Book Briefs: April 4, 1980

What Will Tomorrow Bring?

The World Council of Churches and the Demise of Evangelism by Harvey T. Hoekstra (Tyndale, 1979, 300 pp. [pb], $5.95), is reviewed by Arthur P. Johnston, professor of world missions, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

Harvey T. Hoekstra, recently elected moderator of the Reformed Church and former missionary among the forest people of Ethiopia, has added another voice to the rising concern over evangelism in the WCC. As a minister whose church has been a member of the WCC from its inception, Hoekstra has studied the constitutional commitment of the WCC “to support the churches in their worldwide missionary and evangelistic task.” He questions whether the present WCC understanding of the mission of the church provides the churches with the support they need for this task.

Hoekstra points his finger at the key change from “missions” to “mission” introduced when the International Missionary Council was integrated into the WCC at the Third Assembly in New Delhi in 1961. It was renamed the Division of World Mission and Evangelism. The great debate in the IMC preceding the integration focused upon two principal viewpoints: first, the integrationists insisted that mission and evangelism would be brought into the WCC churches so that the church would be “mission.” The church would be the great instrument of mission in the world with the IMC within the structure of the WCC.

Second, great mission leaders at Ghana in 1958 had grave reservations about integration. Leslie Newbigin had said that integration would make missions a more narrow concern in the total mission of the church. M. A. C. Warren voted for it with profound regret because the full case for nonintegration had not been presented to the assembly. Stephen Neill was concerned because the WCC did not show any “signs of strong missionary passion” and, consequently, “missionary work cannot yet be safely left in its hands.” According to Hoekstra it is this structural inclusion of missions as part of the mission of the WCC churches that has introduced the demise of evangelism.

Hoekstra further researched the change in the mission of the WCC: the classical goal of the mission movement was from God to the church and then to the world. The unresolved issue at the CWME assembly in Mexico City, 1963, centered on God’s providential action in the world independent of the Christian community. By Bangkok in 1973, emphasis shifted from God-Church-World to God-World-Church. Between Mexico in 1963, and Bangkok in 1973, “the CWME progressively abandoned the historic aims of the IMC to steadily embrace the new emphasis produced at Uppsala [the Fourth Assembly of the WCC, 1968] which accented the horizontal and lifted up humanization as the goal of missions.”

Since Nairobi, 1975, Hoekstra asserts, a basic contradiction exists between the churches concerned about evangelism among unreached peoples of the world and the fact that the ecumenical leadership in Geneva have not established any existing programs focusing specifically upon evangelism and mission in the tradition of the IMC. He is hopeful, however, of seeing changes slowly introduced by pressure from the central committee so that evangelistically oriented men representing the viewpoint of the churches will replace those in key positions at Geneva.

Hoekstra has given evangelicals within the WCC a chart on how to reinstate evangelism of unreached people as a mission of the church. He has made a singular contribution to the study of post-New Delhi 1961 evangelism in the wcc and to the apparent cause for its demise. Several problems should have been considered that would have made his research more realistic.

First, there are deep and historical changes in the definition of evangelism in the WCC. The IMC abandoned historical evangelism at the conference in Jerusalem, 1928, and revived a neoorthodox evangelism at Madras (Tambaram) in 1938. The WCC changed a basically evangelical understanding of evangelism expressed in the First Assembly at Amsterdam in 1948, to a humanistic salvation quietly recognized by the central committee in 1959. The theology of these two integrated movements could not possibly result in classical evangelism and mission. The problem does not seem to lie in the structure of the CWME within the WCC, but with the basic theology of sin, Christology, redemption, the world, eschatology, and universalism. WCC evangelism was totally redefined from its 1910 Edinburgh theology.

Second, the leadership of the WCC is now preoccupied with Roman Catholic relationships in anticipation of a conciliar church. Since the main bodies of Eastern Orthodoxy entered the WCC at New Delhi in 1961, the focus of effort is upon whatever new relationships will be forged with Roman Catholicism—probably in this new decade. The complexities of the present soteriologies within the WCC would be further complicated if evangelicalism were introduced.

Third, the doctrine of universalism is so extensively accepted by the WCC churches and, especially, by the Geneva staff, that it seems very unlikely that there can be a sincere and unequivocal evangelistic movement addressed to non-Christian religions and non-Christian ideologies. Dialogue with them has replaced proclamation and the humanization of society has utterly obliterated the historical evangelical understanding of personal evangelism.

Hoekstra has addressed a message to the WCC, to the churches of the WCC, and to the evangelicals within it concerned about the unreached peoples. The preconference material for the CWME meeting in Melbourne in May 1980 reveals a theological pluralism with overtures to evangelicals by those of the radical and liberation theology wing of evangelicalism. It remains to be seen if “classical evangelism” will have a “simultaneous” place in the WCC with that of changing the world—and if it can be implemented without major changes in the Geneva staff.

The Shape Of Evil Today

The Seven Deadly Sins Today by Henry Fairlie (New Republic Books, 1978, 216 pp. $10.00), and The Seven Deadly Sins: Society and Evil by Stanford M. Lyman (St. Martin’s Press, 1978, 329 pp. $5.95), are reviewed by Cecil E. Greek, instructor in social science, Barrington College, Barrington, Rhode Island.

Both of these books are attempts to locate the sources and results of evil in the age in which we live. Despite their propensity for discussing sin, it is interesting to note that neither author would classify himself as a Christian thinker. Stanford Lyman refers to himself as an agnostic Jew while Henry Fairlie admits that he is a reluctant unbeliever.

Fairlie, however, a Washington-based British journalist, presents us with highly orthodox Christian notions of evil, drawing from both Old and New Testament sources. He locates evil within human nature itself, the vestige of original sin. He defines each of the seven deadly sins as demonstrations of love that has gone wrong: pride, envy, and anger are sins of perverted love; love is directed in a false manner to an otherwise worthy object—the self; sloth is defined as a sin of defective love—the love may be directed to a deserving object, but it is not given in the proper measure; avarice, gluttony, and greed are sins of excessive love, a self-love so excessive that it destroys a person’s capacity to love others.

Fairlie’s attempt to fit each of these ancient sins to its modern condition is only partially successful. For example, he equates gluttony with the plethora of cookbooks on the market. In many of his other examples he resorts to vulgar sermonizing about what he feels are the evil features of modern society. However, his discussion of such self-actualization movements as transactional analysis, transcendental meditation, Scientology, and Silva Mind Control as modern forms of sloth is good.

In his final chapter Fairlie finds the answer to our evil in love: each of the seven deadly sins has its opposing virtue—humility, generosity, meekness, zeal, liberality, temperance, chastity; each is an example of love that is in order. Individuals have the power to resist the evil within their natures and develop “character” by practicing love.

Stanford Lyman, a prominent sociologist whose previous writings have established him as an eminent scholar in the fields of race and ethnic relations and phenomenological sociology, has also written a book on sin. Like Fairlie’s, this book contains chapters on sloth, lust, anger, pride, envy, gluttony, and greed. However, Lyman’s discussions of each sin go beyond the Old and New Testament descriptions; Christian thinkers should find these enlightening as they consider views of major Christian theologians concerning each of the sins. For example, the chapter on lust includes discussions of the ideas of Saint Augustine, Martin Luther, and John Calvin on the subject.

Lyman’s book employs a multidisciplinary approach. In addition to his discussions of evil in the area of theology, the author also displays a wide breadth of knowledge in such other fields as sociology, psychology, history, and literature—something greatly lacking in Fairlie’s book.

It is interesting that the author, who is not a theologian but a sociologist, has chosen to discuss sin. Not since the last decade of the nineteenth century when the Social Gospel Movement influenced American sociology and E. A. Ross’s Sin and Society (1907) pointed out the moral defaults of a burgeoning industrialism, have sociologists been very eager to discuss sin. This is because positivism has gained control of American sociology, and in hopes of achieving objectivity, sociologists developed a “value-free” approach, thus becoming unwilling to make moral statements or to refer to the term sin. But Lyman shows that much that has been written in sociology can be reinterpreted as discussions concerning sin.

There are, however, aspects of the book that some evangelicals will find disturbing, such as the ambiguous nature of sin. Lyman states that pride has certain positive elements that in certain situations can negate its sinfulness, such as self-respect or self-confidence. Likewise, overconcern with resisting the sin of pride may make one overly submissive to the will of others.

A second point evangelicals will certainly dispute is the author’s statement that it is the devil who understands man’s propensity to sin because he is forced to dwell with man on earth, while a perfect God living in the heavens does not.

Lyman does not offer us a solution to the problem of evil as Fairlie attempts to do. However, Lyman’s work accomplishes what Fairlie’s fails to do convincingly: he shows that sin and evil have not disappeared in our “secular” world because some men no longer recognize them, but are forever part of the dramas of life in which men engage.

Inaugurated Eschatology

The Bible and the Future by Anthony A. Hoekema (Eerdmans, 1979, 343 pp., $12.95), is reviewed by Royce Gordon Gruenler, professor of New Testament, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

Every now and again a book on eschatology appears that warms the heart of the scholar. Anthony Hoekema, recently retired from Calvin Theological Seminary, brings to the study of biblical prophecy and eschatology a maturity that is rare among contemporary works on the subject. Free of sensationalism, he evinces a reverence for the Scriptures and a measured scholarship that make his book both a pleasure to read and a useful text for college and seminary as well as for the advanced lay reader.

Hoekema’s position is Reformed and amillennial. One would hope that premillennialists, and especially those of dispensational persuasion, would engage with his interpretations, for he argues cogently and irenically on the fragile questions of the literal restoration of Israel and the millennium (which he interprets as the “realized millennium” of the departed saints in heaven). These questions of interpretation are held in perspective, however, and do not comprise much more than 3 chapters out of 20 on other eschatological themes, such as the Holy Spirit, physical death, immortality, the intermediate state, the resurrection of the body, the final judgment, and the new earth. Every evangelical ought to read the book with care and gratitude, regardless of his millennial leanings, for Hoekema is not only fully abreast of the classical tradition but of twentieth-century scholarship, and presents one of the best studies on eschatology available today.

His major theme is inaugurated eschatology, with its tension between the already and the not yet: Jesus inaugurated the kingdom of God in his earthly ministry and will complete it at his return. The reader may be surprised to learn that with their acceptance of inaugurated eschatology, many historic premillennialists like G. E. Ladd are much closer to Hoekema’s amillennialism than to dispensational premillennialism.

One contemporary eschatological school has eluded the attention of Hoekema (and Robert Clouse), understandably perhaps, since it has not yet produced a large literature. The amillennial/postmillennial position of some charismatic evangelicals needs to be reckoned with, since it represents large numbers of charismatics and carries on a holiness tradition that postpones the second coming of Christ until his bride is spotless and pure. Once achieved, according to this school, this “millennial” state of holiness will announce the postmillennial return of Christ to consummate the marriage of his bride. A subject index should have been provided—a serious oversight in a book of this quality.

Theology In Outline

What Does the Old Testament Say About God? by Claus Westermann (John Knox Press, 1979, 107 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Roland K. Harrison, professor of Old Testament, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto.

This slim volume is a revised form of the Sprunt Lectures Westermann delivered at Union Theological Seminary (Richmond, Va.) in 1977. The author is professor of Old Testament at the University of Heidelberg, and is well known for numerous articles and books in his field

The lectures endeavor to root Old Testament theology in history, and then they proceed to study God’s activity in the experience of the Israelites as that of a saving, blessing, judging, and merciful God. The nature of human response is examined in terms of praise, obedience, and worship, and the book concludes with a section on the Old Testament and Jesus Christ. In an appendix, a series of notes to the various lectures amplifies the author’s thought, mostly by reference to works in German.

The scholarship is that of the literary-critical variety, with its uncritical appeal to composite documentary authorship of the Pentateuch, “deuteronomic history,” the “priestly code,” “deutero-Isaiah,” and so on. Thus, the Pentateuch is an essentially late compilation, and even such crucial passages as Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 contain for the author clear signs of a gradual origin. In true Well-hausenian fashion the commencement of history writing is assigned to the beginning of the Hebrew monarchy; before that time we must depend on oral tradition in the form of sagas, legends, tribal stories, and family narratives for the revelation of God to man, which, following von Rad, he thinks of as a story or history developing between God and man.

Westermann attempts to deal with the diversity of what the Old Testament says about God in verbs rather than nouns, as is the case with most Old Testament theologies to date. Thus, instead of treating salvation as a condition, he looks for a more dynamic “act of saving,” which represents one result of the interaction between God and his human creation. The author is fashionably critical of the concept of “salvation history” as being inadequate for representing a full theology of the Old Testament, and shows quite rightly that a theological anthropology must be rooted firmly in the nature-nurture relationship. Whether by design or accident, he mercifully says nothing about the “sanctity of human life,” nor does he deal with the ever-expanding list of “rights” that most people imagine they possess.

The author sees the Servant Songs of Isaiah as pointing to the work of Christ for human salvation, but denies that the Immanuel passage in Isaiah 7:14 has any relationship to the birth of Christ. He establishes a firm historical continuity between the Old and New Testaments, and shows the pivotal importance of the work of Christ in the sequence. But he is vague about the nature of that work, and I missed the emphasis upon vicarious atonement that could have been made so readily by reference to the Levitical sacrificial system.

The book is at best only an outline of Old Testament theology, and suffers from presentation of the material in lecture format. While it contains some provocative suggestions, it also shows how difficult it is to formulate an “Old Testament theology.”

A Philosophy Of Youth Ministry

Youth Ministry: Its Renewal in the Local Church by Lawrence O. Richards (Zondervan, 1979, 364 pp. $11.95), is reviewed by Scott Hawkins, director of Christian education, Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian Church, Durham, North Carolina.

“What went wrong with him?” “What would possess her to do such a thing?” “Our kids are bored with church.” “I just knew he would lose his faith if he went to that state school.” “Why don’t they consider the repercussions of such an action? What of the future?”

With questions like the above from youth ringing in my mind, I read Youth Ministry; it was reading time well-spent. Though our high school and college campuses may appear calmer than they were eight years ago (when this book was first published), the task of youth ministers hasn’t grown any easier. For those seeking to relate Christ in the youth marketplace, the challenge grows in complexity. The modern culture, with all its attractive (though fake) trappings—a breakdown in family structure, the powerful influence of mass media, and the push for personal gratification through it all—illustrate the difficulties confronting youth ministers who must deal with it.

But after reading Youth Ministry, I feel renewed in spirit and purpose as I help our youth leaders plan for sharing the Christ-life with youth. Youth Ministry is not an easy book. It is definitely not a book with “40 gimmicks to increase your attendance at youth group”; it is, instead, a book of theory, of philosophy. It pays more attention to why we design youth ministry a certain way rather than how we carry out specific plans. There are no sure-fire answers, but the reader is motivated to interact with Scripture and the ways of God as he proceeds chapter by chapter. In addition, insights from psychology and other secular disciplines help the reader to implement a complete philosophy of youth ministry. As a result, one comes away with key insights into a biblical model for preparing for and ministering to youth.

After studying “Youth in our Culture,” “Youth as Persons,” and “Adults as Leaders,” the author attacks the meat of his premise. Part three of the book guides the reader to form a three-fold stance of youth ministry. “Youth in Scripture, in Body Relationship, and in Life” become the focuses for organizing program elements. Since Christian education is the teaching and learning of Christian faith from “life to life,” youth ministry must be perceived as youth and adults involved together in those three focuses. The perspective is biblical, straightforward, and compelling.

Only after this foundation is laid can the building blocks of planning and specific programming be added. The serious reader, who participates in chapter-ending “Probe” assignments throughout the book, will find that a workable and scriptural design for planning youth ministry has been generated. For most value, do the “Probes” with another interested youth leader.

Youth Ministry is an excellent guidebook for renewal of youth ministry, for use primarily in local churches, but also for stimulating thought at the college and seminary level.

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