Publisher's Synopsis
This volume forms one of the series of New Testament Handbooks edited by Professor Shailer Matthews of the University of Chicago. The series has obtained a very good name for careful and thorough work, and this contribution to it by Professor Stevens will add to its reputation. What is attempted is to "translate the thought of Jesus into modern terms, and so to correlate the different elements of His teaching as to exhibit its inner unity ". In this Professor Stevens has succeeded well, while the method followed and the general arrangement of matter make the book very suitable for the professed purposes of a text-book for schools and Bible classes and a manual for private study. The proper subject of the book is appropriately introduced by two chapters which give concise statements on the religious beliefs of the Jews in our Lord's time and the records of His words and deeds. These are followed by two chapters which deal with the methods of our Lord's teaching and His attitude to the Old Testament. Then come discussions of particular, elements in His Teaching-the Kingdom of God, the Father, the Son of Man, the Son of God, the value and, destiny of man etc. There are excellent remarks on the teaching by Parable; the problem of Jesus' Knowledge, the idea of the Church, and many other topics. The questions raised by the various ways in which the Second Coming js spoken of are handled with scholarly carefulness and discernment. The same may be said of the expositions of the Johannine conceptions of the resurrection and the judgment. Tnere are one or two points on which the whole case does not seem tq us to be given or in which there is some misapprehension. In the paragraphs, e.g., which deal with our Lord's teaching on sin, the position is, affirmed that He did not teach "total depravity". But the idea attached to "total depravity" is an extreme Augustinian idea, not what is really meant by the ter