Book Briefs: May 22, 1961

In East Germany, A War Of Attrition

God and Caesar in East Germany, by Richard W. Solberg (Macmillan, 1961, 192 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, Asbury Theological Seminary.

At no place is the contemporary struggle between the Christian Church and the forces of modern Caesarism more acute than in the so-called “German Democratic Republic,” this being of course the Russian-occupied area of Germany. The shifting of the attack which the masters of Pankow level from time to time against the religious life of East Germany is so frequent that it is difficult to keep pace with it. One of the outstanding merits of this volume is that it seeks to follow the tortuous paths of dealing by which the East German puppet government has sought to confuse the Christian leaders there.

The author indicates an intimate acquaintance with the melancholic series of events by which Soviet perfidy has accomplished the enslavement of the churches (predominantly Protestant) within its area of occupation. He not only traces the events of the years following 1945, but with even greater skill he analyzes the meaning of these events for the Church, which found itself closely involved in the “on again, off again” policies by which the Kremlin masters sought to condition the reflexes of the citizenry of East Germany. If Dr. Solberg seems to have devoted an unduly large section to the “Einleitung,” the value of his method becomes evident when he traces the successive stages by which the Pankow Reds sought to strangle the Lutheran church.

One’s first reaction to a reading of this volume is that he has been walking through a place of unreality. Can it be, one asks himself, that so-called bearers of civilization can engage in such a systematic and cunning war of attrition against the major agency (i.e., the Church) which offered to give any meaning to life in a devastated land? Yet this is precisely what has occurred: with the establishment of the so-called “autonomous” German Democratic Republic and the promulgation of the constitution on October 7, 1949, there began a policy of double-talk and double-dealing with respect to the “ample” guarantees of religious freedom. There came alternations—one day oppression, another the appearance of a relaxation of pressures and hindrances. Little by little, the ministration of the Church was shrunk. The renowned and beneficial “Railway Missions” were liquidated; the sacrament of baptism and the practice of confirmation of youth were insidiously replaced with secularized versions: for baptism there was imposed a secularized “naming ceremony”; for confirmation there was imposed the “Youth Dedication,” with its exacting of an obscene commitment to dialectical materialism.

The author does not manufacture Church heroes. In East Germany, he has found some ready-made. He is exceedingly fair with Martin Niemöller; he obviously admires Otto Dibelius; he recognizes the heroism also of Theophil Wurm and Heinrich Vogel. In his survey of the tribulations of the East German Church, he has overlooked no significant detail. He is in a position carefully to evaluate the short-sightedness and parochialism of Karl Barth vis-a-vis the East German religious situation.

To the knowledge of this reviewer, there is no other single volume which deals with the question in hand with such thoroughness, and in such a spirit of fairness. It is difficult (perhaps undesirable) that any Christian should be completely objective as he must stand by helplessly while modern Augustans make war upon the saints. And a war it is, a war in which the opponents face one another, prepared for a war of attrition, with each antagonist determined to wear the other down. Dr. Solberg has no illusions, he has no unrealistic expectation that communism will ever modify itself in the slightest in its hatred of the Christian evangel. To those who blithely thought that the excesses against the Russian Orthodox Church were due to the contact of Lenin and Stalin with a merely nominal church, he holds up East Germany as a warning. There the Red masters have met an enlightened Protestantism with a good measure of spiritual and social vitality, and at a literate and civilized level. There the savage hatred of the Church tops that manifested in the land of Muscovy.

This is not a comforting book. Its realism is vigorous, its message clear. It would be trite to say that it “belongs in the library of every thoughtful minister”—yet something equivalent should be said in behalf of God and Caesar in East Germany.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Protestant Crisis

The Suburban Captivity of the Churches, by Gibson Winter (Doubleday, 1961, 216 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Sherwood E. Wirt, Editor of Decision.

The very form in which the material of this book is presented makes it an important work. The author’s thesis is sound: the Protestant churches are in full flight to the suburbs and are thereby neglecting the downtown areas which also need Christ. After documenting this well-known trend with carefully-assessed sociological data, the author then drops a prediction that is a blockbuster: within about 20 years not only the inner city churches, but the suburbia churches themselves will be as dead as doornails!

Why? What is wrong? Implies Dr. Winter: the current church building boom is only a whited sepulcher to hide the rotting bones of a decaying spirituality. Christianity has become “privatized” into an “attenuated religiosity.” Congregational life in the suburbs is identified with “residential and familial interests” rather than “community” and “public” concerns. The churches’ ministry, “intended for the whole life of the metropolis, is increasingly fragmented to accommodate narrow enclaves.”

This, of course, is the jargon of the professional, and it is not to be confused with an attack on theological liberalism. The usual peppering of “individual piety” is to be found here. What is significant is the note of almost unrelieved despair, as the author contemplates the suburbs with churches flaked off into the upper crust, and the inner city with no churches at all.

The picture is bleak and, to a large extent accurate, but Episcopalian Winter and his Parishfield lay-center colleagues have missed a very important dimension in their study. That dimension is the Holy Spirit, who is still unentangled in the lines of the suburban church telephone. Wherever Jesus Christ is preached clearly from the heart and from the Scriptures, the church is alive, not dying, no matter how noninterdependent its membership may be. The secret of survival is not methodological adjustment but theological renewal. It was weak Nestorian theology, rather than sociological stratification, that succumbed to Islam in the seventh century.

Further, I question whether the American church (for in striking at suburbia, Winter is really talking about America) will be dead in a score of years, or that its hope lies in the direction of radial ministries, denominational breast-beating, interlocking ecumenism, and lay academics. It is really much simpler than that. Just let the church be the church!

There is an answer in the second chapter of the book of Jonah to the metropolitan crisis which, I submit to Mr. Winter, would “renew” the churches “to serve the whole life of the emerging metropolis,” if I may borrow his phrase. Every problem he mentions in his book can be met, imaginatively and forcefully, by a twentieth-century revival in the churches, and the creation of new men in Christ Jesus.

SHERWOOD E. WIRT

Being Dead, Yet Speaketh

The Cross Through the Open Tomb, by Donald Grey Barnhouse (Eerdmans, 1961, 152 pp., $3), is reviewed by John R. Richardson, Minister, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia.

Donald Barnhouse was generously endowed with superb gifts of exposition. He knew how to explain biblical truth so that anyone in his audience could grasp the thought. As an illustrator of Christian teachings, he was without a peer.

The purpose of this volume is indicated in the title. It is to set forth the death of Christ in the light of his resurrection. Dr. Barnhouse labors the point that the climactic event in the life of Christ was not his death but his resurrection. He concedes the point that Christ had to die in order to forgive our sins and justify us before God. Then he insists, “But had He not risen from the grave, we could not have eternal life, nor could we live a life of holiness in a sinful world.”

The four divisions of this book discuss “Christ Risen From the Tomb,” “The Person of the Living Christ,” “The Grace of the Living Christ,” and “Marks of a Saint.” The 18 chapters blend Christian doctrines and Christian practice. The proper priority is given to Christian truth, and thus Christian living has a firm foundation upon which to flourish.

This book is a powerful challenge for Christians to confront their responsibility to walk as the sons of God among the sons of men. The possibility of realization lies in the fact that we have been planted in Christ’s death and raised to newness of life in him.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

Tyndale Monographs

An Early Christian Confession, by R. P. Martin (Tyndale, 1960, 69 pp., 5s.), and The Social Pattern of Christian Groups in the First Century, by E. A. Judge (Tyndale, 1960, 77 pp., 5s.), are reviewed by James S. Cunningham, The Queen’s College, Oxford.

R. P. Martin is concerned with examining carefully (and critically) modern interpretations of Philippians 2:5–11. He agrees that this section is part of the early “kerygmatic confession” of the Church. With this basic assumption he is therefore committed to exploring the literary form of the section, its theological and linguistic affinities to the rest of the Letter. This is done thoroughly and with ample references in the manner made familiar by Kittel and the other writers of the Wörterbuch. The author is to be congratulated for his painstaking analysis—and for his exposition of contemporary continental theologians’ judgments on the passage.

Awarded the 1958 Hulsean Prize by the University of Cambridge, the second essay is the work of a scholar whose main interest is ancient history. He wishes to stimulate a new approach to the interpretation of ideas of social obligation. His method is to examine the contemporary institutions. Using the New Testament cautiously as a valuable non-Imperial source he outlines the Christian position, and the results are specially interesting as they are not the work of a professional theologian who has adopted positions on dogmatic grounds.

JAMES S. CUNNINGHAM

On The Atonement

Victor and Victim, by J. S. Whale (Cambridge, 1960, 172 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Samuel J. Mikolaski, Associate Professor of Theology, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

This book will enhance the growing appreciation of Dr. Whale’s contributions to significant theological literature. Dr. Whale’s subject is the Atonement (the title is from a phrase in St. Augustine), and he has made a splendid contribution to the growing and much needed literature on the work of Christ. Though brief (there are eight short chapters) the writer aims to combine the historic faith of the Christian Church in the sufficiency of Christ’s cross for the salvation of the world and her devotion to Him as God and Saviour, with a square facing of certain key philosophical and theological puzzles of Atonement theory.

Chapter one is titled “The Fullness of Time,” and in it the importance of time and the historical element for Christianity are set forward together with a contrast of the biblical and Hellenistic modes of thought. Chapters two, three, and four, respectively, are titled “Christ’s Victory over Satan,” “Christ Our Sacrificial Victim,” and “The Cross as Judgment and Penalty,” and show the line of interpretive thought followed by the author. These chapters glow with the glory of Christ and the finality of his work as the act of God for the world’s salvation. In chapter five, called “The Offense of Particularity,” attention is drawn to the uncompromising claims of Christianity for the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as God and Saviour. The importance of the Church as “The Redeemed Society” is the theme of chapter six; next, “Baptism and Eucharist” (written concisely and with sympathy for differing viewpoints) occupy the reader’s attention in the light of the Cross; and in the final chapter the Christian hope as the life to come and as the life to come now present in the Church is expounded under the heading “The Body of Christ and the Resurrection.”

The central theme is that the Cross is God’s act for the world’s salvation. The ease with which Dr. Whale unfolds the thought of the ancient world will delight the reader, and our special thanks are due to both writer and publisher for the uncumbersome way in which the ancient languages and Scripture quotations are handled to the interests of the average reader as well as the scholar. Dr. Whale discusses the role of the Holy Spirit in authenticating the work of Christ in the believer’s life, but it is regrettable that an undue emphasis is laid on the shortcomings of individualizing evangelical evangelism. (It should be noted that Dr. Billy Graham, for example, insists upon church-centered cooperation in his crusades.) The Suffering Servant passage (Isa. 53) is a key feature of interpretation. Beyond its careful scholarship, the great value of the book is that the Atonement is “faithed”—it is written not primarily to argue theories but for the faith to express understanding.

Have I criticisms of the book? Yes, and these are not easy to state in view of the pleasure I experienced reading it. First of all, the Atonement is viewed from three perspectives: the battlefield, the altar of sacrifice, and the law court. Fuller apprehension of the Atonement awaits a study that will grapple with the complexity of the metaphors and images in Old and New Testaments and in historical theology, and will weave them together into the pattern of the whole. I wish that from his broad knowledge Dr. Whale had led us into this. Then, as I finished reading Dr. Whale’s exposition I felt myself still grasping after the rationale of the idea of victory over evil metaphor, of the vicarious element in sacrifice, and of the law court drama. I am convinced we shall find a rationale more in the moral and personal relations between God and man, and man and man (as Dr. Whale does affirm in part) than in a theology where doctrines of “being” predominate (where Dr. Whale seems to rest heavily upon Paul Tillich). The plain fact is that the “moral criticisms” leveled against the traditional penal and substitutionary language (which nineteenth-century British evangelicals voiced in self-criticism more incisively and cogently than did their critics) are as relevant against contemporary doctrines of Christ’s work being vicarious and expiatory. My point is that both sets of doctrines are true. The mystery of their truth as a whole still eludes us in dogmatic formulation. We do not know enough yet about either God or man.

Secondly, on the question of baptism and the Eucharist, Dr. Whale’s intention at this point is not to suggest that anyone is included in salvation by a logical, metaphysical, or soteriological necessity. If God is free to use external means in conveying grace (and this is freely acknowledged by most students), what is the meaning of man’s free response to God as personal? One could wish for a fuller discussion here. Baptists do not believe in “adult” baptism, but in baptism as the issue of faith on the part of the candidate whatever his age.

Thirdly, I would call to question what Dr. Whale calls the “two-beat rhythm,” the matter of grace and judgment: How clearly is the nature of evil stated, and the law of God in relation to it? Is evil defined as logically necessary to, or as the contrast of, good? Is Satan no more than a mythologized “accusative case” and the law of God no more than “Mr. Legality”? To what extent is the problem of evil put back into the being of God, or into the ontological structure of things, rather than in the tension between rebelling finite wills and the will of God? Dr. Whale builds his metaphysical case around the ontology of Paul Tillich: “actualized existence and estranged existence are identical.” A welcome emphasis is made upon the reality of the demonic, but one wonders whether the case is given away in the metaphysic he adopts. Further, what does Dr. Whale mean when he says that forgiveness comes through judgment? It seems that the ordered nature of things, or the structure of reality, means that finally all will be redeemed. Universalism is the necessary conclusion, he says, because “fulfillment is necessarily universal” (p. 164). Is the wrath of God then real or is it really an exchanging of coins from one divine pocket to another? Wrath in relation to grace is not just a form of the divine love; it declares the moral reality of the sinner under judgment. Why must we end up in a chain of being where personality and volition are finally overborne? The victory has been won, yet “he that believeth not the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him.” We cannot plumb the depths or the extent of the divine mercy when we assess the relevance of the Atonement, but dare we by definition eliminate the possibility of a man saying “No” finally and irrevocably to God’s “Come”?

SAMUEL J. MIKOLASKI

Historiographer’S Delight

American Christianity: An Historical Interpretation with Representative Documents, Vol. I, 1607–1820, by H. Shelton Smith, Robert T. Handy, and Lefferts A. Loetscher (Scribner’s, 1960, 602 pp., $10), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, Professor of History, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

This is truly the finest collection of documents on the history of American Christianity which has yet appeared. The three authors are to be commended upon their judicious selection of representative documents and on the excellent interpretation which accompanies each selection. Not only is every major denomination, including the Roman Catholic, represented with appropriate material, but major movements within the colonial and early national eras are given a fair hearing. This is an indispensable work for every serious student of American church history, and for any who would seek to understand the theological and ecclesiastical history of our country.

In the opinion of the reviewer, it is most unfortunate that at times the authors allow their bias to appear against the Calvinism to which at least two of them are supposed to be doctrinally committed. Certainly Jedediah Morse did not feel that he was “shackling” Andover Seminary to the Westminster Shorter Catechism (p. 483). It would also seem that the authors are guilty of making too sharp a distinction between the Christian liberals of the Revolutionary era and the deists. That the deists were more extreme in their denunciations of the Scriptures cannot be denied; but it is also true that the liberal position could, and often did, degenerate into that of the deists.

It is also difficult to justify the inclusion of selections from Jefferson and Franklin in this collection, inasmuch as the authors admit that they were deists. However, these are minor defects and the work as a whole must be viewed as a tremendously valuable addition to American ecclesiastical and doctrinal historiography.

C. GREGG SINGER

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