Books on the New Testament, 1970

A year without a new volume of Kittel’s Theological Dictionary is a year without an anchor, and this means I had to depart from the custom of the past three years and cast around for a substitute to take the place of this monumental wordbook. Happily, I did not have to seek far. The outstanding religious publishing event of last year (particularly from the evangelical side) was the appearance of the New Bible Commentary: Revised (Inter-Varsity and Eerdmans), edited by D. Guthrie and J. A. Motyer. It is obviously impossible to mention all the New Testament contributors and invidious to single out a few. The whole New Testament section represents a notable achievement in expository scholarship and, though it is not in the same class as Kittel, it will be at least as useful to the pastor and Sunday-school teacher in making available to him a compendium of serviceable information on the background, contents, and teachings of the books of the New Testament canon. Of similar usefulness is A New Testament Commentary (Zondervan), edited by G. C. D. Howley, F. F. Bruce, and H. L. Ellison. Both volumes deserve wide circulation.

A collection of essays that aspires to the same league as Kittel is published under the title Apostolic History and the Gospel (Eerdmans), edited by Ward Gasque and Ralph Martin. Here twenty-four scholars (some of them of international reputation, such as Bruce Metzger, William Barclay, George Ladd, C. F. D. Moule, and Matthew Black) have joined forces to say something worthwhile in the twin fields on which F. F. Bruce has already made his mark, the Acts of the Apostles as a document of early Christian history and the Pauline Gospel. In honor of his sixtieth birthday, they pay Bruce deserved tribute in this symposium; and more, they help forward in many instances the contemporary discussion of Luke-Acts and the Pauline epistles by summarizing current study and breaking new ground. The result is a volume that will take its place both on the library shelf and in the classroom. It is a book full of good things, and I am proud to be able to bathe in the reflected glory of a publication worthy of a great scholar.

That scholar’s own work is on view in his NewTestament History (Oliphants). Bruce has gone on record (more than one contributor to his Festschrift appeals to this dictum) as saying that “a man cannot be a good theologian unless he is a good historian.” How good a historian he is may be seen from this survey of the period extending from Alexander the Great to the end of the first century. As befits a classical scholar, he is at his best when he deals with the Graeco-Roman background of the Gospels, Acts, and epistles; and his book contains a wealth of incidental information that will light up the message of the New Testament. He deals less fully with the development of ideas, especially of a theological nature, within the period and says virtually nothing about the inner life of the early Christian communities. This is a loss, but a man has to set limits somewhere in this vast territory.

By striking coincidence, these gaps in Bruce’s survey are admirably filled by a very full examination of New Testament Christianity published by Leonhard Goppelt under the English title Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Times (Harper). He takes as his starting point Easter and Pentecost and traces the multiform development of the Church through its various cultural, geographical, environmental, and above all theological changes as the Christian mission branched out from Jerusalem to encompass the ends of the world. Goppelt’s final chapters on the place of tradition, the struggle with incipient heresy, the evolution of the ministry, and the rise of liturgical forms bring us right to the center of current New Testament study, especially as it comes under left-wing European influence. It is good to begin with Goppelt’s clear statement of the data before exposing oneself to some of the finely spun theories offered today on the strength of a scholarly “say-so.”

To take one example: for the past few years an issue that has greatly excited Lutheran congregations in Germany has been the definition of heresy. The Confessional Movement, No Other Gospel, has reacted sharply to what it regards as highly dangerous trends within the Bultmannian wing of its church and has called for a censure of its leading exponents. Now it is the turn of these academicians to enter the fray, and one of its leaders, Ernst Kasemann, has done so with a straight-from-the-shoulder piece called Jesus Means Freedom (Fortress). This is not the place to break a lance with a leading post-Bultmannian as he seeks to state plainly and without equivocation what the New Testament message means to him today. We need simply recognize that here is a slender volume that will enable us to see the issues at stake in an updated German Kirchenkampf. One thing is clear. Vital matters are under discussion, and if Kasemann is anywhere near correct in his assessment of the New Testament documents, then all talk of the unity of the New Testament kerygma ought to be abandoned forthwith. What a heavy price to pay in any modern reconstruction of the Gospel!

Adherence to the normative Gospel of apostolic Christianity does not, however, commit us to a message of deadpan, monochrome uniformity, as Michael Green makes clear in his full and scholarly survey of Evangelism in the Early Church (Eerdmans). This book will appeal to a wide constituency. Pastors, missionaries, teachers of the New Testament and early church history, and indeed church members will find this a fascinating volume. Especially for those who are disturbed by the way in which the preaching of the Gospel tends to get blurred because the preacher’s aim is out of focus, this book will have the effect of sharpening the vision of what the early believers said and did when they discharged the dominical commission. Not the least valuable service Green renders is that he pursues his enquiry beyond the New Testament canon and lays under tribute some often neglected material from the Apostolic Fathers up to the time of Origen.

That the past year yielded a significant batch of commentaries is encouraging, for signs that scholars are still at work at the exegetical task of elucidating Scripture means that something of long-lasting value is being accomplished. Surely this side of scholarly enterprise will endure when more ephemeral broadsheets are forgotten. Outstanding in the list of commentary works is Raymond Brown’s second volume on the Gospel According to John in the “Anchor Bible” series (Doubleday). This reasonably priced yet lengthy exposition covers John 13–21 and represents the best in ecumenical Roman Catholic scholarship, judicious and painstakingly comprehensive. Yet the Protestant minister seeking guidance for his pulpit responsibility will not be disappointed when he turns to consult Father Brown. The Fourth Gospel is full of nuances and shades of unexpected meaning that this commentator, as an exponent of the sensus plenior interpretation of Scripture, is well qualified to bring out. But always the historical-grammatical control imposes its authority; the result is a commentary that is exegetically faithful to the text and at the same time devotionally helpful.

Not quite in the same tradition but worthy to stand beside Brown’s work on John is the English version of Eduard Schweizer’s commentary on Mark. Originally prepared for the series Das Neue Testament Deutsch, this volume appears as The Good News according to Mark (John Knox), incorporating the text of Mark according to Today’s English Version (also known as “Good News for Modern Man”). The standpoint is one of a moderate form-critical approach tempered by two considerations. For one thing, Schweizer reflects the influence of the latest editorial criticism which gives the evangelist more credence as an independent writer and not simply as a scissors-and-paste compiler of existing traditions; then, this commentator brings out the theological significance of Mark’s gospel book in an admirable fashion and shows how Mark sought to address a situation in the early Church that imperatively required a full-length “Life of Jesus” based on history.

The recognition that Mark was a theologian in his own right and not simply a faceless purveyor of anonymous traditions that were circulating in the precanonical state of gospel development is an advance usually credited to W. Marxsen. But a few years before Marxsen wrote, the Scandinavian Harald Riesenfeld had opened up this possibility in an essay. Now a revised form of that essay has become available in English under the caption, “On the Composition of the Gospel of Mark,” printed in a volume of collected essays, The Gospel Tradition (Fortress). Included here is Riesenfeld’s now famous dissertation on “The Gospel Tradition and Its Beginnings,” which in 1959 sent up the trial balloon that the teaching of Jesus was committed to memory by the disciples in rabbinic fashion and constituted a “holy word” to be passed on in the emergent churches. That thesis has encountered heavy weather and strong gusts of criticism since it was first launched; in fact, the balloon is hardly still airborne, at least in the form Riesenfeld first gave to it. But students will be glad to have the basic text handily available, though some notation of recent appraisal may well have been added by the translators (who deserve a cheer for putting the original Swedish into English).

Returning to the list of serviceable commentaries on the biblical text, we should not allow the unpretentious format of J. L. Houlden’s Paul’s Letters from Prison (Pelican) to blind us to the tremendous amount of solid study that has gone into its making. Again it is the preacher who will be grateful for many illuminating insights when he comes to take a text from Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, or Philippians. Not all the critical positions in this volume will command universal assent, but for packing so much information and comment into a convenient paperback, the author merits an accolade.

There is a title in the paperback market that should not be omitted. Not a commentary in the exact sense, James Boice’s Witness and Revelation in the Gospel of John (Zondervan) fills the much needed role of giving the reader perspective and guidance as he approaches this spiritual Gospel. The study is partly linguistic and partly expository, as John’s key terms, “witness,” and “testimony,” are set in the context of his purpose. Boice concludes that John tells the story of Jesus from the perspective of diverse witnesses. Some authors claim to have found the key to unlock this enigmatic Gospel; Boice is more modest, yet he has presented a valuable set of clues in this readable doctoral thesis.

On the more technical side of Johannine studies, George Johnston’s The Spirit-Paraclete in the Gospel of John (Cambridge) is to be welcomed for the light it sheds on both the meaning of the term Paraclete (taken to be the personal representative and agent of the Father and the Son particularly active in apostolic preaching, teaching, and witnessing) and the polemic purpose of the Gospel (which is to rebut heretical claims made by those who would tear apart the revealed God and the human Jesus of Nazareth). This at least is one reader’s conclusion at the end of this rather recondite work. But no such hesitation concerning an author’s final conclusion arises from the reading of a book of a different genre. I refer to Frederick Bruner’s A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Eerdmans). The author has two aims in view. He wants to systematize the teaching of the modern Pentecostal movement on the subject of the baptism in the Holy Spirit (and as a by-product he has given us a standard bibliography of Pentecostal writers, both mainline and marginal). Then, he passes this teaching under critical scrutiny and tests it by the yardstick of an in-depth study of Second Corinthians 10–13 that asks questions many professional New Testament interpreters in the upper echelons are posing today: Who were Paul’s opponents at Corinth? What was the nature of their false teaching? Bruner’s answer is partly expected since he has done his exegetical work at Hamburg (Paul’s enemies are adherents of a gnosticizing movement that bypassed the cross of the earthly Jesus and gave unwarranted place to an immediate spiritual experience that displaced the need for “by faith alone”). What he goes on to infer will cause a furor in days when Pentecostals are drawing closer to the older denominations: Corinthian heresy is an anticipated Pentecostalism that has substituted the fullness of the Spirit in a second work of grace for glorying in the cross alone. By this touchstone modern Pentecostalism grazes the edge of heresy with its insistence on a separate dispensation of the Spirit that (says Bruner) extrudes Christ.

It must be significant that yet another book offers a full-scale treatment of the biblical undergirding for a doctrine of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Allenson). A young British evangelical, James D. G. Dunn, takes a close look at the deceptively simple issue of the place of the Holy Spirit in the total complex event of becoming a Christian. The Pentecostal requires that this descriptive process be widened to include an experience of the baptism of the Spirit as a conscious event subsequent to conversion. Others on the “sacramental” flank of Christendom distinguish two comings of the Spirit, one at conversion-initiation, the other in Confirmation. Dunn finds fault with both these positions, though he is more sympathetic toward the Pentecostal appeal to experience as being an inalienable part of the New Testament picture. Some of his severest strictures, however, fall on a Baptist understanding of the rite of initiation as a “mere symbol.” In an impressive way he ties together the apostolic teaching and sets down his conclusion, which relates the Spirit and baptism thus: “As the Spirit is the vehicle of saving grace, so baptism is the vehicle of saving faith.”

Luke’s purpose in his Gospel and Acts is often referred to as his concern to set forth a drama of salvation-history in which he has historicized the story of Jesus and attached symbolic or theological significance to the various stages of his ministry. It is a mark of the vigor of another younger scholar, I. Howard Marshall, that in Luke: Historian and Theologian (Paternoster) he opposes this prevailing notion associated with the weighty name of Conzelmann and his school and defends the view that Luke’s chief interest is with salvation per se, and that he has not manipulated gospel history and trimmed it to fit a preconceived scheme. Marshall’s total effort is well executed, but I was disappointed in his conclusion that Luke did not write to deal with a particular problem or situation in the church. I disagree, because that motivation-less writing does not otherwise seem to be found in the New Testament.

At an opposite extreme stands L. Gaston’s mammoth study, No Stone on Another (Brill). His purpose is much wider than his subtitle—“Studies in the Significance of the Fall of Jerusalem in the Synoptic Gospels”—implies; the book is a far-ranging excursion over the whole New Testament terrain. Conclusions do not come easily to this student of the Synoptic apocalypses, but his one main contention seems proven: When we seek to reconcile Jesus’ expectation of the kingdom of God for Israel in the near future with his prediction of historical catastrophe for the nation at the fall of Jerusalem, we should begin by placing Jesus in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets whose bailiwick was contingent prophecy and not commitment to a rigid apocalyptic timetable. “Promise and threat are not predictions but alternatives,” says Gaston. This estimate of Jesus’ eschatological role puts him in a different camp from the political freedom-fighters known as Zealots. An answer in popular form to the allegation that Jesus was a Zealot comes from Oscar Cullmann’s expanded public lecture, Jesus and the Revolutionaries (Harper & Row). A too facile identification is often made on the supposition that Jesus could not have remained aloof from the political and economic tensions of his native countrymen, but Cullmann has no difficulty in showing that there are more ways than one (armed rebellion) of being a patriot and that his eschatological mission as servant of God precluded his acceptance of a Zealot manifesto. In fact, seizure of a worldly throne was precisely the temptation he refused in the wilderness as he thereafter set his face to the cross. He was crucified by the Romans because he had in the first place been rejected by his own nation. The changing fortunes of the Jewish people when faced with the challenge of Jesus and the apostles are sketched in full by Peter Richardson in Israel in the Apostolic Church (Cambridge). How the Church of the mid-second century came to be a Gentile composition self-consciously defined over against Israel is depicted with particular skill.

No survey of recent literature would be complete without some allusion to studies in gnosticism. A useful contribution to our limited knowledge in this field has been offered by Frederick H. Borsch, The Christian and Gnostic Son of Man (Allenson). He has been able to weave the latest documents from the Coptic library in upper Egypt into his answer to the question why the second-century gnostics came to use the title “Son of Man,” one that the orthodox Christians passed by. His tentative solution is that they picked up an interpretation of the Son of Man found in the language of sectarian Judaism and not directly attributable to the canonical Gospels. His argument raises afresh the much canvassed debate of why our Gospels speak of Jesus as Son of Man and whether after all a background in the Psalms and the prophets rivals that of the apocalyptic literature.

Handbooks that serve a modest aim of acquainting hard-pressed students with what the theological pundits are thinking fill a niche. New Testament Issues, edited by Richard Batey (Harper), is a collection of significant articles ranging across a broad spectrum from Bultmann and Conzelmann on the left to A. M. Hunter and C. E. B. Cranfield on the right. Somewhere in the middle is W. Pannenberg, whose essay (“Did Jesus Really Rise From the Dead?”) takes, we are informed, a more conservative position than that of his larger works. But a couple of quotations seem incapable of improvement: The resurrection of Jesus was “a unique but real event which occurred prior to all human experience of it”; and “Jesus is the final revelation of God and therefore, he himself is God.”

Other notable publications in New Testament studies last year were:

ALLEN, C. J. (ed.), Broadman Bible Commentary: Volume 9. Luke and John, and Volume 10. Acts-I Corinthians. Helpful expositions, based on the RSV, direct attention to the evangelists’ central thrust. The portion dealing with Romans is especially commendable. (In the Old Testament, Leviticus to Nehemiah is also available now.)

BAMMEL, E. (ed.), The Trial of Jesus (Allenson). Historical essays on the Jewish and Roman backgrounds of the trial of Jesus mainly by Cambridge-trained pupils of C. F. D. Moule in his honor.

BARRETT, C. K., The Signs of an Apostle (Epworth). Studies arising out of the author’s prolonged attention to Second Corinthians 10–13.

BEARDSLEE, W. A., Literary Criticism of the New Testament (Fortress). A useful statement of the literary forms used in the New Testament offered as a prolegomenon to academic study.

BOWMAN, J. W., Which Jesus? (Westminster). A students’ manual that surveys the options in the area of New Testament Christology. Bowman’s final choice is traditional, according to the O. Cullmann-T. W. Manson line.

EVANS, C. F., The Resurrection and the New Testament (Allenson). A comprehensive discussion of the relevant New Testament passages but still undecided as to the Resurrection’s historicity.

FENTON, J. C., The Gospel According to John (Oxford). A clear, helpful guide to John that sees the evangelist as highlighting the christological issues implicit in the Synoptics.

GUNDRY, R. H., A Survey of the New Testament (Zondervan). Yet another College text, enlivened by some discussion pointers.

GUTHRIE, D., A Shorter Life of Christ (Zondervan). No trace of form-critical influence deters the author from weaving together the data from the four gospels into a readable life of Jesus.

HARVEY, A. E., The New English Bible: A Companion to the New Testament (Oxford). A straightforward guide to the New Testament literature based on the NEB and written in limpid prose. Excellent for beginners in the field.

MARXSEN, W., The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth (Fortress). An important book of lectures given to clarify the issues surrounding the resurrection accounts in the New Testament, from a left-wing position for which discrepancies are more interesting than harmonizations.

PHIPPS, W. E., Was Jesus Married? (Harper & Row). The eye-catching title should not be misunderstood. Although the author’s thesis (which gives an affirmative answer to his question) is doubtful, his book contains a lot of important discussion on Christian attitudes toward celibacy and marriage.

POLLARD, T. E., Johannine Christology and the Early Church (Cambridge). A careful study based on first-hand materials of the problems of the Trinity and the person of Christ from the fourth Gospel to Marcellus of Ancyra. This will be an indispensable text for students of early Christology and the development of doctrine especially relative to the Arian controversy.

TAYLOR, V., New Testament Essays (Epworth). Posthumous publication of essays by one of England’s leading Methodist scholars, marking an era that is now closing.

WILSON, W. R., The Execution of Jesus (Scribner). A lucid account of the interaction between Jesus and the political forces of his day that clears him of any direct involvement with the power structures. Jesus was not personally implicated in political movements of his day, only caught up in them.

Ralph P. Martin is professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. He holds the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Manchester and the Ph.D. from the University of London.

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