Book Briefs: October 22, 1990

The Gospel According To Updike Et Al.

Incarnation: Contemporary Writers on the New Testament, edited by Alfred Corn (Viking, 361 pp.; $19.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Philip Yancey.

In this day of Christian bookstores, Christian school systems, Christian radio stations, Christian publishers, and even Christian Yellow Pages, it is tempting to conclude that America is polarizing into two parallel civilizations. Do any Christians read Scott Turow, let alone Saul Bellow or Tom Wolfe? Do any ordinary suburban pagans read the megasellers by Swindoll and Dobson? For that matter, do any nonevangelicals ever read the Bible?

That last question bothered poet and critic Alfred Corn. He worried that fundamentalists, who claim to read the Bible all the time, act as if they don’t read it enough; meanwhile, the general public grows increasingly ignorant about the book that serves as “the cornerstone of our customs, our laws, our literature and art, our family structure, and our notions of romantic love.”

Following the successful model of the book Congregation, in which various Jewish writers commented on each book of the Old Testament, Corn solicited short essays on New Testament books from 23 distinguished American writers. Most of them do not bow to the scriptural authority claimed by the New Testament, but rather circle around it, commenting on the texts with familiarity, respect, and even reverence.

Two of the pairings are simply travesties. Novelist David Plante devoted his entire essay on Romans to reliving the repressed sexuality of his Catholic childhood. As a persecuted minority, homosexuals may look with disfavor on Paul’s pronouncements in chapter 1—but, really, is that the only issue worthy of comment in Paul’s masterful treatise of theology? In another mismatch, one of the two Jewish writers (Anthony Hecht) drew the contentious Letter to the Galatians, with a predictably defensive response.

Other assignments were strokes of genius. Who better to comment on 1 Corinthians than Frederick Buechner, the Presbyterian minister whose novels are populated by precisely the kind of ornery lechers who stirred up the church in Corinth? As for Revelation, why not offer it to John Hersey, a missionary kid who made his reputation writing about Hiroshima, our century’s dress rehearsal for the Apocalypse? (That gambit failed: Hersey has no stomach for Revelation and wishes it had flunked the test of canonicity.)

The success of individual essays in this book depends on the delicate blending of personal autobiography with enlightening commentary on the biblical book. As might be expected, the novelists and poets succeed best with the former. Essays such as those by Rita Dove, Annie Dillard, John Updike, Alfred Corn, Michael Malone, and Marina Warner poignantly reveal moments of religious epiphany. Many contributors felt transcendental longing as children; many of them still feel it.

One surprise, for me, was that traditional obstacles to belief do not seem to deter these writers. No one brought up the problem of pain. Nor did supernaturalism pose any great barrier. One gets the impression that even such literary luminaries as Mary Gordon, Amy Clampitt, and Marilynne Robinson would have little hesitation signing on to the Nicene Creed.

On the other hand, perceived New Testament prejudice against women and against Jews constitutes a major problem. In general, these authors admire Jesus, but find Paul much harder to swallow. Specific doctrines like Hell or the Second Coming may cause some consternation, but not nearly as much as the question that ought to concern all of us: Why doesn’t the church more closely match the ideals the New Testament sets forth? More bluntly: Why don’t Christians look more like Christ?

Even Merer Christianity

No book by such a menagerie of writers can present anything resembling a coherent approach to the New Testament. It is not meant to. For the unbeliever, or biblical novice, Incarnation offers a kaleidoscopic glimpse of sacred writings by those friendly toward, but not necessarily committed to, faith. For the Christian more accustomed to reading biblical commentary by John Stott or William Barclay, it offers a series of small, fine observations on “even merer Christianity” from poets and novelists who excel at noticing what may elude the rest of us. Consider the following sampling:

John Updike on Jesus: “He is the new wine, and of all the Gospel writers Matthew takes the most trouble to decant him from the old skin.”

Mary Gordon on the Gadarene devils: “Better to be embodied in a pig than to be bodiless.”

Reynolds Price on the Gospel of John: “In all the mountain ranges of commentary—the all but endless attempts to explain John’s dislocations, his stops and jolting starts, his glaring clarities and sudden fogs—I have never met with an intelligent attempt to see it as an old man’s book. Yet an arresting case can be made for its being the product of a large but aging mind, a mind at hurried final work on the scenes and words of its distant youth—now precise and lucid, now vague and elliptical, all its procedures screened through the thought of intervening years.”

Frederick Buechner on Corinth: “They were in fact Christ’s body, as Paul wrote to them here in one of his most enduring metaphors—Christ’s eyes, ears, hands—but the way they were carrying on, that could only leave Christ bloodshot, ass-eared, all thumbs, to carry on God’s work in a fallen world.”

Rita Dove on the Damascus Road conversion: “Saul was terrified because the eyes that had studied the Law and looked calmly on at the slaying of another man had for the first time failed their owner.”

Michael Malone on James: “James takes two of these witnesses—Abraham, the most revered of Hebrew patriarchs, and Rahab, a Gentile, a woman, a harlot—two extremes, as if to say again there can be no respect of persons—to show how faith is completed by works.”

Marilynne Robinson on the church: “It is as true of Christendom as of humankind that its fall came so briskly on the heels of its creation as to make the two events seem like one.”

And, finally, Larry Woiwode on inspiration: “For me, a writer, aware of how much more complex each story or book grows with each sentence added, it was the power of these patterns and structure in Scripture, and their ability to interlock with one another through as many levels as I could hold in my mind, that convinced me that the Bible couldn’t possibly be the creation of a man, or any number of men, and certainly not the product of separate men divided by centuries. It was of another world: supernatural.”

Less Than Certain

The Sunnier Side of Doubt, by Alister E. McGrath (Zondervan, 160 pp.; $7.95, paper). Reviewed by Michael G. Maudlin.

By the look of things, Alister McGrath is a hyperactive scholar. Not only does he have a degree in theology, he has a doctorate in molecular biology as well. Of the dozen or so books he has in print, some should be clearly stamped “For Scholars Only,” while some deal with basic issues of the Christian faith for new or young Christians, with the rest falling somewhere between these poles. To top it all off, he teaches at Oxford and has yet to hit the ripe old age of 40.

This present volume is one of his popular treatments, and the subject is doubt. After defining the genus, he tackles all the species: Doubts about the gospel (e.g., “The gospel seems to have little effect on my friends”), about yourself (e.g., “I’m not sure I’m a Christian”), about Jesus (e.g., “Did Christians get Jesus wrong?”), and about God (e.g., “Is God really there?”). In all these areas, the advice is wise, clear, balanced, and biblical.

One problem in having an academician handle the question of doubt is that you receive an academic answer. While the treatment is scrupulously reasoned, some of the existential dimensions of the issue are either ignored or dismissed. For instance, the reader is told repeatedly not to trust emotions, as if the feelings Christians experience during worship or prayer contribute nothing to the subject. Nevertheless, if someone is struggling with doubts, no matter what species, The Sunnier Side of Doubt is an excellent first resource to turn to.

Dusting Off The Old Hymnal

The Worshiping Church, edited by Donald P. Hustad (Hope, 845 selections; $9.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Carol R. Thiessen.

Every so often a hymnal appears that breaks fresh ground in its appeal both to where the singing church has been and where it appears to be going. Hope Publishing Company’s 1954 Worship and Service Hymnal was such a book as it found its way into thousands of churches and worship assemblies. Hope is gambling that its latest endeavor will follow the same pattern.

Unveiled at a conference on worship last July, The Worshiping Church, with its 845 selections, ventures into territory unfamiliar to many traditional evangelical congregations, at the same time acknowledging both past and present preferences. Editor Donald P. Hustad, senior professor of music at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, headed a committee of 26 that labored for six years on the first completely retooled hymnal in Hope’s long history of music publishing.

Believing evangelicals are on the verge of renewal in their worship practices, Hustad has characterized the compilation as offering congregations a “broad spectrum of musical expression that is comparable to that of the first-century church, which sang ‘psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.’ ” A major section of the new book is devoted to “Psalms and Canticles,” and many other selections are paraphrases of Scripture.

The new book is carefully organized. The major categories (God, God’s Word, God’s World, God’s People) are broken into subdivisions (under “God,” for example, one section is devoted to each member of the Trinity), and each subdivision is divided further into specific categories. Responsive readings, poetry, prayers, and responses have all been moved from the back of the book and interspersed among the hymns. Service planners will thus find it relatively easy to locate a variety of worship elements on particular or related themes. (Under “God in Society,” for example, is a section on “Art, Science, Education,” which includes, among other things, a prayer for the dedication of a new organ or other instrument.)

Those worship elements also provide much more congregational involvement than in previous Hope hymnals. Added to traditional responsive readings are participative prayers, poetry—even refrains to be sung as responses. (One example is a phrase out of the spiritual “Yes, He Did” that is matched with the first 11 verses of Psalm 40.) There is also a wealth of the popular new praise and worship material already being sung in countless churches, and descants have been added to a number of familiar hymns providing the opportunity to give a lift to a final stanza. Numerous songs that can be sung as rounds are also included.

Some old hymn tunes have been revived with new texts, as with Timothy Dudley-Smith’s Easter text set to a 1623 Orlando Gibbons melody (“All Shall Be Well”). Conversely, some older texts appear with new, usually more appropriate, settings; “I Will Sing the Wondrous Story” is now set to a 1988 arrangement of the tune Cecelia, for example.

Many churchgoers are surprised to discover a wealth of new hymnody has been developed over the past 20 or so years. Textually and musically, scores of these are on a par with the well-known and oft-sung classical hymns we have known from childhood. Many of them that appear in The Worshiping Church are deserving of an equal place in history. Congregations unwilling to try new hymns will be the poorer for not discovering the richness of this new material. British writers such as Brian Wren and Bishop Dudley-Smith, Canadian Margaret Clarkson, and Americans Brian Jeffrey Leach and Jane Parker Huber are but a few among those whose new hymns reveal biblical truth in contemporary language and settings. Even jazz musician Dave Brubeck has an entry, “God’s Love Made Visible,” included in the section on Christ’s birth, and complete with scoring for rhythm (claves and maracas). And there is an eminently singable new Gloria Patri by John F. Erickson.

No hymnal, of course, is perfect. The type in this one seems a bit crowded when compared with its predecessor, Hymns for the Living Church, and “amens” are no longer optional: they’re gone. Retaining the rich theology of the second verse of Adeste Fideles—“O Come, All Ye Faithful”—which most translators have related to the Nicene Creed, and missing from most evangelical hymnals—is commendable, but one wishes the language hadn’t been tampered with. (Other choices were surely made on the basis of theology: excluding the fourth verse of “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” will now prevent unthinking congregations from extolling the universalism implicit in the idea of the “Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man” characterized by that verse—which most evangelicals would deny they believed.)

Also, though the addition of many hymn texts appearing as poetry is clearly a plus, referencing tunes in a different location will surely make them little used for singing.

“Short services”—related music and Scripture for use as worship units—are weaker here than in Word’s Hymnal for Worship and Celebration, and less clearly laid out. An accompanist’s book (to be published later) that will add the musical bridges and key-change modulations will help. Books for brass accompaniment and handbells are also planned, but will disappoint music directors who want full orchestra parts. Also planned is a worship leader’s book, which will give aids to worship and background on particular hymns.

While in some ways this hymnal is for the adventuresome, Hustad’s committee did not slight the songs that always appear on lists of “all-time favorites”—songs and hymns whose omission would probably mean instant rejection of the book by congregations unwilling to give up the sloppy theology, sentimentality, and just plain poor texts and tunes they grew up with and to which they are emotionally attached.

Though the editors did neutralize sexist language in places where it could be done easily, they are to be commended for not perpetuating some of the silliness that a few newer hymnals have introduced. “Good Christian souls, rejoice” rolls off the tongue every bit as easily as “Good Christian men, rejoice,” but most congregations would have trouble singing Child in reference to Jesus rather than Son as some hymns have lately been recast. Also to its credit, Hustad’s committee opted to drop capitalization of words that begin a second phrase of a line, which may help congregations sing the sense of a line and not interrupt its thought.

In all, The Worshiping Church is a fine book and deserves wide usage. It can make a great contribution to congregations willing to be lured away from a more limited repertoire and challenged to make many elements of their worship more meaningfully God-directed.

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