Church

There is no denying that "The Church" is a child of its time. Released in 1967 just two years after Vatican II, this signature work of Hans Kung was succeeded by a string of critical and controversial ecclesiastical works by its author. In the years immediately succeeding its publication, "The Church" played its role in the anguished debate over the very nature of Catholicism in the postmodern world. But this is now over four decades in the past. Those who used this text in ecclesial and university battles are now for the most part long retired or even deceased. Battle lines are still drawn, but the map looks strangely different. The question that remains now is whether removed from its post-conciliar setting, "The Church" has an enduring value, something to say that remains fresh in the contemporary setting. I finished rereading this book almost a year ago, and I wrestled with that thought myself until I came across the excellent collection of essays entitled "Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?" [2007] This is a wonderful and spirited defense of the necessity of the Council. It was inspired, I believe, by a tendency in the Vatican today to act and speak as if the great Council was a momentary blip that changed little. In point of fact, however, Vatican II was a moral necessity, given that Roman Catholicism and its sister communions had been utterly powerless in the face of the grotesque evils of two world wars and the Holocaust. Kung's work, like that of other war generation Catholic theologians of Western Europe, is a vision of a Church that indeed would have the moral credibility of character before the powers of this world. There is some striking similarity between Kung's methodology and that of Karl Barth several decades earlier; both define contemporary Christian experience as the outflow of the arrival of the Reign of God. The Church is nothing more and nothing less than the community of those who accept the Reign of God and gather to celebrate this wondrous overturning of history. Membership in the Reign of God is a dramatic, life altering decision. As Kung himself would remark in a later work, Christianity is the only world religion that calls its members to become like unto God. Kung's sources for the nature, mission, and structure of the Church are primarily scriptural, though as we shall see, Kung's use of the New Testament in particular is at times eccentric. It is not that he did not have other sources, for it is easy to forget over time that Kung was as thorough a scholastic as Karl Rahner, and his footnotes are as multiple and sweeping as those of the Theological Investigations of Father Rahner himself. It is also a reflection of that time that, if memory serves me correctly, English references are rare and American references nonexistent. Kung finds the New Testament not only a Rosetta Stone for deciphering the Kingdom, but also a kind of family history of the Reign's organic unfolding. He tends to contrast the freedom o

It's amazing how a book first released in 1968 can still be relevant to todays Church. This work is a systematic approach to the ecclesiological and eschatological structures of the Catholic and Protestant Church.Hans Kung is an engaging writer who treats each subject with care and meticulous scholarly research. Protestant readers should not be put off by Kungs Catholic background, as Kung is fair and insightful in his critique of both Church traditions. Although 'The Church' is a scholarly publication written by one of the most innovative and clever theologians in modern history, 'The Church' is remarkable engaging and easy to read, despite its considerable length. This book is suited to both Church leaders and the layperson who are seeking a concise study of the nature and purpose of the Church.