RELIGION

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25935, 15 October 1949, Page 3

RELIGION

[Reviewed by L.G.W.]

The Atonement. By Thomas Hywel Hughes. George Allen and Unwin Ltd. 328 pp.

No Christian doctrine has had more practical efficacy than that of the Atonement. Yet no doctrine has had more varied interpretations. Principal Hughes has done good work in drawing up in this book an account of the modern theories of the doctrine.

The principal formulations may be grouped under several heads, viz., satisfaction, penal, ethical satisfaction, “Biblical,” moral influence, and mystical theories. Seven chapters are devoted to these, whose exponents include the famous names of Forsyth, Macintosh, Dale, Denney, McLeod, Campbell, Rashdall, Westcott, John Caird. and Moberley. There is an all too brief chapter in which the views of other representative thinkers are summarised.

A final chapter contains the author’s constructive outline of his conception of the meaning of the atonement. He sees in the sufferings and death of Christ, God’s effort to restore the equilibrium of the moral universe.

A History of Christianity in England. By E. O. James. Hutchinson’s University Library. 184 pp. Per Whitc'ombe and Tombs.

To write a history of Christianity in England in a book of less than two hundred pages is a very difficult task, and much must be omitted and much merely summarised.

The first chapter of this book recounts the story of the British Church as distinguished from the later English Church. The consolidation and unification of the latter is recorded in chanter 11.

The mediaeval Church, the Reformation. the National Church. Nonconformity, Roman Catholicism, and Anglicanism each has a chapter to itself.

As an introduction to the history of the religious situation in the present and past this is a verv useful bonk. Some readers will regret, that the author has had to work within such narrow limits. A useful bibliography is appended to each chapter.

Beyond Belief. By L. E. Jones. Seeker and Warburg. 127 pp.

It is the custom of our time for those without responsibility to lecture those who have it. The author of this book belongs to the class of irresponsible lecturers. With an unself-conscious superiority complex, he takes upon himself the role of a prophet and by means of broad generalizations manages to say many high sounding things that mean very little.

Most of his criticisms of Church doctrine are based on a very superficial understanding of them, and though Mr Jones repudiates the doctrine of original sin with horror, yet one would gather from what he says that such sin is permanently established in the churches.

About these, though he refuses to belong to any of them, he makes many facile pronouncements. It is a pity that he could not have kept his book on the high level where he writes of Christ’s Resurrection. There he shows understanding; elsewhere the book is a long string of querulous complaints.