Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 11, 1993 TAG: 9307130345
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by NELSON HARRIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
David Wells, professor of theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, has added his voice to the chorus of those who consider contemporary Christianity to be theologically bankrupt. Wells asserts, "I have watched with growing disbelief as the evangelical Church has cheerfully plunged into astounding theological illiteracy."
Such illiteracy is the result of a decline in the role of theology in the practice of ministry, the surrendering of theology by the Church to the academic community and the presumption that theology, like a machine, can be fixed with a little tinkering.
Wells' primary target is not the theologians, but the Church. If the Church is the primary audience for and constructor of theology, then the decline in evangelical theology must be laid at the Church's doorstep. The Church has replaced its search for knowledge of God with a search for the knowledge of self, making theology an "embarrassing encumbrance." Wells asks, "Have we not substituted the relative for the absolute, the Many for the One, diversity for unity, the human for the divine?"
According to Wells, the answer to the modern Church's dilemma may well be as complex as finding the cure for cancer. Nevertheless, the author's concluding chapter proposes there be a new kind of evangelical - one whose focus is on the centrality of God, one who finds there is plenty the Church can say to the world which is both theologically responsible and relevant.
- NELSON HARRIS
The Green of the Spring.
By Jane Gurney. St. Martin's. $24.95.
Jane Gurney takes the title of her first novel from "Aftermath," a poem by Siegfried Sassoon who wrote bitterly of the horrors he had witnessed first hand in World War I. That war dominates the novel from start to finish, and engulfs all of the characters. Brother and sister Oliver and Laura Brownlowe are at the center along with their relatives and friends and the servants of the Brownlowe estate in rural England. At first glance, one may assume Gurney's novel to be an "Upstairs, Downstairs"' look-alike, but as the plot progresses, you discover original and arresting characters and situations.
The war itself, naturally, becomes the major conflict, and Gurney's vivid descriptions of wartime situations on both sides of the English Channel create uneasily realistic images. Finally, Gurney's satisfyingly long (507 pages) book becomes difficult to put aside.
- HARRIET LITTLE
What's Called Love.
A Real Romance by Jim Paul. Villard Books. $19.
With the expertise of a master artisan Jim Paul weaves together love stories from the Song of Solomon, Petrarch, Stendahl and a 20th century couple. Only on the last page of his novel does he reveal his reason for calling it "A Real Romance." By doing so, he holds the reader in thrall.
Three weeks in Paris and the South of France alone with the woman he loves should have been idyllic for the nameless narrator of "What's Called Love." On the contrary, he feels frustrated, angry and depressed by L's lack of interest in him, by not knowing the language, by everything.
A former professor, now a travel writer long divorced, he has wrangled the trip through the French government and persuaded L to accompany him. Having lived abroad and made many friends, L leaves him to his own devices a great deal of the time, which forces him to think. What does he think about? Love, naturally, and this is his reason for shifting times and places.
Paris, Avignon, Arles, marketplaces, tourist attractions; Jim Paul describes them all with precision and grace of expression. He does equally well with his forays into the past, and blends the old and the modern with seamless perfection.
- LYNN ECKMAN
Mr. Summer's Story.\ By Peter Suskind. With Illustrations by Sempe. Translated from the German by John E. Woods. Knopf. $17.
Sempe's exquisite illustrations in luminous colors brighten "Mr. Summer's Story," a very somber tale. Not really about the title character, it is about a child and his growing up.
Beginning with a sentence almost two pages long about the little boy's flying . . . well, almost flying, the breathless pace then slows as the plot unfolds. After learning to ride a bicycle, he pedals to piano lessons, to a friend's house to watch television, often seeing Mr. Summer, the town's eccentric, scurrying along, his one and only activity. Never stopping, never communicating with anyone, he walks as though possessed.
Several years pass, marked by the child's increase in height, weight, shoe-size, and by his disappointments. He continues to glimpse Mr. Summer but hears him speak only one sentence, which haunts him. When Mr. Summer disappears, no one misses him for two weeks; then everyone gossips about what might have happened before forgetting him entirely. Only the child knows, but he remains silent.
Why?
Patrick Suskind, whose first novel "Perfume" won international acclaim, taunts readers by forcing them to find the answer for themselves. In less than a hundred pages of text, he tells a story that is unforgettable.\
- LYNN ECKMAN
Nelson Harris is pastor of the Ridgewood Baptist Church.\ Harriet Little teaches at James River high school\ Lynn Eckman teaches at Roanoke College
by CNB