Periodical Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 122:486 (Apr 1965)
Article: Periodical Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Periodical Reviews

“Special Report On Vatican II,” Stuart P. Garver, Christian Heritage, February, 1965, pp. 9-11.

Many Protestants and some evangelical ones have been hailing the successive sessions of the Second Vatican Council as steps toward healing the division in the church created by the Reformation. Such persons insist that Rome is changing and that these changes have been, are being, and will be seen in the actions of the Council.

In this article Garver takes a different view. He likens the changes to the “new foliage” of plants in the spring “which in no wise alters the nature of the plant itself.” He acknowledges the various minor changes the Council has made but concludes, “The changes have not affected the essential nature of their church nor have they repudiated a single doctrine.” Later he points out that for Rome “ecumenicity is possible only under the sovereign authority of the Pope.”

Significant in support of Garver’s views and warnings to evangelical Protestants is this quotation from the closing address of Pope Paul VI at the third session: “Nothing is really changed in the doctrine of the church…. What the church taught for centuries, we teach also.” Ralph L. Keiper reaches similar conclusions in “Which Road Is Rome Taking?” in the January, 1965, issue of Eternity (pp. 10-11).

“What Really Happened At The Sea Of Reeds?” Lewis S. Hay, Journal Of Biblical Literature, December, 1964, pp. 397-403.

This article is titled as though the author was going to provide the final answer on Israel’s deliverance from the pursuing army of Pharaoh. On reading his account, however, one discovers that Hays was not an eye-witness participant in the Exodus after all, nor even a journalistic observer. As a result his explanation of “what really happened” falls under the indictment of all the other rationalistic efforts to deal with this Biblical miracle—it is a destructively critical theory.

The theory Hay advances is that the Israelites, who “went up armed out of the land of Egypt” (Exod 13:18, ASV), decoyed the Egyptian chariots into the marshy sea and then fell on them and slaughtered them. The account of this signal victory became mixed with the concept of God creating the world by a division of the waters. Consequently, the account of the deliverance of God’s people and the destruction of the Egyptians by a miraculous dividing of the sea by God developed.

The theory is ingenious at least and novel, too. Furthermore, it requires as much faith in the rational abilities of man as the literal acceptance of the Biblical account does in the power of God. By ...

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