Reviews
CHRISTIANITY IN A CHANGING
WORLD
CHRISTIANITY IN A CHANGING
WORLD: biblical insight on contemporary issues
By Michael Schluter and the Cambridge Papers Group
Marshall Pickering. 348 pages. £9.99
ISBN 0 551 03241 3
Should Britain join the single
European currency? If you had £3000 to invest what would you do with it? Should
blasphemy be a criminal offence in a secular state? Isn't it time that the
Church of England was disestablished? How do we explain the rise and fall of
nations? What are we trying to achieve with our prison system?
You can hear these and similar
questions being discussed by the panellists on Question Time and by guests on the Today programme. From time to time you can even hear them being
argued about in the Student Union. But it is fairly unlikely that they will
receive more than a passing mention in the teaching ministry of your church.
Why? Are they unimportant? Does the Bible have nothing to say about them?
Christianity in a Changing World is a
collection of 25 of the 'Cambridge Papers' by a group of Christians who have in
common a connection with Cambridge and a resolve to seek biblical insight on
exactly these sorts of issues. Produced over the last ten years these papers
have been brought together to form what is an informative, provocative and very
usable book which can be highly recommended.
A lightning tour will give a
sense of the range and nature of the topics covered. Some of the papers give an
overview of an issue: Christopher Townsend on Homosexuality, on the Morality
of Punishment and on Hell; Paul
Mills on Time; Mark Dever on Providence; Denis Alexander on Science: Friend or Foe? on Genetic Engineering and on Scientific Naturalism; Mike Ovey on Deconstructionism.
Other papers drill down more
satisfyingly: Julian Rivers' papers on Disestablishment,
on Blasphemy in the Secular State and
on the Morality of Rights were all
most stimulating; Peter Walker's paper on Jerusalem
was outstanding for its combination of thorough biblical argumentation and
serious contemporary applications; Michael Schluter's Relationism was introduced in the paper by that name and then
applied helpfully in The Rise and Fall of
Nations.
A third category of papers
introduces a single insight and challenges the reader to take the matter
further: Mike Ovey on Human Identity and
on Women, Men and the Nature of God;
Ranald Macaulay on The Great Commissions;
Michael Schluter on Roots.
Naturally, where papers move
from the statement of relevant principles to more specific recommendations for
public policy and private practice then readers will perhaps feel their
agreement or disagreement with the authors more strongly. This reviewer was
almost wholly with Michael Schluter on Should
Christians Support the Euro? and almost wholly against Paul Mills on the Biblical Ban on Interest, for example.
The papers are structured most
clearly and this makes for easy analysis of the authors' argument. It is easy
to imagine this book being used as a discussion starter for Christian Union
groups, for ministers' fraternals or for serious-minded home-groups, for
example. Christian schools could use it as a textbook for critical thinking
classes.
It is frustrating that the
Biblical basis of the discussions and recommendations tends to be very much
under the surface and that the authors are far from sharing a single view as to
how the Bible is to be applied to these sorts of issues. Nevertheless it is
itself heartening that there should be a Cambridge Papers Group whose members
'share the conviction that the Bible provides a coherent worldview relevant to
every aspect of human life'. The Group has produced a book which will greatly
aid the development of a Christian mind on matters of contemporary interest and
concern and it is to be hoped not only that the book will achieve a wide and
thoughtful readership but also that it will inspire others to address these
sorts of issues with similar clarity of mind, commitment to relevance and
confidence in the sufficiency and authority of Scripture.