Book Briefs: July 3, 1970

Product Of British Scholarship

A New Testament Commentary, edited by G. C. D. Howley, F. F. Bruce, and H. L. Ellison (Zondervan, 1969, 666 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Everett F. Harrison, senior professor of New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Two distinctives of this volume stand out: all twenty-five of the contributors are affiliated with churches of the Christian Brethren (formerly known as Plymouth Brethren), and they present considerable diversity in their occupations. Some are professional educators with special competence in such areas as theology, language, geography, and archaeology, while others are Bible teachers, editors, and missionaries. All are evangelical. Two are from this side of the Atlantic, but in the main this work is a product of British scholarship.

In line with current practice in the commentary field, preliminary consideration is given in a series of general articles to matters pertaining to the New Testament—authority, text and canon, language, archaeology, historical, political and religious background, as well as to the development of doctrine, the apostolic Church, the Gospels, Paul’s letters, the general letters, and the New Testament use of the Old Testament. These are ably handled, with evidence of up-to-date research.

Part II is devoted to commentary, for which the RSV is the chosen translation, although the NEB is often referred to. The introductions are brief (Hebrews is somewhat longer), no doubt to conserve space for the commentary proper. In view of this brevity it would have been helpful to have more bibliographical information on crucial items of introduction, especially with reference to positions other than those taken in this book.

The commentary on each book is prefaced by a fairly detailed outline, and the treatment of the text often involves a brief paragraph setting forth the nature and importance of the section about to be treated. It is impossible in a single-volume work to treat each verse, but those that are selected for comment are the most strategic for the understanding of the passage as a whole. The deficiency of this selective process is in large measure compensated for by summaries of the thought in the various sections.

In at least two instances, writers line up on opposite sides, which gives the reader opportunity to weigh the presentations and possibly come to his own conclusion. One of these is the question of the identification of Galatians 2:1–10 with Paul’s visits to Jerusalem as reported in Acts. The other is the interpretation of the eschatological discourse of our Lord.

F. F. Bruce contributes the general articles on the Gospels and the general letters, also the commentary on the Revelation, maintaining that excellence which distinguishes all that comes from his pen. His colleagues make frequent references to his previous works, especially in the areas of Acts and the letters of Paul. Ellison’s workmanship in Matthew is impressive also, setting a high standard for the commentary as a whole.

It may surprise American readers that there is almost nothing that could be classed as dispensational in this volume. The Brethren outlook comes to the fore mainly in the area of ecclesiology.

This double-columned work is moderately priced, almost completely free of typographical errors, and packed with solid information. In all probability it will take its place alongside the New Bible Commentary as a friendly rival that can claim equal usefulness.

Affirmation Of Human Depravity

Gleanings from the Scriptures, by Arthur Pink (Moody, 1969, 347 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by M. Eugene Osterhaven, Albertus C. Van Realte Professor of Systematic Theology, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan.

No doubt the Christian doctrine that most irritates some people is the doctrine of human depravity. Yet this is one that is fundamental to an understanding of the biblical view of man’s plight and the great salvation God provided for him through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. As the doctrine of human depravity was the real issue in Augustine’s struggles against Pelagianism in the fifth century and at the Synod of Dordt in the seventeenth, so it is the touchstone by which one may judge many a system of theology today. For while the query, “What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he?” may be the central question, another, “What think ye of man? In what shape is he?” is more fundamental. The reason is that those who feel they are well do not think they need a physician, but those who know they are sick want one. Jesus Christ came to call, not the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

A quarter of a century and more ago, Reinhold Niebuhr backed out of a very liberal theological position into something better by way of anthropology. Today self-styled humanists in Marxist countries are having difficulty reconciling evidences of human depravity in their lands with Marxist teaching. “How can these things happen in a socialist society?” they ask. The answer is that man is a sinner and no mere change in the political-economic system can alter that fact. More radical change is needed, a change in man’s heart.

Pink’s book has to do with this fundamental condition of the natural man, and it is not pleasant reading. It wasn’t meant to be. What matters is not whether it is pleasant but whether it is true. I myself agree completely with the author about depravity and the fact of the Fall. Man is a sinner, hopeless and helpless apart from God’s grace. The natural man is wholly unable to reach God or to initiate the change needed.

Part I of the book examines man’s depraved state, and Part II deals with the area of his impotence. The wisdom of that separation can be questioned, for there is repetition in several chapters. More serious is some of the exegesis, the “endeavor to explain how it was possible for a holy person, devoid of any corruption, to sin,” the attempt to show how in the Fall Adam broke each of the ten commandments, and the attempt to argue from philosophical first principles, rather than from Scripture, in setting forth the need for Christ as the remedy for sin. Authors cited are usually Puritan worthies—Charnock, Owen, Goodwin, and others—but no footnotes or references, or even book titles, are given.

The style of this work is old and at times ponderous, so that it makes for wearisome reading. Why can’t an orthodox treatment of this subject be as fresh and scintillating as, say, Brunner’s Man in Revolt? Solid works on major biblical themes are needed, but they must be written in a way that helps them strike fire. The author, who died in 1952 and is said to have been “uninfluenced by prevailing opinions and accepted customs,” knew man and his true condition; but that does not necessarily mean he could communicate his correct position to others—and this we desperately need.

‘Novel’ Approach To Paul

Great Lion of God, by Taylor Caldwell (Doubleday, 1970, 630 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Paul L. Maier, professor of history, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan.

This major novel about St. Paul is the prolific Miss Caldwell’s twenty-seventh book, and it is written with the same questing approach used in her popular novel about St. Luke, Dear and Glorious Physician: maximum attention to the silent years in the lives of the saints, less where we already know their story. In that sense, this is not just “another novel about St. Paul,” for Stephen is not stoned until page 417 of this book, the event in which Paul first appears in the New Testament as garment-checker for the lynch mob. And Miss Caldwell does not carry the apostle’s story to its exciting culmination in Rome. One almost suspects she intended to, but, books can get only so big. The story rather ends with Paul leaving the harbor of Caesarea on his voyage to Rome, and this does indeed make for a very effective conclusion.

Credits in this novel are many. The author has used all her well-honed skills of description and character portrayal. Nature comes through brilliant, colorful, and alive, and each spring with its “pink almond blossoms” is a fresh picture. Action and pace, however, are often sacrificed for the minute brush strokes of this word-painter’s detail, which may disappoint some readers while delighting others. But Miss Caldwell has successfully jumped two millenia in history to unfold a vivid panorama for us in these pages.

Conservative readers may be aghast at several surprises in the full story of their favorite apostle. Young Saul of Tarsus making love to a slave-girl in a meadow near a Cilician pond? Fathering an illegitimate child? Sipping good Syrian whiskey with St. Luke on the creaking decks of a “galleon” (that should be galley!) sailing for Tarsus? Let the orthodox rage, but I will not fault Miss Caldwell here, for this sort of thing could have happened to Paul in his youth (even if it probably did not), and we must not forget about other lusty saints like David and Augustine. In fact, the author rather convincingly has this adolescent fornication standing in the background of the well-known Pauline attitude toward women. This, then, is a flesh-and-blood story of the man behind the famous apostle. This is the difference of the book, and its chief credit.

But in this journal, we must necessarily ask: Is this story of the man second only to Jesus in the founding of Christianity true and authentic where it impinges on history? Alas, not in many of its details. Indulge a brief listing: Someone is described as being “mad as Caligula” at a time when Caligula was not mad, not emperor, and only four years old. Pontius Pilate appears as governor of Judea about ten years before he actually arrived there, and his is the traditional portrait of a man who was sent to Palestine as a punitive measure and who crucified 2,000 Galileans near the close of his term, all of which is unhistorical, as is his supposed commissioning of Saul to arrest the Damascus Christians. The father of Judas Iscariot was not Annas the high priest (!) but Simon Iscariot (John 6:71). The author has Christ appearing at night on the road to Damascus, but in fact it was at noon (Acts 22:6). Paul visits Corinth before Athens in this book, when it was vice versa, and the disagreement with Barnabas over Mark takes place in Corinth rather than Antioch. The Roman governor Felix tells Paul about the great conspiracy against Nero six or seven years before it actually took place. And the economics of the Roman Empire of the time, including the rate of provincial taxation, is grossly exaggerated.

Finally, some of the early Christian militants of the time are represented as smashing idols in pagan temples and attacking religious processions in Rome, and Miss Caldwell repeats this for a fact in her introduction. But she does not supply her source on this, and such specific acts of violence by Roman Christians in the first century A.D. have not been documented.

Perhaps this is all unfair. Can’t a novelist use “literary license” in unfolding her story? Of course she can, particularly where history is silent. But where the facts are plainly known, why need they be distorted? If they must be altered to dramatize or advance the story, all right, I suppose. (This as a reader, not a historian!) But the above chronological misplacements and distortions of fact were not necessary to the success of the story. In most cases, the truth was even stranger, more fascinating, than the fictional alteration. In an age that wants to know “how it really was,” perhaps it is time to consider new ground rules for literary license.

Conservative Christians will be pleased that Miss Caldwell has shunned the mealy-mouthed route of explaining away the miracles in this story. She portrays them openly, frankly, splendidly, leaving the mystery a mystery. In fact, she has added several: the assumption of Mary will please Roman Catholic readers, though St. Paul’s raising Drusilla, wife of Felix, from the dead is in questionable taste, for if the apostle had done so, the Roman governor would surely have released him from his Caesarean imprisonment rather than waiting for a bribe.

Otherwise, Miss Caldwell’s greatest success in Great Lion of God is in burrowing into the Jewish and Greek minds of that day and laying them rewardingly bare for us. And her copious use of prime biblical citations keeps this story relevant for Christian lay readers, who will doubtless be far less sensitive to the historical problems than ministers, theologians, and historians.

A Catholic Theologian Speaks

Theological Investigations, Volume VI, by Karl Rahner (Helicon, 1969, 417 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by Donald G. Bloesch, professor of theology, Dubuque Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa.

This volume of Rahner’s Theological Investigations deals with themes related either directly or indirectly to Vatican Council II. The noted German Catholic theologian again displays his theological acumen and depth of insight.

On the question of biblical authority, Rahner contends for one source of revelation, the Holy Scriptures. Tradition for him is an amplification and clarification of the truth in Scripture, though he makes little room for the idea that tradition must be corrected by Scripture. He maintains that every dogma in the church has in some way a scriptural ground. While holding to a historically conditioned element in Scripture, he subscribes to the traditional view that the Bible is inerrant in what it affirms.

Rahner sees philosophy as an introduction to theology. Philosophy prepares the way for the theological task just as reason prepares the way for revelation. While advocating a philosophical basis or groundwork for faith, he acknowledges that the language of revelation gives the concepts already known in the ordinary sphere “a more profound, changed or new meaning by the fact that they are put in a new context.” Although he posits an integral connection between theology and philosophy, he insists that the Christian faith stands in opposition to all ideology, an interpretation of reality that legitimates one’s social position.

In his understanding, justification includes “divinizing” as well as the remission of sins. Man is still a sinner but only in the sense of committing venial sins. For Rahner, the justified man is in himself righteous. For Reformation theology, our righteousness is only in Christ, even though we can and must reflect this righteousness in our lives.

This book has much to say about human freedom. Freedom is not destroyed by original sin but “profoundly wounded” by it. God does not bring man a new freedom but instead assists an “injured freedom.” Rahner seems to have little perception of the Reformation and biblical conception of the bondage of the will. For the Reformers the bane of man’s existence is not simply the abuse of freedom but the loss of freedom. We are referring here not to natural freedom but to the freedom to believe and to will the good.

Rahner stands essentially in the Thomistic tradition. Grace fulfills and completes nature but does not bring to man a radically new nature. The old nature is not crucified but elevated. Salvation is understood more in terms of self-realization than of total conversion.

Rahner’s conception of the “anonymous Christian” has aroused much interest and also some controversy, and in this volume he expands on the meaning of this concept. Anonymous Christians are all men of good will who do not explicitly call themseves Christian. To accept oneself is to have implicit faith in Christ. To fulfill the duty of conscience is to follow the hidden Christ. He contends that “anonymous Christianity can … be called Christianity in a meaningful sense.” He does not include in this category those who defy and rebel against the grace of God, but anyone who is open to the needs of his fellow man can be regarded as an anonymous Christian and therefore as being in the kingdom of God.

I can appreciate Rahner’s defense of supernaturalism over pantheism, his keen insights on the temptation to ideology, and his wholehearted acceptance of biblical authority. I have serious reservation, however, about his optimism concerning the capabilities of man and his monism of grace. He is constantly emphasizing that the Christian should be both in the world and above the world. But does not the Bible also speak of the need to be against the world as well?

Sampling Of Ethical Problems

Three Issues in Ethics, by John Macquarrie (Harper & Row, 1970, 157 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, professor of philosophy of religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

When the Christian theologian undertakes to “do ethics,” he is confronted by a wide spectrum of problems from which he must select at least a few if he is to relate his quest to the live issues of today. Professor Macquarrie has chosen three major themes as a backdrop for his survey of the contemporary ethical scene. The first is the relation of specifically Christian ethics to the general moral striving of the race. The second is the shape of a theological ethic that is meaningful in our day. The third is the relation of Christian faith to the ethical life.

It is always tempting to conclude that since humanistic systems have their ways of viewing the moral life, any specifically Christian ethic is superfluous, since many assert that all ethical considerations spring from the common nature of humanity. Macquarrie’s position is that the relation between religion and ethics is not superficial but basic and positive. If the areas of common concern are sometimes ambiguous, yet he is persuaded that they are vital. Both secular moral relativism and the more flamboyant forms of “situation ethics” seem to him to fail to do justice to the complexities of man’s moral predicament.

With respect to the kind of ethic today’s man needs—and will accept—our author works dialectically toward a definition of modern man’s image of himself. He rejects any such abstraction as “human nature” in any classical or essential sense and proposes a definition of man as “a Being-on-the-way” or a creature moving toward self-transcendence. Here, he notes, Marxists tend either to bog down or else to move beyond their “orthodox” economic interpretation of man. It is at the point of man’s self-transcendence that Macquarrie sees ethics as compelled to move beyond the advocacy of “personal integrity and the domestic virtues” into the areas of the social problems that overwhelm the world.

The volume seeks to relate the historic categories of sin, grace, faith, love, and especially hope to the moral life. The latter seems to Macquarrie to be most pregnant with possibility for the relating of religious (and more especially Christian) faith to the ethical life. His conviction is that “the hopeful attitude” and the theological underpinnings of it “do generate moral energy and encourage us in the pursuit of moral ends.”

The volume abounds in insights that tantalize and challenge the reader. The Christian-Marxist dialogue is never far from the author’s thinking, being second only to his concern for the way in which modern life styles place increasing demands upon the moral decision.

Two points do raise questions in the mind of this reviewer. First, is human nature as devoid of structure as Macquarrie seems to suggest? And second, does he do justice to the degree to which man has been wounded in his inner being by the Fall? Alienation is certainly a part of the pattern that estranges man from himself, from his fellows, and from God. Can, therefore, any specifically Christian ethic be elaborated apart from some serious consideration of God’s decisive reconciling deed at Golgotha?

Book Briefs

Witness and Revelation in the Gospel of John, by James M. Boice (Zondervan, 1970, 192 pp., paperback, $2.95). This study of the witness terminology in John’s Gospel is a valuable contribution to the current debate on the nature and content of divine revelation.

Conflict and Understanding in Marriage, by Paul Plattner (John Knox, 1970, 95 pp., $2.95). Sees conflict as an unavoidable part of marriage and points the way to a constructive use of this conflict in the development of personality.

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