Dogma 4: The Church Its Origin and Structure by Michael Schmaus

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 779 is an intuitive awareness of God, but only reductively. The image of God arises in the intellect slowly, laboriously, in proportion to strict fidelity to conscience, yet, in the end, never of itself represents more than a supreme Someone. It is only in and through the Christian tradition that the vague God of conscience is known clearly. Hence, for Newman, conscience can never directly impress the image of the God revealed in Christ, as Weatherby implies, nor can it be an independent judge of the content of Christian revelation. Conscience inherently needs Christian revelation, though the judgments it induces are the necessary preconditions for seeing Christian;ity as true. Hence, Newman's firm adherence to the received Catholic tradition is not a voluntaristic leap but an exigency of his own understanding of the function and limits of conscience. Professor Weatherby, then, has written a thoughtful, earnest book which defends the kind of epistemology which Newman rejected as consonant neither with empirical facts nor with the teaching on faith implies in Scripture. This is fair enough. To what extent his attribution of this view to St. Thomas is accurate, I have severe doubts. His interpretation of Newman's mind I find uncovincing, for it is based on misrepresentations which are pervasive and cumulative. Fairfield University Fairfield Connecticut RoBERT E. O'DoNNELL, S. J. Dogma 4: The Church Its Origin and Structure. By MICHAEL ScHMAus. Translated by Mary Ledderer. New York: Sheed and Ward, 197fl. Pp. 214. $3.95 (paper). Professor Michael Schmaus presents a straight-forward description of the Church which is sensitive to the contemporary theological questions of ecclesiology but avoids becoming involved in controversies. The simplicity of his arguments belies the depth at which he treats problems and the care with which he balances disputed questions. We have here the work of a master dogmatician suitable for use as a textbook in the college classroom or the adult study club. The basic research upon which this work rests is Schmaus's Die Lehre von der Kirche (Munich 1958) . This monumental 933 page treatise which includes 46 pages of bibliography, which ranks with those of Journet and Cougar as preparatory of Lumen Gentium, considers the origin of the Church from the viewpoint of God, salvation history, and the foundation in Jesus Christ. This conditions the divine-human character of the Church which is presented around the biblical images People of God, Body of Christ, 780 BOOK REVIEWS and Spouse. From the nature of the Church flows the mission and structure of the visible organization, treated in terms of services for salvation. Dogma 4 follows the outline of the De Lehre but updates the treatment to incorporate Vatican II documents and the ecclesial theses of contemporary theologians, especially colleagues and former students of Schmaus at the university of Munich. There are four parts to the work: a kind of introductory section on the Church as mystery of faith; next, the substantial treatment of the role and the relation of Christ and the Spirit in the Church; thirdly, the development of the theology of the Church; and finally, the extensive section on the structure of the Church. Schmaus shows his awareness of contemporary Protestant exegesis, e. g., that the Church was born out of the common faith of Jesus' disciples, but argues for the Roman Catholic interpretation, e. g., that Christ is the origin of the Church and the continuing ground for its life and existence. His teaching on the activity of the Holy Spirit in the Church exemplifies the celebrated thesis of Schmaus's student, Heribert Muhlen, which expresses the relation of the Spirit and the Church analogously with the mystery of the Trinity and the Incarnation: " One Person in many persons. " Schmaus's historical study of the development of ecclesiology follows Yves Congar's treatment of this subject and traces three periods of development: the age of the Fathers to the seventh century (Isidore), the Middle Ages, and the modern era. Ecumenists will find that Schmaus is faithful to the Vatican II documents on the unity of the Church's structure; his presentation is open to development, but it does not go beyond the Decree on Ecumenism...