116 - The Power of God & The Meaning of Other Faiths & Discovering the Church

The Power of God
By Daniel L. Migliore

The Meaning of Other Faiths
By Willard G. Oxtoby

Discovering the Church
By Barbara Brown Zikmund
Philadelphia, Westminster, 1983. 120 pp. each. $5.95 each.

The final three books in the ten-volume series called "Library of Living Faith" confirm the impression made by their seven predecessors-that among outstanding scholars of mainline Protestant denominations there is a wide variety of opinions, approaches, and emphases. It is exhilarating, if sometimes frustrating, to read these little books. Probably they are best considered in study groups, with a leader who has some background in theology and church history. Parts of the books need explanation, amplification, sometimes even correction, if they are to be helpful to the average church member.

The variety of points of view expressed is especially remarkable when one considers that none of the authors is Roman Catholic or Orthodox; there is no Southern Baptist (as far as I can tell); no representative of made-in-America sects like Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists, Christian Scientists; apparently no genuine born-again, Bible-believing, old-time morality, ultra-conservative of the Jerry Falwell stripe-nor anyone from the third world. That mainline Presbyterians, Methodists, U.C.C.'s, and Episcopalians are thinking in such a many-splendored way is a basis for hope.

Migliore's book, The Power of God, is closely-reasoned, elegantly written, and theologically sophisticated. It feels like a graduate seminar with a top-flight professor. It offers, amid other riches, succinct, powerful statements of what faith is, how God's power shows itself, what, therefore, we as people of faith should be about. "Faith means clinging to God in life and death. It is affirming that this power we call God judges and redeems us. It is trusting that the one we call God is able to bring us and all creatures to fulfillment and is thus the ultimate power

118 - The Power of God & The Meaning of Other Faiths & Discovering the Church

at work in this world. The passionate act of faith is far from intellectual sport; it is a matter of life and death" (p. 23).

He goes on to adumbrate the idols we have substituted for God in modern life, and to discuss some ways the church has thought about God that are other than God-in-Christ. We still sing with gusto about "immortal, invisible, God only wise," and about the way this God is "unresting, unhasting, and silent as night." Well, not really, Migliore tells us. The God Christians put their trust in is the God who suffered on the cross, and who is with us still-not some genie we can call from a bottle to change what we don't like. In between these two stabs at knocking down false ideas of the power of God, Migliore sums up the biblical understanding of that power, culminating in the resurrection hope.

In the rest of the book, he discusses how God is at work in our world, and how, in consequence, individuals and the church should behave. The first of these final chapters offers a very clear and persuasive discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity, one of the key Christian concepts most misunderstood by most people. Migliore not only makes the idea as clear as it can be made (after all, it remains a mystery) but points out its importance for Christian life and thought. This is a most helpful chapter in a helpful book.

A consummate theologian, Migliore tends at times to think too abstractly. For example, in the prescriptive latter sections of the book, the remedies suggested are so very abstract as to verge on the fatuous. "Christians will seek to share power with the weak and powerless of the earth. The just distribution of food and other necessities of life is an imperative of Christian love." Sure enough. But how do Christians do all this, assuming they even had the will? In Central America, say, or in Denver or Dubuque? Maybe in his next book Migliore will tell us.

To write a flawless book of 120 or so pages on The Meaning of Other Faiths is not only a difficult task; it is probably impossible. Willard G. Oxtoby gives it a game try.

Some of the problem is in the title, which raises more questions than a hundred pages can answer. "Other" faiths, for instance-"other" than what? Other than Christianity? And if so, what form of Christianity, when, and where? One section of Oxtoby's book discusses relations between Roman Catholics and Protestants, particularly in the light of Vatican II. This is surely an important topic. But "other" faiths?

Or take "Meaning." Is this supposed to suggest the various "meanings" other faiths have had and have today for Christians? Or the meaning adherents to other forms of belief and practice than Christians find in their own faith? Well, probably both, so Oxtoby puts in some of each.

It is not easy to deal with all these agenda, over a span of millennia, leaving nobody out-not even Amanda Marga, and 3HO or "Sikh Darma," whatever those are.

The consequence is that the author sometimes seems as if dancing

119 - The Power of God & The Meaning of Other Faiths & Discovering the Church

with an octopus. Just as he sets off determinedly to waltz through a discussion of the church's "classic" position with respect to other faiths (the other faiths historically were Judaism, Islam, and Paganism, or everyone else), the octopus wraps another arm around him and he feels constrained to talk of pluralism in the modern world and about the missionary movement that culminated in the nineteenth century rush to every corner of the globe so that all might have the benefits of Christianity and sanitation. Oxtoby is a specialist in comparative religions and a cosmopolitan person. Perhaps on these scores he takes a rather dim view of the triumphalist, often smug, Christian imperialism that is now largely a thing of the past anyway.

The section on "Principles of Dialogue," with its emphasis on understanding "another tradition for its own sake and on its own terms" (p. 92) is most valuable, as is the following section on "Specific Agenda Items." A general rule for reading this work, it seems, might be: if you come to a confusing or, irrelevant (to you) part, skip it and go on to the next.

Barbara Brown Zikmund's Discovering the Church is a careful and systematic discussion of the way the church has influenced the world, the way the ordinary non-church person sees the church, the profound influence the church may have on the individual, various theological and biblical insights into the nature of the church, the structures and organization of the churches, and, finally, what the church is called to be.

Zikmund sees the deficiencies of the church. But on the whole she takes a rosy view. Example: in discussing the way the church has been "supportive of human creativity," she offers a quick survey of church architecture, one so quick as to require of the reader a certain familiarity with the Puritan ethos and with the distinction between Romanesque and Gothic architecture. Of the uglier forms of nineteenth century church buildings in many American cities and in many a missionary community she says nothing. Nor in discussing the church's commitment to "the values of this earthly life" does she mention the role of the Roman Catholic Index, the trial of Galileo, and other such possibly less-than-creative episodes ancient and modern in the church's history. On the whole, when an example is called for, Zikmund is likely to find one that shows the church on the side of the angels. This point of view also characterizes her discussion of the church in the world.

"When slavery refuses to honor the humanity of black people, the church calls Christian leaders into accountability" (p. 66). Well, sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't. "When war contradicts the message of peace so desired by the world's peoples, the church acts to break down pride and mediate between enemies" (p. 66). Well, as I said before.

The book is very clear, sometimes so clear as to be simplistic. It touches all the bases. In a final chapter, Zikmund redresses whatever imbalance may have been created by sentences like those just quoted

120 - The Power of God & The Meaning of Other Faiths & Discovering the Church

and comes down hard on ways the church we all go to on Sunday ought to change its attitudes and actions. "We are unintentional oppressors through indifference and default," she writes. Again, "For most of our churches the good news is difficult. It says that God cares about the world and that the world is made up of suffering people. Jesus did not walk with folks like you and me" (pp. 98-99). Short sentences, and we have heard the like before. But they are telling.

In this final section, which seems to me more realistic than the rest of the book, Zikmund's sincerity and commitment to the church and to the world make her words sound like the old exhortations of the prophets. The book, incidentally, is couched in absolutely non-sexist language. Where she must change a word of a scriptural quotation to eliminate a masculine term for God or God's people, Zikmund indicates the change with brackets. To me. the quotations read better in her emendations. Others may differ.

Janet Harbison Penfield
Princeton, New Jersey