Theology Today - Vol 22, No. 3 - October 1965 - BOOK REVIEW - The Sufficiency Of God; Essays On the Ecumenical Hope In Honour Of W. A. Visser't Hooft

459 - The Sufficiency Of God; Essays On the Ecumenical Hope In Honour Of W. A. Visser't Hooft

The Sufficiency Of God;
Essays On the Ecumenical Hope In Honour Of W. A. Visser't Hooft
Edited by Robert C. Mackie and Charles C. West
240 pp. Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1964. $5.50.

This book is not the last word that will be written on the ministry of the first General Secretary of the World Council of Churches. But it is the latest and most comprehensive tribute to a man who has won a secure place in modem ecclesiastical history. Dr. Visser't Hooft is on the eve of retirement from the position which he has held, with unique distinction, for nearly thirty years. The appointment of his successor has aroused vehement and painful controversy. The issues raised, both personal and organizational, are of vital importance to the future shape and direction of the ecumenical movement. But there is some danger that the heat and dust of this debate, and its traumatic aftermath, may blur perspective on the past and breed a mood of timidity rather than adventurous faith in the future.

These urbane and friendly essays serve, at least, to put the past in perspective and, by implication rather than by direct allusion, to provide a profile of a remarkable man.

The book opens with a candidly affectionate "appreciation" of Visser't Hooft, written by his friend Robert Mackie. But for the rest, the book is composed of a series of essays on movements in which he played a distinctive, and often a decisive, role.

The range and catholicity of Visser't Hooft's friendships and interests is reflected in the names of the contributors, the variety of the themes on which they write, and the diversity of Christian interpretation which they represent. Fifteen essays, by authors drawn from ten countries and from an even greater number of ecclesiastical traditions (Protestant, Orthodox and Roman Catholic), deal with various aspects of the ecumenical development of the last half-century. Three are concerned with aspects of social ethics, the heritage of the Life and Work Movement. Three treat primarily of the problems of faith and order; and it is interesting to note that two of these essays are written by Orthodox contributors and that the third is a notable personal testimony from the Roman Catholic ecumenist, Yves Congar. There are two pieces on the ministry of the laity in the oikoumene; single essays are included on Biblical theology, the student movement, the confessional struggle in Germany, and the growth of unity in the work of the central committee of the World Council of Churches.

This is in some respects a rather formless, and in others a slightly unbalanced, miscellany. It is odd, for example, that Visser't Hooft's profound commitment to the organized missionary movement and his

460 - The Sufficiency Of God; Essays On the Ecumenical Hope In Honour Of W. A. Visser't Hooft

sustained interest in its problems in a changing era should have escaped attention. But all in all, the editors have fulfilled a difficult task with an unobtrusive skill which enables the reader to discern the unifying force of a powerful and many-sided personality. This point is developed in a concluding essay by Charles West, from which the book derives its title: The Sufficiency of God.

Visser't Hooft is quoted as saying, at the end of the first Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1948: "It is most important that we do not decide that we shall succeed." The Council has become a successful organization. The man who has been at the centre of this achievement does not underestimate the usefulness of the kind of success that has been won. He knows, better than most men, how to use it. But he also knows, as many others do not, the limitations and perils of the position which he has helped so greatly to win for the Council.

Visser't Hooft does not strike the casual observer as a conspicuously humble man. Sometimes he makes quite the opposite impression. But those who know him well, as a private man as well as a public figure, recognize in him the essential humility of one who lives in the knowledge that our sufficiency is of God and for whom the final test of all our striving and achievement is not success but fidelity. As Robert Mackie writes: "The ecumenical movement is for him, quite simply, an expression of what God would have the churches be and do. It is a matter of obedience, and obedience is not a question of blue-prints, but of going where you are told to go."

With the departure of Visser't Hooft, the World Council will enter a new phase in its history. Whatever the future may hold in change and development, the one thing that it can least afford to lose from the past is this simple, yet profound, conviction, which has been the lodestar of the man who has had his hand on the ecumenical helm during these formative and fruitful years.

Charles W. Ranson
Theological School
Drew University
Madison, New Jersey