Saturday, March 14, 1998

Religion in the media: a look at recent books

The Dallas Morning News

BOOKS

"The Light of Glory: Readings From John Donne for Lent and Easter Week," edited by Christopher L. Webber (Morehouse Publishing, $9.95). Donne, the dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, preached during a golden age in English letters. King Lear and King James were his contemporaries. This volume gives us a sampling of Donne the preacher, poet and pray-er. For every weekday and Saturday meditation, Father Webber has excerpted a page or so from one of Donne's sermons. On Sunday the reader is given a poem and a prayer. It was an attractive idea to continue the meditations through the week after Easter. The editor has modernized Donne's spelling and punctuation, which is helpful. But his forcing Donne's prose into an "inclusive language" straitjacket is a painful distraction at times. --Paul R. Buckley

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"The Confession of Saint Patrick," translated by John Skinner (Doubleday, $4.95). St. Patrick, so intimately identified with Ireland, made his first trip there as a slave in pirates' hands. During his captivity -- he was a teen then -- he came to know God. He later escaped and became a priest, but a dream beckoned him back to Ireland. Patrick was not a brilliant man, as he (and his adversaries) well knew. "I still blush and fear more than anything to have my lack of learning brought out into the open," the old man writes. He was a man of one book, the Bible, and its phrases recur over and over in his prose. The Confession is brief -- only 50 pages. But it offers a priceless glimpse into the saint's disarming humility and, above all, his love for the people to whom he brought the gospel. --Paul R. Buckley

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"The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine," edited by Colin E. Gunton (Cambridge University Press, price not listed). This is anything but an arid reference work, and if your idea of Lent includes getting a better intellectual grip on the Christian faith, "The Cambridge Companion" may serve you well. The contributors are a cross-denominational group of theologians from the U.S. and the U.K. Part one of the book deals with the nature of Christian theology and how it relates to the world. Part two deals with its content -- the doctrines of God, creation, humanity, redemption, the church and so on. The approach is basically conservative, but don't take that to mean the writers just rehash what others have said before. They are a stimulating lot, and they aim to say something both to the theological student and to the nonspecialist. --Paul R. Buckley

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"Orthodox Lent, Holy Week and Easter," by Hugh Wybrew (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, price not listed). Wybrew is an Anglican cleric in Oxford who has a keen appreciation for Orthodox theology and worship. He begins by sketching the basic similarities in Eastern and Western Lenten observances and then narrows his focus to the East. Each chapter is devoted to one day on the Orthodox calendar between the beginning of Lent to Pascha (Easter). Wybrew provides the liturgical texts and adds a little commentary. Writing primarily for Western Christians, he wants more to do more than educate. He wants to help readers to a deeper sense of the Resurrection. He hopes, too, that they will make the Orthodox prayers and hymns part of their own devotion, public and private. --Paul R. Buckley

REVIEWER'S CHOICE

"A Heart for God," by Sinclair B. Ferguson (Banner of Truth, price not listed). Many evangelicals these days are accustomed to summing up salvation in terms of being forgiven or being "born again" (a phrase that, despite the fun that is made of it outside evangelical circles, is in fact biblical language). But neither of those categories alone can do justice to scriptural teaching, according to Ferguson.

Ferguson believes rather that the knowledge of God is the heart of salvation, the end to which forgiveness and rebirth are means. He recalls the high priestly prayer of Jesus: "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Such knowledge, Ferguson writes, is what human beings were created for and is their highest privilege. And yet many Christians remain "pygmies in the world of the spirit."

The author blames ignorance of God for the poverty of contemporary Christian witness and worship, and he sends his book out with a prayer that it might whet the reader's appetite for growth in knowledge.

The God whom Ferguson discusses is not the philosophers' God but the biblical maker of heaven and earth who cuts covenants and brings salvation and provides for his people. Each chapter is essentially a scriptural exposition.

Ferguson doesn't hesitate to dive early into an area that many Christians neglect as impractical, even arcane: trinitarian theology. Here again he takes a cue from Jesus himself, who on the night before his death opened up to his disciples the doctrine of the Holy Trinity (John 13-17).

Other chapters treat God's omnipresence, wisdom, holiness and providence. The author's closing call to worship and remembrance should challenge and encourage many believers on their way to celebrate the Resurrection. --Paul R. Buckley

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(Writers are staff members of The Dallas Morning News. Write to them in care of: the Religion Section, Dallas Morning News, Communications Center, P.O. Box 655237, Dallas, Texas 75265.)

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