Graham Greene, leading Catholic novelist of the English-speaking world, is an artist provocative and provoking in his apologetics. The Power and the Glory is one of his best novels. Although first published in 1940 (as The Labyrinthine Ways), it still finds a ready market and is widely discussed. Protestant theologians who turn their attention to the modern novelist discover in Greene’s work a vivid story of the paradox of grace (cf. R.W.B. Lewis, The Picaresque Saint, 1959; Horton Davies, A Mirror of the Ministry in Modern Novels, 1959; Gabriel Vahanian. The Death of God, 1961). The novel raises certain crucial problems concerning the dimensions of power—the causes of the Mexican persecution in relation to the sacramental system of the Roman Catholic Church.

Power and Glory of Simplicity

Greene picked up the incident for The Power and the Glory when he traveled in Mexico in the 1930s. He recorded impressions in The Lawless Roads (1939). He mentions a solitary priest fleeing from persecution in the southern state of Tabasco. As he trod the “labyrinthine ways” of Mexico in revolution, Greene found Tabasco a “godless state” void of “forgiveness.”

With this setting in mind, he wrote a poignant tale. The reader may taste, feel, and smell the dusty, dank, dreary Mexican southland. Because of the “obscure, personal neurosis” of Tabasco’s governor, the persecution of the Roman Catholic Church was especially severe. The governor ordered all priests to leave his jurisdiction or face extinction. The chief character of Greene’s tale is a nameless priest, anonymous except as a sometime drunkard who sired a bastard child, who defies the governor in spite of his drive for self-preservation. He is haunted by the compulsion to fulfill the priestly function as long as there are faithful who call for those sacramental services which he alone can perform. He is hounded by the state, represented particularly by a lieutenant who turns gradually in some sympathy toward the creature he must exterminate. Finally, the priest is betrayed by his “Judas”—a corrupt Catholic peasant out for a peso—when he abandons an opportunity to flee in order to administer rites to a dying gringo, a criminal wounded by the authorities. After execution, the cleric crumbles, a “routine heap beside the wall—something unimportant which had to be cleared away.” He himself denies his martyrdom; Greene, however, contrives this possibility by skillfully weaving into the drama of the chase a quiet bedtime story about a Mexican martyr-priest read by a Catholic mother to her children. While it might be too much to see in the priest a Christ-figure, he appears compassionate in his remorse and as one of those “least” mentioned in Matthew’s Gospel who are fed when hungry, refreshed when thirsty, clothed when naked, nursed when sick, visited when in prison—a benediction to those who minister to him.

So potent is Greene’s writing that it may appear insensitive to descend from the near poetry of his prose to consider political and theological problems. But while the novel is a work of art, it is no less a work of subtle propaganda. Those sharing some of Greene’s presuppositions see God, whose glory human contrivance cannot diminish, which may be expressed through the meanness of this earthly vessel. These are those impressed by the heroism of a man who insists upon doing his duty as he sees it in the face of overwhelming odds. Preoccupation with such glory clouds certain aspects of power.

About Possessions and Priests

Greene creates the impression that the machinery of a “godless” state has conspired to crush this wretched, insignificant cleric. By setting his scene in Tabasco, governed as it was by a neurotic, he tends to obscure the problem of persecution of the Roman Catholic Church which was, while not so relentless, Mexico-wide during the 1920s and 1930s.

Persecution was a delayed reaction. The revolutions of 1910 and 1917 were marked by an anti-clericalism which produced some of the harshest constitutional provisions against the church in contemporary political history, e.g., nationalization of property, limitations on the number of priests, strict regulation of ecclesiastical activities. Persecution does not arise in vacuo. The padre of this novel is not persecuted because he is a whiskey priest with a bastard child, the sins which are a personal burden to him. His crime was one of association with power representing the chief vested interest of his country. Since the conquest of Mexico in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and at least until the 1930s (in spite of the challenges of the nineteenth century), the Roman Catholic Church was the most powerful force with continuity of existence in the life of the Mexican people. It was intimately linked with Spanish imperialism, coveting always to preserve and protect patronato and fueros. Through the centuries the church accumulated vast wealth; no one is certain of its extent. According to Columbia University’s Frank Tannenbaum, a conservative Catholic historian has estimated that toward the end of the colonial period it owned not less than half of the real property and capital of the country, and manipulated the rest through its banking interests. Greene’s nameless priest may be contrasted with the hero priests of Mexico whose names are known and revered. Hidalgo and Morelos were nineteenth-century prophets from village traditions who led movements against the old order. These priests were so daring in their declaration of independence against Spanish exploitation that they were excommunicated by the church and executed by the civil power. Political upheaval always threatened economic stability, thereby threatening one aspect of ecclesiastical power. The church found itself on the side of reaction when revolutionaries sought a new deal of Mexican resources for the common good. Centuries of frustration meant the storing of wrath. In the twentieth century, fury was all the more ravaging because those who sought revenge could not reach back into the past to punish the dead.

Greene shows keen insight by allowing the lieutenant to represent a political rather than an economic bourgeoisie, and by implying the faithfulness of Mexicans in Tabasco. It is also true, however, that the revolutionary dictator, Calles, found it possible because of public support or acquiescence to enforce the restrictions of the 1917 constitution upon the church beginning in the 1920s. Greene’s own comment in his 1939 travelogue about the dim promise of revolution may give insight into the church’s approach to the situation. “Even if it were all untrue and there were no God,” he mused in The Lawless Roads, “surely life was happier with the enormous supernatural promise than with the petty social fulfillment, the tiny pension and the machine-made furniture.” For Christians the promise of God about future life overcomes the meanness of this existence, from the stink of the diaper to the stench of the shroud. But power in the presence of Lazarus should not employ this incentive as apology for wealth and for injustice. The lieutenant lays the blame for oppression upon the church itself. It stifled change commensurate to the economic needs of Mexicans. “The Church was poor, the priest was poor,” he remarks about the stance of the church through the years; “therefore everyone should sell all and give to the Church.” The priest responds meekly to his captor and accuser: “You are so right,” and then quickly, “Wrong, too, of course.” In spite of a disclaimer to the contrary, life does “contain churches.” It is this “right” and “wrong” about the relation of the church to the revolution which does not come through in Greene’s treatment of the priest’s tribulation. The church claimed to have a program of social betterment of its own. It could not cover inactivity in reform nor aversion to the whole revolutionary movement because of its supposed “godlessness.”

No priest can be made to bear the corporate guilt of an ecclesiastical institution. But the reason for the relentless persecution of this priest in The Power and the Glory may not be apprehended fully without recognition of his inescapable association with the most reactionary force in Mexico. Mexicans were bent on revolution, not abortive rebellion, to employ Camus’ distinction. Any drive for justice involved, among other matters, a decisive challenge of the power of the church. Perhaps Greene wanted to say that the church must become harassed, as was the priest of his novel, in order once again to be the church. If he meant to say this, he said it, in spite of his realism, with too many smooth pebbles in his mouth.

About Sacraments and Sinners

The power of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico never rested solely upon possessions of this world. Graphically, Greene’s tale asserts the churchly power by divine right to infuse into the believer the privilege of grace through a sacramental system. Discussion of this “hobo priest,” as one critic labeled him, would be incomplete without analysis of the power which accompanies the “keys” of the kingdom of God. Obviousness threatens to obscure the problem.

Contemplating his situation the priest reflects: “When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn’t it his duty to stay.…” By raising such a question, Greene explores the significance of the Roman Catholic system of sacramental grace. The Roman Catholic Church claims to be the channel through which God’s grace is conveyed to believers from birth to death, even into the life beyond. Catholic life is regulated minutely through the use of sacraments—baptism, confirmation, penance, communion, marriage, extreme unction. Above all in order of significance is a seventh sacrament—ordination of the priest with a character indelebilis as the intermediary interposed between God and the individual. By definition, the administrations of the priest who bears his ordination as a “birthmark” are efficacious, ex opere operato, in spite of the condition of the administrant and provided the participant does not place any obstacle in the way. Moreover, the system presided over by the priest is de necessitate salutis—necessary for salvation. The believer must live by the system if the system is to bear the believer. Almost inevitably the system became the sanction by which the church maintained its power over Mexican peasantry.

Greene weaves this sacramentalism into his novel with consummate skill. All the sacraments are accounted for in some way as the cleric encounters and ministers to characters in the book. It would be erroneous to suggest that Catholicism ultimately binds God to the operations of a priest—the theological system is too circumspect to allow this. Given the lack of theological astuteness among Mexican priests and peasants, Greene implies that the presence of God actually depended upon the presence of the priest. The priest often administers the sacraments at great personal sacrifice. He lays down his life doing his mediatorial duty. The church was persecuted not because of heroic acts in abnormal situations, but because priests exploited the system in normal times. The priest of the tale is aware of his power. He alone should baptize; he alone can hear confession and pronounce absolution; he alone, considering the importance of the celebration of the Mass, can make God and place God on the lips of Mexicans. He can do all of this in spite of the fact that he is in mortal sin, unable to repent, a “sacrilege” in his own eyes. One of the truly great scenes is that in which he attempts to buy black-market wine necessary for sacramental purposes. He watches “all the hope of the world draining away” as those from whom he makes his purchase wheedle his hospitality and drink his bottle dry. The peasants also know how indispensable his ministrations are. Greene hints at the shape of exploitation when the priest finds himself, catching his breath in flight in the sheltered cove of a community which remained Catholic in spite of a three-year absence of clerics. At the request of the peasants, whose children have gone unbaptized and whose sins are unshriven, the priest prepares for the necessary sacraments. A peasant asks an irrepressible question: “What will you charge, father?” After haggling, the priest charges “one peso fifty” per baptism, five pesos a Mass, for the “enormous supernatural promise” (to employ Greene’s phrase from The Lawless Roads). The peasants “don’t value what they don’t pay for” in spite of their poverty. As the priest calculates his pesos, he falls into his “habit of piety” and assumes the authoritarian “parish intonation” which he practiced before the start of persecution.

Because he knows Roman Catholicism so well, Greene’s apologetics are forceful; they annoy because he seems incapable of presenting sympathetically the alternatives to his own position. This inability is illustrated when the priest finds temporary hospitality in the home of middle-class Lutherans, prim and proper in a Protestant smugness contrasting with his own misery. During this episode the priest runs across a Gideon Bible, astonished to find “its ugly type and its oversimple explanations” offered as soul-guidance. This skirts on caricature! Toward the end Greene himself seems to make problems simple enough. The lieutenant fails to find a confessor for the condemned priest. He asks if the confessor would make the difference. The priest, who knows he must receive absolution from another priest, hesitates, “Another man … it makes it easier.…” The padre begins his own general confession of sin, abject before God toward whom he looks for forgiveness. In bringing the haunted and hounded priest to this, does Greene intend to discuss an alternative to Roman Catholic sacerdotalism? This is not likely. While the priest’s procedure is theoretically possible under extenuating circumstances, it is the exception rather than the rule. A priest is still the necessity, not a contingent necessity, to the system. Because of its own definition of its relation to the Mexican, the church may have been as responsible as were those who persecuted the church for the seeming godlessness—the great void without forgiveness—which depressed Greene on his Mexican travels.

It is one thing to protect the church from Donatism and to deliver Christians from the dangers of subjectivism through a regulated and restraining system of sacraments. It is quite another thing to say that this is accomplished best in the way in which Roman Catholicism attempts to do it. In Mexico, the system was an occasion for the worse kind of subjectivism, the exploitation of priestly power in the face of the peasant’s ignorant faithfulness. Improper keeping of the “keys” of the Kingdom in Mexico is a key to understanding how God became accessory to the church’s accommodation to this world. When Greene introduces a new priest, mysteriously, almost miraculously, after the execution of his pathetic hero, the reader is forced to ask himself: Is this the author’s proposal for renewal? Is it possible that God may grant grace in another manner? This question is at the “heart of the matter”!

Not all Mexican revolutionists turned from Christ as they turned from the church. Those who often suspect clerics at least may respect Jesus. Soy católico, pero soy anti-clerical! Jose Orozco, rabid and rigid anti-clerical, painted the famous frescoes about the larger aspirations of western-hemisphere man at Dartmouth College in the 1930s. In one of the panels he shows a militant Christ-figure, symbol of an aroused and aggressive spirituality, with ax in hand, a cross at his feet. He stands against a junk heap of religious symbols. To be sure, Quetzalcoatl and not Christ seems to be the hero of the Mexican muralist. But artist Orozco breathes the spirit of prophets who know and warn that God may find man’s sacrifice to him an abomination. He may hate, all the more, the manipulation of Christ’s sacrifice as an instrument of any institutional power.

It is not enough to deal with Greene’s tale in terms of an anonymous priest whose plight exposes desperate human inadequacy, or to see, as Mauriac would have us see, the “utilization of sin by grace” (Francois Mauriac, Men I Hold Great, 1951). Grace may abound! God may turn sin to his own glory! But neither the Christian nor the church should sin that grace may abound. Certainly brutality may not be justified in the name and for the sake of any revolutionary ideology. At the time of Greene’s Mexican visit, revolutionists—for all of their pretensions about purposes and projects for justice—had enough of an ecclesiastical institution, centuries old, centuries rich, whose priests sanctified through a sacramental system exploitation of the dispossessed.

JAMES H. SMYLIE

Department of Church History

Union Theological Seminary

Richmond, Virginia

On several occasions the writer has written, or remarked, that the Church spends much of her time trying to make non-Christians act like Christians.

We do not question the validity of this observation, but when it was made recently in a group of ministers, men honestly and earnestly preaching the Gospel, one godly pastor observed: “My problem is trying to get Christians to act like Christians.”

Sober thought reveals how true this is in our own lives, and in the lives of other Christians. How few of us act as Christians should act! How frequently our actions, and reactions, are much more like the unregenerate than like the regenerate! How often we belie our Christian profession by word and deed!

People become Christians through faith in Jesus Christ and in no other way. It is impossible to do anything which will bring us into a right relationship with God. This has been done for us and must be received by faith.

Nevertheless, living as one of the redeemed is a matter of growing in grace and involves an act of the will, a will enlightened, motivated, and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Living as a Christian means the exhibiting of many facets of God’s grace in our hearts, all of them the outgrowth of Christian love and all of them polished and brightened by practice.

Their sequence is inconsequential, for they combine to make up the whole of Christian graces by which the believer should be recognized. Furthermore, these graces are the outward expression of an inner Presence and attitude, the putting into action of those things we know are good and right. This we do not for our own glorification but for the glory of our God.

Sympathy. There is hardly a day that we do not come in contact with someone who has been buffeted by the winds of adversity. All around us there are those who sorrow, who are the victims of illness, suffering, bereavement, or privation.

How utterly un-Christian to be indifferent to these unfortunate! True sympathy is begotten by love and expressed at the personal level. Only the Christian can know true sympathy, for he has experienced the comfort of the Holy Spirit and knows, or should know, how to sympathize with others.

Speaking of this the Apostle Paul says: “Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God” (2 Cor. 1:4).

Compassion. The Christian should show compassion. There is a distinction between sympathy and compassion, for compassion involves depth of understanding—one sinner’s being sorry for another sinner. As Dr. Joseph Blinko has said, “One beggar telling another beggar where he has found bread.”

Compassion looks deep into the heart, suffers with and understands the need of the other person, and communicates that understanding. Compassion ignores the unlovely as it sees God’s image in most unlikely places.

Courtesy. Courtesy is the art and grace of treating others with respect and understanding—just as we would like to be treated. It is politeness in the face of provocation, the turning of the other cheek when we have been offended.

Courtesy involves the soft answer which can turn away wrath. It is the recognition of the niceties of social intercourse even in the midst of trying circumstances.

Only too often unhappy situations develop because of the lack of common courtesy. That this should be true where Christians are concerned is a travesty, reflecting dishonor on the very name Christian.

Patience. We live in a day of multiplied tensions, due, in part, to the pace of modern living. Impatience has dimmed the witness of many a Christian. How often we must distress our Lord by our impatience with others. Some people seem slow, inarticulate, and inept—how do we appear to our Lord? And yet he in infinitely patient with us.

Tactfulness. Frankness is not always for the glory of God. We have known some Christians who have prided themselves on being frank, and we have known some who have been hurt by this frankness. Telling the truth can be done in love, taking into consideration the feelings of others. There is a vast difference in the remarks of two shoe salesmen, one of whom said, “I’m sorry madam, but your foot is too big for this shoe,” while the other said, “I am sorry, but this shoe is too small for you.”

Tact is that grace which enables us to sense the feelings of others and to act towards them or communicate with them in a way which preserves human dignity.

Forgiveness. Without a spirit of forgiveness human relationships cannot be maintained at the Christian level. We live in the light of God’s forgiveness, and it is an attitude which God requires of us. Forgiveness involves the divesting of the robe of self-righteousness and being clothed with the humility which is a part of true Christianity.

Practicality. Where we so often fail is at the point of implementation. To too many of us Christianity is a matter of theory, the Christian graces nebulous attributes which we expect in others but fail to exhibit ourselves.

Practicality involves helping people in the place where they need help. It is not just a kind word but also a kind act where that act can do the most good. Where food is needed, give food. Where clothing is needed give clothing. Where comfort, sympathy, courtesy, and patience are needed, show these in a tangible way. The Apostle James admonishes us: “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” Acting like a Christian means just that.

In these things the Christian must rigorously search his own heart, at the same time determining by God’s help to grow in those aspects of grace which so intimately affect others, while they reflect Christ in our own hearts.

C. S. Lewis has well said, “Do not waste your time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor or not; act as if you did. As soon as you do this you find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.”

The exhibiting of the grace of God in our dealings with others must be for the glory of God. The unbelieving world sees Christ through the lives of Christians—and what a sorry spectacle is often paraded before them!

The exhibiting of Christian graces is a matter of practice, of growing, and of outward witnessing. In this the effectiveness of our salvation is exhibited to others. When we fail to act as Christians we dishonor the One whose name we bear.

The world needs the evidence of sanctification in the Christian’s life. This is evidence of the power of God to redeem and change, and also a balm to a sin-sick world.

Paperbacks

While the groundhog is still curled up in his shadow under a snowbank, spring comes with the appearance of the bookworm, who emerges to feast on the spring book catalogs. The early worm this year reports a bumper crop of paperbacks. More than a thousand new entries have been added to the 15,700 editions indexed in last year’s Paperbound Books in Print.

No doubt Washington watches with concern. Should the government launch a paper-bank program to subsidize publishers who will refrain from printing books? Or should book silos be built in Texas?

Already there are disaster areas of paperback flooding. A recent spot-check in a college apartment revealed one chair, three mattresses, one Munck reproduction, and 1,127 paperbacks. The floor was inundated and the rising tide of books was creeping up the walls.

Paperbacks admirably fulfill the specifications of Samuel Johnson: “Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.”

That prophetic description of these handy books suggests, of course, a way to dispose of the surplus. But, contrary to the impression created by the drugstore rack, the paperbacks are gaining in quality as well as quantity. This minor publishing revolution could become a cultural renaissance under the very eye of television. Art, biography, economics, fiction, history, literature, philosophy, poetry, reference, religion, science—they are the classifications of the paperback catalog.

For years I have been filling my windowsills with these paperbacks, and some day I shall begin reading them. What I need, dear Editor, is your organizing genius. You have been spotlighting significant paperbacks regularly. Could you sponsor local CHRISTIANITY TODAY discussion groups? Or fine me if I haven’t read the book of the fortnight?

Leaders are readers; nowhere is a Christian retreat from the world more disastrous than in the world of books. If readers of paperbacks are to discover the leatherbacked Book, they must be met by Christians at home in both. The God-man must be confessed before men; the written Word of God must answer and judge the written words of men. The themes of culture are at root religious. Multiplied books do not make words cheap any more than the multitude of men makes life cheap. We must take both seriously. Christian journeyed to the City carrying his Book. Today he should have a paperback in each pocket.

No Need For Burial?

Thanks for the stimulating December 21 issue regarding the threats of Communism.… If we fail to clearly crystallize our crucial national and religious concepts and ideals international Communism may not have to bury us, but merely erect a tombstone over our graves that we have dug for ourselves. Now is the hour for national penitence and rededication: Communism is surely evil, but there is much evil within ourselves.

Oklahoma City, Okla.

I agree that basically this present world struggle is between two ideologies, individualism and collectivism, and these well may be called religion. And certainly Christian people must keep this fact in mind as they gird for battle. But the battle is being fought in the political arena, with overtones of the possibility that some phases of it may be fought by armed forces.…

I cannot go along with [Bishop Kennedy’s] declaration that “Communism as an economic system has certain undeniable strengths.” In my opinion the only truth in this statement is that Communism is an economic system. All too often it is assumed that Communism is either a political system or a political-economic system. Actually, Communism, an economic system, could operate under a monarchy, oligarchy or other political system. Communism does not exist anywhere in the world. The preliminary phase, dictatorship (of the proletariat!), is operating in the Soviets and other Communist countries, so called.

Neither Communism nor the “dictatorship of the proletariat” have “undeniable strengths.” Either would fall of its own weight except for the strength of the ruling political background.…

American Council of Christian Laymen

Madison, Wisc.

Congratulations on … “Facing the Anti-God Colossus,” by Billy Graham.… This is a most timely and excellent observation. Mr. Graham has occasionally been criticized for his straightforward proclamation of the Gospel, and I read one article that even went so far as to call him a “prophet of doom.” Personally, I am most thankful that the cause of truth has a voice such as his in times like these.…

Board of Church Extension and Home Missions of the Church of God

Anderson, Ind.

Never in all the Christian era have there been fields “white unto harvest” like those that now exist behind the Iron Curtain. Those people, now better educated than ever before yet denied access to truth, are desperately eager to find the meaning for life. Forbidden to enjoy even the basic freedoms of existence, they grope to know a better pattern of society than the one in which they are held subject.…

Memphis, Tenn.

Can the anti-Russians find no better remedy for our present divided world than this?… Physical force of our huge material riches will never defeat or convert communism into our outmoded American old-fashioned capitalism. The more we persecute our few Communists, the firmer they are in their self-defense, because they are firm in their social and economic religion as the first Christians were.…

Cleveland, Ohio

Though many truths are stated and well stated by all the writers on the subject, one wonders when Christianity is, as Bishop Kennedy has said, going to get off [dead] center.…

Philadelphia, Pa.

Dr. Bonnell in … “A Challenge to Christianity” has made a very broad and sweeping charge, “Religion in every shape and form, and especially Christianity, is regarded by Communism as its arch enemy.” This will be disputed by many Communists and fellow-travelers, but I think he has hit the nail on the head. Such a statement is very controversial and it will arouse an attack upon him, with a request to prove his case, but I think he is standing upon very firm ground, and that he can prove that his words were not idle words.…

McKinley Park Presbyterian Church

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Wonder Book Disclaimer

I should like to explain the position of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare with respect to the book Primitive Man (Editorial, Oct. 26 issue).

This book is one of a series which Dr. Paul E. Blackwood has edited as an outside activity conducted on his own time. The laws and regulations governing the conduct of Federal employees permit such outside work if no conflict of interest is involved.

In this case, however, one of our procedural rules was not followed, although the work itself was properly approved. We require that when an employee’s title or connection with the Department is shown in a private publication, a disclaimer must be used which clearly rules out any official support or endorsement.

In August the omission of a disclaimer from the Wonder Books edited by Dr. Blackwood was called to our attention. He was instructed that in this case the use of his title is not appropriate, and that if the fact that he is an employee of the Office of Education is listed it must be accompanied by a disclaimer. We are following up on the action taken to carry out these instructions. Of course, depending on the number of books which have been printed, it may be several months or longer before all books in dealers’ stocks show the new format.

Administrative Assistant Secretary

Department of Health, Education,

and Welfare

Washington, D.C.

Garbc And Billy Graham

Dr. Paul R. Jackson’s letter (Eutychus, Sept. 28 issue) was of particular interest to me, because I attended Baptist Bible Seminary in Johnson City, New York, when Dr. Jackson was president of the school.…

Dr. Jackson stated, “We are not against Mr. Graham, and it is our definite policy not to attack him.” This statement is false. Many times in chapel, in classrooms and from the pulpit at First Baptist Church in Johnson City, I have heard Dr. Graham attacked. Never once in my five years at Baptist Bible Seminary and in my past seven years association with the General Association of Regular Baptists have I ever heard a prayer uttered by any of the leaders in the movement for God’s blessing on Dr. Graham. I have heard prayers that God would show Dr. Graham the light so that he would repudiate his present position (this means come ye apart and join us).…

Due to the policies and the spirit of the movement several of the recent graduates of Baptist Bible Seminary have sought other fellowships.

Bethany Baptist Church

Highland, Ill.

I hold a Bachelor of Theology degree from the Baptist Bible Seminary, Johnson City, New York. BBS is an accredited school and endorsed by the GARBC. Dr. Paul R. Jackson who is now the National Representative of the GARBC was president and professor while I was a student.

I have had high regard for Dr. Jackson. However, when his letter to you appeared in the Baptist Bulletin, I believe he fell into his own error.… I can name men, and I am included, who … were sorrowfully led to leave the GARBC movement because its “policies” and “practices” are not in harmony. Let me add that these men were not only students but former faculty members of Baptist Bible Seminary.…

When I was a student I heard several times in class sessions and during chapel services aggressive attacks against Dr. Graham. This is one of the reasons that some men of my graduating class did not seek GARBC pulpits.

It may be a “definite policy not to attack Dr. Graham,” but I have witnessed the leading church in the Johnson City and Binghamton area do it from the pulpit. I was surprised at Dr. Jackson’s statement regarding the Chicago Crusade and the opposition from the GARBC. He said, “I live in Chicago, and I have not heard of any such incidents.” I heard about the attacks and I live a thousand miles away!

Billy Graham has nothing to hide. The conscientious laymen of the GARBC should know the facts.…

Pine City Baptist Church

Pine City. N. Y.

How do i feel and what am I doing about the fact that I am soon to die?

It’s quite certain, you see, that I will soon die. Such was not always the case. Fifty-five years ago when I began my struggle against tuberculosis (I learned years later that my family despaired of my recovery) I could only say, “I may die soon.” But now that I am an octogenarian, I can say without fear of contradiction that I am sure to pass away before much longer.

How do I feel about this prospect of imminent death? Just fine. I’m somewhat surprised at my spontaneous certainty that all will be well with me when I pass from this life. It’s a little like this: every time I come to a church I’m sure I will be safe and will have heartening fellowship. In the same way I’m happily expectant about the good life in the Great Beyond. When I read the New Testament I find myself saying, “I just couldn’t help believing in Jesus.” Just so, I find myself saying, “I just can’t help knowing I’ll be safe when I die.” Sometimes I start arguing with myself: “Are you so sure, old man? Aren’t there some things you haven’t taken into consideration? Are you fit to die happily? Better stop and investigate.” But it’s hard to get my own attention. I drift off into singing bits of songs that I love—I can’t help it.

I must admit I don’t enjoy the prospect of physical death. Let me illustrate what I mean. The first time I underwent a major operation I had complete confidence in the surgeon and in the nurses. I was sure I’d come through fine, and that I’d be in better health. But for some reason I’ve always had a horror of being smothered, and I was afraid the anesthetic would smother me. That’s how I feel about physical death. It’s like a dreaded anesthetic I need to take between the experiences of this world and the far better blessings of the future world.

Though I expect the future of life to transcend by far any experiences I have known here on earth, I can’t say I’ve attained to that eagerness for departure which Paul expressed. He said he had a desire to depart and to be with Christ—that he was willing to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. I’m reminded—if you’ll forgive me—of the one brother who alone remained seated when the preacher asked that all who wanted to go to heaven should stand. “My brother, don’t you want to go to heaven?” asked the pastor. “Why, I thought you meant right now,” came the reply.

I’m still interested in the affairs of this world. I watch the growing crops with eagerness. I was astounded when my doctor friend told me that his sister was incubating 350,000 turkey eggs this year. I would have missed every meal of the day before I would have missed watching Colonel Glenn on his epic flight. I cheer at the peewee baseball games. And I wish that for once District Attorney Berger would get the best of Perry Mason. No doubt the time will come when I can only sit and wait. But I hope that when I must turn my back on this world, I’ll be looking upward with a song on my lips.

Well, in view of its soon coming, am I preparing for death? Not much more than I have for years. I remember a brother who told me that in World War I he was on a transport ship when a sub was sighted. It was almost amusing, he said, to see men everywhere with their little New Testaments, trying to find something to help them in a watery grave. When the danger was past, they put away the books—for safekeeping until the next big scare! I’m not moved this way. I’ve been getting ready for the last impressive hour for many, many years. I’ve prepared faithfully: when I tried so hard to have one more sermon for the people. When I said to a gifted teacher, “Won’t you ask the Lord tonight to help you settle this matter?” and she joyously sought me the next day to confess Christ. When I went many times to a home so revolting I would ask none of our women to go there. When I happily preached to a mere 8 or 12 or 16 at mission stations, sure of being in the Lord’s appointed place. When I read and read until I wore out several Bibles. When I turned ever and again to a man’s best earthly refuge, my own Christian home. Oh, in all these and a thousand other activities I was getting ready to die. Let me make a suggestion here. Just go along living a Christian life of usefulness the way a Christian should, and when you approach 82 you’ll find yourself thinking, “Why, I’ve been getting ready for my last hour on earth for a long time.”

But I think it’s time to tell you on what ground I base my almost audacious confidence that all is well with me as death approaches. The universal longing for another life is best answered by Jesus’ words and deeds. He was sure he had lived with the Father before he came to us, and he was sure he would return to the Father. He remembered he had come from God. And he went back to God after he had washed the disciples’ feet. On his last night on earth he said, “Father, I come to thee. Glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory I had with thee before the world was.” On the cross he said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

And he was sure he could save all believing disciples for eternity. He prayed that his friends might be with him to behold his glory. He said that his sheep hear his voice, that he the Shepherd knows them, that he gives them eternal life, and no one can pluck them out of his hand. Just before he died he told his disciples not to be troubled; he was going to prepare a place for them and would come to receive them unto himself, “that where I am, there ye may be also.” What a promise! What’s more, Jesus keeps his promises. When the first martyr, Stephen, was being tried for his life, he saw God in his glory and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “I see him, I see him!” he cried. Then while tormentors stoned him to death he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” Jesus was there to welcome Stephen; and I say in utmost humility, I expect him to be there to welcome me, too.

Dwight L. Moody was as mighty an evangelist in the last century as Billy Graham is today. I remember when in 1899, in the midst of a great revival in Kansas City, he became ill and was rushed home to Massachusetts. A few days later he was gone. In the last moments he had said to his son: “This is no dream, Will. If this be death, it is inexpressibly sweet. Earth is receding, heaven is opening, God is calling, and I must go.”—The Rev. S. F. MARSH, of Leland, Mississippi, retired Southern Baptist minister who served more than 40 years in Texas pastorates.

A book salesman recently told me that there are about 600 book publishers in the United States, and I have observed all by myself that they run from Vintage to Vantage—which, viewed from either end, is a long way. Even if his figure is a typical salesman’s estimate, I hope that many of these never get my address. The postman whose bent back brings books up to my tenth-floor office already more than earns his hire. As he enters and tries to stand up straight, he reminds me of a hard-to-open book, and his eye says more than I care to read. As it is, his weekly deposit on my big desk scarcely leaves room for my coffee cup.

My postman’s future is not promising if promises of my already innumerable publishers about their new spring books come true—and they always do. We’re in for another avalanche. While never admitted in print—though facilities for such confession are not far from any one of them—publishers, it seems, have taken a vow to leave no subject uncovered.

And—speaking of covers—be it known to the reader that I am working up to the reason for CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s annual Spring Forecast: there are covers and covers. Literally, there are even covers for covers. Why is a well-bound, beautifully covered book covered up with what the industry calls a dust jacket? Dust, you say? My wife veritably finds the jackets harder to dust than the books. I admit that the composite effect of two or three shelves of colorfully jacketed books often creates the prettiest spot in the room, making a contribution equal, and often similar, to that of some modern paintings. Yet I suspect that the publishers’ concerns are not really related to interior decorating, nor to what my wife thinks of dust. They are concerned about that free space which can so effectively carry a colorful advertisement for the books I have not purchased. But why “dust” jackets? Are they asking me not only to accept their advertisements, but also to keep them clean?

Really, the only dust jackets that annoy me are those which cover the book but not the subject. The dedication of book publishers to leave no subject uncovered combined with their practice of covering up every book with a dust jacket whose advertisements and claims somehow are always brightly legible makes for colorful libraries, but also makes the life of the book editor difficult. True, there is no cover charge. But it is also true that while clothes may make the man, it takes more than a jacket to make a book.

The book editor must flee the temptation to judge a book by its jacket, and often suffers because reviewers don’t. This not only troubles him, but leaves him quite alone in his misery; since more people read jackets than books, the reviewer automatically has a majority.

Now that the reader has some intimation that the life of a forecaster is not an easy one, from endless offerings I will present a selection of what appear to be the most significant books to come with spring. The selection is made, of course, on the basis of (clean) dust jackets and publishers’ claims, but the reader can now know that it is done with some knowledge of the hazards, and with some not unsympathetic awareness that every producer, author, publisher, or father is, understandably, favorably prejudiced toward his own issue.

Eschewing all boasting, the reader’s assurance in my selective ability should be bolstered by his learning that rarely has any item in these forecasts ended up on those office shelves whose books even the office help refuse to take home free of charge. It may further be said that if this is to be a normal spring, the great world of publishers will again produce many exciting and even some great books, books worth every loyal postman’s ache.

NEW TESTAMENT: Harper and Row will publish A Historical Introduction to the New Testament by R. M. Grant, The Historical Jesus by Heinz Zahrnt, Jesus As They Saw Him by William Barclay, and The Gospel of Philip by R. McL. Wilson. John Knox Press will offer J. W. Bowman’s Jesus’ Teaching in Its Environment, G. Lundström’s The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus, and R. N. Flew’s Jesus and His Way. From Westminster Press will come The Bible and the Church by S. Terrien, Parables to the Point by A. T. Childs, Many Witnesses, One Lord by William Barclay, Tradition in the Early Church by R. P. C. Hanson, and New Testament Apocrypha, Volume I, by E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher. Cambridge University Press will print W. D. Davies’ The Turin Fragments of Tyconius’ Commentary of Revelation (Tyconius’ thought influenced Augustine); and Oxford Press, C. K. Barrett’s The Pastoral Epistles.

Eerdmans will publish Origin of the Synoptic Gospels: Some Basic Questions by the late N. B. Stonehouse; and Sheed & Ward, Understanding the Lord’s Prayer by H. van den Bussche. From Association Press, T. S. Kepler’s The Meaning and Mystery of the Resurrection; from Fleming H. Revell, P. S. Rees’s studies in I Peter, Triumphant in Trouble; from Concordia Publishing House, Luther’s Works, Volume 26 (Galatians); from Philosophical Library, S. Umen’s Pharisaism and Jesus; and from Hawthorn, R. Zeller’s The Book of Joseph.

OLD TESTAMENT AND ARCHAEOLOGY: Harper announces publication of what it appears will be a significant work, Before the Bible by C. Gordon. Revell will print D. A. Redding’s Psalms of David; Eerdmans, Treaty of the Great King by M. G. Kline and The Book of Isaiah, Volume I, by E. J. Young; John Knox, Essays on Old Testament Hermeneutics edited by C. Westermann; and Sheed & Ward, Meditations on the Psalms by B. Mischke. Two archaeological productions are promised: Biblical Archaeology by G. E. Wright from Westminster, and The Splendor That Was Egypt by M. A. Murray from Hawthorn.

CHURCH HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY: Here is a field that will be well ploughed this spring. Abingdon will give us a delightful book by G. Kennedy, While I’m on My Feet (an autobiographical writing), G. A. Buttrick’s Christ and History, and M. Schmidt’s John Wesley: A Theological Biography. Thomas Nelson will publish G. Mollat’s The Popes at Avignon, 1305–1378 and The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, Volume 13, edited by C. S. Dessain; Harvard Press, The Harvest of Medieval Theology by H. A. Oberman and The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanists by L. W. Spitz; Association Press, N. Ehrenstrom and W. G. Muelder’s Institutionalism and Church Unity; Yale Press, Luther’s View of Church History by J. M. Headley and Hoosier Zion by L. C. Rudolph; McGraw-Hill, The Meetinghouse and Church in Early New England by E. Sinnott; Macmillan, Moody by J. C. Pollock; World Publishing Company, The Idea of Prehistory by G. Daniel; Charles Scribner’s Sons, American Christianity, Volume II, 1820–1960, by H. S. Smith, R. T. Handy, and L. A. Loetscher; Broadman Press, The Anabaptist Story by W. R. Estep; Bethany Press, Reformation of Tradition, Volume I of “The Renewal of Church,” edited by R. E. Osborn; E. P. Dutton & Company, The Tides of History, Volume II, by J. Pirenne; University of Copenhagen (order from Wartburg Seminary), A Study in Immigrant History: The Americanization of the Danish Lutheran Churches in America by P. C. Nyholm; Oxford, What Jesus Did by T. P. Ferris and Jesus and the Gospel by E. C. Colwell; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy by A. Schmemann; and Southern Methodist University Press, George Washington and Religion by P. F. Boller, Jr.

Westminster will publish five in this area: The Church and Faith in Mid-America by V. Obenhaus, Presbyterianism in New York State by R. H. Nichols, Did the Church Baptize Infants? by K. Aland, Creeds and Confessions by E. Routley, and Luther by F. Lau; Harper, two: Second Chance for American Protestants by M. E. Marty and The Lively Experiment by S. E. Mead; and Cambridge, two: St. Anselm and His Biographer by R. W. Southern and Historian and Character by M. D. Knowles.

THEOLOGY: Kierkegaard As Theologian by L. Dupre, Christ the Redeemer by F. X. Durrwell, and Theology For Today by C. Davis, all from Sheed & Ward. Scribner’s will publish The Vindication of Liberal Theology by H. P. Van Dusen and The Rationality of Faith by C. Michalson; Bethany Press, Reconstruction of Theology edited by R. G. Wilburn; Revell, The Divine Comforter by J. D. Pentecost and Things Most Surely Believed by C. S. Roddy; and John Knox, Identification: Human and Divine by K. J. Foreman and Salvation History: A Biblical Interpretation by E. C. Rust.

From Association The Recovery of Life’s Meaning: Understanding Creation and the Incarnation by W. P. Jones; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, The Dogma of Christ, And Other Essays by E. Fromm; Macmillan, The New Creation as Metropolis by G. Winter; and Oxford, Truth and the Person in Christian Theology by H. V. White.

Westminster will publish W. Lillie’s Studies in New Testament Ethics, J. A. Baird’s The Justice of God in the Teaching of Jesus, and J. K. S. Reid’s Our Life In Christ; and Harper, Finality in Faith by N. F. S. Ferré and The Later Heidegger and Theology, Volume I of “New Frontiers in Theology,” by J. M. Robinson and J. B. Cobb. Fortress Press will issue Predestination by H. G. Hageman and Faith Victorious (an introduction to Luther’s theology) by L. Pinomaa; and Baker, Salvation by E. F. Kevan and The Holy Spirit by W. Broomall.

ECUMENICS: The offerings are few. Westminster will present One Church: Catholic and Reformed by L. Mudge; McGraw-Hill, The Challenge to Reunion by R. McA. Brown and D. H. Scott; and Macmillan, Unity in Mid-Career by Bridston and Wagoner.

MISSIONS: Broadman will publish Christ For the World by G. A. West and Fire on the Earth by S. Powell; Westminster, Christianity in Africa by C. Northcott; Eerdmans, Evangelism in the Early Church by S. C. Brown; Sheed & Ward, That the World May Believe by Hans Küng; Harper, Barriers to Christian Belief by A. L. Griffith; Moody Press, R. Evans’ Let Europe Hear and A. Rodli’s North of Heaven; Fortress, The Challenge of World Religions by G. F. Vicedom and Theology in the Life of the Church by R. W. Bertram; and Friendship Press, Christian Issues in Southern Asia by P. D. Devanandan, These Cities Glorious by L. H. Janssen, and Mud Walls and Steel Mills by R. W. Taylor and M. M. Thomas.

Revell will issue S. Perkins’ Red China Prisoner, My Years Behind Bamboo Bars; Herald Press, R. L. Mast’s Lost and Found; and Augsburg, Back of Beyond by J. Kjome.

PASTORAL THEOLOGY: In this area the following listings are promised: The Pastor and His People by E. N. Jackson, Channel Press; Encounter With Spurgeon by H. Thielicke, Fortress; The Seasons of Life by P. Tournier, John Knox; Principles for Interpreting the Bible by A. B. Mickelsen, Eerdmans; The Miracle of Dialogue by R. L. Howe, Seabury; Make Your Preaching Relevant by J. D. Sanford, Broadman; The Urgency of Preaching by K. Haselden, Harper; Preaching on Old Testament Themes edited by C. E. Lemmon, Bethany Press; The New Bible Survey by J. L. Eason, Zondervan; Power in Expository Preaching by F. D. Whitesell, The Pastor’s Counseling Handbook by J. L. Christensen, Preaching Week by Week by D. A. MacLennan, and Neurotics in the Church by R. J. St. Clair, all by Revell; and Epistle to the Romans by J. R. Richardson and K. Chamblin, Baker.

Abingdon will give us L. D. Weather-head’s Wounded Spirits and J. G. McKenzie’s Guilt: Its Meaning and Significance; Sheed & Ward, Preaching edited by R. Drury and To Preach the Gospel by P. Hitz; Westminster, The Preacher: His Purpose and Practice by R. Pearson, The Strong and the Weak by P. Tournier, The Gospel in a Strange New World by T. O. Wedel; Zondervan, ThePsychology of Christian Experience by W. C. Mavis; Baker, You and Your Mental Health by R. Heynen and The Christian and the Couch by D. Tweddlie; and Prentice-Hall, Principles And Practices of Pastoral Care by R. L. Dicks. Some of these are plainly very interesting titles.

ETHICS AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS: P. L. Lehmann’s Ethics in a Christian Context will be issued by Harper; J. Leclercq’s Christ and the Modern Conscience by Sheed & Ward; H. E. Kolbe’s One World Under God by Abingdon; J. C. McLelland’s Living For Christ by John Knox; D. L. Munby’s The Idea of a Secular Society by Oxford; B. Morgan’s Christians, the Church and Property by Westminster; S. F. Olford and F. A. Lawes’s Sanctity of Sex by Revell. Holt, Rinehart and Winston will publish The Religious Press in America by Deedy, Marty, Silverman, and Lekachman—which should be an interesting book, as should McGraw-Hill’s The Church, the Court, and American Democracy by R. F. Drinan.

BIBLE STUDIES, COMMENTARIES, DICTIONARIES: Harper will print W. Neil’s one-volume Harper’s Bible Commentary; McGraw-Hill, The Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Bible (translated from the Dutch by L. F. Hartman); and Cambridge Press, the Cambridge History of the Bible by S. L. Greenslade. From Fortress will come H. Ringgren’s Faith of the Psalmists; from United Church Press, L. S. Mudge’s God Now with Us; from Seabury, C. R. Simcox’ The First Gospel: Its Meaning and Message; and from Zondervan, The Pictorial Bible Dictionary edited by M. C. Tenney.

APOLOGETICS, PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE: In this wide field Eerdmans will issue The Vocabulary of Communism by L. DeKoster and The Four Major Cults by A. Hoekema; Harper, Twentieth Century Religious Thought by J. Macquarrie, Christianity and World Revolution edited by E. Rian, The Dilemma of Modern Belief by S. Miller, and Passion by K. Olsson. From Westminster will come The Inspiration of Scripture by D. M. Beegle and An Introduction to Barth’s Dogmatics For Preachers by A. B. Come; from Macmillan, Good News by J. B. Phillips; from World, Natutral Law and Modern Society by R. M. Hutchins, J. C. Murray, and others; and from Sheed & Ward, B. Ulanov’s Contemporary Christian Thought. Moody will present The Spiritual Dilemma of the Jewish People by A. W. Kac; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, The Jewish-Christian Argument: A History of Theologies in Conflict by H. J. Schoeps; Prentice-Hall, Positive Protestantism: A Return to First Principles by H. T. Kerr; and Presbyterian and Reformed, Karl Barth’s Theological Method by G. H. Clark.

SERMONS: Here is proof that some ministers still follow the good practice of writing sermons: The Mysterious Presence by E. C. Munson, Fortress; Christ’s Eternal Invitation by R. T. Haynes, Jr., John Knox; Sermons to Intellectuals by F. H. Littell, Macmillan; Sermons for Special Sundays by J. D. Holt, Broadman; and A Reasoned Faith by J. Baillie, Scribner’s. Harper will publish Freedom of the Christian Man by H. Thielicke, He Spoke to Them in Parables by H. Bosley, Christian Priorities by F. D. Coggan, and Strength to Love by M. L. King, Jr. Revell will present G. Powell’s Difficult Sayings of Jesus; Abingdon, J. A. Redhead’s Sermons on Bible Characters; Concordia, Sermonic Studies, Volume II, by various authors; and Westminster, K. Barth’s The Preaching of the Gospel.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION: Christian Education as Engagement by D. R. Hunter, Seabury; The Church College in Today’s Culture by W. O. Doescher, Augsburg; The Teaching Church by K. B. Cully and Called to Teach by C. D. Spotts, United Press; and three from Westminster: How to Teach Senior Highs by L. E. Bowman, Jr., The Case Method in Pastoral and Lay Education by W. Fallaw, and Servants and Stewards by A. R. McKay.

LITURGY, MUSIC, WORSHIP: Concordia will publish R. Seboldt’s God and Our Parish; Broadman, Church Music in Transition by W. L. Hooper; and Abingdon, The Training Of Church Choirs by J. R. Sydnor.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE: Cambridge will issue Anglo-Saxon Churches by H. M. and J. Taylor; Eerdmans, Christ and Architecture for Reformation Churches by D. J. Bruggink and C. H. Droppers; and Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art by G. van der Leeuw.

RELIGIOUS LITERATURE AND CULTURE: J. B. Lippincott will publish G. MacGregor’s The Hemlock and the Cross; United Church, J. M. Benton’s Gift of a Golden String; and Augsburg, J. H. Burtness and J. P. Kildahl’s The New Community in Christ. Macmillan will offer Hertzberg, Marty, and Moody’s The Outbursts that Await Us.

DEVOTIONAL: From Abingdon will come The Word Became Flesh by E. S. Jones, Life Is Forever by G. A. Crafts, Power of Paul by W. McF. Stowe, Whom Christ Commended by R. W. Sockman, and No Saints Suddenly by H. G. Werner. Broadman will publish Did I Say Thanks? by L. B. Flynn, and from Bethany Press will come Gift of Hope by W. P. Ford, On Holy Ground by D. E. Stevenson, and Pursuit of Happiness by W. K. Pendleton. Eerdmans will publish Seed Thoughts for Christian Living by R. E. O. White and Reflections by H. E. Kohn; Channel, The Stranger Within by C. H. Powell; and Holt, Rinehart and Winston, I Believe In God: A Meditation On the Apostles’ Creed by P. Claudel.

MISCELLANEOUS: Abingdon will publish Halford Luccock Treasury, selected by Robert E. Luccock from various writings of his late father, onetime Yale Professor and “Simeon Stylites.” Scribner’s will issue A Nation So Conceived by R. Niebuhr and A. Heimert; Macmillan, P. Ferris’ The Church of England and W. C. Smith’s The Meaning and End of Religion. From William Morrow will come The Shoes of the Fisherman by M. L. (The Devil’s Advocate) West and The Birthday King by G. Fielding.

PAPERBACKS: Here I can select but a few from a vast literature: Zechariah Speaks Today by A. A. Van Ruler, Chrysostom and His Message by S. Neil, Association; Zwingli: A Reformed Theologian by J. Courvoisier, Concerning the Ministry by J. Oman, This We Know by S. de Diétrich, John Knox; The Struggle of the Soul by L. Sherrill, Memoirs of Childhood and Youth by A. Schweitzer, Religious Language by I. Ramsay, The School of Prayer by O. Wyon, The Cost of Discipleship by D. Bonhoeffer, The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis, Macmillan; Many Things in Parables and The Gospel Miracles by R. S. Wallace, The Old Testament in the New Testament by R. V. G. Tasker, Eerdmans; Our Faith by E. Brunner, Christianity Among the Religions of the World by A. Toynbee, Scribner’s; The Call To Preach by C. Beyler, Herald Press; Kierkegaard’s Way to the Truth by G. Malantschuk, Augsburg; Concordia Bible Dictionary by E. Lueker, Proclaiming the Parables by M. Schmieding, Key to the Full Life by R. Norden, Concordia; The Miracle of America by G. L. Ford, Zondervan; Lectures on Ethics by I. Kant (which suggests the very opposite of his position), Harper; William Carey—Father of Modern Missions by W. B. Davis, Moody Press; Jesus Christ and History by G. E. Ladd, The Century of the New Testament by E. M. Blaiklock, Inter-Varsity.

Probably any teacher of college freshmen is familiar with the student who turns up on registration day with a strong emotional urge to be a professional man but with complete disdain for the step-by-step process for reaching his goal. He may be an aspiring scientist who wants to remake the world—but can’t stand math; or a would-be physician with a burden to serve humanity—as long as he can stay away from chemistry; or a ministerial student who yearns to preach—if only he can escape Greek.

The human urge to bypass the process by which things happen and believe that “wishing will make it so” is a comfortable rationalization which helps us avoid work. We all indulge it at times. But when a Christian minister asserts, in effect, “Our purposes are so important and lofty that we will not be distracted from them by examination of the means by which we reach them,” the evasion may become dangerous. I am talking about the minister’s knowledge of communication process.

The study of communication theory as an integrated body of information constituting an area of scholarship in its own right is a relatively modern development. Given recent impetus by the growth of huge nationalistic propaganda organizations and astronomical advertising budgets, study of the communication process has attracted increasing attention from a variety of disciplines. Modern communication theory gathers together from relevant traditional areas of scholarship (such as sociology, linguistics, psychology, semantics, literature, anthropology, logic, and rhetoric) all available information about the transmission of ideas, and applies scientific information-gathering techniques to the study of the process. The classic definition of communication study as “the study of who says what to whom with what effect” provides a good outline.

There are indications that some ministers and theologians have taken fright that study of the communication process may turn out to be an attack on preaching. We have recently read rather pointed ministerial criticism of those who apply the principles of communication theory to the spread of the Gospel. Though variously expressed, most of the misgivings can probably be grouped under three general headings.

Believing, as he does, that participation in the revelation of Jesus Christ is the most important work in which man can engage, the minister owes it to himself to find out whether organized study of the communication process represents a potential threat or a possible source of increased efficiency in his work of spreading the Gospel. Let us examine the charges one at a time.

Problem 1: Communication theorists are technicians concerned only with method, with no regard for the truth or permanent importance of the matter conveyed. There is some basis for this assertion. The electronics expert who installs and operates the public address system for the evangelist is a technician. The effectiveness of his amplifier does not depend upon the truth or error of the speaker’s words. It depends upon the skill with which he designs his circuitry.

The student of communication theory is concerned chiefly with process—laws which govern it and effects which it can produce. But, unlike the job of the electronic technician, his work, if it is to produce results, cannot be separated from the source of the ideas. The preacher cannot say to the theorist, as he does to his public address operator, “I have now finished producing this idea—you transmit it to the audience.” For the very framing of the idea, the symbols chosen to express it, the time and place of its presentation, constitute the “techniques” to be considered. The “technique” and the “message” cannot be separated, which means that the minister must be his own “technician”—and the better-informed technician he is the more effective will be his message.

Problem 2: Theories of persuasion imply manipulation of the audience in violation of the freedom of the human will. The notion that the Nazi and Communist propaganda machines and the productions of Madison Avenue represent a magical new art which threatens all our traditional values makes good scare material, but it does not square with the facts. The basic devices of modern propaganda and advertising were well described by Aristotle. They are not the product of the black wizardry of electronics and neo-Freudian psychology. To equate the study of communication with some particular set of non-rational appeals used by an advertising agency is inaccurate and unfair.

If there is one observation which more frequently than any other causes dismay among students of communication, it is the passive receptivity of the mass audience. There are parallel areas of apathy and suggestibility in the Christian church. The ruggedly individualistic Christian of apostolic or Reformation times would seem strangely out of place in many spoon-fed twentieth-century congregations. One of the most urgent messages of today’s Church is that the significance of the individual lies in his personal accountability to God. The minister who knows how propaganda techniques short-circuit the human rational processes will most stoutly assert the importance of this personal accountability. He knows the hazards against which to warn his congregation and the non-rational shortcuts against which to guard his own sermons.

Problem 3: Application of communication theory to the work of the minister minimizes the direct work of God’s Spirit upon the human mind and elevates the human instrument. It is not a new charge that scientific examination of a process takes God out of it. Christian physicists and biologists have lived with this objection for years and have successfully contended that orderly description of the forces operating upon a celestial body or of the minute structures of the human brain need not eliminate belief in the upholding power of God. The fact that the physical finger of Deity does not appear as a value in an equation or as a location in the cortex merely teaches us that God operates his universe more efficiently and less primitively than we might have supposed. We learn that the Spirit that moved on the waters of Chaos operates lawfully.

The student of communication gathers together what has been learned about the process by which ideas move from one mind to another. He probes the pressures causing them to be accepted, rejected, or modified. He observes whether they are applied or not applied to conduct.

At what points does the Spirit enter the communication process? Certainly the preacher’s mind must be open to the Spirit’s stimulation through the written Word. Certainly the minister is alert for pertinent lessons in the circumstances God brings to him. Certainly he plans the ritual of his service and the sonorities of his organ and choir to allow the worshiper the peace and leisure for introspection—for the still, small Voice to be heard through the din of the huckster’s shouts echoing in his mind.

As in the process of the germination of a seed or the birth of a child, there is no spot to which we may point and say, “Just there is the finger of God.” Yet as in the planting of the seed or the rearing of the child, the more we know of natural law—the divinely ordained order of the universe—the more effectively we can work within its structure.

It is precisely because he believes that language and the human mind are both products of God’s creation and because he believes that God has deliberately chosen to communicate with men through the medium of human language that the minister is rewarded by study of the communication process. God could employ angels, direct vision, or other media at which man cannot even guess. But, as is obvious from the Gospel commission, the channel of human language as spoken by human beings is his chosen medium for conveying his message to mankind. Scripture records that he chose, in each age, the most effective individual transmitter for his message. Moses, Samuel, and Jeremiah were set apart from childhood; Paul was selected as a “chosen vessel” while still a rebel.

Why were these men chosen? They could scarcely have been selected for an orotund delivery, an impressive vocabulary, or a sincere presence. There must have been divine recognition of their total potential as communicators of a message. It is this total impact that concerns the student of communication.

If there is a single lesson that the study of communication would stress above all others for the minister, it would probably be attention to this “complete impact.” This means recognizing that a worship situation includes many “messages.” There are many of the communication channels which supplement or negate the words of the preacher. Communication research also suggests answers to a wide range of questions such as: How does the listener’s concept of himself affect the way he receives the minister’s message? Should the minister present both sides of a disputed point, or only his own convictions? How does audience perception of the minister affect its willingness to receive his message? Can the minister capitalize on the group identifications of his church members? When is fear not an effective stimulus to action? What happens in the mind of the listener when a new idea conflicts with a previously accepted idea? How do shifts in word meaning warp the minister’s message?

Far from attacking the study of the communication process as a threat to his calling, the minister should find in it a new opportunity to reexamine the worship techniques carried over from a previous generation. He should find incentive for rigorous self-examination. He should look to research findings as incentive to help him present the everlasting Gospel as fresh good news. He should be willing to compare his audience’s reaction to that of the audience of the Teacher of whom it is reported, “the common people heard him gladly.”

END

The best evangelical contributions of 1962, in the judgment ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY’Seditorial staff, are listed below. The selections propound evangelical perspectives in a significant way, or apply biblical doctrines effectively to modern currents of thought and life. These are not the only meritorious volumes, nor do they in every case necessarily reflect the convictions of all evangelical groups.

BERKOUWER, G. C.: Man: The Image of God (Eerdmans, 376 pp., $6). Eighth volume of “Studies in Dogmatics,” which are studies in depth by a master theologian.

BOETTNER, LORAINE: Roman Catholicism (Presbyterian and Reformed, 466 pp., $5.95). Contrasting emphases in Roman Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism.

BRUCE, F. F.: The Epistle to the Ephesians (Revell, 140 pp., $3). Written particularly for the general reader, but also rewarding for the serious student.

BUSWELL, J. OLIVER: A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion (Zondervan, 430 pp., $6.95). The first of two volumes, it provides a useful treatment of theism and anthropology.

DOUGLAS, J. D., ed.: The New Bible Dictionary (Eerdmans, 1375 pp., $12.95). A significant contribution to its field; rich in scholarship, comprehensive in coverage.

GORDON, ERNEST: Through the Valley of the Kwai (Harper, 257 pp., $3.95). The sustaining light of faith in a Japanese horror camp for prisoners of war.

GUTHRIE, DONALD: New Testament Introduction: Hebrews to Revelation (Inter-Varsity, 320 pp., $4.95). A useful study, embracing latest literature on the subject.

HENRY, CARL F. H., ed.: Basic Christian Doctrines (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 302 pp., $6). Perceptive and literate expositions by an international complement of scholars.

HUGHES, PHILIP E.: Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Eerdmans, 508 pp., $6). Skillful exegesis, evincing acquaintance with ancient and modern authorities and spiritual insight.

KOLLER, CHARLES W.: Expository Preaching Without Notes (Baker, 132 pp., $2.50). Instruction in use of the preaching method indicated in the title.

MCKINNEY, GEORGE D.: The Theology of Jehovah’s Witnesses (Zondervan, 130 pp., $2.50). Analysis of the main tenets of one of the largest and fastest-growing sects in the world.

MURCH, JAMES DEFOREST: Teach or Perish! (Eerdmans, 117 pp., $3). A spirited plea for the revitalizing of Christian education at the local church level.

PAYNE, J. BARTON: The Theology of the Older Testament (Zondervan, 554 pp., $6.95). Scholarly study organized around the theme of “testament.”

PFEIFFER, CHARLES F. and HARRISON, EVERETT F.: The Wycliffe Bible Commentary (Moody, 1525 pp., $11.95). Compressed biblical exposition with balance of the practical and the scholarly.

PFEIFFER, CHARLES F.: Exile and Return (Baker, 137 pp., $3.50). Background material which enriches Bible reading of a significant period of Old Testament history.

POLLOCK, J. C.: Hudson Taylor and Maria (McGraw-Hill, 212 pp., $4.95). New source materials highlight the early missionary adventures and married life of China Inland Mission’s founder.

POLMAN, A. D. R.: The Word of God According to St. Augustine (Eerdmans, 242 pp., $5). A valuable study of Augustine’s theology of the Scriptures.

REDDING, DAVID A.: The Parables He Told (Revell, 177 pp., $3). Style has the polish of old silver, message has the ring of the present.

ROBINSON, WILLIAM CHILDS: The Reformation: A Rediscovery of Grace (Eerdmans, 189 pp., $5). The testimony of the Reformation to enduring theological and ecumenical concerns.

SAUER, ERICH: The King of the Earth (Eerdmans, 256 pp., $3.95). Science and the Scriptures undergird a reverent study of man created, fallen, redeemed, and restored to kingly honor.

SCHOOLLAND, MARIAN M.: Leading Little Ones to God (Eerdmans, 286 pp., $3.95). A guide to parents in teaching children about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

UNGER, MERRILL F.: Archaeology and the New Testament (Zondervan, 350 pp., $4.95). Archaeological light ably cast upon the New Testament world.

VAN TIL, CORNELIUS: Christianity and Barthianism (Presbyterian and Reformed, 450 pp., $6.95). A driving rejection of Barth’s theology as speculative, dialectical, and hostile to evangelical Christianity.

ZORN, RAYMOND O.: Church and Kingdom (Presbyterian and Reformed, 228 pp., $3.75). Reformed treatment of the relationship between the Church and the kingdom of God.

It is a sign of Christian vitality that religious books continue to come out in large numbers, and that more diversified publishing houses display a strong interest in theological literature. From another standpoint, however, the wealth of titles is an embarrassment, since it makes discernment difficult, threatens to reduce any general review to a mere catalog, and poses a particular problem for those anxious to pick out the main trends. The most that we can do in this appraisal is to select some of the more interesting works, take account of any trends that seem to be emerging, and estimate the thrust of evangelical writing.

A first point is that there is no abatement of interest in the great theology of the past. Among important additions in this area are the new volumes of Luther’s Works (Concordia and Muhlenberg), and the Luther volume, Early Theological Writings, in the “Library of Christian Classics” (Westminster). The Banner of Truth Trust continues its good work with Sermons of the Great Ejection, in commemoration of the expulsion of Puritans in 1662, and The Early Life of Howell Harris, the Welsh evangelist. The year 1662 was also the date of Pascal’s death, and it is thus fitting that there should be a new English edition of the Pensées (Harper). During the year there have also been new editions of some of Kierkegaard’s works, including his Works of Love (Harper) and Philosophical Fragments (Princeton). In the main, the influence of these reprints is wholesome from an evangelical standpoint.

In purely historical studies one of the most encouraging developments is the church historical series jointly produced by Paternoster and Eerdmans. During the year G. S. M. Walker has added The Growing Storm on the medieval period, and the basic volume, F. F. Bruce’s The Spreading Flame, has been reissued. Dr. Latourette’s great series on Christianity in a Revolutionary Age has now been concluded with The Twentieth Century Outside Europe (Harper), and it is hopeful that the author remains optimistic for Christianity in spite of present difficulties.

The area of historical theology has produced some good works, with Reformation theology well to the fore. Those interested in biblical authority in Calvin might do well to consult H. J. Forstmann’s Word and Spirit (Stanford University Press), and much the same question is discussed in respect of the Anglican Jewel, though not without a certain bias, in W. M. Southgate’s John Jewel and the Problem of Doctrinal Authority (Harvard). Indeed, we are in much the same area in the Luther study, Grace and Reason, by B. A. Gerrish (Oxford). A more general work on grace in the Reformation period is by W. Childs Robinson’s The Reformation: A Rediscovery of Grace (Eerdmans). Ranging rather farther afield, Matthew Spinka has given us a fine survey of thinking from the Reformation to our own day in his new volume, Christian Thought from Erasmus to Berdyaev (Prentice-Hall). Another valuable survey is K. Cauthen’s The Impact of American Religious Liberalism (Harper), though we are not to follow the author in his more appreciative sections. From the evangelical standpoint we welcome the first of a four-volume assessment of Augustine by A. D. R. Polman of the Netherlands. The first volume on The Word of God in the Theology of St. Augustine (Eerdmans) is an acute and learned study.

Augustine is also the subject of a more biographical work which also comes from Europe. This is Augustine the Bishop by F. van der Meer (Sheed and Ward), and it deals with the more pastoral and practical aspects of Augustine’s ministry. Another stimulating biography from a very different period is Zinzendorf, the Ecumenical Pioneer (Westminster), by A. J. Lewis. Among other things this book reminds us that whatever we think of the ecumenical movement as it now is, it has in evangelicalism its deepest and its healthiest roots.

In the ecumenical world the Vatican Council tends to dominate the scene. Two works are particularly important here. The first is The Council, Reform and Reunion (Sheed and Ward), by Hans Küng, which represents more progressive opinion in the modern Roman Catholic Church. The second is the symposium, The Papal Council and the Gospel (Augsburg), in which we have a sympathetic but cautious appraisal by some leading Protestant scholars. Regrettably, nothing outstanding comes from evangelical theologians, though Roman Catholicism is a theological and ecclesiastical force we cannot afford to ignore. Preoccupation with the Vatican, however, should not cause us to lose sight of other works, which include Bishop Newbigin’s A Faith for This One World? (Harper). Even more important are two books which take us deep into the theological issues, namely, Gustav Aulén’s Reformation and Catholicity and W. Niesel’s The Gospel and the Churches (Westminster). Here again it is unfortunate that there are no comparable evangelical works, for it is at this dogmatic level that evangelicals might well be making a critical and constructive contribution.

By contrast, we welcome two significant volumes in dogmatic theology. The first is the composite Basic Christian Doctrines (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), which gives more permanent and coherent form to the recent series in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. For all the unevenness of multiple authorship, this is an effective presentation of essential Christian truths. The second is G. C. Berkouwer’s latest addition to his dogmatic monographs, Man, The Image of God (Eerdmans). Those who are not already familiar with this series are advised to consult it without delay. Among other works, the first part of a two-volume Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion (Zondervan), by J. O. Buswell. will be much appreciated. From England comes a group of essays by the faculty of the London Bible College under the title Vox Evangelica (Epworth), and Anglican evangelicals have contributed to another series in Eucharistic Sacrifice (Church Book Room Press). The latter series’ title is simply a title for discussion and does not indicate its positive thrust.

Looking out to the wider world, we may note five other doctrinal works of distinction. Just before his death the late John Baillie completed the manuscript of his Gifford Lectures, and as these are now published under the title The Sense of the Presence of God (Oxford) they represent his final dogmatic testimony. The theology of James Denney finds fresh presentation in J. R. Taylor’s God Loves Like That (SCM). For an authoritative survey of Roman Catholic dogmatics we may now turn to the English translation of L. Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Mercier Press, Cork). J. McIntyre gives us a new and acute discussion of the divine love in his book On the Love of God (Harper). And, finally, Emil Brunner has at last published the third and concluding volume of his Dogmatics (Westminster), and those who, while they disagree with him, nevertheless admire the richness and conciseness of Brunner’s thinking, will turn with profit to what may well be his last major work.

Mention of Brunner reminds us of Barth, whose British and American visits have naturally stimulated fresh interest. Among evangelical books on Barth we may refer to the detailed study, Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Holy Scripture (Eerdmans), by K. Runia, and C. Van Til’s more general Christianity and Barthianism (Presbyterian and Reformed), which works out more comprehensively the author’s earlier thesis that Barth succeeds in reaching the very opposite of his avowed intentions. For an excellent survey of Barth’s development between 1910 and 1930 readers are advised to study Karl Barth (Harper), by T. F. Torrance, a sympathetic admirer but by no means slavish disciple. Many of Barth’s own works have appeared during the year, including a reprint of Credo, the American edition of Gollwitzer’s selection from the Church Dogmatics (Harper), and the early essays, Theology and Church (Harper). Volume IV, 3 of the Church Dogmatics was also published in two halves in 1962 (T. and T. Clark). With this massive account of the ongoing prophetic work of Christ, the English translation catches up with the German, though IV, 4 on the ethics of reconciliation is now almost ready in German.

The lectures given by Barth in America are printed in the larger work Evangelical Theology (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), which comes out early in 1963. This book falls into a valuable category of reflection on the pursuit of theology, and in this category we may well include H. Thielicke’s A Little Exercise for Young Theologians (Eerdmans) and H. Vogel’s Consider Your Calling (Oliver and Boyd). Perhaps our own theologians might be well advised to do some of this fundamental reflection on their task.

Little space remains for the great field of practical theology. In devotion, we may commend John Baillie’s Christian Devotion (Scribner’s), and also the account of Anglican piety between the Reformation and the Oxford Movement in J. C. Stranks’s Anglican Devotion (SCM). In worship, Horton Davies has added another volume to his Worship and Theology in England (Princeton). For a real theological assessment of the pastoral ministry, in which the minister is not reduced to the rank of somewhat inferior psychoanalyst but is assessed in terms of his own task, we recommend the basic substance of The Theology of Pastoral Care (John Knox), by E. Thurneysen. In sermons, the series by W. Fitch on The Beatitudes (Eerdmans) and the powerful messages of H. Thielicke in The Silence of God call for notice. But here we may fitly end, as we began, with the voice of the past, for not only has W. R. Mueller drawn our attention to a great seventeenth-century figure in his John Donne, Preacher (Princeton), but after years of patient work by G. R. Potter and E. M. Simpson a ten-volume edition of The Sermons of John Donne has now been completed (University of California Press, 1953–1962).

END

We may begin with a few works which cover both Old and New Testaments, and first and foremost mention must be made of The New Bible Dictionary (IVF and Eerdmans), edited by J. D. Douglas. The praises of this monument of contemporary evangelical scholarship have already been sung in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. It might be invidious to single out special contributions, but a work which includes articles of the quality of those by Herman Ridderbos on the Kingdom of God, J. N. Birdsall on the New Testament Canon and Text, Howard Marshall on John’s Epistles and Gospel, and Earle Ellis on Paul can hold its head high and unashamed. From the United States come two important volumes—the Holman Study Bible (A. J. Holman) and the Wycliffe Bible Commentary (Moody Press)—which also promote the evangelical cause; the former is an edition of the RSV with special introductions, general essays, a concordance, and maps, while the latter, edited by C. F. Pfeiffer (Old Testament) and E. F. Harrison (New Testament), includes contributions from 48 scholars representing a wide cross section of North American Protestantism. It would be a good thing if the writers entrusted with the Synoptic Gospels in a work of this kind engaged in a measure of joint consultation; this not only would prevent unnecessary overlapping, but also might forestall the rather odd position found in this commentary, where Mark is dated several years later than Luke!

The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Abingdon) has appeared in four volumes; it bids fair to take the place for many years to come that Hastings’ five-volume work took in the earlier part of this century. Peake’s Commentary on the Bible (Nelson), edited by M. Black and H. H. Rowley, bears a familiar title but is an entirely new work, whose 62 contributors are said to represent “every branch of the Protestant Church in Europe and America”. William Neil has produced single-handedly a One Volume Bible Commentary (Hodder & Stoughton); in 200,000 words he succeeds in providing a remarkable amount of digestible information and comment for the general Bible reader.

D. Guthrie has produced the second volume of his trilogy on New Testament Introduction (Tyndale); it deals with all the books from Hebrews to Revelation, and gives us everything that we expect in an introduction. His conclusions are regularly conservative, but they are based on careful and well-informed examination of all the factors involved; we never get the impression that he has formed his conclusions in advance. T. W. Manson’s posthumous Studies in the Gospels and Epistles (Manchester University Press) has already been noted by the present writer in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. C. F. D. Moule has contributed a fascinating volume on The Birth of the New Testament to the “Harper’s New Testament Commentaries” series; it might be called an essay in form criticism, but that would be a misleading description for those who think of form criticism exclusively in Bultmannian terms. J. McLeman’s The Birth of the Christian Faith (Oliver & Boyd) deploys in defense of an ultra-skeptical interpretation arguments of a kind which would receive short shrift if adduced in defense of conservative opinions. G. Delling’s Worship in the New Testament (Darton, Longman and Todd) deserves a welcome in this English translation by Percy Scott; it is a most important work on its subject. J. A. T. Robinson has brought together Twelve New Testament Studies which have appeared in other places (SCM); those dealing with the Johannine writings of the New Testament deserve special attention. James Barr’s Biblical Words for Time (SCM) applies to one lexical area the principles of his earlier Semantics of Biblical Language; writers and preachers who are about to make sweeping generalizations about terms like aion, chronos, and kairos would be well advised to read Professor Barr’s observations before committing themselves too far.

Current Issues in New Testament Interpretation (Harper), edited by W. Klassen and G. F. Snyder, is a Festschrift for Otto Piper to which 15 scholars have contributed. Two items of special interest are Rudolf Bultmann’s critique of Karl Barth on Romans 5:12–21 in Christ and Adam, and Krister Stendahl’s interpretation of the Muratorian canon, which (he suggests) allows canonical status to Paul’s epistles on the strength of their analogy with John’s epistles to the seven churches in the Apocalypse; the canonicity of the latter was established without argument because John was a prophet addressing the whole Church.

Background Studies

F. C. Grant has completed his study of the cultural background of the New Testament with Roman Hellenism and the New Testament (Oliver & Boyd), a companion to his Ancient Judaism and the New Testament, which was noticed in our survey two years ago. Lucetta Mowry writes on The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Early Church (University of Chicago Press). More important studies of this and related subjects are collected in W. D. Davies’ Christian Origins and Judaism (Darton, Longman and Todd). M. F. Unger has given us in Archaeology and the New Testament (Zondervan) a companion to an earlier volume on Old Testament archaeology; he begins the present study with Alexander the Great and carries it on to the end of the apostolic age. E. M. Blaiklock has once again put his classical learning to good use in a characteristically readable paperback, The Century of the New Testament (IVF), an admirable introduction to New Testament background for the non-specialist Bible student.

F. W. Beare’s The Earliest Records of Jesus (Blackwell) is designed as a companion to the Huck-Lietzmann Synopsis of the First Three Gospels, providing a commentary on the more than 250 pericopae into which that work divides the Synoptic material. Jesus As They Saw Him, by William Barclay (SCM), surveys 42 names and titles given to our Lord in the New Testament. Suzanne de Diétrich contributes a helpful and original volume on Matthew to the “Layman’s Bible Commentaries” (SCM). R. H. Lightfoot’s The Gospel Message of St. Mark, first published in 1950, has appeared as an Oxford Paperback. In The Parables of Conflict in Luke (Westminster), J. S. Glen shows how Jesus exposed the superficiality and complacency of religious attitudes of his day, and draws certain practical conclusions about religious attitudes of our own day. Roland A. Ward’s The Gospel of John is one of the best volumes in the Baker series, “Proclaiming the New Testament”; the series is intended for preachers, but anyone who makes serious use of Dr. Ward’s book will be helped to preach sound expository messages—and if the Christian ministry is truly the ministry of the Word of God, preaching which is not expository is not true preaching.

Paul continues to exert his influence on men’s thinking. If many question whether it is possible to write a life of Jesus, or even to give an outline of his teaching, there is no lack of scholars (and others) prepared to come to grips with Paul. T. W. Manson used to say, “By their ‘Lives of Jesus’ ye shall know them,” but it is surprising how much can be learned about a writer when he sets down his reactions to Paul. A 30-year-old work by M. S. Enslin, The Ethics of Paul, has been reprinted as a paperback (Abingdon). C. K. Barrett’s Hewett Lectures have been published under the title From First Adam to Last (Black). This work, subtitled “A Study in Pauline Theology,” is a first-class contribution to Paulinism; we can only hope that Dr. Barrett will one day develop at greater length a number of the themes touched upon here. He takes up three “typical” Old Testament characters who figure prominently in Paul’s writings—Adam, Abraham, and Moses—and considers the part that they play in the unfolding Heilsgeschichte that finds its culmination in Christ. The final chapter, “The Man to Come,” affords an opportunity for Dr. Barrett to express his mind (in the light of Paul’s teaching) on a number of subjects of urgent interest and importance, and to conclude that “the whole of Church History stands as a witness to the Church’s permanent need of the Jewish Doctor of the Gentiles.” It makes a great difference when a writer on Paul knows—in his bones as well as in his intellect—what the Apostle is really getting at. Another aid to Pauline studies is the latest addition to the series of “Bible Key Words” (Black)—Law, by H. Kleinknecht and W. Gutbrod. The same subject is treated on a more popular level by G. A. F. Knight in Law and Grace (SCM). St. Paul and His Letters (Abingdon), by F. W. Beare, presents an expanded version of radio talks given in 1961 over CBC networks at “University of the Air” level, together with a paper on “St. Paul as Spiritual Director” read at the Oxford Congress on the New Testament the same year. The Dutch scholar W. C. van Unnik in Tarsus or Jerusalem? (Epworth) argues that Jerusalem, not Tarsus, was the city which exercised a formative influence on Paul’s early youth.

Studies In The Epistles

The publication of Wilhelm Pauck’s edition of Luther’s Lectures on Romans in the “Library of Christian Classics” (SCM) is an important event, not least because of what happened to Luther himself while he was engaged in the preparation and delivery of these lectures. But the student of Paul will read them with profit because they come from a man who in a signal degree thought Paul’s thoughts after him. The new translation of Calvin’s New Testament commentaries has been augmented by Ross Mackenzie’s fine translation in one volume of Romans and Thessalonians. A new book by E. K. Lee, A Study in Romans (SPCK), is not a commentary but a study of the principal themes of the epistle, viewed against a broad background. In the “Layman’s Bible Commentaries” (SCM), K. J. Foreman has written the volume on Romans, Corinthians. To write on three such important epistles in less than 150 pages means that many important matters must be dealt with but sketchily; nevertheless, Professor Foreman provides an attractive introduction to them for more elementary readers. A full-scale commentary on I Corinthians is J. Héring’s The First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians (Epworth), translated from the French. Like everything else by this veteran New Testament scholar, this commentary takes its place in the front rank. The only volume in the “New International Commentary on the New Testament” to appear this year is Philip E. Hughes’s magisterial volume on II Corinthians (Eerdmans). Whereas Professor Héring argues for the dichotomy of an epistle which is usually acknowledged to be a unity, Dr. Hughes argues ably for the unity of an epistle in which many exegetes, even if they are generally conservative in their approach, recognize portions of at least two Pauline letters. In the future Dr. Hughes’s arguments will have to be seriously considered, not only on this point but on many others which affect the interpretation of II Corinthians. At this point it will not be out of place to record our indebtedness to the late General Editor of the “New International Commentary,” Dr. N. B. Stonehouse, and our sense of the loss which New Testament scholarship has suffered by his death.

One short passage in Galatians—the catalog of the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit in 5:19–23—is the subject of William Barclay’s Flesh and Spirit (SCM), a word-study of all the terms used in these verses. Karl Barth’s Philippians, first published in German in 1927, has appeared in an English dress (SCM); it tells us at least as much about the development of Barth’s thought as it does about the teaching of Paul. William Hendriksen’s volume on Philippians has appeared in his New Testament Commentary (Baker); in it, as we expect, we have ample evidence of the painstaking exegete and the Christian Reformed theologian. L. J. Baggott’s New Approach to Colossians (Mowbrays) takes the cosmic significance of Christ seriously and endeavors to show how Christ today provides the only clue to a satisfying interpretation of this mysterious universe. A simpler work on Colossians is H. K. Moulton’s volume on it in the Epworth “Preacher’s Commentaries.” C. K. Barrett has written on the Pastoral Epistles for “The New Clarendon Bible” (Oxford) what is claimed to be the first commentary based on the New English Bible.

The “Torch” commentary on The Epistles of John (SCM) has been written by Neil Alexander. He expresses his indebtedness to C. H. Dodd’s work on these epistles, but dissents from his ascription of them to a different author from the Fourth Gospel’s. Lehmann Strauss has produced a devotional exposition of the same epistles (Loizeaux). D. T. Niles of Ceylon has written a work on the Book of Revelation entitled As Seeing the Invisible (SCM). He makes no independent contribution to the critical questions raised by the book, but helps the reader to read it so as with John to see Him who is invisible. William Hendriksen’s exposition of the same book, More than Conquerors, now over 20 years old, has appeared in a British edition (Tyndale Press).

H. W. Montefiore has published a most interesting series of studies in Josephus and the New Testament (Mowbrays), in which he considers how far certain supernatural events associated with the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ can be correlated with prodigies related by Josephus. The same author collaborates with H. E. W. Turner in the writing of Thomas and the Evangelists (SCM), which studies the relationship between the Gnostic “Gospel according to Thomas” and the canonical Gospels. The two authors reach somewhat different conclusions, so that the reader is faced by the healthy task of exercising his private judgment. Another important work on the recently discovered Gnostic texts is an edition of The Gospel of Philip (Mowbrays), by R. McL. Wilson.

END

Pilate Before Christ

The bench is raised

Where Pilate judging sat,

And Christ in seamless robe

Wrist-bound with sneers

In quiet dignity and strange repose

With unbefitting majesty yet speaks

Where common clay would agitate,

“Against me Thou

Couldst have no power

Save it were given from above.”

O Pilate, in those words

Deliverance lies

From trial more your own

Than Christ’s!

For many choose with you

The empty motions

Of hand-washing indecision,

And many vainly cry

Irresolute:

“What shall I do with Christ?”

RUTHE T. SPINNANGER