The Real Old-Time Religion
Common Roots by Robert Webber (Zondervan, $8.95, 256 pp.) is reviewed by Jan Dennis, general editor, Good News Publishers, Westchester, Illinois.
Robert Webber, a professor in the Bible department at Wheaton College, has written Common Roots with the firm conviction that evangelicalism must be revitalized if it is to continue as a life-giving force in contemporary Christianity. Webber applauds evangelicalism for grasping the central message of Christianity (the necessity of conversion and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ) and for preserving it in what he calls the “evangelical spirit.” But too often this evangelical spirit has been prevented from receiving its full expression by structures that are deficient or defective. Despite signs of evangelicalism’s robust health, Webber isolates three deadly viruses within it: modernity—doctrinal, liturgical, and ecclesiastical innovation posing as apostolic belief; historical amnesia—neglect of the 1500 years of Christianity preceding the Reformation; and over-enculturation—an uncritical appropriation of secular methodologies and structures that tend to drive out biblical ones.
Where should evangelicals look for revitalization? To the historic orthodoxy of the church of the second through fifth centuries. Why there? Because, says Webber, “the best insights of the early church … were … apostolic” (p. 8). Initially, the early church completely identified itself with the teachings it had received from the apostles. Because of its proximity in time and outlook on the gospel events, the early church profoundly understood the significance of the redemptive activity of God in Christ and expressed this understanding in its faith and practice. Indeed, Webber believes the faith and practice of the early church as manifested in its ecclesiology, worship, theology, mission, and spirituality was nothing more, and nothing less, than the visible expression of the evangelical spirit. He is not so much concerned to prove this as to lay it before our eyes by holding a mirror up to the life of the early church and letting us compare what we see with our own experience.
The greater part of the book examines the five areas mentioned above—ecclesiology, worship, theology, mission, and spirituality—and calls for evangelicals to recover the early church’s outlook, understanding, and visible expressions of these. For the majority of evangelicals, who are probably unfamiliar with this period of the church’s life, Common Roots will be nothing short of revelatory. Those more familiar with the early church will perhaps be even more impressed with the book’s wealth of information and provocative analysis.
Especially significant is the section on worship. Here the Lord’s Supper is clearly shown to be the central activity of the church as a worshipping community. For the early church, eucharistic worship was a mystical reenactment and representation of God’s redemptive work on behalf of man. This emphasis was lost to evangelicalism under the influence of Protestant scholasticism. The latter produced a false propositionalism that affirmed only what could be proved by rational analysis. (Though Webber does not mention this, the bitter fruits of this anti-supernatural rationalism are still being harvested in the higher critical, demythologizing, and positivistic schools of Protestant thought.)
One thing clearly emerges from the book: if evangelicalism and the early church share the evangelical spirit, as Webber assumes, they have given visible expression to it in quite different ways. Given these dissimilarities of expression, one wonders if the faith and practice of the early church and the faith and practice of evangelicalism are indeed informed by the same principles. This question receives insufficient attention in the book. If the principles informing evangelicalism and the early church are different, evangelicals can scarcely be expected to adopt the faith and practice of the early church without accepting its underlying principles.
Many, perhaps not so sanguine as Webber, have noted that a real separation exists between evangelicalism and the historic orthodoxy of the early church, and have identified it as springing from a different conception of the relationship between the gospel and the church. This different conception is itself a result of a different understanding of the way the gospel endures in time. Evangelicalism, following classical Protestantism, conceives of the gospel’s enduring in time by the sovereign, charismatic, ad hoc operation of the Spirit calling to Christ individuals who then under his Lordship band together in local churches. While historic orthodoxy does not discount the reality of the Spirit’s working in this fashion, it also sees the gospel enduring through a visible, permanent, inviolable expression or axis, with the church, divinely founded and organically linked to the redemptive acts of God in Christ. These links are the apostolic ministry, the apostolic teaching office, and the sacraments. Right or wrong, these conceptions were already present and operative in the early church, according to the consensus of scholarship, both Protestant and Catholic.
Though different, the principles informing evangelicalism and historic orthodoxy are not necessarily in conflict. Indeed, a growing number of Christians feel the two understandings are harmonizable. But whereas many (e.g., Newman, Chesterton, Ronald Knox, W. E. Orchard, whose book, From Faith to Faith, is the definitive work on this theme) have seen historic orthodoxy as a fulfillment of evangelicalism and have subsequently left Protestantism to join one of the catholic communions, afterwards advocating a kind of evangelical Catholicism, Webber suggests the process can be reversed: perhaps evangelicalism can become a full expression of the faith by applying to its life the structures of historic orthodoxy, becoming a kind of catholic evangelicalism. If it could do this without diluting its distinctive character, the prospect for healing the rent Body of Christ would be greatly enhanced. Because of the pioneering steps it takes in that direction, this book should be read by every evangelical concerned about the future of the church.
Archaeology And The Old Testament
The Bible in Its World by Kenneth A. Kitchen (InterVarsity, 168 pp., $3.95 pb) is reviewed by Samuel J. Schultz, professor of Bible and Theology, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.
If you are interested in updating your knowledge of the Old Testament in the light of recent discoveries, here’s the book for you. It even includes a concise report on the Ebla excavations in Syria that have only recently been widely publicized.
Kenneth Kitchen, lecturer in Egyptian and Coptic at the University of Liverpool, shares with the reader his expert knowledge and infectious enthusiasm in relating the recent spectacular discoveries to OT times and its literature. This volume provides an excellent complement to the author’s earlier work, Ancient Orient and the Old Testament (InterVarsity, 1964).
With an awareness of a century of controversy from Wellhausen, who allowed no historicity for Abraham, to Albright, who considered Abraham a travelling trader, Kitchen evaluates the current skeptical reaction by such men as T. L. Thompson and J. van Seters. Against the background of second and third millennium documents currently available, he suggests that these narratives are not legend or fiction but are closest to the historical class of literature. Kitchen is cautious in relating archaeology to the Scriptures. For example, rather than flat assertions, he simply observes that anyone in Joseph’s position would have been in close contact with writing, and that in the Middle Bronze period when alphabetic writing seems to have been invented, there is “the attractive (but totally unproven) possibility of patriarchal traditions being put into such script, in West-Semitic, from the seventeenth/sixteenth centuries B.C. onwards, as the basis of what later we now find in Genesis” (p. 74).
Kitchen’s scope is wide. He summarizes what we know about the most ancient cultures as they have developed since 10,000 B.C. He surveys and evaluates the literature of the “brilliant third millennium c. 3200–2000 B.C.” and the creation and flood traditions of later periods so often related to biblical accounts by modern scholars. Against this background he asserts that “… the unit Genesis 1–11 best finds its literary origins in the early second millennium B.C.” and that the “earliest narratives in Genesis appear to be neither late concoctions nor mere bowdlerizations of Mesopotamian legend” (p. 35).
Can Solomon be associated with the Book of Proverbs? Kitchen grants that “no-one can prove that Solomon collected, wrote or inspired” Proverbs 1–29. But his “possible authorship of one complete work (1–24), drawing on older wisdom, and role of collector of material copied-up later (Hezekiah, 25–29) are entirely feasible suppositions in the context of the literary, linguistic and conceptual world of the forty or so other works of the kind known to us today” (p. 107).
For students, pastors, and anyone else who wants a better understanding of the Old Testament in its world this book is essential.
Jesus And The Year Of Jubilee
The Favorable Year of the Lord: A Study of Jubilary Theology in the Gospel of Luke, by Robert Bryan Sloan, Jr. (Schola [Box 14317, Austin, TX 78761] 213 pp., $3.25 pb) is reviewed by James Parker III, visiting assistant professor of New Testament interpretation, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, North Carolina.
In what was originally his doctoral dissertation at Basel, Sloan has attempted to answer a currently popular question of whether Jesus declared a Year of Jubilee in his Nazareth sermon in Luke 4:16–30.
He begins with a discussion of the theological assumptions behind the provisions of the jubilee-sabbath year legislation. In this context Sloan also examines the eschatological features of the jubilee legislation, features which account for the eschatological use of the code in Daniel, the Book of Jubilees, Qumran (11Q Melch.) and later rabbinic literature. In my judgment, he convincingly shows that the idea of Jubilee indeed stands behind the Nazareth reading by Jesus of Isaiah 61:1–2a, 58:6d. For Jesus, the proclamation of “the favorable year of the Lord” is the proclamation of the long-awaited eschatological year of Jubilee. The very important implications of this for understanding Jesus’ self-consciousness and his “preaching of the kingdom” are treated, as well as the pervasiveness of the idea of Jubilee in Luke.
The final chapter will undoubtedly provoke the greatest stir among those who see the year of Jubilee as a model for present Christian social involvement. Sloan does not accept John H. Yoder’s conclusion in The Politics of Jesus that the year of Jubilee as proclaimed by Jesus is a purely social event. Likewise he rejects the traditional view that it refers only to “spiritual” release, that is, the forgiveness of sins. Rather the year of Jubilee as proclaimed by Jesus refers to both. He argues for the necessary interrelatedness of the “social” and “spiritual” dimensions of the year of Jubilee. The discussion of the theological relationship between these two oft-polarized aspects of Christian mission is very helpful and worthy of careful consideration by those who are prone to limit the message of Jesus to one or the other.
This topic is of particular interest today because many groups and movements take Luke 4:16–30 as their rallying cry without a clear understanding of what the passage is actually teaching. It is unusual when a technical scholarly work has such immediate and direct application to contemporary discussions of Christian mission. I hope that the author will soon provide a popular, more easily readable version of this superb book, so that a wider audience can be challenged by his thesis.
Succinct But Solid
Commentary on the New Testament, by E. M. Blaiklock (Revell, 271 pp., $9.95) is reviewed by Lanney Mayer, Wheaton, Illinois.
Why another commentary on the New Testament? For one thing, Blaiklock’s comments are simple enough not to overwhelm. Reflecting his years of preparing notes for Scripture Union, the retired classics professor from New Zealand presupposes no background or technical competence. His succinct presentation of each book of the New Testament is forceful and penetrating. There is a pleasant blend of scholarly acumen and the excitement of fresh discovery which offers something of value to students and pastors alike.
Furthermore, when many commentaries seem merely antiquarian, Blaiklock provides a contrast. He presents the New Testament so as to enhance the likelihood of his readers being confronted with the message that brought the apostolic writings into being in the first place. Commenting, for example, on John’s account of the betrayal of Judas (John 13:21ff.) he says (p. 91): “He was about to dismiss Judas on his errand of evil, but gave him yet another chance. The ‘sop’, a choice morsel, was a mark of friendship (26). He saw Judas’ eyes harden. He left, and John, watching in horror, remembered, sixty or more years later, the oblong of dark as the door opened and closed. It was like the theme of darkness and light which runs through all his writings. The door closed—for ever (30).” And again, the historian Luke is pictured as scouring Palestine for details concerning the empty tomb (pp. 7ff.): “The exquisitely told tale of the Emmaus road is one of Luke’s discoveries. Nothing could be more eloquent of the broken despair of the disciples.…”
If a Bible student is tempted to become overly involved with the details of John’s Revelation or of a Pauline argument, Blaiklock’s format will not permit it. Revelation is distilled to twenty pages and Romans to merely thirteen, hardly more than the biblical accounts themselves. For these reasons a new Christian and even the busy pastor may find this commentary a profitable place to start.
It is only natural that some parts of more traditional commentaries are left out of the treatment. There are no outlines, nor are there formal introductions to each book. Discussions of theological issues and alternative interpretations are minimized. Regrettably, a page or two telling about aids to further study are also absent.
Overall, the impression is not one of a commentary reduced to skin and bones but rather a presentation of what is really indispensable. If one desires a provocative encounter with the fundamental message of the New Testament, this can be it.
What To Do About Drinking?
Alcohol: Its Use, Abuse, & Therapy by Gerald Schomp, (Our Sunday Visitor, 208 pp., $7.95), The Trouble with Alcohol by Tom Shipp (Revell, 160 pp., $6.95), and I’m Worried About Your Drinking by Judith Mattison (Augsburg, 104 pp., $2.95 pb) are reviewed by William Miller, intern chaplain, Alexian Brothers Medical Center, Elk Grove Village, Illinois.
As a result of various developments, many evangelical churches are receiving new members from among their own children and from outsiders who see nothing wrong with social drinking, and who want to know why many evangelicals are so uptight about the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Also people are being converted who have a history of problem drinking. What do we say to those who want intelligent answers to their honest questions about alcohol? How are we going to help our children who are growing up in a drug oriented society where alcohol is more often than not the “drug of choice”? These three books are intended, from different angles, to help answer such questions.
Alcohol: Its Use, Abuse and Therapy could have been subtitled “Everything you did and did not want to know about alcohol.” This short book is a veritable compendium on the subject of alcohol. Everything from “How to sober up” and “How to handle a hangover” to a simple explanation of “The three most common methods of producing alcohol” is included. We are told how to identify a drinking problem and where to get help for alcoholics and their families. Discussion questions accompany each of the nineteen chapters and a glossary of technical and slang terms is included. The information is clear, complete, and in terms readily understood by one not versed in the technical terminology of the subject.
Unfortunately, the book does have some features that will not be appreciated by many evangelicals. Two of the chapters are “How to be a good host” and “How to teach your children about alcohol.” The latter tells us that “the crucial question” regarding our children and alcohol is “How can parents best ensure that their children as adults will drink responsibly if they choose to drink at all?” The author assumes that all teens will inevitably drink so therefore we must “… face up to the issue of how to introduce a child most effectively to alcohol.…”
Although the dust jacket claims that “Christian attitudes are emphasized, with the role of religion in recovery,” in practice this means an emphasis on how “AA is a basically spiritual program” together with many examples of Catholic priests who have had alcoholic problems and a lengthy discussion of CALIX, the “Catholic AA.” In sum, this is an excellent, well-written book, filled with very useful information; but it cannot be considered specifically theological or religious in its presentation or expressed attitudes. Professionals and discerning laymen can profitably use it as a reference book.
The Trouble with Alcohol is by the late pastor of the Lovers Lane United Methodist Church in Dallas. The best feature of this presentation is the use of illustrations, case histories, and analogous stories. In many ways the book is the story of the author’s work with alcoholics, and it lives up to its subtitle, “Expert practical advice with Christian insights.”
The book has a two-pronged purpose. First, it is intended to be a help to the suffering alcoholic by giving guidelines for self-assessment, a plan of action, “pitfalls on the road to recovery,” and a good explanation of Alcoholics Anonymous. But this is not the best feature of the book. There is other literature available, especially AA produced, that can as well or better reach out to the alcoholic in need. The second purpose is to provide guidance and insight for those who wish to help alcoholics and their families. Much of what Shipp learned about working with alcoholics came by trial and error. Pastors who have had no personal experience with alcohol abuse will be able to learn from Shipp’s experience. This book is better for those who are ministering to alcoholics than for the alcoholics themselves.
The chapter on youth and alcohol is probably the best in the book and one which most evangelicals will find both acceptable and helpful. Shipp attacks the underlying problem of youthful drinking. “Children must be taught the business of living. They must learn to deal with the reality of life, disappointments, and heartbreaks, because they live in an imperfect world with people who have faults. But they do not have to turn to a chemical to deal with the world’s deficiencies.”
Throughout the book the author is able to bring the reader face to face with the feelings experienced by alcoholics and their families. A real sensitivity to people and their needs most obviously characterized the life of this pastor.
Yet another approach is presented in I’m Worried About Your Drinking. It is essentially a poetic book. The author tells us: “As you read this book, experience its feelings. Are they like yours? Is this what is happening to you or to someone you care about? Are you indecisive and concerned? The intent of this book is to help you clarify your feelings and problems.” She succeeds in her intended purpose. Each poem confronts the reader with true feelings experienced by alcoholics and their families. The book can be very helpful for those wanting help in sorting out feelings about an alcoholic family situation of which they are a part. It can also be very helpful in gaining understanding of those who are trapped in the web that is spun out by alcohol abuse.
Any worthwhile view on alcohol consumption must be founded on knowledge and understanding of facts and feelings. In distinct ways each of these books can make its contribution to a more effective Christian ministry in an increasingly alcohol oriented society.
FILMSTRIPS
A truly unusual filmstrip is from Twenty-Third Publications (Box 80, West Mystic, CT 06388). The Happy Ones is based on the Beatitudes. It combines photographs from the inner city and dialog that is spontaneous yet well edited. The teenagers in this production are mostly black or Catholic. Suburban evangelical youth can gain understanding of inner-city youth.
Lilie Sparrows, subtitled “God’s Dear Child,” is a multimedia kit for the very young, from Concordia (3558 S. Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, MO 63118). Everything about this kit from the clever filmstrip animation to the complementary components is good. The Lutheran principle of law and grace is lovingly portrayed by coordinating art, crafts, music, physical activities, and imagination. Designed to give children a positive image of God and themselves in response, this set of four filmstrips is an unqualified success.
In Winston House’s Discovering God’s Creative Goodness (23 Groveland Terrace, Minneapolis, MN 55403), finely tuned feelings characterize the narration and sound effects. Though perfect for the very young, the kit includes separate reading scripts for adult viewers that are very effective. Superior aids accompany the splendid photography of the usually good audiovisual line from Winston. Christian educators may want to examine Winston’s “Joy” line of curricula with which this set of four is easily coordinated, though it can stand alone.
The Church Media Center (Broadman, 127 Ninth Ave., N., Nashville, TN 37234) is a tour of a center stocked and staffed to rival secular centers. But as is pointed out, all one needs to begin is an orange crate. The church media center is also the subject of Slides, Preparation and Use—a filmstrip organizationally and pictorially well-arranged. Broadman’s line of practical filmstrips is long.—DALE SANDERS, pastor, United Presbyterian Churches, Orleans and Stamford, Nebraska.
