Did God Check Out of Vietnam?

Did God Check Out Of Vietnam?

Out of the Night, by William P. Mahedy (Ballantine, 233 pp., $15.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Col. Galen H. Meyer, a chaplain in the U.S Army Reserve and a teacher of Bible and English at South Christian High School, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“God checked out of ‘Nam because of what was goin’ on down there. I would’ve checked out, too, if I could’ve.”

These are the words of one troubled Vietnam veteran to William P. Mahedy, an Episcopal priest and former army chaplain with combat service in Vietnam. The matter-of-fact statement about God’s absence sprung from the horror the veteran saw there, and it poignantly expresses the feelings of so many veterans—that the war has left them not only aliens in their own country, but strangers to God as well. Mahedy’s book, Out of the Night, is primarily a pastoral work designed to bring reconciliation between veterans, themselves, their countrymen, and God.

Profound Moral Pain

Unlike so many counselors who see the Vietnam veterans’ malady only as a psychological problem, Mahedy perceives it as a moral-spiritual problem. The veterans who told their stories to Mahedy saw their own experience in those terms. For the most part, these men were quite unlike the stereotype of the Vietnam veteran. They had not committed atrocities; on the contrary, they served honorably by any standard.

Yet they continue to suffer, long after the war’s end, what Mahedy calls a “profound moral pain.” It is a pain, he says, “… generated by the realization that the war itself was evil and one should not have participated in it.” The journey out of the night for Vietnam veterans may begin many different ways but it will never be complete, Mahedy argues, “without some resolution of the moral conflict.”

Reconciliation with the God who was absent from Vietnam begins, says Mahedy, with the honest confession of having been “swallowed up by the sin of war.” Mahedy admits that Americans are not used to the idea of war as sin or moral failure. Such thinking has no place in American civil religion, with its macho God who has made American military action his righteous judgments on other nations. Ironically, though many Americans refuse to see war itself as sin, the clear, underlying motif of the stories Vietnam veterans tell is an awful awareness of evil.

Because the veteran has confronted the truth about himself in combat, he often stands in a better posture to receive the grace of God than the noncombatant countryman who accuses him of wrong. The veteran has found himself devoid of righteousness apart from God. He has found his own decency to be a sham, something that will disintegrate like tissue when circumstances exert pressure. His countryman, on the other hand, can still believe in his own innate goodness. He has never been brought face to face with the evil inside himself—left in a lonely place where the mission is to kill and success is measured by a “body count.”

Out of the Night is worth reading. Veterans will find kinship with other veterans. They may also find the theological and scriptural framework in which to understand their experience and to receive the healing grace of God. Pastors will be brought to a new awareness of the veterans who as young men were members of their congregations but have since dropped out. Members of the church will learn the importance of the veterans’ stories. And all of us might understand the shallowness of civil religion and the seriousness of sending men to war.

“Before Our Eyes, Mass Murder”

Letters from Westerbork, by Etty Hillesum, introduction and notes by Jan G. Gaarlandt, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans (Pantheon; xviii + 156 pp.; $14.95, cloth). Reviewed by Paul W. Nisly, chairman of the language, literature, and fine arts department, Messiah College, in Grantham, Pennsylvania.

Readers who have read Etty Hillesum’s powerful journal, An Interrupted Life, will be grateful for this finely edited collection of her letters written in the embattled Netherlands of World War II. Etty Hillesum (then 27) began writing her intensely personal journal in March 1941—days of increasing Nazi pressure on Dutch Jewry.

In the summer of 1942, Etty was first shipped to Westerbork, a detaining camp in northeastern Netherlands for Jews before they were sent to Auschwitz. Both because of her work on the Jewish Council and because of her health problems, she was allowed to return to her native Amsterdam on several occasions—but always her heart was with her people in Westerbork.

Westerbork itself was a small camp, with 10,000 people eventually crowded into tiny huts and wooden barracks. Etty’s letters help us feel the awful mud and later the wind-whipped sand. Always there seemed no place even to write a letter. “I have visited ten different places in order to fill this one sheet of paper,” she once wrote to a friend.

Her letters reveal a young woman who cared deeply about human misery and uncertainty. Particularly poignant is her concern for her aging parents and her talented pianist brother, Mischa. Beyond her efforts for her family, she spent much time helping the old, the weak, the very young—all those who seemed especially vulnerable.

One of the horrors that she and the others faced was the weekly transport train, which came to the camp and took a thousand or more people to an unknown destination in Poland. Always there was the anxiety, the lack of knowledge: Who is on the list this time? My parents? My brother? A friend? Then there was the moral dilemma of knowing that if her parents and friends were spared, someone else’s parents or friends would fill the quota.

Beyond Comprehension

The experience was too incongruous to assimilate into her consciousness, much less to understand. “The sky is full of birds,” she wrote to friends, “the purple lupins stand up so regally and peacefully, two little old women have sat down on the box for a chat, the sun is shining on my face—and right before our eyes, mass murder. The whole thing is simply beyond comprehension.”

Yet always Etty Hillesum insisted that life, despite appearances, must have purpose. “One discovers that the basic materials of life are the same everywhere, and that one can live one’s life with meaning—or else one can die—in any spot on this earth.”

On September 7, 1943, Etty, her parents, brother, and a thousand others were crowded into a transport train bound for Poland. Did she remember her words from two months earlier?

“Against every new outrage and every fresh horror, we shall put up one more piece of love and goodness, drawing strength from within ourselves. We may suffer, but we must not succumb. And if we should survive unhurt in body and soul, but above all in soul, without bitterness and without hatred, then we shall have a right to a say after the war. Maybe I am an ambitious woman: I would like to have just a tiny bit of say.”

After 40 years Etty Hillesum is finally having her say. Reading these letters and knowing the outcome, one is angered, saddened, grieved and—yes, also—gratified, encouraged, enriched. The mystery of evil is profound, but not overwhelming.

Universal Urge

The Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade, editor in chief (Macmillan, 16 vols.; $1,100.00, hardcover). Reviewed by Terry C. Muck.

Any doubts about religion being a universal urge of mankind will quickly be dispelled by a glance through the 16 volumes, 2,734 articles, and over 9,000 pages included in this monumental work. Authored and edited by the crème de la crème of religious-studies scholars and experts worldwide, the Encyclopedia of Religion describes religions from the four corners of the world, from African traditional religions to South American indigenous religions to Tibetan religions to Arctic religions. Articles mark points on a time line that reaches back to prehistoric faith traditions and forward to new religions and present-day movements, and smoothly covers everything in between—including the history of Christianity as seen through the eyes of history of religions scholars.

Edited by the recently deceased Mircea Eliade, perhaps the foremost history of religions scholar of our time, the Encyclopedia is structured for both comprehensive coverage of the field and for ease of use by scholar and layperson alike. It contains two types of articles. The first details each of the major religious traditions (44 are listed), and extensive supporting articles under each of those headings cover the important theologians, events, and principal beliefs of each tradition.

The second type of article takes the history of religions approach, viewing religion as a universal phenomenon. Articles falling into that category look at religious phenomena (such as almsgiving, faith, prayer, celibacy, and revelation) as they appear in many different traditions. There are also articles on the various methods of the study of religion itself, and the scholars who have made the study of religion their life’s work.

Obviously the Encyclopedia’s coverage of Christianity extends beyond the strictly conservative Christian point of view. Articles on Calvin, Bunyan, Fox, and Wesley have equal weight with those on Coleridge, Rahner, and Swedenborg. In the article on Abraham, we read not only what the Bible has to say about Abraham, but what extrabiblical sources, such as the Qur’an, have to say as well.

Yet it is not antagonistic to conservative Christianity. Because of the broad historical approach of the Encyclopedia, intricate points of Christian theology are not debated. Unfortunately, no evangelical scholars have written any of the Encyclopedia’s articles; but the history of religions is a field conservative Christian scholars have by and large chosen to avoid. Perhaps that avoidance is something we should address.

The Encyclopedia is a useful tool, the latest and best in a rich tradition of history of religions resource works. It can help scholar, pastor, and layperson locate his or her Christian tradition in the larger context of world history and the history of belief.

Drane Delivers

Introducing the New Testament, by John Drane (Harper & Row, 479 pp.; $19.95, cloth). Reviewed by Walter W. Wessel, professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary West in San Diego, California.

Introductions to the New Testament are notoriously dry, usually authored by scholars whose ability to write lucid, succinct prose leaves much to be desired. Although they often claim to be written for “informed” or “intelligent” lay persons, they are in fact written by scholars for scholars.

So when an introduction comes along that is written in clear, intelligible language and demonstrates a grasp of what the real issues are, it is an occasion to celebrate. John Drane’s introduction is that kind of book.

Drane is interested in both history and theology. The kinds of questions he asks indicate this. He asks not only “When was Jesus born?” but “Who was he?”; not only “What is a Gospel?” but “Can we trust our Gospels?”; not only “Did Paul write 2 Thessalonians?” but “Did Paul really believe in freedom?”

Another attractive feature is the large number of contemporary photographs in the book. When Drane explains what it means to be a Christian according to Paul, a photograph shows a priest in a Latin American shantytown. The priest is “acting in the true spirit of the Apostle Paul, who ‘became all things to all men, that I by all means might save some.’ ” In another illustration, Sun Myung Moon becomes the modern example of ancient heretics, for he “claims to have received special revelations from God, though his teaching directly contradicts the Bible.”

Although the book is devoid of the typical scholarly trappings, one must not underestimate the author’s grasp of modern New Testament research. His discussion, for example, of the historicity of the Gospels is a model of clear and accurate analysis of the problems and of sound conclusions based on a thorough knowledge of the research.

Drane is refreshingly tough-minded in dealing with authorship questions. He is not persuaded by the subjective arguments that would deny the Pauline authorship of Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles. He does, however, hold that 2 Peter may well have originated from a group of Peter’s disciples.

The foreword claims that ordinary readers (in addition to students and scholars) will want to read this book “as an aid to understanding the New Testament and getting to grips with its relevance for their own lives.” And Drane delivers.

The “Denver Theology”

Integrative Theology, Volume 1, by Gordon Lewis and Bruce Demarest (Zondervan, 394 pp.; $16.95, cloth). Reviewed by Stanley J. Grenz, associate professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics, North American Baptist Seminary in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

At a time when there appears to be no end to new Baptist systematic theologies, Gordon Lewis and Bruce Demarest promise a unique approach—integrative theology. The innovation supposedly lies in the six-step process employed. In each chapter the authors follow the same pattern: problem, historical solutions, relevant biblical teaching, doctrinal development, defense in the face of contrary positions, application to life situations. Central to this process is the authors’ quasi-scientific method of testing theological hypotheses. The correct theological formulation is the one that explains the greatest amount of biblical data.

Whereas some may find this approach unusual, for me it was an “old friend.” Reading the book took me back to my student days at Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary in the mid-1970s. The publication of this first installment of a projected three-volume series indicates that the “Denver theology” is now taking definitive, printed form.

In Volume I the authors apply their approach to prolegomena and the doctrine of God. Most evangelicals will find few surprises here. Lewis and Demarest are uncompromisingly committed to revelation as primarily, if not solely, propositional. Therefore, they find strict inerrancy not only doctrinally correct, but also essential to the theological task. Part two contains a basically traditional description of the doctrine of God, centering on God’s attributes as mediating actual knowledge of the divine essence.

There is much to commend in this volume. Lewis and Demarest are strong advocates of the theological enterprise, being convinced that theology makes a profound difference in life. Their summaries of historical positions and of the relevant biblical data provide a wealth of information. The discussion of the Trinity is a high point, although the doctrine would have been better served by a greater emphasis on its historical development than on its supposed presence in the Bible. The authors also offer a plausible presentation of mild Calvinism.

Even though I share similar positions on certain major issues, the book left me with several of the same reservations I formulated in the classroom. The most significant of these center on the theological method and tone displayed in the work. Although promising in many ways, the method is simply inadequate. By working from a limited understanding of the nature of revelation, Lewis and Demarest make theology too rational, too traditional, and too easy. The reader comes away with a gnawing sense that the task has been oversimplified and the correct answers have too readily appeared.

In short, Integrative Theology will assist the convinced in remaining convinced. To this end it is a helpful addition to other similar works. Yet it may not spur students who want to find out not only the dangers to be avoided among the plurality of theological voices, but the lessons to be learned as well.

Book Briefs

Hostility With A Smile

Uncivil Religion, edited by Robert N. Bellah and Frederick E. Greenspahn (Crossroad, 235 pp.; $17.95, cloth).

Americans find it hard to imagine that anyone would kill for religion. We are tolerant. And yet, there are layers of incivility beneath the calm surface—tensions between Jews and Christians, Protestants and Catholics, liberals and conservatives, established and emerging groups. Uncivil Religion is an effort by 11 historians and sociologists to assess and understand these tensions.

Mark Noll’s essay, “Old Hostilities and New Strife,” uses two pairs of variables to explain recent Catholic-Protestant trends. First, differences concerning the historical conditioning of the Christian faith produce two modes, absolutist and historicist, which differ on whether Christianity should be fixed or developing. And second, the degree to which Christians have assimilated American values (either left or right) exposes another side of recent hostilities. From this analysis Noll describes three kinds of Protestants and Catholics: “old,” “new,” and “Americanist,” and the types of conflicts that have emerged from these differences.

George Marsden’s essay, “A Case of the Excluded Middle,” probes conservative-liberal tensions in the creation versus evolution conflict. He attributes belief in “scientific creationism” to a scientistic or precisionist view of Scripture inherited from millenarianism and Protestant scholasticism. The strength of creationism in the South is traced to North-South tensions that have their historic roots in the slavery controversy. The essay is a fine piece of historical detective work. It, of course, does not decide who is right, but it sheds light on why, when the leaders of early fundamentalism adopted mediating positions on evolution, opposition to all biological evolution has become a test of faith in some circles.

Methodists: Betrayed Or Rekindling?

The Betrayal of the Church, by Edmund W. Robb and Julia Robb (Crossway, 296 pp; $8.95, paper), and Rekindling the Flame, by William H. Willimon and Robert L. Wilson (Abingdon, 127 pp.; $9.95, cloth).

These two titles show something of the conservative-moderate tensions in the United Methodist Church. The Robbs provide a case study in the combination of theological critique and Americanist values, in this case adherence to democratic capitalism. Their opposition to the Religious Left, buttressed by scores of footnotes, is presented as a charge that the mainline churches have abandoned the gospel. They may have done so, but it confuses the argument to treat political and economic issues as though they were theological issues. If the churches were supporting democratic capitalism, would the Robbs object?

Willimon and Wilson, on the other hand, provide strategies to revitalize the church. Their primary call is to “recover the purpose of the church, reaffirm the Wesleyan heritage.” They see the purpose of the church as “formation of a visible people of God” (Matt. 28:19). The unique aspects of the Wesleyan heritage that they support are: the experience of grace as central to the gospel, Christian formation as the central purpose of the church, and the gospel preached and lived before all.

They urge the church to avoid commitment to what Noll (in the book reviewed above) calls Americanist values, either Right or Left, and point to the confusion that commitment has caused in the church. The book includes several specific proposals: serve the church instead of the clergy, demand leaders instead of managers, abolish minimum salaries for clergy (!), insist that clergy teach in the parish, simplify local church structure, and trust the laity.

Something You’re Not

Becoming Anabaptist, by J. Denny Weaver (Herald Press, 174 pp.; $14.95, paper).

In his concluding essay for Uncivil Religion, Robert N. Bellah says, “In order for me to know who I am I need to know who I am not. I am not you.” In this book, J. Denny Weaver says (to turn it around), “I’m an Anabaptist. And you’re not.” What is an Anabaptist? How did they arise? Why is it important?

Using recent historiography, Weaver emphasizes the geographical and theological diversity of early Anabaptism. Three of the five chapters in the book trace Swiss, South German and Moravian, and Low Country origins. A good set of maps, correlating sixteenth-century locations with modern ones, would have made this history even more serviceable. This is especially important when geography contributed to the varied expressions of Anabaptism.

Out of this diversity emerged the basic principles that the author urges on the heirs of the “believers church” tradition: Jesus as the norm of ethical conduct, the church as a community and a fellowship, and nonviolence as the foundation of social relations. He further notes that these themes are increasingly found outside traditional Anabaptist, Mennonite circles.

One of the places where Anabaptist principles are found is among social activists in the evangelical Left and center-Left. As an aid to understanding the perspective of these movements, Weaver’s study is invaluable.

“Fable Of The Ox” And Other Resources

Ulrich Zwingli: Early Writings, edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson (Labyrinth Press, 299 pp.; $15.95, paper) and The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren (Volume 1), translated and edited by the Hutterian Brethren (Plough Publishing House, 887 pp.; $36.00, cloth).

These two volumes provide an opportunity to read some of the sources used by J. Denny Weaver. Zwingli was a key figure in the Swiss movement, and Jakob Hutter a leader in Moravia. The Zwingli volume contains the first life of the Reformer to be written, from 1532, along with his “Fable of the Ox” (about the pope and other leaders), and some early pieces on Lenten fasting, marriage of priests, and the church tithe.

Hutterites provide models of living the Christian life under persecution and mistreatment. The Chronicle follows events—many of faithfulness under martyrdom—from 1525 to 1665, primarily in the Swiss Tirol and in Moravia/Slovakia. It serves to flesh out Weaver’s account of Moravian Anabaptism.

Book Briefs by Larry Sibley, who teaches practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

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