Christians who have a special interest in Israel but who do not read Hebrew readily will welcome the appearance of Immanuel. The emphasis of this semi-annual journal is on making available English descriptions and summaries of recent Hebrew books and articles on the Bible, Jewish-Christian relations through the ages, and current religion in Israel. Adherents of both Judaism and Christianity are on the editorial board. (U. S. subscriptions to Robert Dugas, 31550 Linden, Fraser, Mich. 48026; $3/year.)
