Page 5590 – Christianity Today (2024)

It lacked the splash of a National Religious Broadcasters convention. But last month’s two-day consultation, “The Electronic Church,” was not intended as a promotion for today’s high technology, higher budgeted, religious broadcasting.

Most of the 250 participants, who represented mainstream Protestant and Roman Catholic communications and church offices, suspected the electronic church is draining away members to conservative churches, and attracting dollars that might otherwise go into church collection plates. In a day of continuing membership declines in the traditional churches, both are causes for concern.

Conference sponsors, the National Council of Churches and the U.S. Catholic Conference, have been among the most vocal skeptics of the value and the function of radio-TV preachers. They say the electronic church preaches a cheap, simplistic gospel and avoids issues. The critics say the electronic church makes converts, but doesn’t follow them up, and encourages viewers to sit by the TV, rather than in church.

Most of these concerns surfaced at some point during the recent meeting at New York University. William Fore, NCC communications officer, helped plan the conference so that the electronic church debate would be put into its “larger context.” Speakers discussed the psychological, sociological, spiritual, and legal aspects of the electronic church. And, to their credit, conference sponsors invited several speakers from outside their own camp: Christian Broadcasting Network president Pat Robertson, TV preacher Robert Schuller, and NRB executive secretary Ben Armstrong. (Armstrong said he felt “outnumbered” as one of only several conservative evangelicals at the meeting; but he acknowledged that liberals were just as rare among the larger crowd of 2,000 at the January NRB annual meeting.)

The conference was not intended as a face-off between mainstream groups and conservative evangelicals, said Fore. However, its structure made inevitable “we-they” comparisons: speakers from opposing viewpoints had the opportunity for rebuttal.

Robertson, in a dinner address, compared the electronic church to the early Wesleyan movement. Regarded as controversial and unconventional, the movement became a success because it fulfilled needs not met in the established church, said Robertson. A United Methodist professor and former dean of Yale Divinity School, Colin Williams, who was scheduled as “reactor” to Robertson, said the comparison to Wesleyanism was inappropriate. John Wesley had emphasized bringing new converts into Christian communities for nurture: “I do not find that same insistence in the electronic church,” Williams said.

(In a telephone interview, CBN marketing specialist John Roos rebutted the argument that the TV preachers weaken the local church. In CBN audience surveys, 34 percent say they have become more involved in the local church as a result of watching CBN, while only 2 percent say they have gotten less involved through watching CBN. ROOS said CBN reaches into 350,000 households daily: 65 percent of the viewers are women, average age is 49, 15 percent are Baptists, and Roman Catholics and Assemblies of God each comprise 11 percent of the audience.)

Schuller criticized the “they-against-us” mentality in a report by psychologist Richard Liebert. Liebert had criticized the high-powered fund-raising techniques of the electronic church, and predicted that one day it will become a denomination unto itself. Schuller said he, himself, is a “main liner,” from the Reformed Church of America. He also disagreed with the term “electronic church”: Religious News Service quoted him as saying that his weekly television program, “Hour of Power,” is “not a church, and I’m the first to say that.”

Liebert touched upon perhaps the most crucial issue to conference attenders: whether religious broadcasters should buy air time from local stations, or ask to receive it free as public interest programming.

Correction

Geoffrey J. Paxton should have been identified as the former president of Queensland Bible Institute in Brisbane, Australia (Feb. 3 issue, p. 66). In the same article, the correct name for the husband of Seventh-day Adventist founder Ellen G. White is James White.

Most of the 900 programmers belonging to NRB buy their air time. These mostly Protestant, evangelical, fundamentalist, and charismatic preachers preach conservative doctrine and politics and buy local station air time with dollars from loyal supporters. The main-line Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish broadcasters, however, have traditionally relied on free time for their nonsectarian programs, which usually are aired on Sunday morning and produced with the commercial networks.

Local stations are increasingly unwilling to provide free religious programming when they can get paid for it. More than 92 percent of all religious programming today is paid for, said Fore of the NCC, whereas 10 years ago only 53 percent was paid religious programming. Psychologist Liebert said the survival of the main-line variety of religious programming requires that mainstream groups buy radio and TV time “to meet the competition head-on.”

Two years ago, the NCC Governing Board bent its hard-line stand against purchase of air time. The board said stations still have a primary obligation to provide free time for religious broadcasting, but that groups that “cannot get on the air otherwise” can buy time. Fore said the NCC itself still has not purchased radio and TV time. (In cooperation with Roman Catholic and Jewish groups, the NCC has television programs on the three major networks: “Directions,” on ABC; “For Our Time,” on CBS; and once-monthly, hour-long specials on NBC.)

The courts have made clear that stations hold the airwaves in the public trust, and have a responsibility to provide free public interest and religious programming, claimed Fore. “The move of electronic evangelists to buy more and more time will mean the churches of America will pay very, very dearly to stations for something they have the right to have free,” said Fore.

The NRB’s Armstrong acknowledges that religious broadcasting has become free enterprise, and says he is glad of it. The NRB was formed in 1944 by those seeking the right to buy air time, he said. The major networks had been providing air time mostly to liberal broadcasters, such as the old Federal Council of Churches, Armstrong said, and, in the process, stifling conservative and fundamentalist voices.

“The liberal groups are apprehensive about the electric church because we seem to be succeeding,” said Armstrong. (Time Magazine recently listed annual broadcasting revenues for the top TV preachers: Jim Bakker of the PTL Club, $51 million; Robertson, $47 million; Jerry Falwell, $46 million; Rex Humbard, $25 million; Jimmy Swaggart, $20 million; and Robert Schuller, $10 million.)

At the New York meeting (which he said he helped plan, by persuading Robertson to come), Armstrong supported deregulation of the broadcasting industry. Last September the Federal Communications Commission proposed deregulation of the nation’s 8,400 radio stations. The proposal would drop limits on radio advertising time, and requirements that stations have public affairs programming, perform surveys to determine community needs, and keep program logs. Armstrong and the NRB board have said the proposal would decrease government paperwork and regulation, rather than public interest programming.

But most spokesmen in New York argued that deregulation would abolish most public service and minority interest programming, neither of which is as popular or as profitable as music or general interest programming. The U.S. Catholic Conference and the United Church of Christ both have organized letter writing campaigns against deregulation. Because of the controversy, the FCC has extended for two months the period for public comment on the proposal.

Armstrong said the conservative broadcasters in general want less government regulation, while mainstream groups want more. The liberals “believe they know what the public needs” and want the government to require such programming, said Armstrong.

Fore and others argue that conservative radio-TV preachers by necessity speak only to please their listeners. The electronic church doesn’t really speak to tough issues, said Fore: “You don’t dare offend your audience, or the funds and audience will drop off.”

JOHN MAUST

Personalia

College appointments: Purdue University professor Donald Felker was named president of 1,100-student Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. A Geneva graduate, Felker succeeds the retiring president of 24 years, Edwin C. Clarke. William C. Nelsen, presently the vice-president of Saint Olaf College, was appointed president of Augustana College (American Lutheran) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Ralph Phelps, Jr., president emeritus of Ouachita Baptist University (Ark.), is new president of Howard Payne University (Southern Baptist) in Brownwood, Texas.

Catholic charismatic leader Francis S. Macnu*tt recently informed superiors of plans to leave the priesthood to get married. Macnu*tt, who travels worldwide in a faith-healing ministry and speaks at charismatic gatherings, reportedly was warned that he faces excommunication from the church if he is married. The Catholic charismatic community for the most part has supported the church’s stand on a celibate priesthood.

More than 50 million adult Americans over age 18 are single, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. The bureau also states that there are nearly 20 million “nonfamily” households consisting of people living alone or with an unrelated person—a 66 percent increase since 1970.

While entrepreneurs have caught the vision—hawking singles’ portions in grocery stores, singles’ apartment complexes, and nightspots—the church has been slow to tap into this huge chunk of the population. But now, following the lead of several pioneer ministers to single adults, some churches and denominations are considering church-sponsored programs for single adults. Their belief is that the gospel offers far more to the unmarried—many of whom are lonely, alienated, or unchurched—than singles’ bars and lonely hearts clubs.

Some of the best known and most active leaders of single adult ministries met last month in Dallas, Texas, where they attended workshops and general sessions designed to study the problems and challenges of ministry to single adults. Since singles’ ministry was almost nonexistent until the last decade, the better-than-hoped-for turnout of more than 400 found the three-day conference helpful in terms of contacts and resource materials: the book and cassette tables did a brisker business than a Texas steakhouse.

The three-day conference was called SALT I, an appropriate name for those who consider that the nuclear family was a bomb in the 1970s and that, as a result, single adults will continue to proliferate through the 1980s. A one-year-old resource agency, SOLO Ministries of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, planned this Single Adult Leadership Training (SALT) as “the first national interdenominational conference to assist the church in more effectively ministering with single adults.”

Attenders focused on the peculiar situations of singleness: the young and never married, who feel trapped in a no man’s land between high school and young marrieds’ groups; the divorced, who may feel alienated from their churches and friends: and the widowed, bothered by grief and loneliness.

Participants at SALT I, many of whom attended to learn how to start and structure a single adults program, asked questions such as: Should groups be broken down according to age and marital experience? Are married couples and divorced persons qualified (or better qualified) as singles’ leaders? How can small churches get involved in a costly singles’ program? How can leaders build Christian commitment in a transient singles’ group—in which the annual turnover rate may exceed 60 percent?

The six SOLO Ministries staff members could offer suggestions out of their own experiences in working in local churches with single adults. The staff of SOLO Ministries, a division of SOLO Magazine, a bimonthly publication aimed at “Positive Christian Singles,” include:

• Doug Shaw, 31, SALT I coordinator, who directs a growing ministry to single adults at 5,000-member First United Methodist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a city with an estimated 60,000 single adults. Last year, when it became apparent that a second full-time staff member for single adults was needed, Shaw’s core group of 300 donated $15,000 in a single offering—more than enough for a one-year salary for an assistant to Shaw.

• Jim Smoke, of Tustin, California, an author and consultant. In 1974 he became single adults’ minister at Robert Schuller’s Garden Grove (Calif.) Community Church with 200 singles; there were 1,300 when he left four years later.

• Harold Ivan Smith, 32, the first general director for single adult ministries in the Church of the Nazarene, one of the few Protestant bodies with a coordinator for single adult programs (the Southern Baptists are another). Smith became interested in singles’ ministry after going through a painful divorce, and then finding few written Christian materials dealing with his situation.

• Jerry Jones, 28, publisher of SOLO magazine—originally a publication of Schuller’s Garden Grove church—has blended the inspirational with the practical: entertaining tips for singles, counsel for single parents, and advice on dating relationships. Magazine circulation has grown from 1,200 to 12,000 within the past year, said Jones.

The magazine’s sudden growth may be indicative of a coming, larger “single ministries” boom, said SALT I speakers. Smoke, a frequent speaker at singles and divorce recovery workshops, said the singles’ movement is becoming as strong as Youth for Christ was in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Next year he will teach a singles’ ministry course at Fuller Seminary, reportedly the first seminary-level program of its kind.

Some churches report phenomenal growth in single adult programs: 6,000-member Village Presbyterian Church in suburban Kansas City, for instance, has almost nightly events for singles, with an average attendance of 400 and an overall program impact on some 3,000 single adults in the area.

Speakers warned against placing emphasis on the “numbers game,” however. Britton Wood, who was one of the first full-time ministers to single adults when he was at Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas during the 1970s, said churches first should build caring relationships between the single adults they already have, then consider recruiting outsiders: “If singles begin to care for each other, growth will occur.”

Shaw, whose goal is building credibility for singles’ ministry in the local church, was concerned about “getting into a lot of hype.” He may have been referring to the sudden Christian growth industry of singleness: the pen pal clubs, tour groups, and newspapers aimed at Christian single adults.

Churches must face the hard issues of singleness, SALT I speakers agreed; conference leaders recognized that many people join singles groups for relationships with the opposite sex. In a conference address, Harold Smith said the church has been woefully silent on the subject of sexuality. The church must provide solid, biblical guidance to singles—some of whom are looking for an accommodation for their promiscuity. (Last year, Smith conducted a survey of 203 formerly married Christian adults in a large California church. He found that only 9 percent of the men and 27 percent of the women remained celibate after their divorces [see CT for May 25, 1979].)

However. Smith believes it is just as wrong for singles’ leaders to forbid dating relationships between group members, and ask them to regard each other only as “brothers and sisters in the Lord.” Repressed sexuality only increases the temptation for sexual sin when the single adult finally has a date, said Smith.

Marriage education courses are one answer to the spiraling divorce rates, said several SALT I speakers. Another problem, said single adults’ leader Bud Pearson of Garden Grove church, is divorced per sons who rush into a second marriage and find this second relationship also on the rocks. He is leading a counseling program geared to divorced persons who have remarried, and to the just-divorced. One singles’ leader said the church should discourage marriages that appear likely to fail: one SALT I speaker said, “I’m turning down about one wedding now for every wedding I do.”

Singles have greater resources and time for ministry than do many marrieds, conference speakers agreed. For that reason, singles should be placed in missions and church leadership positions. Dick Stafford, single adults’ minister at South Main Baptist Church in Houston, warned against singles becoming self-centered “in-groups.” His own single adults.’ program, which is called “Main Point” (“the main point is not whether you’re single or married, but whether you know Jesus Christ,” he explained), wants to start a church-planting ministry. The singles’ goal, after three years of work in an area, would be to leave behind a church building, enough funds for a pastor’s salary for one year, and a core of believers excited about building the church.

Along this line, SALT I leaders made clear they were not building a church for singles: “We’re the family of God, not the singles of God,” said Shaw. Suggestions for incorporating singles into the family-centered local church included intergenerational worship groups, families who will “adopt” singles into their homes, and the full participation of singles on church committees and in leadership posts.

But to get single adults fully involved in the church family, SALT I participants realized that singles first must be brought into contact with the church. At the expected SALT II conference next year, participants will explore new ways to attract single adults to the church.

They may also reaffirm the more traditional approaches. Quipped one knowing pastor: “We’ve never had a potluck dinner that failed.”

Social involvement

The Best Education at State—Bar None

The riot last month at New Mexico State Penitentiary left 33 inmates dead and $60 million in damages: a grim reminder of a need for rehabilitation among inmates in the nation’s potentially explosive prisons.

State Prison of Southern Michigan (SPSM), the largest walled prison in the world, was broken into this fall by a Christian liberal arts college education program. Nearby Spring Arbor College (Free Methodist) began offering 35 upper division classes at the prison. So far, about 200 of the 6,000 inmates are enrolled in the classes, which are taught by Spring Arbor faculty.

Located near Jackson, the prison is one of the most densely populated in the U.S. Only 14 miles and a brick wall separate it from Spring Arbor and the 1,000 “traditional” students enrolled there.

Spring Arbor got involved at the prison after learning that Wayne State University and John Wesley College programs at the prison were terminated last spring.

“This program is an excellent opportunity for an outreach ministry,” said Spring Arbor president Kenneth Coffman. “You will not find a larger concentration of needy individuals, and most of them will be returning to society. If we can make a difference in their lives, we are not only providing a service to them, but to society at large.”

To qualify for the program, inmates must have earned at least 62 hours of college credit from Jackson Community College, which also offers classes there. The program leads to a bachelor of arts degree, and majors are available in business, psychology, and social science.

Some classes, such as biblical history and literature, deal directly with Christianity. Others allow the teacher opportunity to share a Christian perspective on values, lifestyles, and social problems.

Faculty and staff members who teach at the prison say their presence is a witness in itself. Paul Nemecek, coordinator of the prison education program, said inmates say they can distinguish Spring Arbor faculty from other teachers at the prison because the former “put more into their classes and take more of a personal interest in their students.”

Many inmates have had bad experiences with authority figures, some of whom accept bribes and sell drugs. Said academic dean Alton Kurtz: “They [inmates] have little experience with people of integrity. We do not have to teach a Bible class for the inmates to recognize our Christian distinctives.”

Since Spring Arbor’s traditional curriculum and teaching approach is geared for students familiar with Scripture and the evangelical tradition, by necessity there have been efforts to adapt the program to the prison clientele. Many prisoners are Black Muslims and socialists, with a different world outlook.

Philosophy/religion professor Darrell Moore commented, “There are real problems of communication. We have a Christian value system, but many of them see Christianity as the worst oppressor of their society … some of them have a whole different value structure.”

Still, most parties involved—inmates, Spring Arbor faculty, and prison officials—are optimistic about the program’s potential. The classes are held in a give-and-take atmosphere. A goal is to offer the inmate students a holistic education, in which they integrate faith, learning, and living. One prisoner, in a letter to the Jackson Citizen Patriot, said education will help the inmates’ socialization process: “… there are many prisoners at SPSM who are socially retarded.”

Inmates who leave prison and are unable to find work usually end up behind bars again. With that in mind, the college is developing a career planning and placement program at the prison in an effort to decrease this return rate among its graduates.

Program coordinator Nemecek calls the corrections system “one of the greatest social problems of our time,” and doesn’t see himself as “changing the system.” By his involvement, however, he hopes to better the prisoners’ lot and, in so doing, be an “agent of redemption in our society.”

DAN RUNYON

The National Prayer Breakfast

President Carter Commends Prayer for Our Persecutors

“Spiritual growth depends partly on becoming more aware of others and praying for them,” said President Jimmy Carter at last month’s National Prayer Breakfast, held at the Washington Hilton. His audience of some 3,000 at the event, held annually since 1953, included many of the nation’s high and mighty in government, business, and labor.

“One of the most difficult things for us to do is to pray for those who hate us and persecute us,” he said. He urged his listeners to draw up a list of specific names as a guide for daily prayer. “It’s not easy; I force myself to pray for some persons,” said Carter. “Every day I pray for the Ayatollah Khomeini, for the kidnappers who hold the Americans, and for those who are held hostage in innocence.”

The prayer list, Carter added, should include thanking God for life’s distressing experiences, for these, too, are opportunities for spiritual growth.

Earlier, Republican Congressman Guy Vander Jagt of Michigan, the eloquent keynote speaker at the event, recalled how Carter at the 1979 breakfast had correctly predicted that religious events in the Middle East would be the big news story of the year. The legislator expressed hope that this year’s big stories would include the release of the American hostages in Iran and “a spiritual awakening here at home”—a remark that prompted enthusiastic applause.

Vander Jagt, a Yale Divinity School graduate who served as pastor of a United Presbyterian church in Michigan when he was still a teen-ager, recounted his futile quest at Yale “for the historical Christ.” The lawmaker said he finally made the same discovery as the apostle Paul, who likewise did not witness the historical event of the resurrection: “Christ liveth in me.… That’s where we must be; we must experience the resurrected Christ.” The crowd responded with a standing ovation.

Observers seemed agreed that except for brief mentions in formal prayers about the potential perils facing the nation, the breakfast meeting lacked an atmosphere of national crisis. After Carter spoke, participants held hands at their tables while Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, Chief of Naval Operations, delivered the final prayer. He called on God to “use us as instruments of your power to bring solutions to the world’s perplexing problems,” and then Congressman Bill Hefner of North Carolina led the gathering in singing the chorus, “Alleluia.”

(Similar prayer breakfasts were held simultaneously at the Pentagon, where hundreds gathered, and at various military installations throughout the world.)

Following the breakfast, many guests fanned out to Christian leadership seminars for the rest of the day. Speakers included retired Roman Catholic Cardinal Leo Josef Suenens of Belgium, charismatic evangelist Juan Carlos Ortiz of Argentina, and globe-trudging street evangelist Arthur Blessitt of Los Angeles. Suenens, the highest-ranking member of the Catholic charismatic renewal movement, spoke on the importance of establishing a personal relationship with Christ and on the need for “visible Christian unity.” Suenens hinted that such unity could not exist apart from some sort of relationship to the Catholic church. Pastor Richard Halverson of suburban Washington’s Fourth Presbyterian Church, chairman of the meeting where Suenens spoke, voiced his belief that the church is in a state of flux and that a new unity will emerge, separate from any present institution.

A panel on disaster relief featured both relief agency workers and refugees. Recent visitors to Cambodia told of meeting small numbers of Christians who somehow survived the former regime’s extermination efforts. Former Congressman Walter Judd, a retired physician, sparked a rousing response by asking “When are we going to deal with the cause instead of just the symptoms or results of oppression?” Said he: “Let’s not call them ‘boat people,’ let’s call them what they are—victims of Communist tyranny.”

In another session, Nicholas Soames, son of Rhodesia’s interim Governor Lord Soames and grandson of Winston Churchill, declared that the “bottom line for the world today is the need for reconciliation.” Governments can’t produce it, he said, because they are not spiritual forces. “Our only real hope is the reconciling force of Christ,” he asserted.

Officially, the annual breakfast is sponsored by the House and Senate prayer groups (the Senate prayer group was begun the morning after Pearl Harbor was bombed; the House group began in 1943). The real work force behind the event over the years, however, has been International Christian Leadership, an evangelical group reorganized in 1971 as a loosely structured entity known simply as “the Fellowship.” Halverson, former executive head of ICL, is still the spiritual patriarch of the movement, which has both full-time and volunteer workers stationed around the world.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

North American Scene

At least 17 Jewish groups refused invitations to testify at two National Council of Churches panel hearings on the Middle East last month. A spokesman for the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’rith said the NCC claims fairness, but “when the votes are taken in the NCC Governing Board, the views of pro-Arab pro-PLO spokesmen always prevail.” The hearings, which were sparsely attended, are part of a reassessment of Middle East policy by the NCC leading up to full discussion of the issue at its governing board meeting in May.

Civil liberties groups have filed suit against a new Massachusetts state law allowing voluntary prayer aloud in public schools. (Since 1966 the state has had a law requiring a minute of silent meditation in the classrooms—one of nine states with laws requiring either silent meditation or prayer.) Some teachers did invite pupils to pray aloud, but surveys showed spotty compliance with the law.

Church-related colleges should not expect direct federal aid in the coming decade, warned Shirley Hufstedler, head of the newly created Department of Education. She voiced her support for church-related colleges, but warned that because of constitutional questions, the “safest” kind of federal help is grants and loans to students, not institutions. Her comments were well received by 450 educators in Washington, D.C., at a National Congress on Church-related Colleges and Universities: it was sponsored by 600 schools affiliated with 23 church bodies as part of a two-year effort to “review, reaffirm, and renew” the role of such schools in American culture.

Arrangements are nearly complete for what may be the largest-ever single operation by evangelical relief agencies.

Next month crews are expected to begin land-clearing operations on thousands of acres of jungle land in Guyana, on the northern coast of South America. Soon afterward, significant numbers of Southeast Asian refugees—perhaps eventually 100,000 or more—will be transported from refugee camps in Thailand to their new home.

It is entirely possible that Jonestown—scene of the People’s Temple mass suicide-massacre a year-and-a-half earlier—will be used as the processing and orientation center for the incoming refugees before they are permanently resettled elsewhere.

That Guyana should serve as the host country for a large refugee contingent sponsored by Christian agencies is both natural and startling—natural, because Guyana is an underpopulated country that is largely virgin jungle, and startling because Prime Minister Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham’s Cooperative Republic of Guyana is South America’s only socialist regime.

Some of the more immediately apparent questions: Why should Burnham be dealing with Christian agencies? Why are the agencies risking bringing refugees who have been overrun by Southeast Asian Communism to an authoritarian country practicing a homegrown Western brand of socialism?

The emerging answers are beginning to sketch in a narrative that reads like fiction. But the relief agencies are doing their best to bury the drama in bureaucratic understatement, at least for now. By mid-February the only statement they had released read:

“Representatives of World Relief Corporation, Samaritan’s Purse, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and World Medical Missions, Inc., have met with ministers of the government of Guyana concerning the resettlement of refugees in Guyana. Proposals have been discussed and agreed upon in principle. The consortium has received a letter of intent from the government of Guyana and the respective boards of directors are being advised that all preliminary negotiations have been completed and the program may proceed.”

From the relief agencies’ perspective, involvement with Guyana began last April in a car traveling between Khon Kaen, Thailand, and Nong Khai on the border with Laos. The car was driven by Ken Weeks, on the staff of the American embassy in Bangkok—a Christian who was transporting three passengers during his off time. Passenger Reg Reimer, World Relief Corporation’s director for Southeast Asian affairs, was describing to the others the situation of the refugees they were about to visit. He called them the forgotten refugees, pushed out of the headlines by Cambodia and the boat people. Their chance of being resettled, he said, was almost nil.

Listening to him were Andy Bishop, WRC vice-president for disaster relief, and Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and director of World Medical Missions and Samaritan’s Purse (in the process of merging). Graham recalls that as they brooded over the apparently hopeless situation, someone in the car blurted out, “Why couldn’t Jonestown be made into a home for refugees?” That challenging question served as the basis for an impromptu prayer meeting as the journey continued.

Graham began investigating the possibility on his return. He was preparing to approach the Guyanese ambassador in Washington in June when a tip based on a newspaper account carried in the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel Star alerted him to the Lionel Luckhoo conversion story (see facing page). Charles Ward, BGEA crusade associate, got Luckhoo’s address from Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International’s director for Central and South America in Houston, but learned that Luckhoo was out of Guyana, attending the Pan American games in Puerto Rico. After tracking down Luckhoo in his Puerto Rico hotel, he arranged for him to meet with Graham and himself during his July visit to the FGBMFI convention in New Orleans.

Luckhoo did meet with them then and expressed sympathy for the idea of resettling refugees in his country. He said he had been praying for such a development. But winning Burnham’s endorsem*nt would be essential, he said. He inquired whether the U.S. government would be interested in sweetening the proposal by offering monetary aid along with acceptance.

A tentative arrangement for Graham and T. Grady Mangham, a veteran Southeast Asia missionary with the Christian and Missionary Alliance and now WRC director of refugee services, to meet with Burnham in August fell through when elements of the Guyana populace staged a general strike there. Other engagements ruled out September.

But at the beginning of October, right after Graham’s return from an Asian visit, Luckhoo called to say he had an appointment for them with Burnham just three days later on October 6. They went, and at that meeting Burnham agreed to receive a written proposal from them.

Bud Hanco*ck, the WRC and Wycliffe Bible Translators liaison with the government in Washington, D.C., approached the U.S. State Department and obtained its cooperation.

By mid-November Mangham and Graham had a signed proposal to present. Burnham accepted the proposal in principle on December 3. But he said that some of his cabinet had expressed reservations, and requested that a presentation of the proposals be made to a cabinet session. Mangham, Graham, Bishop and a few others did so on December 18.

The full cabinet approval triggered formation of the consortium, which retained an advertising agency, the Walter F. Bennett Company, in an effort to keep the lid on information about the project in its early stages, and to coordinate it among the members thereafter. At this point, also, Luckhoo agreed to serve as the contact person for the project in Guyana.

It was also now time to bring the refugees into the picture. An early idea of resettling Vietnamese refugees was abandoned in favor of resettling the more agrarian Hmong tribal people from the mountains of Laos. (It was also decided to include refugees from the tiny Caribbean island nation of Dominica, devastated last summer by Hurricane David.)

The consortium took special pains to make a low-key approach to the Hmong. After two earlier disappointments, the Hmong have adopted an understandable show-me attitude. A Food for the Hungry plan to resettle 5,000 Hmong in the lowlands of eastern Bolivia got sidetracked by the country’s recurring political convulsions. A People’s Republic of China offer to accept 10,000 Hmong dried up after only 150 had been absorbed.

A trip to Thailand in late January by Graham and WRC president Jerry Ballard established Hmong interest in the project and informal endorsem*nt, pending inspection of the actual sites. At press time, a four-member official Hmong delegation was almost ready to depart for Guyana’s nearly empty Northwest District. Travel documents had been issued to two Hmong representatives in the United States; attempts were being made to expedite their issuance for two efugee representatives in Thailand. By mid-February a verbal agreement had been reached with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Paul Hartling.

As soon as the Hmong have formally approved, an initial contingent of about 20 families, or some 200 refugees, will be ferried to their new homeland. The consortium is hoping this will occur by mid-April.

Sensitivities of the Hmong—largely animistic but with a Christian minority—are behind uncertainties over use of the Jonestown complex. Their belief that the spirits of the dead linger make them skittish about the site of the tragedy—even as a temporary holding area. But using these existing facilities, instead of constructing new ones, would save half a million dollars, according to Ballard. He also acknowledges that their use would carry “high promotional value.” Besides Hmong superstition, however, Guyanese sensitivity over the Jonestown blot on their image must be taken into account.

Almost stronger than the logical pros and cons of utilizing Jonestown is an almost mystical conviction—shared by Graham and Mangham—that God intends to take that scene of twisted religion and tragedy and redeem it for the glory of Christ, and the restored honor of Guyana. “We would like Jonestown to be known not for a chamber of horrors or a museum of death,” says Graham, “but let it be known for a place of the living.”

Arrayed opposite the “visionaries” who see in Burnham a contemporary Saul turned Paul are the “realists” who point out that, religion aside, Burnham’s move is shrewd politics.

The two major political forces in Guyana traditionally have been the urban blacks—Forbes Burnham’s natural constituency—and the rural East Indians—the constituency of Burnham’s long-time rival, Cheddi Jagan, and his successors. The East Indian segment of the population is increasing at a much faster rate than Guyana’s other ethnic groups. A large infusion of Asians grateful to Burnham for a haven could be viewed as a brilliant court-packing move prior to next October’s elections, already twice postponed.

It would also provide a buffer by populating the empty area adjacent to the Venezuelan border. Venezuela has long laid claim to that sector, and a World Court-imposed moratorium on the dispute expires next year. Guyana has witnessed Venezuelan expansion across its ill-defined border with Brazil and fears encroachment into its own territory.

Burnham has been in power for 15 years—longer than any other South American leader except for strongman Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay, with 25 years. But observers see indications that his power base is eroding. Diverse opposition elements, including the Guyana Council of Churches, accuse him of corruption, mismanagement, and dictator-like behavior, and are calling for his removal.

The consortium members, however, are impressed by what they see as genuine magnanimity in Burnham’s offer. They say they feel strongly that his basic motivation is a humanitarian impulse of compassion.

At any rate, in their determined search for a refuge for Southeast Asia’s refugees, the evangelical agencies find their success tied up with that of an enigmatic socialist who has more than once mixed religion with his politics in unorthodox ways.

Evangelistic Thrust Sets the Stage for Diplomacy Gains

Improbably, the biggest breakthrough to date in the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees may have begun with an evangelistic excursion by a couple of leaders in the Full Gospel Business Men’s movement.

Newman Peyton, Houston-based international director for Central and South America of Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International, and Glen Norwood, builder from Sugarland, Texas, flew to Guyana on November 4, 1978. Three days later they had assembled 61 Georgetown business and professional men to give the gospel a hearing. That evening Peyton led to a decision Sir Lionel A. Luckhoo, 65, a highly successful criminal lawyer reputed never to have lost a defense of a client accused of murder (229 cases by December). Luckhoo’s clients in civil cases at the time included Jim Jones, whom he represented in a case brought by Tim and Grace Stoen, defectors from People’s Temple, in an effort to obtain custody of their six-year-old son, who later died in the massacre.

Norwood returned to Texas the next day, but Peyton stayed on for a week, helping ground Luckhoo in his new faith, and grooming him to lead a Full Gospel Business Men’s chapter in Georgetown.

He checked out of the Pegasus Hotel at about the same time the entourage of ill-fated California Congressman Dan Ryan checked in. Peyton flew to an FGBMFI convention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where, on November 17, before 400 convention participants, he signed a letter to Burnham, asking him to endorse and attend a FGBMFI dinner for Guyanese government and diplomatic officials. The Jonestown suicide-massacre occurred the next day.

Luckhoo, a personal friend of the prime minister, asked Burnham not to give a negative reply without first checking with him. Thus, in January, when Burnham made an appointment to meet with him, Luckhoo got his young FGBMF chapter—heavy with lawyers—together to pray. Luckhoo knew that Burnham was critical of churches in general, and was engaged in a running feud with one denomination (whom sources declined to identify). The Jonestown uproar didn’t help matters. Luckhoo expected to have to marshall his celebrated persuasive powers.

But when Luckhoo entered Burnham’s office, Burnham simply told him to get out his calendar and pick a date. They settled on March 1, and Burnham’s only condition was that he not be expected to speak at the banquet.

The presidential state dinner at Queen’s College in Georgetown followed a format FGBMFI has used elsewhere. Six Christian businessmen from North America each gave a five-minute testimony. Then FGBMFI president Demos Shakarian concluded with his own, and appealed for decisions from the 500 or so in attendance. Burnham was the first to raise his hand, and he was followed by scores of others. Burnham made an extemporaneous speech, extending for some 20 minutes, that stressed the need for love and reconciliation.

FGBMFI spokesmen are convinced Burnham underwent a conversion experience that night. Local believers included in the dinner audience have expressed doubts.

For one thing, it was hardly Burnham’s first exposure to the Christian message. The eloquent orator had been schooled in the Bible in his early education: he was a Methodist lay preacher before his law school days, and has continued to refer frequently to the Scriptures in his speeches. For another, there is scanty evidence of a change in his regime’s rough-and-ready tactics. One of his adversaries was shot down by the police a couple of months ago in a gun battle. They claimed the man was smuggling guns, and that he shot first when they attempted to apprehend him. But a source surmised that “that’s just a way Forbes Burnham has of getting rid of people he doesn’t like.”

Critics do acknowledge that Burnham showed emotion during the testimonies, that he said he was thinking seriously about what it meant for him, and that his rambling remarks were favorable to Christians.

No one doubts, though, that Luckhoo’s own conversion was genuine. As a cabinet member, personal lawyer, and adviser to Burnham, he has certainly exerted influence. At any rate, these observers say, a renewed spiritual openness among elements of the Guyanese leadership has become apparent.

The altered climate in Georgetown, of course, does not establish a cause-and-effect relationship with the developments now being divulged. But several observers believe the timing is more than coincidental.

The People’s Republic

Religious Thaw in China Produces Wang’s Release

Wang Ming-tao, a Chinese Christian leader well known for his courageous testimony in the early 1950s, has been released from a People’s Republic of China prison. He was reunited with his wife and reached his home in Shanghai on January 10. (Earlier reports that Wang had been released, circulating in late 1978 and early 1979, were incorrect.)

A CHRISTIANITY TODAY correspondent confirmed Wang’s release after meeting a Chinese visitor to the United States who has seen Wang personally. A friend, who has spent many hours with Wang, also has written the correspondent that Wang wants to thank all who have prayed for him. During his 22 years in prison, Wang said, he had sometimes been like Peter, but never like Judas. He explained that while at times he weakened under pressure, since 1974 he had been greatly strengthened, just as he was 30 years ago.

His hearing and eyesight are failing. But Wang, 80, with strong glasses still is able to read and write, and his mind is alert, the friend reports. He has inquired about the spiritual status of many who were his colleagues and acquaintances before his long confinement.

World Scene

Protestant churches in Ireland have expressed disappointment following their talks with the Roman Catholic Church on mixed marriages. In at least one part of Ireland the Protestant partner must promise in writing that children will be raised in the Catholic faith. The Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Methodist issuers of a statement were also distressed by the suggestion of a second wedding ceremony in a Catholic church for those married in a Protestant service. The Irish Catholic church, for its part, planned to issue a pastoral directory on mixed marriages in order to achieve more uniformity of practices in its dioceses.

Christian organizations with American origins have been taking their lumps in Europe recently. The deputies for evangelization of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands have criticized the Dutch branch of Campus Crusade for Christ for failing to “build a personal relationship” with its converts. Campus Crusade’s success with youth in the Netherlands may have instigated the charge, since Campus Crusade does not have discipleship and lay training programs for converts.

In a joint statement by official German Protestant and Roman Catholic mission bodies, the Summer Institute of Linguistics, sponsored by Wycliffe Bible Translators, was obliquely criticized for sometimes bypassing self-determination for Indian groups. The statement urged that translations no longer be made at the request of governments, but only in consultation with national churches. The statement was issued after study of a report by the Society for Threatened Peoples, whose work, the statement acknowledged, was “not always objective and precise.”

The National Youth Festival of the German Democratic Republic’s Communist Youth Organization had an unofficial adjunct activity when it met recently in East Berlin. Each evening, during the three-day event, the centrally-located Marienkirche hosted organ concerts and evening prayers attended by from 600 to 1,000 young people. Young Christians were present to answer questions. There were also displays depicting church life, and a bookstall. The most briskly selling item: the German version of Good News for Modern Man.

Polish authorities have backed down in a face-off with the Roman Catholic Church. At issue was the plan for a new highway which would have cut through the pilgrim approach to the famed “Black Madonna” icon in Czestochowa. A proposed pedestrian tunnel apparently had been designed to restrict the flow of visitors from the city. Now, instead, the highway will go underground, and adequate access will be retained.

Reports of a revival movement in Soviet Central Asia are reaching the West by way of ethnic Germans who have emigrated from Russia to West Germany. Personal letters indicated that 600 persons were converted within a two-week period in Alma Ata, Frunse, and other Central Asian cities. During evangelistic meetings with two Ukrainian preachers, the churches and tents put up for the meetings were filled to overflowing.

South African government funds were used to subsidize the Christian League of Southern Africa. The World Council of Churches, a target of league attacks, had charged for some time that the league was being so subsidized. But in late November, Foreign Minister Roel of Botha confirmed that funds were channeled to the league through the now defunct Department of Information. The department’s former secretary, Eschel Rhoodie, alleged that the league received more than $250,000 prior to mid-1970.

Mozambique’s Marxist government has confiscated all property belonging to churches, according to a report in Tempo, the official paper published in the capital city, Maputo. In a broadcast address from Lichinga, president Samora Machel attacked not only the majority Roman Catholic Church and established Protestant churches, but also indigenous churches and religious communities for “splitting the people apart.”

Kenya President Daniel Arap Moi publicly acknowledged that government hospitals do not match mission hospitals either for cleanliness or efficiency, and he ordered increased government grants to private hospitals. Officiating at the late January dedication of the new extension of Kijabe Medical Center, attached to the Africa Inland Church, Moi assured sponsors of mission hospitals that his government has no intention of taking them over.

President Godfrey Binaisa of Uganda has decreed that all missionaries who were expelled by Idi Amin may now return, according to an All Africa Press Service report. Binaisa said, “Missionaries not only spread the word of God, but also have contributed tremendously to the development of Uganda.”

The Gideon Adwoc Theological College in the southern Sudan has graduated its first class of pastor-evangelists: 21 men. Recently relocated to Melut from Omdurman in northern Sudan, the Sudan Interior Mission-sponsored school is named after a Sudan Interior Church pastor who was killed during Sudan’s 17-year civil war.

A literature center in Khartoum, Sudan, has been closed for having distributed “anti-Islamic” literature. The German news service IDEA reports that 20,000 copies of Christian publications were confiscated, that the manager of the center, a Swiss doctor, has been expelled from the country, and that Sudanese members of the staff were being held for questioning.

A rash of vandalism against churches and Christian institutions has erupted in Jerusalem over the past three months. City officials say more than $30,000 in damage has resulted from vandalism inflicted on Baptists, Roman Catholics, Russian Orthodox, and others. The (Southern) Baptist Bookshop in the New City, for instance, had its glass doors smashed four times in three weeks. Anti-Christian slogans have been painted on walls and tombstones with crosses smashed, and clergymen harassed in the streets by young men believed to belong to the Jewish Defense league, led by fiery U.S.-born Rabbi Meir Kahane. The city is granting compensation for all physical damage.

House churches in China have become more public and more numerous under the new climate of religious tolerance, according to William Kerr, director of the Christian and Missionary Alliance China Office in Hong Kong. Attendance at some is approaching 400. The Three-self Churches, which enjoy government approval, are seeking to require the house churches to close and join them, he says. Some, he adds, fear a fragmentation.

Brazil

Stotts First Visit Helps Bridge Student-Church Gap

Frank Sinatra’s packed-out concert in Rio filled the front pages of Brazilian dailies in January, but for 400 students, the headliner was John Stott. Speaking in Recife, the English expositor urged his youthful audience to submit to the discipline of biblical authority. “Don’t abandon the local church,” he added. “If you leave, it may get worse. Stay and you will have a chance to influence it from within.”

Stott was in Recife as the featured speaker at the national congress of ABU, the Alliance Biblica Universitaria, Brazil’s counterpart of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. Earlier, jointly sponsored by ABU and OC Ministries (formerly Overseas Crusades), he gave a series of expository messages to pastors and seminarians in São Paulo. The following week, in Belo Horizonte, he had his most varied ministry. There he addressed church leaders, graduate students, and believers from a variety of denominations in a closing mass meeting.

In his first visit to Brazil, Stott’s ministry transcended his ministry to students, according to ABU leader Valdir Steuernagel. “His expository style is a much-needed model for the Brazilian church,” Steuernagel commented. “His ministry also served to link the ministry of ABU and the students it serves to the local church.”

JIM Mcnu*tT

There are practical initiatives by which Christians can cool the international climate.

In the February 8 issue I wrote about the appalling size of the superpowers’ arsenals, the economic madness of current worldwide “defense” spending, the predictable effects of nuclear war, and the theological grounds for peacemaking. Jesus’ seventh beatitude retains its full validity: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called God’s children.

But what can it mean to be a Christian peacemaker amid the frightening realities of the nuclear age? What practical peacemaking initiatives are possible?

First, Christian peacemakers must recover their morale. There is a tendency among today’s church members either to grow so accustomed to the balance of terror that we lose our sense of outrage, or to become so pessimistic that we acquiesce to it with a feeling of helplessness. But to give up either feeling or hoping is to have parted company with Jesus Christ. We need to join others in seeking to reverse the arms race.

Second, Christian peacemakers must be more diligent in prayer. I beg you not to dismiss this statement as a piece of pietistic irrelevance. For Christian believers it is nothing of the sort. Jesus our Lord specifically commanded us to pray for our enemies; do we? Paul laid down, as the first duty of every gathered congregation, the responsibility to pray for their national leaders, so that “we may lead a quiet and peaceable life” (1 Tim. 2:1–2). He thus attributed peace to prayer. Today virtually every church has a period of intercession in its public worship. Is it perfunctory or real? Supposing the whole church family during this period were to unite in fervent, concentrated prayer for rulers, for enemies, for peace, freedom, and justice in the world? What might God not do in response?

Third, Christian peacemakers must supply an example of a community of peace. It is impossible for Christians to maintain a credible witness for peace in the world unless the church is itself seen to be a community of peace. If charity begins at home, so does reconciliation. We need to obey the teaching of Jesus first to be reconciled to our brother and then to come and offer our worship (Matt. 5:23–24). We need to forgive our enemies, mend our broken relationships, ensure that our homes are havens of love, joy, and peace, and banish from our church all malice, anger, and bitterness.

God’s purpose is to create a new, reconciled society. He wants his new community to challenge the value system of the secular community, and to offer a viable alternative. Not that this is easy. God’s own peacemaking involved the blood of the cross.

Fourth. Christian peacemakers must contribute to confidence building. There has been a lot of study of the postures of aggression which human beings adopt when they feel threatened. But not enough study has been done on the behavior of states under threat. Have you ever asked yourself how much Soviet behavior may be aggressive not so much because they are ambitious for power as because they feel threatened? How far could their aggressive stance be a sign not of imperialism but of insecurity?

On this matter opinions differ sharply. Some believe the Soviet Union is committed to world conquest by force. They point to Korea (1950), Hungary (1956), the Cuban missile crisis (1962), Czechoslovakia (1968), and to Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, and other countries today. They are convinced Russia is utterly unscrupulous in its imperialistic designs.

Others believe that, although world conquest is indeed the Marxist goal, the Soviet Union is committed to the battle of ideas and to political infiltration, and that the nation’s main concern is the security of its far-flung borders. The Soviet Union has good reason to be jumpy, they add, since already twice this century its territory has been invaded by Germans.

Whichever explanation is right, we must agree that each superpower perceives the other as a threat, and that Christians should support any means to reduce this confrontation of suspicion and fear.

The Helsinki Final Act (1975) spoke of “confidence building measures” (CBMs) whose purpose was to remove the fear of sudden attack and develop reciprocal trust. The kind of CBMS in view were the establishment of demilitarized buffer zones, advance notification of military maneuvers, the exchange of information and observers, and verification measures to enforce arms control agreements. It seems to me, however, that there is also scope for the development of Christian CBMS. I understand that the Mennonite Central Committee arranges student exchanges between the U.S. and both Poland and East Germany. Ought not Christian travel agencies to organize more tour groups to visit the Soviet Union? It is reliably reported that between 15 percent and 20 percent of Russians still are church members. Yet the links between American and Russian Christians are minimal. A strengthening of this fellowship could be influential.

Fifth, Christian peacemakers must promote more public debate. In England in the fifties and sixties the campaign for nuclear disarmament was headline news. In the seventies the debate died down, but in the eighties it must be revived. Fresh questions need to be asked. Is the nuclear arsenal a deterrent any longer? Does it not now offer more peril than safety? Could it ever be justifiable to buy national defense at the cost of millions of civilian lives? Does not the Bible roundly condemn “the shedding of innocent blood?” Is not national morality in the end more important than national security?

But Christians need at the same time to be realistic. The call for immediate, total, unilateral nuclear disarmament seems to me unrealistic. What Christians could do, however, is to call for a unilateral gesture of disarmament, as an example of the “audacious gestures of peace” which Pope John Paul II has canvassed. I believe we should press our governments to make an unequivocal public pledge that they will never be the first to use a strategic nuclear weapon. We could also call on them to declare at least a temporary moratorium on the development and testing of new nuclear weapons systems.

Of course, we shall not succeed in building a utopia of peace and plenty on earth. Jesus said, “there will be wars and rumors of wars.” Not till he returns will all swords be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks. But this fact cannot be made an excuse for building sword and spear factories. Does Christ’s prediction of famine inhibit us from feeding the hungry and seeking a more equitable distribution of food? No more can his prediction of wars inhibit us from seeking peace. God himself is a peacemaker. If we want to qualify as his authentic children, we must be peacemakers too.

John R. W. Stott is rector emeritus of All Souls Church, London. England.

Basic Theology

Theological thinking is showing amazing vitality considering the obituaries that were being written a few years ago.

Carl Henry continues his massive project with volumes 3 and 4 of basic theology: God, Revelation and Authority (Word). They will no doubt be the standard for some time to come in evangelical circles. Elder R. V. Sarrels has published a full-blown Systematic Theology (Harmony Hill, Box 377, Azle, Texas). It is high Calvinism with a twist: apparently all who do not commit the unpardonable sin are elect, and the Atonement is “limited” to them. Awakening to God (InterVarsity), volume 3 of “The Foundations of the Christian Faith” by J. M. Boice, is more traditional Calvinism, but in pastoral, readable form. The basic topics of theology are dealt with simply by James Draper in Foundations of Biblical Faith (Broadman). What We Evangelicals Believe (Fuller Seminary) is David Hubbard’s exposition of Christian doctrine based on Fuller Theological Seminary’s statement of faith. Its sincerity and basic orthodoxy no one would deny, although some might take exception to his statement, “The infallible character of Scriptures means that they will get their message across”, his italics, (p. 55–60). Basic theology, in abbreviated form will be found in Help in Understanding Theology (Judson) by N. R. DePuy and in extended form in Understanding the Faith of the Church (Seabury) by Richard Norris. The latter has especially good material on the history of doctrine. Millard Erickson offers an excellent collection of basic material in The New Life: Readings in Christian Theology (Baker). It is mostly from contemporary evangelical thinkers.

Thomas C. Oden would point us to a “post-modern Christian orthodoxy” in Agenda for Theology (Harper & Row). He argues well that the way out of the quicksands of modernity is to be found in classical Christianity. A highly original work that argues that theology is commitment emerging from experience is The Physiology of Faith, A Theory of Theological Relativity (Harper & Row) by J. W. Dixon. Norman Pittenger offers us his earlier God in Process, revised, with new material added, in The Lure of Divine Love: Human Experiences and Christian Faith in a Process Perspective (Pilgrim).

Two Roman Catholic statements of Faith are Why Catholic? (Doubleday), edited by J. J. Delaney, and Introduction to Christianity (Seabury) by Joseph Ratzinger (profitable reading for anyone).

TOPICS IN THEOLOGY Current discussion covers numerous specific theological topics. The Love of God: Old style meditations are found in Love Divine (Exposition) by Reuben Brown. Election: A dogmatic treatment is The Sovereignty of Grace (Baker) by A. C. Custance and a biblical theological treatment is But As For Me (John Knox) by André Lacocque. Law: A very fine discussion of law and freedom, biblically considered, is The Trumpet in the Morning (Oxford) by Stuart Blanch. Grace: Roger Haight, S.J., attempts to build a theological foundation for the Christian life by analyzing the idea of grace in The Experience and Language of Grace (Paulist). Faith: Jean-Claude Barreau examines authentic false faith in The Religious Impulse (Paulist). Revelations from God: Herman Riffel offers ways to test whether God is speaking in Voice of God (Tyndale), and C. Floristán and C. Duquoc offer a theological analysis in Discernment of the Spirit and of Spirits (Seabury). Baptism: Robert Rayburn’s What About Baptism? (Baker) and G. W. Bromiley’s Children of Promise (Eerdmans) both argue strongly in favor of baptizing infants. L. Maldonado and D. Powers look more broadly at baptism in Structures of Initiation in Crisis (Seabury). Sacraments: A full-blown look at sacramental theology is made by the Roman Catholic R. Vaillancourt in Toward a Renewal of Sacramental Theology (Liturgical Press). Prayer:The Theology of Prayer (Baker) by Wayne Spear is a serious attempt to look at prayer within a Reformed framework. Healing:Medical Wisdom from the Bible (Revell) by R. J. Thomsen and Some Thoughts on Faith Healing (Christian Medical Fellowship) by Vincent Edmunds and Gordon Scorer are excellent short studies. Angels: Roland Buck claims to have seen them and personally to have interviewed Chironi, the angel who pushed over Jericho’s walls in Joshua’s day in Angels on Assignment (Hunter Books, 1602 Townhurst, Houston, Tex.). Ann Wedgeworth has interviewed numerous people who have encountered angels in Magnificent Strangers (Gospel Publishing House). Claus Westermann’s God’s Angels Need No Wings (Fortress) is less sensational and though angels are seen to be a “collective concept” they nevertheless show that “we are visited.” Satan/Demons: Warren Wiersbe offers biblical advice in The Strategy of Satan (Tyndale), as does Lester Sumrall in Demons: The Answer Book (Nelson). Death: A sensitive study will be found in Biblical Perspectives on Death (Fortress) by L. R. Bailey. Heaven: A contemporary look is taken in Heaven (Seabury), edited by B. Van Iersel and E. Schillebeeckx. Hell: Jon Braun takes a sobering look at this very difficult subject in his Whatever Happened to Hell? (Nelson).

THEOLOGIANS The study of what other men have said continues unabated. An excellent introduction and defense of Kant is Allan Wood’s Kant’s Rational Theology (Cornell University). The Tongues of Men (Scholars Press) by Stephen Dunning is a look at Hegel and Hamann, being a defense of the latter with profound implications for today, asserting that biblical language cannot successfully be secularized. The essence of Pascal’s quest for certainty is ably explained by H. M. Davidson in The Origins of Certainty: Means and Meanings in Pascal’s Pensées (University of Chicago). Theistic Faith for Our Time (University Press of America) by G. D. Straton lucidly introduces the process thought of both Josiah Royce and A. N. Whitehead. Another brilliantly done piece of work is The Value-Philosophy of Alfred Edward Taylor: A Study in Theistic Implication (University Press of America) by Charles Mason. A stimulating and sympathetic look at Tillich’s socialism is John R. Stumme’s Socialism in Theological Perspective: A Study of Paul Tillich 1918–1933 (Scholars Press). Fortress Press gives us in paperback the Preface to Bonhoeffer by John Godsey and The Logic of Promise in Moltmann’s Theologyby Christopher Morse. The latter is a particularly helpful work. George Goodwin looks at The Ontological Argument of Charles Hartshorne (Scholars Press) and R. J. Rowling at A Philosophy of Revelation According to Karl Rahner (University Press of America). Charles Hefling writes on Jacob’s Ladder: Theology and Spirituality in the Thought of Austin Farrer (Cowley). Farrer’s brilliance is being more and more appreciated. A fair, but strongly critical review of the pastor of the Berachah Church in Houston is found in Bob Thieme’s Teachings on Christian Living (Church Multiplication, 9560 Long Point Road, Houston, Tex.) by J. L. Wall.

Two nontheologians who have profoundly influenced theology are examined in: Martin Heidegger (Viking) by George Steimer and Jung in Context (University of Chicago) by Peter Homans.

Two excellent Festschriften round off this section: Science, Faith and Revelation (Broadman), edited by R. E. Patterson in honor of Eric Rust; and Hearing and Doing (Wedge), edited by J. Kraay and A. Tol, in honor of H. Evan Runner.

THEOLOGICAL SOURCES A. W. Wood and G. M. Clark have translated and annotated Kant’s Lectures on Philosophical Theology (Cornell University). This is a very useful volume for an understanding of Kant in readable English style. The Parables of Kierkegaard (Princeton University) have been edited by T. C. Oden and neatly illustrated by L. S. Johnson. S. K. lovers will welcome this handy collection. Teilhard de Chardin’s The Heart of Matter (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) completes Teilhard’s collected works and contains two previously unpublished essays. Carillon Books has made available in A Fulton Sheen Reader some of the best writing of the late popular Roman Catholic thinker. Karl Rahner continues his epoch-making work with volume 16 of his Theological Investigations: Experience of the Spirit: Source of Theology (Seabury). John Mulder has put together the best of Hugh T. Kerr’s essays in Our Life in God’s Light (Westminster). Written over 35 years by the former Princeton theologian, these essays strike a resounding note.

God

Practical and analytical studies about the Christian doctrine of God continue to be written. Not as much time is being spent in this area as could be wished, but helpful works are appearing. Peter Toon contributes a traditional work, God Here and Now (Tyndale), that is readable and trustworthy, and concludes by defending the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. Not so Joseph A. Bracken, What Are They Saying About the Trinity? (Paulist). A helpful survey of contemporary speculations about the Trinity is vitiated by his conclusion that only a broadly-based processive, communitarian, bisexual approach to the Trinity will genuinely speak to modern men and women. Logos International offers The Other God: Seeing God as He Really Is by Richard Exley as an opportunity to break free from our misconceptions by a new experience of God in his reality. It does it in quite traditional categories. Edmund Steimle of Union Seminary (N.Y.) reflects on God the Stranger (Fortress) by means of 13 sermons that attempt to take modern doubt into consideration by not asking for too much belief in certain facts (the Resurrection should be looked at out of the corner of the eye rather than directly). Whether the theology can stand, without the facts, is another matter.

Who Art in Heaven (Zondervan) by Philip Hook studies the attributes of God. Simply written, with study questions for each chapter, this book should be helpful for lay people. Theological students and scholars will turn to the Baker reprint of Elisha Cole’s God’s Sovereignty. Originally published in 1673, it was used for over a hundred years, in 14 editions. It is straightforward, five-point Calvinism.

Linwood Urban and Douglas Walton have compiled a helpful book of readings on omnipotence and evil in The Power of God (Oxford). Arranged topically, this is a helpful collection of medieval to modern statements about problems related to Job’s ancient problems of the Judge of all the earth doing right. A thought-provoking book. Equally thought-provoking is the speculative The Feminine Dimension of the Divine (Westminster) by Joan Engelsman. She argues, drawing on Freud, Jung, and Hellenistic religions, that the feminine dimension of God has been repressed by Western theology only now to come into focus. Our views of Trinity and evil will probably need redefinition to include the missing dimension. Hans Küng looks at God and Freud for a different reason in his Terry Lectures, Freud and the Problem of God (Yale University). This very helpful and positive book is a careful study of Freud’s views of God, combined with a sensitive Christian rejection of his negative conclusions.

Another book that in the end rejects Freud is The Birth of the Living God: A Psychoanalytic Study (University of Chicago) by Ana-Maria Rizzuto. Rizzuto accepts the Freudian psychological thesis, but rejects the Freudian metaphysical thesis, regarding human belief in God.

JESUS CHRIST/CHRISTOLOGY Continuing a 20-year-old trend, publishers pour forth books trying to explain to an inquisitive American public who Jesus was, or is. Joining the 1,000-plus books already available in print, the following attempt to answer anew the age-old question, “Who do they say that I am?,” by looking at Jesus as part of his own times. Jesus, His Life and Times (Revell) is the beautifully done Genesis Project production that carefully (and reverently) goes through the life of Jesus with explanations, text (KJV), and over 200 color illus-looking at Jesus as part of his own times. Jesus, His Life and Times (Revell) is the beautifully done Genesis Project production that carefully (and reverently) goes through the life of Jesus with explanations, text (KJV), and over 200 color illustrations. It is a striking volume. Portrait of Jesus (Mayflower) by Alan Dale is nicely illustrated with drawings by Trevon Stubley. It is a theological picture of Jesus that is disappointingly tentative—the Resurrection (though Dale apparently believes it) is pushed as a new experience of God bringing new convictions and a new job for the disciples. John Drane’s Jesus and the Four Gospels: An Illustrated Documentary (Harper & Row) is nicely written, well-illustrated and diagrammed, and argues strongly for the trustworthiness of the accounts. Jesus of Galilee: His Story in Everyday Language (Judson) by Louis Baldwin and Autobiography of God (Regal) by Lloyd John Ogilvie are attempts to restate the life of Jesus in modern terms using the Scripture text as the base. Both are well done, as in Anthony Burgess’s Men of Nazareth (McGraw-Hill), the novel on which the TV series “Jesus of Nazareth” was based.

Charles C. Cochrane in Jesus of Nazareth in Word and Deed (Eerdmans) and Lucas Grollenberg in Jesus (Westminster). Written over 35 years by the former Princeton theologian, these essays strike a resounding note. Times (Fortress), presents a liberal reconstruction where little is actually known of the historical Jesus, and where the Resurrection did not occur in space and time. James Borland, in Christ in the Old Testament (Moody), attempts a comprehensive study of the Old Testament appearances of Christ in human form. Many of its footnotes, however, are from books dated before 1925. Norman Geisler also looks for Christ in the Old Testament, but also in the New, in To Understand the Bible, Look For Jesus (Baker). Werner Kelber, Mark’s Story of Jesus (Fortress), attempts to lay bare Mark’s focus on Jesus by using current literary and redaction criticism. The motion picture Jesus is available in text and photos in a book by the same name, put together by Lee Roddy and published by Spire Books. It is based primarily on the Gospel of Luke and is very true to the text. S. G. DeGraaf’s Promise and Deliverance (Paideia) is a sensitive account of Christ’s ministry death, and a blessing to read.

Israelis, Jews and Jesus (Doubleday) by Pinchas Lapide is a very interesting survey of current Jewish opinion about Jesus, past and present.

Five new books deal with the work of Christ. Herbert Lockyer offers meditations on the death and resurrection of Jesus in The Man Who Died For Me (Word). The Cross: Tradition and Interpretation (Eerdmans) by Hans-Ruedi Weber, a Swiss Reformed pastor, is a carefully written biblical, theological study of the death of Christ. Weber has also produced a beautifully illustrated and thoughtful series of meditations on Christ’s death called On a Friday Noon (Eerdmans). It is moving and disturbing at the same time. Both are well worth reading. So is What the Bible Teaches About What Jesus Did (Tyndale) by F. F. Bruce. Here is a clear statement on the work of Christ by an eminent scholar in clear, understandable English. Richard Bauerle and Frederick Kemper have put together a set of sermons and dialogues for Lent in Up to Jerusalem Where He Must Suffer (Concordia).

No one really knows what Jesus looked like, but Denis Thomas, The Face of Christ (Doubleday), has collected a representative sampling from the whole of the history of Christian art. It is a marvelous and moving book.

The deeper significance of Jesus is also under discussion. Charles Massabki sees liberation as the key to understanding Jesus in Christ: Liberation of the World Today (Alba House). It is a sensitive and deeply spiritual book. John Stott, Focus on Christ (Collins), says authentic Christians must make Christ the center of their lives because he is the center of Christianity. Christ is to be seen as Mediator, Lord, Goal, and Model. Three excellent books stress the deity of Jesus: Peter Toon, Jesus Christ Is Lord (Judson); Wilfrid Tunink, Jesus Is Lord (Doubleday); John Buell and O. Q. Hyder, Jesus: God, Ghost, or Guru? (Zondervan). It is deeply satisfying to see fundamental Christian truth so well presented and carefully argued. The necessity to worship Christ as Lord is well-argued in a deeply spiritual book by Ernest Lussier, Jesus Christ Is Lord (Alba House). Sir J. N. D. Anderson enters into dialogue with modern critics of the traditional view of the Incarnation in The Mystery of Incarnation (InterVarsity). It is a fine and vigorous defense of the truth. In opposition to it could be placed James Mackey, Jesus, the Man and the Myth (Paulist), who sees mostly myth and only man (i.e., no Incarnation), and Françoise Dolto and Gérard Sévéron, The Jesus of Psychoanalysis: A Freudian Interpretation of the Gospel (Doubleday), who look at the Gospels much as fairy tales, and through Freudian eyes.

John Thompson has given us a masterful work in Christ in Perspective: Christological Perspectives in the Theology of Karl Barth (Eerdmans). It is a fine treatment of the subject. Two earlier works of Willi Marxen are now available again as a single volume in The Beginnings of Christology, together with the Lord’s Supper as a Christological Problem (Fortress). New Testament students will be happy to see these works by the Münster theologian. Geoffrey Grogan, What the Bible Teaches About Jesus (Tyndale), has written a readable overview of the New Testament’s teaching about Jesus, at a level any layperson could understand. Jesus, The New Elijah (Servant) by Paul Hinnebusch is a typological look at Jesus, using Elijah as the key. It has some interesting insights.

Undoubtedly the most significant of all the new books on Christology is Edward Schillebeeckx’s massive Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (Seabury). It is a scholarly work that comes to some unconventional conclusions, but it will need careful consideration by all who are seriously interested in the subject.

THE HOLY SPIRIT C. F. D. Moule. The Holy Spirit (Eerdmans), and John Peck. What The Bible Teaches About the Holy Spirit (Tyndale), are very useful biblical studies that concentrate on basics. Come Holy Spirit (Eerdmans) is a paperback reprint of 25 sermons by Karl Barth from the years 1920–24. They deal with more than the Holy Spirit, and still retain their vigor. A traditional and readable discussion of the Third Person of the Trinity is Who Is the Holy Spirit? (Alba House) by Father Charles Massabki.

Leanne Payne in Real Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Works of C. S. Lewis (Cornerstone) has given us more a helpful introduction to all of C. S. Lewis than a technical study of the Holy Spirit, but it is nonetheless valuable on that account. The question of whether the gift of tongues is for this day and age is answered negatively by Richard Gaffin in Perspectives on Pentecost (Presbyterian and Reformed). He argues that gifts were intended only for the foundational period of the church’s life and ceased with the coming of the completed canon of Scripture. Not so the Roman Catholic Karl Rahner, who argues in The Spirit in the Church (Seabury) that the Spirit still works in numerous ways, including charismatically. In fact, we should pray for the courage to receive new gifts. Michael Griffiths also encourages cultivating charismatic gifts, which he renames grace-gifts, in Grace Gifts (Eerdmans). Oxford has republished in paperback the 1973 work of John V. Taylor. The Go-Between God. It is an attempt to relate the Holy Spirit to mission in an experimental way and it still retains its ability to challenge us to new ways of looking at things.

ESCHATOLOGY Throughout the history of the church, when troubled times arose Christians searched the Scriptures, sometimes responsibly, sometimes irresponsibly, to look for a way out. Our time is no exception. Curtis Routley, The Vision of All (Carlton Press), offers a blueprint of the last days that has a postmillennial(!), but pretribulational Rapture. He has calculated how many gallons of blood will make up the river of Armageddon: “The winepress of my God is awesome!” Jack Van Impe (with Roger Campbell), Israel’s Final Holocaust (Nelson), sees Israel as the key to understanding and looks at its future through traditional pretribulationist eyes. A war with Russia is predicted and the end is upon us. The Granary (150 Ottley Dr., Atlanta, Ga.) has republished I. M. Haldeman’s The Coming of Christ, Both Pre-Millennial and Imminent, an old standard of pretribulation eschatology. Dan Betzer. Countdown, A Newsman Looks at the Rapture (Gospel Publishing House), also offers standard pretribulationism, complete with a novellete on the night of Christ’s return as chapter one. A full-blown novel is The Years of the Beast (Beacon Hill) by Leon Chambers. Based on a partial Rapture theory, it is the story of a Christian who got left behind.

Three recent books are written from an amillennial perspective. Anthony Hoekema’s The Bible and the Future (Eerdmans) is a scholarly presentation that is thoroughly abreast of current studies in the area and is written from a positive point of view. Everett Carver’s When Jesus Comes Again (Presbyterian and Reformed) is more biblical than contemporary theological, but it is marred by a rather constant negative attitude toward dispensationalism. John Bratt, The Final Curtain (Baker), is standard amillennialism put in simple terms with study questions at the end of each chapter.

Prophecy and Prediction (Pryor Pettengill) by Dewey Beegle was intended to be a thorough discussion of the issues, but unfortunately it is a hodge-podge of critical remarks about rigid conservatives who won’t admit the Bible has errors in it, dispensationalists, Seventh-day Adventists, assorted kooks, and Lindseyism. Apparently they are all about the same to Beegle, who doesn’t manage to say much that is very constructive. Robert Jewett, Jesus Against the Rapture: Seven Unexpected Prophecies (Westminster), is also against Lindsey and dispensationalists, calling their view “The New Apocalypticism.” It is interestingly written, but rambling and disorganized. It’s difficult to discern what he is trying to accomplish.

Desmond Ford has tackled one of the thornie*st problems of New Testament eschatology in The Abomination of Desolation in Biblical Eschatology (University Press of America). He concludes that belief in the return of Christ, as pictured in Mark 13, is not a delusion of primitive Christianity but something inherent in fundamental Christian doctrine. This scholarly work will be appreciated by all students of New Testament eschatology.

Westminster Press has republished J. A. T. Robinson’s controversial 1957 work, Jesus and His Coming, virtually unchanged. Robinson’s thesis remains that there was but one coming of Jesus which included victory in it; there is no need for a further second return.

Finally, there is Endtime: The Doomsday Catalog (Collier) by William Griffin. It’s hard to describe but equally hard to put down. In it you will find everything everybody has ever said about the end of the age, complete with drawings, cartoons, and pictures. A real experience awaits you.

Apologetics

A good way to begin our look at defenses of the faith is to mention a hard-hitting attack on the faith: Atheism—The Case Against God (Prometheus) by George Smith will introduce you to the current arguments against God’s existence: it is a minority viewpoint, as Smith himself admits (indeed, only 4 percent of the American public denies that God exists).

Defenses of the faith take many forms. Chance or Design? (Philosophical Library) by J. E. Horigan is a carefully presented scientific-philosophical argument for design in the universe, and hence a designer. Rationality and Religious Belief (Notre Dame), edited by C. F. Delaney, is a stimulating collection of essays that argue for compatibility between human reason and belief. Josh McDowell has revised and updated his Evidence Demands a Verdict (Here’s Life). It is still helpful, but also unreliable in places. Objections Answered (Regal) by R. C. Sproul is a set of well-thought-out answers to difficult questions about the faith. Faith for the Non-Religious (Tyndale) by Michael Green is the same sort of book, also well done. Finally, Rosalyn Kendrick argues from the structure of evolution to God in a neatly written Does God Have a Body? (Morehouse-Barlow).

A series of books offer Christianity to the thoughtful, but nonhostile unbeliever. All are sensitively written and would be excellent gifts for one searching for some answers. These are: H. Thielicke, The Faith Letters (Word); Thomas Powers, Invitation to a Great Experiment (Doubleday); Colin Morris, Bugles in the Afternoon (Westminster); Richard Holloway, A New Heaven (Eerdmans); George Otis, The God They Never Knew (Bible Voice); Denis Osborne, The Andromedans (InterVarsity).

Three books look at the present situation: G. I. Williamson, Understanding the Times (Presbyterian and Reformed), tries to explain our current distress and offer a biblical answer; J. I. Packer, Knowing Man (Cornerstone), tries to correct false views of man; and James Muyskens, The Sufficiency of Hope (Temple University Press), offers hope as a meaningful way out of our present problems.

Ethics

The pendulum is swinging back in the area of ethics. After a decade or so of contextualized morality, the whole subject of ethics has come intensely under review again, with attempts to find absolute norms once more. Newer and far more complex problems have also forced the issue.

BASIC ISSUES An excellent survey of the areas covered by ethics is The Concise Dictionary of Christian Ethics (Seabury), edited by Bernard Stoeckle, a Roman Catholic. Augsburg has made available George Forell’s History of Christian Ethics: From the New Testament to Augustine, being volume 1 of a three-volume series. It is original, insightful, and easy to read. Karl Holl looks at Luther’s ethics in a fine work, also from Augsburg, The Reconstruction of Morality.

Three books present overviews of Christian ethics. Newness of Life: A Modern Introduction to Catholic Ethics (Paulist) by James Gaffney is an excellent topical study from a Roman Catholic point of view. The Christian Moral Vision (Seabury) by E. N. Brill (with study guide by C. A. Hahn) covers the same area but includes representative non-Catholic opinions as well. Law, Morality and the Bible (InterVarsity), edited by Bruce Kaye and Gordon Wenham, explores basic biblical themes and specific inquiries into morally problematic areas. It, too, is an excellent introduction to ethics, from an evangelical point of view.

ETHICAL TOPICS A diverse group of problem areas has received analysis during the last year. Honesty: Jerry White takes a down-to-earth look at basic principles in Honesty, Morality and Conscience (NavPress). It comes with a helpful study guide. Pauline Ethics: Select topics, such as hom*osexuality and the place of women in the church, are examined from a rather liberal perspective in The Moral Teaching of Paul (Abingdon) by Victor Paul Furnish. Crime: Nelson-Hall has published an interesting book entitled A New Look at Biblical Crime by Ralph W. Scott. It takes an objective look at some of the problem areas of the Old Testament. Black Ethics: Enoch Oglesby has given us a very fine look at ethics from a black perspective in Ethics and Theology from the Other Side: Sounds of Moral Strangle (University Press of America). Ambiguity: Richard McCormick and Paul Ramsey have put together a representative set of opinions in Doing Evil to Achieve Good: Moral Choice in Conflict Situations (Loyola University). Sin: A devastating look at contemporary lunacy is taken by Henry Fairlie in The Seven Deadly Sins Today (Notre Dame). This is an excellent book. Norms: A very perceptive and helpful introduction to the subject is Readings in Moral Theology No. 1—Moral Norms and Catholic Tradition (Paulist), edited by C. E. Curran and R. A. McCormick. Freedom: Two very fine studies have appeared: Paul’s Ethic of Freedom (Westminster) by Peter Richardson, and Free and Faithful in Christ: The Truth Will Set Yon Free (Seabury) by Bernard Häring, which is volume 2 of his three-volume Moral Theology. Richardson writes from a biblical Protestant perspective and Häring from a dogmatic Roman Catholic view. Politics: John Warren Johnson has written an excellent handbook for believers in the public arena in Political Christians (Augsburg). The University Press of America has made available a series of George Wesley Buchanan’s sermons in The Prophet’s Mantle in the Nation’s Capital.Mental Retardation: A sensitive book on a difficult subject is Ethical Issues in Mental Retardation: Tragic Choices Living Hope (Abingdon) by David and Victoria Allen. Materialism:The Golden Cow (InterVarsity) by John White attacks this twentieth-century idol with relentless vigor. Higher Education: A challenging series of papers on a crucial issue will be found in The Hesburgh Papers: Higher Values in Higher Education (Andrews and McMeel) by Theodore Hesburgh.

BIOMEDICAL ETHICSAn Introduction to Bioethics (Paulist) by T. A. Shannon and J. J. DiGiacomo raises more questions than it answers, but it’s a start. Lifespan: Values and Fife-Extending Technologies (Harper & Row), edited by R. M. Veatch, contains valuable information on the technological side of the question but is disappointing on the question of values. Joseph Fletcher in Human-hood: Essays in Biomedical Ethics (Prometheus) argues that we ought to pass laws keeping infants “who fall below the minimum standard” from being born and should consider unwanted pregnancy “a venereal disease,” thus justifying abortion. One wonders how the word ethics got into the title. Completely opposed to Fletcher in its antiabortion stand is Beyond Abortion: The Theory and Practice of the Secular State (Franciscan Herald) by Charles E. Rice. Equally opposed are Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (Revell).

Social Ethics

Klaus Bockmühl explores Evangelicals and Social Ethics (InterVarsity) in a timely monograph. Gregory Baum looks at a number of contemporary issues in a perceptive book, The Social Imperative (Paulist). Robert Webber builds a good case for evangelical social responsibility in The Secular Saint (Zondervan).

HUMAN RIGHTS Two excellent defenses of human dignity are After All. I’m Only Human (Vantage) by C. Bassett and Human Science and Human Dignity (InterVarsity) by D. M. MacKay. An attempt to renew the human rights tradition in Roman Catholicism is to be found in David Hollenbach’s Claims in Confüct (Paulist). Peggy Billings utters a plea for involvement in Paradox and Promise in Human Rights (Friendship Press). Bread and Freedom (World Council of Churches) is Ron O’Grady’s defense of the wcc. As usual, the U.S. comes off badly as a violator of human rights. T. R. Ingram argues for a return to the universal law of God as a basis for human rights in What’s Wrong With Human Rights? (St. Thomas Press, Box 35096, Houston, Tex.). Alois Müller and Norbert Greinacher edit an excellent collection of essays in The Church and The Rights of Man (Seabury). Another excellent work by Seabury is The Death Penalty and Torture, edited by Franz Böckle and Jacques Pohier: it is essentially against the death penalty. Not so Walter Berns in For Capital Punishment: Crime and the Morality of the Death Penalty (Basic Books): it is well argued.

LIBERATION THEOLOGY Four attempts to look at the oppressed world and what the church should be doing from a bit left of center are: S. M. Ogden, Faith and Freedom: Toward a Theology of Liberation (Abingdon): Religions Life and the Poor: Liberation Theology Perspective (Orbis) by A. Cussianovich: Political Theology and theLife of the Church (Westminster) by Andre Dumas: and Beyond Our Tribal Gods (Orbis) by R. Marstin. Two semidevotional books stress the church’s need to be involved: Room to be People (Fortress) by J. J. Bonino, and Charismatic Renewal and Social Action: A Dialogue (Servant) by Cardinal L. J. Suenens and Dom H. Camara.

A full-blown biblical theology of liberation is The Way to Peace: Liberation Through the Bible (Orbis) by L. J. Topel, a well-written book. A helpful look at contextualizing theology is Gospel and Culture (William Carey), edited by John Stott and Robert Cooke. This series of papers goes a long way toward clearing up misunderstandings in this area.

PEACE STUDIES Three new books argue for a peace initiative: Mission and the Peace Witness (Herald), edited by R. L. Ramseyer: New Testament Basis of Peacemaking (Center for Peace Studies) by R. McSorley: and Peace in Search of Makers (Judson), edited by Jane Rockman. Ramseyer’s work is carefully done from an evangelical point of view, Rockman’s includes speeches by the First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy, delivered in Riverside Church (N.Y.).

Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations

Available in paperback is the award-winning The Jewish Mind (Scribner’s) by Raphael Patai. It is a definitive study of the Jewish life and history that ought to be read by anyone interested in Jewish thought. Also available in paperback is the third edition of Jacob Neusner’s clear and simple The Way of Torah (Duxbury).

A different sort of introduction to Judaism is Living With the Bible (Bantam) by Moshe Dayan. The reflections of this great general on biblical times and his own time are worth considering.

Two books probe the meaning of the Holocaust: Journey of Conscience (William Collins) by L. Rabinsky and G. Mann, and A Consuming Fire (John Knox) by John Roth. No one should ever forget, and these books are reminders.

Rosemary Reuther’s Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (Seabury) is available again in paperback. Its trenchant argument still carries force. John Koenig, Jews and Christians in Dialogue: New Testament Foundations (Westminster), attempts to bridge the gap between Christians and Jews by showing that the early church did not see itself apart from its Jewish background. The God Who Cares: A Christian Looks at Judaism (John Knox) by Fredrick Holmgren also looks at Christianity’s Jewish heritage as a foundation for better Jewish-Christian relations. The definitive Encyclopedia of Jewish Concepts (Sanhedrin) by Philip Burnbaum is now in paperback. If only one book could be owned on Judaism, this would be it.

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Fine commentaries are the “meat and drink” of those who study, teach, and preach the Bible. It is a great satisfaction, therefore, to have commentaries on two letters of Paul that have been prominent in the history of the church—Romans and Galatians—as two major books of 1979. C.E.B. Cranfield’s second volume of A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (T. & T. Clark) makes his work without question the commentary on Romans (the first volume appeared in 1975). Cranfield’s readable discussions provide thorough and learned comments on Romans 9–16. As an example of Cranfield’s interpretations, he translates 9:5b “… Christ, who is over all, God blessed for ever, Amen”; 11:26a is a reference to the eschatological restoration of the nation of Israel as a whole to God; the “authorities” in 13:1 probably refer simply to the civil authorities; and 16:7 refers to a woman apostle, Junia, a fact “… to which the Church as a whole has not yet paid sufficient attention” (p. 789). Cranfield’s commentary closes with two excellent essays, the first on Paul’s purposes in writing Romans, the second a fine topical summary of the theology of Romans.

The latest volume in the Hermeneia commentary series is Hans Dieter Betz’s Galatians (Fortress). Although the format of the series is imposing, what is provided is an abundance of primary and secondary material for the study of this early letter of Paul. Betz tends to favor the so-called North Galatian destination theory and is noncommittal on the date (somewhere between A.D. 50 to 55). He sees the opponents of Paul as Jewish-Christian missionaries whose gospel would have been like Paul’s except that they demanded obedience to the Torah and acceptance of circumcision. Betz considers Galatians to be an example of the genre of apologetic letter and gives an outline of the whole letter of more than 400 points. The commentary contains a brief analysis of each section and a general verse-by-verse interpretation that is buttressed by hundreds of footnotes and numerous excurses and appendices. Betz’s commentary is a model of the detailed, technical commentary that discusses virtually every nuance of the text.

The year 1979 saw the publication of two very important items for the study of the New Testament Greek text. The long-awaited twenty-sixth edition of the E. Nestle-K. Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (Deutsche Bibelstiftung; available from the American Bible Society) appeared. It presents the same excellent text found in the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (third edition), but its textual apparatus of variant readings and various marginal notes and tables should make it the preferred edition of the New Testament for all who have studied Greek.

A second edition of Walter Bauer’s A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (University of Chicago; also distributed by Zondervan) was prepared by F. W. Gingrich and F. W. Danker, two men who deserve a special tribute for their labor of love. This edition of Bauer’s fifth German edition, completed in 1958 shortly before his death, expands Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich significantly, especially by adding bibliography and references to Greek papyri. This lexicon (Bauer-Gingrich-Danker) will remain the authority for word-meanings in the New Testament for many years. Of course, the lexicon can be challenged; for example, compare the entry of Junia with what Cranfield says correctly in his commentary on Romans 16:7.

In addition to technical items, the church also needs good popular commentaries, too. Robert Mounce’s What Are We Waiting For? (David C. Cook), a brief, clear commentary on Revelation, is both an excellent popular commentary and an example of how to produce one. Each chapter of Revelation is explained paragraph-by-paragraph with study questions provided for each chapter. This commentary is based on Mounce’s own 1977 The Book of Revelation, which is a detailed, technical commentary.

Among the many books on Jesus and the Gospels published in 1979, two deserve special mention. John Drane’s Jesus and the Four Gospels (Harper & Row) provides a superb survey of Jesus and the Gospels in less than 200 pages, accompanied by numerous black and white photographs and various charts. Drane covers the historical context of Jesus’ time, the life and teachings of Jesus, and the nature of the Gospels. The chapters “Who Was Jesus?,” “Why Did Jesus Die?,” “The Resurrection,” and “Are the Gospels True?” are especially helpful. Drane, as shown in his 1976 Paul, has a fine ability to present the results of biblical scholarship in a clear and interesting manner. He sweeps no issues under the rug, and with integrity and patience explains the historical and theological issues one meets in the study of the Gospels and Jesus. He provides a good and brief case for the authenticity and reliability of the gospel tradition as well as for the resurrection of Jesus as a real, historical event.

Ben F. Meyer’s The Aims of Jesus (SCM) may prove to be the most weighty New Testament book of 1979. Meyer’s book has two sections, the first of which deals with hermeneutical issues relative to the study of the Gospels and the historical Jesus. This section is a searching, telling critique, conversant with New Testament studies, philosophy, and theology, and of undue historical skepticism relating to the subject. While fairly difficult reading, it is one of the better treatments of the relationship between history and faith in the study of the life of Jesus. The second section is Meyer’s attempt to recover the aims of Jesus. In touch with modern philosophical and hermeneutical concerns about intentionality, Meyer undertakes a study of the Gospels and concludes that probably Jesus anticipated a violent death from the start of his ministry, conceived of it in sacrificial terms, accepted it willingly, and understood it to be crucial to the eschatological and inclusive restoration of Israel. This is a powerful statement about the aims of Jesus coming from careful scholarship outside the traditional evangelical framework.

A question of constant intrigue and difficulty is the chronology of Paul’s life and letters. Although not the last word on the subject, Robert Jewett’s A Chronology of Paul’s Life (Fortress) may be the best word to date. While Jewett’s negative views on the historical value of the Acts (especially Acts 11:27–30) somewhat skew his overall results, his book nevertheless is an outstanding collection of all the primary source data and the various interpretations of it in the history of scholarship.

One of the major study tools of 1979 is Clinton Morrison’s An Analytical Concordance to the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament (Westminster). This is a superbly executed and beautifully published concordance, clearly the best available for an English language New Testament. The concordance is designed for English readers who do not know Greek, but in the Strong-Young concordance tradition it gives the Greek word(s) behind every English translation. An Index-Lexicon, which has all the Greek words arranged alphabetically by transliteration, then shows how each Greek word is variously translated within the RSV. The concordance also shows clearly when the RSV has contextual translations (an English word with no specific Greek word at that point), and paraphrasing translations, and when it does not translate a Greek term present in the text. The concordance is of considerable value in Bible study, whether or not one regularly uses the RSV.

An engaging “tract for the times” is found in Patrick Henry’s New Directions in New Testament Study (Westminster). The book, which is a very readable survey of nearly all aspects of New Testament study today, provides either an introductory or refresher “course” on the current topics, conclusions, and moods in New Testament studies. The book is also an appeal to maintain rigorous thinking in the study of the New Testament, but at the same time to claim the New Testament as the book of the church and, as such, is a deeply felt appeal for theological rapprochement within contemporary American Christianity. The book emphasizes the diversity which the texts of the New Testament canon display. In some contexts I have referred to Henry’s book as a “poor man’s” James Dunn (Unity and Diversity in the New Testament, 1977), because Henry makes some of the same points, but in a briefer, simpler, and less costly format.

Emil Schürer’s The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175BC–AD135) has been recognized throughout this century as the standard work on the Jewish background and context of early Christianity. A “new Schürer” is being produced under the direction of Matthew Black, Fergus Millar, and Geza Vermes. The first volume appeared in 1973 and now the second volume has appeared (T. & T. Clark). This is clearly a reference work, the second volume containing over 600 pages of detailed information. Nevertheless, it is the most recent and authoritative information on subjects crucial to the New Testament: the cultural setting; political institutions, including the Sanhedrin; the priesthood and temple worship; Pharisees, Sadducees; synagogues; messianism; and Qumran.

One might not expect a collection of scholarly essays to be included among the most important books of the year—something even more certain when the title is A Wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaic Essays (Scholars Press). However, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, a leading Roman Catholic New Testament scholar, provides some vital, even dramatic, information. Fitzmyer’s scholarly life has been devoted to the study of Aramaic, a “cousin” language to Hebrew and the daily language of Jesus and his earliest disciples. Not all of the essays are of equal value to the general reader, since they deal with many aspects of the Aramaic language and texts, many of which have come from the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls. Three of the essays, however, bear significantly on New Testament Christology. Fitzmyer concludes that the pre-New Testament use of “Son of Man” does not yet provide any clear evidence for the phrase as a title for an expected figure or as linguistic substitute for “I.” Fitzmyer also concludes, against a significant and influential stream of scholarship in our century, that the titles “Son of God” and “Lord” most likely had their origins in Palestinian Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christianity (and not in a Hellenistic pagan environment). The importance of this data, cautiously but clearly assessed by Fitzmyer, for the so-called myth of God Incarnate debate can hardly be overstressed. Many of the arguments of the proponents of this position flounder on this evidence.

In connection with the subject of Christology, attention should certainly be drawn to Edward Schillebeeckx’s Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (Seabury Press). Although this book technically falls into the field of theology, it deals so extensively with the New Testament to warrant mention here. Further, recent events within the Roman Catholic Church, especially the Vatican’s “discussions” with Schillebeeckx, give this major study on Christology additional interest. It is impossible to summarize or categorize this massive book here (over 750 pages). It should be observed that Schillebeeckx is attempting to “hear” the New Testament texts about Jesus somewhat apart from the tradition of dogma. He thus finds great importance in the intimate connection between Jesus’ person and God’s act of salvation (sometimes called “functional” Christology) and in the presentation of Jesus as a genuine human person through whom God is known. Those among us who see ourselves as biblically-grounded theologians will find Schillebeeckx’s book a challenge worth the effort.

GENERAL NEW TESTAMENT Two brief New Testament surveys were published: A. E. Harvey’s Something Overheard: An Invitation to the New Testament (John Knox) and Ladell J. Futch’s Learning the New Testament (Judson). John R. Bodo’s A Gallery of New Testament Rogues (Westminster) consists of brief character studies.

Four more substantial books on general New Testament issues may be noted. Hendrikus Boers’s What Is New Testament Theology? (Fortress) is an excellent book discussing method in the New Testament theology by giving a selective history of the discipline. One of Boers’s last statements in the book is an important “admission”: “The question how … the New Testament could be normative for the present continues to motivate most, if not all, New Testament scholarship even though it has become fashionable to deny that it is so.” Daniel J. Harrington’s Interpreting the New Testament: A Practical Guide (Michael Glazier) is a very good introductory survey to various methods and issues of historical exegesis. This book would make a good text for New Testament exegetical method courses. William Barclay’s Great Themes of the New Testament (Westminster) is a collection of six studies previously published. Another prolific author, F. F. Bruce, who is certainly the “dean” of evangelical New Testament scholars, has written The Time is Fulfilled: Five Aspects of the Fulfilment of the Old Testament in the New (Eerdmans). Bruce again has written a book we should not neglect.

Three volumes of collected essays of interest to scholars, which contain many fine studies, are: Ernest Best and R. M. Wilson, Text and Interpretation: Studies in the New Testament Presented to Matthew Black (Cambridge): Robert A. Guelich, Unity and Diversity in New Testament Theology: Essays in Honor of George E. Ladd (Eerdmans); and Bernard Orchard, and Thomas R. W. Longstaff, J. J. Griesbach: Synoptic and Text-Critical Studies 1776–1976 (Cambridge). The essays for George Ladd deserve special mention. Ladd is a leading American evangelical New Testament scholar. This volume contains essays by many prominent evangelical scholars; some could be read with pleasure and profit by nonscholars.

Leonard Swidler’s Biblical Affirmations of Women (Westminster) is a massive catalog of biblical and postbiblical Jewish references to women and feminine imagery. This volume should be helpful for discussion of this topic.

The 1888 “classic” of Hermann Gunkel, The Influence of the Holy Spirit: The Popular View of the Apostolic Age and The Teaching of the Apostle Paul (Fortress) appeared in English for the first time and will be of special interest to those who follow the history of doctrine. Although Roberta Hestenes’s and Lois Curley’s Women and the Ministries of Christ (Fuller Seminary) is not strictly speaking a New Testament book, the collection of papers given at the second national conference of the Evangelical Women’s Caucus contains many New Testament studies. I especially recommend Leon Morris’s “The Ministry of Women.” Other books on New Testament themes included: Julio de Santa Ana, Good News to the Poor (Orbis); Ronald J. Sider, Christ and Violence (Herald); Peter De Jong and Donald R. Wilson, Husband & Wife: The Sexes in Scripture and Society (Zondervan); and James A. Fischer, God Said: Let There Be Woman—A Study of Biblical Women (Alba House).

New translations of the New Testament continue to appear and the debate over the textual basis of the New Testament goes on. D. A. Carson’s The King James Version Debate: A Plea for Realism (Baker) should be widely read within the evangelical community. It communicates important information and a sound perspective in a nonthreatening way. Perhaps the most interesting new translation is Richard Lattimore’s The Four Gospels and the Revelation (Farrar, Straus, Giroux). Lattimore is known for his numerous translations of classical Greek texts (his translation of Revelation appeared in 1962). Others included Ben Campbell Johnson’s Matthew and Mark: A Relational Paraphrase (Word) and The New King James Bible: New Testament (Nelson). Wayne Walden’s Guide to Bible Translations (Livingbooks, 764 Congress St., Duxbury, Mass. 02332) is a helpful but incomplete annotated list of translations, mostly from the twentieth century.

A great and competent help for readers of the Greek New Testament is found in Max Zerwick’s and Mary Grosvenor’s A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament, Vol. II: Epistles-Apocalypse (Biblical Institute Press, Rome); Volume I appeared in 1974. This provides vocabulary and identifies verb forms and various grammatical constructions. It is the best of such guides. If your Greek needs refurbishing, try the helpful workbook by Marvin R. Wilson, A Guide for the Study of the First Letter of John in the Greek New Testament (Baker).

COMMENTARIES Many other commentaries were published in 1979, in addition to those of Cranfield, Betz, and Mounce already noted. The Liberty Bible Commentary on the New Testament (Nelson), edited by Jerry Falwell, was written by 11 faculty members in the Liberty Baptist Schools of Lynchburg, Virginia. It describes itself as “distinctively Baptist, aggressively Fundamental, historically evangelical and eschatologically premillennial.”

A new Roman Catholic series of New Testament commentaries was launched by publisher Michael Glazier. Edited by Wilfrid Harrington and Donald Senior, it is entitled New Testament Message: A Biblical Theological Commentary. The aim of the series is to bring the best of biblical scholarship to people in the church who desire to strengthen their faith. Five of the planned twenty-two volumes appeared in 1979: Wilfrid Harrington, Mark; James McPolin, John; Robert J. Karris, The Pastoral Epistles; Adela Yarbo Collins, The Apocalypse; and an introductory volume to be noted later. These are well-written, and often helpful despite their brevity.

A very few other brief commentaries on individual synoptic Gospels appeared: Robert E. Obach and Albert Kirk, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Paulist); Howard F. Vos, Matthew: A Study Guide Commentary (Zondervan); Willard M. Swartley, Mark: The Way for All Nations (Herald); and Michael Wilco*ck, The Savior of the World: The Message of Luke’s Gospel (InterVarsity).

Several more commentaries on the Gospel of John were published. James Boice completed his five-volume The Gospel of John: An Expositional Commentary (Zondervan); volume 5 covers John 18–21. Pheme Perkins’s The Gospel According to St. John: A Theological Commentary (Franciscan Herald) incorporates a considerable amount of background material and awareness of current scholarship in a genuinely popular commentary. Dr. George Vanderlip’s John: The Gospel of Life (Judson) adds a good popular book on John to this author’s publications. Veteran Southern Baptist scholar Ray Summers produced Behold the Lamb: An Exposition of the Theological Themes in the Gospel of John (Broadman). Deeper Into John’s Gospel (Harper & Row) by Arthur F. Sueltz may also be noted.

The most important item on Acts was the reprinting of F. J. Foakes Jackson’s and Kirsopp Lake’s five-volume (1920–1933) The Beginnings of Christianity; Part I, The Acts of the Apostles (Baker). Anthony L. Ash’s The Acts of the Apostles, Part I: 1:1–12:25 (Sweet) is a brief and popular work with some fine words in the introduction on the historical value and purpose of Acts. Two sermonic commentaries by well-known preachers may be mentioned: Donald Grey Barnhouse’s Acts: An Expositional Commentary (Zondervan), prepared by Herbert H. Ehrenstein; and W. A. Criswell’s Acts: An Exposition, Volume I, Chapters 1–8 (Zondervan). Although not a commentary, Jacques Dupont’s The Salvation of the Gentiles: Studies in the Acts of the Apostles (Paulist) is a very helpful collection of his essays in the study of Acts.

Several popular commentaries on Pauline epistles appeared in 1979.I would select four for special mention, besides the work by Robert J. Karris on the pastoral epistles already noted. John A. T. Robinson, well-known recently for his rather “conservative” books, Can We Trust the New Testament? (1977) and Redating the New Testament (1976), has provided us with Wrestling With Romans (Westminster). Carl Holladay’s The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians (Sweet) is an especially fine popular commentary. Robert H. Mounce’s Pass It On (Regal) on the pastoral epistles is another good popular commentary.

Especially welcome is an American edition of F. F. Bruce’s 1970 The Epistles of John: Introduction, Exposition and Notes (Eerdmans). Although not as detailed as I. H. Marshall’s commentary of a year ago on the Johannine epistles, Bruce’s work is an excellent guide, presenting considerable data in a brief and interesting way. Attention may also be called to D. Edmond Hiebert’s The Epistle of James (Moody). John H. Elliott’s I Peter: Estrangement and Community (Franciscan Herald) is a fine study of this epistle.

Two commentaries on Revelation have already been noted—those of Robert Mounce and A. Y. Collins. Five others appeared, all worthy of mention. Harry R. Boer’s The Book of Revelation (Eerdmans) is a useful, popular treatment. J. P. M. Sweet’s Revelation (Westminster) in the “Pelican Commentaries” series and Homer Hailey’s Revelation: An Introduction and Commentary (Baker) are more substantial works, each of which can be profitably consulted. Both provide fairly extensive introductory sections on the background and interpretation of Revelation. In this connection the reprint of Isbon T. Beckwith’s 1919 The Apocalypse of John (Baker) with its helpful introduction of over 400 pages should be noted. Gilles Quispel’s The Secret Book of Revelation (McGraw-Hill) is a lavish book (the “Secret” is borrowed from a late medieval German title page for Revelation). In addition to Quispel’s informational notes and interpretive essays, the book contains some 400 illustrations, many in full color, depicting from Western art the themes and symbols of Revelation. Quispel, drawing on his expertise in the fields of gnosticism and Jewish mysticism, stresses a symbolic interpretation of Revelation, often drawing on the work of Carl G. Jung. There is more of value here than one might expect. As a supplement to the commentaries one might enjoy Otto F. A. Meinardus’s St. John of Patmos and the Seven Churches of the Apocalypse (Caratzas Brothers), an illustrated archaeological-travel guidebook.

JESUS AND THE GOSPELS There was a flood of books on Jesus and the four Gospels in 1979. For the study of this material it is good to have a new (fourth) edition of Burton H. Throckmorton’s Gospel Parallels: A Synopsis of the First Three Gospels (Nelson). This is the best inexpensive Gospel synopsis available.

Apart from Drane’s book mentioned earlier, several popular books on the life of Jesus came out. Of these, Lucas Grollenberg’s Jesus (Westminster) may be the most helpful.

Appreciation can be expressed for two books that deal directly with the issues of the historical character of the Gospel tradition and the fact of four different Gospels. Birger Gerhardsson’s The Origins of the Gospel Traditions (Fortress) is a brief (less than 100 pages) statement of the position he articulated in two important books in the 1960s. Stanley B. Marrow’s The Words of Jesus in Our Gospels: A Catholic Response to Fundamentalism (Paulist), although aimed at a Roman Catholic audience, is a simple, clear presentation of basic issues in Gospel study. A very technical book for scholars in this area is Erhardt Güttgemann’s Candid Questions Concerning Gospel Form Criticism: A Methodological Sketch of the Fundamental Problematics of Form and Redaction Criticism (Pickwick).

Various studies on the teaching of Jesus were also published. T. W. Manson’s helpful commentary of 1937 on Jesus’ words in Matthew and Luke, The Sayings of Jesus (Eerdmans), had its first American publication. A helpful book for study and research is Warren S. Kissinger’s The Parables of Jesus: A History of Interpretation and Bibliography (Scarecrow), which gives a 250-page chronological history of parable interpretation and nearly 200 pages of bibliography on the study of the parables. More technical and in dialogue with recent parable study is Mary Ann Tolbert’s Perspectives on the Parables: An Approach to Multiple Interpretations (Fortress). Two rather technical Gospel studies are Robert Hamerton-Kelley’s God the Father: Theology and Patriarchy in The Teaching of Jesus (Fortress) and Arland J. Hultgren’s Jesus and His Adversaries: The Form and Function of the Conflict Stories in the Synoptic Tradition (Augsburg).

Several books appeared that deal with the study of a particular Gospel. The most engaging of these books was written by a professor from Union Seminary in New York on the Gospel of John. Both Raymond E. Brown’s The Community of the Beloved Disciple (Paulist), and J. Louis Martyn’s The Gospel of John in Christian History (Paulist) attempt reconstructions of the history of the Johannine community. Brown’s book is the more helpful of the two and would make provocative, profitable reading for serious students. Also very helpful is Robert T. Karris’s What Are They Saying About Luke and Acts? A Theology of the Faithful God (Paulist), which provides a well-informed but moving essay on the theology of Luke’s two volumes.

Other more advanced studies in the Gospels include: John P. Meier, The Vision of Matthew: Christ, Church, and Morality in the First Gospel (Paulist): Werner H. Kelber. Mark’s Story of Jesus (Fortress): John C. Meagher, Clumsy Construction In Mark’s Gospel: A Critique of Form and Redaktionsgeschichte (Edwin Mellen); and A. J. Mattill, Luke and the Last Things: A Perspective for the Understanding of Lukan Thought (Western North Carolina). These last two books promote theses that are not likely to win much approval. Studies geared more toward spiritual reflection include Thomas H. Olbricht, The Power To Be: The Life-Style of Jesus from Mark’s Gospel (Sweet): Joseph G. Donders, Jesus, the Way: Reflections on the Gospel of Luke (Orbis), written in poetic format; and José Comblin, Sent from the Father: Meditations on the Fourth Gospel (Orbis). A devotional book based on Luke-Acts by one of America’s foremost evangelical New Testament scholars is Merrill C. Tenney’s Roads A Christian Must Travel (Tyndale).

PAUL AND OTHERS Apart from the commentaries, relatively few books on Paul were published in 1979. Leander E. Keck’s Paul and His Letters (Fortress) is a very helpful summary of Paul, based, however, on only the seven undisputed letters of Paul, excluding II Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, and the pastoral Epistles under the headings: “the quest for the historical Paul”; “the gospel Paul preached”; and “what Paul fought for.” A more popular life of Paul is Lucas Grollenberg’s Paul (Westminster). Three books by Otto F. A. Meinardus provide interesting, illustrated, archaeological guidebooks to the places Paul visited: St. Paul in Greece; St. Paul in Ephesus and the Cities of Galatia and Cyprus; and St. Paul’s Last Journey (all Caratzas Brothers).

Ralph Earle’s fourth volume of his Word Meanings in the New Testament (Baker) provides nontechnical word studies on numerous terms in I and II Corinthians, Galatians, and Ephesians. Two brief and popular but well-informed studies on Pauline ethics appeared: Victor Paul Furnish’s The Moral Teaching of Paul (Abingdon) and Peter Richardson’s Paul’s Ethic of Freedom (Westminster). Although organized quite differently, each has a chapter on Paul’s view of women. On the whole, I prefer the general approach of Richardson’s book. A rather technical and convincing, yet interesting study of Pauline theology, is George Howard’s Paul: Crisis in Galatia—A Study in Early Christian Theology (Cambridge University Press).

JUDAISM: EARLY CHURCH I believe it is especially beneficial in understanding Christian beginnings to read about early Jewish-Christian relations, realizing that the church began as a movement within Judaism. Two new books that explore Jewish-Christian relations in the New Testament are John Koenig’s Jews and Christians in Dialogue: New Testament Foundations (Westminster) and Antisemitismand the Foundations of Christianity (Paulist), edited by Alan T. Davies. An excellent but specialized study of one area is Wayne A. Meeks’s and Robert L. Wilken’s Jews and Christians in Antioch in the First Four Centuries of the Common Era (Scholars Press). An important reprint, with a new preface by the author, is Jakob Jocz’s 1949 (revised 1954) The Jewish People and Jesus Christ: The Relationship between Church and Synagogue (Baker).

In addition to Schürer’s book on the Jewish background to the New Testament previously mentioned, a brief, popular book on “intertestamental” Judaism is provided by H. L. Ellison, From Babylon to Bethlehem: The People of God from the Exile to the Messiah (John Knox). This would be a good place to begin for those who have not read in this area. Although limited in scope, Hershel Shanks’s Judaism in Stone: The Archaeology of Ancient Synagogues (Harper & Row/Biblical Archaeology Society) is a beautiful and fascinating book. Synagogues, of course, were significant in the teaching ministries of Jesus and Paul. Very fine technical books on Judaism include the late Samuel Sandmel’s Philo of Alexandria: An Introduction (Oxford University Press), a very readable book on a prolific Jewish author from the first century A.D.; David Winston’s The Wisdom of Solomon: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Doubleday) in the Anchor Bible series, which treats in depth a Jewish apocryphal work that is important for the conceptual background of the New Testament: and Messianism in the Talmudic Era (Ktav), edited by Leo Landman, which is a collection of 27 reprinted essays on Jewish messianic beliefs.

A few books were published in the area of early church studies related to the New Testament. Kenneth A. Strand’s The Early Christian Sabbath: Selected Essays and a Source Collection (Ann Arbor Publishers, P.O. Box 388, Worthington, Ohio 43085) represents the fine scholarship of the Seventh-day Adventists on the issue. A book already causing controversy on both sides of the Atlantic, Elaine Pagels’s The Gnostic Gospels (Random House) discusses the implications of the Nag Hammadi Coptic gnostic texts for early church history and doctrine. Pagels, an expert on the Nag Hammadi texts, makes some inferences that will need a critical response. The Nag Hammadi library contains over 50 texts on which some commentaries have already been written, with many more certain to follow. Bentley Layton, one of the Coptic experts of our day, has produced the latest: The Gnostic Treatise on Resurrection from Nag Hammadi (Scholars Press). This is an important text in the early history of the discussion on the resurrection of believers that was started by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15.

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Introductions The notable event in Old Testament publication for 1979 was the appearance of Brevard S. Childs’s Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Fortress). Following up his earlier books (Biblical Theology in Crisis, 1970, and The Book of Exodus, 1974), Childs’s Introduction comprehensively discusses how the much-heralded “canon criticism” applies to the dating and authorship of Old Testament books. Here is the first North American critical introduction on the scale of the larger European works, offering not only a survey of the field, but developing the author’s own position. But the real news is still “canon criticism.” What finally is it? How does it take shape? Is it another form of the current interest in a more literary approach to Scripture, or is this something particularly new?

Canonical criticism is seen to be clearly a theological development. Childs accepts much of the literary-historical development of the Old Testament, but sees as a neglected element the influence of the process of canonization in the shaping of the final text. That this is not simply another form of redaction (editorial) criticism is plain, for the latter is man-centered, while true canonicity reflects the community’s recognition that God, the ultimate Author of Scripture, has a normative and authoritative purpose for the writing that has been taking shape under normal historical and literary forces. This influences the final shape that Childs seeks to capture in his analysis of the text. For starters in learning how this affects traditional critical questions, read the discussion of the relationship between Genesis 1 and 2 (p. 149–150), or the treatment of Isaiah’s canonical unity (pp. 325–336). This Introduction is fresh, responsible, and devoid of irresponsible speculation.

Two other “introductions” deserve mention, though neither pretends to break new ground. The Word Becoming Flesh (Concordia) by Horace D. Hummel is presented as a “middle-level” book, written from a “confessional and evangelical viewpoint.” Clearly a product of confessional Missouri Synod Lutheranism, Hummel provides a moderate and generally nonpolemical examination of the origin, purpose, and meaning of the entire Old Testament: a useful textbook for beginning Old Testament students. Equally useful, but without the confessional base, is John H. Hayes’s An Introduction to Old Testament Study (Abingdon). Although coming to the Old Testament from the historical-critical side (contra Hummel who begins with theology), Hayes is both thorough and fair in his discussions of opposing viewpoints. He makes no attempt to treat definitively matters of individual books or passages, but surveys, rather, various critical questions and how they have been addressed. Unlike most textbooks written for undergraduates, this useful volume simply relates the state of the art and gives something of the direction the author perceives as fruitful in further investigation.

Periodically the (British) Society for Old Testament Study publishes a collection of essays surveying the work done in recent Old Testament study. Tradition & Interpretation (Oxford), edited by G. W. Anderson, is thus an update of the widely circulated 1951 volume, The Old Testament and Modern Study, edited by H. H. Rowley. Roughly the same format is retained, and the degree of erudition is unchanged, but most of the materials were in the editor’s hand by late 1974 and the delay in publication leaves the impression of a somewhat dated account. The articles both on archaeology and philology, for example, make no reference to Ebla, recent developments in Pentateuchal studies do not appear (there is no interaction with any of Childs’s work on canon), and the article on theology is silent on the considerable output since 1974.

In the fertile field of structural analysis and kindred studies, we have two helpful books to report. Anthropology and the Old Testament (John Knox Blackwell) by John W. Rogerson continues the author’s investigation of whether, and how, social anthropology can make a contribution to Old Testament studies. So much is being written that seems to assure the conclusions of certain schools of linguistic-sociological-anthropological thought, that we are doubly grateful when a scholar with Rogerson’s clearheaded approach works his way through the presuppositional verbiage and helps to separate that which is firm from the mass of chaos. Far more varied in its contributions (read Rogerson first) but equally useful is a collection of essays particularly concerned with structure. Encounter with the Text; Form and History in the Hebrew Bible (Fortress Scholars), edited by Martin J. Buss, is divided into four parts, each dealing with some aspect of structural studies and their relation to history, linguistics, sociology, and theology.

PENTATEUCHAL STUDIES The leading commentary in the 1979 book list is Gordon J. Wenham’s Leviticus (Eerdmans). Wenham does not spend much time on critical questions, although he shows that he is fully familiar with the literature. His strong emphasis is on the value and applicability of the Book of Leviticus for today’s Christian. In contrast to the usual attitude toward Leviticus, Wenham argues that theology or practice for daily living is found “especially in the book of Leviticus.”

There is little else by way of notable commentary. In the Layman’s Bible Book Commentary, a series published by Broadman Press and representing moderate Southern Baptist scholarship, three short books deserve mention. Appearing in 1979 were Genesis by Sherrill G. Stevens, Exodus by Robert L. Cate, and Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy by Roy Honeycutt, Jr. Each volume has about 150 pages, assumes a moderately critical stance, and stresses the use of the books for a community of faith.

Two more books round out the available material on the Pentateuch. H. L. Ellison has brought together 12 articles originally written for the “Hebrew Christian” in a volume entitled Fathers of the Covenant: Studies in Genesis and Exodus (Paternoster). As always, his studies are a combination of scholarly, practical, and devotional material. We welcome David J. A. Clines’s The Theme of the Pentateuch (University of Sheffield. England). While it has been usual for scholars to divide up their sources and analyze the smallest particles, Clines reverses the process in this book and looks for unity in the Pentateuch as we have it. It is not that he is arguing against any sources in the Pentateuch but rather that we ask what the Pentateuch as a whole is about. The author uses some of the methodology of modern structural analysis and has produced a short but groundbreaking work.

HISTORICAL BOOKS In this category, the volume perhaps of most interest to CHRISTIANITY TODAY readers will be the “Tyndale Old Testament Commentary” on Ezra and Nehemiah (InterVarsity) by the highly respected British Anglican, Derek Kidner. The book is not intended to make a major contribution to critical issues and the author affirms both the traditional order of Ezra before Nehemiah and the early date of Ezra’s arrival in Jerusalem. In addition to grammatical and historical points, the author sets forth the underlying themes of Ezra and Nehemiah, with allusions to previous writings

A second and in its own way considerably more comprehensive work by Jack M. Sasson is Ruth: a new translation with a philological commentary and a formalist-folklorist interpretation (Johns Hopkins University Press). Sasson’s initial concern was the question of what transpired between Boaz and Ruth, and how Ruth persuaded Boaz to become Naomi’s redeemer. He aims to give us a completely new translation with considerable critical apparatus, in which he takes some liberties with the Hebrew text and, indeed, shows a large degree of independence in his treatment of various philological points. Sasson is not ready to cast aside the historicity of Ruth completely but is not convinced that it is a datable, historical narrative in the usual sense.

A number of shorter commentaries on historical books were forthcoming in the previous year. Two of them represent the Everyman’s Bible Commentary Series published by Moody Press. This series is short and tends to be more devotional than exegetical. Arthur Lewis writes on Judges and Ruth, John C. Whitcomb on Esther.

Two additional studies will mainly interest scholars. David M. Gunn in The Story of King David (University of Sheffield) applies structural principles to the “succession narrative” in II Samuel and I Kings. As in the Clines volume, the emphasis is on both the unity and the aspect of the narrative as story. Sandra B. Berg’s The Book of Esther (Scholars Press) also concentrates on narrative features, which she discovers in terms of motifs. The theme of reversal, which, according to this volume, provides the ordering of the structure of the book of Esther, is the basis for a rather detailed section on the architecture of the book. All in all it is a sound and useful work.

A series of exhortations from such prominent figures among the judges as Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson is given by Gary Inrig in a fairly substantial and quite good book entitled Hearts of Iron—Feet of Clay (Moody).

POETRY (WISDOM & SONGS) From C. Hassell Bullock comes An Introduction to the Old Testament Poetic Books (Moody), an excellent book that is thoroughly conservative, both in content and style. It deals briefly with the main critical issues of the books of wisdom and praise, giving a helpful perspective on questions of theme and development. A second introductory treatise, Glendon E. Bryce’s A Legacy of Wisdom (Bucknell University) is more technical and creative in its scholarship. Bryce seeks to support the claim often made by scholars that Israelite wisdom, and particularly the section in Proverbs 22–24, is dependent upon Egyptian prototypes. The author sees three stages of dependence marking the fixation and development of Egyptian materials in the book of Proverbs.

Moving to the area of commentaries and translations of Wisdom books, we have Stephen Mitchell’s Into the Whirlwind: A Translation of the Book of Job (Doubleday), in which a student of both Hebrew and comparative literature gives a fresh and extremely graphic translation of the text of Job, which is far more satisfying from a literary standpoint than from the point of view of Hebrew philology. Some 35 verses are listed on page 140 as deletions for reasons such as that they are glosses.

A contrasting work is a translation of the three volumes of sermons on The Song of Songs by the twelfth-century Cistercian monk, Gilbert of Hoyland, by Cistercian Publications of Kalamazoo. The method is essentially allegorical, relating the physical relationships of bride and groom to our spiritual relationship with the Lord.

On now to three very different books on Job. From Baker Book House comes a selection and translation of John Calvin’s Sermons from Job with an in troductory essay by Harold Dekker. The preaching of John Calvin has received fresh attention in recent years and these sermons dealing with God’s majesty, inscrutability, and all-inclusive providence will demonstrate the reason why. Much more difficult is the English translation of C. G. Jung’s Answer to Job (Routledge and Kegan Paul), a study available in English since 1954, but published here separately. Lawrence L. Beseerman’s The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages (Harvard University Press) begins by asking certain questions about Job, and traces three very different kinds of portraits of Job and his wife from the varied sources of biblical, apocryphal, and ecclesiastical traditions.

Now a few of the varied commentaries that deal with poetic books. John J. Davis offers a useful series of studies in the Twenty-third Psalm entitled The Perfect Shepherd (BHM Books). In the Everyman’s Bible Commentary Series, Job is well served in the short volume by Roy B. Zuck (Moody). Finally, for scholars comes a short study on the text of Lamentations by Hans Gottlieb (University of Aarhus, Denmark)—an invaluable aid to any student of the Hebrew text and a must for libraries.

PROPHETIC LITERATURE We note with pleasure the arrival of the long-awaited second volume of the Jewish Publication Society translation of Holy Scripture. This volume, titled The Prophets (Nevi’im) renders both the former and latter prophets according to the Jewish order.

In the field of introduction we welcome the posthumous work of Leon J. Wood, The Prophets of Israel (Baker). Wood begins with a discussion in the united monarchy and continues his studies of individual prophets down through the period of exile. It is a useful work. A shorter volume and one more dependent on contemporary scholarly opinion is Reading the Old Testament Prophets Today (John Knox) by Harry Mowvley. He begins with the ancient Near Eastern cultural context of prophecy and then shows both the similarities and differences between ancient Near Eastern source material and biblical prophetic life. A closing section discusses the teaching of the prophets, and relates that teaching to the needs of the church today; it is a far more useful work than its size might suggest.

The Book of Daniel continues to attract more attention than any of the other prophetic books. An excellent conservative treatment in paperback is Daniel by Desmond Ford (Southern Publishing Assoc., Nashville), a former student of F. F. Bruce, who has contributed the foreword. Ford shows that Daniel was addressing a world of meaninglessness in order to give it hope and content. This condition in which eschatology began to flourish is not unlike the condition we face today.

Daniel (InterVarsity) by Joyce G. Baldwin continues the offerings of the “Tyndale Old Testament Commentary” series. Miss Baldwin stresses questions of meaning in history and hope for the church in a day when Marxists and others claim to find man exalted in place of God, and history proceeding in a determined direction toward a final godless synthesis. Another book, included as part of a major series “The Bible Speaks Today,” is Ronald S. Wallace’s The Lord Is King: The Message of Daniel (InterVarsity). The purpose here is exposition. Wallace, basing his remarks on sound exegesis, takes the concerns expressed by Desmond Ford and Joyce Baldwin and shows how these concerns speak directly to the issues of 1980.

Most of what remains is reasonably light, though in a number of cases useful. Popular apologist Josh McDowell’s Daniel in the Critics’ Den (Campus Crusade) merely summarizes the positions of conservative scholars. Of a very different order is Jay Braverman’s Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel: A Study of Comparative Jewish and ChristianInterpretations of the Hebrew Bible (Catholic Biblical Quarterly), which includes a fresh translation of Jerome’s commentary.

In the “Proclamation Commentaries,” a short paperback series from Fortress Press designed to give ideas to ways in which the Old Testament is useful for preaching, 1979 saw the appearance of three additional books: Elizabeth Achtemeier’s Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, James Luther Mays’s Ezekiel, II Isaiah, and Bernhard W. Anderson’s The Eighth Century Prophets: Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah. Three additional paperbacks combine study guide format with brief commentary. Thus Says the Lord by Reidar B. Bjornard (Judson Press) examines the book of Isaiah while Jeremiah: Prophet Under Siege (Judson Press) by James M. Efird continues the same series. Additional study guides include Jeremiah by Ernest E. Marten (Herald), Amos: Prophet of Lifestyle from the Neighborhood Bible Studies series, and Just Living by Faith by three authors and published as a study guide to Habakkuk by InterVarsity Press.

HISTORY AND THEOLOGY A welcome addition to the literature of Old Testament theology is William Dyrness’s students’ handbook, entitled Themes in Old Testament Theology (InterVarsity). The author makes no attempt at a full-orbed treatise, but this is a well-written, systematically arranged, nontechnical, and very useful book.

A massive study that makes a point of rejecting theological models for those of sociology, but nevertheless projects a thesis with profound implications for theology, is Norman K. Gottwald’s The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050B.C. (Orbis). Gottwald, a liberation-oriented biblical scholar, offers a major study into tribal life in early Israel in a framework that sees in the simple tribal structures the liberation missing in much of the remainder of the ancient Near East. This book will disturb many.

An attempt to understand prophecy by bringing to the study a concept from social psychology is Robert P. Carroll’s When Prophecy Failed (Seabury/SCM). The thesis is simple: most biblical prophecies are not understood because we fail to realize the theological and psychological context in which they were uttered. Carroll is convinced that the average Old Testament prophet was unconsciously or consciously attempting to deal with what psychologists call “cognitive dissonance” (a response to disappointed expectations). To interpret the prophet aright we must begin with his hermeneutics and only then move to ours.

Two books deal with the history and theology of the exile. Largely similar in method, these volumes reflect a sharply divergent style. James D. Newsome, Jr., in By the Waters of Babylon (John Knox) draws out the pathos and human experience of exile. Ralph W. Klein’s Israel in Exile (Fortress), wants to say something to the various “exiles” in which contemporary North Americans live, but his touch is that of the theologian rather than the storyteller. With Klein, moreover, it is more difficult to find the unity of response in the various witnesses, and we are left wondering whether there is a single theology that is appropriate.

The next two volumes are revisions of doctoral dissertations. The Just King (University of Sheffield) by Keith W. Whitelam approaches the little-worked area of the responsibility of the Israelite king to uphold justice. Whitelam argues that the royal role, ideally speaking, was largely administrative rather than legislative: a ruler’s activities were to be based on the rules of the covenant. Slightly less careful with Scripture but helpful in understanding an aspect of Israelite royal ideology which ultimately figured prominently in messianic projections is The Royal Dynasties in Ancient Israel (W. deGruyter) by Tomoo Ishida. The question of the extent to which either popular acclaim or divine designation was basic to Israelite kingship has long puzzled readers of I Samuel. By the time of David’s later rule, it is clear that the Judean monarchs can claim both divine authority and a dynastic succession. Ishida tries—not always with the confidence in Scripture we might hope for—to sort out how this development came about, both within Israel and against its ancient Near Eastern cultural milieu.

Three compact subject studies try to fill gaps in our knowledge of Old Testament faith. Claus Westermann gives us a mini-theology of the Old Testament under the title What Does the Old Testament Say About God? (John Knox). God is seen in revelation, history, salvation, creation, and blessing. Christ in the Old Testament (Moody) by James A. Borland is a study of the so-called Christophanies (appearances of Christ) in the Old Testament. Borland is convinced that every occurrence or manifestation of God in human form in the Old Testament was, in reality, an appearance of the Second Person of the Trinity and preparatory to the coming of Christ in the New. A third book, Occultism in the Old Testament (Dorrance) by Solomon A. Nigosian, argues that Old Testament records prove that, “despite the denunciatory excerpts, occultism was a legitimate and accepted norm in ancient Israelite society”—a questionable thesis.

Finally, two books that fit no other category. Gerhard von Rad (Word) by James L. Crenshaw is an appreciative portrait of the late, influential German theologian and is a good starting place for understanding his thought. By contrast, John L. McKenzie’s The Old Testament Without Illusion (Thomas More), is a book best avoided, as showing chiefly how far his researches have led him away from traditional belief in Scripture.

ARCHAEOLOGY Easily the most exciting archaeological book of the year is Ebla: A Revelation in Archaeology (Times Books) by Chaim Bermant and Michael Weitzman. Here a journalist and a scholar combine to give us the “real” story of the spectacular finds in North Syria. We still wonder whether we have the whole story, but the book is helpful and readable. Chapters on the history of Ebla’s discovery, its coverage in the world press, disputes over alleged Zionist plotting, problems between excavator and epigrapher, relation between Ebla and the Bible, all whet our appetite for more.

Beginning but serious students of the Bible backgrounds will rejoice at another splendid textbook from veteran archaeologist/writer Jack Finegan. Archaeological History of the Ancient Middle East (Westview/Dawson) is a connected account of what happened first in Mesopotamia and then in Egypt as revealed by the archaeologist’s spade, between roughly 10,000 B.C. and the rise of Alexander the Great (330 B.C.).

Two volumes will interest the specialist, though each has material that can be profitably consulted by any interested university graduate. Canaanite Myths and Legends (T. & T. Clark), edited by J.C.L. Gibson, is a thorough revision of a 1956 volume by G. R. Driver, in which all the Ugaritic literary texts are published in translation and transliteration, with a full introduction to each. Symposia (American Schools of Oriental Research), edited by F. M. Cross, brings together 11 essays on archaeology, early Israelite history, and sanctuaries in Israel.

LINGUISTIC AIDS Another volume of the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (Vol. III, gillulim-haras), edited by G. J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren, continues the rapid English translation of this important German work. Two additional volumes in The Computer Bible (Biblical Research Associates, Box 3182, Wooster, Ohio 44691), edited by F. I. Anderson and A. D. Forbes, continue this valuable study of Hebrew vocabulary. Volumes XIV and XIV A cover all of the words in the text of Jeremiah. Kregel has reprinted a nineteenth-century lexical aid by William Wilson, as Old Testament Word Studies. This book is a bit difficult to work through, but can function as a concordance as well as a dictionary for the Hebrew words behind English expressions in the King James Bible.

Following recent practice in New Testament studies, Baker Book House has issued an edition of Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament numerically coded to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. This enables the reader to jump directly from Strong’s entry to the meanings in the Hebrew lexicon. Used with care, this tool can be of great value.

COLLECTED ESSAYS Two collections of essays arrived in 1979. Dedicated to the Union Seminary (N.Y.) don Samuel Terrien, Israelite Wisdom (Scholars Press) is edited by J. Gammie, W. Brueggemann, W. L. Humphreys, and J. Ward. Twenty essays on varied themes of wisdom scholarship are presented, with contributions from North America and Europe. In God and His Friends in the Old Testament (Universitetsforlaget Oslo, Norway), Norwegian scholar Arvid S. Kapelrud brings together 18 of his own articles, particularly on the Psalms and Qumran.

FOR SCHOLARS ONLY This section will only list titles, most of which with the subtitles included are descriptive of content.

Three studies that come as supplements to the “Journal for the Study of Old Testament” (University of Sheffield) are: Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet: An Interpretation of Isaiah Chapter 53 by R. N. Whybray, The Sense of Biblical Narrative: Three Structural Analyses in the Old Testament (1 Sam. 13–31, Num. 11–12, 1 Kings 17–18) by David Jobling, and Yahweh as Prosecutor and Judge by Kirsten Nielsen. Two books are part of the Harvard Semitic Monograph series (Scholars Press): Parallelism in Early Biblical Poetry by Stephen A. Geller and The Qumran Text of Samuel and Josephus by E. C. Ulrich, Jr. Also from Scholars Press come Biblical Hapax Legomena in the Light of Akkadian and Ugaritic by Harold R. Cohen and “Righteousness” in the Septuagint of Isaiah by John W. Olley. Finally, we notice Robert R. Wilson’s Genealogy and History in the Biblical World (Yale University).

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

The publishing event of 1979 in biblical studies is certainly the appearance of Volume 1 of the revised International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Eerdmans), under the general editorship of Fuller Seminary church historian Geoffrey W. Bromiley, with the able assistance of Everett F. Harrison (New Testament), Roland K. Harrison (Old Testament), and William S. LaSor (Archaeology). The new ISBE maintains the same, high level of scholarship that marked its predecessors, along with a responsible and reverent evangelical tone.

Next in importance for general study of the Bible are three new volumes of commentary, the first of which, The Layman’s Bible Commentary (Zondervan), represents the completion of an earlier New Testament work entitled A New Testament Commentary (1969) under the editorial hand of G. C. D. Howley, F. F. Bruce, and H. L. Ellison. Issued in Britain with the title A Bible Commentary for Today (Pickering and Inglis), this volume represents almost exclusively the work of Plymouth Brethren scholars and, as such, testifies to the rising scholarship that is currently to be found within that significant evangelical movement.

In contrast to the previously mentioned work, the Concordia Self-Study Commentary (Concordia) is essentially the work of two men, Walter R. Roehrs and the late Martin H. Franzmann. Like the Layman’s Bible Commentary, the new volume represents a combination of earlier New Testament material with fresh Old Testament resources and for the main part is also a verse-by-verse commentary. The Concordia book, however, lacks many of the helpful introductory articles of the previous work, but in other respects matches the scope admirably. The critical stance of both works is what might be called “enlightened conservative.”

A third volume to appear in 1979 was volume 1 of the 12-volume Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Zondervan), under the overall editorship of the veteran biblical scholar and writer, Frank E. Gaebelein. Unlike the previous two commentaries, which are based on the Revised Standard Version, the EBC is a commentary on the New International Version text. Volume 1, however, leaves commentary for later and concentrates on 35 helpful introductory articles. Presented like the previous volumes in scholarly but nontechnical language, this book represents a treasury of evangelical scholarship and will surely take its place as a standard work for years to come.

THE NATURE OF SCRIPTURE An item on which attention still is focused is the subject of inspiration. Two books ably yet simply defend the inerrancy of Scripture: The Inspired Scriptures (Gospel Publishing House) by Charles Ford and Nothing But the Truth (Biblical Literature Distributors, Box 3499, Newport, Del. 19804) by Brian Edwards. Robert Mounce defends the accuracy of Scripture from a practical point of view in Answers to Questions About the Bible (Baker). Standing firmly “on the side of an errorless Bible,” Mounce answers a multitude of difficult questions from and about the Bible. Tyndale House has made available the six sermons that were preached at the plenary sessions of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy in October 1978, in Can We Trust the Bible?, edited by Earl Radmacher. These are marvelous messages defending a high view of Scripture. A collection of essays presented in honor of Reformed professor Johannes G. Vos entitled The Book of Books (Presbyterian and Reformed) by Vos’s colleagues and students, defends the Warfieldian position on biblical inerrancy and discusses the ways in which Scripture is to be interpreted in light of it.

No survey of books on the Bible could be complete without reference to Harold Lindsell’s second foray in the battle for the Bible, appearing under the title The Bible in the Balance (Zondervan). This is not only a sequel to Lindsell’s earlier polemical work but serves as an in-depth response to his critics. Inasmuch as the interim period between the two volumes witnessed the convocation in Chicago of a major conference on biblical inerrancy and the issuance of a definitive statement on the meaning and extent of inerrancy, we might have expected Lindsell’s book to use the Chicago statement as its point of departure; however, only four references are to be found. The book, then, is not so much a statement on Scripture itself or the nature of inspiration as it is a commentary on the various schools and institutions in which the author sees evidence of decline.

Of a much more scholarly nature, but no less polemical in its intent, is The Authority and Inspiration of the Bible: An Historical Approach (Harper & Row) by Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim. Both the preface and a foreword by F. L. Battles affirm that Lindsell went wrong in basing his doctrine of Scripture not on a historical, Reformed Calvinistic position, but on the Princeton scholasticism of B. B. Warfield, derived ultimately not from Calvin but from Francis Turretin. Rogers and McKim have issued a serious challenge to the standard approach taken to biblical inerrancy and deserve to be answered with a balanced study of equal scholarship.

Others are not so sure that a high view of Scripture is even necessary. Jacques Guillet sees the revelation of God as coming through people and human experiences, as well as through the Scriptures in A God Who Speaks (Paulist). God speaks in Scripture, but Guillet says we should not idolize the letter. In The Living Word of the Bible (Westminster) Bernhard Anderson argues that God speaks to his people today through Scripture and when the “inspired writing” meets the “inspired reader,” it becomes the Word of God. The Words of Jesus in Our Gospels: A Catholic Response to Fundamentalism (Paulist) by Stanley Marrow is a polemical work that argues the inerrancy view is ultimately inadequate and those who hold it must also willy-nilly claim for themselves divine inspiration. Marrow hasn’t really understood what conservatives believe. William Neil asks Can We Trust the Old Testament? (Seabury) and seems to answer with an unsatisfactory “yes—but”: yes, in that God is to be found working there; but, in that a lot of it isn’t actually true, especially if modern science says it didn’t happen that way.

AIDS TO BIBLE STUDY 1979 saw the appearance of several “how-to” manuals that will greatly aid the average student in grasping good study principles. Grant R. Osborne and Stephen B. Woodward in their Handbook for Bible Study (Baker) include both basic and more advanced methods of analyzing a text, along with a considerable bibliography for people who want to study the Bible seriously. Similar in tone but slightly more popular is A Layman’s Guide to Interpreting the Bible (Zondervan and NavPress) by Walter A. Henrichsen. Equally helpful but less penetrating is the short Navigator Bible Studies Handbook (NavPress), which concentrates on a kind of catchy ABC method of Bible study (a title, best verse, challenge, difficulties, essence, and so forth). Bob Smith, a pastor in California’s Peninsula Bible Church, offers Basics of Bible Interpretation (Word). Smith has a layman’s grasp of the nature of language, the nature of Scripture, the biblical languages, and the way to analyze a text. Another book from a conservative author, Sweeter Than Honey (BHM Books) by Jesse Deloe, may prove helpful to some but is flawed by an occasional inaccuracy and a less than elevated style. The best of the lot is How to Get More From Your Bible (Baker) by Lloyd Perry and R. D. Culver, which deals well with the text and content of Scripture. All these books should give readers lacking theological training tools to understand good exegetical method working strictly from the English text.

Three additional books are designed to introduce the beginning reader to the flavor of Scripture. Reading the Bible for the First Time (Judson Press/Oliphants) by British Old Testament scholar John Goldingay divides biblical material into story, word, and response. Goldingay brings to life the story as well as the proclamation in a way that combines a moderately critical commitment with a strong sense of evangelical reverence. For someone who has never read the Bible, this book would provide a good starting point, in spite of the fact that most conservative writers will not agree with Goldingay’s dating of some Old Testament sections. Equally helpful and strongly conservative is a translation from the Dutch entitled The Bible as a Book (Paideia) by Gerardus Van Der Leeuw. Finally, we mention the work of a Dutch Roman Catholic, Lucas Grollenberg, in order to advise readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY to stay away from it. The author, a distinguished geographer, has written a book entitled A Bible for Our Time (SCM) which documents what can happen when a church that traditionally held to the divine origin of Scripture suddenly spawns scholars who see the Bible as nothing more than a human book

Two more books treat the Bible as literature. Leonard L. Thompson in Introducing Biblical Literature: A More Fantastic Country (Prentice-Hall) has provided us with a major Christian analysis of the entire Bible from the standpoint of literary and rhetorical criticism, although conservatives will not agree with everything Thompson has said. Much of the work of the contemporary structural analyst is found in the book, but the volume retains a sensitivity to the need for Scripture to remain in the realm of the historical as well as to evidence the literary. Alongside Thompson’s volume we find a somewhat breezy introduction to form criticism replete with cartoon illustrations under the title The Bible: Now I Get It! (Doubleday). Its author, Gerhard Lohfink, is convinced that an understanding of form criticism is necessary for the average person and stands as an outstanding introduction to what biblical “forms” are; but Lohfink mars the finished product by a tendency to confuse description of the literary form in which an event is told with totally unwarranted denials of the historicity of the event described. This would otherwise be the ideal introduction to a useful form criticism for the average church layman.

Three more Bible study books deal with themes of the Bible, particularly as the themes of the Old Testament relate to the New. From the veteran British evangelical New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce comes a short volume entitled The Time Is Fulfilled (Eerdmans) that is packed with scholarly and spiritual insights. Only slightly less readable and considerably more complete in its coverage is The Scripture Unbroken (Eerdmans) by Reformed scholar Lester J. Kuyper. The book centers on a series of essays dealing with themes of Old Testament theology as brought forward into the new era and its concerns. Finally, a short volume by Norman Geisler has been reprinted by Baker Book House under the title To Understand the Bible, Look for Jesus. If you have ever wondered what Jesus told the disciples on the road to Emmaus when he said that Moses and all the prophets spoke concerning himself, this book will at least give a hint.

Finally, John A. Bollier has compiled a reference work for theological students and ministers entitled The Literature of Theology: A Guide for Students and Pastors (Westminster). Compared to other annotated bibliographies (e.g., Brevard S. Childs’s Old Testament Books for Pastor and Teacher), Bollier’s work is less definitive but more extensive. The fields covered include not only the Bible and such general material as bibliographic guides and manuals, bibliographies of bibliographies, encyclopedias and dictionaries, but also systematic theology, church history, denominational reference works, practical theology, missions, ecumenics, and comparative religion.

ARCHAEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY In the well-plowed field of biblical archaeology, 1979 added only two slender books to the already crowded shelves. By excerpting two articles from the above-mentioned volume 1 of the Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Zondervan was able to publish yet another volume in its Contemporary Evangelical Perspective series. Archaeology and the Bible by Donald J. Wiseman and Edwin Yamauchi is factual rather than polemical and is a useful compendium for the beginning student. Much more of a personal statement comes in Kathleen M. Kenyon’s The Bible and Recent Archaeology (John Knox). The author, who until her death was a leading Palestinian archaeologist, concentrates on those excavations in which she was personally involved and has given us a volume rich in illustration and authoritative in tone.

Under the heading “Geography,” three new Bible atlases and one reprint make available to the beginning student a series of useful maps to provide geographical waymarks in one’s journey through Scripture. Most complete and also the most lavishly illustrated is the Holman Bible Atlas (A. J. Holman), edited by Jerry L. Hooper. Unlike other collections of maps, this one is essentially a historical atlas; that is, it traces the movements of the people of Israel in both Old and New Testament times as they relate to the text of the Bible.

Those looking for nothing more than a fairly complete collection of maps, accompanied by a definitive geographical gazetteer, will find what they are seeking in The Compact Bible Atlas (Baker). Nineteen maps and a gazetteer will enable the student to find virtually any place mentioned in the Bible. From the Paternoster Press in Britain comes another short collection of maps laid out and illustrated with a chronological table, in a form that will be especially useful for children first entering the world of Bible study. The book is called Students’ Atlas of the Bible and would make a fine gift for Sunday school scholars. To round out the feast we have a Penguin reissue of Lucas H. Grollenberg’s Shorter Atlas of the Bible, originally published in both Dutch and English in 1959. This is a shorter version of a much larger work and has proven its worth over the years.

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

The spark and sting of his sermons were the product of hard study.

The wonder of the Age”—that was how Presbyterian Samuel Davies described the amazing George Whitefield (1714–1770). No other preacher had such wide influence and revived so much interest in preaching on both sides of the Atlantic. Many regarded him as probably the greatest preacher in the history of English homiletics.

Surprisingly, however, the scholastic side of Whitefield has been largely ignored in favor of emphasizing his eloquence. Also, many have assumed that popularizers in the pulpit necessarily had to be free from the weight of academic apparatus, of wide reading.

Whitefield’s sermons admittedly were not clever essays nor profound treatises, yet neither were they hasty harangues. The spirited urgency with which he delivered them and their seeming artlessness may lead one to think of them as extemporaneous ramblings. In his Journals he let it be known that he was not about the business of producing homiletic masterpieces; but in the irony of God’s working the spark, sting, and seraphic soarings of his countless sermons were also the product of hard study. If the mother of Whitefield’s eloquence was ingenuity, its father was intelligence. We do not diminish his surrender to God’s Spirit, who used him to spearhead America’s Great Awakening, when we focus upon his preparations to preach. Indeed, we miss the secret to much of what made him great and gripping unless we pay proper attention to his reading. Fire without fuel soon burns out. Thousands were warmed by his words because he was well supplied from many rich stores of substance.

Whitefield’s collected sermons show his serious thought, as do his eight Journals. Even more helpful are his private letters (contained in Works). In them most of all he was more inclined to discuss books and recommend authors.

Traditionally evangelists are stereotyped as lolling in mental laziness. At times Whitefield breathed with difficulty because of his asthma, but he was listened to with pleasure because of his adept mind. Behind the rhapsodic voice, passionate outbursts, and enchanting appeals was a reservoir of learning, much disguised and much more distilled. He said something significant in addition to saying it attractively. Books shaped his mind and sharpened it.

The book that most occupied his attention and influenced his life was the Bible. He read it seriously and for long stretches even before he entered Oxford University. He confessed to giving it first place, sometimes to the neglect of his assigned lessons. Following his ordination as an Anglican priest and upon his first transatlantic voyage he recorded, at age 23, “Two most profitable hours in reading God’s Holy Word.” He read while on his knees, a practice he started in college and continued all his life. Meditation on Scripture was his favorite recreation throughout his life.

George Whitefield never scoffed at scholastic pursuits, nor attacked linguistic skills. At 17 he learned Greek and used it on a regular basis during his entire ministry. He cited the Greek New Testament in his correspondence with the bishop of London, and, on occasion, referred to it in sermons. Today Whitefield’s personal copy of the two-volume Greek Testament is housed in London. His notes on the interleaved edition reveal, according to Mr. George Stampe of the Wesley Historical Society, “a wide, if not deep, knowledge of the Greek language.”

Posing as pundit was against his convictions. As an itinerant evangelist and effective communicator he was not above referring to the latest translations, paraphrases, and renderings of the original biblical texts by others. He was familiar with Latin and read Latin theological books.

A roving evangelist in those days of arduous transportation had less time to read than would have been the case with a resident pastor. Rarely at home, Whitefield had little opportunity for sustained and systematic study. Obviously, circulating far and wide and preaching a staggering number of times (18,000) he found it impossible to read as much as he would have liked. The pressure of a full schedule, however, did not prevent him from analyzing doctrines, reviewing popular books, and giving exuberant defense of evangelical views, rights, methods, and men.

He showed and shared his intellectual interests. He urged his correspondents to improve themselves by reading. He distributed books, pamphlets, and tracts to people who could read but could not afford them, such as prisoners, soldiers, and seamen. Students especially were fortunate recipients of his book gifts. He pushed particular books, writing forewords to those being reissued. He edited William Law’s Serious Call for wider distribution, demonstrating that he realized the relevant Christian need not be completely serious about all Law laid down.

Ocean travel in colonial times was slow and hazardous, yet Whitefield looked upon it as welcome respite from his rigorous schedule. From England to America via Gibraltar took 11 to 17 weeks; the direct route took approximately 9 weeks. Whitefield crossed the Atlantic 13 times, gaining opportunity to read, meditate, pray, compose sermons, and write letters. On January 8, 1750, after laboring on land, he wrote, “I want to read, meditate, and write. But I despair of getting much time for these things, till I get upon the mighty waters.” He did not complain, therefore, when the voyage lasted longer than expected.

He was well-traveled and, with it, well-rested; but was he really well-read? In his collected works (seven volumes) he names 120 authors and up to 230 books. He read much more, of course, and those he did mention were, for the most part, his favorites. If his praise of the Puritans means anything, he read them widely. Yet he by no means confined himself to them. He showed he had a circ*mspect appetite in his driving desire to read.

Fields of Reading

In theology, the key book outside the Bible that altered his life significantly was Henry Scougal’s Life of God in the Soul of Man (1677). On the similar note of regeneration and of similar size were much praised, much prized Joseph Allein’s Alarm to the Unconverted (1672) and Richard Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted (1657). A favorite theme was justification, God’s declarative act by which he regards guilty sinners as righteous in Jesus Christ; among his favorite treatments were Jenk’s Submission to the Righteousness of Christ and Solomon Stoddard’s The Safety of Appearing in the Righteousness of Christ (1687).

Whitefield also liked books that rocked the ecclesiastical boat, such as Jonathan Warn’s The Church of England Man Turned Dissenter and Arminianism, the Back Door to Popery.

He rejoiced in “an excellent Scotch divine,” Thomas Boston, whose Fourfold State of Man and Covenant of Grace he liked. Along similar Calvinistic lines he extolled Edward Fisher’s Marrow of Modern Divinity and Elisha Cole’s Divine Sovereignty. Whitefield himself held to infralapsarianism in the matter of predestination. In eschatology he was amillennial.

Regarding the application of salvation, William Guthrie’s Christian’s Saving Interest, a stock evangelical work of the period, received his hearty appreciation. On the subject of sanctification, he depended heavily upon and delighted in the comprehensive work of Walter Marshall, Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, which, like the earlier volume by Guthrie, was reprinted as late as the 1950s. He acknowledged help in John Edwards’s Veritas Redux, the writings of Nicholas Ridley and Matthew Henry on the subject of the extent of Christ’s Atonement, a matter which led to a separation from John Wesley. Whitefield had no firsthand acquaintance with Calvin, Zwingli, or Melanchthon, as far as I have found in his extant references. His knowledge of Luther’s exegetical comments and aphorism were derived, in the main, from his Table Talk, Galatians Commentary, and The Bondage of the Will. His information in Reformation theology was more biographical than theological, more English than continental, more second generation than first generation. Yet we must not conclude that Whitefield was merely giving the gist of the Reformers, for he could in numerous sermons and letters give a restatement of the classic doctrines of the Reformation in the simplest, most salient language, indicating a digestion of the great doctrines, thoroughly integrated into his thought processes.

Big among the biblical commentators was the Presbyterian who died the year Whitefield was born, Matthew Henry (1662–1714), “my favorite commentator,” “that holy, judicious, and practical expositor.” Henry’s six-volume quarto set was a rich mine of insight, providing quaint and quick information for the busy evangelist. Whitefield also mentioned another near-contemporary, Samuel Clark (1676–1729), whose Bible with Annotations, seemed “best calculated for universal edification.” Expository tools in language aids were familiar to Whitefield, and so were the ponderous and hefty commentary-sermons of William Gurnal on Ephesians 6 and Thomas Goodwin on the first three chapters of Ephesians. Clear and crisp by Puritan standards were the works of Thomas Manton and John Flavel, available to today’s readers in reprint.

Whitefield always eyed books from a devotional angle. Prior to his conversion and during his spiritual infancy he read such books as Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ. The translated works of Prof. August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), the leader of pietism in Germany, prompted Whitefield to write to him.

An experience with Christ beyond participation in the sacraments was a continuous theme in Whitefield’s preaching. He argued this case from the historical fulcrum and illustrated it with biographical and autobiographical detail. He was especially enthusiastic about news reports on the revivals and religious societies scattered throughout the American frontier. He followed with interest the progress made in evangelical charitable works, such as an orphanage in Georgia.

Biography, especially of ministers, delighted him. “Biography … is the best history,” he once said. He continued, “writing and reading the lives of great and good men, is one of the most profitable and delightful kinds of history we can entertain ourselves with.” Among the lives he knew were Archbishop Cranmer, Latimer, Hooper, Bishop Gardner, Bishop Jewel, Bunyan, Luther, Law, Haliburton, Calvin, Philip Henry, Dr. Calamy, and “the venerable Foxe’s history of the martyres.”

When a boy, Whitefield was drilled in plays and poems. In maturity he quoted Homer and Horace, but did not retain much of the youthful enthusiasm he once had. Among poets of his century, he liked George Herbert in England and Edward Taylor in America.

In his youth at Oxford University Whitefield resolved to read or to prefer those books “such as entered into the heart of religion and which led directly into an experimental knowledge of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Any book that did not result in building up one’s faith was considered unworthy of a Christian’s time. He urged students to read extensively, even though he warned of being “letter-learned.”

God was vitally interested, as he saw it, as much in what we read as in where we go. Instead of indiscriminate reading, a Christian should be noted for indefatigable reading in the best sources. For him Puritanism offered the best in reading material because it was solid and rewarding. He liked the “critical and judicious commentaries”: they edified and could “go to the bottom.” Of the Puritan writers he singled out “the great Preston” (John Preston), “the learned Dr. Owen” (John Owen), “the great” and “that learned pious soul” Dr. Thomas Goodwin, and “the amiable Mr. Howe” (John Howe). Richard Baxter got his frequent notice and approving nod.

Conclusions

Whitefield knew his talent was not in writing learned works. He strove, however, to improve his mental stock, to keep in touch with contemporary thought, and to argue effectively the merits of Reformed theology. Sometimes his sermons were disorganized; yet they were eloquently expressed and passionately delivered. Even from his digressions it was evident that he had not thrown education to the wind. They were always interesting, even instructive. Unlike some evangelists today, Whitefield never made derogatory remarks about painstaking research. He was not an anti-intellectual.

Further, in that era we can find no more articulate and attractive exponent of orthodoxy. To see the multitudes moved and to hear of large numbers embracing Christ and emulating his stance moved him to enormous effort.

To him a deliberately selective library was no drawback. He judged what he read in terms of faithfulness to Scripture, homiletical usefulness, and personal edification.

Certainly he was no lumbering technologist in theology, but Gilbert Thomas is inaccurate in saying that he was “no lucid thinker.” His mind had been tooled by exact study and trained in a theological tradition both celebrated and censured for its precise distinctions. He spoke and wrote clearly and persuasively. To compose and deliver compelling, life-changing sermons, to marshall the strongest arguments in the simplest manner, to adjust his comments to the immediate situation—all these features of his ministry bore an indirect testimony to the hours he spent in bumping against the best brains of the age.

So the fluent, sensitive Whitefield was a disciplined, reflective reader. Without failing to extol the freedom of the spirit’s presence, Whitefield exemplified the need for intense preparation in preaching. Behind the gifted spokesman of evangelical Christianity was the good student.

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

One of the top ten questions among evangelicals today is whether one is for or against the charismatic movement. It is a bad, polarizing, party-minded, Corinthian sort of question; I usually parry it by saying I am for the Holy Spirit. But why is it asked so often and so anxiously? Perhaps it is because some evangelicals feel threatened by charismatics, having perceived (they would say) several errors. I wish to report these, modify them, and then zero in on a number of significant insights noncharismatics can profitably gain from charismatics.

First, a word of introduction. The charismatic movement has its Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and liberal Protestant components, and focuses on celebrating the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The evangelical movement plays a minority role in most older Protestant bodies, and focuses on a longing to see God’s revealed truth reform and renew Christendom. These two movements, charismatic and evangelical, are overlapping circles; many evangelicals define themselves as charismatics; many charismatics define themselves as evangelicals.

Charismatic theology may look loose and naive beside evangelical formulations, sharp-honed as these are by nearly five centuries of controversy. But the two constituencies are plainly at one on such supposedly evangelical distinctives as personal conversion to Christ, lives changed by the Spirit’s power, learning about God from God through Scripture, bold expectant prayer, small group mutual ministry, and a love for swinging singing.

Most of what is distinctive in charismatic theology comes from older Pentecostalism, which sprang at the start of this century from the yet older Wesleyan tradition. Though charismatic Christianity treats experience rather than truth as primary and embraces people with many nonevangelical beliefs, it remains evangelicalism’s half-sister; this may explain why evangelical reactions to charismatic renewal seem sometimes to smack of sibling rivalry.

Commonly Voiced Concerns

Why do some evangelicals say they feel threatened? They mention the following:

1. Irrationality in glossolalia. Charismatics see their tongues as God-given prayer language, perhaps angelic. But to those who would only ever address God intelligibly, and who know from professional linguistic scholars (who are unanimous on this) that glossolalia has no language-character at all, it can seem shockingly silly, self-deceived, and irreverent. Granted, earlier diagnoses of glossolalia as a neurotic, psychotic, hypnotic, or schizophrenic symptom are not tenable; on the contrary, the evidence reveals glossolalia in most cases both psychologically and spiritually health-giving, so far as man can judge. Yet many still find the thought of making nonsense-noises to God deeply disturbing, and are unnerved by people who are exuberantly sure that this is what God wants them to do.

2. Elitism in attitudes. Charismatics see their kind of communal spirituality as God’s current renewal formula, and themselves as his trailblazers in this. Hence, they naturally talk big about the significance of their movement, and easily leave impressions of naive and aggressive arrogance as if they thought only charismatics matter, and none really count for God who do not join their ranks. The old Oxford Group had a similar self-image, and left similar impressions.

3. Judgmentalism in theology. Protestant charismatics (Catholics less so) tend to theologize their experience as man-centered in terms of recovering primitive standards of Christian experience through seeking and finding what was always available but what earlier generations lacked faith to claim, namely, Spirit-baptism and sign-gifts (tongues; interpretation; miracles; healing; and as charismatics believe, prophecy also). This Arminian “restorationism,” the equivalent in spirituality to Anabaptist ecclesiology, implies that noncharismatics are substandard Christians, and that the only reason why any lack charismatic experience is that either through ignorance or unwillingness they have not sought it. Such beliefs, however gently and charitably stated, are inescapably threatening.

4. Disruptiveness in ministry. The charismatic movement often invades churches in the form of a reaction (sometimes justified) against formalism, intellectualism, and institutionalism, in favor of a free-wheeling experientialism. Such a swing of the pendulum is bound both to win converts and produce division; frustration-fed reactions always do. Many churches have split because charismatics have either hived off or, in effect, have driven others out—in both cases with an apparently good conscience. Other churches contain charismatic cliques who keep a low profile but constantly scheme to move things their way. Pastors in particular naturally feel threatened.

Evaluating These Concerns

Judgmentalism evokes judgmentalism; many Christians, evangelicals and others, have written off the charismatic movement entirely as a delusive and perhaps demonic distraction. But inasmuch as it produces conversions, teaches people to love Christ, the Bible, and their neighbors, and frees them up for worship and witness, demonic delusion cannot be the whole story. A more discerning estimate is required.

Charismatic “restorationism” (a restoring of first-century experiences) is certainly doubtful. There is no way to establish the disciples’ Spirit-baptism at Pentecost as a normative experience for all later believers. Indeed, quite apart from the fact that as an experience we know very little about it, its dispensational uniqueness rules that out. Nine o’clock on Pentecost morning was the singular, unrepeatable moment when the promised Spirit first began his new covenant ministry of communicating communion with the glorified Christ. Since that moment all Christians have enjoyed this ministry from conversion on (Acts 2:38–39: Rom. 8:9–11: 1 Cor. 12:12–13.) Because the disciples became believers before Pentecost, their experience had to be “two-stage” in a way no later Christian’s can ever be.

Moreover, though the subsequent experience of those who testify to having received Spirit-baptism may be far richer than it was before, it does not seem significantly to differ from that of devoted people who have not known this “second blessing.” Contrary claims at this point simply force the question: Who is kidding whom?

Nor is there any way to make good the claim that the sign-gifts that authenticated the apostles (Rom. 15:19; 2 Cor. 12:12; Heb. 2:3f.) are now restored. The nature of those gifts is in many respects uncertain, and must remain so. We cannot be sure that charismatic phenomena fully correspond to them. For instance, charismatics commend private glossolalic prayer, but New Testament tongues are signs for use in public; charismatics who claim healing gifts have a spottier success record than did Christ and the apostles; and so on.

Yet one can doubt restorationism (which in any case is not approved doctrine among Roman Catholic and German Protestant charismatics) and still rejoice in the real enrichment that charismatics have found in seeking the Lord. Their call to expectant faith in the God who still on occasion heals supernaturally and does wonders can be gratefully heard, and their challenge to seek radical personal renewal can be humbly received without accepting all their theology. We should be glad that our God does not hide his face from those who seek him—neither from charismatics nor noncharismatics—until their theology is correct. Where would any of us be if he did? And we should not refuse to learn lessons from charismatics while contesting some of their opinions.

In passing, I urge that a better way to theologize what is called or miscalled Spirit-baptism is as an intensifying of the Spirit’s constant witness to our adoption and inheritance (Rom. 8:15–17), a deepening of the communion with Father and Son of which Christ spoke (John 14:21–23), an increase of what Paul prayed the Ephesians might enjoy (Eph. 3:15–19), and a renewing of that unspeakable joy in Christ (1 Peter 1:8) of which the Puritan John Owen wrote: “There is no account to be given, but that the Spirit worketh it when and how he will; he secretly infuseth and distills it into the soul, filling it with gladness, exultations, and sometimes with unspeakable raptures of mind.”

Vivid awareness of the divine love seems always to be the essence of the experience, whatever its adjuncts, as it has been also of countless comparable experiences. These have included sealing with the Spirit among the Puritans, entire sanctification among the Wesleyans, the noncharismatic Spirit-baptism of Finney, Moody, and Torrey, the Keswick experience of consecration and filling with the Spirit, the mystics’ “second conversion,” and other meetings with God to which no such brand name has been given. I propose the same theological account of God’s work in all such experiences as being biblically viable and fitting the facts.

A Catholic Assesses Charismatic Renewal In His Church

As one who regards himself as a “Catholic evangelical” and a leader in the charismatic renewal, I have watched with interest for signs of response by evangelical Protestants to the Catholic charismatic movement. It has seemed to me that the charismatic renewal among Roman Catholics offers an opportunity for evangelical Christians—Protestant and Catholic—to recognize a common loyalty to the basic beliefs that constitute Christian orthodoxy.

I see indications that some Protestant evangelicals are also perceiving such an opportunity. While some have rejected the charismatic movement as a whole—and thus have not seen the Catholic charismatic renewal as evidence of an evangelical awakening among Catholics—other Protestant evangelicals have taken a positive, though cautious view. Observers such as Robert Culpepper, Charles Hummel, and Richard Lovelace have described the Catholic charismatic renewal as a genuine movement of conversion to Christ and experience of the Holy Spirit. Lovelace comments in the Dynamics of Spiritual Life: “The Catholic charismatic sector is in many aspects among the most balanced and beautiful in this renewal, [although] no one doubts that eventually hard theological issues will have to be faced.”

The World Evangelical Fellowship has asked me, a Catholic participant in the charismatic renewal, to contribute a chapter to its forthcoming book assessing world evangelicalism in the eighties, and by inviting me to attend its general assembly in London this month as an unofficial observer.

After 13 years of growth, what is the state of the Catholic charismatic renewal today, and what might its significance be for evangelical Protestants?

The charismatic renewal in the Roman Catholic church has, since its inception in 1967 in the United States, become a vast, sprawling movement involving large numbers of Catholics in virtually every country in the world. In a recent Gallup survey of American Catholicism, it was reported thhat 10 percent of American Catholics have had some contact with the charismatic renewal and 8 percent had attended charismatic meetings within the last month. That would mean 5 million American Catholics have had some contact with the charismatic renewal and 4 million actually attended a meeting within the month they were surveyed.

While the movement is largest and, in some ways, most developed in the United States, it is a significant presence in many other countries of the world. For example, in Colombia there are reported to be more than 10,000 Catholic charismatic prayer groups. In France, a few hundred thousand Catholics are now involved, and the numbers are growing in many more European countries. More than 20 percent of the Irish clergy and nuns have become involved in the charismatic renewal, and the charismatic influence on the Irish celebrations with Pope John Paul II was obvious—in music and in other ways.

This renewal movement is not organized centrally, and it does not have a handbook; it is happening spontaneously all over the world. There are, however, some important national and international centers that exercise a significant degree of leadership in the renewal. Some American leaders have been working with Cardinal Leo Josef Suenens for the past four years in Brussels at what is the de facto international headquarters of the charismatic renewal in the Catholic church.

The renewal has been amazingly well accepted by Roman Catholic church officials. Pope Paul VI put a final seal of approval on the renewal in 1975 when he gave an encouraging address to the 10,000 participants in the Catholic charismatic conference held in Rome that year. More than 400 bishops, either individually or as members of national bishops’ conferences, have issued positive statements on the renewal. More than 50 bishops are involved, and testify to renewal in their lives.

The normal format for the charismatic renewal is the small prayer group of 10 to 50 people. There are tens of thousands of these groups all over the world. I expect that, like any popular movement, there will be a peak and a decline of the charismatic renewal as a broad popular movement in the Catholic church. Often there are not sufficient leadership resources, wisdom, and maturity in local leadership to sustain a renewal group. Still, it is clear that literally million of Catholics have been renewed or converted to a signficant relationship with Jesus as Savior and Lord, and to a life of holiness and service empowered by the Holy Spirit.

The long-range fruit of the charismatic renewal, besides contributing to a heightened awareness of the evangelical heart of Roman Catholic Christianity, will probably be the emergence of renewal communities, sometimes called covenant communities. These appear to be the way in which the charismatic renewal will continue to function as a powerful leaven for good in the Roman Catholic church. Some of the most significant of these communities are interdenominational, and so the aspect of uniting with other evangelical Christians to give a common witness to the gospel is strikingly present in some cases.

To what extent is the Catholic charismatic renewal an evangelical renewal movement? I would say that it is broadly characterized by a basic conversion or reconversion, through which millions of Catholics have encountered and accepted Jesus Christ as the Savior who takes away the sin of the world, our sin, and as Lord: Lord of the universe, Lord of the church, Lord of our own lives. At the same time, there is emphasis on the need for the power of the Holy Spirit to live the Christian life, and there is tremendous, widespread blossoming of the reading of Scripture and of giving testimony in evangelism.

In many ways I think it is more accurate to talk about what is happening as an “evangelical awakening” in the Catholic church rather than as a “charismatic renewal.” I personally feel more comfortable being called a “Catholic evangelical” than a “Catholic charismatic.” The focus in my life, as it is in most of the renewal movement, is not on the gifts of the Holy Spirit but on conversion to the person of Christ and entrance into a life of faithful service to him. This is not to deny the importance and relevance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and his work in the life of Christians and communities. But it is really not my intention, or the intention of most of the people in the charismatic renewal, to put the focus on the gifts of the Spirit rather than on the person and work of Christ.

At the same time, because the movement is so broad, some of the same problems that the Roman Catholic church at large is facing—namely, various confusions of the gospel and unhealthy trends in spirituality—are not absent in some segments of the charismatic renewal. Some of the psychologizing of the gospel, some of the various liberalizing tendencies that are at work now in the Catholic church from liberal Protestantism can be seen here and there in the charismatic renewal. But these certainly are not dominant.

A struggle over the basic gospel message is going on right now in the Roman Catholic church, just as has been the case in many of the major Protestant churches. There has been immense confusion in the Catholic church since the Second Vatican Council, and in many ways what has happened has been just the opposite of the renewal the council intended. Liberal Protestant thought has made serious incursions into the Roman Catholic church. It is my hope that the charismatic renewal and the evangelical emphasis growing out of it will be able to contribute to the strengthening of orthodox understanding of the gospel in the Catholic church. I believe this struggle for the basic gospel is an area of common ground between Protestant and Catholic evangelicals.

I see the communities that are emerging from the charismatic renewal, and the renewal itself, as it continues to evolve, as part of a broader evangelical renewal in the Catholic church. I look forward to the time when we Catholic evangelicals have more contact with our Protestant evangelical brothers and sisters; we desire to serve the same gospel and the same Lord.

RALPH MARTIN

Charismatic Contributions

Despite some unhappy theology, the charismatic movement overall bears marks of genuine spiritual renewal, and though it or sections of it may have lessons to learn in doctrine, it has its own lessons to teach concerning practice.

Doubtless they are not unique, and could be learned elsewhere. But when God has brought new life to so many along charismatic channels, it would be perverse conceit on the part of noncharismatics to be unwilling to look and learn.

The charismatic movement, like the evangelical movement, is a fairly self-sufficent, transdenominational, international network, with its own established behavior patterns, literary resources, and leadership. How far to identify with all this, or with what one’s local charismatic community is doing, is something that each individual must decide for himself. But it seems to me Christians can learn more about the meaning of ideals to which lip service is too easily given.

First Ideal: Total Worship

The charismatic conviction is that worshiping God should be a personal realizing of fellowship with the Father and the Son through the Spirit, and therewith—indeed, thereby—a realizing of spiritual oneness with the rest of God’s assembled family. Liturgical structures therefore must be loose enough to allow for spontaneous contributions and ad libs, and relaxed, informal, and slow-moving enough to let all bask in the feeling of togetherness with God and with each other. In pace, in cultivated warmth, and in its way of highlighting points by repetition, charismatic worship is to historic liturgy as Wagner and Bruckner are to Mozart and Haydn: romantic, that is, in the sense of directly expressing attitudes and feelings rather than classical, focusing on excellence of form. The aim is total involvement of each worshiper, leading to total openness to God at the deepest level of one’s being. To achieve this, charismatics insist, time must be taken; their worship meetings thus may be two or three hours long.

What does this say about the brisk, stylized 60-minute canter—clergy, and choir pulling along a passive congregation—which is the worship diet of so many Christians on so many Lord’s Days? All would no doubt protest that total worship was their aim, too—but are all as realistic and perceptive as charismatics in seeing what this involves? Charismatic practice, however childish and zany it may seem on the surface, convicts the restrained, formal behavior in church that passes for reverence of not being the most vivid, lively, and potent way of communicating the reality of God. Let all consider how “atmospheric communication” can best be effected.

Second Ideal: Total Ministry

It was Paul and Peter who first affirmed that every Christian has a gift or gifts for use in the church (Rom. 12:4–6; 1 Cor. 12:4–7; Eph. 4:7, 11, 16; 1 Peter 4:10.). Thus, the charismatics insist (making a point that is distinct from their hazardous claim that sign-gifts are back) that every-member ministry, achieved by discerning and harnessing each Christian’s ordinary gifts, should be standard practice in the body of Christ. Congregational behavior patterns must be flexible and decentralized enough to permit this.

There’s the rub! Every-member ministry is an ecumenical shibboleth as well as a charismatic slogan these days, and few hesitate to mouth it. But are all as practical as charismatics in devising new structures and reshaping old ones so as to make it happen? No. In many churches the complaint is heard that the talents of gifted people lie unused, and obvious needs in personal and neighborhood ministry go unmet because the pastor insists on being a one-man band and will not treat his flock as a ministering team. Some members of the team do some things better than he. Yet charismatics as a body are past this blockage point in a way that radically challenges all who are not.

Third Ideal: Total Communication

Charismatic singing (both from books and “in the Spirit”), clapping, arm-raising and hand-stretching, the glossolalia ritual of lead-passing from one followed by interpretation from another, delivery of prophecies from God to the group, loose and improvisatory preaching and corporate dialogue with the preacher by interjection and response, are features that impress different people differently; but none, can fault the purpose it serves: to make all that God’s people do together deepen, and share sense of God’s presence and power and openness to his leading at all points. When this is achieved in any measure, you have what Walter J. Hollenweger calls “atmospheric communication,” an established revival phenomenon.

Without advocating the practices mentioned or any technique of “working up” meetings (for manufactured excitement never communicates God), I urge that the charismatic purpose is right.

Fourth Ideal: Total Community

Community or fellowship, which means having Christ in common and sharing what we have from him, is a quality of Christian relationships that charismatics seek to maximize. Their distinction is that they share well, giving both themselves and their substance generously, sometimes recklessly, to help others. In their prayer groups, their discipling relationships, and their experiments in communal living, the strength of their desire to serve in love, whether wisely expressed or not, puts others to shame, while the vividness of their vision of each church—the whole church, as a great extended family, is magnificent.

Again, the question that arises is not whether all should imitate the particular things they do, but whether their example does not expose half-heartedness in others who say they want community but settle for locked-up lives and never squander themselves in love. If it does, what steps will those others now take in the matter?

We have seen that some Protestants are hostile to the charismatic movement because they disagree with some strands of its teaching, or because they feel it threatens them. Others, we know, patronize it as involving illusions that some people need which, therefore, should not be resisted, only ignored. These responses seem inadequate. The movement is forcing all Christendom to ask what it means to be a Christian, and to be Spirit-filled. It is bringing into recognizably evangelical experience people whose ears were closed to evangelical witness as such. As “egghead” radical theology invites the church into the wilderness of a new Unitarianism, is it not (dare I say) just like God to have raised up against it not a new Calvin or Owen, but a scratch movement that proclaims the deity and potency of the Son and the Spirit—not by great theological acumen or accuracy, but by the evidence of renewed lives and lifestyle? A movement which by its very existence reminds both the world and the church that Christianity in essence is not words but a Person and a power? Surely we see divine strategy here.

But whether or not I am right to think this is how Christians of tomorrow will see the charismatic renewal of today, I am sure we shall all do well to try and learn the lessons spelled out here.

J. I Packer, noted English theologian, is professor of systematic and historical theology at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.