Book Briefs: January 31, 1969

The Christian, the Church, and Contemporary Problems, by T. B. Maston (Word, 1968, 248 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Charles E. Hummel, president, Barrington College, Barrington, Rhode Island.

Evangelicals have often been accused of having the right answers to the wrong questions. Our doctrine may be correct, but we have failed to relate it to current social problems in a way that meets people at their point of need and questions. Although this charge often overlooks significant evangelical social concern shown both in writing and in action, there is enough truth in it to make this book a welcome arrival.

T. B. Maston is professor emeritus of Christian ethics at Southwestern Baptist Seminary. In his forty years of teaching he showed concern that in the ethical arena our preaching is better than our practice. For this book he has drawn upon his wealth of experience in relating the Christian and the Church to the social structures and problems of the day. The book is significant in three major respects: its biblical grounding and perspective, its wide range of concern, and its breadth of scholarship in relation to both past and present writers.

The opening chapters establish a biblical basis for social concern and the relation of theology to ethics. Here Dr. Maston makes a strong case for the Christian as a citizen of the world as well as of the Kingdom of God, and for the responsibility of the Church to grapple with world problems. He bases his argument on Scripture and develops it in the context of church history. Readers anxious to wrestle with issues immediately may be impatient with what seems like a slow start. But as they progress to the treatment of the problems of our society, they will appreciate the solid biblical foundation laid for the discussion.

The remaining three sections—twelve chapters—deal with family, social, and political problems. Each section begins with a chapter on biblical teachings to set the stage for treatment of specific topics. In the area of the family, Maston writes with unusual perception about the problems of aging members and of divorce. He lays bare complex issues as he gives practical advice without pat answers.

The section on social problems has a valuable chapter on “Law, Order, and Morality” that is of special interest in view of the recent political campaign. Here we see the inter-relatedness of law, morality, order, justice, and love. The racial situation is presented as a threat to religious liberty, and the underlying revolution of our civilization, which motivates many kinds of revolutions. The book ends with the panorama of unrest and rapid change swirling around us, yet with the conviction of God’s overriding sovereignty in world events.

Broad scholarship is evident in Maston’s appropriate quotations from leading theologians and other contemporary scholars. Both his notes and his index are unsually comprehensive. He communicates clearly and avoids the common scholarly failing of seeming profound by being obscure. All in all, his book is an excellent introduction to a vital area of Christian concern.

Against Meaningless Structures

Spirit Versus Structure, by Jaroslav Pelikan (Harper & Row, 1968, 149 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by John H. Gerstner, professor of church history, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

This volume, though its title might serve in this post-election year as a reminder of the inevitable gap between campaign promises and administrative fulfillments, finds its real part of relevance in the contemporary Protestant-Roman Catholic dialogue. Although Luther originally opposed the Roman Catholic Church as Spirit Versus Structure, he later found himself obliged to reproduce structures of his own more or less like those he had opposed.

Dr. Pelikan takes The Babylonian Captivity of 1520 as the Reformation platform. Ecclesiasticism, Luther said in that work, had replaced the Bible and driven out the Holy Spirit. The priesthood had become a higher order on whom the laity depended, while really baptism makes all men priests and for practical reasons these true priests appoint some of their number to perform the functions. Monastic vows were presumptuous without the Holy Spirit and unnecessary with him. Faith is not produced by baptism, but faith, wrought by the Spirit, justifies that sacrament even in the case of infants. Canon law is the structural antithesis of the freedom of the Christian man. And indeed the whole sacramental system, as a sign, is a travesty, the only true sacrament being the Word itself, which may be expressed by the three traditional sacramental forms.

The vicissitudes of this Lutheran program of spirit vs. structure are traced in various monographs of the following decade. While Luther would rather see a church without ministry and sacrament than with the wrong kind, he finds himself drawn into organization, ultimately justifying, for example, infant baptism without faith. Monasteries he could bring down, but their welfare, mission, and educational work he could not reproduce by Protestant spirituality, only by the secular state.

This book, an interesting and valuable testing of the Reformation in the promise and fulfillment of its central hero, is perhaps a little too neat. While its thesis is deftly and even brilliantly advanced, there are also the facts that Luther was given to hyperbole, on the one hand, and was never utterly opposed to form, structure, and institution, on the other. Incidentally, Luther was not so much concerned with Spirit vs. structure as he was with the Spirit’s truth versus the structure’s errors. It was not by its institutions that the Roman church fell but, according to Luther, by its repudiation of justification by faith alone. From the beginning the German reformer was willing to keep even the pope if with him he could have the Gospel.

This little work should be compared with the nineteenth-century study, The Conservative Reformation, in which the Lutheran C. P. Krauth attempted to show the essentially conservative character of Luther and Lutheranism in doctrine and worship, in spirit and structure. Pelikan is suggesting that this conservatism came gradually and the hard way.

Basic Question Overlooked

Marburger Hermeneutik, by Ernst Fuchs (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1968, 277 pp., DM 28), is reviewed by Harold O. J. Brown, theological secretary, The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Ernst Fuchs, the Marburg New Testament scholar, here attempts a contribution to the interpretation of the New Testament, i.e., to New Testament hermeneutics. It is thanks to his own labors, as well as to those of his Marburg mentor Bultmann, and some of Bultmann’s other disciples, that the so-called hermeneutical problem has become the focal point of much if not all theological discussion, especially in Germany.

Professor Fuchs begins by stating that existential honesty, not merely intellectual honesty, is his goal. He exhibits a certain directness, freshness, and trenchancy in some of his comments, particularly when he deals with the situation in theology and the churches today. He calls talk of the death of God “monkey-shines” and laments the theologians’ failure to live with the Bible and the widespread loss of a regular quiet time. The book is dominated by his feeling that the Church and the theologian aren’t getting through and that the reason is that the Bible is not getting through to us. The task of his “Marburg hermeneutics” is to solve this problem.

For him, hermeneutics before Bultmann was concerned chiefly with justifying its own methods, with what the exegete brought to bear on the text; after Bultmann, exegetes like Fuchs himself want to see what the text brings to the exegete, the changes it causes in him.

Herr Fuchs is at his most convincing when he wrestles with the problems of ambiguity and inauthenticity in modern life and in the Church, and in his appendix on love. However, if his intention is to lend clarity to the task of interpreting the Bible, he certainly fails. The book is organized into numbered parts, paragraphs, and sections, but seems to consist chiefly of random, cryptic comments on other theologians, the Bible, philosophy, and other subjects, many of them made an oracular tone. The late Professor J. T. Muller of Concordia, commenting on the words “Try the spirits” (1 John 4:1), gave as one of the tests of a theologian’s fidelity to the Spirit of God his ability—or willingness—to express himself with clarity. By this standard, Marburger Hermeneutik falls far short.

This fashion of speaking as though he were a divine oracle (not peculiar to Fuchs—many of his colleagues in Germany, America, and elsewhere do the same thing) makes it hard for the reader to question or verify what he writes. He gives few footnotes and displays a remarkably Germano-centric provincialism. He devotes much space to a little-known Tubingen theologian, Traub, as well as to the standard luminaries; but C. H. Dodd, the only British scholar mentioned, appears only in a parenthesis, while the work of Paul Ricoeur is completely ignored, even though this French Protestant is perhaps the outstanding thinker in existentialist hermeneutics today.

Partly because of his interest in Heidegger’s philosophy and in German Romanticism, Fuchs is preoccupied with the question of time. For him, physical sciences are concerned with space, the humanities and theology with time, which man “uses up in living.” Unfortunately, any insights he may offer are so obscured by his bewildering and arbitrary terminology and by his practice of hopping from one oracular dictum to another that even an interested reader has difficulty fishing them out. If there were no hermeneutical problem, Fuchs would certainly create one.

A chief defect is that Fuchs, like many of his colleagues, applies his existential honesty only to the interpreter as a cerebral, reflective, hyperverbal scholar, and not to the text or to the realities of living in the world. He acknowledges that the “obscure” Bible began to speak to men with renewed clarity when they were pushed to the limit by twentieth-century persecutions, but he does not consider why this was possible. What authority does the Bible have to change me, the exegete? Fuchs’s failure to answer the basic question is all the more tragic since he obviously has felt and feels the power emanating from the sacred texts.

Is this not characteristic of almost all contemporary theology? Radically critical in its approach to traditional sources of authority and to the central teachings of historic Christianity, claiming an openness to all knowledge from whatever quarter, it ends by building a theological edifice with only the building blocks contributed by a limited, close circle of “scientific” theologians, which it accepts uncritically, seldom asking even whether they are formally meaningful, much less whether they are true to the biblical message or to life as we experience it.

Ultimately, then, the structural looseness, the literal incoherence, of Fuchs’s Marburger Hermeneutik is a reflection not merely of the ferret-like vivacity of his own turn of mind but also of the fundamental sterility of his theological method, which cannot communicate life but can only observe it, and may destroy it. His attempts to supersede the vitality of the biblical message (the source of which he fails to see clearly) with the frenzied vivacity of his burrowings in his own and others’ theological methods must remain, for all its fascinating virtuosity, a pathetic and mechancholy one.

A Converted Gangleader

Run Baby Run, by Nicky Cruz, with Jamie Buckingham (Logos, 1968, 240 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Russell Spangler, instructor in speech, Alma College, Alma, Michigan.

Nicky Cruz was once the feared and ferocious leader of the renowned Mau Maus of New York City. Ten years ago, when the city was plagued by two or three hundred of these “bopping clubs” (street-fighting gangs), the Mau Maus had the reputation of being one of the most vicious and blood-thirsty of all gangs.

Here is the intriguing story, in Nicky’s own words, of how a rebellious fifteen-year-old Puerto Rican kid was sent to the big city to make it on his own. He made it all right. He joined the Mau Maus, and six months after going through the barbaric initiation ritual he became their leader, by being meaner, more courageous, and more blood-thirsty than anyone else. This meant he had two hundred boys (and seventy-five girls) who would do whatever he told them.

Understandably, the first half of this biography has (potentially, at least) the gory elements that characterize so many cheap autobiographies of slum characters who have risen to the point at which they feel they can make money from their sordid past. What makes this book different is the account of the marvelous transformation of this rebellious, sadistic teen-ager into a consecrated preacher filled with an overwhelming desire to go out and reach other “hopeless” young people. This is a thrilling story of what must be one of the most dramatic conversions of this generation.

The story will be inspiring to readers of all ages. Ministers will be particularly challenged by the example of the Reverend David Wilkerson, who played an important role in Nicky’s conversion. (Wilkerson has already told a portion of Nicky’s story in his best-seller, The Cross and the Switchblade.)

Run Baby Run is not a complete biography, for Nicky Cruz has not stopped running. He now travels the country presenting his testimony to young people. His program, for juveniles is called “Outreach for Youth” and is located in Fresno, California. One hopes this book will be another outreach for youth.

A Ray Of Hope?

Religion in America, edited by William G. McLoughlin and Robert N. Bellah (Houghton Mifflin, 1968, 433 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Frank L. Hieronymus, acting president and dean of the faculty, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.

Religion in America explores the nation’s religious landscape through essays originally presented at a conference of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The editors and contributors are optimistic about the American religious scene, whether they view it as broadly inclusive or as confined to Christianity. America, say the editors, is in the fourth great awakening, in which, unlike the first three, Roman Catholics and Jews share equally with Protestants. And Michael Novak, in a chapter entitled “Christianity: Renewed or Slowly Abandoned?,” states his “quiet conviction that Christianity is now entering upon one of the most creative periods of its history.”

Among facts cited to support this optimism are the membership growth in religious organizations to 125 million; the identity with some form of faith of about 96 per cent of Americans; the increase in religious contributions to some four billion dollars a year; and, of course, the quickening of interest among religious leaders and organizations in the social and economic issues of the era.

A point stressed throughout the volume is the pluralism of American religion—“an attitude towards differences that reinforces and contributes to social cohesiveness.” Recent Supreme Court decisions are interpreted as expanding religious freedom as well as helping to mature this kind of pluralism.

The omissions are noteworthy. The editors say that their efforts to obtain an article on Negro religion failed; this is surprising, in view of the spate of work being done in Negro history and culture. They concede that conservatives or new evangelicals are underrepresented. There is no chapter on revivalism, though Billy Graham is frequently mentioned; no study of the impact on society of mass-media efforts by evangelicals; no analysis of the healing meetings, the tongues movement, or the missionary programs sponsored by these bodies. Because of these omissions, the evangelical is likely to underrate or ignore the volume, and the non-evangelical will read it without coming to a better understanding of the evangelical position. Thus each will continue to broadcast on his own wave length, without reading the other’s signals.

Each of the essays in the book distills the ideas its contributor has published in larger works. And each has a helpful bibliography and supporting footnotes. The volume suffers from considerable repetition and overlapping, not unexpected in this type of work.

Religion in America is recommended for ministers and laymen who take their religion seriously and for the student of the contemporary scene. It will not be very valuable for the scholar in religious history.

Kierkegaard’S Train Of Thought

Kierkegaard’s Authorship, by George E. and George B. Arbaugh (Augustana, 1967, 431 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Lloyd F. Dean, associate professor of philosophy, Rhode Island Junior College, Providence.

This study has many virtues. It is chronologically systematic, comprehensive, and lucid. Indeed, it seems to stand at the opposite pole to existentialists in general and Soren Kierkegaard in particular. It convinces this reviewer, at least, that the Arbaughs (father and son) have accurately understood and honestly presented the genius of the much discussed Dane.

The authors modestly suggest that what they have produced is only a guide to the approximately seventy published and unpublished books by Kierkegaard himself. But they have given us a great deal more: an exposition of his thought in context throughout his life, with lucid introductions to all his works, telling the circumstances of their composition and the author’s motivation for writing.

After an introductory chapter on the significance of Kierkegaard’s life and labors, the Arbaughs move into the first division of his writing, “The Aesthetic Literature”—philosophical, religious, and ethical works intended to attract aesthetically. Kierkegaard’s ultimate goal was to prod the reader “to consider the Christian answer to his problems.”

Irony abounds in this period. “In one instance, S.K. deliberately misleads his readers through an entire book (Repetition) to see if the reader will have sufficient integrity of character to follow through to the grave issues at its end.” This was not strange to the literary custom of his age. Thus one must always ask if he is reading the real Kierkegaard. (Note the relation of this approach to the subject of his M. A. dissertation, The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to Socrates.) It will be most helpful for the new reader to understand that Either/Or (of this period) is a love letter that also purposes to help the reader face his spiritual existence.

The Arbaughs date the second period, “Christian Writings,” from Kierkegaard’s conversion or attainment of assurance of forgiveness. In this period he feels he can speak openly on behalf of true Christianity, and the philosophical elements decrease. His purpose is to define Christianity in such a way as to make a confrontation with it unavoidable. Later the subject of suffering becomes more prominent. “Christianity makes man supremely significant and therefore makes his existence ‘as difficult and painful as possible.’ ” The key concept in his ethics, say the Arbaughs, is neighbor-love as an act of essential freedom. Thus Kierkegaard turns more and more to the common man, rather than to the intellectual and the sophisticate. Unlike Sartre, he sees man placed in a responsible situation by creation and, though fallen, able to accept a restoration to his spiritual home by the grace of God.

Kierkegaard viewed his writing as a process of educational growth toward clarity and commitment. He came to oppose such social gospels as those of Marx or Mill, because he found the solution to man’s problems in the inward transformation of individuals. Organized Christianity, he felt, instead of taking its proper part in this transformation, was actually contributing to its own destruction. In the heat of his radical attack on the problem, the Arbaughs see Kierkegaard un-properly describing Christianity as “absurd.” They point out, however, that he ultimately made it clear that by absurd he meant that Christianity is “a matter of faith rather than demonstrative probability.”

In the short section on “Miscellaneous Writings,” Kierkegaard’s journals, newspaper articles, meditations, and prayers are treated with special note of their autobiographical significance. The final chapter, “Kierkegaard and Existentialism,” shows his influence on Ibsen, Hoffding, Unamuno, Jaspers, and Heidegger, as well as the contrast with Sartre and other naturalistic existentialists. There are brief but excellent discussions of existence, essence, paradox, and other important concepts. The Arbaughs conclude that Kierkegaard must not be identified with secular existentialists, for he always roots love and duty in a concern for one’s neighbor before God. Thus they find that “the fundamental purposes and concepts of Kierkegaard are antithetical to a great deal of more recent existentialism.”

No Easy Solutions

The Nine Lives of Alphonse, by James L. Johnson (Lippincott, 1968, 256 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by James W. Sire, editor, Inter-Varsity Press, Chicago, Illinois.

It is easy to find fault with James L. Johnson’s second Code Name Sebastian adventure. The Nine Lives of Alphonse has most of the weaknesses of the earlier novel: poor characterization, over-explicit moralizing, strained figures of speech, and a general lack of subtlety.

Sebastian, an ex-minister, has been summoned to Florida by a former female convert in “soul trouble.” When he arrives, he is immediately thrust into the middle of a chaos of opposing factions: the woman, her atheist husband, a jolly but soured Cuban Catholic, an ex-Communist femme fatale, a criminal, the exiled Cuban leader of Miami Free Cubans who wants to get the rest of his family out of Castro’s Cuba, the U. S. Navy, the National Intelligence Agency, and Cubans loyal to Castro. Still, the plot, with the peaks of excitement and relief found in most adventure stories, is straightforward.

But Johnson tries to make The Nine Lives of Alphonse more than a diversion. Referring to Sebastian’s earlier experience in Code Name Sebastian, he writes, “It was that same old grinding of the gears again, violence vs. spirituality, the disheveled, wrinkled, chaotic world vs. the prim, starchy, well-pressed theology of love.” And much to Johnson’s credit, Sebastian finds no easy solutions. He works out his salvation in sweat and blood, constantly troubled by whether God could lead a Christian (especially one ordained) to cavort with criminals, spies, prostitutes, and soldiers of fortune. It is also to Johnson’s credit that at times the narrative becomes intense and dramatic—even absorbing.

But there are still all those telling weaknesses. The language, especially the dialogue, is often unrealistic, just short of a line I recall from a Late Movie on TV: “A man doesn’t lie with stark horror on his face and cold terror in his eye.” Clichés abound. And when Johnson does try a fresh approach, it often obtrudes: “Sebastian detected the Spanish accent that rode some of Bingo’s words like unwanted passengers demanding more room on the train.” Yet he strives for realism. One character blurts out in anger, “When my preacher friend here pops his colon down there at fifteen fathoms or so, I want to scoop up a specimen and hang it up in my wife’s bedroom so she can see what kind of man she’s got for a hero. Right preacher?”

Sebastian himself is unbelievable. He’s a wiser, surer man than in the previous novel, and he faces more complex issues. He knows God is on his side this time; after all, he is out of the spiritual desert of the Negev and in the waters off Florida. But his goody-goody nature often becomes unbearable. He drinks coffee, the others run; he thinks of his true love while being enticed by a beautiful Cuban prostitute; he goes to church almost every Sunday despite incredible obstacles. In fact, in a novel that takes many pokes at nominal Roman Catholicism, Sebastian is still a priestly Protestant minister: “It was that peculiar gulf that makes ministers a breed apart, maybe, and no amount of common sweat or blood or effort could change it.”

The messages the novel bears are sound: a relationship to God in Jesus Christ gives life meaning and vitality, and a person committed to Christ may well find himself caught up in the troubles of his neighbors, Christian and non-Christian. But all in all these points are made in a language too explicitly religious. Too little is left to the reader’s own intelligence and imagination. Keats once wrote that “we hate a poetry that has a palpable design upon us.” His remark holds for novels as well.

Book Briefs

The Biblical Sunday School Commentary, edited by H. C. Brown, Jr. (Word, 1968, 422 pp., $3.95). A new, evangelically oriented commentary on the International Sunday School Lessons offering solid, creative Bible study and an abundant supply of illustrative material.

Religious Trends in English Poetry, Volume VI, by H.M. Fairchild (Cambridge, 1968, 535 pp., $12.50). In this final volume in a series that studies nearly three centuries of English poetry, the author, a Christian, searches the “Valley of Dry Bones” for modern poetry’s definition of deity: God or man. Students of literature will appreciate this distinguished contribution of literary criticism.

God in the White House, by Edmund Fuller and David E. Green (Crown, 1968, 426 pp., $5.95). An investigation of the religious faith of each of the thirty-five presidents of the United States—its development and its effect upon the man and his contemporaries.

A History of Religious Education, by Robert Ulich (New York University, 1968, 302 pp., $8.50). Traces the development of modern religious education through the study of pertinent documents, beginning with the Old Testament.

McLuhan: Pro and Con, edited by Raymond Rosenthal (Funk & Wagnalls, 1968, 308 pp., $5.95). A collection of very lively responses—pro and con—to the thought of Marshall McLuhan.

Jesus of Fact and Faith, by Samuel A. Cartledge (Eerdmans, 1968, 160 pp., $4.50). A survey of the work of recent scholarship on the life of Jesus, with evaluations of the most important current theories.

Communication-Learning for Churchmen, edited by B. F. Jackson, Jr. (Abingdon, 1968, 303 pp., $5.95). First in a series of four volumes designed to give churchmen a better understanding of communication and learning so that these may be used more effectively in the churches.

The Zondervan Expanded Concordance (Zondervan, 1968, 1,848 pp., $14.95). Includes key words from six modern Bible translations (Amplified, Berkley, Phillips, RSV, NEB, ASV) and the King James Version.

Meditations for Communion Services, by William Latane Lumpkin (Abingdon, 1968, 111 pp., $2.95). Twenty-four brief meditations on the Lord’s Supper offer helpful insights into the rich meaning that can be found in the Communion service.

The Couch and the Altar, by David A. Redding (Lippincott, 1968, 125 pp., $3.95). Credits Freud and Jung for their part in helping men identify their problems but emphasizes that wholeness and fulfillment can be experienced only through the forgiveness and restoration offered in Jesus Christ.

The Vatican Empire, by Nino Lo Bello (Trident, 1968, 186 pp., $4.95). The former Rome correspondent for Business Week offers an objective survey of the staggering wealth and awesome fiscal power of the Roman Catholic Church.

It’s Always Too Soon to Quit, by Mel Larson (Zondervan, 1968, 157 pp., $3.95). Story of Steve Spurrier, the 1966 Heisman Trophy winner.

Prayers for Help and Healing, by William Barclay (Harper & Row, 1968, 124 pp., $3.50). A collection of prayers for those who find themselves in a crisis experience. Reflects compassion for those undergoing trial and a conviction that God is able to meet their needs.

The Text of the New Testament, by Bruce Manning Metzger, (Oxford, 1968, 281 pp., $7). New edition of a standard work on the text of the New Testament.

I Saw Gooley Fly, by Joseph Bayly (Revell, 1968, 127 pp., $2.95). A series of entertaining yet penetrating story-parables by the author of The Gospel Blimp.

The Tent of God, by Marianne Radius (Eerdmans, 1968, 368 pp., $5.95). The story of the Old Testament for young readers in their own language—for either personal reading or family devotional use.

Obedience and the Church, by Karl Rahner et al. (Corpus Books, 1968, 250 pp,, $6.95). Fourteen Roman Catholic theologians offer essays on the touchy matter of obedience in the community life of the Church, taking into account both church authority and personal conviction.

Interpreters of Luther, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan (Fortress, 1968, 374 pp., $8.25). In this volume honoring Wilhelm Pauck, ten scholars examine the way in which various outstanding Protestant thinkers have understood Martin Luther.

The Other Side, by James A. Pike (Doubleday, 1968, 398 pp., $5.95). Bishop Pike’s account of the events surrounding his son’s tragic death. Tells of the strange happenings that led him to seek to communicate with his dead son and records their alleged conversations.

Words and Meanings, edited by Peter R. Ackroyd and Barnabas Lindars (Cambridge, 1968, 240 pp., $7.50). This series of essays, honoring David Winton Thomas, deals with problems of meaning and interpretation of Old Testament words and ideas.

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