Book Briefs: April 1, 1977

Yea, Hath God Said?

God, Revelation and Authority, Volumes I and II, by Carl F. H. Henry (Word, 1976, 438 and 373 pp., $12.95 each), are reviewed by Ronald H. Nash, head, Department of Philosophy and Religion, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green.

Since the current controversy over divine revelation lies at the very heart of the crisis of modern theology, the first two (of a projected four) volumes of Carl Henry’s monumental study appear at an especially critical time. Both volumes carry the subtitle “God Who Speaks and Shows” and deal with questions of religious knowledge in general and with revelation in particular. The time has come to be done with nebulous views of the God of Christianity and with skepticism about either man’s ability to attain knowledge about God or God’s ability to communicate truth to man. God, Henry states, is not “a nameless spirit awaiting post-mortem examination in some theological morgue. He is a very particular and specific divinity, known from the beginning solely on the basis of his works and self-declaration as the one living God.” The entire enterprise of Christian theology must be grounded on God’s self-revelation. The necessary precondition for all talk about God is God’s own freely initiated disclosure of his own reality.

Given the pivotal importance of divine revelation in any consideration of Christian theology, it should not be surprising that Henry has chosen to devote three of his four volumes to questions related to the topic of revelation. He does this primarily through fifteen theses that make up the bulk of volume two and the forthcoming volume three. Some theses, like that concerning the unity of divine revelation, are covered in one chapter. Other topics, like the relation between revelation and history, take up much more space. One key feature is the way in which Henry ties to the central theme of revelation his discussion of doctrines usually covered under such topics as Christology, soteriology, and eschatology. For example, the Incarnation is treated as the climax of God’s special revelation. In Jesus, “the source and content of revelation converge and coincide.”

Two theses deserve special mention because they play a foundational role in Henry’s entire argument: first, the claim that “God’s revelation is rational communication conveyed in intelligible ideas and meaningful words, that is, in conceptual-verbal form,” and second, the view that “the Bible is the reservoir and conduit of divine truth.” Non-evangelical theology since Barth has been characterized by its attempt to strip away any cognitive or informational content from divine revelation. Protestant orthodoxy’s insistence on the presence of a truth content in special revelation constituted one major difference between it and neo-orthodoxy. In recent years, however, one can detect within professedly orthodox ranks considerable slippage on this issue. Those evangelicals who are abandoning propositional revelation have been captured by a post-Kantian mind-set that leaves them skeptical about man’s ability to attain knowledge about God. That deprives them of any basis for connecting authentic belief in God with an acceptance of particular beliefs. Henry’s development of these two primary theses offers a timely corrective to a point of view that ought to be challenged as destructive to biblical faith. He rightly recognizes that the issue of propositional revelation (the position that God’s revelation conveys information, knowledge, truth) is even more basic than the question of inerrancy that so often occupies the attention of conservatives.

Henry is aware that his view is not popular today. He realizes, in fact, that the deck is stacked against the affirmation of a divine revelation that conveys information in words and sentences. There are any number of intellectual grounds on which propositional revelation is attacked. They range from the now discredited Logical Positivist claim that religious language cannot be cognitive to the still prevalent appeal to mythical language as the vehicle of revelation. More widespread and more subtle are social and cultural obstacles: modern man exists in a cultural milieu pervaded by irrationalism and suspicion about all claims to absolute truth. In an attempt to restore confidence in the possibility of truth, Henry’s first volume contains a sweeping examination of the assorted intellectual and cultural challenges to the thesis of propositional revelation together with an outline of a philosophico-religious epistemology that will show the plausibility of his position. His initial chapter is entitled “The Crisis of Truth and Word” and establishes a direction for all that follows.

While secular man has often disparaged Christianity as the repository of irrationalism, Henry shows that revealed religion and the recovery of respect for reason must go together. Christian theology is a rational science. It is not and cannot be opposed to reason and logic. Revealed religion is possible because God has made man in his image and has given to him a rational ability to perceive the truth that God has revealed. Human knowledge would be impossible apart from the agency of the transcendent Logos of God. Man’s reason is a God-given faculty, not to create truth, but to recognize it. Scripture presupposes that man can reason logically and can understand God’s truth about himself and the creation.

Volume three (scheduled for late in 1978) will contain Henry’s more detailed treatment of propositional revelation and inerrancy and, for that reason, may be the key book in the series. The last volume (projected for late 1980) will treat the nature of God. When complete, the set will constitute a major statement of evangelical theology and will certainly provide an indispensable resource for the theologizing of future generations. The appearance of the first two volumes is a publishing event of the first magnitude.

Charismatic Calvinism?

Reflected Glory, by Thomas A. Smail (Eerdmans, 1976, 158 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Cecil B. Murphey, pastor, Riverdale Presbyterian Church, Riverdale, Georgia.

Would you believe it—a Reformed scholar who speaks in tongues? A charismatic who understands Calvin, Emil Brunner, and T. F. Torrance and who studied under Barth? Not only that, he even believes it is possible to integrate charismatic renewal with traditional Reformed theology.

Smail offers a scholarly treatment of the Holy Spirit and neo-Pentecostal experiences by an insider. He cries “Halt!” to the purely testimony literature that has previously dominated the field. It’s time to examine our experiences in the light of Scripture rather than attempting to interpret Scripture in light of personal experience, he says.

Smail re-examines the theology of last century’s Edward Irving. Instead of lightly dismissing him, Smail points out real strengths—for instance, that Irving’s Christology “offers a basically dynamic, charismatic, and practical representation of the Person of Christ that can provide the modern charismatic renewal with a far sounder basis than the second blessing Pentecostalism on which it has hitherto too much relied.” Others would disagree.

Smail makes two major contributions: (1) as a charismatic, he refutes the “second blessing” concept; (2) yet he defends the term “baptism of the Holy Spirit.” He believes in a new experience of the working of the Spirit but refuses to define this as a second experience, subsequent to salvation. The tendency to make this a separate experience comes from the Methodist-holiness interpretation of Scripture rather than from the Reformed-Calvinist view. The second-blessing theology occurs when personal experience becomes both law and doctrine. That is, people first appropriate the blessings of the Spirit and then, on the basis of their experience, formulate universal statements about how everyone must enter. Theologizing is then done on the basis of the experience and not on the basis of the Bible. Calvinists should love Smail’s approach.

Smail states there is “no trace in the New Testament of a universal law of Christian progress that lays down that we must first be converted and then, after an interval, go on to be baptized in the Spirit.” Then how many blessings are there? Answer: essentially one. God has given one gift of himself in his Son; everything else is contained in that. Smail avoids dividing the Christian life into a salvation that is a gift to the sinner and a fullness of the Spirit that is a reward to the saint.

The author insists that the phrase “baptism of the Holy Spirit” is one legitimate way of describing an integral part of the gift of Christ. He notes that “the charismatic renewal does not stand or fall by the correctness of its exegesis and use of this single New Testament metaphor. The verbal phrase ‘to be baptized in the Spirit’ is used six times in the New Testament and is only one metaphor among many to describe the release of the Spirit among Christians.” (It would have been helpful if he had discussed the other metaphors as well.) Smail asserts that his objection to the word “baptism” stems not from its biblical use but from its use/abuse in Pentecostalism.

The traditional Pentecostalist may not like Smail’s position that no law on tongues exists in the New Testament. He writes, “The legalistic assertion of some Pentecostals that an authentic experience of the baptism of the Spirit must be accompanied by speaking in tongues as its initial evidence, goes beyond any scriptural statement.” That position fairly well reflects current thinking among neo-Pentecostals. Smail acknowledges that he himself speaks in tongues and understands this as a valid experience, but not to the point of insisting it is the initial proof of the baptism of the Spirit.

Smail’s book reads well; his thinking is clear. I hope this book will produce further useful dialogue about the Holy Spirit and his ministry.

Survey Of Evangelical Apologetes

Testing Christianity’s Truth Claims: Approaches to Christian Apologetics, by Gordon Lewis (Moody, 1976, 347 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by John Warwick Montgomery, professor-at-large, Melodyland Christian Center, Anaheim, California.

This work is intended by its author, who is professor of systematic theology and Christian philosophy at the Conservative Baptist Seminary, Denver, to serve primarily as a college, Bible school, or seminary textbook in apologetics. Its readers are not expected to be philosophy majors, and the book ends with a brief glossary of philosophical terms.

Lewis offers the student descriptions and critiques of six “distinctive systems in defense of Christian truth claims,” all the product of “orthodox and evangelical” thinkers who have “produced their major works since 1945”: J. Oliver Buswell, Jr. (pure empiricism), Stuart Hackett (rational empiricism), Gordon Clark (rationalism), Cornelius Van Til (biblical authoritarianism), Earl E. Barrett (mysticism), and Edward John Carnell—to whose verificational approach to facts, values (axiology), psychology, and ethics the author devotes almost as much space (108 pages) as he does to the other five thinkers combined (130 pages).

An appendix of only forty-three pages treats the work of no fewer than ten “recent writers on [the] issues that have been focal points through the book.” They are, in the author’s order of presentation: Francis Schaeffer, Os Guinness, Clark Pinnock, John Warwick Montgomery, Norman Geisler, George Mavrodes, Arthur Holmes, Josh McDowell, Bernard Ramm, and C. S. Lewis. Some of these appended thinkers, whose work is treated in an average of four pages each, are referred to as well in the annotated bibliographies to the major chapters, which consist of a potpourri of references to the major thinkers’ writings and a selection of other works that Lewis apparently considers either to parallel their viewpoints or to help in clarifying and interpreting them. There is no name or subject index to the volume.

Professor Lewis has a kindly, attractive personality, and I have had an excellent relationship with him; his contribution to the Christian Medical Society’s recent symposium volume on Demon Possession, which I edited, was most helpful. I say this because I should like readers of this review to understand that it is painful for me to have to say that Testing Christianity’s Truth Claims almost totally fails as an apologetic text or survey of the field. It can be recommended only as a reference work for libraries or for specialists who must consult all treatments of the subject. The problems of the book are so numerous that little more than a focus upon the two major areas of difficulty can be provided here.

1. Most serious is the overall imbalance of the work. Presumably the author intends to give student readers a general picture of current influential defenses of the Christian faith. From the space devoted to particular thinkers in Lewis’s book, it would simply be impossible to acquire such a picture. Indeed, a bizarre portrait emerges. C. S. Lewis, unquestionably the most influential orthodox Christian apologist after World War II, is relegated to eight pages of appendix, with no mention whatever of the deep-myth side of his apologetic, as developed conjointly with Charles Williams and J. R. R. Tolkien and as set forth in his science-fiction trilogy and Narnia chronicles. A full major chapter is devoted to Stuart Hackett, whose only book, Resurrection of Theism, has been out of print for years. (It was to have been followed by two volumes that unfortunately have not yet been published.) Another major chapter is on Earl Barrett, whom I, after a decade of doing and teaching apologetics with more than average bibliographical interests, had not even heard of. The omission of semi-evangelical Peter Berger’s remarkable sociological defense of the faith in his Rumor of Angels may be explained on the ground of Lewis’s recurrent over-identification of apologetics with philosophical defenses, but what can possibly justify the general omission of the entire area of analytical apologetics (deriving from Wittgensteinian analytical philosophy) that has revolutionized so much contemporary defense of the faith? One thinks immediately of the work of Ian Ramsey, who gets only a single bibliographical citation, and of Jerry Gill and Alvin Plantinga, who receive none.

2. Lack of comprehensive research and careful treatment of the thinkers presented. These failings are particularly evident in the appendix. Schaeffer’s methodology is inadequately critiqued: no attempt is made to determine the key matter of how and why he chooses particular cultural illustrations for his “cultural apologetic”; my position is superficially treated on the basis of my publications only up to 1969 (and none of the secondary journal articles or the theses devoted to my apologetic are used in the analysis at all); Geisler’s position is described without any apparent awareness that it derives from and thoroughly reflects his commitment to an evangelically modified Thomism; Mavrodes is treated as if he were a mainline evangelical thinker, whereas he has expressly disengaged himself from the classical evangelical position on total biblical reliability, and Lewis surely should have been aware of his ASA Journal articles on the subject; the muddiness of Arthur Holmes’s efforts to have a variety of epistemological cakes and eat them too is only dimly perceived.

But not only in the appendix are such difficulties rife: neither in his chapter on Buswell nor in his chapter on Van Til does Lewis cite or analyze the polemical articles these men wrote against each other—articles essential for the illumination of the apologetic issues between them. No effort is made to distinguish Dooyeweerd’s position from Van Til’s or to give even a brief description of the former’s views, which are certainly as worthy of analysis as Van Til’s and are in many ways far broader in application and influence. It is simply misleading for Lewis to say nothing more of Dooyeweerd’s world view than that it is “similar to that of Van Til” and then to quote Van Til: “I rejoice in the work of Christian philosophers like … Dooyeweerd.”

Even Carnell, to whom four chapters are devoted, is not given the keen critique that his work deserves and that he almost invariably gave to others. His views are clearly set forth—but of the six major thinkers Lewis discusses it was Carnell who expressed himself the most clearly and therefore was in least need of exposition! (One thinks of the charwoman who found the Gospel of John a great help in understanding the commentary on it her bishop gave her.)

Lewis never seems to see the fundamental problem with the “systematic consistency” truth test Carnell took wholesale from his Boston University philosophy mentor, E. S. Brightman: what happens if internal consistency is incompatible with the fitting of the facts? That this is by no means a theoretical issue should be evident when we reflect upon such high matters of Christian doctrine as predestination and free will, or the Most Holy Trinity. Christian doctrine isn’t “internally consistent” at all points—at least not from a human perspective (and apologetics always speaks to fallen man in the human perspective, there being, presumably, no need for the discipline in heaven, where God’s thoughts reign). Carnell never seemed to realize that if your truth test is multiple, you must have a higher truth test to arbitrate when the different aspects of the multiple test run into conflict. In the final analysis, one cannot stop with Carnell: either one must move to the fitting of the facts as the ultimate test of a world view (in C. S. Lewis fashion) or one must decide that life isn’t bigger than logic and conclude that what is consistent is therefore true. However, the greatest of the world’s madmen have held the most consistent delusions—in contrast, note well, to the apostolic testimony: “We did not follow cunningly devised myths when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”

Briefly Noted

ASIA should interest all Christians because it not only is the largest continent but proportionately is the least evangelized. Evangelical Perspectives on China edited by Donald Douglas (Evangelical China Committee [Box 457, Farmington, Mich. 48024], 162 pp., $3 pb) consists of seven essays. Crucial Issues in Bangladesh by Peter McNee (William Carey, 283 pp., $6.95 pb) is probably the best evangelical overview of the world’s poorest large country. Viet Nam: Beyond Aid and Development (IDOC [145 E. 49 St., New York, N. Y. 10017], 99 pp., $4.35 pb) is part of “The Future of the Missionary Enterprise” series. It includes many documents and offers viewpoints in surveying the past and projecting the future that are controversial, to say the least. But it, along with the previous two volumes, is pertinent.

SUNDAY SCHOOL leaders can profit from Big Ideas For Small Sunday Schools by Ralph McIntyre (Baker, 61 pp., $1.50 pb), Make Your Sunday School Grow Through Evaluation by Harold Westing (Victor, 117 pp., $1.95 pb), and Learning Together by Ronald Held (Gospel Publishing House, 127 pp., n.p., pb), which stresses the teacher-student relationship. If your special responsibility is young teens, see The Exuberant Years by Ginny Ward Holderness (John Knox, 215 pp., $3.95 pb). If it’s adults, see How to Teach Adults Without Really Suffering edited by Wesley Tracy (Beacon Hill, 144 pp., $2.95 pb). If it’s toddlers, then Living and Learning With Nursery Children by Joy Latham (Baker, 126 pp., $2.95 pb) is for you.

Emotional Problems and the Gospel by Vernon Grounds (Zondervan, 111 pp., $2.95 pb) is a collection of lectures given at Ontario Bible College. Grounds asks why Christians are plagued with problems of anxiety, anger, pride, and guilt. Insightful in its relating of psychology and the Bible.

But God Has Promised by Cecil Murphey (Creation, 169 pp., $2.95 pb) candidly tells of a missionary’s experiences of commitment in a foreign country. Written in an anecdotal style, the book is a reminder of God’s faithfulness. There is no myth of super-spirituality in Murphey’s account of his trials and triumphs.

BUDDHISM is a force to be confronted not only by evangelists in Asia but increasingly, through one or another of its branches, in the Western world. Two major collections of scholarly articles that serve as general surveys are Buddhism: A Modern Perspective edited by Charles Prebish (Pennsylvania State University, 330 pp., $14.50, $7.95 pb) and Buddhism in the Modern World edited by Heinrich Dumoulin (Macmillan, 368 pp., $6.95 pb). Buddhism in America by Emma McCloy Layman (Nelson-Hall, 342 pp., $17.50) is a thorough, scholarly survey. Tucker Callaway really knows both Zen Buddhism and Christianity. He demonstrates how radically different the two are (contrary to what some popularizers allege) in Zen Way—Jesus Way (Charles E. Tuttle Co. [Rutland, Vt. 05701], 263 pp., $8.50). All four of these books belong in libraries of colleges and of missionary training centers.

In June, 1976, a major World Congress of Fundamentalists assembled in Edinburgh, Scotland (see our August 6, 1976, issue, p. 41). Six paperback volumes (of varying lengths) of the messages delivered there are now available from Bob Jones University Press (Greenville, S.C. 29614) and should be acquired by theological libraries at least for the enlightenment of scholars, journalists, and others who use the term “fundamentalist” when “evangelical” or some other designation would be more accurate.

Drawing eclectically on German, British, and especially Scandinavian critical studies since 1960, Gustaf Aulen presents his mature and moderate conclusions as to where there is a critical consensus in the modern picture of the historical Jesus in Jesus in Contemporary Historical Research (Fortress, 167 pp., $7.95).

Gadgets, Gimmicks, and Grace by Edward McNulty (Abbey Press, 130 pp., n.p., pb) is a helpful guide to the use of various kinds of audio-visual aids to teaching. The author tells how, gives theological and educational reflections, and tells where to get some of the kinds of aids he discusses.

In recent years many scholars have become interested in studying the interests and activities of ordinary people. Abstracts of Popular Culture, a quarterly, is a new and helpful tool for libraries serving students in this enormously varied field (Bowling Green University Popular Press, Bowling Green, Ohio 43403).

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.