Critics' choices for Christmas Traveling widely, reading closely (even eccentrically), and judging perspicaciously, our panel of Christmas critics has put together a list of titles that includes everything from an obedient Lassie to God's brilliantly wayward "biographer" And then there's the poetry and the theology Please share the good words
Meilaender, Gilbert
Gilbert Meilaender Gilbert Meilaender is the Davis Professor of Religion at Oberlin College. His book Body, Soul, and Bioethics will be published by the University of Notre Dame Press in January...
...His book Body, Soul, and Bioethics will be published by the University of Notre Dame Press in January 1996...
...The moral life also requires, of course, that we reflect on particular problems...
...Moreover, her long introduction to the play cycle is learned, witty, and provocative...
...If we only read new books, however, we miss the pleasure-and insight- that comes from returning time and again to books that are rich in wisdom...
...The Hastening that Waits: Karl Barth's Ethics (Oxford, $17.95,208 pp...
...we read the books we must...
...In academic life we do not always read the books that most appeal to us...
...Thomas Schmidt, a New Testament scholar, has written Straight and Narrow...
...Even the footnotes of this book are a rich store of information, and the book provides cultural criticism of a very high order...
...This is not a book only about biblical texts, though it is that in part...
...Those who return to read them again will be drawn still more deeply into the most remarkable story imaginable-a story in which, as Sayers put it in one of her essays, "the dogma is the drama...
...The trick-not easily or always accomplished-is to make the two coincide...
...Many have doubted the possibility of constructing any ethic at all on the basis of Barth's theological premises, but Biggar's is a wonderfully concise and precise explication...
...He suggests that Barth's overwhelming emphasis on the freedom of God to command in any moment does not eliminate all continuity from our understanding of what we ought to do or what sort of person we ought to be...
...by Nigel Biggar, was first published in 1993 and is now available in paperback...
...He captures some of the aesthetic beauty of Barth's work while also drawing the reader into problems that are central for Christian ethics...
...His starting point is very simple: If we care about what is good for children (and, hence, good for the next generation of our own society), we should recognize that one of the things they must have is a father who is a daily presence in their lives...
...Those who have not read the plays will, I think, find it a moving experience...
...which deserves a wider audience than it is likely to get...
...So rich and complicated is his thought, however, that he is read far less often than he deserves...
...I have for years admired and learned from Helmut Thielicke's work in theological ethics...
...the English translation of Thielicke's autobiography...
...Through it all he carries the theme of the wayfarer, seeing himself as a guest "on this beautiful planet," but ultimately called by the voice of the Good Shepherd to a still great fulfillment...
...One of the most troubling issues facing our society is given provocative and penetrating treatment by David Blankenhorn in Fatherless America (Basic Books, $23,328 pp...
...An even more towering figure of twentieth-century theology was Karl Barth...
...We are fortunate now to have Notes from a Wayfarer (Paragon, $29.95, 422 pp...
...I do not know of a better book on the subject...
...But there were other tyrants in life as well, and years later, when he was at Hamburg University during a period of student uprising in the '60s, he was the target of radical student groups...
...The simple premise is developed in rich detail by Blankenhorn as he unpacks the different "cultural scripts" we provide for fathers-scripts that are often embarrassingly thin and that often seem to suggest that fathers are essentially unnecessary...
...And since these are reflections written to be read in the Christmas season, it is worth noting that Ignatius Press has again made available Dorothy Sayers's The Man Born to Be King ($14.95,338 pp...
...In Sayers's powerful artistic imagination the stories of the Gospels come alive and are given a coherence that is both striking and persuasive...
...The story of their attempt to disrupt his preaching is a stirring one, well worth reading today...
...The book is a model of clear theological prose...
...Written with a passion that does not obscure his considerable learning, marked by the profound crisis of the Nazi regime, his work has been paid too little heed in this country...
...Compassion & Clarity in the Homosexuality Debate (InterVarsity, $10.99, 239 pp...
...As a young theologian, Thielicke was removed from his teaching position by the Nazis...
...This cycle of plays on the life of Christ, first written for radio broadcast, is a gem well worth reading at least once a year during Advent or Lent...
...Another hotly debated issue in our society, even though its effects are not perhaps as wide ranging, is the morality of homosexuality...
...The central arguments are no longer about private preference but about public affirmation and ecclesiastical blessing...
...He shows how the recently popular category of "narrative" was used by Barth- before it became fashionable-to unfold the role of Scripture in ethics...
...Schmidt has read very widely in the ethical, sociological, and medical aspects of this debate...
...He is a master of dissecting some of the shibboleths about parenthood that we take for granted-as, for example, in his discussion of the "Deadbeat Dad" or the "Visiting Father...
...When he turned to parish ministry and was in demand as a preacher, he was also on occasion forbidden to preach...
...He is careful, judicious, and evangelical throughout...
Vol. 122 • December 1995 • No. 21
