Book Briefs: May 27, 1991

The Battle for the Resurrection, by Norman L. Geisler (Nelson, xxi + 224 pp.; $10.95, paper); From Grave to Glory: Resurrection in the New Testament, by Murray J. Harris (Zondervan, xxviii + 493 pp.; $16.95, paper). Reviewed by John G. Stackhouse, Jr., who teaches in the Department of Religion at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.

Norman Geisler of Liberty University believes he is engaged in another important doctrinal battle, another crusade to protect orthodoxy from a terrible error spreading within its fortress of truth. Lest anyone mistake this language for a caricature of Geisler’s own, let us refer to his opening sentences: “There is a trojan horse inside the evangelical camp. A new battle has broken out, and the enemy is on the inside, not the outside. In fact, the enemy has secretly placed dynamite at the evangelical foundation which supports the whole superstructure of Christian truth.”

What is this tremendous threat and who are the furtive enemies that pose it? Would you believe that the “threat” is a view of the Resurrection only slightly different from Geisler’s own and that the perpetrators are those notorious subverters of orthodoxy, Murray Harris and his colleagues at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School?

The utter preposterousness of Geisler’s charges is borne out abundantly as one examines these two books. Geisler’s is a response to two allegedly unorthodox books by Harris on the Resurrection, and Harris’s is a defense of his position against Geisler’s attack of several years’ standing upon him, his school, and the Evangelical Free Church of America denomination that “tolerates” his “errors.”

The Stratosphere Of Speculation

Geisler’s book mixes a few germane comments and questions regarding Harris’s views with histrionic prose of the sort quoted above, irrelevancies (such as a whole chapter devoted to an assortment of non-Christians who do not believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ—an attempt at guilt by association?), and—most significant—misrepresentations of Harris’s views and of Geisler’s own views.

It comes down to this: Geisler wants Harris to answer with yes or no the following question: “Do you believe Christ rose from the dead in the same material body of flesh and bones in which He died?” Geisler claims to have polled some 1,200 members of the Evangelical Theological Society and received 300 replies, of which almost 90 percent said yes to this question.

Harris’s book shows in almost excessive detail that the correct answer to this question mal posée is “yes and no.” Harris asserts that there is significant continuity between Jesus’ pre- and post-resurrection bodies, and thus he robustly defends the historic belief of the church in Christ’s bodily resurrection. On the other hand, Harris goes on to show (in the spirit of 1 Cor. 15:35–57) that Christ’s resurrection body is different in some respects from the body he had before. (For example, the new body is immortal; it is capable of appearing and disappearing; it apparently does not need food.) Not everyone will agree with all the differences Harris lists, but the general point is well taken. The first section of this book is precisely the sort of meticulous, conservative scholarship one would expect from the former warden of Tyndale House, Cambridge.

Geisler wants Harris to agree with the simplistic answer of the ETS majority and castigates him for his biblically nuanced answer. Yet Geisler devotes chapter 7 of his book to discussing various ways in which Christ’s resurrection body was “supernatural” (a highly dubious rendering of the Greek word pneumatikon in 1 Cor. 15:44), which presents the reader with this inescapable conclusion: Norman Geisler himself does not believe that “Christ rose from the dead in the same material body of flesh and bones in which He died,” but rather that Christ arose in a transformed body—precisely what the church has believed and what Murray Harris has taught. The differences between Geisler and Harris, then, are way above the foundational levels of belief or disbelief in the bodily resurrection of our Lord and up in the stratosphere of speculation on the basis of slim and difficult biblical data.

What is at stake here, then, is not orthodox belief in the Resurrection, and evangelical pastors and scholars can safely ignore this part of the issue. What really is at stake, however, is the nature of evangelical theology in America.

How can Norman Geisler continue to publish such poor scholarship in evangelical journals and with evangelical publishing houses? Why should indubitably conservative institutions like Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and the Evangelical Free Church and responsible scholars like Murray Harris have to devote precious time and effort to countering such specious charges? With huge items begging for serious evangelical attention on the contemporary theological agenda, how dare evangelicals so misuse their theological resources on such nonissues?

The first section of Murray Harris’s book is a worthy introduction to the Resurrection and should be valued as such; the second section, the response to Geisler, occasionally descends to picking nits—a sad example of how this sort of meaningless controversy can demean all who engage in it. Geisler promises yet another book on this subject. On the basis of the present work, evangelicals can send publishers a clear message by letting the forthcoming one sit on bookstore shelves.

Evangelical theology cannot advance in a spirit of fear, with scholars attempting to probe mysteries while looking over their shoulders at self-appointed heresy hunters. Responsible theology trusts in God and his Word and risks trying something new with the hope that reasonable dialogue with other believers will ultimately correct mistakes and confirm fresh insights. Geisler and his supporters need to look at what contribution they are making and at what contribution they can make to the larger conversation.

God On The Campaign Trail

Under God: Religion and American Politics, by Garry Wills (Simon and Schuster, 442 pp.; $24.95, hardback). Reviewed by Randall Balmer, who teaches religion at Columbia University and is the author of Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory (Oxford).

On the face of it, there would appear to be little reason to recall the presidential election of 1988, featuring as it did two phlegmatic, uninspiring candidates, precious little substance, and a smarmy advertising campaign that teetered on the brink of racism. Indeed, a cynic might argue that the only reasonable solace to be derived from that excruciating campaign—namely, that it finally and mercifully ended—is tempered by the fact that we will face another such spectacle soon.

Garry Wills, whose portfolio ranges from classics scholar and university professor to journalist and political commentator, seems to disagree about the utility of examining the political deeds of 1988. In Under God he uses the campaign as a point of departure for an extended, discursive essay on America’s persistent religiosity and, in the process, comes close to fashioning the proverbial silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Under God opens with a general discussion of the importance of religion in American life, followed by a masterly analysis of the Gary Hart saga. Hart at first denied his liaison with Donna Rice, thereby implicitly accepting the immorality of adultery. Later, however, as the evidence mounted against him, he changed his defense several times—the media had pried improperly into his private life; personal morality was irrelevant to the task of governing—all the while refusing to elaborate about his Nazarene upbringing and thereby undermining whatever credibility he had. “[Hart] inadvertently made himself a powerful symbol of the problem presented by a secular politics cut off from its past moral vocabulary,” Wills writes. “He was not merely inventing himself, moment by moment, but improvising an entire political morality without any help from traditional forms of ethical and religious discourse.”

Wills’s analyses of other presidential candidates may not be so trenchant, but they are surely compelling. The author assesses Michael Dukakis, whom he describes as “the first truly secular candidate we had for the presidency,” against the background of Greek tragedy and finds that Dukakis was utterly tone deaf on matters of religion. Many of the “Republican dirty tricks,” Wills says, “relied on religion, a force he did not even know was in play.”

George Bush, on the other hand, understood the game, having learned it at the feet of Ronald Reagan. This blue-blooded Episcopalian assiduously courted the televangelists (making several forays to Lynchburg and Heritage U.S.A. long before the 1988 campaign), and he even marketed himself, improbably, as born again (“I’m not quite sure what it means, but …”).

Wills does not suggest that sensitivity to religion spelled the difference in the campaign, but his analysis of the candidates vindicates his claim about the importance of religion in American political culture. His frequent historical digressions, moreover, reinforce that claim and add a texture to the book that makes it transcend mere political punditry.

Not infrequently, however, the book suffers from poor organization and a lack of structure. In a chapter on Jesse Jackson’s relationship with Dukakis, for instance, Wills delivers a detailed and withering critique of Robert Bork, effectively demolishing the judge’s pretense of being a “moderate” during his ill-fated Senate hearings—but the salvo has little to do with the chapter itself.

On other matters the author’s judgments are wry and even idiosyncratic. Wills examines the teaching (and the pretensions) of R. B. Thieme, Marilyn Quayle’s favorite theologian, and remarks: “I cannot judge his (or anybody’s) Hebrew; but if it is no better than his Greek, it is a sham.” Pat Robertson faced his share of credibility problems during the campaign—misrepresenting his educational background, fudging his date of marriage in an apparent attempt to conceal the fact that his child was conceived out of wedlock—but Wills takes Robertson to task for violating the “Southern code of battle” when his father, then a U.S. senator, arranged to shield him from combat during the Korean War.

Throughout, Wills displays his considerable analytical skills and his eye for irony. He credits Operation Rescue’s Randall Terry with being more consistent with his religious beliefs in opposing abortion than is Mario Cuomo in his support for choice. Wills also notes that in the abortion debate, the “two groups most supportive of full human rights for the fetus”—Roman Catholics and fundamentalists—“are also the two which deny women full access to church office.”

Although Wills is sometimes too eager to demonstrate his own erudition, his intellectual dexterity with primary sources—from Augustine to Francis Schaeffer, from Thomas Jefferson to Robert Bork—is beyond reproach. Under God contains flashes of insight and brilliance. Its disjointed character ultimately renders the whole something less than the sum of its parts, but it is nevertheless a thoughtful and a thought-provoking treatment of the inextricable connection between religion and American politics.

The Coloring Of Theology

Learning About Theology from the Third World, by William Dyrness (Zondervan, 221 pp.; $12.95, paper). Reviewed by Terry C. Muck, associate professor of comparative religion, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and author of Alien Gods on American Turf (Victor).

When William Dyrness, dean of the School of Theology at Fuller Seminary, tells us that there are more Christians in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (825 million) than there are in Europe and the United States (595 million), he intends to do more than give us an attention-getting tidbit to bandy about at coffee klatches.

This particular fact, Dyrness argues, will determine what Christian theology becomes in the next quarter-century. Theologians who learn to do theology cross culturally will steal the stage from strictly Western-oriented scholars.

This development will not be easy, however. Dyrness outlines the essentials of Christian faith that we dare not jettison: the uniqueness and exclusiveness of Jesus Christ and his work, the special status of Scripture as Good News, and the importance of our particular history, the story of God’s working in the ancient Middle East.

But the strength of Dyrness’s book is that instead of focusing on the risks and dangers of our inevitable interaction with the Third World (and indigenous, non-Christian thought forms), he talks mostly about the great opportunities this interaction presents to us.

For Dyrness, the interaction must begin with a clear understanding of just what this “contextualization” (in both Third World and Western cultures) of the Good News means: It does not mean recasting the content of the gospel to fit the needs of the culture. It does not mean so focusing on a practical implication of biblical teaching—such as love, liberation, justice, or judgment—that either the rest of Scripture or the real needs of a particular culture are ignored. It does not mean decoding the Scriptures into transcultural principles and encoding those principles into each new culture we encounter.

Claiming that “it is Scripture, and not its ‘message’ that is finally transcultural,” Dyrness argues for an interactional model of contextualization that takes both Scripture and culture into account. The peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America will find truths in Scripture that will not only make the Christian faith a living reality for them, but will deepen other cultures’ (including our own) understandings of the whole gospel.

This interaction of Scripture and culture can lead to two developments: First, indigenous cultural forms can be used to tease out implications of Scripture otherwise downplayed or even unseen by other cultures. For example, Dyrness notes that traditional African thinking sees the order of life more as a “shout for joy” than a cry for deliverance (the traditional Western understanding of the human predicament). That kind of celebratory approach to life is not foreign to Scripture—indeed, it is integral to it. But it has often taken too much of a back seat to lamentation.

Second, this close interaction of Scripture and culture can also point out the uniqueness of the Good News that can in turn address lacunae in traditional cultural forms. In the African context, for example, “sin” is not seen as a wholesale pattern of fallenness but more as a series of mistakes and disruptions in the order of life. Correction of “sin,” then, requires a seemingly endless series of sacrifices and propitiations. In such a system, the gospel message of sin as a condition that can be addressed through the one-time, atoning work of Jesus Christ comes across as Good News indeed.

Dyrness, in dealing with the common cultural features of Africa, Asia, and Latin America in separate chapters, points up scores of insights into gospel/culture interactions that come across as curtain-lifting previews of the shapes theology might take in the years to come.

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