Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 125:498 (Apr 1968)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

Crisis In Lutheran Theology. Volume 1. By John Warwick Montgomery. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1967. 133 pp. Paper. $1.50.

Five essays dealing with issues facing Lutheran theology today are presented in a thought-provoking and incisive way backed by thorough study and depth in scholarship. In the first essay on “Inspiration and Inerrancy,” Dr. Montgomery, who is Professor and Chairman of the Division of Church History at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, points to inerrancy as the crucial issue in theology today. Current attempts in Lutheranism to separate inspiration from inerrancy are considered by the author both dangerous and a departure from historic Lutheranism.

His essay on Lutheran hermeneutics points to another division, the departure from historic Lutheran propositional hermencutics in favor of contemporary existential hermeneutics is viewed as destructive of Biblical theology as well as historical Lutheranism. The remaining essays point out how these and other issues face the Lutheran Church today. An essay intended for laymen, entitled “Theological Issues and Problems of Biblical Interpretation Now Facing the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod,” contrasts the Biblical and historic Lutheran point of view to the contemporary existential approach in areas such as the authorship of Biblical books, the factuality of the Genesis account, the historicity of Jonah, the person and work of Christ, immortality and resurrection, the moral law in the Christian life, the inspiration of Scripture, and the conflict in Biblical interpretation. These are intended to alert Lutheran laymen to the issues facing the church. The problems of Lutheranism, however, illustrate the problems of the church at large and any student of contemporary theology interested in the preservation of Biblical orthodoxy will find much valuable material in this first of two volumes published in this field.

J. F. Walvoord

Glossolalia: Tongue Speaking In Biblical, Historical, And Psychological Perspective. By Frank Stagg, E. Glenn Hinson and Wayne E. Oates. Nashville and New York: Abingdon Press, 1967. 110 pp. Paper. $1.45.

Modern adherents of speaking in tongues will find little comfort indeed in this analysis of their experience. The authors, who are faculty members of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, write in an irenic spirit but it is

clear that they are not favorably disposed toward glossolalia. Unfortunately, their little volume can be charged with betraying the signs of modern rationalism. For example, the New Testament section (by Stagg) gives a not unsympathetic hearing to the ideas of contemporary...

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