Karl Adam (theologian)
Karl Adam | |
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Born | Tübingen school | 22 October 1876
Main interests | Christology, ecclesiology, ecumenism, historical theology, systematic theology |
Karl Adam (22 October 1876 – 1 April 1966) was a German
Life and career
Early life and education
Karl Adam was born in
Early career
Adam taught from 1908 until 1917 at the
From 1919 Adam's work dealt predominantly with systematic theology.
Nazi era
Adam was one of several German Catholic theologians who sought rapprochement between the church and
Early 1930s
In his 1933 essay "German Nationality and Catholic Christianity" ("Deutsches Volkstum und katholisches Christentum") Adam argued that the German nation should be primarily the domain of Christians of German heritage, rather than being a
Whereas Adam's ecclesiological work in the 1920s had emphasised the universality of the church and its relationship to peoples' common humanity, in 1933 he began to see the unity between Christ and humans in the church as resting on racial and ethnic distinctions.[21] He argued that the church could only flourish among a group of people to the extent that it took on the traits of those people, and that the German-speaking church must encourage the solidification of a German racial and ethnic identity.[22]
In a 1934 speech Adam criticised the Nazi state's support for the
"The Spiritual Situation of German Catholicism" (1939)
Adam re-entered the political sphere following the
Bernhard Lichtenberg wrote to Adam upon reading the transcript of the lecture, accusing him of offering a "fatal vagueness" under the pretence of a clear delineation of the status of German Catholicism.[34] Lichtenberg criticised Adam's argument that German Catholics ought to obey the Nazi authorities, argued that Adam accepted Nazi efforts to make Catholic doctrine secondary to other Weltanschauungen, and accused Adam of confusing the concept of Weltanschauung itself by treating it as solely a secular phenomenon then later using the term with regard to theological matters.[35] He argued that Adam overlooked Nazism's anti-Christian and anti-Catholic themes, and objected to Adam's formulation of the concepts of original sin and "German nature".[36] In concluding, Lichtenberg observed that the practical proposals Adam made had already, to a large extent, been implemented.[37] Lichtenberg was later arrested, convicted of violating the Pulpit Law and the Treachery Act of 1934 and imprisoned, and died while being taken to the Dachau concentration camp.[38]
"Jesus, the Christ, and We Germans" (1943)
In 1943 Adam wrote "Jesus, the Christ, and We Germans" ("Jesus, der Christus, und wir Deutsche"), which expressed
Adam's reasons for accommodating Nazism
Krieg has argued that Adam's pursuit of accommodation between the church and the Nazi government was due to his belief that the church should play a central and fundamental role in society and the state.[43] Krieg also argues that Adam's political naivety was in large part the result of his dependence on the ideas and categories of German Romanticism, which led him to envision a national community in harmonious relation to the church, and thus to misjudge political realities and fail to realise the incompatibility of Nazi ideology with Christian faith.[44] In addition to his Romanticism, Krieg argues that Adam's political stance was also informed by the view that Germany was threatened by modernity and the tendencies toward democracy, individualism, secularisation and a modern notion of freedom that promoted diversity.[45] These tendencies, Adam thought, required new social and political formations that would restore order and encourage community, tradition and Christian faith.[46] The theologian Klaus Schatz argued that Adam's "predilection for the 'vital' and 'organic'" and his rejection of rationalism and liberalism contributed to his willingness to accommodate Nazism.[45]
Robert Spicer argues that Adam's expression of common themes uniting Catholicism and Nazism can be seen as in keeping with the themes of Tübingen school theology. Whereas his precursors at Tübingen had attempted to situate Christianity within the culture of the day, the specific culture in which Adam operated was one influenced to a great extent by Nazi ideology.[47] Spicer argues that, while Adam's overtures to Nazism were understandable in the early 1930s, by 1939, after Kristallnacht and the Nazis' persecution of the Catholic Church, they became incomprehensible.[47] Spicer claims Adam "allowed himself to be so influenced by the National Socialist milieu that he could not properly discern between what he should accept and reject from the movement's ideology."[48] John Connelly argues that Adam saw Hitler as a figure capable of bridging the divide between German Catholics and Protestants, in keeping with his earlier support for ecumenism.[7]
Post-war career and death
The University of Tübingen was occupied by the French Army in 1945 as part of the denazification process.[40] Neither Adam nor any of Tübingen's other Catholic theologians were among those imprisoned or banned from teaching for promoting Nazism or the Nazi regime's human rights violations.[40] No work was published in postwar Germany questioning or censuring Adam's support for Nazism.[49] Krieg writes that "it is not clear ... that Adam ... ever acknowledged his own misjudgment about and complicity with the Third Reich."[50]
In the postwar years Adam became involved in the
Works
Adam's best-known works include The Spirit of Catholicism (1924), The Son of God (1934), Christ Our Brother (1929) and The Christ of Faith (1954).
The Spirit of Catholicism (1924)
In The Spirit of Catholicism (1924), Adam critiqued rationalism, which he argued had distanced people from themselves, from their communities and from God; the Enlightenment, which he claimed prioritised intellect over feelings and relationships; and modernity itself.[55] In mounting this critique he drew on the thought of Max Scheler.[55] Arguing along similar lines to Joseph Lortz and Oswald Spengler, Adam diagnosed a centuries-long spiritual and cultural decline in Western civilisation, which he argued had begun in the Late Middle Ages and culminated in the Enlightenment.[56] He argued this decline could be arrested, however, by a revitalisation of belief in Christ and the church.[56]
The account of the church in The Spirit of Catholicism differed from
Karl Heim, a Protestant colleague of Adam's at Tübingen, responded to The Spirit of Catholicism with a series of lectures that were published under the title The Nature of Protestantism in 1925.[53] George Orwell reviewed The Spirit of Catholicism in The New English Weekly in 1932. Orwell differentiated the book from works of "Catholic propaganda", which focus on the basis of Catholic faith and criticisms of its opponents; Orwell praised Adam, by contrast, for his focus on "what goes on inside the Catholic soul".[59] The book's main significance for non-Catholics, Orwell argued, was as an example of the "Hebrew-like pride and exclusiveness of the Catholic mind".[60]
The Spirit of Catholicism has been translated into 13 languages, and was an influence on thinkers including
The Christ of Faith (1954)
The Christ of Faith (1954), a collection of lectures, is a comprehensive history of Christology and Adam's final major work.[50][62] The lectures discuss the sources of Christology and recount the history of controversies in the field, then examine the doctrine of salvation.[63] Here Adam defines Christology as the study of images of Christ, of which he identifies three: the "dogmatic image" found in doctrine, the "reflected image" found in the Bible, and the "living image", formed through the meeting of the other two images and the church.[64]
Juniper Cummings, reviewing the English translation of The Christ of Faith, declined to endorse the book "without reservation", noting that certain statements may lend themselves to misrepresentation, while others suffer from inexactitude, but noted that many of its apparent flaws may in fact be "legitimate differences of theological opinions", while others may stem from insufficient attention to updating the lectures when compiling them.
Other works
In the essay "Faith and the Scholarly Study of Faith in Catholicism" ("Glauben und Glaubenswissenschaft im Katholizismus", 1920) Adam developed an account of faith that differed from neo-scholastic and rationalist approaches, in which faith is essentially private, and argued that faith has a communal character, relating to encounters with Christ that occur in the church.[67]
In Christ Our Brother (1927) Adam focuses on the
Christ and the Western Mind (1928) again drew on Scheler in critiquing modernity, rationalism and the Enlightenment.[69] Here Adam described a process of secularisation, beginning in the Late Middle Ages and incorporating the Reformation and the Enlightenment.[70] He argued again for the necessity of a return to Christ and the church, which would require a clear presentation of Christian doctrine.[67]
The Son of God (1933) similarly considers the Gospels' accounts of Jesus,
One and Holy (1948), a collection of essays, expressed support for ecumenism.[62][50]
Evaluation
Krieg describes Adam as both "one of the most creative theologians of the early twentieth century" and, due to his support for Nazism, "one of the most naive".[61] Krieg argues that Adam played a significant role in the renewal of Catholic theology in the first half of the 20th century,[50][72] but weakened Christian resistance to Hitler by stressing the perceived common ground uniting Nazism and Catholicism.[50] Krieg identifies Adam's pessimistic evaluation of Western civilisation as the fatal flaw in his thought, which led him to seek accommodation with Nazism.[73] Adam's theory of history, Krieg argues, was insufficiently complex and failed to consider the capacity of the church and tradition to adapt.[73]
Krieg argues that, although Adam anticipated insights of the Second Vatican Council in his account of Christ's humanity and the church as a community, he remained within the horizon of the First Vatican Council in his rejection of modern ideas of freedom.[74] Krieg suggests that Adam's life and work provides a lesson in the impossibility of "turn[ing] back the clock in order to restore the relationship that existed between the Church and the state in an earlier epoch."[75] Adam's theology also provides a positive lesson, however, in Krieg's view, insofar as Adam in The Spirit of Catholicism acknowledged that the church would have to adapt to non-European cultures and to diversify.[76]
James Carroll described Adam as "perhaps the most notable Catholic theologian of his generation" and identified this eminence as the reason why Adam's position on Nazism is significant.[77] Writing in Commonweal in 2008, John Connelly argued that Adam's engagement with Nazism indicates "the dangers of speculation, of making judgments about the fulfillment of God's will in history."[78] Connelly also described Adam as "the rare theologian who made the presence of God seem tangible", identifying this as a reason why Adam ought not to be forgotten.[78]
List of works
- "Faith and the Scholarly Study of Faith in Catholicism" (1920)
- The Spirit of Catholicism (1924)
- Christ our Brother (1927)
- Christ and the Western Mind (1928)
- The Son of God (1933)
- "Jesus, the Christ, and We Germans" (1943)
- One and Holy (1948)
- The Christ of Faith (1954)
See also
Citations
- ^ a b Krieg 1999, p. 436.
- ^ Krieg 2004, p. 202 n. 39.
- ^ Lehner 2007.
- ^ a b c d e Krieg 2004, p. 84.
- ^ a b c d Krieg 2004, p. 85.
- ^ a b c Krieg 1999, p. 437.
- ^ a b Connelly 2012, p. 19.
- ^ Krieg 1984, p. 458.
- ^ Krieg 2004, pp. 85–6.
- ^ a b Krieg 2004, p. 86.
- ^ a b c d e f Krieg 1999, p. 438.
- ^ Krieg 2004, p. 29.
- ^ a b c Krieg 1999, p. 443.
- ^ a b Krieg 2004, p. 97.
- ^ Krieg 2004, pp. 93–4.
- ^ a b c Krieg 1999, p. 445.
- ^ Krieg 2004, pp. 97–8.
- ^ a b Krieg 1999, p. 444.
- ^ Krieg 2004, pp. 98–9.
- ^ a b c Krieg 2004, p. 99.
- ^ Krieg 2004, pp. 166–7.
- ^ Krieg 2004, p. 167.
- ^ Krieg 2004, pp. 99–100.
- ^ a b Krieg 2004, p. 100.
- ^ Krieg 1999, p. 446.
- ^ Krieg 2004, pp. 100–101.
- ^ a b Krieg 2004, p. 101.
- ^ Krieg 2004, pp. 101–2.
- ^ Krieg 1999, pp. 446–7.
- ^ Spicer 2001, pp. 250–1.
- ^ Spicer 2001, pp. 251–2.
- ^ a b c Krieg 2004, p. 102.
- ^ Krieg 1999, p. 447.
- ^ Spicer 2001, p. 257.
- ^ Spicer 2001, p. 258.
- ^ Spicer 2001, p. 259.
- ^ Spicer 2001, p. 260.
- ^ Spicer 2001, pp. 265–70.
- ^ Krieg 2004, pp. 102–3.
- ^ a b c Krieg 2004, p. 103.
- ^ Krieg 1999, p. 448.
- ^ Krieg 1999, p. 48.
- ^ Krieg 1999, p. 435.
- ^ Krieg 2004, pp. 104–5.
- ^ a b Krieg 2004, p. 105.
- ^ Krieg 2004, pp. 105–6.
- ^ a b Spicer 2001, p. 253.
- ^ Spicer 2001, p. 254.
- ^ Connelly 2012, p. 22.
- ^ a b c d e f g Krieg 2004, p. 104.
- ^ Krieg 2004, pp. 103–4.
- ^ Krieg 1999, p. 439.
- ^ a b c Schwarz 2005, p. 415.
- ^ Krieg 1999, pp. 439–42.
- ^ a b c Krieg 2004, p. 87.
- ^ a b Krieg 2004, p. 88.
- ^ a b c d Krieg 2004, p. 90.
- ^ Krieg 1999, pp. 437–8.
- ^ Orwell 1968, p. 103.
- ^ Orwell 1968, p. 104.
- ^ a b c Krieg 2004, p. 83.
- ^ a b c Misner 2003, p. 107.
- ^ Cummings 1958, p. 80.
- ^ Krieg 1984, p. 460.
- ^ Cummings 1958, pp. 80–83.
- ^ O'Connor 1983, p. 55.
- ^ a b Krieg 2004, p. 89.
- ^ a b Krieg 2004, pp. 90–91.
- ^ Krieg 2004, pp. 87, 88.
- ^ Krieg 2004, pp. 88–9.
- ^ Krieg 1984, p. 470.
- ^ Krieg 1984, pp. 458–9.
- ^ a b Krieg 1999, p. 449.
- ^ Krieg 1999, p. 454.
- ^ Krieg 1999, p. 455.
- ^ Krieg 1999, p. 456.
- ^ Carroll 2002, p. 518.
- ^ a b Connelly 2008.
Sources
- ISBN 061821908-0.
- Connelly, John (14 January 2008). "Reformer & Racialist: Karl Adam's Paradoxical Legacy". Commonweal.
- Connelly, John (2012). From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-067406488-1.
- Cummings, Juniper (1958). "Review of The Christ of Faith by Karl Adam". .
- .
- Krieg, Robert A. (1999). "Karl Adam, National Socialism, and Christian Tradition" (PDF). doi:10.1177/004056399906000302. Archived from the original(PDF) on 21 March 2017.
- Krieg, Robert A. (2004). Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany. ISBN 978-144119120-5.
- Lehner, Ulrich L. (22 January 2007). "Improper Wisdom: What the Pope Learned from August Adam". Commonweal. Retrieved 2 September 2020.
- Misner, P. (2003). "Adam, Karl". New Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1 (2nd ed.). Gale. p. 107.
- ISBN 978-082030663-6 – via Internet Archive.
- Orwell, George (1968) [First published 1932]. "Review". In Orwell, Sonia; Angus, Ian (eds.). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 1: An Age Like This 1920–1940. Penguin. pp. 102–105.
- ISBN 978-080282986-3.
- Spicer, Kevin (2001). "Last Years of a Resister in the Diocese of Berlin: Bernhard Lichtenberg's Conflict with Karl Adam and His Fateful Imprisonment". JSTOR 3654453.
Further reading
- Krieg, Robert A. (1992). Karl Adam: Catholicism in German Culture. University of Notre Dame Press.