History of the Church, Vol. 10: The Church in the Modern Age ed. by Hubert Jedin, et al.

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 629 Paris. Here Hayes exposes Bonaventure's final reflection in his Collations on the Hexaemeron where Bonaventure affirms the necessity to find Christ as the center of history (in opposition to the spirituals), as the center of wisdom (in opposition to the philosophers) and as center of the Church; a center to be found at the intersection of the beams of the Cross. "Bonaventure's Christology appears as a clear case of a religious experience opening itself to reality in the widest sense possible through theological reflection (page 217) ." Hayes succeeds in demonstrating the harmonious blend that Bonaventure achieved in his speculative and spiritual christology. He shows that the religious experience of the imitation of Christ by which the Christian accepts and places Christ at the center of life and reality is meaningful and authentic because in fact Christ is the eenter of reality and in him mankind is saved and life acquires meaning . Bonaventure's speculative understanding of the person of Jesus Christ and his comprehension of man's redemption in Christ, collective and individual, were two currents in the theology of St. Bonaventure at the service of one another's development and growth. Hayes's book is a manifestation of the author's extensive knowledge of Bonaventure's christology and his ability to communicate that knowledge in a maner clear and comprehensive to beginners and those familiar with Bonaventurian thought. It is a valuable contribution to the study of christology, particularly, Bonaventurian christology. University of Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland THOMAS REIST, O.F.M. Conv. History of the Church, Vol. 10: The Church in the Modern Age. Edited by HUBERT JEDIN, ET AL. New York: Crossroad, 1981. Pp. xxi + 867, with notes and index. $37.50. This the last in the ten-volume series has twenty-four collaborating authors, three editors, one translator, two prefaces, one by J edin and Repgen for the 1979 German edition, one by Dolan for the English edition after Jedin's death in 1980. It contains four pages of abbreviated titles of sources and forty-five pages of bibliography for its twenty-five chapters which are organized into three sections according to J edin's dominant theological method and interpretation of church history. Church history is the history of salvation. "All collaborators were united in the faith in the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church, united in the conviction that church history, including the ecclesiastical history of the eontemporary period, must follow historical method. In selection and 680 BOOK REVIEWS evaluation we have held to the principle which Joseph Ratzinger very recently formulated: 'On the one hand, the Church must never be separated from its concrete manifestation, but on the other hand, it must also never be entirely identified with it" (preface xiii). What follows in the three sections of this volume is a faithful account of the implementation of this principle of interpretation of ecclesiastical history over the past sixty years. Section one, on the institutional unity of the universal church, in six chapters, deals with the visible institutional structure of the church through four pontificates over sixty years. The concrete manifestation of the church is documented in its statistics; in the lives and work of Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII and John XXIII, its four popes; in the diplomatic activity, concordats, and external policies of its popes; in the convening of, and the promulgation of the decrees of, its twenty-first ecumenical council, Vatican II; in the promulgation, development, and interpretation of canon law from 1917 to 1974, its legislative acts; and finally in its policy of concordats from 1918 to 1974. In section two the diversity of the inner life of the universal church is developed through nine chapters. Here the authors' faith vision and theological methodology compel them to interpret the events of church history as they faithfully reflect the holiness, apostolicity, and catholicity of the church during this era. Chapter seven carefully and comprehensively documents and develops the central social teachings of the church establishing the social principles of christian personalism, subsidiarity, solidarity , and the common go.od culminating in Paul VI's formula "Development , the new Name for peace" (p. 259). The remarkable theological developments in...