Book Briefs: March 1, 1968

Reactions To Radicalism

The Future of Belief Debate, edited by Gregory Baum (Herder and Herder, 1967, 229 pp., $2.45), is reviewed by Milton D. Hunnex, professor of philosophy, Willamette University, Salem, Oregon.

Radical theory reaches into Catholic as well as Protestant thought. Leslie Dewart’s The Future of Belief is a “theological bombshell” designed to catapult Catholic theology into the twentieth century.

One is reminded of Anglican Bishop Robinson’s earlier bombshell, which was followed up with The Honest to God Debate. But one is also impressed by the greater philosophical strength of the Toronto professor’s book, since he works out the foundations of his existential Christianity with much greater technical adequacy. Also, his radicalism is much more far reaching. Whereas Robinson tried to recast the content of the Gospel in more intelligible form, Dewart holds that the content itself must go. What was proclaimed in the first century in Hellenic terms, he argues, can no longer be true or relevant today. Hence the contemporary Christian should not even try to say what Paul said—however differently. He should articulate the Gospel in contemporary concepts only.

Dewart’s Catholic reviewers freely acknowledge that his program reaches beyond demythologization or even dehellenization. It is revolutionary in political direction as well as theological content, since it paves the way not only for the reconciliation of all Christians but also for a rapprochement of Christianity and Marxism.

According to Dewart, “Christianity has a mission, not a message.” Its mission is to bring about the progressive intensification of man’s awareness of himself as a creature who is responsible for his own creative development. God is not the Lord of history. He does not even exist in the orthodox sense of the term. He is the ubiquitous historical presence men experience as the ground of all that happens or could happen in their lives.

According to Dewart, what makes Christianity irrelevant today is that it is promulgated as a message that must be understood in Greek metaphysical terms. The Greek approach makes Christian revelation and truth into a set of propositions that Christians are supposed to believe. But truth is existential rather than propositional, Dewart argues. We know God only as a historical and existential presence, not as something we can talk about.

Men’s concepts are not true because they accurately represent something beyond themselves. They are true only because they enlarge self-understanding. In man’s experience of himself and his world, God is experienced only as a presence, and since all men are immersed in a cultural and historical situation, truth must be taken as those concepts that illuminate this situation for them. Hence while the form and content of the New Testament were appropriate for the situation in which it was written, they are not appropriate today.

The trouble with Dewart is that, though he is radical, he is radical in the wrong way and not radical enough. If being radical means getting at the root of something, then being radical as the evangelical Christian sees it would mean getting beyond the philosophical quarrels of Catholic theology to the origin and root of Christian faith. Scholasticism must go, Dewart says. The evangelical certainly agrees, but he wonders why it should have ever been allowed to envelop the faith as it did.

Evangelical radicalism calls for a Christianity unsupported by philosophical speculation and therefore not subject to the vicissitudes of philosophical style. Dewart’s call for an existential theory of truth that is hardly congenial to the modern scientific mind simply repeats all over again the mistake of trying to articulate a philosophical Christianity. The difference now is that the new philosophy that is to replace scholasticism not only will not buttress the faith as scholasticism tried to do; it will eliminate it on the curious grounds that this is the only way to save it. What is becoming clear today is that the only Christianity that can or, for that matter, should survive is evangelical Christianity.

Actually Dewart’s program for dehellenizing Christianity is itself another form of hellenistic philosophical distortion. The difference is that he prefers Heraclitus and Protagoras to Parmenides and Plato. Also, his appeal to “contemporary experience” is unconvincing, since there is no such thing as a homogeneous “contemporary experience” to which one can appeal. Moreover, many people still find that what the New Testament says in the way it is said is more radically relevant to their lives than the radical but secular reformulations of the faith.

The Inner Life Of A Missionary

Who Shall Ascend: The Life of R. Kenneth Strachan of Costa Rica, by Elisabeth Elliot (Harper & Row, 1968, 171 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Frank E. Gaebelein, headmaster emeritus of the Stony Brook School and former coeditor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The reader of this book should not neglect Elisabeth Elliot’s introduction, in which she states her attitude toward the responsibility entrusted to her by the Latin America Mission, of which Kenneth Strachan was the distinguished head. That she has endeavored honestly to see him in the light revealed by the material so unreservedly made available to her is plain. Apparently very much of this material is in the form of letters; this is understandable, for Strachan was separated from his parents in his youth and later traveled much of the time during his missionary service.

Mrs. Elliot uses her sources with integrity and sensitivity. Out of them she gives us a portrayal of Kenneth Strachan reminiscent of the biographical genre of psychography (soul-portraiture) that made Gamaliel Bradford famous. For Who Shall Ascend is much more concerned with Strachan’s inner pilgrimage than with the outward details of his career as a missionary administrator and statesman.

Some aspects of the book will disturb those who think that Christian leaders are somehow exempt from personal tensions and uncertainties. To such readers, as well as to the Christian community as a whole, Mrs. Elliot has rendered a service in this discerning study of a man who, despite inward problems, to say nothing of outward trials, pressed unremittingly on and, through the idea of evangelism-in-depth, made one of the greatest missionary contributions of this century. Surely the evangelical missionary enterprise must be mature enough to look below the surface of its success and realize more fully the ways of God with his servants.

The title with its allusion to Psalm 24 is apt. But these absorbing pages also bring to mind the first beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” No one could accuse Kenneth Strachan of thinking of himself more highly than he ought to think. Yet what great things God did through this gifted, humble, and sorely tried man!

A question remains to be asked. To what extent do letters, even private family letters, really reflect the full truth about a person? Or, to put it another way, are not what a person does and his influence upon others as revealed by what they say of him also important means for understanding who he was? Nevertheless, it must be granted that, working within her established framework, Elisabeth Elliot has helped us know the kind of man Kenneth Strachan was. And we are indeed the better for this knowledge. Incidentally, a side of missionary life too little known—its human cost in separation of children from parents—comes through the lines of Who Shall Ascend.

The Latin America Mission has set a worthy example in giving this talented writer access to confidential materials and in not interfering with her conscientious use of them.

Views From The Quad

Never Trust a God Over Thirty, edited by Albert H. Friedlander (McGraw-Hill, 1967, 209 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Paul E. Little, director of evangelism, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, Chicago, Illinois.

“Do you believe all that?” This was the pointed question a student put to his campus pastor after a conversation about the historic Christian faith. The six religious counselors at Columbia University whose essays appear in this book would answer that question in varying ways.

The rabbi feels that though his function is varied in the complex Columbia context, he must be more concerned for the student than for the institution. He acts with the knowledge that the sacred realm of institutional religion has been rejected by the mainstream of Jewish tradition—that from the time of the Pharisees, the task of the rabbi has been the sanctification of the secular, a daily existence.

A Protestant counselor to Episcopal students feels that the new theology rules our present-day styles of campus ministry by offering new understandings about God, his Church, and “Jesus who is called the Christ.” He seems to feel that we should give greater emphasis to listening to the world than to declaring any message from God—a message about which he, in accordance with the mood of the new theology, is clearly uncertain.

The associate counselor to Protestant students and Presbyterian university pastor describes the student radicals and the campus ministry in relation to them. He feels that those campus pastors who have become involved in activist enterprises have established rapport with this group, but he observes that student radicals in their response to “marching” clergy have not been drawn into a formal religious stance. However, he does not consider this necessary. He says: “There is no place in the world for the old proselytizing spirit of the past, especially when the issues which confront us all demand understanding and acceptance of one another rather than attempts at converting one another.”

Only in the writing of the counselor to Catholic students and the Lutheran university pastor does one sense any feeling of a mission to communicate a God-given message. In contrast to some of his colleagues, the counselor to Catholic students feels that to abandon any rational element in religion is to commit intellectual as well as spiritual suicide. The church belongs on the campus primarily in an educative and intellectual capacity. I do not think that theology is to be forever in exile from the university anymore than I believe that revelation is now in exile from the world of man. For the Catholic, God’s revelation is now an objective fact—the fact of God’s action is history. From that divine action have emerged certain truths, which, as indicated, can be formulated, even if inadequately, in intellectual propositions.

He is concerned for real assent, which is reached only when what is apprehended becomes the motivation of one’s life and actions. This is in sharp contrast to mere conformity to rituals.

The Lutheran pastor sees the problem for the student as a combination of tradition, the intellectual content of tradition, and ethical considerations. To separate science, which is in the realm of reason, from a personal realm of values where preference is largely emotional, private, and distinct from the objective and rational, is disastrous. It leads to a relativism that says, “I don’t object to your faith, but I do object to any suggestion that it might be good for anyone else.” This relativism, he points out, evaporates when an appeal is made to “the moral issue” either for or against the Viet Nam war in campus discussions. Here the subjectivity of values disappears, and the “right” conclusion is supposed to be immediate and obvious.

Relativism and positivism create a mood pressuring students to discount religious assertions, and in effect narrow experience to its internal dimensions. He points out:”One does not have to work at attaining this point of view on the campus—it is in the very air we breathe. It is a mood. It is not the clear conviction of all concerned but a steady pressure in common contacts which surrounds the discussion of almost any subject imaginable.”

He urges that in the campus ministry it is essential to tackle once again the problem of faith and reason.

As an illuminator of campus attitudes in some quarters and of churchmen’s attempts—or lack of attempts—to shed light on the hard questions of existence, this book is helpful. I agree with the acerbic critic-at-large Paul Goodman, who writes in the introduction, “In my observation it is an error to say, like some of the writers in this book, that the present-day young are not interested in religion in a metaphysical sense.” It is only when those involved in campus ministry know clearly what they believe and why they believe it and are committed to it with “real assent,” so that this commitment is apparent in their lives, that they will make an impact on this student generation.

Reading For Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

• Christ in the Communist Prisons, by Richard Wurmbrand (Coward-McCann, $5). A heroic Rumanian minister, fourteen years a prisoner of the Communists, vividly describes the opposition to Christianity behind the Iron Curtain.

• Religion Across Cultures, by Eugene A. Nida (Harper & Row, $4.95). The American Bible Society’s noted linguist takes a fresh look at the psychological and dynamic factors related to effective communication in diverse cultures.

• Who Shall Ascend, by Elisabeth Elliot (Harper & Row, $5.95). At the request of the Latin America Mission, a gifted missionary-novelist has written an intimate, probing biography of R. Kenneth Strachan, Costa Rica mission leader who developed “Evangelism-in-Depth.”

Preaching To Prisoners

Call for God, by Karl Barth (Harper & Row, 1967, 125 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Andre Bustanoby, pastor, Temple Baptist Church, Fullerton, California.

Suppose a pastor were to pull out of his files his last twelve Christmas and Easter sermons and, instead of tearing them up, bundled them up and submitted them to a publisher. What would happen? He would probably receive a rejection slip promptly. But not if his name were Karl Barth.

That is more or less the story of Call for God, a collection of twelve sermons for Christmas, New Year, Easter, and other special occasions preached by Karl Barth to prisoners in Basel, Switzerland. Weighed in the homiletical balances, Call for God is found wanting in several respects.

Barth is often obscure. For example, he says in his sermon “You May” (Jer. 31:31) that the law of God is not an oppressive thing when it is written on the heart of man. It is no longer “you must obey” but “you may obey.” Unfortunately, the preacher does not tell us how the law of God comes to be written on a man’s heart so that obedience becomes a normal outworking of the life of faith.

Historical background must be taken into account in preaching from the prophets. But Barth preaches four sermons from Isaiah with little or no attention to historical background. The only connection between Isaiah 54:7, 8 and his Easter sermon “Brief Moment” is the phrase “the LORD, your Redeemer.”

Application is skimpy. Barth talks about “we,” “people,” and “the community” but does not address himself specifically to his audience—men in prison uniforms doing time for armed robbery and murder, suffering the frustrations of prison discipline and regimentation.

His Christmas sermon on Luke 1:53, “He has filled the hungry with good things,” offers an excellent opportunity to show how Christ can fill the void in the prisoners’ lives, and Barth makes a stab at it. But he speaks only in generalities, about such things as receiving a good conscience from Christ. He fails to tell how that prisoner who has murdered his wife in a fit of rage can receive the gift of a clear conscience and a cool head. He does not say what one should do about his uncontrollable temper. Barth never gets down to the nitty gritty.

Despite these liabilities, the book will probably sell. There is magic in the name Barth.

The Thesis Of Dodd Is Dead!

Preaching and Teaching in the Earliest Church, by Robert C. Worley (Westminster, 1967, 199 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Benjamin L. Rose, professor of pastoral leadership and homiletics, Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia.

A neat distinction between preaching and teaching did not exist in the earliest Church (despite what C. H. Dodd said), and the effort today to differentiate the two creates confusion about the purpose and direction of church education. That is the thesis of this book. In five chapters that are well documented but at times very tiresome reading, the author, associate professor of theology at McCormick Seminary, challenges Dodd’s thesis that there was in the New Testament a clear distinction between kerygma and didache.

Four kinds of data are Worley’s basis for a critical evaluation of Dodd: word-studies of the use of preaching and teaching in the New Testament literature; recent studies in the speeches in Acts; information on intertestamental Jewish usage, practice, and background; and a variety of critical arguments by New Testament scholars. By the end of four chapters, Dodd’s thesis is as dead as a dormouse. (But I wondered whether the poor little dormouse merited all the ammunition expended on him; he was pretty sick before the shooting started.)

In the fifth and final chapter, which is the most readable in the book, Worley offers some practical advice about the Church’s educational program. The preaching-teaching task is one, not two, and must be stripped of its institutionalized distinctions (e.g., Director of Christian Education in contrast to Preacher). Preacher and church educator must take up and blend into one program the tasks of (1) teaching the Scriptures, (2) offering guidance in Christian living, including ethics, and (3) instructing in the history of the Church, as well as calling to commitment.

This is a helpful book, recommended for all who are responsible for the educational program of the Church. If they haven’t time to read the whole book, they should at least read the last chapter.

A Warm-Hearted Historian

Beyond the Ranges, by Kenneth Scott Latourette (Eerdmans, 1967, 155 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Sandford Fleming, president emeritus, Berkeley Baptist Divinity School, Berkeley, California.

This is a brief autobiography of a great scholar who is a warm-hearted Christian and missionary statesman. It deals with Dr. Latourette’s years of preparation, his brief period of missionary service abroad, cut short by ill health, and his long teaching and writing career, together with his constant participation in various kinds of Christian service. This is a challenging record of one whose life has been richly lived, who has always been primarily concerned with persons, notably students, and who brings to every task the carefulness and thoroughness of good scholarship.

Especially significant are Dr. Latourette’s accounts of the decisions he made at a YMCA summer conference in 1903 and of a physical and emotional crisis that came during his first decade on the Yale faculty. In describing the latter, he says he had become deeply concerned by “the seamy side of ecclesiastical and official religious life,” and had begun to doubt whether Christianity was really confirmed by its fruits. His release came through the recognition that the “fruits of the Spirit” are to be found in men and women both in humble walks of life and in high ecclesiastical and academic positions. Most striking is his witness to the validity of the evangelical faith: “Increasingly I rejoiced in the Gospel … I was confirmed in my conviction that when all the best scholarship is taken into account we can know Christ as He was in the days of His flesh.… I was convinced that the historical evidence confirms the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Christ. Increasingly I believed that the nearest verbal approach that we humans can come to the great mystery is to affirm that Christ is both fully man and fully God.”

In a brief review it is difficult to do justice to this intimate portrayal of one of the great Christians of our time. Always the reader is aware that here is a life constantly guided by the Spirit of God. Dr. John A. Mackay says it well: “In these fascinating pages we follow the career of a young saint who became a scholar and of an aged scholar who has not ceased to be a saint.”

One regrets only that this account of a noble life is so brief, realizing as he comes to the end how much more fully the story might have been told.

Electrons With Mentality?

Evolution and the Christian Doctrine of Creation, by Richard Overman (Westminster, 295 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by A. E. Wilder Smith, professor of pharmacology, University of Illinois, Chicago.

Dr. Overman has swallowed not only the evolutionary bait but the hook, line, and sinker as well. The scholarship of the book, insofar as it reports on the works of Whitehead (it is a Whiteheadian interpretation), Bergson, Bultmann, Brunner, Barth, Teilhard de Chardin, Lamarck, Darwin, and others, is impeccable. The reference citations are copious, except those to orthodox evangelical scholars. The general index is scanty.

Basically, Overman grapples with the problem of explaining the evolutionary upsurge of order out of the natural chaos surrounding us: “How are we to express this in the face of evidence that indicates man appeared on the planet as a result of a ‘make-do’ process with no intrinsic long-term goals?” “Design, we might say, was somehow thwarted by the swarming, purposeless Newtonian atoms.” Over against this surging force of disorder stands the “fact of evolution” with its high order in cells and complex organisms.

To account for this evolution without invoking direct, supernatural interference in design, Overman assumes (in common with Teilhard de Chardin and others) that each basic unit of matter has a primitive “mentality” that ensures, without exogenous interference, an upsurge of order out of chaos: “This provides us with one reason for attributing to electrons some glimmering of mentality.…” Rock molecules, likewise, may have “flashes of conceptual novelty,” apples, their “consciousness.” An x-ray particle is conceived of as having a “pulse of emotion.” Electrons are “obedient.” Maupertuis’s idea that the Newtonian particles possess a “glimmer of mentality” is cited in support. An electron within a living body is maintained to be “different” from one outside it. With the help of this hypothesis, Overman and his friends try to relate the upward surge of evolutionary processes to the “subjective aims of actual occasions” in the atomic and subatomic world, which would otherwise be offset by the downward tendency towards chaos.

This line of thought seems to me, as a mere experimental scientist, to be a very shaky philosophical house of cards. We have no evidence, of course, of any “conceptual inwardness” of any non-living matter. In fact, the weight of experimental evidence is against such a proposition for the simple reason that mere compositions of matter, left to themselves, show no tendency whatever toward “conceptual synthesis” or toward mounting order leading to increased complexity and reduction of entropy. Decay and loss of complexity according to the second law of thermodynamics are the firm observations on which the success of modern science has been built. The only way the down-to-earth scientist knows of obtaining results that appear to be “conceptual”—i.e., that overcome the innate trend toward increased chaos and entropy—is through the intelligent (or conceptual!) application of energy.

On Overman’s and similar theories, non-living matter, left to itself, ought to show some sort of primitive conceptual trend toward higher order, even over the short experimental periods at our disposal. That it does not discredits all this sort of theory. It cannot. That the available energy is lacking (the sun’s energy is not available, as such, for such processes), discredits these fundamentally pantheistic theories involving “conceptual” atoms or electrons. Such theories are an attempt to avoid the necessity of the supernatural as an explanation for archebiopoiesis by attributing creative concepts to matter itself. Overman invokes the usual evolutionary hypothesis of huge time spans to allow this covert conceptual property of matter to reveal itself in upward evolution. (I have dealt with this whole problem in my book Herkunft und Zukunft des Menschen, which will soon appear in English under the title Origin and Destiny of Man.)

Besides these matters of principle, other indigestible fare is offered. The prodigious age of the coelacanth fish is mentioned, but the conclusion to be drawn from this—that species can be extraordinarily stable and not subject to transformism—is not drawn. More serious, in Overman’s thinking God is not omniscient and did not create by fiat, because that would have involved “capricious divine power.” Although God’s power is unrivaled, Overman says, it is not absolute. No mention is made of the fact of redemption in creation (Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, Revelation 13:8).

The book is toilsome to read—the paper is poor and the type small—and expensive. It does contain a wealth of accurate bibliographical material which evangelical Christians would do well to know, and for which the author is to be thanked.

The Date Of Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy and Tradition, by E. W. Nicholson (Fortress, 1967, 145 pp., $3.25), is reviewed by Samuel J. Schultz, professor of Bible and theology, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

In these pages the reader is offered an excellent example of trends in Old Testament scholarship since the turn of the century. The author discusses the relation of Deuteronomy, a book that is crucial in Old Testament studies, to tradition, as held by a large segment of modern scholarship.

Nicholson retains the basic theory of DeWette (1805), popularized by Wellhausen, that Deuteronomy was written in the seventh century B.C. Reflecting the influence of form criticism and the traditio-historical investigation of Old Testament literature, he rejects the conclusions of the nineteenth-century critical school that regarded Deuteronomy as primarily projecting the ethical teaching of the eighth-century prophets.

Deuteronomic traditions, according to this author, had their beginnings with the sacral and cultic festivals in the pre-monarchial ampichtyony of Israel. These were adapted and modified during the monarchial period by the prophetic circles—not the Levites, as advocated by von Rad and Wolff—primarily in the Northern Kingdom. After the fall of Samaria (722 B. C.) this prophetic circle moved into the Southern Kingdom, where they embodied the basic principles of Hezekiah’s reforms. During Manasseh’s reign they composed the basic book of Deuteronomy—chapters 5–26 and part of 28. When the Deuteronomy-Second Kings corpus was composed some time after the fall of Judah (586 B.C.), chapters 1–4; 27; 29, and most of 31 were added. At a later date editorial expansion throughout Deuteronomy and the addition of chapters 32 and 33 may reflect the combination of Deuteronomy and the Genesis-Numbers corpus to form the Pentateuch.

Nicholson correctly acknowledges that J. Reider, G. T. Manley, E. J. Young, and other scholars advocate the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy. He reflects familiarity with some of the research into the form and content of Ancient Near Eastern covenant foundations but fails to acknowledge the incisive analysis and research Meredith Kline (Treaty of the Great King, Eerdmans, 1963) brings to bear upon the composition and authorship of Deuteronomy.

How Presbyterians Worship

Presbyterian Worship in America: Changing Patterns Since 1797, by Julius Melton (John Knox, 1967, 173 pp., $5.75), is reviewed by Clifford M. Drury, professor emeritus of church history, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Francisco, California.

Here is an excellent historical review of the philosophy of worship and the development of liturgy in the Presbyterian Church. Julius Melton, who teaches religion at Southwestern University in Memphis, shows a thorough grasp of his subject and writes clearly and forcefully.

He points out the strong Puritan anti-liturgical feeling that the first Presbyterian immigrants brought to this country (more could have been said about an even stronger feeling that came from North Ireland) and skillfully traces the attitudes toward liturgy of both the Old and New Schools. Some questioned even the use of the Lord’s Prayer. Both schools were united in rejecting the Anglican prayer book; for the most part, however, the Old School was willing to adopt some guides for worship, while the New School was inclined to be free and independent.

In time anti-liturgical sentiment diminished. Among the factors leading to change were the introduction of better music, the use of Gothic architecture, the need for some worship guides for laymen, the need for a prayer book for use in the military chaplaincy, and developments in Christian education. In 1906 the General Assembly approved a prayer book for “voluntary use.” Since then there have been four revisions.

Melton brings on the stage a number of well-known Presbyterian leaders, such as Samuel Miller and Charles Hodge of Princeton; Charles G. Finney, the New School evangelist; Robert Baird and his two sons, Charles and Henry; and Charles Briggs, Louis Benson, and Henry Jackson Van Dyke, all of whom were active in the Church Service Society.

This book merits the attention of all Presbyterian pastors and seminary students.

Book Briefs

A Search for Strength, by H. C. Brown, Jr. (Word, 1967, 126 pp., $2.50). A seminary professor tells movingly and intimately how he faced his wife’s death and gives his prescription for victory over sorrow.

Luther and the Reformation, by Hanns Lilje (Fortress, 1967, 223 pp., $5.95). In a book handsomely illustrated with wood-cuts, engravings, and portraits, the Lutheran bishop of Hannover, Germany, sets Luther and the Reformation in their historical context.

The World of the New Testament, edited by Abraham J. Malherbe (R. B. Sweet, 1967, 186 pp.). A worthy volume on historical, geographical, cultural, and religious backgrounds of the biblical world.

The Risen Christ in the Fathers of the Church, edited by Thomas P. Collins (Paulist, 1967, 118 pp., $3.50). This Catholic work brings together statements on the Resurrection by Church Fathers from Clement of Rome to Augustine.

Divine Science and the Science of God, by Victor Preller (Princeton University, 1967, 282 pp., $8.50). A reformulation of Thomas Aquinas’s ideas about religious language in light of current analytic philosophy.

Once upon a tree …, by Calvin Miller (Baker, 1967, 128 pp. $2.95). Devotional essays on the Cross that show spiritual perception and deep faith.

Up Tight!, by John Gimenez with Char Meredith (Word, 1967, 168 pp., $3.95). An ex-junkie describes his life as an addict and tells how Christ delivered him from it. Stirring.

Hyper-Calvinism, by Peter Toon (Olive Tree [2 Milnthorpe Rd., London, W.4., England], 1967, 176 pp., cloth $3.50, paper $1.50). Toon offers an informed perspective of eighteenth-century rationalistic hyper-Calvinism, distinguishing it from the doctrine of Calvin. A first-rate work.

Billy Graham the Preacher, by James E. Kilgore (Exposition, 1968, 70 pp., $4). An interesting but superficial analysis and assessment of the preaching of the man heard in person by more people than any other speaker in history.

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