146 - Living the Truth in a World of Illusions & Faith: The Great Adventure

Living the Truth in a World of Illusions
By William Sloane Coffin
San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1985. 120 pp. $12.95.

Faith: The Great Adventure
By Helmut Thielicke
Philadelphia, Fortress, 1985. 154 pp. $8.95.

The minister at New York's famous Riverside Church here offers us his best book of sermons to date. He continues provocative and perceptive comments upon matters of social concern, but they are softened by a pastoral sensitivity I do not remember before. The preacher has "mellowed" in the best sense. The power of these proclamations resides in his ability, especially evident in this volume, to show how social concerns can cut across and interact with personal concerns. Here is Coffin the prophet/ pastor showing how our national preoccupation with defense betrays our feelings of personal helplessness, or

147 - Living the Truth in a World of Illusions & Faith: The Great Adventure

how ecology relates to "communion" of persons with one another, or, indeed, how Coffin, the disturber of politicians' souls and a bereaved father, confronts his own depression and personal sadness.

These are the sermons of a preacher who strains for no rhetorical or artistic effect. He aims only to tell the truth in the clearest language he can discover, and on the way addresses us with simple eloquence that would make a rhetorical flourish superfluous and that no rhetorical fog can obscure. Every preacher can thereby learn and profit from these sermons.

If Coffin tends to took outward and remind us of our political and social context, Thielicke goes inward to share with us the results of his faith adventure. This is his contribution to the huge amount of current literature which deals with spirituality. The form is meditations on favorite biblical texts and information about faith one can share by "immersion in meditation" to avoid "inner bankruptcy." In that sense, these statements are timeless, and one can, I am sure, read them with profit. But, for me, they do not stir my own inner fires as Thielicke's other works have often done. A few brief, choice accounts regarding the faith of some of Germany's great old scholars should not go unmentioned. Perhaps, the best way to appreciate these meditationen is with the sound of Thielicke's earlier thunder in our ears.

John M. Stapleton
Trinity United Methodist Church
North Myrtle Beach, S.C.