One and Holy by Karl Adam (review)

144 BOOK REVIEWS One and Holy. By KARL ADAM. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1951. Pp. 130. $2.00. In these days of so much conversation and writing and of intense prayer centering about the problem of the re-union of Christendom, it is especially helpful to have a commentary on various aspects of the problem from one who has written so much and so well about the Church, its Founder, and its spirit. American Catholics in touch with efforts on the Continent toward ecclesiastical union are aware of the existence and of the activities of the Una Sancta group; it was to an audience of members of this movement that the lectures that comprise this little book were originally delivered. Because Una Sancta is mainly a Lutheran-inspired movement, Dr. Adam devotes most of his examination of the Catholic-Protestant breach to a consideration of the origins and causes of the Reformation as they existed in the mind and work of Luther, though what he says of Catholic-Lutheran differences is mainly true, mutatis mutandis, of Catholic-Protestant relations generally. In the main, the book can be said to treat two topics, three chapters being devoted to them: The Roots of the Reformation and Luther's leaving the Church; and The Possibility of Reunion and the methods by which reunion is to be achieved. On the first subject, Dr. Adam is as unsparing as Fr. Philip Hughes in insisting on the existence of many and very real abuses in the pre-Reformation Church. The end of the fifteenth century saw, Dr. Adam maintains, "night indeed in a great part of Christendom," and he feels that if Luther had arisen then and had utilized the powers for good that ·lay within him to lead a movement for reform, he would today be numbered with the greatest of the Church's leaders. We know, however, what did happen: Luther allowed himself to be carried along by the whirlwind of anti-papalism and anti-dogmatism until he became an attempted destroyer of the Church herself. Seldom has a more sympathetic portrait of Luther been given, though in few pages. Theologically, Dr. Adam centers his consideration of Luther's revolt largely upon his acceptance of the Ockhamist doctrine of justification; a personal experience of a mystical nature that Luther felt himself to have undergone. This, centered about an illumination as to the meaning of St. Paul's concept of the justice of God, pushed Luther still further into the development of his " Theology of consolation," which removed from him the terror of sin and its punishment and staked all upon faith of the right sort. Again, Dr. Adam presents this development in a few pages, but one cannot accuse him of over-simplification, and still less of being moved only by hatred of or desire to destroy all of the values of Luther and Lutheranism. Dr. Adam feels that the first step toward reunion between the Protestant churches and Rome must be that of Protestant union--:-certainly this seems far off at the moment, in spite of World Councils and ecumenical move- BOOK REVIEWS 145 ments. About the difficulties of the individual Protestant in his search for the true Church, Adam writes sympathetically and lucidly, and with full respect for the integrity of the individual conscience. The book is therefore most helpful to the Catholic concerned to know something of the causes that keep men outside the true Church and of the mind of the men and women upon whom those causes operate. Catholic Univrnaity of America, Washington, D. C. 10 DoM BERNARD THEALL, 0. S. B. ...