After a poll conducted among British booksellers, London’s Sunday Telegraph has published its best-seller list for 1963. Not surprisingly, Morris West, Daphne du Maurier, Ian Fleming, and Agatha Christie are to be found in the first dozen, but none of these occupies a place in the leading quartet, three of which are nonfiction. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, that most staid of all publishing houses, rocketed into the limelight with The Denning Report, which ranked fourth. Third was Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, its sales predictably boosted by a court case. The New English Bible, published in March, 1961, was still a strong second. But the man whose year it was, and whose name, like that of Abou Ben Adhem, led all the rest, was John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich, who caused a shaking of the foundations in England with his paperback Honest to God (see Current Religious Thought, June 21, 1963).

A subtle feature of this book is the way in which the bishop adroitly covers himself on occasion by professing merely to be “raising the question” and “thinking aloud.” But by many whose faith is shaky or whose intellectual grasp is limited, this technique may be dimly comprehended as doubts uttered with all the weight of the episcopal office behind them. To such criticism Dr. Robinson points to the prophetic as an integral and neglected aspect of his ministerial office. This simply will not do. As the Church Times puts it: “Since when was ‘talking aloud’ equated with prophecy? There is not much of ‘Thus saith the Lord’ about Honest to God.” A bewildered English factory worker said, “What I get in the canteen is that they always said there isn’t a personal God, and now one of the bishops has said so too.” The principal of one Anglican theological college reported that two of his students had lost their faith as a result of reading the book. Peter Howard, Frank Buchman’s successor, in his New Year message to the European Assembly for Moral Re-Armament, appealed to people to “call the bluff of beatnik bishops and intellectual confidence tricksters who use their brains to destroy the conscience of our community.”

Even secular writers have after the manner of their kind expressed disapproval. Noted columnist Michael Frayn of The Observer, taking his cue from an article by Robinson in that paper, found in the book a clarion call to join the Our-Image-of-God-Must-Go Movement, but ventured a complaint: “There’s nothing in this new scheme, so far as I can see, about the Wonderful Free Gift Offer that life subscribers got under the old system.” And that is as good a commentary as any. Alasdair MacIntyre, no friend of Christianity, ran true to form when he concluded a scathing review in Encounter thus: “The creed of the English is that there is no God and that it is wise to pray to him from time to time.”

The SCM Press, London, and the Westminster Press, Philadelphia, have now published some reactions to Robinson’s book under the title The Honest to God Debate. It costs a fraction more, but is twice as long as the original work. More than 100,000 had been ordered before it was ready. The book is edited by the British publisher, David L. Edwards, who writes also the opening chapter on “A New Stirring in English Christianity.” Dr. Robinson himself has contributed in unrepentant vein an essay unhelpfully entitled “The Debate Continues,” and among other articles a place has mysteriously been found for part of John Macquarrie’s inaugural lecture, “How Is Theology Possible?,” at Union Theological Seminary, New York.

Of special significance are the two chapters that incorporate respectively some readers’ letters and some reviews. During the first three months after his first bombshell hit Britain the bishop received more than a thousand letters. Fifty of these are now reproduced wholly or partly. Only five are hostile. It was made clear that although many critical letters were received, more were not printed lest “it might be thought that the Bishop and his publisher were seeking to hold them up to ridicule.” While this leaves an impression of gentlemanly conduct, it poses also a lot of unanswered questions. In the following chapter twenty-three reviews are printed, not one of which expresses the conservative evangelical viewpoint. On this occasion we are not assured that the utterances were suppressed for the conservative good. An editor who in his preface stresses the importance of “assessing the climate of opinion,” yet admits to writing “with a bias,” will not be surprised if at this point some of his readers familiar with another brand of whimsy are found murmuring:

“I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,” said cunning old Fury;

“I’ll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.”

The preface does mention, however, the bare fact that Dr. J. I. Packer has written a reply to Robinson’s book, called Keep Yourselves from Idols (Church Book Room Press, London, one shilling). Librarian of Latimer House, Oxford, the evangelical Anglican research center, Packer suggests that in mutilating the Christian message “the bishop is not, as he thinks, rescuing the perishing; he is merely sinking the lifeboat.” In a calm, logical, and scholarly manner, completely devoid of the “unrestrainedly emotional” kind of attack that Mr. Edwards so discounts, Packer makes four criticisms of the bishop’s teaching. Only the merest summary is possible here:

1. It does not stand up by itself. Invoking the category of love to one’s neighbor as the criterion of behavior is something which lacks precision and can be defined “only in terms of the gospel of grace that Dr. Robinson has abandoned.”

2. It makes true worship impossible, for the bishop’s “God” is not a person, has done nothing to be praised for, and, as merely an aspect of “the depth in me,” must involve self-worship. Similarly, the bishop’s Jesus may not be worshiped, for he was not God in any personal sense.

3. It denies Christianity, for it offers a choice, not between two images of the same God, but (in Packer’s words) “between two Gods, two Christs, two histories, and ultimately two religions.… And if Robinsonianism is accepted, the faith of the Apostles’ Creed is rejected.”

4. It misconceives both the nature of the Word of God and its relation to the world of men, and has such an utterly inadequate conception of Christianity that it is in fact a new idolatry.

Concluding his twenty-page booklet, which is a model of lucidity, Packer carries the fight into the enemy camp by asserting that a truer and profounder radicalism is found in “those who, in face of the shibboleth that ‘modern man’ is entirely different from any man before him, are bold enough to maintain that the Bible is still right, that God is still on the throne, that the risen Christ is still mighty to save, that man remains the sinner he always was, that the apostolic gospel is still ‘the power of God unto salvation,’ and that not even such great mistakes [as Robinson’s] can finally stop its course, or thwart its triumph.”

Southern Presbyterians Seen In Context

Presbyterians in the South, Vol. I, by Ernest Trice Thompson (John Knox, 1963, 629 pp., $9.75), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, chairman, Department of History, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

In many ways this first volume of a projected two-volume history of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. is a superior piece of historical writing; it offers an excellent account of the development of Presbyterianism in the South for all who are interested in the religious development of the American people, regardless of their own religious outlook. This volume is obviously the fruit of a tremendous amount of research and solid documentation. The accompanying bibliography is one of the finest on the subject to have come to the attention of this reviewer.

Professor Thompson is to be congratulated on the breadth and scope of this work, for he has not lost sight of the fact that Presbyterianism in the South was part of the South. The relation between Presbyterianism and the South, in its social, cultural, and political development, is especially well treated during discussion of the colonial era, and, although the idea recedes somewhat toward the last of the book, it is never forgotten. For this reason, if for no other, this work is unique. It is denominational history, and rightly so; but the history is presented in a most meaningful way. It is unfortunate that so few denominational histories attain this high standard.

This work never becomes a dull recitation of what presbyteries and general assemblies said or did; rather, it gives a real and valuable place to their pronouncements in the light of the issues involved. Professor Thompson is always alert to the impact that Presbyterians had on Southern history to 1861; he is very careful to present their influence on education (this might be called one of the major themes of Volume I) and on the development of religious liberty. In fact, his treatment of the role of Presbyterians in the struggle for church-state separation is one of the highlights of this volume and is a needed corrective to the prevailing view that the struggle in Virginia was carried to a successful conflict by the Jeffersonian Deists and the Baptists.

There is so much of value in this book that this reviewer wishes he could conclude at this point; but this is not possible. Although Professor Thompson treats his sources and his many quotations with fairness and accuracy, he fails to present the doctrinal side of Presbyterianism in the South in all of its majesty and strength. He is careful to state the disagreements between the Old and New Light parties in the 1740s and 1750s. He is equally careful to set forth the differences between Presbyterianism and Deism. At no time, however, does the reader gain the impression that these differences are vital and that Deism was a distinct threat to the evangelical faith.

This doctrinal obscurity gains a greater influence in Professor Thompson’s writing as he considers the revivalist movements of the early years of the nineteenth century and the rise of abolitionism. At no place does he show an awareness of the close relation that existed between transcendentalism and unitarianism and the abolitionists in the North, and his attempt to convey the impression that it was largely an evangelistic movement is not supported by the facts. Again, he is accurate in his presentation of the facts concerning the split between the Old and New School groups. But he fails to set forth the relation between the theology of the New School, on the one hand, and the religious and philosophical radicalism which was coming to the North as a result of Hegelian philosophy. The basic issues of this controversy are glossed over, and the threat posed by the New School to historic Presbyterianism is never set forth. On the other hand, the author tends to minimize such controversies, and to find one of the major causes for the split of 1837 in the growing rivalry between the mission boards directly under the General Assembly and those boards that were the result of the Plan of 1801.

This tendency to reduce the importance of doctrinal issues comes to its height on the discussion of the issues that brought the final break between Presbyterians of the South and the Old School General Assembly and the formation of the Southern Presbyterian church. He admits that slavery was not the only cause, but his general treatment of the split is not satisfactory. He fails to explain why Plumer, Thornwell, Palmer, and Dabney finally took such a strong stand against abolitionism, when at one time they had been in favor of some kind of manumission of the slaves. The insights of Thornwell and Palmer into the real meaning of abolition and its connection with radicalism in the North are slighted, and Thompson is something less than fair when he says that Thornwell was guilty of inducing a new concept of Presbyterianism into the thinking of the South. He later admits that the root of this jure divino Presbyterianism can be found in English Puritanism. Because the author slights the doctrinal strength of Presbyterianism, he never is able to show the close relation of this doctrinal vigor to the amazing influence that Presbyterianism was able to achieve in the cultural life of the South. In the opinion of this reviewer, the failure to appreciate the biblical foundations of what he calls jure divino Presbyterianism is a weakness of what would otherwise be a great denominational history.

For the Presbyterian layman as well as the minister this book fills a real need; but it should be read with the above comments in mind.

C. GREGG SINGER

Is It What It Does?

The Minister in the Reformed Tradition, by Harry G. Goodykoontz (John Knox, 1963, 176 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Elton M. Eenigenburg, professor of church history. Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan.

This volume is a welcome addition to a growing body of literature on the nature of the ministry. Much of it has been written in behalf of communions other than the Reformed—all the more reason for rejoicing in a contribution that tries to be of specific help in grasping and defining the Reformed understanding of the ministry of the Gospel.

Dr. Goodykoontz has produced a useful book, one which reflects a careful selection from largely contemporary sources. The author is concerned to be contemporary, and places us in dialogue with advocates of similar and dissimilar points of view. The involvement of the author himself in the dialogue is not very vigorous, though he does not leave doubt as to where he stands on disputed matters. He often leans too heavily on his authorities, quoting them rather than incorporating their wisdom into conclusions of his own.

On the more practical side, concern is expressed for the tendency in our times to drive a wedge between the clergy and laity, largely because of the minister’s inability to understand his own image and role and the layman’s inability to accept the minister for what God intends him to be. But Dr. Goodykoontz does not believe the difficulty finds solution through a depreciation of the minister’s office. He is especially opposed to Dr. Arnold Come’s program (in his book, Agents of Reconciliation) of dissolving office into function so thoroughly that there no longer is a clergy in distinction from laity.

A more technical problem is related intimately to the one just indicated. Should the minister be regarded as holding an office in the technical sense of that term, or does he merely exercise an important function? The author attempts to show, both on the basis of the biblical evidence and from the history of the Reformed churches, that the minister definitely holds an office (and thus exercises the functions that are implied in the office). Contemporary authors. he finds, and this includes some in the Reformed-Presbyterian tradition (like Come), have been so determined to describe the ministry exclusively in terms of function that we are in great danger of reducing the ministry in our time to an amorphous activity incapable of careful definition.

This study of the problem would have been considerably benefited by an analysis of the semantic difficulties created by juxtaposing the terms “office” and “function.” Too often in contemporary discussion they are looked upon as antithetical terms, and are put in an either-or relationship to one another. Goodykoontz’s study implies, but does not say clearly enough, that this does not have to be the case. Obviously “office” indicates a function or functions of some kind. A “function” persisted in over a period of time by the same person, who has been set apart for that function by some form of initiation to his duties, attains the character and structure of an office. Thus properly conceived, office and function have the inalienable relation to one another of form and content.

There are many good things in this book. We have singled out only a few. A large part of the effort is devoted to a summary treatment of attitudes towards the ministry up and down the history of the Church, especially in the Presbyterian and Reformed churches. Another substantial section is given over to practical questions relating to ministerial calls, ordination, and related matters. Ministers. Reformed and otherwise, will gain new perspective on their high calling by a study of this book.

ELTON M. EENIGENBURG

Who Should Be Initiated?

Baptism: Conscience and Clue for the Church, by Warren Carr (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964,224 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Paul K. Jewett, associate professor of systematic theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Some people find a key to the meaning of the Church in the role of the laity; others, in a return to expository preaching or in a conscience awakened to social and economic injustice. The present volume, as its title suggests, elaborates the thesis that if the Church will fulfill its mission in the world today, it must seek to close the gap between its doctrine of baptism and its practice of baptism. According to the author this is not a task that can be achieved by one group in the Church seeking to make the whole Church conform to its particular view. The author, a Baptist minister, has read widely, for a non-practicing scholar, in the literature on both sides of the issue of infant baptism as well as in ecumenical sources, some of which try to play down all questions about baptism in the interest of harmony and unity. Seeking to steer a middle course, he definitely feels that our attention must focus (as it has recently in Continental theology) on the question of baptism, yet in a spirit of humility that is willing to learn, to whichever tradition one may belong. The unfortunate thing is that too often those who have been concerned with baptism have given their energies to a defense either of infant baptism or of believers’ baptism. Having examined the case for these alternatives, the author concludes that both sides are culpable of “private distortions” of the true meaning of the rite. Christian baptism is neither believers’ baptism nor infant baptism. The bulk of the book is concerned to set forth both traditions with accuracy and some fullness, and then by analysis to show their respective weaknesses. For readers who, like the reviewer, are members of American Baptist churches practicing open membership, some of the illustrations of Baptist failure will appear the unfortunate result more of Southern Baptist usage than of flaws in the theology of believers’ baptism as such. This, however, does not altogether nullify the author’s strictures against his Baptist brethren.

On this score the author has some enlightening things to say about Christian education, specifically Baptist Sunday school literature, which suffers from a paucity of materials and methods. The drum is beaten rather consistently for evangelizing the lost, and the Sunday school scholar is pressed into a decision for Christ before he is old enough to say no. On the other hand, pedobaptist educators are weak on the evangelistic element. They cannot escape the shadow of Bushnell, who taught that children of believers should be so nurtured as to grow up Christian from childhood, never knowing themselves to be otherwise.

But whatever defects we may see in the way others practice baptism, we should all agree that baptism is the symbol of Christian initiation. This leaves the old question of the proper subject of baptism unresolved. “Direct appeal to the New Testament does not promise an early end to the reigning uncertainty. It is conclusive that the theology of the New Testament disfavors infant baptism with considerable inflexibility. On the other hand, the New Testament evidence for the practice of infant baptism cannot be summarily dismissed as an ‘argument from silence.’ The assumption that persons born of Christian parents, were not baptized until they had reached the age of discretion or accountability must also be argued from silence. A second complication is the assured impossibility of recapturing the New Testament Church without abolishing the form and institution of the Church as it now is. The only workable option is to find the proper subjects of baptism for the contemporary Church within a grace-faith context while looking to the New Testament as the most resourceful guide” (p. 176). Each tradition, concludes the author, must look to what its baptism does to the world mission of the Church as well as what damage is wrought to the act of Christian baptism in its own right. The writer’s serious attempt to do this as a Baptist gives the book a unique ministry.

PAUL K. JEWETT

A Rich Novel

Holy Masquerade, by Olov Hartman, translated by Karl A. Olsson (Eerdmans, 1963, 142 pp., $3), is reviewed by Clyde S. Kilby, chairman, Department of English, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

Let those who doubt that a “Christian” novel is possible read this one. They will be happy to discover in it none of the patent situations and contrived procedures that have too often marred the religious story. It is one of those books that do not exhaust themselves in one reading. On the contrary, as it proceeds the novel takes on a far-reaching symbolism that reminds one of Ibsen and Mauriac.

The story is in the form of a journal written by the worldly and doubting wife of Pastor Albert Svensson. Realizing not long after their marriage that they inhabit different worlds, Klara Svensson attempts to bring a crystal-clear common sense to bear upon Albert’s religious pretentions. She finds her husband totally enveloped in the “apparatus of piety” and a man who “stuffs all his problems into his theological system,” even, eventually, his clandestine meetings with another woman. Klara notes how Albert unconsciously accommodates both his theology and preaching to circumstances, chiefly his unspoken desire for ecclesiastical advancement.

But primarily the novel is about Klara Svensson’s unsuccessful bout with God. Convinced that atheism is the only reasonable view, Klara attempts to establish her whole life on that platform. In focusing her keen eye on Christianity she discovers that logic itself plays unexpected tricks and that even so sharply outlined a doubt as her own may also be as complete a masquerade as that of her husband’s well-packaged piety.

Examining a madonna statue in the church tower, Klara at first sees only vacancy in the eye of Mary, but later the far view of Calvary. In spite of her abiding hostility to the supernatural, Klara experiences the mystery of Christ and, still struggling against belief, finds that Christ is in process of gestation in her. Thus the picture is reversed and Klara’s husband appears as the unbeliever, the man of an overriding “common sense” who interprets Klara’s conversion as the oncoming of insanity.

Let me mention only one of the many symbols in the novel. Klara and her husband are barren both of children and of spiritual life. In time Klara grows envious of the Virgin with her Christ-child and longs, even while she fights against the idea, to “bear” Christ also. But she realizes that it must be a virginal birth, since Albert Svensson is himself incapable of taking part in any spiritual begetting. While Christ is born in Klara, her husband ends as barren as in the beginning, for he is incapable of any participation in the supernatural.

No summary can suggest the rich contents of this novel. For me the book has been a grand discovery, and I have urged the publisher to arrange for the translation of other works by Olov Hartman.

CLYDE S. KILBY

The Best

Chapters in the History of New Testament Textual Criticism (from the “New Testament Tools and Studies” series), by Bruce M. Metzger (Eerdmans, 1963, 163 pp., $4), is reviewed by Herman C. Waetjen, assistant professor of New Testament, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, California.

The study of the transmission of the biblical text is an extremely technical and complex science. At the same time it is also an indispensable tool. Professor Metzger’s book is like the subject he deals with: technical and indispensable. It is a series of essays examining some of the more important as well as some of the more irregular problems of New Testament textual study. The chapter titles themselves provide a good survey of the contents: The Lucianic Recension of the Greek Bible, The Caesarean Text of the Gospels, The Old Slavonic Version, Tatian’s Diatessaron and a Persian Harmony of the Gospels, Recent Spanish Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, Trends in the Textual Criticism of the Iliad and the Mahabharata, and finally an appendix, William Bowyer’s Contribution to New Testament Textual Criticism.

Each chapter outlines the history and development of the subject under examination and leads up to the present-day discussion. Sometimes the “tasks and problems” awaiting or demanding investigation are summarized. In each case the reader knows where the debate is presently focused and where the exploratory work of the future lies and needs to be undertaken.

For example, Metzger reviews a chain of scholars since the time of Westcott and Hort who, through their research on the Lucianic Recension, have forced a re-evaluation of the generally dismissed Syrian text. The debate on Streeter’s Caesarean text is sketched, with the conclusion that this recension probably had its origin in Egypt and not Caesarea, but at the same time that it was revised at a later date “into the true Caesarean.” Metzger’s examination of the scholarship which has been devoted to the Old Slavonic version results in a call for renewed efforts to include the significant readings of this text in the critical apparatus of the Novum Testamentum Graece.

Here is scholarship at its painstaking best moving beyond the general beaten paths of textual criticism. Footnotes are extensive and valuable. The book supplies ample testimony that Professor Metzger is one of the world’s leading authorities in textual criticism. In the light of the prevailing emphasis on maximum capital gains in printing and selling books, Eerdmans is to be congratulated for undertaking the publication of the present volume and of the entire series.

HERMAN C. WAETJEN

As Seen From The Jordan

Where the Jordan Flows, by Richard H. Sanger (Middle East Institute, 1963, 397 pp., $5.75), is reviewed by Anton T. Pearson, professor of Old Testament literature, Bethel Theological Seminary, St. Paul Minnesota.

Where the Jordan Flows is free from the xenophobia so often observed in writings on the Arab world and from the chauvinism so frequent in Zionist apologies. The author, Richard H. Sanger, long familiar with the Near East, has served on the American Embassy staff both in Beirut and in Amman, and is now a member of the faculty of the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute.

The book surveys in twenty-two chapters the history of Palestine from Abraham to the year 1963. The volume contains a selected bibliography, an index, and sixteen representative photographs, but regrettably lacks maps. Sanger uses the standard works, but does not mention G. Lankester Harding’s definitive The Antiquities of Jordan.

After a sketch of the biblical epoch from Abraham to Solomon, in which the scene of the wilderness wanderings is very graphically portrayed, the author leaps to the Maccabean era, with an intervening chapter on Petra. Ensuing chapters treat the periods from the Herods to the modern times, but there is no reference to the Mamluk rule (1250–1517).

The discussions on Petra, Jerusalem, Jerash, and Qumran employ careful research and reveal the author’s personal familiarity with these places. Here, too, outline maps would be a desideratum! The story of the Crusaders is fascinatingly told, and the chapter relating Lynch’s trip down the Jordan River, the visits of Mark Twain, Chinese Gordon, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Allenby’s entry, and Bertha Spafford Vester’s long sojourn, is delightful reading.

Moderate appreciation is expressed for the enigmatic Lawrence of Arabia, while high tribute is paid to Abdulla, King Hussein, and the Englishman Glubb. Glubb befriended the Bedouin, organized the Desert Patrol, maintained calm in Jordan during the tensions of 1936–38, overcame Nazi and Vichy French movements—only to be expelled after twenty-six years of faithful service! The tribal structure of the Bedouin, “who spend most of their life hungry” (p. 322), is detailed with insight. The conflicts with the Jewish settlers and the Suez crisis are summarized in the last chapter. The author neither passes judgment on nor suggests a solution for the thorny Arab-Jewish problem.

Scholars would dispute the accuracy of Sanger on a number of points of biblical history (see pp. 3, 12, 17, 49, 50, 117, 120). Among the jarring misprints are Arets IV (for Aretas), p. 54; D. (for R.) de Vaux, p. 140; and Mars (instead of Mar) Saba, p. 190. Antiochus appears as Antigonus (pp. 70, 72, etc.), and Herod’s Hasmonean wife Mariamne is always designated Marianne (pp. 77–81, etc.).

However, the book can be profitably read by Christian, Moslem, and Jew!

ANTON T. PEARSON

The Best Four-In-One

The Four Major Cults, by Anthony Hoekema (Eerdmans, 1963, 447 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, professor of missions, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventism, and Christian Science are treated in this volume by Professor Hoekema, who is associate professor of systematic theology at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The book revolves around the general historical background of each cult. The doctrinal treatment follows the normal approach to the study of theology by considering the subjects of God, man. Christ, salvation, the Church, and the sacraments, and then eschatology. Each chapter has an appendix in which further material is provided for special subjects peculiar to the cult in question. Thus in the case of Seventh-day Adventism the Investigative Judgment, the Scapegoat Doctrine, and the Sabbath receive further treatment. The concluding chapters of the book provide insights into the distinctive traits of each cult and the task of approaching the cultist from a Christian standpoint.

Mr. Hoekema has produced a splendid piece of work. He has included excellent bibliographies for each cult and has carefully footnoted his material. He has leaned heavily on primary source material and has checked his material with leaders of the cults. The presentation is fair and accurate. His conclusions will not be accepted by the cultists, but there can be no doubt that given the usual evangelical presuppositions his conclusions are quite correct. He has not indulged in name-calling, but at the same time he has made it clear that these cults do not stand up under the light of the biblical revelation. The book is one that can be used in the classroom and is an excellent source of information for anyone interested in this subject. It can be recommended highly and without reservation.

There are one or two observations on the other side of the ledger, but they are not serious. Mr. Hoekema, coming out of the Reformed tradition, discusses the cults in relation to predestination as though that were a controlling principle. Anyone in the Arminian tradition would be somewhat annoyed by this. He obviously leans strongly in the direction of pedobaptism and is a sacramentalist. The other observation pertains to Seventh-day Adventism and points in another direction. Mr. Hoekema is apparently not familiar with the Brinsmead brothers and the Sanctuary Awakening Fellowship among the Adventists. These movements are of great significance, for they condemn the leadership of the cult and argue that the views of Mrs. White are being revised and reinterpreted. They claim that Mrs. White is being repudiated. To an outsider looking in on the cult it would appear that the Brinsmead group and the Sanctuary Awakening Fellowship have the better of the argument. If words convey meaning, it is obvious that Questions on Doctrine (published by the Adventists and the subject of much discussion because of the statements of the late Dr. Barnhouse and of Dr. Martin) marks a departure from the teachings of Mrs. White. It is to be hoped that Mr. Hoekema will enlarge his work to include this aspect of Adventism, for it is the expectation of the reviewer that there will be a large demand for the book, which is far and away the best one-volume treatment of these four cults.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Fruit Of The Spade

The Bible and Archaeology, by J. A. Thompson (Paternoster Press, 1963, 468 pp., 30s.; also Eerdmans, $5.95), is reviewed by A. R. Millard, librarian, Tyndale House, Cambridge, England.

Archaeological discoveries relating to the Scriptures have become one of the most popular topics among Bible students. Their importance for background information and for clarifying specific points is now gaining its proper recognition. Dr. Thompson, qualified for his task by experience of excavations in Palestine, by research at Cambridge, and by several years of teaching in Australia, has written a book presenting and interpreting current knowledge with simplicity and with caution. Both spectacular and routine finds are placed in perspective against the Bible. Clarity of presentation and the breaking up of each chapter into shorter sections with subheadings increase the volume’s readability.

This survey includes all the familiar and outstanding material, and much that is less known. It is unusual that, whereas the Old Testament seizes the lion’s share of most books of this sort, here more space is devoted to the Inter-Testamental and New Testament periods (Parts Two and Three) than to the Old (Part One). The first two parts follow the historical sequence from Abraham to the Exodus, the Exile. Ezra, the Essenes, and the Herods. After a historical summary commencing each chapter, particular subjects are discussed, such as Solomon’s trading enterprises or the court at Susa. In this way the position of Israel among the nations of the ancient world is well conveyed. The author, a well-known evangelical, has confined his book to the material remains bearing directly upon the Bible, and little space is devoted to the ancient literary compositions of the same genre as Proverbs and the Song of Songs, or relevant to the early chapters of Genesis. These demand another volume.

A work of this nature cannot escape errors. The merit of this one is that those observed are of minor import. Some have resulted from the amalgamation into one of the three Pathway Books published by the author a few years ago. Not everybody will agree with all of Dr. Thompson’s conclusions; in one or two instances these are superseded by recent discoveries. Yet he has not been afraid to indicate alternative views or to suggest that some questions cannot yet be answered. He has, moreover, a firm persuasion that the Bible is the Word of God written for our learning. So his brief remarks applying a lesson or drawing an example for the present make this book of the past a seed-bed for meditation as well as a reliable presentation of the fruits of archaeological scholarship.

A. R. MILLARD

Book Briefs

The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands (in two volumes), by Yigael Yadin, translated by M. Pearlman (McGraw-Hill, 1963, 484 pp., 525). The story of how war was conducted in all biblical lands: from Anatolia to Egypt, from Palestine to Mesopotamia. The text is accompanied by line drawings, color plates, and explanatory captions. Not a history, but a discussion of implements, techniques, and strategies. Beautiful color photography. An extraordinary treatment of an extraordinary subject; done with excellence.

Ministers of Christ, by Walter Lowrie, edited by Theodore O. Wedel (Seabury, 1964, 186 pp., $3.95). Four men of four different traditions respond to Episcopalian Walter Lowrie’s original monograph: “Ministers of Christ.” A discussion of the ministry in terms of church unity.

The Military Establishment, by John M. Swomley, Jr. (Beacon Press, 1964, 266 pp., $6). An opponent of universal military training warns against the growth of a military establishment in the United States.

A Relevant Salvation, by Reginald E. O. White (Eerdmans, 1963, 132 pp., $2.25). Biblical sermons that analyze humanity’s broken life in sin and proclaim the healing and saving power of the Christian Gospel. Substance and style combine to make excellent reading.

Reprints

The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology, by Charles P. Krauth (Augsburg 1963, 840 pp., $7.50). One of the theological classics that came out of American Lutheranism. Published in 1871 to recall Lutheranism to its confessional basis.

Immortality, by Loraine Boettner (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1963, 161 pp., $2.50). An informative treatment of the many faces of death and immortality. First published in 1956.

Cults and Isms: Ancient and Modern, by J. Oswald Sanders (Zondervan, 1962, 167 pp., $2.50). Fifteen essays on as many cults, giving critiques of their basic errors. The book makes no distinction between heresy and cult, and includes treatment of Roman Catholicism and Seventh-day Adventism. Revised and enlarged. First printed in 1948. Formerly issued under Heresies Ancient and Modern.

Bolshevism: An Introduction to Soviet Communism, by Waldemar Gurian (University of Notre Dame, 1963, 189 pp., $3.25). A valuable study of Communism as a secular religion and a world power. First printed in 1952.

The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, by Loraine Boettner (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1963, 435 pp., $4.50). The book’s announced purpose is to state the Reformed Calvinistic faith and “to show that this is beyond all doubt the teaching of the Bible and of reason.” The book’s rationalistic method and presuppositions distort the Reformed view. First printed in 1932.

The Parables of Jesus, by Joachim Jeremias (Scribners, 1963, 248 pp., $4.50). A book that ought to be read by every preacher making sermons on the parables. This translation is based on the sixth German edition, and compared with the first English edition of 1954 is considerably enlarged and revised. Read discriminatingly, its rewards are great.

The Mother of Jesus: Her Problems and Her Glory, by A. T. Robertson (Baker, 1963, 71 pp., $1.75). Written in the belief that Roman Catholics make too much and Protestants too little of Mary. Not a polemical but a biblical expository writing by a former great Southern Baptist. First printed in 1925. A book not to be forgotten.