Hans Küng: Breaking Through. The Work and Legacy by Hermann Häring (review)

144BOOK REVIEWS Ericksen, articulated the conservative, antidemocratic, and anticommunist views of tlieir contemporaries. AU of these "ordinary men" were willing to execute orders from the Nazi leadership. Doris Bergen's essay on the German Christian Movement and Heschel's essay on the 1939 establishment of the antiSemitic Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life support Ericksen's conclusion that many Christians were enthusiastically anti-Semitic and not merely latently attached to this corrupting bias. Shelley Baranowski's essay offers an analysis of the entrenched anti-Semitism in the ranks of the Confessing Church, which helps to clarify why these political resistors never rigorously questioned the racist axioms of the Nazis. These bystanders nurtured Nazi anti-Semitic policies. Additionally, to help illuminate the problem of Christian anti-Semitism, Kenneth Barnes has explored Dietrich Bonhoeffer's varied reactions to the persecution of theJews. Bonhoeffer's own family utterly disregarded racial origin as long as the Jewish person embraced Christian German culture, and that seems to be part of the general Christian problem during this era. Bonhoeffer initially in 1933 felt that the state had a right to enact measures dealing with the Jews within its political realm, thus seeming to condone the Nuremberg Laws.. From 1935 to 1939, he tried to persuade the Confessing Church to take a strong stand against the persecution of the Jews. Unsuccessful in this approach, Bonhoeffer returned to direct political resistance, but said little explicitly about the Jews. This collection of essays has been designed to illuminate the complexities of the relationship between the Christian churches and the Third Reich. In the process of focusing on their themes, each of the authors points to the problematic responses to Nazism of a Christianity that had deserted its original impetus and values. This book is also valuable, since the essays refuse to offer simplistic solutions to the problems of Christian responses to Nazism. Donald J. Dietrich Boston College Hans Kiing: Breaking Through. The Work and Legacy. By Hermann Häring. Translated by John Bowden. (New York: Continuum. 1998. Pp. xv, 377. $29.95 paperback.) The Swiss-born theologian Hans Küng has been a major figure in twentiethcentury theology since his appointment in I960 as professor of systematic theology at the University of Tübingen. He retired in 1996 and turned seventyone in 1999. An assessment of his theological contributions is welcome. Häring has undertaken a formidable task, however, since Küng has published some 12,000 pages of text over more than forty years on a wide variety of topics, and he is encyclopedic in his bibliographical references. BOOK REVIEWS145 The book begins with an introductory chapter that is a general orientation of the significant themes and influences in Küng's theology. The nine chapters that follow deal with Küng's major works in some detail. In each chapter Häring presents the main lines of Küng's position, comments on them, and points out the hermeneutical and methodological framework. He discreetly uses references and an occasional direct quotation. One chapter of special interest deals with Küng's "Roman troubles." The book ends with a brief conclusion and a bibliography. Häring divides Küng's theological career into three periods—with some inevitable overlapping—around which he organizes his chapters. The first or early period, from the late 1950's through the 1970's, deals with Kiing the ecclesiologist and ecumenist.At that time, Küng concentrated on intra-ecclesial or "domestic" issues: justification (Justification: The Doctrine ofKarl Barth and a Catholic Reflection, 1957);reform and reunion (The Council:Reform andReunion , I96I); the nature of the Church (The Church, 1967); and infallibility (Infallible ?An Inquiry, 1970). In addition, Küng also wrote two large works on the nature of Christianity (On Being a Christian, 1974) and on God (Does God Exist?, 1978). The second period, which began in the 1980's, was prompted by Rome's withdrawal of Küng's missio canónica in December, 1979, which meant that he could no longer teach in the Catholic faculty at Tübingen. As a result, Küng turned his attention to broader issues, namely, a dialogue...