Lordship For Today
Jesus Christ Is Lord, by Peter Toon (Judson Press, 1979, 154 pp., $4.95 pb), is reviewed by W. Harold Mare, professor of New Testament, Covenant Theological Seminary, Saint Louis, Missouri.
The task Toon has set for himself in this work is “to explain what the Lordship of Jesus Christ means for Christian faith today.” In developing this theme he expounds the doctrine of the exalted Jesus who is Messiah and Lord, then discusses in detail the meaning the New Testament writers attached to Jesus’ ascension. This discussion includes Jesus as the promised Messiah-King of the Old Testament, the enthroned one who makes possible the good news of forgiveness of sins, who is the head of the church, who gives it the fullness of the Spirit, who prepares a place in heaven for his own, and who prays for them in their struggles against sin.
The author further applies his theme to Jesus as Lord of the nations and as the Lord of the church. He stresses the need for unity among Christians and questions why so many denominational groups are necessary, making it more difficult for competing groups to do the job of evangelism. Toon hastens to add to Jesus’ lordship his kingship over the universe. To this claim he adds that the Bible teaches Jesus is the Lord of all religions. Toon ends his discourse by explaining the exalted Jesus and Lord in the light of early Christian creeds. He climaxes his argument by stating that today’s Christian must consider Jesus as Lord by applying the ethic of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount to his life and by following Jesus in a life of faith and holiness.
Toon is to be congratulated on his fine exegetical work. His explanation of a cultural, epistemological, and teleological relativism that many use in approaching world religions today is good. Also helpful is his down-to-earth explanation of how early Christian creeds developed out of the controversies and heresies of their day.
One could wish, however, that he had been more careful in some of his statements. For instance, he states that, “today even the most conservatively biblical of us find these statements [i.e., Paul’s talk of ‘principalities and powers,’ ‘evil angels’] to be somewhat mythological.” One wonders just how far Toon goes in accepting Karl Barth’s theology when he says, “we have no basic disagreement with Barth’s argument and proclamation [regarding revelation and religion]. As a true Christian, he honors and exalts Christ.” Toon must be aware that besides the dispensational interpretation of the Second Coming events, which he disparages, there is a covenant premillennial eschatology (cf. J. O. Buswell’s Systematic Theology, Vol. II), but he does not even allude to the latter.
Equally problematic is Toon’s sweeping statement, when talking about the claim of “Lordship for Jesus Christ over other religions of the world,” that “we avoid any suggestion that he who does not know of, or does not submit to, the Lordship of Jesus will be eternally punished. But we do say that such people do not know the real meaning of life and probably [italics added] miss the privilege of having eternal fellowship with God.” Open to misunderstanding and unfortunately stated is the remark on page 131: “These models [to explain the development of the Christian creeds] also help us to understand the task of the theologians of the church today as they are called to create for us new doctrine [italics added] which, while being faithful to Scripture and to the best insights of the church in the past centuries, is nevertheless addressed to contemporary theological problems and makes use of modern ideas which are ‘baptised into Christ.’ ” Rather, the evangelical Christian believes that the doctrines of Scripture are found in the Bible and that, though they may be restated, they are not newly created by modern man.
The book sets forth an important theme for man’s consideration today and is written in terms that can be understood by the lay person. For further study on this subject Toon includes some bibliographical suggestions at the end of most of the chapters and all but the chapter introducing the theme ends in a prayer.
The Incarnation Debate
Incarnation and Myth: The Debate Continued, edited by Michael Goulder (Eerdmans, 1979, 257pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Charles Twombly, teacher of history, Tennille School, Tennille, Georgia.
The controversy stirred up by the 1977 appearance of The Myth of God Incarnate persists. This volume represents an effort to bring combatants together for an intense but friendly discussion. The seven contributors to the original symposium gathered at the University of Birmingham with seven of their critics in July 1978 (CT, Cornerstone, Dec. 7, 1979). Out of that three-day meeting came these papers and comments that form the basis of Incarnation and Myth.
A book with 36 parts by 14 authors is difficult to assess in limited space, so general impressions will have to suffice. Despite individual differences, the “mythographers” (Basil Mitchell’s term) are fairly united in offering a distinct alternative to orthodox Christianity. Don Cupitt and Frances Young see the basic thrust of the New Testament picturing Jesus in eschatological, but not incarnational, terms. Jesus fulfills the promises of the old covenant, ushers in the end times, and reveals God’s salvation; but in no way can identity with God be claimed for him. Incarnational assertions are seen as covertly Docetic and as compromising Jesus’ humanity.
Maurice Wiles, John Hick, and Michael Goulder challenge the logical propriety of the notion of the Incarnation. Rather than seeing it as a mystery or paradox, in the positive sense, they find instead “mystification” and “nonsense.” For them the religious value of Christianity lies largely in its concrete manifestation of general truths that are by no means limited to the Christian faith.
Goulder continues to hammer away with his thesis that Samaritan converts introduced the idea of the Incarnation in the fifties of the first century. Leslie Houlden comes from another direction with an attempt to knock the props out from under those who hold that such beliefs as the Resurrection and the presence of Christ should form part of the context in which the Incarnation must be understood.
The “traditionalists,” despite individual differences, offer a stout and basically united defense. Biblical scholars Charles Moule and Graham Stanton argue persuasively for the pervasive presence of incarnational faith in the New Testament documents. Moule rejects Goulder’s arguments as gross oversimplifications. The accusation of oversimplifying is echoed by Nicholas Lash who finds the mythographers “not sufficiently puzzled by classical Christological models.” John Rodwell explores a similar theme in his careful analysis of how scientific theories function and how they are related to other kinds of thinking.
Lesslie Newbigin questions the implications of the Incarnation for the meaning of history. His intimate acquaintance with oriental thought enables him to correct facile comparisons between Christianity and other religions. Stephen Sykes finds in the Incarnation a “principle of adhesion” without which the Christian story fails to hang together. Brian Hebblethwaite, whose contribution was for me the most helpful, reinforces Sykes’s contention in his impressive argument for the religious and moral value of the Incarnation.
This is a book to read and study. The debate throughout is of high quality and the issues raised are of compelling significance. Even the arguments with which one must disagree are instructive.
The Example Of India
Ethnic Realities and the Church, Lessons from India, by Donald A. McGavran (William Carey Library, 1979, 262 pp., $8.95 pb), is reviewed by W. Douglas Smith, director, Center for Mission, La Paz, Bolivia.
As a result of the Consultation on World Evangelization in Thailand in June 1980, world attention is focusing on how to reach the remaining least-reached people. The answer comes clear and strong from McGavran in Ethnic Realities, “people by people.”
The author traces chapter by chapter the historical development of each of the nine variations of the Indian church. He subdivides and contrasts the growing monoethnics with the stagnating multiethnics; Part I shows five basic types of churches and Part II, the four secondary types. Against the backdrop of the surrounding population’s response to each church’s proclamation and living example of the gospel, McGavran evaluates the evangelistic potential, advantages, and disadvantages of each.
India appears to have passed through the first stages of exploration and the second stage of occupation, and now is experiencing the third stage of multi-individual decisions from castes and tribes in both rural and urban areas. With many other Third World countries, this country stands at the threshold of stage four: great numbers of Indian missionaries are called for to pioneer new fields. But this is a dangerous place to be, for India may move back into a sealed-off, static condition like the churches of Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. This could, however, also be a place of great opportunity. Some Indian churches are well poised for a breakthrough of enormous proportions. Others are barely incorporating their biological growth. To read this book is to help you discern if your own national church is set for a similar breakdown or breakthrough.
It is hoped the next edition of this valuable volume will provide the easily confused first-time reader with some helps: clearer syntax in some places, relief and general area maps showing where the many groups are located, an index for quick cross reference, and a table relating the rates and trends of growth of all nine types of Indian churches within their respective, responsive populations.
On The Way To Justice
Personal Values in Public Policy, edited by John C. Haughey (Paulist Press, 1979, 275 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by James H. Olthuis, senior member in philosophical theology, Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The relationship between personal ethics and government decisions is the subject of this unusual publication of the Woodstock Theological Center. Nine academic essays followed by conversations with government officials and career civil servants seek to “cast some light on the virtually opaque process of decision-making that takes place ing government circles in our time.” The book explores in two parts the routes between personal values and public policies. Part one discusses the topography of government decision making, the role of values, and the place of reason, plural loyalties, and responsibility with respect to morally questionable policies. Part two focuses on religious faith and its relation to decision making.
Although I found a number of the essays helpful and some of the conversations interesting, the volume as a whole did not excite me. What is missing is a discussion of the institutional contours of state and government that form the parameters for individual decisions within the government. Without attending to the fundamental stance of the government and comparing that with its God-given mandate to make for public justice, one too easily gets lost in specific policies or escapes in unhelpful moralisms. On the other hand, having arrived at some decision about the fundamental justice or injustice of a government in terms of its God-given task to foster public justice, individuals have a principled basis for monitoring specific policies and personal involvement. Only when convinced of a government’s fundamental direction towards justice is one able to cope with its weaknesses and to move with it. It is to the credit of editor John Haughey that he included an epilogue by John Rohr that basically makes this point.
It is the project that excites me. As a socially concerned evangelical, I can only applaud the efforts of the Woodstock Center to reflect theologically on contemporary human issues. We need to join hands in communal reflection and praxis.
Facing Up To Death
Don’t Take My Grief Away from Me, by Douglas Manning (Insight Books, 1979, 129 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Guy Greenfield, professor of Christian ethics, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas.
The funeral as a gift to the life being memorialized and the rights of the family in planning the funeral are set here against the traditional and often ridiculous “wishes of the deceased.”
The choice of officiating minister is carefully handled: he should minister and not be ministered unto. This may mean a pastor stepping aside for a minister closer to the family. With wisdom Manning discusses viewing the body, flowers, and concern for children in the family of the deceased, and he seeks to recapture some lost emphases. “A funeral should be a very personal celebration of the life, love, death, and hope of the person.” Canned or stereotyped funeral services are out. The eulogy could be a statement prepared by family members.
The author tactfully handles the problem of guilt, dealing mainly with false guilt that is needlessly created. The best part of the book is the section on grief. Manning attacks the belief that grief explained is grief eliminated, and that grief is bad and should be avoided at all costs. Grief is an important part of the healing process when the pain of loss has been experienced: everyone has the right to grieve. The stages of grief are set forth helpfully as a map for this difficult journey.
The final resolution of grief is being able to “say good-bye and say hello.” Those who grieve need to make a final break with the past and strike out into a new future. Most important is for the grief-growth process to enable us to discover the purpose for which we were born.
This book needs to be put in the hands of every person who has just experienced the death of a close relative or friend. It would also be helpful for people who have experienced deep loss when used as a resource in grief seminars, study groups, or retreats.
Insight Into Lewis
They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914–1963), edited by Walter Hooper (Macmillan, 1979, 592 pp., $13.95), is reviewed by Ronnie Collier Stevens, pastor, Faith Evangelical Bible Church, Newport, North Carolina.
Sixty-four years ago a 17-year-old student wrote to his best friend from his tutor’s house in Surrey, England. As a joke he suggested: “I think you and I ought to publish our letters (they’d be a jolly interesting book by the way) …” The student’s name was C. S. Lewis. The friend back home was Arthur Greeves, the “first friend” of Surprised by Joy. Sixteen years after his death Lewis’s joke has become a reality, and his hopeful estimate of the book’s interest has proved a colossal understatement.
This book, in a word, is a feast. It is a feast that is not merely sumptuous, but soul nourishing as well. A recent article (CT, Dec. 21, 1979) called for a “restful moratorium” on books about Lewis. Here, though, we have not just a book about Lewis, but, in a substantial addition of over 500 pages to the Lewis corpus, we have the man himself.
The volume contains all of Lewis’s extant letters to Greeves from 1914 to 1963, along with a few letters by Lewis’s brother, his wife, and Arthur Greeves himself. The reading pleasure these letters provide is diminished only by the realization that we may be witnessing the completion of the Lewis canon. Year after year the posthumous works have appeared. They Stand Together is possibly the last major episode in a remarkable publishing history. These letters are no minor addition to that history. Walter Hooper, who edited them, writes that the letters may be “as close as we shall get to the man himself.”
Hooper’s lengthy introduction is a key that unlocks many passages that otherwise would be unintelligible, and the research behind the footnotes is both painstaking and prodigious. The editor’s great effort is marred by one surprising lack of judgment. Much of the correspondence covers Lewis’s late adolescence and early manhood, and quite naturally these dialogues with an intimate friend deal with intimate topics. Late in life Lewis deleted those sensitive sections. Walter Hooper has reproduced these extremely personal revelations (which were chemically retrieved) in brackets in this book. Such an invasion of privacy seems less an effort at an accurate record than an exercise in historical voyeurism. It is ironic that when Arthur became nervous about the future discovery of the confidential disclosures, Lewis replies that any person who reads the letters would be “an ill bred cad … we shouldn’t mind what he saw.”
Offering much more than standard juvenilia, most of Lewis’s great themes are here in seed form. Early on we see his preference for the ancient over the recent, and the literary over the personal experience. Later we see the famous discovery of George MacDonald and the conversion to Christianity. Subsequently Lewis wrote evangelistically to the apostate Greeves, who grew up a nominal believer.
The last line of the final letter is stunning in its pathos. It should not be read out of sequence.
A Bible Survey Of Sorts
Divine Struggle for Human Salvation: Biblical Convictions in Their Historical Setting, by Andrew C. Tunyogi (University Press of America, 1979, 474 pp., $15.00), is reviewed by James C. Moyer, professor of religious studies, Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield, Missouri.
Andrew Tunyogi, professor emeritus of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, has collected in this book a lifetime of research on the Bible. He used the book in an earlier form in his classes, and suggests its usefulness will be as either a textbook or a reference book. He covers both Old and New Testaments, with an almost equal division of material. Very little space is devoted to the Apocrypha except for a brief reference here and there. He approaches the Bible academically with emphasis on the historical-critical method, He stands, for the most part, in the mainstream of critical scholarship. What is unique, however, is his emphasis on biblical convictions, beliefs, or theology. These are described not by the individual Book, but by units of material: Deuteronomic History, Prophets, Synoptic Gospels, Paul, for example.
Unfortunately, the book is not entirely successful. The title is something of a misnomer. There is a general survey of beliefs and convictions, but no special emphasis on salvation as a unifying theme. Space limitations undoubtedly led to selectivity of material, but we are never told any principles of selectivity. The omission of the Joseph cycle in Genesis 37–50 certainly overlooks a strong emphasis on the sovereignty of God in working out his plan in spite of human attempts to thwart it. Likewise, we are surprised to learn of James that an “attempt to present the teachings and religious convictions of the letter would be of little use.” Actually, only about 30 percent of the material on the Old Testament deals directly with beliefs. We would expect about half to be devoted to beliefs and half to the historical context; such a balance is reasonably well achieved in the New Testament material.
Neither is it entirely successful as a potential textbook. It is well outlined, uses only a few footnotes placed at the end of the Old and New Testament units, and is written in a straightforward fashion. But probably it would not excite the less-interested student. It contains no illustrations, and only one drawing. Brief chronological charts are hidden at the end of both Old Testament and New Testament sections, but the student is not alerted to them. Books and articles for further reading listed at the end of each unit are sometimes in foreign languages, and abbreviations are often used without any explanation. Proper names are spelled in a variety of ways, sometimes departing significantly from the RSV, which is used for all biblical quotations. The addition of maps and a glossary of key terms would be helpful. Worst of all, there are several hundred mechanical errors, which appear in every section of the book; these are especially numerous in the books and articles suggested for further reading.
Although issues of special importance to evangelicals do not receive attention, this book has some value to teachers as a reference book: it is a fairly up-to-date summary of critical scholarship on the Bible with emphasis on a survey of biblical beliefs.
BRIEFLY NOTED
New or Recent Periodicals.The Evangelical Review of Theology is a relatively recent international journal comprising a selection of articles and reviews from current evangelical serial literature. It is ably edited by Bruce Nicholls and appears twice yearly, at a cost of $10.00 a year. Subscription requests may be sent to WEF, Box 670, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80901, or to Paternoster Press, 3 Mount Radford Crescent, Exeter UK, EX2 4JW. Theological Students Fellowship Bulletin, edited by Mark Lau Branson, is an updated version of the TSF News and Reviews. It is designed to reach a larger audience (college preseminarians, religion majors, graduate students) with a wider range of topics. Published five times a year (Oct.–May), it is available separately for $6.50 a year from: Theological Students Fellowship, 233 Langdon, Madison, Wisconsin 53703. Members of TSF receive the Bulletin and Themelios (the Theological Journal of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) free.
Foundations, edited by Dr. Eryl Davies, is a theological journal published in November and May by the British Evangelical Council. It contains valuable articles and reviews, and may be ordered from the business manager, Mr. Aubrey J. Roberts, 58 Woodstock Road North, St. Albans, Herts, England, AL1 4QF. The cost is 75d. per issue. The Christian Counsellor’s Journal, edited by Selwyn Hughes, makes a much-needed contribution to the so-called helping ministries from an evangelical point of view. It is published quarterly for £3.00 a year, and may be obtained from Crusade for World Revival, Box 11, Walton-on-Thomas, Surrey, England. John C. Whitcomb is editor of the new Grace Theological Journal, the first issue having appeared in April 1980. Basically a journal of scholarly biblical and theological research, it may be ordered from Grace Theological Seminary, Winona Lake. Indiana 46590, for $7.50 a year.
There are four journals of Reformed interest worth mentioning. The Clearing House of the International Conference of Reformed Institutions for Christian Scholarship Circular is available free of charge from Dr. B. J. van der Walt, % Institute for the Advancement of Calvinism, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, Potchefstroom, 2520, Republic of South Africa. Circular 13, April 1979, was 64 pages of valuable comments, notes, book reviews, personalia, and so on. Reformation Canada is a high-quality scholarly journal of articles, edited by William Payne, which appears three times a year. It may be obtained from Sharon Morden, 8 Hailey Court, Bowmanville, Ontario, LIC 3ˣ5, Canada, for $4.00 per year. The excellent thrice-yearly Reformed Theological Review may be obtained from The Editors, Box 2587W, Elizabeth St., P.O., Melbourne, Vic., 3001, Australia, for $5.40 (U.S.) per year, postpaid. The Baptist Reformation Review, edited by John Zens, is published quarterly by Baptist Reformation Educational Ministries, Box 40161, Nashville, Tennessee 37204, at a cost of $4.00 a year. It has helpful articles, reviews, and information.
The Christian Legal Society publishes two quarterly items, The CLS Quarterly and The Advocate. They are packed with news, briefs, information about upcoming court cases, and comments on matters relating to Christians and the law. They are sent as a package for $10.00 a year and may be obtained from the Christian Legal Society, Box 2069, Oak Park, Illinois 60303.
