Book Briefs: October 20, 1978

Survey Of Bioethical Issues

Issues of Life and Death, by Norman Anderson (InterVarsity, 1977, 130 pp., $2.95 pb), is reviewed by Robert A. Case, II, Yakima, Washington.

In 1969 Spitzer and Saylor published a collection of articles entitled Birth Control and the Christian (Tyndale) in an attempt to focus evangelical attention on that particular area of ethics. Although that collection served as an instigator of evangelical opinion in bioethics, it has several current weaknesses for today’s reader. Most importantly, it was pre-Roe v. Wade (U.S. Supreme Court abortion decision in 1973), a fact that now makes some of the contributions less than relevant. Also, since it was evangelicalism’s first broad attempt to cover an area in bioethics, several of the articles were not up to high standards of scholarship.

All this is simply to say that there is no one book that evangelicals can use to help guide their thinking in the area of bioethics. Norman Anderson has attempted to fill that void with his latest, Issues of Life and Death. This outstanding British legal scholar has given us such fine works as Morality, Law and Grace; Christianity and Comparative Religion; and Christianity: The Witness of History. His little booklet, “The Evidence for the Resurrection.” is one of the prime tools used in college evangelism in Britain.

Anderson has now turned his weighty capabilities to bioethics in a one-volume survey covering the full gamut of human life—inception of life to prolongation of life to termination of life. As he moves along these stages (in a series of lectures) he touches upon such diverse subjects as artificial insemination, genetic engineering, birth control, sterilization, abortion, when and under what circumstances is a human life terminated, organ transplantation, suicide, war, capital punishment, self-defense, revolution, and even civil disobedience. Needless to say, in a 130-page book only the most cursory treatment is given. However, the ultimate value of his book is that some treatment is given. There are, though, several unfortunate weaknesses.

In his initial chapter, “The Sanctity of Human Life,” Anderson gives a brief survey of some of the leading British humanist positions on the value of human life. This is a contribution worth the price of the book. He rightly concludes: “To the humanist man may be regarded as the apex of the evolutionary process, while to the Christian the fundamental fact is that man was created, by whatever means, ‘in the image’ and ‘after the likeness’ of God. To the humanist, again, the exciting point has been reached at which man can consciously take a part in furthering his own evolution, while to the Christian some of the undreamed of possibilities—actual or potential—which are being explored today by medical research may be regarded as an opportunity for man to fulfill, in a new and more intelligent way, the divine command to ‘fill the earth and subdue it.’ ”

When he moves to genetic engineering the author explains what he believes to be the foremost principle for Christian consideration in this complex area of the life sciences: “the fact [is] that ‘nature’ as we know it, can provide us with no adequate criterion, for the ‘whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now.’ ” Anderson rightly says “no criterion,” because “nature has been affected by cosmic sin.” The criterion must be derived from God’s revealed will. Anderson fails to make plain that God’s will is preeminently discerned through the Scriptures. A little exegesis here would have helped immeasurably. A further weakness of the chapter is that lawyer Anderson relies too heavily on a secular secondary scientist source (Our Future Inheritance: Choice or Chance?, by Alan Jones and Walter Bodmer) for much of his material.

In the chapter on birth control the author erroneously discusses “abortion.” but then in today’s climate that is understandable, though not very helpful. (Perhaps it’s the influence of the abovementioned proabortion book.) This part of the book I found to be entirely unsatisfactory and inconsistent with the tightly reasoned biblicism we have come to expect from Anderson’s eminent legal mind. He concludes with what has become an all too familiar Christian cop-out. “The only answer I can give at this point is that we must grapple with the problem before God earnestly and responsibly—but with the scales weighted, I think, always in favor of reverence for human life.” One misses in this chapter the articulate and anguished evangelical plea for the unborn of Harold O. J. Brown.

In his chapter on the prolongation of life Anderson uses the inexcusable term “monster” to refer to a human baby that is grotesquely misshapen at birth. He defines a monster as “one born with no proper brain or so grossly deformed as not to be human in any meaningful sense of that term.” One need only talk briefly with such Christian physicians as C. Everett Koop of Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia to see how foolish that is. When the author discusses mongoloids his rationale for not letting them die at birth is socially derived: “mongols are frequently very affectionate, arouse a corresponding love in their parents, and exercise a humanizing influence on those who care for them.” Whatever happened to Romans 9:20 or Isaiah 29:16 when one approaches the physical formation of the human body and mind? A positive contribution of this chapter is the clear thinking of Gordon Dunstan of King’s College, London, upon which Anderson draws.

Finally, Anderson comes to his chapter on termination of life and it is in this section that we find some of the best exegesis of the book. He discusses capital punishment, and with the help of Derek Kidner he exegetes Genesis 4. Anderson is, of course, on more familiar ground here and it shows as he brings more Scripture to bear on the topics under view. He has a helpful segment on “just revolution” as he intertwines First Kings and Judges into his basic position that the Old Testament supports the concept of a “just revolution” as it supports the concept of a “just war.” This chapter is vintage Anderson as he takes on the positions of Ellul, Cleage, Shaull, Carmichael, Colin Morris, and Maillard, and like the first chapter, it represents the best of the book.

Norm Anderson’s little book is an attempt to fill a gap in evangelical ethical literature for a one-volume compendium of bioethical opinion and scholarship. The attempt largely fails due to a lack of application of Second Corinthians 10:5. And there is simply very little new scholarship evident in the book. Most of it is a rehash of previously published work.

One must still look to Koop’s The Right to Live: The Right to Die, or Cliff Bajema’s The Meaning of Personhood for a unified evangelical approach to even a few issues in the field of bioethics. Ethics classes in Christian colleges around the country are still waiting for a good textbook.

Was The New Testament At Qumran?

The First New Testament, by David Estrada and William White, Jr. (Nelson, 1978, 128 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Gordon D. Fee, professor of New Testament, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

Six years ago a Spanish specialist in ancient writing, Father José O’Callaghan, created a mild stir in the world of New Testament scholarship when he suggested that nine small Greek fragments from cave 7 of Qumran should be identified as remains of early copies of the New Testament. The most important of these was fragment 5, which had ten visible letters (plus seven or eight partial letters), and which O’Callaghan claimed to be a portion of Mark 6:52–53.

The response to O’Callaghan’s discoveries was virtually unanimous: His contention was not proved. It was an interesting suggestion, but it had too many strikes against it to merit acceptance. To make his identification work. O’Callaghan had to eliminate a prepositional phrase from the text of Mark (against all other evidence), read an obvious t as a d (permissible in nonliterary papyri, but scarcely possible in a clearly literary text like this one), and repeatedly refused to admit the existence of an obvious iota in line 2. This last item in particular completely undermined his whole case.

This claimed identification of fragment 5 led O’Callaghan to find eight other New Testament texts in cave 7. These other claims have not been accepted for two reasons. In seven cases the fragments are so small, with so few visible letters, that they admit to dozens of identifications. (For example, in fifteen minutes I was able to locate fragment 7 [O’Callaghan’s Mark 12:17] in five different places in the Septuagint, as well as in John 1:14.) Moreover, the four larger fragments from cave 7 (1, 2, 3, 19) are clearly not New Testament texts. (One is from the Old Testament, one from the Pseudepigrapha, and two are from unknown texts.) Why identify the smaller fragments with the New Testament when, like the larger fragments, they are more likely Old Testament or other non-Christian texts? In any case, these smaller fragments are nearly worthless, because they can be fitted almost anywhere.

Nonetheless, two men have now come to O’Callaghan’s defense in a book they call “the final fruition of all the debates and trials.” Would that it were so. Estrada and White rely almost totally on O’Callaghan and they simply never take the objections to his claimed identifications seriously. A thorough discussion of the data, pro and con, would have been useful. Instead, we receive an emotional attack on O’Callaghan’s “detractors.” who, we are told, took “awesome offense” at O’Callaghan’s discovery and greeted him “with jeers and acidic criticism.” The reason for this offense, they argue, is that O’Callaghan’s discovery overthrows the presuppositions of all kinds of unbelief by proving the authenticity of the Bible. But even if O’Callaghan were correct, nothing really changes, for recognition of an early date for one or more of the New Testament writings has never guaranteed belief in their truthfulness.

As bad as these chapters are, the errors of chapter seven, where the authors discuss the fragments themselves, are worse. Consider two examples out of many I could have chosen. On the basis of five letters, O’Callaghan identified fragment 7 as Mark 12:17. Although O’Callaghan himself considered this identification as only probable, Estrada and White throw all caution to the wind. Indeed they are nearly ecstatic because the fragment contains “both the name Jesus and the title Caesar.” However, the “Jesus” they claim to have found (in O’Callaghan’s reconstructed letter ois) is in fact not in the reconstructed text at all, but one whole line above where there is nothing at all. The letters ois they read as “Jesus” are the final letters in autois (“them”).

Similarly, in their discussion of fragment 8 (O’Callaghan’s James 1:23–24), Estrada and White make a considerable point of the fact that this fragment is on the left margin with three lines in neat rows. This, they correctly argue, means that the stichometries (number of letters per line) must be fairly even. But they are quite in error when they go on to assert that “this is the single aspect of O’Callaghan’s careful effort that is overlooked by would-be critics who feel they have found alternative passages that will satisfy the requirements of the fragments.” On the contrary. In this case “O’Callaghan’s careful effort” to arrive at his identification with a stichometry of 23 letters per line necessitated his removing the words gar heauton against all known manuscripts of James. On the other hand, C. H. Roberts and I quite independently showed how this fragment, among other places, could be identified with Zechariah 8:8, with a perfect stichometry of 22 letters per line and with absolutely no tampering with the text of Zechariah.

The Unreal Jesus

The Real Jesus, by Garner Ted Armstrong (Sheed, 1977, 280 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Joseph M. Hopkins, professor of religion, Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania.

Garner Ted Armstrong, erstwhile radio-television voice of “The World of Tomorrow” and executive vice-president of the Worldwide Church of God (until toppled by his father, Herbert W. Armstrong, last May), wrote this unusual book. The Real Jesus is Armstrong’s first venture into the field of commercial book publishing. Written for laity, it addresses its intended readers at their own level in a lively, colorful, interesting, and stimulating manner. The first and final chapter headings provide samples of Armstrong’s cryptic, attention-grabbing style. Chapter one is entitled “The Birth of Jesus: The Greatest Story Never Told.” And chapter twenty’s caption is “A Step Through Stone.” The narrative, which traces Jesus’ earthly life from incarnation to resurrection, is embellished by the author’s rich imagination, but given an aura of authenticity by appropriate quotes from Josephus, Tacitus, and the Talmud. The result is a biography of Jesus based on the Gospels, conjecture, and ancient non-Christian writings. The result reflects the distinctive theology of Armstrongism: an eclectic blend of a certain rigid fundamentalism with significant cultic aberrations.

Allowing for Armstrong heresy, The Real Jesus does make for interesting, provocative, and at times astute reading. Armstrong challenges traditional Christians to think about who Jesus was and is, what he was like during the days of his flesh, and the significance of his earthly mission and eschatological reign. But evangelicals are rightly concerned with the potential of the book for luring inquirers or poorly-grounded Christians to the unreal Jesus of Armstrong distortion.

Kohlberg And Conversion

I’m Saved, You’re Saved—Maybe, by Jack Renard Pressau (John Knox, 1977, 146 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Samuel F. Rowen, coordinator of curriculum development, Missionary Internship, Farmington, Michigan.

It was with great interest that I approached the reading of I’m Saved, You’re Saved—Maybe. I am concerned about the variety of ways in which people conceptualize the meaning of salvation. The fact that Pressau used the psychological approach of Lawrence Kohlberg made the prospect all the more interesting. For three years I participated in a research project at Michigan State University on the cognitive developmental theory of moral judgment propounded by Kohlberg and his associates at Harvard University. (See the article on Kohlberg by Ruth Beechick in our December 30, 1977, issue, page 12.)

Pressau writes clearly and from the posture of an inquirer. He invites response. The book is essentially his hypothesis on how people conceptualize the meaning of salvation: “This book is a giant hypothesis. It is a grandchild of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, the son of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, and … the half-brother of James Fowler’s stages-of-faith-development concept” (p 115).

A hypothesis is to be tested, according to Pressau, in terms of the criteria of usefulness, rather than of truth or falsehood. It is useful in its power to explain, predict, and control. The hypothesis is one of many explanations of religious development that can be used to suggest actions for influencing behavior.

The author outlines the essence of Kohlberg’s theory, which is built upon Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. An individual develops through a series of stages of cognitive moral development. There are six stages, two stages within each level of development. The two stages within each level represent an earlier and later form of development within the level. Some recent writers believe that the most crucial aspect of the theory is in the idea of the levels. Pressau seems to recognize this and gives a separate chapter to each level: the preconventional, the conventional, the postconventional. The labels for the levels at first may seem to be uninspiring, but upon reflection they are highly descriptive. There is a level of moral development to which most people progress (conventional) and there is development that precedes it and that goes beyond it.

The book does not attempt to analyze Kohlberg’s theory, but to test its utility in regards to a specific issue—the different ways people conceptualize salvation. The perceptions of salvation are: Stage 1—God, my Rewarder-Punisher; Stage 2—God, my personal covenant giver; Stage 3—Christ, our Model; Stage 4—Christianity, our Belief-Behavior System; Stage 5—Christ, Redeemer of the World’s Power Systems; Stage 6—Christ, the Universal Uniting Point. The differing approaches to evangelism of such groups as Young Life, Child Evangelism, Campus Crusade for Christ, and Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship are used to illustrate the different ways (stages) that people think about salvation.

There are several crucial points in Pressau’s use of Kohlberg’s developmental stages that reflect a misunderstanding of Kohlberg and possible lack of knowledge of some of the more recent writings in the field. The latter problem may be the result of the publishing time-lag. First, crucial to the theory is the distinction between content and structure. A person may use the same words, but have a different structural development in mind. Pressau fails to grasp the full import of structure and builds his descriptions on content. This is why he misuses the theory and ends up labeling people. He labels Bonhoeffer’s statement “We Lutherans,” showing as Stage 4 that he was a loyal churchman and his “religionless Christianity” as Stage 6. It is totally inappropriate to use the stage labels for isolated statements. The above statements could be used at various levels of development. The statements reflect content and not structure.

Second, there are several aspects of Kohlberg’s theory that are accepted without critical comment. Stage 4 is called the Law and Order Stage and the acceptance of the Decalogue is at best Stage 4 development. However, the biblical idea of law is the fullest expression of the justice expressed in Level III. Even the lex talionis is more properly described as jus talionis and reflects the highest level of moral development.

Third, in the most recent writings of Kohlberg he is finding it more difficult to distinguish between Stages 5 and 6. Part of the problem is that there are so very few at the top. Pressau falls into this trap and ends up making his particular “content” of the Christian faith the highest stage. Evangelicals can hardly rise above Stage 4 because of their content. Pressau is left with the “fish-hook” method of development, trying to pull others up to where he is. This approach runs counter to Piaget, which sees development as a process of finding equilibrium. The posture of the teacher is to help an individual to explore his disequilibrium rather than entice him upwards. Our Lord’s view of discipleship, “You are all brethren …” (Matthew 23:1–8), implies a reciprocal view of development rather than a top-down model.

Pressau is to be commended for trying to apply the promising insights of Kohlberg to the work of the church. There are some helpful insights to the various ways people conceptualize salvation. However, the book is not the best place to begin to understand Kohlberg and assess his usefulness. It is hoped that evangelicals will not dismiss Kohlberg because of the conclusions of this book.

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