The Twelve Christ Chose, by Asbury Smith, 1958
I borrowed this book from the library of Saint James Episcopal, my parish church; its collection is miscellaneous and occasionally strays from selections one would expect in a Christian library, but often such a profusion allows the discovery of a rare tree of knowledge. The Twelve Christ Chose, by Asbury Smith, is one of those. Smith is an Methodist minister of his era; as such, he is more Protestant than many contemporary Episcopalians, yet does not display the reflexive hostility to any Catholic vestiges that contemporary Baptists might. His style is lucid, although non-native English speakers may suffer from some of his assumptions of vocabulary knowledge. It is no surprise that the model for his writing is the popular sermon, but the meat of the argument is generally sparing of Biblical quotes; in some cases, this dearth of direct Scripture is attributable to the scant material which the New Testament provides on the lesser-known apostles. He presents the apocryphal and historical material in a thorough but somewhat dry manner, perhaps enhanced in its original form by the inflections of the human voice.
The structure of the overall book is straightforward, and could serve as a textbook example of what I learned in school about essay composition, although the body of the book is much thicker than anything I have composed. Smith may well have composed, or at least revised, the introduction and conclusion after the completion of the series of sermons. The body of the book is divided into chapters, each one assigned to an apostle. Simon Peter naturally takes precedence in this series, but every one of the Twelve receives thorough and serious consideration. Each chapter opens with the collect for the appropriate saint on his feast day. Although these prayers are thematically linked with the chapter which follows, the archaic language may render them opaque to an audience unaccustomed to such formal and grammatically sinuous language. The material in the chapter weaves together several threads: the frequency and Biblical characterization of the apostle; the historical and social setting from which he came, which is assumed historical knowledge on the part of the Evangelists, but is now often obsolete; apocryphal sources and sources from ecclesiastical history, especially in the cases of the apostles about which very little is said in Scripture itself. It is worth noting that apocryphal in this context does not indicate falsehood or heresy, but rather material which is not part of the canon. Polycarp and Clement are excluded from the epistles for reasons of chronology, not of fidelity.
Dr. Smith’s intention in composing this series was the restoration of relevance to both clergy and laity of apostles who had faded, for the most part, into spectral visual companions of Christ. His thesis, that Christ chose the Twelve as his first followers and his successors in His ministry, suggests that the Twelve were chosen as individuals to whom we could compare ourselves and on whom we could model or avoid modeling ourselves. The secondary reliance on apocryphal texts and tales may cause discomfort to some, but this reliance is never weighted heavier than Scriputre when Scripture is available, and the audience would be wise to remember that the apocryphal tales are Christian tales intended for fellow Christians.
Dr. Smith presents an engaging and thought-provoking read, but I would caution against a too hasty reading of the material that allows omission or diminution of provocative and valuable details and examples. It might be suitable as a series of Bible-based discussions, and thus not far from its original genre. The collects at the beginning of each chapter, however, would require previous examination in order that a discussion group could understand the thematic significance of the collect.
