j a m e s f o r s y t h ✡ n e t

Just a few points…

The second edition of this volume (2003) has been fine tuned and, in my opinion, improved.

Personally I found it helpful to copy and adapt the diagrams on how to construct arguments, with blank, fill-in boxes for trialling different concepts. Please note, however, that the “acknowledgement and response” (i.e. acknowledgement and response to exceptions to rules, seemingly opposing evidence, etc) part of the “claim, evidence, warrant, reason” diagram should be linked with dual-direction arrows to each other part of the argument. This is the case because an acknowledgement and response may be required for any part of the argument process. The authors make this clear themselves in the text, but it is not so clear in the diagram.

If I can find the original files I used to make these diagrams I’ll post them here.

I found the bibliographical pointers at the back of the book to be relevant, up to date and of great assistance to anyone about to embark on a lengthy and challenging research project.

For those wishing to expand their knowledge on how to construct arguments, Williams and Colomb have also written “The Craft of Argument” which is now also in its second edition (2003). There is some degree of repetition here, but it is well worthwhile learning to firmly ground your arguments.

I particularly liked the tip (in the volume at hand) about placing a warrant first, which a hostile audience is likely to accept. Then moving to specifics which will cause your reader some real cognitive dissonance!

This book is logically set out and is complete with lexica and indices.

In case you have already studied Latin, and don’t want to switch the way you go through your declension paradigms, Collins uses the following order: NGDAA - Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative. That’s the way I personally prefer it, as I did Greek that way, except that in Greek there was no Ablative, but a Vocative in its place.

For those of you, like myself, who hold to a reformed faith, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater and forget about Latin. Remember, all of the reformers knew Latin, and that doesn’t make them papists by any means. Furthermore, logically, isn’t knowledge better than the lack of knowledge?

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a somewhat tongue-in-cheek “Mass” in his book Fates Worse than Death. In an appendix at the back of that book is John F. Collins’ Latin translation!

It’s a shame this book didn’t come with its own answer key in the back. Honestly… it took another author to write one, which has recently been released.

One can see from the credits page towards the start that quite a team went into putting this dictionary together. Other than the editor John DeFrancis himself, there are five associate editors, four editorial associates, two computer associates and twelve proofreading associates (two of whom double as associate editors). This spread of “eyes” is important with dictionary compilation as the fewer people working on the text, the more nuanced the definitions and selection of words.

I like the inclusion of the Kangxi and Comprehensive Radical Charts at the “back end paper verso” (back cover) of the dictionary. The front covers are blank, which could have been used in a similar way, perhaps for a summary of stroke-order rules.

Speaking of stroke-order rules, I have rarely, if ever, seen a satisfactory treatment of this in any Chinese text, let alone dictionary. Unfortunately this includes the volume at hand. The best method that I have seen is employed for the use of Japanese lexicography, in Hadamitzky and Spahn’s Kanji & Kana (Tuttle - 0-8048-2077-5).

On the whole, however, the appendices included at the back are comprehensive, necessary and easy to follow.

The inclusion of words with Roman lettering (such as “a Q jingshen - attitude that treats defeats as personal moral victories” p9) shows the trend towards the use of English words and letters interspersed in Mandarin in modern China.

The “er” retroflexive suffix is a handy inclusion - at each relevant entry - for anyone wanting to travel to Beijing or the surrounding area. The same word can have this suffix appended or not, depending on the intended meaning. Thus, it is of great benefit to be able to check at a glance whether it is included in each individual entry, without having to memorise the rule/s concerned. A cheap handbook (shou ce) on the “er” suffix, called “hanyu erhuaci xuexi shouce / Chinese-er suffixed words without tears” is available, published by Beijing University.

It would have been good if measure words were included in the entries as well. But this may have overly complicated the process, as a word can have more than one measure word depending on the context in which it is used. On page 1360 and onwards, however, there is a very useful appendix listing many measure words and their respective usages.

Whenever a character has been simplified, the traditional character is shown in square brackets. This is essential for anyone interested in the etymology of a character. Also, if you have spent time in Hong Kong or Shen Zhen, or have studied Chinese before using fantizi (traditional characters) you will appreciate being able to move from the familiar to the more challenging.

This dictionary has an electronic counterpart, namely Wenlin. Wenlin is top-of-the-range Chinese dictionary software, with many added benefits over using the book alone. This includes a flashcards function, a drawing box for character look-up, and spoken pronunciation of a high quality; not to mention the ability to upgrade from Wenlin’s website.

If you are thinking of buying both the ABC dictionary and Wenlin, I would err on the side of “lexical diversity” by choosing Wenlin and, possibly, Oxford’s 3rd edition English-Chinese/Chinese-English dictionary, the one with the red cover (0-19-596457-8). The benefits of this, are twofold. First, you would have an English-Chinese dictionary (which ABC has not and Wenlin’s is limited). Second, the Oxford dictionary is smaller, and much more portable, than ABC (but the 1999 edition of ABC is available in a smaller size).

Although the text size is quite small, the print quality is of such a standard that the components and shape of complicated characters (i.e. jiantizi - simplified - but still complicated) can still be discerned.

Perhaps most importantly, with this dictionary most of all, please read the Introduction and Reader’s Guide at the front of this dictionary as soon as possible. It contains information on the arrangement of words, orthography, parts of speech and many other indispensable tools.

I’ve been a WordPerfect user (and never much of an MS Word user) ever since adolescence. A major attraction for myself and many others being the Reveal Codes function. However, this review is not about WordPerfect vs. MS Word, but about the book Special Edition Using WordPerfect X3.

One of the most important features of a book such as this (which is about 2 inches thick) is its index. I find the index to be well laid out, easy to read and a good combination of bold and plain text. There is also a Contents at a Glance on the very first page, as well as the Contents proper.

New features of WordPerfect X3 are listed on pages 2 to 7. Note that I don’t consider the addition of the Yahoo! toolbar, and the Y! icon (which I couldn’t get rid of - it kept reappearing) as enhancements. This is clearly a commercial move rather than purely an enhancement, which brings me to my only complaint with this book, it seems to lack a critical edge. Not once in the whole manual is there a “bug”, nor “plugin”. Come on, let’s get into the workarounds and tweaks! Anyway, this isn’t enough for the manual to lose any stars in my opinion.

The ease of pasting unformatted text from other programs/documents (an essential feature - done in a more round-about way in MS Word) is described on page p339. I use this feature all the time, I’m very pleased to learn (p339 - again) of the shortcut key Ctrl+Shift+V to do this very quickly.

Just to go back to the WordPerfect vs MS Word debate for a minute. The #1 downfall of WordPerfect is becoming more and more clear in our globalised world: The lack of unicode support (especially obvious when it comes to Asian languages).

Overall: Highly recommended. Special Edition Using WordPerfect X3 complements the simplicity and comprehensiveness of WordPerfect itself.

Timothy George is founding dean and professor at Beeson Divinity School. He has also been a pastor and editor of numerous Christian magazines. Currently he is executive editor of Christianity Today.

It was a refreshing change to read Theology of the Reformers. George comes to the subject as a Christian. He does not fudge difficulties presented to believers, but, as we shall see, seeks to assist in our growing in faith and knowledge of God through the reformers.

George moves from the familiar to the unfamiliar in that most theological students have read biographies of Luther, Zwingli and Calvin, but probably not Menno Simons. The chapter on Menno Simons, then, is couched in a familiar setting which presented me with some quite new and challenging material.

The basic aim of this book is to bring out the emphases in the theologies of these four reformers. In being faithful to this aim, George has assisted in breaking down a number of myths commonly held about the reformers. For example, rather than Calvin being a melancholic and unemotional theologian, he is shown as a pastor who (page 212) “…was frequently called on to counsel those Protestants who had been imprisoned for their faith and who often faced imminent martyrdom.” A quick scan of the footnotes between pages 238 and 246 will show that Calvin greatly drew on the Pastoral Epistles to shape his theology.

The key phrase used in the four main biographical chapter headings are something that won’t easily be forgotten by most readers: “Yearning for Grace: Martin Luther”; “Something Bold for God: Huldrych Zwingli”; “Glory unto God: John Calvin”; and “No Other Foundation: Menno Simons”. These chapter headings are tied in with major threads of each of the respective reformer’s theologies, and could be used as mnemonics for subsequent reflection.

All four reformers are presented in a sympathetic light. However, George doesn’t shirk from showing the reformers belligerently holding on to their divisive approaches to the sacraments, when compromise (or at least temporary concession) may have been better for the church at large. Whilst not misrepresenting the unique perspectives of each reformer’s viewpoint nor espousing a “facile ecumenism” (page 316) George proposes a way forward of sorts in his final chapter The Abiding Validity of Reformation Theology namely, to hold to the essentials but continue to promote the importance of the sacraments.

Regarding this final chapter, Baker (Baker, J.W. (1991) Theology of the Reformers (Book Review). Church History 60, 387-389.) asserts that George “…may have exceeded the reach of his study”. I do not agree with this statement for the following reasons: first, given the overall fine quality of the book and George’s extensive experience in the pulpit, lecture hall and editor’s desk, he is qualified to provide guidance in applying the knowledge he has gleaned from the reformers discussed; second, given the importance of the topic (i.e. the way forward for unity among Christians) it is warranted that George contributes to resolving the schisms that past doctrinal differences have caused.

George’s description of the disagreement between Luther and Zwingli (along with a number of associates) at Marburg was quite moving. He brings home to me the lasting importance of unity within the Christian church and the need for flexibility in the face of military backlash (cf Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).

Should this book have been aimed at theological students, it seems odd that German, Swiss, Dutch and Latin phrases are documented so precisely whilst New Testament Greek (a language of considerable usage by three out of four of the reformers studied) is only touched on thrice (pages 241, 293 and 257), and then only as transliterations. On page 70 George points to a “Greek verb”, but fails to mention which verb he is referring to. On the other hand, a sound knowledge of Latin seemed to be assumed by the author throughout. In many theological colleges, such as BCV (Australia), Latin is not taught, but Biblical Greek is. For this reason it seems hard to justify “ordo salutis”, for example, not being mentioned in the glossary, nor explained in the passage (page 270). It would be helpful to have a copy of Muller’s Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms handy when reading a book such as this (Muller, R.A. (1985) Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Books).

Further to the level the book is pitched at, note that in Baker’s review of this book he says (in connection with his usage of the book for an undergraduate Reformation history class) “…it was clearly a challenging text for some of them”. So, if it is pitched at a high level, why all these other European languages and so little Greek?

Perhaps a good introduction to the subject would be to read McGrath’s Reformation Thought first (McGrath, A.E. (1988) Reformation Thought: An Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Similarly sized, it takes a more thematic/topical approach than George’s, which is more biographical. McGrath has a similar sized glossary, but it includes less non-English words. It is interesting that McGrath only mentions Menno Simons twice in his book. This is not to say that George could be criticised for placing the obscure Menno Simons next to the renowned Luther, Zwingli and Calvin. As I noted previously, there is value in moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar. As is the case with reformation studies, and doubtlessly so many other historical subjects, the amount of repetition in what is published is enormous. The chapter on Menno Simons is a welcome addition.

There is a need for this book in that short biographies are used to explain reformation theology, which may otherwise be quite dry to the new reader. George certainly achieves his aims in this book. The lives and theologies of the four reformers are well elucidated. It is well written, easy reading, yet deep enough and applicable to modern thought and practice (I say this in connection with the discussion on the Marburg Colloquy above).