of its self-expressions, the ways it did bear witness to the Lord; hence the four

sections into which the articles are grouped: the apostolic church and preaching,
liturgy, written gospels, and missionary activity. Scripture students can hope
that Stanley will further pursue this analysis and synthesize his discoveries in a
work more formally ecclesiological.
The volume is not without defects that could easily have been avoided. An
index of scripture passages is missing, all the more unfortunate in that Stanley
usually gives his own translations. And any reader is jusdy disappointed that
the footnotes have been relegated to that awkward, clumsy location in the back
of the book.
St. John's Abbey Job Dittberner, OSB.

A Sacramental Spirituality. By Bernard Haring, C.SS.R. Translated by R. A.

Wilson. Sheed and Ward, New York. 1965. Pp. 281. Cloth, $5.00.
When a man is confronted with the reality beyond his powers of expression, he
responds in two ways: he accepts the reality and lives with it, or he attempts to
reduce the reality to his terms so he can define it. Both responses are valid.
When in the area of God's plan of salvation, however, the tendency to define
God's action in the cramped small letters of our vocabulary can lead us astray.
For many years the highly technical explanation of the sacraments, translated
into the handy memorizable phrases of the catechism, has left us devoid of the
reality of God's self-giving manifested to us in the sacraments. A gross over-
simplification results if a Christian attempts to live out the mystery of his sal-
vation according to definitions. The sacraments get placed in the realm of some-
thing we do. As it were, fill out correcdy the application blank and get a prize.
The liturgy becomes human exactitude and a matter of legality. In such a view
the sacraments become ritualism, and salvation, morality taught from a ca-
nonical viewpoint.
Father Bernard Häring does much to defeat the notion that Christian moral-
ity is a mere ethics and Christian worship human perfectionism. Christian
morality in fact is spirituality,, that is, life in the Spirit. We experience this life-
giving Spirit in our encounter with the risen Christ in the sacraments. We have
grown to expect of Father Häring a book such as Sacramental Spirituality, for
he has always integrated our everyday life in the basic mystery of salvation, the
passover of Christ. Christian spirituality builds on the- fact that we are saved
in Christ; and we meet Christ today in sign^u* his earthly visibilty, the, church.
Ihe basic premise of Father Haring's teaching is the gratuity of salvation,
that God acts first. Sin is egoism, self-centeredness, the attitude that we save
ourselves or, in other words, that we do not need the Father. If a Christian is to
act spiritually, if his actions are to be worthy of salvation, they must become the
action of Christ. Building on the belief that Christ is all and we are in Christ,

Boo\ Reviews 121

 Father Häring the moral theologian does not hesitate to ground moralitv and
Christian existence in the sacraments, the sacraments not seen as definitions but
PSrov^terie*to be lived.
The book reads much like a retreat. It is not a systematic study from the view-
point of exegesis or historical development. But a retreat does not attempt to do
this. For many non-theologians it is a good introduction to the renewed aware-
ness of a theology concerned with the presence of Christ in the sacraments and
the possibility of our experiencing this presence. The book can also serve many
priests in their preparations for sermons and instructions.
Holy Rosary Church Tobias Maeder, O.S.Β.
Detroit La\es, Minnesota

The Christian and the World: Readings in Theology. By Alfons Auer et al.
Compiled at the Canisianum, Innsbruck. P. J. Kenedy & Sons, New York. 1965.
Pp. xx-229. Cloth, $4.95.
Written large across the page of contemporary theology is the word History.
Not only have the methods of historical research which have given us profound
insights about the gospel resulted in renewed interest in the history of dogma,
liturgy, and the Bible, but also the awareness of history as the basic dimension
of human existence has predominated in the theology of renewal promulgated
by the council fathers. The concern for widening the horizon of the Roman
Catholic, clerical and lay, to include not only other Christian churches, but also
other religions, and even the world, has arisen from a confrontation of the
gospel message by the philosophies of history and the scientific studies of evolu­
tion. For the large question facing the believer today is whether the direction
of the history of humankind, which is disenchanting itself at a rapid rate of the
superstitions and fears of primitive man, is God-ward or toward the utopia
achieved by the efforts of man.
The doctrine propounded by contemporary secular thinkers and the prophetic
vision of the scientific theories of Chardin are definitely anthropological in
emphasis. "The cosmos is now situated in the horizon of man rather than man
in the horizon of the cosmos" (Auer, p. 28). The ascendency of man has been
asserted and the beginning of a new era proclaimed. "This man of the unified,
planetary living-space which is extended even beyond the earth . . . has . . .
the impression of standing at a beginning, of being the beginning of the new
man, conceived as a kind of a superman who will show clearly for thefirsttime
what man really is" (Rahner, p. 210).
This collection of articles by European theologians asks whether belief in
salvation given us by the Father in Christ lesus makes sense in the face of the
achievements of the modern world. The first three articles, by Alfons Auer,
Karl Rahner, and Johannes Metz, attempt a theology of the world, to mark out

122 Worship: Volume 40, Number 2

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