Reviews Of Books -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 17:1 (Nov 1954)
Article: Reviews Of Books
Author: Anonymous


Reviews Of Books

Cornelius Jaarsma: Fundamentals in Christian Education. Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1953. 482. $5.00.

This is the hour for Christian education in America. Even Americans are beginning to recognize that building modern school walls of glass will not dispel the spiritual gloom of secularism within. And Christians are gradually perceiving the connection between the effortless triumph of modernism in the churches and the uninstructed gullibility of the generation which was hoodwinked by its superficialities. What is more, Reformed Christianity comes to this hour not with theory only, but with a program. Christian schools, with all their potential for the church and the kingdom, are a flourishing reality.

Yet the focus of attention on the Christian school and the demands of its expanding growth have brought embarrassment as well as rejoicing. Dr. Cornelius Jaarsma, professor of education at Calvin College, confesses that the hour “catches us as Christians ill prepared to meet the need” (p. 7).

In editing this book of readings, Dr. Jaarsma is both meeting and issuing the challenge. There are many questions that are well answered, there are more that are well put. The greatest merit of the book is its reflection of Dr. Jaarsma’s own approach to the problems of Christian education. A Christian educator must be a theologian and a philosopher as well as a psychologist and a pedagogue, and Dr. Jaarsma is all of these, and in everything a Christian who rejoices in the Word of God. With the perspective of such Christian scholarship he has prepared a book that concentrates upon the fundamentals. Only such an approach can discover the true distinctiveness of Christian education, and manifest the danger of merely adding courses in Bible and a Christian teacher to a school that is anti-Christian in its educational philosophy, curriculum, and methodology. The readings Dr. Jaarsma has selected go down to the foundation and build upon it. They deal with the basis, the aim, and the program of Christian education.

In form the book is a tool for Dr. Jaarsma’s trade, the training of Christian school teachers. The selected readings are summarized by the editor in “key thoughts” and additional comments relate the articles to the main considerations of the book. Some seventeen authors are represented and, as might be expected, there are great differences in emphasis, and some express disagreements. Dr. Jaarsma’s comments overlook these differences, stressing areas of agreement. This may be useful in a college introductory course but it is not desirable for the scholarly discussion Dr. Jaarsma seeks to stimulate.

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