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734 BOOK REVIEWS more useful would have been joining eschatology to ecclesiology and anamnesis. Lawler's treatment of anointing (chapter seven) is generally well done; however greater recourse to the present anointing rite would have clarified importanit ways thait the church is involved in the pastoral care of the sick as well as in anointing itself. The section on marriage (chapter eight) is unique in that here .the author deliberately moves to a description of .the reality of marriage as experienced by a couple as thait experience helps to focus the tradition of church teaching and practice on marriage. Given the chapter's length it is regrettable that Lawler did not utilize and develop some important insights on marriage recently offered by J. Dominian and T. Mackin. The final chapter on holy orders is much less useful since here ithe author identifies the church's ministers raither than what a theology of ministry consists in. Most unfortunate is the author's reliance on Schillibeeckx's Ministry rather than the corrected and expanded book The Church With a Human Face (even granting the epistemological and exegetical criti• cisms which this work has received). In sum, this attempt at a contemporary Roman Catholic sacramental theology is somewhat useful but not without flaw. It could serve as a textbook in college or adult education courses in sacraments with a skilled teacher who can correct and expand on the text as needed. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. KEVIN w. IRWIN Evangelical Theories of Biblical Inspiration: A Review and Proposal, By KERN ROBERT TREMBATH. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Pp. 154. $24.95 (cloth). Although it is often stated that interest in the question of biblical inspiraition has declined greatly in recent years (as witnessed, for example , in how little space it receives in current introductions to the Bible or to Systematic Theology) , there have been a large number of books published on the subject during the last decade. Trembath has added his voice to the present discussion from a very specific concern : namely, to explore the possibility of a theory of inspiration in an Evangelical tradition that rejects deductive approaches and literal reliance on verbal inspiration in favor of an inductive approach. He set out to show ithat inspiration of the Bible refers " not to the empiri· BOOK REVIEWS 735 cal characteristics of the Bible itself but rather to the faot that the Church confesses the Bible as God's primary means of inspiring salvation within itself." (p. 5) The key term here is salvation. The final criterion of inspired writing is not in the material or formal aspects of the books themselves, but in the effect they have on the believing community which receives .them. Mirabile dictu, after investigating the shortcomings of all previous evangelical attempts at formulating :the issue, he turns to a Roman Catholic, Karl Rahner, and his transcendental Thomism for the most adequate basis on which to articulate an answer for modern Evangelicals ! Of course, since this book is a barely-revised doctoral disserta· l:ion done at Notre Dame University under Fr. James Burtchaell, C.S.C., perhaps this is not ·too surprising. But it is certainly a major departure from traditional theologizing within the Evangelical tradition. The author clearly recognizes his role as spoiler and sees this book as a challenge to be taken up and wresitled with by his co-religionists. Before examining the development of ·the argument, it will be valuable to sum up the author's own conclusions. He sees the concept of biblical inspiration pointing not to the Bible but to Christian believers who have already experienced salvation from God through the Bible. This salvation is a saving experience, an act of self-transcendence, whose ultimate initiator is God. In any kind of divine inspiration, God initiates and humans receive. This means the sine qua non of biblical inspiration is salvation by God. Any .theory to account for biblical inspiration that fails to rest upon the presence of salvation in the human recipient is at best only ambiguously Christian, and at worst grounds the specificity of Christianity in such nonreligious concepts as logic, interior feelings, historical accuracy, or the like...

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