665 - Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith & Major Themes in the Reformed Tradition

Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith
By Donald K. McKim, Editor
Louisville, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992. 448 pp. $36.95.

Major Themes in the Reformed Tradition
By Donald K. McKim, Editor
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992.447 pp. $34.95.

The two volumes have value as reference works for all Reformed theologians-laypersons, teachers, and pastors. They make a wealth of information immediately available to the inquirer and offer bibliographical information to any who would undertake more intensive study.

The Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith is encyclopedic, not in the sense of exhausting the field but in its provision for "a circle of knowledge" within which the events, persons, and theological ideas that constitute the Reformed tradition are identified. The editor's intent is to substantiate the conviction that history has meaning, that people contribute to a meaningful history by their interpretation of it, and that Reformed theology retains the capacity to shape the present and future. The book represents the further assumption that historical traditions exist, that they possess a distinctive vocabulary, and that they can be differentiated from one another.

Major Themes in the Reformed

666 - Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith & Major Themes in the Reformed Tradition

Tradition has a similar but not identical thrust. This volume is a collection of essays, most of them reprints from other publications, that either trace the historical development of the major themes of the Reformed tradition or deal with theological topics central to the Reformed perspective. The purpose once again is to acquaint not only scholars but also pastors, laypersons, and students of theology with the heritage and legacy of the Reformed tradition.

The weakness of both volumes is that they border on the provincial rather than the ecumenical, representing that which has been rather than that to which the tradition is prepared to look forward. Both volumes, for instance, are primarily oriented to the European and North American experience, offering considerable assistance to people who are at home there, but little to those whose hope is in the displacement of tradition by the dawn of a new day.

The greater weakness, however, is that the list of contributors with which both books begin betrays the fact that neither is truly Reformed. The Reformed tradition, humanly speaking, originated with pastors and preachers in local congregations whose theological reflection and formulation was the outgrowth of a lively dialectic between the content of the gospel and the contemporary setting of the church. In contrast, these two volumes consist for the most part of articles written by men and women who live and work not in congregations but in classrooms of universities, colleges, divinity schools, and seminaries. This may have its place and prove to be helpful in the short run, but in the long run the tacit admission that the Reformed tradition must look for life to the academy and not to the church puts the whole enterprise at risk. The omission of the pastor-theologian from the list of contributors to these volumes is a mirror into which theological education must look if it is to see its face.

Nevertheless, these two books belong in the church library and in the study of pastor and teacher alike, We are all in debt to Donald McKim for making the Reformed tradition available to so many in this thoughtful and encyclopedic manner.

Wallace M. Alston, Jr.
Nassau Presbyterian Church
Princeton, NJ.