Abstract
This new book, by Prof. Tracey Rowland from the University of Notre Dame in Australia, should be recommended to anyone who is interested in modern Western philosophy or theology, whether Catholic or not. It is not only thought-provoking for academic theologians and philosophers but also readable for non-academic readers. Rowland presents lucid and intense expositions of the thoughts and activities of six pre-war German Catholic intellectuals in a chronological order: Carl Muth (1867–1944), Theodor Haecker (1879–1945), Theodor Steinbüchel (1888–1949), Gottlieb Söhngen (1892–1971), Romano Guardini (1885–1968), and Erich Przywara (1889–1972). The thoughts and activities of these intellectuals are said to have shaped that of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), which is an important connection to Rowland, who is a renowned scholar on his theology.
While the last two authors (Guardini and Przywara) have already been much discussed in the anglophone world (so probably do not need any introduction), the other four figures are very little known. Rowland dedicates the first chapter to Muth, who was the editor of the journal Hochland, which was the precursor to the International Catholic Review: Communio founded by Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Henri de Lubac in 1972. Muth helped the development of Christian literature and humanism by giving an ecumenical outlet to his peers. He was also a close friend of Hans Scholl, one of the martyrs of the White Rose resistance movement. Rowland's second choice is Haecker, a friend of Muth and the Scholl siblings. He was a satirical writer and a translator of the works of Kierkegaard and John Henry Newman. Rowland appreciates his use of humour as a weapon and his Christian chivalrous sensibility. The third chapter focuses on Steinbüchel, who was ‘the most significant moral theologian of his generation in Germany’ (p. 5), even though he is hardly discussed these days. His deep interests in Christian chivalry also appeal to Rowland, who has written on the topic of chivalry in her Portraits of Spiritual Nobility. Rowland's fourth choice, Söhngen, was Ratzinger's teacher, who supervised both of his theses, and hence had arguably the greatest influence on his thought. Söhngen is also known for his treatment of Analogia Fidei, which the reformed theologian Karl Barth preferred to Przywara's Analogia Entis.
According to Rowland, all these six intellectuals had several significant features in common. They were all based in Munich during the first half of the twentieth century. They all openly opposed the Nazi regime. They all tried to present and defend a ‘Christian humanism’ while struggling against the influence of the two giants in European philosophy from which the title of the book is drawn: Immanuel Kant (the epitome of modernity) and Friedrich Nietzsche (the epitome of postmodernity). According to Rowland's assessment, they all agreed that ‘the Kantian equation of freedom with autonomy was a most terrible intellectual error, and that Nietzsche's verdict that Christianity is a crime against life itself is a very serious criticism that demands a response’ (p. 10). They agreed that ‘attempts to find secular and transcendental foundation for moral and epistemological security apart from God—above all the attempt to find any meaning at all in human life apart from God—are destined to end in some form of anti-humanism’ (pp. 9–10). Rowland follows Ratzinger's claim that ‘the deepest crisis in Catholic theology in the twentieth century hinged on the issue of how to understand the mediation of history in the realm of ontology’ (p. 13). In Rowland's view, these six intellectuals followed the lead of John Henry Newman and took a ‘both/and’ approach instead of an ‘either/or’ approach and thus opened ‘ways of relating history and ontology within an overarching framework of Catholic tradition’ (p. 16).
Further, these six thinkers were acutely aware of the fading influence of Christian culture in Western Europe. In Rowland's view, they all tried to fight against what Steinbüchel called a ‘bourgeois Christianity’, which, instead of working on sacramental ground, ‘simply goes in search of Christian-friendly elements of the zeitgeist with which it might identify and market itself’ (p. 172), and which apparently plagues our age too. Indeed, this is exactly why Rowland draws our attention to these six pre-war figures now. These six figures lived and worked through some of the severest cultural and political manifestations of atheism: communism and fascism. Their thoughts and activities are still relevant for us, because the atheism of our own age is also strong and demands our serious analysis and response.
What Rowland wants to offer her readers through this book is hope. In her conclusion, Rowland emphasises how these intellectuals did not ‘despair of Christianity’ but ‘offered hope for those caught in the nihilist cul-de-sac by representing Christianity in a form that transcends all either-or choices, that holds polarities together in a creative tension, and offers a theological anthropology that is both radically aristocratic and inclusive of all humanity’ (p. 173). Indeed, these six thinkers survived a dark age of their time. We, who are also going through our own dark age severely plagued by atheism and relativism, are supposed to survive it too, supported by the hope and inspiration offered by our predecessors.
While Rowland's argument in itself is clear and convincing enough, one cannot help wondering how relevant this hope can actually be for us. It is true that these six intellectuals were already lamenting the loss of Christian culture in Europe. That process has surely accelerated and progressed so that we might suggest it is virtually impossible to talk now about ‘Christian Europe’. Moreover, Germany, which is the homeland shared by these six figures, seems to be the very place where we are witnessing a massive ‘exodus’ of church membership on the one hand and the ‘bourgeois Christianity’ is progressing the most on the other hand. Living in such an age, what are we supposed to make of the ‘hope’ Rowland finds in the works of these six pre-war German intellectuals? Indeed, it seems to require much more wisdom and more courage than ever to keep on presenting and defending a Christian humanism in Western European society.
That being said, from a scholarly point of view, one can easily appreciate the mere fact that Rowland has drawn attention to these six figures. Her elegant expositions of Muth, Haecker, Steinbüchel and Söhngen work as a good introduction which invites further research on them in the anglophone scholarship, while her chapters on Guardini and Przywara function as a nice reminder that these two giants still deserve even more attention than they have already received. In particular, as Rowland says, ‘the task of mining the insights of Przywara into cultural polarities and the restoration of the analogia entis to the centre of Catholic theology remains a vast work in progress’ (p. 167). As the ‘both/and’ approach shared by all these thinkers in this book can be considered as an application of the principle of the analogia entis, further research into the other five thinkers can enrich our study on Przywara too (and vice versa).