Qtnurnr~iu m4rningtral :!Inut41y Continuing LEHRE UND VVEHRE MAGAZIN FUER Ev.-LuTH. HOMILETIK THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY-THEOLOGICAL MONTHLY Vol. IX November, 1938 No. 11 CONTENTS Page A Course in Lutheran Theology. Th. Engelder _____ . _______ . __ .. __ ._. _____ .. _ 801 Was lehrt die Schrift ueber die iustitia civilis? G. Hnebener ... __ .. 821 The Lure of Biblical and Christian Archeology. P. E. Kretzmann ___ 828 Sermon Study on Heb. 10:19-25. Th. Laetsch .. _. _____________ .. _ __ _______ 834 Predigtentwuri fuer den ersten Adventssonntag _______ .. ____ .. ______ . ___ 846 Miscellanea _______ . . ________________ . ___ . . _________ . __________________ _ .. ____ . __ 849 Theological Observer. - Kirchlich-Zeitgeschichtliches ___ ___ .____ ._. __ . _ 852 Book Review.-Literatur -__ .... _. __ .. __ .. _.' _. _______________ .. ___ . .. __ . __ . _________ 873 E1n Pred1ger muss nicht al1eln w ei- den, IJlso dass er die Schafe unter- weise. wie sie rechte Christen Bollen sein. sondem auch daneben den Woel- fen wehTen. dass sie die Schafe nicht angreifen und mit falscher Lehre ver- roehren und Irrtum elnfuehren. LutheT. Es 1st k eln Ding. das die Leute mehr bel der Kirche behaelt denn die gute Predigt. - Apologie, A,.t. 24. If the trumpet give an uncertain sound who shall prepare himself to the battle? -1 COT. 14, ,. Published for the Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States CONCORDIA PUBLISHING ROUSE, St. Louis, Mo. Book Review - 21teratut 873 Book Review - 2itttdut A Shepherd Remembers. By Leslie D. Weatherhead. The Abingdon Press, New York. 176 pages, 7%X5. Price, $2.00. Here is a new appraisal of the Twenty-third Psalm by the pastor of the City Temple in London, who spent considerable time during the World War as a political officer among the Arab tribes on the Persian border. His purpose is plainly described in the preface: "What I have tried to do is to paint the picture which lies behind each phrase in the psalm and then interpret its meaning in the fuller light we have in Jesus, the Good Shepherd." In a general way, the author has met this objective, although we believe that the emphasis on Christ as the Good Shepherd, who lays down His life for His sheep, could be stronger and more consistent. Unfortunately the presentation is marred by unnecessary concessions to higher criticism. Thus the superscription "A Psalm of David" to the author means "that the psalm was taken from the first of the minor psalters gathered under the name of David, the traditional father of religious poetry." (P.17.) This denial of the Davidic authorship and the substitute theory, of course, is not original with Pastor Weatherhead. He cites the International Critical Commentary on the Psalms by Briggs and accepts his peculiar theory of authorship. The presentation creates the impression that the Biblical text of the Old Testament is unsound, and the author is ready to correct the Maso- retic text on the basis of the Septuagint manuscripts. For example, on page 106 he says: "The verse in Ps. 2: 9, translated 'Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron' should be read: 'Thou shalt shepherd them with an iron club,''' - an utterly unwarranted emendation based on a Septuagintal error, with a resultant fantastic translation. Again, the author makes long linguistic leaps in such statements as these: "The word 'friend' in the Old Testament comes usually (not always) from the root of the word for 'shepherd.''' A glance at Gesenius will show that the two words are derived from homonymic, yet different, roots. The author seeks to retain the shepherd picture in the last part of the psalm with about as much success to our mind as any other attempt. A notable feature in the book is the well-selected sepia pictures from the American Colony in Jerusalem illustrating Palestinian shepherd life. W. A. MAIER The World in which Jesus Lived. By Basil Mathews. The Abingdon Press, New York, Cincinnati, Chicago. 130 pages, 5lJ4X8. Price, $1.50. The book, as the blurb says, is written for those who have not seen the Bible lands or people, for those who would equip themselves as Bible teachers, and for those who would prepare for a visit to the Near East. Having during twenty years repeatedly visited Palestine, the author is well equipped to describe the land in which Jesus lived among men and with the aid of this background to picture to us the life of the Jews in the days of Christ. These are the headings of the chapters: 874 Book Review- S3itetatut Jesus' World and Ours; The Life of the Home; The Drama of Every Day; His Native Land; The Panorama of His People; The Greek Way of Life; The Roman Eagles; Paul: Hebrew Orator, Greek Writer, Ro- man Citizen; Paul's Pictures from Life." The book furnishes much interesting, helpful information, assisting one in the endeavor of understanding the picture language of the gospels. Now and then a feeling of uneasiness arises in one as to the scholarship of the author. It was not, as the uninitiated reader has to conclude, Antiochus the Great who was responsible for the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (p. 74 f.) ; nor was Baruch the coworker of the prophetess Deborah (p. 63); nor did Cyrus of Persia bring his armies west to fight the Greeks (p. 44) . One is amazed to read (p. 125) that the high priest carried a dove or lamb into the Holy of Holies. These are, of course, mere little slips or inaccuracies which can easily be de- leted in a second edition. In the chapter on "Paul's Pictures from Life" we find these beautiful sentences on the meaning of reconciliation (the Scripture reference being 2 Cor. 5: 18 f.): "God makes my relation to Him right through Christ and gives me the work of bringing others into that relationship of love and understanding; God, not reckoning that I have not contributed my share, has canceled that debt and actually trusts me with expressing to the world His longing to bring all His children into a relationship of love with Himself." (P.121.) Justification is correctly and forcefully por- trayed as a forensic act (p.123). But when the word propitiation is ex- plained the moral-influence theory is adopted (p. 125), and the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement, although not quite adequately de- scribed, is rejected. How this view of propitiation is to be harmonized with the author's teaching concerning reconciliation mentioned before is hard to see. W. ARNDT God the Creator. _ By Geo. S. Hendry. The Cokesbury Press, Nash- ville, Tenn. 170 pages, 5%)<7%. Price, $1.50. The Eternal Gospel. By Rufus M. Jones. The Macmillan Company, New York. 235 pages, 5%X8. Price, $2.00. The pulpit pronouncements in our American (sectarian) churches are generally no more than a faint echo of the modern books on theology (alas, often falsely so called) which theil- ministers read, so that we can rightly understand modern American preaching only if we keep in touch with the present-day book markets. From this point of view the two volumes here reviewed are of interest also to us Missourians. The first, God the Creator, contains five lectures which the Rev. Prof. G. S. Hendry, associate professor of divinity, University of Edinburgh and the Hastie Lecturer at the University of Glasgow, delivered in 1935. His guiding thesis finds its expression in the presentation of the non- immanent, "wholly-other" God, whom Barth (Brunner) has been preach- ing Germany and Switzerland as a challenge to German Ritschlians to restudy the doctrine of God as this is set forth especially in the great church creeds and in the writings of the Reformers (as Barth, so also Hendry includes the Swiss divines). The lectures do not make easy or Book Review- S3iteta±ut 875 popular reading but are intended for such only as are interested in, and conversant with, Barthian fundamentals. To all who have the requisite historico-theological background, as also the desire for theological re- search, they make fascinating reading. The lecturer, of course, is orthodox only in a Barthian sense. On the one hand, he stoutly dis- avows the vague pantheistic concept of God which Continental and British divines now champion; on the other hand, while seeking his terminus a quo in the theology of the Reformation, he does not turn entirely to Christian orthodoxy in expounding the doctrine of God. Like Barth's, so also his investigations terminate in a sort of philosophy of theology rather than in a theologia pura et e Scriptura hausta. He begins his lectures with the problem of the knowledge of God, then pictures, in a somewhat sweeping way, the God of Israel and the deities of Greece in their fundamental divergences, next brings them together in a supposed "great amalgamation," or fusion, of God-concepts, then presents in a long chapter - and this is the best portion of the book- Luther's "theology of the Godhead of God," seen of course through Barth's colored spectacles, and finally endeavors to analyze the Christian knowledge of God the Creator in its fundamental aspects. Studies of this kind are by no means useless. They at least show us orthodox theologians how eminently well we are off because we take our theo- logical knowledge directly out of the Bible and confine it to what Scrip- ture teaches in so many clear words, there resting the case. In this way we obtain the divine truth concerning God and a very definite, certain, and helpful divine truth, while rationalizing Barthians and their fellows "wax worse and worse," 1t:ACI.'VW'V"tE';; xed 1t:AU'VcOItE'VOL, 2 Tim. 3: 13, "ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth," v.7. The book is full of striking judgments and sayings, such as the following: "God must now pass a test, set by human thought (modernistic thought of course), before He can be accorded to be God." (P.134.) Or: "He [Luther] is entirely innocent of the 'Zug zum System'" (p.llS), which indeed is very good. Or: "To identify empirical method with scientific method is quite unscientific." (P.21.) Or: "Reason comes a litigant, but it constitutes itself the judge, and faith in consequence is ration- alized." (P.lS.) Professor Hendry avows in his Preface that "Scottish theology has to find its true affinity with the theology of Continental Protestantism rather than with that of England or America." To this profession he is moved, we believe, by the painful shallowness of English and American modernistic theologians, which is in no wise pleasing to the profounder Edinburgh divines. - In his treatise Professor Hendry speaks of the present-day "vogue of mysticism." The Eternal Gospel, by Rufus M. Jones, offers a sample of this modern religious mysticism. Dr. Jones, formerly professor of philosophy at Haverford College, kept (as we are told) in close touch with leading mystics of Europe ever since he studied in Heidelberg some fifty years ago. Also in this book Barthian influences are traceable. The "old devil" of enthusiasm in his book is not so very different from that of the Barthians, though wearing another kind of garment. To Philosopher Jones the "eternal Gospel" is the "direct revelation of God to men through the coming, and the 876 Book Review - S3itetatut presence in the world, of the Holy Spirit" (p.l). This is the definition of the "eternal Gospel," which mystic monk Joachim a Fiori suggested in the twelfth century, and Dr. Jones adopts it as quite pertinent. He himself interprets the "eternal Gospel" as the "endless revelation to men of a spiritual Reality who is over all and in all and at the same time vastly more than all things in space and time, a Reality, both immanent and transcendent, as Spirit in its essential nature is bound to be." After the fashion of mystics in general he next traces the "revelation of the eternal Gospel" through the ages, in history, the Church, literature, and so forth, until he arrives at the conclusion that "the world is still in the making" and that "God is still 'making man,'" "creation being yet in progress." Professor Jones's attack is upon (atheistic) Humanism and materialism, which grossly dethrone God and seek to get along with- out Him. But Jones's mysticism is no remedy against atheism in any form. It is no more than a pantheistic (evolutionistic) acknowledgment of an existing world force conceived as "God," very similar to Schleier- macher's. We are somewhat perplexed that this book is the first to appear in a so-called Great Issues of Life Series, which is to be pub- lished soon. Books of this sort contribute nothing helpful in support of positive Christianity. It rather represents antichristianism and essen- tially the same brand which Humanism champions. Mysticism, both ancient and modern, is nothing else than merus enthusiasmus (eitel Enthusiasmus) , and what Luther so well writes in his fine Smalcald Articles (Part III, Art. VIII, §§ 5, 6) is true also of the "sheer enthusiasm," which Rufus M. Jones here represents: "All this is the old devil and old serpent, who also converted Adam and Eve into enthusiasts and led them from the Word of God to spiritualizing and self-conceit (auf Schwarmgeisterei und Eigenduenlcel)." (T7'iglot, p. 495.) J. THEODORE MUELLER S)et ftuni1ilfifdje $tJ)teftnnti~mu~. l5ein meg oiS 3ur ftcmailfifdjen lRebo!ution. !Bon :;Sofe\l~ ~~amoo1t. 1937. ~~r.d~aifet