In May, 1940, Virginia Woolf read a paper on “The Leaning Tower” to the Workers’ Educational Association in Brighton. She set out to account for the difference between English writers in the nineteenth century and those in the first half of the twentieth. Her thesis about the nineteenth-century writers was that because they lived in a serene and protected world, they were bound together by a likeness that overrode individual differences. She called this world their tower:

If we want to risk a theory, then, we can say that peace and prosperity were influences that gave nineteenth century writers a family likeness. They had leisure; they had security; life was not going to change; they themselves were not going to change. They could look; and look away. They could forget; and then in their books remember. Those then were some of the conditions that brought about a certain family likeness, in spite of the great individual differences, among the nineteenth century writers. The nineteenth ended; but the same conditions went on. They lasted, roughly speaking, till the year 1914. Even in 1914 we can still see the writer sitting as he sat all through the nineteenth century looking at human life; and that human life is still divided into classes; he still looks most intently at the class from which he himself springs; the classes are still so settled that he has almost forgotten that there are classes; and he is still so secure himself that he is almost unconscious of his own position and of its security. He believes that he is looking at the whole of life; and will always so look at it [The Moment and Other Essays, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948].

World War I, however, marked the end of the old order and the beginning of the new disorder, and 1918 became the great divide. The tower, so long secure and serene, began to lean. Its tilt forced the writer to look at life from a new angle. The landscape no longer appeared level and stable. Strange new towers that were raised here and there changed the landscape. Writers were forced to leave their ancestral towers in order to keep sight of human life, which had fled them either for new towers or, more likely, in startled confusion. Miss Woolf described the effect this had on the new generation of writers from about 1925:

When they looked at human life what did they see? Everywhere change; everywhere revolution. In Germany, in Italy, in Spain, all the old hedges were being uprooted; all the old towers were being thrown to the ground. Other hedges were being planted; other towers were being raised. There was communism in one country; in another fascism. The whole of civilization, of society, was changing. There was, it is true, neither war nor revolution in England itself.… But even in England towers that were built of gold and stucco were no longer steady towers. They were leaning towers. The books were written under the influence of change, under the threat of war.

Miss Woolf followed her analysis with a venture into the risky and uncertain world of prophecy, and she has proved to be a better analyst than seer. She dared valiantly to dream that the post-war world would be a world without towers or classes, “without hedges between us, on the common ground.” We can forgive her if her prophecy was based more on wishful thinking than on hard realism, for she was among a noble company of dreamers who have longed so earnestly for the time when men “shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” that they have mistaken the yearning for the realization. How could she have anticipated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the fall of China to Communism, the cold war, the rise of the colored races around the world and the sudden dissolution of great empires, Castroism in Cuba, or the social-renewal movement in America? Towers have fallen in every society on earth, and often even the rubble has been carted away. Those towers that remain are shaky and are leaning so far out of plumb that their fall seems inevitable. Universal sensibility of such accelerated change may explain why recent shifts of the Leaning Tower of Pisa have commanded world attention and have sent engineers scurrying to their drawing boards in search of ways to arrest the threatened collapse. Tower-dwellers are always the last to accept the inevitable process of change. When the tower tilts, they look out from a different angle but do not abandon the tower; and when it falls, they cower in bewilderment or lash out in futile fury. Seldom do they seek causes; even less often do they have the imagination and will to erect new towers better adapted to an emergent or new society. This is true of much of the South under the impact of the social-renewal movement that began there and has been spread throughout the United States both by the contagion of revolution and by the mass migration of Southern Negroes to cities in the North.

Many Southern white people simply cannot comprehend the movement. Recovering from the shock of defeat in the Civil War and emerging from the humiliation of Reconstruction, the white South built a social structure whose hedges were a bit untidy but whose tower, as far as any could tell, was strong and secure. In many ways, it was a good and comfortable life. The hedges, though untidy, were defined and generally accepted. The pace of life was measured and deliberate. Human relations had the simplicity and hence the warmth of a way of life whose well-worn paths were trod with confidence and only minor complaint. This was the Establishment, or so it seemed to the white Southerner, and the eruption of the social-renewal movement took him by surprise and confounded him. It has left him bitter and resentful and has hardened him to stubborn, if futile, resistance. Witness the swing of several Southern states in the recent national elections away from their traditional Democratic affiliation to a new alliance with the Goldwater brand of Republicanism.

The Challenge Of Collapse

The greatest danger, however, is not the white Southerner’s intransigence but his apparent inability to accept the challenge that the collapse of his tower presents—the challenge to review, rethink, and renew the social order. The first rumblings of social revolution produced a Pavlovian reaction. A case in point is the public school in an educational system deeply intrenched in the separate-but-equal doctrine. It is now generally acknowledged that at the time of the Supreme Court’s historic decision which in effect ordered desegregation in the public schools, the public school system was more separate than equal. When the social-renewal movement attacked the public school, it was not seen at first as a challenge to the educational system per se. Many assumed that the movement could be stopped in its tracks simply by rectifying inequalities and leaving the separateness intact. A concentrated effort was made to equalize teachers’ salaries and to bring Negro schools to a par with white schools. Teachers’ salaries were equalized in most places, and, as a result of new construction, in many communities Negro school facilities were made superior to white ones. It must be admitted that this was a major achievement in the time given in states whose financial resources lagged stubbornly behind the national average. Many Southern states were investing a higher percentage of their citizens’ personal income in public education than were their more affluent sister states in the Union.

Then, however, came the greatest and most disillusioning revelation of all. The Negro was not pacified. His appetite for better things was merely whetted. The white Southerner discovered that the movement was not an educational rebellion but a social revolution covering the entire spectrum of society, and that the Negro would not be satisfied until the hedges were uprooted and the towers thrown down throughout the whole Establishment. The white Southerner was outraged, indignant, and thoroughly bewildered by it all. In his fury he sought a hidden, alien enemy. His hurt reaction produced cries of “Northern politicians,” “outside meddlers,” and, inevitably, “Communist agitators.” Undoubtedly, there is a measure of truth in all these charges; the fallacy lies in his reluctance to examine the social-renewal movement dispassionately and to apply to it the creative imagination that produced the South of Jefferson and Madison and later rescued the South from the shambles of defeat and the incredible vengefulness of Reconstruction.

A Problem In Understanding

The riddle demanding an answer is how the white Southerner can understand the modern Negro as well as his grandfather understood the nineteenth-century Negro. Of course, he thinks that he does understand him and that he is the only one who does. Has he not lived with him longer and in closer contact, worked with him, watched over him, sheltered him, and known him better than any other American? Has he not regarded him with genuine affection and cherished him as a friend? The white Southerner is convinced that the social upheaval that has invaded his domain would vanish as the morning dew if alien forces would withdraw and leave him and the Negro alone to resume their former ways of tranquillity, to trim the hedges and shore up the towers. And the white Southerner is so sure his analysis of the situation is correct that he is almost totally unprepared to understand the new Negro and his purpose in the social-renewal movement. He is prepared to improve the lot of “Uncle Tom” and to do so with warmth and affection, but he is not prepared to change his image of Uncle Tom—and there’s the rub. Even as the hedges are uprooted and the towers thrown down, he clings to the old image of the Negro “in his place” and the white man in his, both places chosen and defined by the white man. The fatal flaw in this thinking is that the white Southerner persists in deluding himself with the belief that this is what the Negro really wants. He persuades himself that if he will hold out long enough, agitators will finally go away and everything will return to normal.

The fact that must be faced is that this old order exists only in the tortured imagination of the white Southerner. The hedges have been uprooted and the towers thrown down. The old order has passed, never to return. The breakdown must come with new insight on the part of the white man into the depth of the Negro’s new self-awareness. To a large degree, the white Southerner’s problem rests with his failure to comprehend the modern Negro’s image of himself. He does understand somewhat the Negro’s new awareness of the world of things and his demand for a larger share of it, and he is willing to grant him a larger share as long as the landscape is not radically altered. The thing that baffles and upsets him is that the modern Negro’s new awareness does not stop with the world of things nor even focus primarily on this world; it extends to himself as a person. He is no longer the smiling, docile man of yesterday who politely doffs his hat and keeps to his place. He has become aggressive and demanding and has acquired an insolence and tenacity of purpose that are downright irritating. His new awareness of himself carries implications far more radical than any appetite for material improvement. When the white Southerner senses the revolutionary implications of the Negro’s new awareness of himself as a person, it shakes him—the hedge-planter and tower-builder—to his foundations. He reacts vigorously, sometimes violently. Depending on his intellectual and cultural qualifications, he builds his defenses on a line ranging from hysterical warnings against “racial mongrelization” to extreme political conservatism, all of which is designed to freeze the status quo and impede the flow of time and change.

In fairness, let it also be said that the white Southerner is not alone in this. The racial problem has long ceased to be sectional. It seems simple only where a minority race composes a negligible portion of the population. As the percentage of Negroes in the population of cities in other parts of the country has approached the percentage of Negroes in the South, similar attitudes and strategems have appeared in those places. Racial prejudice knows no geographical restrictions.

Religious Roots Of Renewal

Meanwhile the Negro pursues his goals, not always clear even to him, with the passion of religious fervor. Indeed, superficially it appears that the social-renewal movement is a crusade born of a religious revival. This obvious deduction, however, can easily be misleading. It is true that the Negro churches are closely associated with the social-renewal movement, but it is also true that before the movement got under way the Negro churches were largely moribund. The movement has had more effect on the churches than the churches on the movement. If asked whether the churches helped to create the movement, we must reply with a qualified affirmation. Nevertheless, there is a more fundamental sense in which the social-renewal movement stems from religious origins, especially as it expresses the Negro’s new self-awareness. The yeast of religious beliefs and values folded deep into Southern society rose in the Negro’s life and revealed him to himself as a man like other men. He became not just a faceless integer in a suppressed minority but, for the first time in his modern history, an individual. This profoundly religious concept is the artesian source of motivation and power in his bid for equality. Boris Pasternak has a passage in Dr. Zhivago, words wonderfully luminous like the soft light of sapphires, that describes man’s spiritual progress from facelessness to individuality:

When the Gospel says that in the Kingdom of God there are neither Jews nor Gentiles, does it merely mean that all are equal in the sight of God? No—the Gospel wasn’t needed for that—the Greek philosophers, the Roman moralists, and the Hebrew prophets had known this long before. But it said: In that new way of living and new form of society, which is born of the heart and which is called the Kingdom of Heaven, there are no nations, there are only individuals.

The more perceptive leaders of the social-renewal movement understand its goals. They strive for a free and open society because they realize that men can become individuals only in a climate of freedom in which hedges are not barriers and towers are not citadels. Hence they do a service to all men, for the hedges impound those on both sides and the towers become prisons to their occupants. This is what the white Southerner must come to understand.

On the other hand, the Negro must keep constantly before himself the fact that uprooted hedges and demolished towers are only preliminary steps to self-realization in a free society. He has effectively used legal measures, political pressures, and public opinion to remove the barriers, but this is only the beginning. These steps have gained him access to what was forbidden ground, but he must understand that access does not mean acceptance and recognition. He can remain isolated in a society that is legally and politically free. Whatever legal victories may be won, they will not rid society of racial prejudice. Once the barriers are removed, the Negro must win acceptance for himself as an individual if he is to achieve his goal as a full member of the human race. There are overtones of tragedy in a desegregated school where Negro pupils have gained entry by legal means but remain in a state of practical segregation. It may well be that the Negro’s hardest battles lie beyond the legal victories, in the situations in which he must prove himself an individual and earn his acceptance in the face of entrenched prejudice and established social patterns. His newly acquired freedom introduces him to a new dimension of responsibility wherein self-discipline and dedication to his highest ideals are of chief importance.

It is in this new condition in which the old hedges have been uprooted and the old towers thrown down that the Christian ethic of sacrificial and redemptive love will play its most important role for both the white man and the Negro. The final victory will be won, not in the street or in the courtroom, but in the human heart, which lies beyond the reach of the demonstrator and the jurist. This fact must send us all back to our knees to confess our sins and seek divine forgiveness. It must send us back to the Scriptures to search out anew the word of God for us in this day. It must lead us to personal and social renewal in the light of Jesus’ two great commandments: first, to love God, and then, to love our neighbors as ourselves.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

Let us start with The Greek New Testament: Being the Text Translated in the New English Bible (1961), edited with introduction, textual notes, and appendix by R. V. G. Tasker (Oxford and Cambridge University Presses). This handsomely produced Greek Testament can scarcely be called a critical edition, but Professor Tasker has for many years specialized in the textual study of the New Testament, and his introduction and notes on variant readings contain much that will interest careful Bible students.

T. W. Manson’s Companion to the Bible, first published in 1939, has appeared in a thoroughly revised edition under the editorship of H. H. Rowley (T. and T. Clark); it includes chapters on various aspects of New Testament study by George Johnston, G. R. Beasley-Murray, Nigel Turner, H. H. Scullard, H. E. W. Turner, and the present writer. E. F. Harrison’s Introduction to the New Testament (Eerdmans) provides us with the mature judgments of an evangelical scholar who has studied and taught New Testament introduction for many years. The Interpretation of the New Testament, by Stephen Neill (Oxford), surveys the main trends of New Testament study during the century 1861–1961; it is a most readable and informative book. The New Testament, by W. C. van Unnik (Collins), is a book for beginners by a scholar who is himself in the top rank of specialists. The Framework of the New Testament Stories, by Arnold Ehrhardt (Manchester University Press), brings together a number of papers on early Christianity. New Testament Detection, by W. G. Robinson (Lutterworth), takes the reader on sixty “detective excursions” in the New Testament. Two first-rate manuals on textual criticism have appeared: The Text of the New Testament, by Bruce M. Metzger (Oxford), and—designedly at a more elementary level—Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism, by J. H. Greenlee (Eerdmans).

New Testament language is dealt with by A. N. Wilder in The Language of the Gospel (Harper and Row), a study of early Christian “rhetoric” (for want of a better word). Various aspects of New Testament introduction and theology are treated in eight Essays on New Testament Themes, by E. Käsemann, translated from German (SCM). Another aspect of New Testament theology is the subject of B. Gärtner’s The Temple and the Community in Qumran and the New Testament, the first title in a new series of monographs sponsored by the Society for New Testament Studies (Cambridge University Press). Worship in the Early Church, by R. P. Martin (Marshall, Morgan and Scott), considers the New Testament Church a worshiping community and brings to light much interesting information about its hymnody and creedal recitation, its principles of stewardship and sacramental practice. Another work dealing with a phase of New Testament sacramental practice is The Eucharist in the New Testament, by N. Hook (Epworth). J. Macdonald’s The Theology of the Samaritans (SCM) might not seem at first blush to have much to do with New Testament theology, but its publishers have advisedly included it in their “New Testament Library”; a study of it may help us to understand what there was about our Lord’s teaching in John 8 that made his hearers call him a Samaritan (8:48).

The later phase of New Testament history is treated exhaustively in the English translation of M. Goguel’s The Primitive Church (Allen and Unwin), written from the same liberal standpoint as were its predecessor, The Birth of Christianity, and other works by the same scholar. W. Förster’s Palestinian Judaism in New Testament Times, which has also been translated into English (Oliver and Boyd), is an excellent account of the Jewish background of early Christianity, from the Babylonian exile to the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Another work on New Testament history that ought to be translated into English is B. Reicke’s Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte (Töpelmann, Berlin). The same period is covered from another viewpoint by G. A. Williamson in The World of Josephus (Secker and Warburg). To his other volumes in the “Teach Yourself” series R. K. Harrison has now added one on The Archaeology of the New Testament (English Universities Press).

Some Synoptic Studies

For the study of the Gospels H. F. D. Sparks has provided an elaborate Synopsis of the Gospels, presenting the text of the Synoptic Gospels according to the Revised Version of 1881 with the Johannine parallels (A. and C. Black). A valiant attempt to undermine the case for the priority of Mark has been made by W. R. Farmer in The Synoptic Problem (Macmillan). It is good that the priority of Mark should be scrutinized and not taken for granted as if it were axiomatic; but some of us rise from the study of a work like this more firmly convinced than ever of the priority of Mark. A scholar who for many years felt himself unable to be confident about the priority of Mark but was latterly impelled to affirm it was N. B. Stonehouse, whose lectures on Origins of the Synoptic Gospels have been published posthumously (Eerdmans).

A number of books have appeared on the subject-matter of the Gospels. C. H. H. Scobie’s John the Baptist (SCM) studies the career of the forerunner in the light of modern knowledge, and rightly emphasizes the importance of his Samaritan ministry implied in John 3:23. H. Anderson in Jesus and Christian Origins (Oxford) presents “a commentary on modern viewpoints” that amounts to a judicious survey of the new quest for the historical Jesus; he does not attempt to make a personal contribution to the quest. A symposium by a number of scholars who are actively engaged in the quest is The Historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ, edited by C. E. Braaten and R. A. Harrisville (Abingdon). Some of E. Fuchs’s contributions to the quest have been collected in an English translation, Studies of the Historical Jesus (SCM).

A. J. B. Higgins in Jesus and the Son of Man (Lutterworth) takes a new look at the “Son of Man” Christology of the early Church and compares it with the meaning of the title on the lips of Jesus, finding that the “Son of Man” Christology stems ultimately from Jesus’ affirmation that the Son of Man would acknowledge (or deny) before God those who acknowledged (or denied) Jesus before men (Luke 12:8 f.). G. E. Ladd in Jesus and the Kingdom (Harper and Row) gives a careful exegesis of the relevant texts; he brings out the tension between history and eschatology in Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God. A fine study of the same subject by a Roman Catholic scholar is God’s Rule and Kingdom, by R. Schnackenburg, now available in English (Herder-Nelson).

Jesus’ teaching about God is studied by R. A. Ward in Royal Theology (Marshall, Morgan and Scott). The relation of his teaching to that of the Pharisaic schools is treated by A. Finkel in The Pharisees and the

Teacher of Nazareth (Brill, Leiden). A fresh and stimulating study of the parables, tending toward an existential hermeneutic, is presented by G. V. Jones in The Art and Truth of the Parables (SPCK). The English translation of The Parables of Jesus, by J. Jeremias, has been revised in the light of the latest edition of the German original (SCM). A former pupil of Jeremias, I. H. Marshall, has given us some able observations in his Tyndale Lecture, Eschatology and the Parables (Tyndale Press). But of all the works on the teaching of Jesus to have appeared in 1964 the greatest is The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount, by W. D. Davies (Cambridge)—a work that exhibits the same superlative qualities as did Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, with the greater maturity that comes with sixteen additional years of life and thought. One point Davies makes (which will call for further study) is that the polemical parts of the Sermon were originally directed against the Essenes, and that their redirection against the Pharisees is the Evangelist’s adaptation of the words of Jesus to a later life-setting.

The Gospel of John, by G. A. Turner and J. R. Mantey, is the latest volume to appear in the “Evangelical Commentary” series (Eerdmans). F. V. Filson has expounded The Gospel According to John for the “Layman’s Bible Commentary” (John Knox Press); he joins the ranks of those who identify the beloved disciple with Lazarus (cf. John 11:5).

In The Structure of Luke and Acts (Hodder and Stoughton) A. Q. Morton and the late G. H. C. Macgregor undertake the same kind of statistical analysis that they used with John’s Gospel some years ago; in the case of Luke the computer’s evidence appears to favor the Proto-Luke hypothesis. A new commentary on Acts has appeared in the “Lietzmann Handbuch” series—Die Apostelgeschichte, by H. Conzelmann (Mohr, Tübingen). F. V. Filson presents a series of studies of Acts in Three Crucial Decades (Epworth); it is good to meet a scholar who does equal justice to Luke’s qualities as a historian and his qualities as a theologian. G. E. Ladd contributes the volume on Acts to the “Bible Guides” series under the title The Young Church (Abingdon). J. Dupont takes account of recent critical study of Acts in The Sources of Acts (Darton, Longman and Todd). M. D. Goulder’s Type and History in Acts (SPCK) is an unsuccessful attempt to interpret Acts as an essay in typology.

The Teachings Of Paul

D. E. H. Whiteley’s The Theology of St. Paul (Fortress) gives a systematic survey of recent work on Paul and expounds the main features of his doctrine. In Paul: Apostle of Liberty (Harper and Row) R. N. Longenecker examines the Apostle’s teaching about Christian freedom against the background of his earlier commitment to the law. R. Schnackenburg’s Baptism in the Thought of St. Paul has been translated into English by G. R. Beasley-Murray (Blackwell, Oxford)—a pleasant gesture of cooperation between a Roman Catholic and a Baptist. The Baptist translator has good reason to say: “No treatment known to me of Paul’s teaching on baptism is so profound as that contained within these pages.”

With God’s Glory (Eerdmans) the literary executors of D. G. Barnhouse have issued the tenth and last volume of his exposition of Bible doctrine in which he took the Epistle to the Romans as his point of departure. D. N. Steele and C. C. Thomas, two Baptist ministers, are joint authors of a study manual entitled Romans: An Interpretive Outline; their theological outlook is sufficiently attested by the fact that their work is published by the Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company of Philadelphia. John Calvin’s commentary on Second Corinthians and the Epistles to Timothy, Titus and Philemon has been translated by T. A. Smail for the new English edition of the Reformer’s New Testament commentaries, of which six of the ten projected volumes have now appeared (Eerdmans). C. K. Barrett’s Manson Memorial Lecture, Christianity at Corinth (Rylands Library, Manchester), deals with some of the problems of Paul’s Corinthian correspondence. The lessons of this correspondence are applied to an important phase of life today by W. Baird in The Corinthian Church: A Biblical Approach to Urban Culture (Abingdon). The lessons of Ephesians are applied to present-day issues by D. Moody in Christ and the Church (Eerdmans). Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon are introduced by D. Guthrie in Epistles from Prison in the “Bible Guides” series (Abingdon). For the “Layman’s Bible Commentary” H. Rolston has written on six Pauline epistles in Thessalonians to Philemon (John Knox). From Prison in Rome, by E. M. Blaiklock (Pickering and Inglis), presents a new translation and study of Philippians and Philemon. Bishop Stephen Neill has written on Paul to the Colossians for “World Christian Books” (Lutterworth), and William Barclay presents ten studies in the same epistle for the “Living Church” series in The All-Sufficient Christ (SCM).

Two large commentaries on Hebrews appeared toward the end of 1964. H. W. Montefiore’s commentary is the latest addition to the series published in Britain by Black and in the United States by Harper and Row. It is based on his own translation, which is made from the Greek text of the new diglot prepared for the use of translators by the British and Foreign Bible Society. Canon Montefiore suggests that the epistle was written by Apollos between A.D. 52 and 54, and that it was written to the Corinthian church on the occasion referred to by Paul in First Corinthians 16:12, when Apollos could not pay that church a personal visit. The volume on Hebrews in the “New International Commentary on the New Testament” has been written by F. F. Bruce (Eerdmans); it follows the line that the epistle was sent to a Jewish-Christian community in Rome shortly before A.D. 66 and that its unknown author had, like Apollos, an Alexandrian background.

The first New Testament volume in the new “Anchor Bible” is that on The Epistles of James, Peter and Jude, by B. Reicke (Doubleday); the translation and commentary are distinguished and augur well for the quality of this inter-faith enterprise. The Epistles of John in the “Tyndale New Testament Commentaries” have been expounded by J. R. W. Stott (Tyndale), who introduces his work with a plea that he is not a New Testament scholar and continues by proving that this is just what he is. What he means is that he is involved in pastoral and not in academic work; but pastoral work is an excellent qualification for expounding the Johannine epistles, and Mr. Stott’s commentary maintains the highest standard of the Tyndale series.

The Revelation of St. John the Divine, by A. Farrer (Oxford), is a thoroughly revised and enlarged edition of A Rebirth of Images, published in 1949. It is full of original insights, among which those on the heptadic structure of the book are specially important. A. Kuyper’s The Revelation of St. John, which originally appeared in serial form in De Heraut and later formed the fourth and last volume of a work on The Consummation of the World, was issued in English translation in 1935; this translation has now been reissued as a paperback (Eerdmans). Kuyper gives the Apocalypse a consistently symbolical interpretation, which cannot conveniently be pigeon-holed in any of the traditional categories.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

Although not all may agree, I nominate as the most important work in Old Testament studies to appear during 1964 the first volume of the Anchor Bible, Genesis, a translation and commentary by Ephraim A. Speiser, published by Doubleday. The series is being prepared by an international group of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish scholars.

Building upon those views of Genesis that were popularized by Hermann Gunkel in his Commentary on Genesis, Speiser treats Genesis as a collection of sagas. He is, however, considerably more moderate than Gunkel in his understanding of the factuality of the stories. In his textual discussion, Dr. Speiser uses the letter “T” to designate the oral tradition that he believes lies behind the three main literary sources of Genesis. A significant suggestion is that the idea of canonicity is older than the written Scriptures and adhered even to the oral tradition. Most surprising, to some at least, is his position that “the genesis of the biblical way is bound up with the beginnings of the monotheistic concept: both converge in the age and presumably also in the person of Abraham” (p. xlix). A generation ago critics were not willing to grant that Moses was a monotheist, let alone Abraham.

Speiser has sought to translate the text into readable but accurate modern idiom, faithful to the meaning but not always to the precise wording of the original. In general he has done fine work, although I disagree strongly with his rendering of Genesis 1:1, “When God set about to create … the world being then a formless waste.” This translation, I feel, denies the doctrine of creation as it is presented elsewhere in Scripture. Ministers can use the volume to advantage. Laymen will have more difficulty, particularly if they focus attention upon the proposed documentary segregation (though this aspect, fortunately, is not obtrusive).

It would be well to point out, incidentally, that part of the work of Gunkel mentioned above has been translated and appears with the title The Legends of Genesis in paperback from Schocken Books. William F. Albright’s introduction points out that more recent studies have forced a modification of Gunkel’s conclusions. The translation is good, and the book provides a direct source for this school of criticism which has influenced much twentieth-century scholarship.

Guides For Bible Study

Recently the pastor of an active church asked why seminaries do not teach students how to organize Bible study groups and Bible courses. One suspects that such matters should be treated somewhere in the Christian education departments of many seminaries. The question nevertheless points to the fact that church boards that provide curricula often assume that biblical education is the task of the Sunday school or youth groups only. Usually they also assume more knowledge of the Bible and theology than the average church member has in this era of biblical illiteracy.

There is no substitute for reading the Bible itself. Yet those whose task is to teach others will enhance their knowledge of the Bible by certain supplementary readings. Every minister and informed layman should have a good introduction to the Old Testament, and an eminently satisfactory work of this kind has appeared from the hand and mind of Gleason L. Archer. It is entitled A Survey, of Old Testament Introduction and is published by Moody Press. Thoroughly conservative in its theological viewpoint, it is also of unquestionable scholarship. Its treatment of twentieth-century criticism, though brief, considering the amount and kind of this criticism, is good. Interesting evidences of the Mosaic authorship of significant sections of the Pentateuch (pp. 100–109) and argument for the early date of the Exodus (pp. 212–22) are a refreshing effort to reconsider candidly what some have thought was settled long ago in a way contradictory to biblical statements.

Another useful introduction—one which, however, accepts all the major conclusions of modern literary criticism—is Interpreting the Old Testament, by the professor of Bible at the divinity school of Vanderbilt University, Walter Harrelson (Holt, Rinehart and Winston). It is most lucidly written, has a theological approach, and includes the main topics of biblical studies, such as canon, introduction, history, and theology. The author is to be commended for providing, besides a bibliography and indices, a glossary of terms used in contemporary interpretation.

A second important tool for biblical studies is an Old Testament history. The biblical narratives themselves are highly selective and, from our perspective, need to be augmented by information about the cultural milieu and international movements in which they occurred. Two commendable books of this kind have appeared. One is Egypt and the Exodus, a monograph in an Old Testament history series by Charles F. Pfeiffer, published by Baker. The author has a solid respect for the scriptural data and relates to these in brief compass the most pertinent material from extra-biblical sources. Compared with Archer, Pfeiffer supports a somewhat later date for the Exodus. The other title in the history category is a Concise History of Israel by M. A. Beek of the University of Amsterdam (Harper and Row). That the title concise is deserved is evident from the fact that Israel’s history from Moses to Bar Cochba is covered in a little more than 200 pages. It would be a wholesome exercise to read the Bible from First Kings through Ezra and then read Beek’s History, pages 80–152.

The third and final tool for the organizer or leader of Bible study groups is the study guide that focuses upon the contents of the biblical books. Abingdon has continued to publish its paperback series of “Bible Guides” edited by William Barclay and F. F. Bruce; the editorial leadership itself is enough to commend the series. Three volumes appeared in 1964, entitled The Law Givers (Leviticus and Deuteronomy) and Prophets of Israel (2) and (3), covering Jeremiah through Malachi. Out of my special interest in the prophecy of Ezekiel I express admiration for the way that prophecy is handled. The brevity of these books prevents their being real commentaries but makes them helpful in gaining an overall perspective of the Scripture involved.

A title similar to the above in its purpose is a short exposition of Numbers by Irving L. Jensen in the Colportage series of Moody Press. The material is neatly organized and marked by a fine devotional attitude.

A very practical help as a study guide is a Survey of the Old Testament by T. Layton Fraser, printed by R. L. Bryan Company but distributed by others. To some the presentation may seem over-simplified. Yet the facts of modern church life almost necessitate an elementary approach. This book could be used in group study or by the Christian in private study, since it has a series of simple, direct questions with spaces for answers at the end of each chapter.

In Theology: A Good Offering

For several years Old Testament theology has seemed to dominate serious biblical studies, and many books have appeared in this area. I am pleased to recommend virtually all that became available last year as “quality” material. Schocken Books has put into a paperback edition Norman Snaith’s Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament. The essential thrust of the work is found in the author’s own words:

… if Christianity does contain distinctive elements, both in common with Judaism and against the rest of religions, and of itself as against Jewry, then, in the Name of the One God, let us examine them and let us be very sure indeed of what they are” [p. 17].

I am particularly gratified by the treatment of the covenant love (Hebrew chesed) and the electing love (Hebrew ’ahab) of God.

Our knowledge of theological concepts derives largely from the vocabulary used by the ancient writers, and word studies have always been prominent in the work of biblical theologians. Ministers and seminarians are familiar with the name, if not always the content, of Gerhard Kittel’s Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament. Harper and Row is doing the American religious world a real service by producing a selective English edition of Kittel under the title Bible Key Words. The English title is perhaps more accurate than the German, for though the word studies are taken from the vocabulary of the Greek New Testament, each article covers the equivalent Hebrew and Old Testament vocabulary. The fourth volume in the series, which appeared recently, deals with Law and Wrath. One can scarcely stop short of saying that these books are essential for a serious minister’s library. Eerdmans is rendering an even greater contribution by its translation and publication of the whole of Kittel’s Wörterbuch under the title Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. The first volume appeared in 1964.

At least two other volumes in biblical theology deserve careful reading. One of them, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic by D. S. Russell (Westminster), is largely beyond the Old Testament in subject matter. It does, however, fill a vacancy in relating the concepts that began in the Old Testament to those same concepts as they come to expression in the New. While neither the Jewish synagogue nor the Christian Church has accepted the apocalyptic literature of the intertestamental period as canonical, everyone recognizes that the language and literary form of the apocalyptists have influenced some New Testament passages. Russell’s sections on eschatology, Messianism, and the “Son of Man” title used by our Lord are especially illuminating.

A second worthy book reached me too late for careful examination, but a scanning of its contents induces me to put the book first on the list of those that must be read soon. Its author is that giant among Semitics scholars, William Foxwell Albright, whose History, Archeology and Humanism (McGraw-Hill) is the first volume in a projected series designed to gather all of his writings. The author examines the philosophical presuppositions of certain historians and theologians, including Breasted, Toynbee, and Bultmann. Of Bultmann he is especially critical. I predict that there will be many and varied reactions to Albright’s own credo, which he calls Christian humanism.

Space, or rather the lack of it, forbids an appropriate discussion of some other books that deserve recognition. May I therefore commend or describe them to the reader in very brief evaluations:

Shechem, by G. Ernest Wright (McGraw-Hill). This book, fairly technical in spots, effectively indicates the light that archaeological research sheds on Israelitish and ancient Near Eastern life.

The Old Testament in Dialogue with Modern Man, by James D. Smart (Westminster). With a pastor’s heart, Professor Smart shows that the Old Testament can be made plain without demythologizing.

Gleanings in Joshua, by Arthur W. Pink (Moody). The gleaner gathered what others might miss. This is good devotional reading.

The Commission of Moses and the Christian Calling, by J. Hardee Kennedy (Eerdmans). Evangelism of the best type is discussed in this inspirational study of Moses’ calling.

Parables of the Old Testament, by Rudolph F.

Norden (Baker). A Lutheran expositor provides a different kind of study that could be used for making a series of sermons.

Personalities of the Old Testament, by Ralph G. Turnbull (Baker). One of Presbyterianism’s outstanding preachers gives some valuable homiletical studies.

Preaching Through the Bible, by Eric W. Hayden (Zondervan). From each book of the Bible Hayden provides a sermon with a key word, theme, and key text.

Old Testament Survey Guide: A Questionnaire, by Charles M. Laymon (Abingdon). This suggestive and provocative questionnaire could be eminently useful to a college Bible-course teacher as well as to a pastor.

The Bible as Literature, by Buckner B. Trawick, and An Outline of the Bible, by Benson Y. Landis (Barnes and Noble). These two handbooks are suited to college students who are taking courses in religion. Experience leads one to suspect, however, that the students might depend upon the concise summaries presented in the handbooks rather than read the biblical text!

The Old Testament, by Robert Davidson (J. B. Lippincott). This book merits longer treatment. In beautifully expressive language the main themes of the books of the Old Testament are set forth as the basis for a living faith that finds its full satisfaction in the person of Jesus Christ. I regret, however, Davidson’s approach to the Book of Daniel.

A Survey of Syntax in the Hebrew Old Testament, by J. Wash Watts (Eerdmans). This thorough study takes the place of the now out-of-print Hebrew Moods and Syntax, by S. R. Driver.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

Little if any of the literature produced in this field in 1964 is destined for immortality. All the more reason, then, to begin our survey with some of the reprints either of established classics or of books with more than ephemeral importance. The great Luther translation is making good progress, and volumes recently added include the lectures on Galatians and Genesis, and the Liturgy and Hymns (Augustana-Muhlenberg). This is a venture of the first rank. A new British house, the Sutton Courtenay Press, has initiated an equally important series, the “Library of Reformation Classics.” The first volume is devoted to the works of the Bible translator, William Tyndale. The only defect of this new edition is that it leaves out the distinctive and (from an Anglican standpoint) prophetic eucharistic teaching. A reprint of the charter of Pietism, Spener’s Pia Desideria (Fortress), has one unusual feature, namely, that it is, though almost unbelievably, the first English translation.

Of a different character is the minor classic, Church and State in the United States, by A. P. Stokes and L. Pfeffer, whose three volumes have now been published in abridged and revised form in a single volume (Harper and Row). In a similar connection one might also mention the one-volume Concise Dictionary of American Biography (Scribners), which should prove a handy reference work.

Modern works that have called for new editions include D. M. Baillie’s Faith in God and Its Christian Consummation (Faber and Faber), J. Pelikan’s The Riddle of Roman Catholicism (Abingdon), and Niebuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man (Scribners, two vols.). Baillie’s work is now almost a period piece, and Pelikan’s has only a topical reference (though it is still topical), but Niebuhr’s work—perhaps his best—may have more lasting value. Incidentally, the reissue of P. T. Forsyth’s Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind (Eerdmans) is a praiseworthy attempt to reintroduce a figure whose true stature has perhaps not been appreciated, especially in the States.

Turning to new works, we find that history and biography again have the most solid fare to offer. (Is this a sign that our age talks too much, and knows too little, about “creativity”?) Two new series attract attention. The first is Oxford’s “Library of Protestant Thought,” off to a good start with A. C. Outler’s Wesley and E. R. Fairweather’s The Oxford Movement. The second is the “Pelican History of the Church,” sponsored in the States by Eerdmans. Volume IV gives us a solid study of The Church in the Age of Reason by G. R. Cragg and Volume V, a provocative account of The Church in an Age of Revolution by A. R. Vidler. Another ongoing series that should be noted is “Yale Publications in Religion” by Yale University Press. Recent additions (6–9) range from a comparison of Thomas Aquinas and John Gerhard, through Luther’s View of Church History, to Thomas Stapleton and the Counter-Reformation and The Quakers in Puritan England.

Reformation and Puritan studies rightly occupy a considerable place in recent historical writing. We have a new history of The English Reformation written by A. G. Dickens (Schocken Books), and W. Haller has given us an illuminating study of the influence of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs on British and American life in The Elect Nation (Harper and Row). From Open Court comes a fresh study of John Colet by L. Miles in John Colet and the Platonic Tradition. The inter-relations of Anglicans and Puritans are re-examined by J. F. H. New (Stanford University Press). If we fail to live up to our Reformation and Puritan heritage, it should not be for lack of knowledge, or at least information.

More modern studies cover a vast and varied field. T. S. Miyakawa discusses the wider range of Protestant influence in Protestants and Pioneers (University of Chicago), in which he issues a warning against overemphasizing pioneering individualism. K. K. Bailey analyzes a distinctive movement in Southern White Protestantism in the 20th Century (Harper and Row). F. F. O’Dea gives a fresh account of The Mormons (University of Chicago). J. C. Pollock continues his valuable activity as an evangelical historian with The Keswick Story (Hodder and Stoughton). N. Zernov introduces us to the strange world of Russian Orthodoxy in The Russian Religious Renaissance of the 20th Century (Harper and Row).

We might also mention two more comprehensive works. The first is a translation of F. Gontard’s The Chair of Peter (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), a full survey of the papacy from its shadowy beginnings to its final overprecision. The second is the Horizon History of Christianity (Harper and Row), a vivid presentation in narrative and illustration of the Church’s progress through its most formative epochs (text by R. H. Bainton).

In biography the year has been interesting and varied. Among Reformation biographies we may add to G. Ritter’s Luther (Harper and Row) a welcome biography of Zwingli translated from the French of J. Rilliet (Zwingli, Westminster). Moving to the eighteenth century, F. Baker’s William Grimshaw (Epworth) introduces the unusual but highly effective predecessor of the Brontë family in Haworth Parsonage. H. Daniel-Rops has told the story of one of the most outstanding medieval fathers in his Bernard of Clairvaux (Hawthorn).

Most of the biographies, however, deal with more recent characters. R. Lejeune’s Christoph Blumhardt and His Message (Plough) should be read with interest, and H. Perrin’s Priest and Worker (Holt, Rinehart and Winston) plunges us into the controversial worker-priest experiment of French Roman Catholicism. Two notable leaders are presented in J. Fletcher’s William Temple (Seabury), a theological study, and In the Service of the Lord (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), the autobiography of Otto Dibelius. Another autobiography bears an unconventional title that well characterizes the unconventional minister of St. Giles’, Edinburgh: Laughter in Heaven (Revell), by H. C. Whitley. One hardly dares speculate whether the laughter includes that of Dr. Whitley’s illustrious predecessor, John Knox. We are in debt to C. S. Kilby for his able study of C. S. Lewis in The Christian World of C. S. Lewis (Eerdmans). From overseas missions comes an admirable and challenging account of Lillian Dickson in Angel at Her Shoulder, by K. L. Wilson (Harper and Row).

Poverty In Dogmatics

Dogmatics offers only a meager selection. Now that Barth has suspended production on the Dogmatics, publishers have been picking up his untranslated odds and ends. In addition to the Heidelberg Catechism for Today (John Knox), we have lectures in God Here and Now (Harper and Row) which form a less painful though less rewarding introduction to Barth’s theology than the Dogmatics. In this area one might mention a continuation of C. Van Til’s anti-Barthian polemic in the pamphlet Karl Barth and Evangelicalism (Presbyterian and Reformed).

The aftermath of J. H. T. Robinson’s Honest to God may be seen in The Honest to God Debate (SCM). One wonders whether Honest to God is intrinsically worth the fuss. It presumably enjoys the vogue it does only because it has fallen on an age that is dogmatically immature and superficial. Some of our predecessors who never went to college but understood their Bible and Hodge would probably have made short work of it! But a vacuum has to be filled.

The vacuum is hardly filled by the more constructive works of the year. H. Berkhof has made a fresh attempt to wrestle with The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (John Knox). M. H. Micks has given us a new Introduction to Theology (Seabury). Carl F. H. Henry has assembled a fine evangelical team to comment on Christian Faith and Modern Theology (Channel). The theme of glorification has kindled evangelical interest. Bernard Ramm writes in his usual competent and stimulating manner in Them He Glorified (Eerdmans), and D. Moody approaches the same subject from a different angle in The Hope of Glory (Eerdmans).

Some Borderline Books

On the borderline between philosophy and theology there are few studies of consequence. H. Gollwitzer, who almost followed Barth in Basel, writes on The Existence of God (SCM). A. Plantinga has edited an interesting set of essays on Faith and Philosophy (Eerdmans) dealing with historical, philosophical, and ethical themes. A tardy translation is that of K. Löwith’s fine book, From Hegel to Nietzsche (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), which supplies much valuable background for those who venture into this perilous half-world.

Perhaps current preoccupation with ecumenical themes explains in part the dogmatic poverty. The spate of ecumenical works is such that we are forced to let most of them swirl by and hope that we catch some of the most representatively significant. On the Roman Catholic side we can hardly go wrong if we consult the supreme authority, Cardinal Montini, whose utterances are now readily available in, for example, The Mind of Paul VI (Geoffrey Chapman) and The Church (Helicon). Also to be considered are the debates of Vatican II, and here the selection of Council Speeches edited by H. Küng and others (Paulist Press) is of particular value. On the Protestant side, another work of some authority is the report from Montreal in The Fourth World Conference of Faith and Order by P. C. Rodger, who was nominated to succeed Visser t’ Hooft, and L. Vischer (Association). Whether the conference did justice to the work of the commission is debatable.

Of other works, four may be singled out. The first is The Problem of Catholicism by Vittorio Subilia (SCM), a Waldensian professor in Rome who knows his subject as few Protestants could claim to do and who is less facilely optimistic than many. The second is J. Pelikan’s Obedient Rebels (SCM), which renews the old thesis that the Reformers were seeking to be true Catholics, in the hope that this will open up ecumenical discussion in a more fruitful way. The third is Toward the Recovery of Unity, a highly relevant selection of letters by F. D. Maurice edited by F. J. Porter and W. Wolf (Seabury). The last is a critical evangelical analysis, Unity in the Dark, by D. Gillies (Banner of Truth Trust). The continuation of the Vatican Council ensures a steady filling of the ecumenical shelves again in 1965, quite apart from the ordinary output associated with the World Council of Churches.

Ethics is dominated for the most part by the new morality. The brashest presentation seems to be No New Morality, by D. Rhymes (Bobbs-Merrill), which favors the antiquated thesis that Paul was the corrupter of the original new morality of Jesus. Presumably the Lord and the Holy Spirit mistook the role of Paul when they chose him as apostle and writer, unless it be that the new morality knows little apostleship or inspiration but its own. Helmut Thielicke in his Ethics of Sex (Harper and Row) apparently makes common cause with the thesis in many respects; but in spite of a certain ambivalence, his ethical work rests on more solid theological foundations developed in the important earlier volumes of his Theological Ethics, soon to be published by Fortress Press. Though tactical reasons might justify it, the premature appearance of the later volume is in many ways unfortunate.

Not a great deal has been done to provide a sound theological reply to the new morality. A. Lunn and G. Lean, in The New Morality (Blandord), provide a criticism from the Roman Catholic viewpoint. E. Thurneysen in his Sermon on the Mount (John Knox) gives an answer in terms of the Barthian inter-relating of Law and Gospel. R. S. Wallace has a complementary study of the Ten Commandments in his Free Before God (Eerdmans), an exploration of true freedom that preserves the distinction between law and legalism. Incidentally, one wonders why American Lutherans do not do more to relate the doctrine of Law and Gospel to this question. Surely they have not lost it.

In conclusion, brief reference may be made to contributions in the pastoral field. Some Great Sermons on the Resurrection have been assembled by Wilbur M. Smith (W. A. Wilde). Another sermon collection is to be found in The Christian Year: Sermons of the Fathers, Volume I (Nelson). G. W. Webber of the Harlem mission writes a challenging account of his work in Congregation in Mission (Abingdon). Critics should remember that he is at least there. A book for organists, choirs, pastors, and congregations too is E. Routley’s Twentieth Century Church Music (Oxford). The Church of England has its new Paul, the twentieth-century reorganizer; hence the unenthusiastic The Paul Report Considered (ed. by G. E. Duffield). Finally, it might do us good to read J. Isaac’s The Teaching of Contempt: Christian Roots of Anti-Semitism (Holt, Rinehart and Winston). No doubt the thesis is onesided and the case overstated. But we easily forget that we are wild branches grafted into the olive tree, and view ourselves as the whole tree with a right to treat the true branches with contempt. To see the truth again—a biblical truth—should teach us appropriate humility and sweeten all our ministry and mission.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.