Not ‘Til I Have Done
Reviewed by Terry Schlossberg, April 1, 1999
Not ‘Til I Have Done is Elizabeth Achtemeier’s autobiography.
Achtemeier has distinguished herself not only as an exemplary preacher and teacher, scholar and author, but also as one of the modern Church’s truly prophetic voices. Before the feminists were publicly declaring their victimhood, Achtemeier was earning a degree in psychology from Stanford University and moving on to graduate summa cum laude from Union Seminary (New York) in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She was awarded Union’s prestigious Traveling Fellowship in 1950 which led her and newly wedded husband “Bud” to study under Karl Barth in Switzerland.
She became one of the most respected critics of radical feminism in the Church and one of the Church’s best teachers on combining marriage and career. She has more than a score of books to her credit, on a broad range of subjects including biblical interpretation, preaching, marriage, finding a pastor, abortion, feminism, and naturalism. Her first book, The Old Testament Roots of our Faith, co-authored with Bud, was first published in 1962 and is still in print. But her most popular book is The Christian Marriage. She has maintained a biblical theology all her life and has been able to critique the stream of modern theological shifts in the company of the best orthodox thinkers of our century. Because her career has been marked by sound scholarly work, she speaks to the controversial issues of the day without being labeled activist.
She spent four decades of her life as a seminary professor but is in constant demand as a speaker and writer because of her ability to relate theology to the most common experiences of life, and because of her deep love of the Bible (“We need to get it into our very bones,” she often says). Not ‘Til I Have Done begins and ends with reference to the Scripture she loves and lives by. And next to her family, she would probably regard as her greatest accomplishment the knowledge that her students consistently outscored all other Presbyterian seminary students on their ordination Bible content exam. Her life has been a crusade to communicate her own love and knowledge of the Bible to all Christians.
Those legions in the Church who have had both their faith and their biblical theology strengthened under Achtemeier’s tutelage will wish this little autobiography were much longer because of its insights into what made the woman they love. But all readers will find in this small volume on this larger than life figure not only the story of her life but also minitheological treatises on the range of subjects that is nearly as broad as the whole of her writing and teaching career. We can all be grateful that one meaning of the title of this book is that her contribution to the Church and to our lives is not yet done!
Terry Schlossberg is executive director of Presbyterians Pro-Life.