In 1957, I was sent by the RAF to Habbaniya in Iraq for five months. The work was light and I was able to spend a lot of time in the chapel, and with padre Sylvester. In the vestry there, I found a run of the Scottish Journal of Theology, and read many articles. I had never come across theology like it. I noticed it did not have the personal address of the preaching I was used to, the pietistic comfort and call to response. It was academic, theology coloured by philosophy and the search for precise language, connecting God with the world through the medium of this cultivated discourse, which was utterly new to me. I was intrigued and glad to work at it. Much of it was beyond me, but I had no sense that it was out of bounds for an evangelical Christian. It was a helpful step on the way into theology for me.
Even more important was the discovery in the vestry of a copy of George MacCleod, Only One Way Left (1956). It opened my eyes, stirred me up, and encouraged me.
I talked with no one about it. I did not remember much from it, except his startling insistence that ‘there is a Man in heaven’, backed by his reading of Hebrews. I did not see or hear of the book for many years, but I knew I valued it.
A year or two ago, I looked for a copy and found one, worn, but with the original red dust cover. And inside I found it belonged to Padre Stubbs-Bromley in HongKong, and there was a letter from Freddy Temple, the Dean of Hongkong thanking the padre for the loan of the book. It seems the military chaplaincy service spread the book round the Empire.
So now I am reading it again, and wondering how much it sunk into my into my mind unconsciously at that formative time. I find myself now very much at home with it. And so I will recommend it.
It is a downloadable book from WildGoose publications, Only One Way Left.