424 - Memoirs

Memoirs
By W. A. Visser't Hooft
Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1973. 379 pp. $15.00.

The life of W. A. Visser't Hooft personifies the ecumenical movement in the twentieth century. He knew the generation of pioneers, was on the staff of the Y.M.C.A. and the World Student Christian Federation, and served the World Council of Churches as General Secretary while it was in the process of formation and then for the first eighteen years of its organized existence. Moreover, retirement in 1966 did not end this relationship. His successor, Eugene Carson Blake, asked him to remain in Geneva as consultant, and in Uppsala, when the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches elected a new slate of officers, 't Hooft was the enthusiastic choice for Honorary President. Today one will still find him during a part of most working days in his study down the corridor from the General Secretary's office in the Ecumenical Center, where he sits at his familiar desk, reads the voluminous literature that pours in from the various traditions of the church, and welcomes guests from around the world.

A Dutchman from Haarlem, the son of a lawyer, 't Hooft seemed destined for international service almost from the beginning. Superbly equipped linguistically, educated in the classical languages and speaking and writing four modern languages, he matured at the close of the second decade of this century, just in time to be influenced by two powerful movements that grew out of World War I. The first was a new surge of idealism that was inspired by the conviction that the world must make a new beginning and produce a brotherhood of mankind, and the second was the dialectical theology of Karl Barth. Perhaps the genius of 't Hooft's leadership lay in his ability to hold these two influences in balance. He was able to retain an ecumenical vision of a worldwide Christian community and conscience, but he never equated the kingdom of God with human brotherhood. He was thus able to mediate between the European and American stereotypes of otherworldliness and activism and to combine the strengths of both in a positive program of ecumenical service and action.

Memoirs are personalized history. 'T Hooft's purpose in publishing this volume is to show that the ecumenical movement "is not just another piece of ecclesiastical machinery, but a movement in which human relations and creative ideas play the decisive role." Ecumenism involves mutual trust on the part of church leaders from different backgrounds and communions who share a common concern for the unity and mission of the church. This is the story of how the Student Christian Movement and the World Student Christian Federation

425 - Memoirs

brought together a generation of gifted young people and built up such a fellowship of trust, and 't Hooft, who came out of this background, was unusually successful in securing the cooperation of the ablest minds among lay people as well as clerics in forwarding the work of cooperation and witness.

The author's activities as General Secretary of the World Council, beginning in 1939 when the organization was still in the "process of formation," included involvement in the German Church conflict and, when war broke out, maintaining contact with the German resistance, work in behalf of European Jews and prisoners of war, and providing a private link between his beleaguered countrymen and the Dutch government in exile, all the while looking beyond the war to the problems of peace, reconciliation, and reconstruction. So effective was his leadership that it was clear by 1948, when the First Assembly of the World Council was held at Amsterdam, the new organization was indispensable for the life of the churches. This is the story also of tension and conflict, of the work that has been done to hold the ecumenical movement together in the face of the Cold War and other international disruptions, and it is an account of the growth of an ever widening circle of fellowship that now includes virtually the whole of Eastern Orthodoxy in the membership of the World Council and a renewed Roman Catholicism in the ecumenical quest.

Some will be disappointed that 't Hooft has chosen to write a public story rather than a series of private revelations. But he makes clear at the outset that it was not his intention to write "an I-book." In setting down his recollection of persons, ideas, and events that have been central in the life of the Christian church in the twentieth century, he has made a permanent contribution to church history. What impresses this reviewer most is the author's openness, his lack of special pleading, and the optimism with which he faces the future of the church. He acknowledges with approval the new orientation of the ecumenical movement during the past decade and attributes this shift to a new set of priorities that moves away from concern with institutional matters toward service to the world. But he wisely adds, "In the last resort the agenda which God gives to the church (and which includes of course the affairs of the world) must have priority." To the end he remains a Reformed theologian!

James I. McCord
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey