275 - Reply

Reply
By Guy H. Ranson

Dr. COME'S complaint seems to me to be based upon a misunderstanding of the purpose of a critical review in a learned journal. The reviewer's function is neither to praise a book nor to promote its cause, but to give a critical analysis and place it in the context of research on the subject.

Professor Come's comments illustrate well the two characteristics of his book which I criticized adversely. First, they are not written in a scholarly manner. They seek to sustain a point of view not with pertinent information and critical analysis but with emotive language, such as "soothing confusion," "freezing the blood," "conjuring up specters," and "horrifying possibility." Furthermore, they express this point of view in ambiguous sentences, such as "This vision has set loose deep in the life of local congregations a spiritual stirring and revolutionary rumbling that dim the significance even of such facts as the ecumenical movement, existential theology, and the discussion of communism." Second, they lack historical perspective. Dr. Come reveals his lack of acquaintance with the literature on the vocation of the laity to be ministers of reconciliation. He "guesses" that I referred to Puritanism or Pietism when I made reference to the well-known works on vocation which were written in the seventeenth century. The two errors to which I referred in my review are clearly apparent in such works as Williams Perkins, A Treatise of Vocations, or Callings of Men, with the Sorts and Kinds of Them, and the Right Use Thereof, Vol. I of Works (London: 1626); Isaac Barrow, Sermons on Industry, Vol. III of Works (London: 1831; Barrow's dates were 1630-77); and Richard Steele, The Tradesman's Calling (London: 1684).