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The Resilient Church: The Necessity and Limits of Adaptation
By Avery Dulles
Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Co., 1977. 229 pp. $7.95.

The publication of The Resilient Church led to sharp exchanges between the author and Langdon Gilkey (in Christian Century, Nov. 9-16,1977) and David Tracy (in National Catholic Reporter, Nov. 4, 1977) because certain views of these two theologians are among those criticized in Dulles' book. The exchanges were significant, but it would be unfortunate if the casual reader were to associate The Resilient Church exclusively with these episodes. For in addition to the "critique of modernity" it offers, the book is a highly constructive effort "to appraise and carry forward the theological work of Catholic ecclesiology since the [Second Vatican] Council" (p. 1).

Dulles is conscious throughout of the ecumenical bearing of the renewal of Roman Catholic ecclesiology; in general his discussion moves from broad and fundamental issues in the early chapters to more narrowly defined questions that are more clearly related to ecumenical concerns in the latter chapters. Although they were originally prepared as separate talks or articles, Dulles has reworked his materials into a coherent whole and he writes with admirable clarity.

He begins by asking what it is the church is to be and to do. His answer echoes the Protestant call of the 1930s, "Let the church be the church." The church's primary mission is not to build community or to

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campaign for social change. Rather it is to "constitute itself in the world as an efficacious sign of Christ … [whereby it] will progressively draw its members into the saving movement of faith, hope, and charity, so that they too will be transformed into living and potent symbols of Christ's present in the world" (pp. 26-27).

Vatican II called for a renewal of this sense of mission in the church. However, its simultaneous call for reform worked against the achievement of renewal because it rendered problematic the church's understanding of how it was to give witness to the presence of God in the world. Hence, Dulles turns in chapters two and three to the problems of how reform generally, and doctrinal reform specifically, are to be understood and approached. He proposes a "situationist" solution, according to which reform is seen, not as a return to pristine perfection or as an accumulative organic development, but as a matter of "creative interaction" between the church and the world. Forms of church life and organization, "and even the propositions expressing Christian faith," vary in different historical and cultural situations because the church must change in order "to maintain a fruitful dynamic relationship between a people immersed in history and the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ" (p. 33).

Conceiving of reform in this fashion has three advantages, since it (1) lightens the burden of assenting to doctrines handed down from the past; (2) provides more apt ways of expressing the heart of the Christian faith; and (3) enables the church "to speak more appositely to presently pervasive error" (p. 51 ). It is in the context of the third point that Dulles turns in the next chapter to an explication and defense of the Hartford Appeal, whose "critique of modernity" he interprets as a timely challenge to currently pervasive assumptions that threaten to undermine completely the Christian message. Dulles' willingness to name the theologians and cite the passages that he regards as exhibiting the influence of these destructive assumptions is what set off the controversies with Gilkey and Tracy.

But while critical of the positions of certain theologians, Dulles calls in chapter five for a more active role for theologians in the determination of doctrinal teaching. Near the end of this argument he makes a statement that aptly illustrates the mentality with which he approaches this question and the other issues with which the book is concerned. "Faith," he writes, ". . . is not simply a matter of accepting a fixed body of doctrine. More fundamentally, it is a committed and trustful participation in an ongoing process. In the course of responsible discussion, certain previously accepted doctrines will be modified" (p. 112).

In chapters six through nine Dulles takes up successively reform of the papacy, changing notions of church membership, eucharistic sharing as an ecumenical issue, and the problem of ecumenism as such. All are extremely rewarding and quite accessible to non-theologians (of whom this reviewer is one).

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Two interrelated qualities contribute especially toward making Dulles' writing remarkably clear and cogent. The first is his striking capacity to generalize, to order the content of his discussion under meaningful and manageable categories. The second, and closely related quality, is his strongly historical approach. A modified historicism is, of course, built into Dulles' "creative interactionist" understanding of the church and the world. But unlike many whose thought is said to incorporate an awareness of "historicity," Dulles is actually able to marshal historical information in a manner that illuminates his exposition and analysis. Whether he is talking about changing ideas of doctrinal reform or the variety of ecumenical strategies that have prevailed since 1900, the application of Dulles' generalizing intelligence to historical materials gives the reader a highly satisfying sense of having gained really new insights into what is at issue and how contemporary problems may be approached. This is an achievement of which any author might be proud.

Philip Gleason
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana