Michael J. Townsend

Book Reviews : Explorng Mark's Gospel

Leslie J. Francis and Peter Atkins, Exploring Mark’s Gospel: An Aid for Readers and Preachers using Year B o f the Revised Common Lectionary (London and New York: Continuum, 2002. LIZ.99. pp. 256. ISBN o-8264-6562-S) forms part of a ’Personality Type and Scripture’ series, which uses psychological type theory to explore biblical passages. This volume tackles the Year B Gospel readings. An earlier version of the Markan material was published by Mowbrays in 1997. This has been revised and the Johannine lections added. Readers familiar with other volumes in the series will know what to expect. Others will find the theories behind the expositions clearly laid out in the Introduction.

Book Reviews : Reflections By Novelists

pp. 276, ISBN 0-664-22256-0), edited by David H. Smith, is a collection of essays by ten contributors, who seek to listen carefully and explore thoughtfully the religious dimension in professional practice. The book comprises four sections: Ways of listening, Caring for children, Organ transplantation , and Adults at the end of life. Its basic premise is to argue for a close connection between moral reflection and the study of actual lives and the life stories of people involved in health care. When bioethics distances itself from those stories and experiences (both of patient and professional), then it sacrifices its vitality. The subtitle provides an understanding of its basic themes. While it is written from an American context, it does highlight the many pastoral dilemmas that engagement in health care creates. The professionals who find themselves at these frontiers often comment on the lack of

Book Reviews : Resources for RCL

Genuine theological dialogue characterized by openness, consideration, fairness, searching questioning and a willingness to learn is not as common in theology as the human fallibility of theologians should be seen to require. Often the ultimate concern characteristic of faith mistakenly finds expression in an odium theologicum where attempts at dialogue appear to outsiders to be dialogues of the deaf. It is therefore a pleasure to find and to be instructed by a collection of pieces arising from authentic dialogue. The contributors to Searching for an Adequate God: A Dialogue between Process and Free Will Theists (Eerdmans, 2000, f 15.99/

Book Reviews : Luke for Preachers

26.00, pp. xiv + 269, ISBN 0-8028-4739-0), edited by John B. Cobb Jr and Clark H. Pinnock, represent two theological perspectives, one stemming from the evangelical/ fundamentalist flank of the Christian community and the other from the liberal wing. The former group identify themselves as ’openness theists’ since, on the basis of their reading of the biblical witness, they maintain that God does not determine future events, but, as love, both affects all creatures and is affected by what happens to them. When evil things happen, God suffers. Theological claims, moreover, must fit human experience, including religious experience, and make sense intellectually. In these respects, openness theists find that what they affirm has much in common with the claims that process theologians, influenced by the views of Whitehead and Hartshorne (who incidentally died last October, aged 103), develop in their metaphysically grounded form of natural theology. On the other hand there are interesting differences between the groups. For example, freewill theists are concerned that process theologians have an inadequate understanding of divine activity in the world and of eschatological hope, while process theologians query the consistency of the openness theists’ affirmations of the reality of divine activity in the world with their claims about the authenticity of human freewill. Furthermore, freewill theists maintain that the divine love is voluntary while process theologians consider it to be an essential quality of the divine being. These and other issues are perceptively explored in papers and critical responses by David Ray Griffin, Nancy R. Howell, David L. Wheeler, Richard Rice, and William Hasker. While, as the authors recognize, there are important differences of opinion within the constituencies which they are representing (so that assertions about what is definitive of either process theology or openness theology need to be tempered by a Wittgensteinian notion of fuzzy edges), this clearly written collection is a valuable contribution to the developing understanding between believers who are often misunderstood, and who more often misunderstand themselves, to have little in common with each other.

Book Reviews : Wesley's Theology Today

Using evidence from the four Gospels, Ian Wallis, in Holy Saturday Faith: Rediscovering the Legacy of Jesus (SPCK, 2000, £17.50, pp. viii + 214, ISBN 0-281-050252), seeks to demonstrate that it was during the period of grieving between Jesus’s crucifixion and his resurrection (the ’Holy Saturday’ of the title) that his disciples became convinced that not only was he ’living on in the life of God’ (p. 15) but that he was a continuous presence in and influence on their lives. The subsequent review (chapters 2-5) of the resources available to them during this transitional period, from within Judaism, together with those provided not only by Jesus’s teaching but also by the qualities discernible in his way of life, within that Spirit-filled faith which he embodied, is informative and thought-provoking. Not only that, but it sets out material from Jewish tradition, from the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas and the Didache which is not otherwise easily accessible to the general reader. In the last chapter the focus of attention moves away from Jesus and the early Christian communities to the contemporary church, to the implications for it and the challenges to it of what has already been said. For many the greatest challenge will be that of the central thesis of the book, acceptance of which requires a shift of emphasis, with respect to the origins of Christian belief and practice, from post-resurrection time to transitional time, to ’Holy Saturday’, as the formative period. Finally reference must be made to the two appendices, in the first of which there is a liturgy for Holy Saturday, and in the second a sample of the speculation about that ’day’ from patristic texts. This is a carefully researched, lively and very readable book which could be used in church study-groups to inform and to stimulate discussion. It would also be a useful resource for undergraduates engaged in the study of Christian origins. BARBARA E. SPENSLEY, UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS ORAL TRADITION IN THE GOSPEL TRADITION

Book Reviews : Stimulating Study of the Eucharist

As a result of the recent marginalization of the Puritans and the Laudians in the historiography of early Stuart history a neglected middle group has emerged: satisfied Prayer Book Protestants. Judith Maltby, in her Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Cambridge University Press, 1998, L40.00/

Book Reviews : Worship Related To Work

64.95, pp. xvii + 310, ISBN 0-521-45313-5), has leaped into this gap. Her aim is twofold. Her primary goal is to explore this field, but her second task is to show that it is possible to learn more about a group free from persecution. The first section undertakes these projects by an imlnersion in the church court records of the dioceses

Reading the Book: 5. The Epistle of James

and an attempt to show that the ’the Christ present in the proclaimed Word (the Christus praesens) ... is the center of both Calvin’s and Schleiermacher’s preaching’. Whilst this is certainly the case for the former, anyone familiar with Barth’s critique of Schleiermacher will blink at the suggestion that the latter carries through the agenda of the former in any significant manner. This, then, is a daring little book: in style it is very readable on two very distinct and different theologians, yet maintains its academic rigour throughout. In content it addresses several levels of discourse. Firstly, DeVries seeks to show that whilst both theologians belong to different sides of the historical critical divide, in their preaching both show an indifference to the peculiarly historical questions about Jesus Christ. Rather, both apply Reformation principles concerning the redemptive power of Jesus Christ. Thus, DeVries clarifies something in general about doctrinal development in the Protestant tradition. Secondly, DeVries seeks to redress the neo-orthodox criticism by Barth and Brunner against Schleiermacher. Even with his divide between dogmatics and exegesis Schleiermacher holds firmly to the Reformers’ understanding of the Word as a sacrament that ’presents Christ’ to us. Indeed, as any researcher of Schleiermacher discovers when attending to his sermons, one discovers a theologian passionately consumed with the preaching of Christ through the Word. It is to DeVries’ credit that she reclaims Schleiermacher’s reputation after being so long dismissed under the heady critique of Barth. Don’t be put off by the limited scope of the subject matter of this book. For Reformed theologians this is a must although there is no guarantee that you will agree with the author’s thesis, you will be forced to think through some well-established prejudices. For the wider audience, this is a lovely little book on how to present theology well, engage with the reader and stimulate wider

Book Reviews : Theological Aesthetics

Patrick wants to value the ways in which tradition has served well in the past, but shows a profound shift in direction is needed to correct past distortions, and new maps needed to chart the terrain over which we now travel. The themes of the book, that all believers bear responsibility for discerning the moral obligations of their lives, and that moral theology should provide leadership in helping them become more confident and competent ethical decision-makers, aren’t new, as Patrick notes, but they are expressed here with clarity and fresh insight, and my own ethics teaching has gained significantly from the book.

Book Reviews : Handel as Theologian

It does not take long to read straight through the Epistle of James. Nor, or so it appears at first, is any great concentration required on the reader’s part. There are no complex theological arguments demanding close attention, such as we find in Romans, Galatians or Hebrews. James, clearly, is not that kind of document. The topics with which the letter deals appear to be ethical rather than doctrinal. By and large, they are tackled by means of fairly brief statements rather than sustained discussion. Fairly commonplace illustrations are sometimes used to drive the point home. At first glance, James can also seem lacking in shape and form. The writing appears to move rapidly from one topic to another, not displaying any particularly logical connection between them. Martin Luther’s description of James as an ’epistle of straw’ is well enough known. Less well known, but much more pertinent, is his comment on the form of the epistle. The tone is still derogatory, but the insights are in advance of their time: ’... he throws