Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 141:564 (Oct 1984)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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BSac 141:564 (Oct 84) p. 359

Book Reviews

Christian Education: Its History and Philosophy. By Kenneth O. Gangel and Warren S. Benson. Moody Press, 1983. 394 pp. $16.95.

One writer recently commented that many books today are thoroughly contemporary or are wholly biblical, but that very few are both biblical and contemporary! This medium of mediocrity has now been upgraded by this outstanding work which is not only biblical but also contemporary. Gangel is chairman of the Christian education department at Dallas Seminary, and Benson, former professor of Christian education at Dallas Seminary, is now professor of Christian education at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

This reviewer’s colleagues have made a valuable contribution to the field of Christian education by combining these two overlapping fields (history and philosophy) into a very readable and logical unit. The result is a masterful treatment of both Christian and secular thought throughout the ages.

Readers are asked to keep in mind that Christian education is based on not only a proper understanding of history but also of philosophy. Ideas (even Christian ones) are clarified over the span of centuries and it is essential for Christian educators to ask how one gets from Plato to Pietism and from Aristotle to Aquinas.

Though the work is comprehensive, beginning with the Old Testament contribution to Christian education and ending with Christian education in the 1980s, it is not overly exhaustive. The reader does not feel overworked or undereducated. It is readable for both students and serious church people. The authors are biblically informed and their drive to be contemporary is unparallelled.

BSac 141:564 (Oct 84) p. 360

This volume is “must” reading for Christian educators and may well become the new standard work on the subject.

H. G. Hendricks

The Authoritative Word: Essays on the Nature of Scripture. Edited by Donald K. McKim. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1983. xiv + 270 pp. Paper, $10.95.

Each of the essays in this volume has been published previously. The contributors include no proponents of biblical inerrancy. The perspective of the entire volume is reflected in the opening essay by Paul J. Achtemeier, “How the Scriptures Were Formed,” in which he describes the conservative position on Scripture as “dictated by the prior assumption that Scripture is inerrant” (p. 5; cf. p. 13). Critical scholars, on the contrary, are convinced that “the phenomena of Scripture…render difficult if not untenable the idea of inerrancy” (p. 3) and therefore “are not so much perturbed by discrepancies and errors” in Scripture “as they ar...

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