TO LIFE
Rediscovering
Biblical Church
Steve Maltz
Saffron Planet, 223
pages, £10.00
978-0-9562296-2-5
To Life: Rediscovering
Biblical Church concludes the train of thought begun in Steve Maltz’s How the Church lost the Way…and how it can
find it again and continued in How
the Church lost the Truth…and how it can find it again. Borne out of the
author’s personal experiences of fragmentation and conflict in and between
churches, the book tells us that “Biblical Church” is to be found by rejecting
the pagan and philosophical “Greek” way of doing things turning instead to the
Hebraic model of lives, thoughts, and actions focussed on God.
Much in this book is true, some good points are made, and
the style is easy to follow. That said, I can not write glowingly of all of it.
In a book about “Rediscovering Biblical Church”, one would expect to find the
author’s definition of “church.” None is given – only a description of what the
early church was (allegedly) like. Maltz is often given to over-simplification which
may account for his remarkable ability to write about “church” without really
addressing ecclesiology, his rose-coloured view of the early church, his
failure to cite sources for the claims he makes concerning church history, and his
dismissal of all cessationists, whatever their category, as ultimately deistic.
I also felt uncomfortable with his use of ethnically based terms like “Hebraic”
and “Greek”, which readily bring to mind tensions in the early church, despite
the author’s strong attempts to defend such terminology.
Again, many good points are made, and Maltz quotes Scripture
constantly, but the result is more Hebraic “Church” (whatever that may mean), not
Biblical Church. Ironically, this undoubtedly well-intended book presents us
with a very Greek (as Maltz would have it) dichotomy between Hebrew and
Hellenistic, leaving no room for a biblically-balanced middle ground.
Ryan King is Assistant
Pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Wood Green.
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