Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 130:517 (Jan 1973)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

He is There and He is Not Silent. By Francis A. Schaeffer. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1972. 100 pp. $3.95; paper, $1.95.

The readers of Bibliotheca Sacra should already be familiar with the material of this book. Dr. Schaeffer gave four lectures as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Memorial Lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary which were published in this journal in successive issues beginning in Apr-June, 1971. The differences are two: the material is expanded by about thirty per cent and two brief appendices appear. These are entitled “Is Propositional Revelation Nonsense?” and “‘Faith’ versus Faith.”

The value of these lectures consists in the simplicity of Schaeffer’s style. He is able to popularize philosophic problems in a way that most Christians are able to understand. He defines his terminology and illustrates the problems with quotations from a wide variety of contemporary opponents of Christianity (e.g., Jean Paul Sartre, B. F. Skinner, Albert Camus, Michael Polanyi, and Ludwig Wittgenstein). One unhappy feature is that the men quoted are not cited from book and page so one must take Dr. Schaeffer’s word. In fact, the only footnotes are references to his own works and no bibliography or index appears.

The thesis of the book is the philosophic necessity of the existence of God and His self-revelation in the areas of metaphysics, morals, and epistemology. The answer to the one-and-the-many-problem is found in the Triune God. The moral problem is solved by a present dualism of good and evil, the good from God and the evil from the revolt of a “nonprogrammed creature” (p. 35). According to Schaeffer (p. 67), Christianity has no problem of epistemology. This is a great over-statement but his comments in context are helpful. For the general reader, Schaeffer is recommended.

E. A. Blum

The New World Idea Index to the Holy Bible. Edited by Harvey K. Griffith. New York: World Publishing Company, 1972. xxv + 907 pp. $ 1 4.95 .

Employing the modern process of concept indexing (based on a philosophy of “predefined unity” in which an “idea set” is created prior

to the indexing of the subject matter), this Idea Index is a very sophisticated type of topical index to the Bible (including the Apocrypha). An “idea set” of 147 basic words is used with an eleven-page thesaurus of over 1,000 related terms which refer the reader to one of the 147 basic ideas.

For example, the reader is referred in the thesaurus to the basic idea “DEITY” by any one of seven other words (Divine Being, God, Infinite, Omnipotence, Omnip...

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