Book Reviews

Michael T. Dempsey (ed.), Trinity and Election in Contemporary Theology , Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2011; 311 pp.: 9780802864949, £25.99/$38.00 (pbk)

This book concerns a contentious issue that has dominated the interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth for some time. Within the insular and sometimes scholastic world of contemporary Barth studies, an intense debate is underway regarding the complex relation between the Trinity and the doctrine of election – two of Barth’s chief contributions to modern theology. The issue has divided some of the most formidable interpreters of Barth’s theology in the English-speaking world, which has resulted in quite entrenched schools of thought.

On the one side stands Bruce McCormack, who reads in Barth that precisely in the event of election God constitutes Godself as Trinity. There is no getting behind the revelation of God as Trinity to some ‘neutral’ God. Consequently, the distinction between the immanent and economic Trinity and the Logos asarkos and the Logos ensarkos is softened. This requires revisions of certain ‘lapses’ in Barth’s own judgement that seem to suggest otherwise – namely, the treatment of the Trinity before (and not after) election in the Church Dogmatics, and his repeated refusal to reduce God’s being to his work. Precisely these ‘lapses’, however, are proffered as ‘evidence’ by Paul Molnar, George Hunsinger and others, who trade proof-texts that suggest for Barth the Trinity is in fact complete in itself from eternity and independent of God’s election: God therefore reveals what he has always been. This distinguishes between both the immanent and economic Trinity and the character of God’s Logos. At stake, then, in McCormack’s reading is no less than the gospel: the very the freedom of God to choose to be with humanity – or so the critique goes.

Following a balanced introduction to the debate’s major issues by Michael Dempsey of St John’s University, New York, the volume falls into three parts. The first includes reprints of the major tracts (though notable by its absence is McCormack’s controversial contribution to the Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, around which much of the debate circulates) and three excellent new essays by Paul Nimmo (who insightfully reads election from a pneumatological perspective), Paul Dafydd Jones and Christopher Holmes. Part 2 considers the debate from a Roman Catholic perspective, and a constructive essay by Paul Louis Metzger constitutes the final part, which draws out some ethical implications.

It is worth emphasizing that Barth is a slippery thinker indeed and resists interpretative reductionism. There are many different readings of Barth and Barth is doing many different things at the same time. Given Barth’s own ambiguities and inconsistencies, one must be accommodating, then, to alternative readings, though some contributors to this volume are clearly more accommodating than others.

This invaluable book is less a resolution of the debate, which shows no sign of waning, than a forum to facilitate further discussion. The stimulating and constructive essays provide an indispensable resource for readers to draw their own conclusions on the matter while also providing an important work on the doctrine of election itself.

A. J. Cocksworth

Trinity College, Cambridge

Gerald O’Collins, sj, Rethinking Fundamental Theology: Toward a New Fundamental Theology , Oxford University Press: Oxford 2011; 384 pp.: 9780199605569, £35 (hbk)

This beautifully produced, engagingly written book is difficult to review. Its author, the distinguished and prolific Australian Jesuit theologian Gerald O’Collins, revisits a branch of theology on which he has published three times before (1971, 1981 and 1993). His stated intention is to move well beyond those earlier texts and relaunch fundamental theology as a vital contemporary theological discipline. However, even accepting that as a Protestant reviewer I fail quite to ‘get’ fundamental theology – as opposed to prolegomena to a systematic theology or the philosophical preamble to doctrine – I am far from sure that his attempt succeeds.

The work comprises thirteen chapters and a short epilogue. An initial chapter briefly surveying the history and fortunes of the concept of ‘fundamental theology’ and its relations to other theological sub-disciplines is followed by eleven more substantive chapters, each of thirty to forty pages in length. These examine the nature of God, the human condition, revelation, Jesus Christ (two chapters), faith, tradition, the Bible (two chapters), the Church and world religions. In the thirteenth chapter, O’Collins offers some methodological reflections.

There are many positive points to the work. It is well structured, informative, thorough in what it addresses and sparklingly opinionated at times – even while remaining a largely reliable guide to solid material. But whether it functions in practice as more than a quite traditional introduction to systematic theology’s themes is another matter. I think the problem lies in the title and sub-title: ‘rethinking’ and ‘new’. By these I was led to expect much, much more. As it is, I was able to draw up a long list of theologians and fairly standard recent theological works which do not put in an appearance (feminist theologians, for example, are in short supply). The six theologians O’Collins suggests we should now be emulating – in theology’s three methodological styles (thinking, acting, worship) – are all white men, three now deceased, three in their 80s (p. 330). Brilliant though they may be/have been, it is difficult to see how O’Collins is enabling the fully ‘intergenerational conversation’ he wishes to stimulate actually to happen. In short, I am not sure what it is that is ‘new’ here, and what exactly is being relaunched. If O’Collins means that he knows that such texts as this are barely being used in Roman Catholic seminaries across the world, and some basic re-assertion of this material is needed, then so be it: I hope it sells well. But I missed some of the excitement of recent theology, and was taken aback by some of the abruptness of his judgements at times (the negative flipside of his sparkling opinions): the Jesus Seminar (p. 259), kenoticism (pp. 297–8) and liberation theology (p. 329), for example, are not really given much chance to have their full say. I would love to have seen the insights contained in Chapter 12 (‘World Religions and Christ the Revealer and Saviour’), in which the basis of a challenging pneumatology is sketched, become the foundation of a refreshed fundamental theology. That would have been new. My main question, then, is who this is for, beyond Roman Catholic seminarians. And even then, will students be able to afford such an expensive hardback?

Clive Marsh

University of Leicester

Edward T. Oakes, sj, Infinity Dwindled to Infancy: A Catholic and Evangelical Christology , Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2011; 480 pp.: 9780802865557, £29.99/$44.00 (pbk)

This book has two purposes: to provide an introductory survey of the history of Christological thought and to argue for a particular understanding of Christology throughout that history, an understanding with special relevance, in Oakes’s opinion, for Christological debates among post-Vatican II Catholics. The ‘fundamental thesis’ of the work is that ‘there can be no getting around the essential paradoxicality of the Christian confession of Christ as Lord’ (p. 15), with Oakes occasionally surmising that attempts to resolve the paradox only end up dissolving it. The criticisms of various Christologies interwoven in Oakes’s historical survey are meant to lift up the uniqueness and mystery of the incarnation as the joining of an infinite God into union with a finite man.

Following an introduction in which he emphasizes an aesthetic approach to the incarnation, Oakes examines New Testament Christology in terms of the titles of Christ and the oral history behind the written proclamation before addressing patristic Christological controversies. Like the work on the whole, these chapters display a laudable depth of research and occasional insight into the subjects under discussion. In his treatment of patristic thought Oakes shows a striking ability to isolate and clearly express the core issues in difficult theological debates, breaking down complicated discussions in a way amenable to students and lay readers.

Subsequent chapters on medieval Christology and the Reformation era are not without their faults. Oakes’s overview of the medieval context discusses only the introduction of Aristotle into theology, neglecting the focus on the individual at work in social developments in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries and that reverberates in the concern for individual salvation in Anselm. Oakes also reserves his account of the personal experience of Martin Luther, which could have deepened his explication of the role of Christology in Luther’s thought, until his engagement with Ignatius of Loyola. The comparison of the two experiences is supposed to place Ignatius in a more favourable light, but Oakes’s desire to protect Christology from its perceived faults in Luther gets in the way of a clearer understanding of the roots of the Reformer’s theology.

The final third of the book focuses on Christology from the nineteenth century to the present, zeroing in on the relation between Christology and religious pluralism. Chapters on the influence of German Idealism on Christology and liberal Protestantism set the stage for Oakes’s real concern, the state of Catholic Christology with respect to the question of other faiths. Chapters on Catholic theology surrounding and in the wake of Vatican II are meant to safeguard the uniqueness of the incarnation as an event not relativized within a universal human religion yet allowing room for other religious traditions. Oakes’s argument here takes important cues from von Balthasar and Joseph Ratzinger while criticizing Karl Rahner and Jon Sobrino.

The deficiencies in this book are minor when set against its strengths. It is a lucid and thorough treatment of a difficult subject, and admirable as an introductory textbook.

Dan Cantey

Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

Jane Williams (ed.), The Holy Spirit in the World Today , St Paul’s Theological Centre Books: London, 2011; 188 pp.: 9781905887910, £9.99 (pbk)

This is a collection of conference proceedings unlike any that I’ve read before. From what the editor describes, this reflects the distinctive character of the conference itself – a gathering of scholars, pastors and students, consisting not only of the usual fare of papers, discussions and coffee but also of Bible studies, seminars, workshops and times of collective worship. The feeling that this book is unusual begins with the introduction – Jane Williams, the editor, has the humility and gracious good sense to step aside and invite readers in to experience something of what those at the conference did. Her invitation does not disappoint. The proceedings admirably express the concrete practicality of the conference. Ten essays, a Bible study and a closing ‘Reflection’ all strive to answer the question, ‘Does the Holy Spirit act in the world today?’ The contributors respond ‘yes’, very often by turning to the local church, as does Jürgen Moltmann; or to missions, as does Graham Cray; or to ministries of healing, as does Luke Bretherton. While this is not a book of systematic theology, the contributors attack the questions and concerns of pneumatology, discernment, ecclesiology and interfaith dialogue head-on with aplomb and precision. For example, David Ford argues intriguingly that the very obscurity of the Spirit can be constructive, leading people away from attempts to ‘grasp’ it into openness to ‘receiving’ it, and, in turn, offering to others signs of the Spirit’s presence as diverse as the individual members of the Church. In a different vein, Luke Bretherton and Simeon Zahl contribute lengthy and very worthwhile pieces on Pentecostalism – the latter on healing as a witness to Christ’s rule and a judgement on the mechanism of political oppression operative in the world, the former on negative experiences as keys to discerning the activity of the Holy Spirit.

I wish to highlight one essay which most struck me. In a particularly enjoyable piece, entitled ‘The Holy Spirit in the Bible’, Rowan Williams uses Johannine and Pauline texts to contemplate – with all the theological acumen and gentleness that one has come to expect – the Holy Spirit’s role in forming Christ-like, cruciform humans who by emptying themselves receive more fully the ‘energy of gift and being fully alive’ (p. 68). Williams’s vision of humanity coming alive through reception of the Holy Spirit made possible by a willing embrace of suffering and joyous self-emptying is one which resonates across ecclesial borders and calls on Christians to let their theological convictions drive their lives.

This book’s great strength is its accessible practicality, and so, unsurprisingly, the two most technical pieces are also the weakest. Lincoln Harvey’s essay about the connection between an emphasis on Jesus’ humanity and a robust pneumatology turns out to be a kind of homage to Colin Gunton and seminars at King’s College. Chris Tilling’s piece on ‘Pneumatology and the New Testament’ suffers from the usual problems of New Testament studies, spending far too much time in a review of literature (all but two pages of the essay) before getting to his own points.

Otherwise, the essays are a rich and promising group, and Jane Williams’s Bible study on Matthew 12.22–32 is eminently usable for specialist and non-specialist alike. I would recommend the book less for disinterested academic use – though it is useful for that – and, really, more for personal reflection and, perhaps, even devotion. It is remarkable to see in a book like this how quickly and humbly Christian scholarship can come alive, embrace ecclesial and everyday concerns, and through this influence the lives of believers in profound ways. I hope to see more conferences and more publications like this: high-calibre theological thinking directed to renewing the Church and benefiting believers.

Jonathan Zecher

Honors College, University of Houston, Texas

Benjamin Myers, Christ the Stranger: The Theology of Rowan Williams , T&T Clark: London, 2012; 160 pp.: 9780567562364, £60.00 (hbk); 9780567599711, £14.99 (pbk)

Ben Myers is an Australian scholar best known in the UK for his Faith and Theology blog, which has gained something of a cult following among younger theologians. Those familiar with his blog will know that he has had a long-standing interest in the theology of Rowan Williams, and this book is the result. It takes the form of an intellectual biography, tracing Williams’s theological development primarily through a series of engagements with the thought of others. For a theologian as oriented to dialogue as Williams, this is a particularly apt approach.

The first thing to say is that Myers can write. He shows a literary sensibility uncommon among academic theologians. One of the strengths of this book is Myers’s periodic, and often elegant, engagement with Williams’s poetry, understanding this facet of his output as very much part of the same contemplative enterprise as Williams’s theological work. Other highlights include Myers’s treatments of the impact upon Williams’s thought of respectively Donald MacKinnon and Gillian Rose – two very different, if similarly awkward, customers who have shaped Williams’s theology in its deepest structures. For those seeking to understand the Archbishop, Myers’s brief treatments of MacKinnon and Rose alone may make this book worth the price.

Yet, not all of the engagements Myers delineates are as convincing as the above two. He makes much of the impact of Wittgenstein on Williams’s early thought, yet the evidence offered for this amounts to an anecdotal account of Williams’s teenage reading habits, and the fact that he grew up in Swansea, with its Wittgensteinian-influenced philosophy faculty. It is not that Myers is necessarily wrong in this intuition, but the case must remain largely unproven on the strength of the evidence supplied. Similarly, Myers claims much for the impact of Freud, seeing Freudian thought as generative of Williams’s aversion to consoling fantasies in religious life, and even viewing Williams’s later theology as a ‘post-Freudian apologetic’. Yet, the citational evidence offered for this lies largely in one 1993 dictionary article. One is left with the impression of an intriguing possibility, but nothing more. And it strikes this reviewer that St John of the Cross is at least as generative in Williams’s thought of an aversion to false spiritual consolation as Freud.

There are wonderful aspects to this book; Myers is often an insightful reader of Williams, but there are also many frustrations. Too much is too often claimed, however plausibly or intriguingly, on too little evidence. There is a vexing tendency to sweeping generalization. There is even the odd genuine howler, such as Myers’s claim that Williams’s ‘most important scholarly contribution throughout his years as Archbishop of Canterbury’ has been an Augustinian-influenced reformulation of Trinitarian doctrine’ (p. 85). This claim is based on a series of essays largely written before Williams came to Canterbury. It is moments like this that make one think that this book was written too quickly. But then Myers begins to elucidate some of Williams’s poetry and you are ready to forgive him.

Brett Gray

Selwyn College, Cambridge

Jason A. Mahn, Fortunate Fallibility: Kierkegaard and the Power of Sin , Oxford University Press: New York, 2011; 288 pp.: 9780199790661, £45.00 (hbk)

Jason Mahn’s Fortunate Fallibility is a thoughtful and sensitive exploration of what, early on, he calls ‘an existential via negativa’ (p. 2), of which he comments that ‘[Kierkegaard’s] negative way is less a precursor to modern existentialism than a way of returning to Christian praise’ (p. 2). As many theological readers will guess from the title, Mahn has the felix culpa theme in mind and returns on a number of occasions to the ‘Exsultet’ of the Easter Eve liturgy. However, rather than tie himself (and Kierkegaard) to the notion of fault or culpability, he prefers to gloss his theme in terms of a happy fragility, a happy fallibility and a happy offensiveness, which he relates respectively to Kierkegaard’s work The Concept of Anxiety, The Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity. This is an important shift, since it marks Kierkegaard’s essential modernity and, indeed, post-Kantian intellectual situation. Kierkegaard, in other words, is not offering us a Christian view of being human in terms of what we, objectively, are. Rather, he views being human in terms of what it is possible for us to be. This focus on possibility serves Kierkegaard theologically by enabling him to avoid both rationalistic and Romantic ways of celebrating sin without falling into the moralizing characteristic of much modern Christian discourse. In other words, whereas a Hegelian might see the fall as a necessary stage in human beings’ intellectual growth or a Byron might regard it as a sign of courageous independence (as in his drama Cain – see pp. 97–102), in both cases as something to celebrate rather than bewail; and whereas the moralist might reduce ‘Sin’ to a list of particular ‘sins’, Kierkegaard is able to see our potential for sinning as indeed marking our distinction from the merely natural world while also holding on to the central Christian conviction that sin has to be resisted and that ‘transgressive’ behaviour is by no means necessarily cool or commendable. Sin’s possibility is good (p. 31) but sin itself isn’t – thus ‘fortunate fallibility’ rather than ‘fortunate fault’. As for sin itself, Kierkegaard (via his pseudonyms Vigilius Haufniensis and Anti-Climacus) keeps us on an analytic knife-edge. Seen from a theological perspective, it is an inexplicable leap, while psychologically it is more of a ‘slide’. Then, depending which of these perspectives we adopt, it is further viewed either in forensic terms, as a fault, or medically, as a sickness from which we need to be healed. Ultimately, as in Practice in Christianity, this duplicity is carried all the way into the relation to Christ.

This is a carefully crafted, deeply reflective book that shows how Kierkegaard’s concerns can be critically and constructively related to more recent figures such as Ricoeur, Hauerwas and Derrida. The book is endorsed by three distinguished Kierkegaard scholars, philosophers and theologians, and their praise is well deserved.

George Pattison

Christ Church, Oxford

John Anthony McGuckin (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity , 2 vols, Wiley-Blackwell: Chichester, 2011; 872 pp.: 9781405185394, £250.00 (hbk)

We seem to have moved into another Hellenistic age with a vengeance, if the production of encyclopedias is anything to go by. Most academic presses now have series of handbooks, companions, encyclopedias, all aiming to make the learning of scholars accessible beyond the lecture room, or to provide students with a head start as they make their way there. Orthodoxy perhaps needs this more than many other areas of knowledge. Only a hundred years ago most people in the West would have had no encounter with Orthodoxy and known little about it. The revival of patristic learning inspired by the Oxford Movement led very few towards the Orthodox Church, despite its claim to be the ‘Church of the Fathers’. In the last century, the situation has changed, mostly because of emigration from traditionally Orthodox countries to the West. The fall of the Ottoman Empire led to large numbers of Greeks seeking their fortune abroad: in Western Europe, but even more, North America and Australia, where there are now large Greek Orthodox communities. Lenin’s expulsion of non-sympathetic intellectuals from Russia in 1922 created a Russian Orthodox presence in the West, with its epicentre first of all in Paris, that has gradually had a real influence on Western theology. Both these events, for different reasons, led to the Orthodox being a significant voice in the ecumenical movement, at least to begin with.

An early attempt to explain Orthodoxy to the West, and to date far and away the most successful (not just in the English-speaking world), was the Pelican (later, Penguin) book, The Orthodox Church, by a then (1963) young convert to Orthodoxy, Timothy Ware, now Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia. Still in print, it remains an excellent introduction, taking one a long way. But encyclopedias provide more information in a more easily accessible way, and we shall soon have several of these. Already there has been a Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology, which as the title suggests is about theology. But there is more to Orthodoxy than theology, not least its complex and multinational history, and we might expect to find something about this in encyclopedias, and indeed we do in this, the first to be published (another is expected from Routledge very soon, and an Oxford Handbook is also planned). Perhaps one of the best aspects of the encyclopedia under review is the attention paid to the national varieties of Orthodox Christianity. There is an exceptionally illuminating article on Georgia, by Tamara Grdzelidze, who has contributed a number of other excellent articles. There are equally fine articles on Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Japan, Romania, Russia, Serbia and the Ukraine; all these contain information that would otherwise be difficult of access, at least in English. Some of the other geographical articles are less good: for example, the article on the Orthodox Church in Africa. You would never guess from this article (or the companion article on ‘Alexandria, Patriarchate of’) that Orthodoxy has established itself in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania; for that amazing story, you need to turn to Timothy Ware. This lack highlights another problem that raises its head from time to time: the tendency when writing about Orthodoxy to struggle to get beyond the first millennium (and not even to the end of that). The article on ‘Orthodoxy in Africa’ is nobly ‘ecumenical’ in including Augustine, but it only glances beyond the first millennium. The article on Alexandria is much the same: it runs to nearly twenty columns, but only gets beyond the seventh century in the last half-column. The article on Coptic Christianity is not much better: it does reach the twentieth century, it is true, but tells us more about Kavafy and Durrell than about Pope Shenouda (he has a cameo role in ‘Alexandria’). What else might one expect from such an encyclopedia? There is a good deal on liturgies, largely accurate (though I am not sure in what sense the Liturgy of St Basil, as we have it, could be regarded as ‘earlier’ than St John Chrysostom’s). The article on ‘Royal Doors’ perpetuates a Russian/Romanian muddle; the ‘royal doors’ are not in the iconostasis (they are the ‘beautiful doors’), but are the central doors leading into the nave from the narthex, through which the emperor entered the church. There are good articles on aspects of Orthodox theology, though the patristic background is sometimes presented in what strikes me as a rather out-of-date way (e.g., the article on Arianism). The article on the Calendar is a bit of a muddle; you would do better to consult Holford-Strevens in the Oxford Companion to the Year (not, of course, mentioned in the bibliography, which includes Seabury’s ancient tome, of more interest to Anglicans).

But it is easy to carp in this way. The encyclopedia as a whole is a remarkable achievement: not, perhaps, completely reliable, but nothing is. The preface by the editor, Fr John McGuckin, is a masterpiece. It is conscious of all the problems that face Orthodoxy, and the problems encountered in trying to explain Orthodoxy. It is full of hope, though not overweening, confident, but not aggressive. It is, as one would expect, of a piece with his own remarkable book, The Orthodox Church (2008). This reasonable confidence comes over especially in the articles on moral and social issues. There are good articles on Bioethics, War, Wealth, Sexual Ethics, just to mention a few, and an excellent article on Canon Law (though ‘canon law’ is not really an Orthodox concept). There are lots of pictures, all very helpful, and many icons are depicted – all, so far as I could tell, by Fr John’s wife, Eileen, which perhaps obscures the diversity of iconographic traditions in Orthodoxy (amazingly there is no mention that I could find of the revival of traditional iconography in the last century). The cultural dimension of Orthodoxy is sold short: nothing on Papadiamantis or Kontoglou or John Tavener, though there is an article on Dostoevsky. There are also over a hundred pages of documents in translation.

Andrew Louth

University of Durham

Walter Brueggemann, Subversive Obedience: Truth-Telling and the Art of Preaching , ed. K. C. Hanson, SCM Press: London, 2011; 126 pp.: 9780334044949, £16.99 (pbk)

This lively book is the fruit of a decade of Walter Brueggemann’s writing and editing for the Journal of Preachers. For a long time now we preachers have learned to trust Brueggemann to stoke, to fund and to fuel our homiletical imaginations. He never fails to engage the biblical text without producing fresh insights and stunning ideas. The essays in this collection are no exception.

As always, Brueggemann’s visceral prose presents the fruits of his wide-ranging reading, placing us in conversation with quite an array of interpreters, yet always under submission to the world-changing wisdom of the biblical text. These essays are more spirited than the phrase ‘essay’ indicates. Every one of them sounds very much like a sermon, a preacher addressing preachers, calling them to greater fidelity to the task of preaching.

Brueggemann is a biblical critic who always begins from the standpoint of obedience to the text, giving the text (in the case of most of these essays, texts from the Old Testament) a privileged place in his ruminations. He puts the ancient text in conversation with current events, contemporary North American culture and the struggles of today’s Church in a way that renders a fecund engagement with the text that is sure to lead us preachers to all sorts of good sermons.

Moses before the bush that speaks and enlists his aid in liberation, the duty and delight of Torah, resurrection faith found in (of all places) the Hebrew Scriptures, a pastoral response to our people post-9/11, the politics of biblical faith, and the sheer joy and adventure of being a biblical preacher are among the themes that are treated here. In every reading by this masterful hermeneutist the preacher will know that he or she is in conversation with a master preacher, someone who believes that the ancient text gives us an incisive, world-changing word for today. Brueggemann’s faith in the ability of the biblical word to create and recreate communities of faith is unbounded. Therefore these essays are a witness not only to the authority and truthfulness of the biblical text but also to the adventure of being called to be a servant of the word.

I am preparing to teach a divinity course, ‘From Text to Sermon’, in which students will struggle to bring the messages within the Old Testament to speech in contemporary Christian congregations. Of course I’m making Brueggemann’s book required reading, fully expectant that this little collection of some of the best of Brueggemann will stoke, fund and fuel their imaginations and reinvigorate their spirits for the preaching task.

William H. Willimon

Duke Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina

David M. Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction , Oxford University Press: New York, 2011; 608 pp.: 9780199742608, £45.00 (hbk)

The issue of how and when the Hebrew Bible was composed and formed into a comprehensive canon of Scripture was the centrepiece of the biblical criticism that was so disturbing to both Christians and Jews a little over a century ago. Many theological students will have wrestled fervently with the various sources and ancient documents which scholars believed they could discern. It was a task that aimed to reach a consensus of opinion, but failed to achieve this. Since that time variations and modifications of the most plausible hypotheses have won varying levels of support. David Carr here addresses the problem in this comprehensive and readable survey of the main issues involved and the most satisfactory explanations for them that are current. He adopts an attitude of ‘methodological modesty’, by which he frankly acknowledges the inevitable difficulties of retracing the many stages by which such a large corpus of ancient writings came to be written.

The book is divided into three major sections, each of which is subdivided into a number of well-marked topics and themes. The first is a look at ancient writings from the Mesopotamian world, with a particular focus on the Epic of Gilgamesh which includes an episode recounting a Great Flood which carries links to the stories of Noah. Stories about ancestors and great kings were a means by which communities established their identity and were retold in more than one version – a feature that the elaborate retelling of the Genesis stories in Qumran shows well.

Biblical territory is handled as the main core of the study in the central section, searching for clues regarding the writing and preservation of the key traditions. Surprisingly this begins in the second century bce with the period of Judas Maccabeus. It then works back from this, giving weight to theories that will be more familiar to biblical scholars. Chief among these is a period of extensive collecting and revising of older traditions after the Babylonian exile of the sixth century bce. Behind this was a major reform of worship a century earlier under King Josiah (2 Kings 22—23). Questions whether some traditions may derive from even earlier in the period of David and Solomon are then considered with several pointers suggesting that collections of psalms, proverbs and tales of the ancestral origin of sanctuaries are likely to have originated from this far back in the tenth century bce.

I cannot think that many readers will expect this book to be an easy read, but it is a very competent and well-presented survey of the difficulties that show up when questions about ‘Who wrote the Hebrew Bible?’ are raised. It explains very well the difficulties and the false trails that characterize the overconfidence of past scholars in attempting definitive solutions. It serves the reader well by explaining the various methods adopted and the links with other (non-biblical) writings. It has well-marked sections which can be worked through comfortably as separate units. It is a monument of hard work and a fair-minded re-examination of issues which have, in the past, proved disturbing to many. It will certainly command the respect of other biblical scholars and shows just how far research into the origin of the Hebrew Bible has moved forward in recent years.

Ronald E. Clements

Cambridge

Arland J. Hultgren, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Commentary , Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2011; 832 pp.: 9780802826091, £40.99/$60.00 (hbk)

For an epistle written by Paul to a Christian community he did not found, so as to prepare for a Spanish mission which, if tradition is correct, he never undertook, Romans has done remarkably well for itself! Since the earliest days of the present era, the epistle has been central to constructive theology – so central indeed that it has been the battlefield of choice for such giants as Luther and Erasmus or Barth and Bultmann. The author of the present volume, Professor Arland Hultgren, is noted for his diligence as an exegete and his capacity to communicate his work in an accessible register. This is evident in his previous commentary on the parables of Jesus (The Parables of Jesus, Eerdmans, 2000), and also in the present volume, which is a worthy contribution and a timely, critical response from within the Lutheran tradition to the present state of Romans scholarship.

In his commentary, Professor Hultgren assumes a stance that is neither straightforwardly traditional Lutheran nor straightforwardly New (or indeed ‘newer’) Perspective. Take, for example, the issue of Paul’s reasons for penning the epistle. At various points in the volume, Hultgren clearly acknowledges the significance of the socio-cultural context of the Roman churches (cf. Acts 18.2; Suetonius, Life of Claudius 25.4) for understanding the Jew–Gentile dynamic throughout the epistle (pp. 16, 468, 580), but he regards such concerns as subsidiary to Paul’s main purpose. Rather, he suggests that Paul writes Romans as a letter of introduction, under the shadow of possible rejection at Jerusalem, so as to offset any impact that rejection might have on his plans for Spain (pp. 14–20). The upshot of this is not to decontextualize Romans; rather, it is to re-contextualize it around events in the life of its author rather than its recipients. This gives the commentary an interestingly traditional yet critical feel.

The volume comprises an introduction, ten chapters and eight appendices on key issues raised by the text. Each chapter deals with a major section of the argument, divides it into subsections, and addresses these according to a standard pattern of translation, notes, general comment and detailed comment. The translation is clear, accurate and readable; the notes and comments are wonderfully detailed and insightful, without being technical for technicality’s sake. Peppered throughout the volume are detailed bibliographies, which are excellent resources in their own right. The appendices tackle various issues, some of them philological and lexical (e.g. dikaiosunē theou, ‘righteousness of God’, pp. 605–15, and pistis christou, ‘faith in/of Christ’, pp. 623–61) and some of them more theological and hermeneutical (e.g. ‘Romans 1:26–27 and homosexuality’, pp. 616–22). One of the advantages of placing them at the end as appendices rather than in the main body as lengthy excurses is that the volume reads more smoothly than it would otherwise do. In both the chapters and the appendices, however, the discussion is excellent. This volume is likely to prove invaluable to both educators and preachers as they prepare material from Romans for presentation today.

Michael J. Lakey

Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford

Tom Wright, Revelation for Everyone , SPCK: London, 2011; 256 pp.: 9780281064632, £9.99 (pbk)

Like a curtain raised in a theatre, with a single member of the audience present to see the stage flooded with light: that is how Tom Wright introduces us to the puzzling book of Revelation. For the Apocalypse is a book of ‘unveiling’, in which the privileged seer sees clearly, while others remain firmly in the dark. Or, to change the analogy, John’s visionary apprehension is more akin to a surrealist painting, appealing to the imagination in order to transform the reader’s view of the world.

The format of this book follows that of earlier volumes in Wright’s For Everyone series. Like every good preacher, he begins each section with a story or contemporary scenario to provide a homiletic bridge to the exposition of the passage in question (readers will find some of these more compelling than others). Moreover, the author writes in his characteristically engaging style: always interesting, often provocative, so that even interpretations already proposed by others are given a freshness and an interesting spin.

A few examples will serve to illustrate the point. Wright’s analysis of the throne-room vision of Revelation 4 includes a profound meditation on what distinguishes human beings from the rest of creation: in Revelation’s language, the ability to say ‘because’. God’s throne-room, to which John is brought back again and again throughout his book, is ‘the true reality’ which sets all else in proper context. By contrast, those whom John calls ‘the earth-dwellers’ (e.g. Rev. 3:10) are that section of humanity which has ‘lived on earth as though there were no heaven’. The two witnesses of Revelation 11 are to be viewed less as two individuals (pace much of the history of interpretation) than a symbol of the Church’s prophetic mission. The relationship between the satanic dragon of Revelation 12 and the monsters of Revelation 13 is a reflection of the world of Realpolitik, where the ultimate powers often act through intermediaries. The millennium of Revelation 20 is not a literal thousand-year reign (whether prior to or following Christ’s second coming), nor the more symbolic Augustinian period of the Church. Rather, it describes what the martyrs are now doing in heaven.

Again and again, and particularly against pervasive Dispensationalist and similar readings, Wright reminds his readers that the language of Revelation is symbolic, not literal. His alternative reading shows how the Apocalypse might be rescued from its doom-laden reputation by presenting it as a dramatic proclamation of the good news. It is the story of a new Exodus in Christ: in contrast to the pervasive slavery which made the ancient world go round (and the more subtle enslavements characteristic of our contemporary world) it reveals a God who sets slaves free.

One minor quibble: like other volumes in this series, this book lacks a bibliography, so one is left guessing about the main influences on Wright’s interpretation. Wright’s own teacher, the great George Caird, is surely one. Readers would have benefited from some indication as to others, and guidance as to further reading.

Ian Boxall

St Stephen’s House, Oxford

Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld, Jesus and the Subversion of Violence: Wrestling with the New Testament Evidence , SPCK: London, 2011; 176 pp.: 9780281060689, £14.99 (pbk)

One of the difficulties with discussions of violence is deciding what is meant by the term. While the dictionaries cited by Neufeld refer to physical force, his preferred definition extends the meaning to any act which ‘depersonalizes’. The focus has moved from the perpetrator to the victim and from objective action to subjective experience. The word itself has become contested territory. Perhaps this is why there are currently theorists who assert that humans are becoming less violent, while others claim that human language and culture is always and everywhere structured by violence. On top of all this, the postmodern suspicion of truth-claims means that many view Christianity, with its talk of revelation and of the Bible’s authority, as inherently violent and oppressive.

So, anyone who finds themselves asking, as Neufeld does, whether the New Testament promotes or justifies violence, needs to be clear concerning their presuppositions about violence. Furthermore, the decisive factors in addressing the capacity of a text to incite violence are, in the end, those concerning context and hermeneutic. Who is the reader, where is she located and how does he read the text? These must be the decisive questions. Neufeld seems to be aware that these are vital and his treatment of them, while brief, is suggestive of some interesting solutions.

The author’s main concern is to discuss a selection of the texts which some have argued are violent or incite violence. He prefaces this with a chapter about the ethic of Jesus as revealed in his famous injunctions about turning the other cheek and loving your enemies. Neufeld then turns to violent imagery found elsewhere in the Gospels and focuses on the story of the unforgiving servant and on Jesus’s action in the Temple. There are then chapters on Christian understandings of atonement, the ethics of subordination, especially as they are articulated in the household codes incorporated into New Testament letters, and divine warfare, where the discussion is focused on the Apocalypse and texts dependent on the image of a divine warrior.

The book faces the key issues and offers interpretative strategies that enable the texts in question to be read as subverting violence rather than endorsing it. The conclusion offers some hints about the method to be used; the hermeneutic is Christological and focuses on the presence of Jesus, ‘as teacher and model, as prophet and dying and rising messiah’ (p. 150). However, these thoughts seem too preliminary; they need to be further explicated, theologically defended and made more explicit in the preceding exegetical chapters.

Nevertheless, Neufeld offers a useful introduction to the issues and some helpful suggestions for addressing them. As the book’s US title Killing Enmity suggests, his understanding is that where the New Testament uses violent imagery it does so in the service of non-violence; it borrows the language of violence in order to expose it, undermine it, and offer a peaceful alternative.

Stephen Finamore

Bristol Baptist College

Pope Benedict XVI, Great Christian Thinkers: From the Early Church through the Middle Ages , SPCK: London, 2011; 328 pp.: 9780281064748, £12.99 (pbk)

Great Christian Thinkers presents an outstanding introduction to some of the most important figures of the pre-Reformation Christian tradition, from St Clement to Julian of Norwich. A staggering seventy portraits are provided, ‘staggering’ because never superficial, demonstrating instead a deep intimacy with each thinker. Nor is it a mere intellectual history. Pope Benedict’s sustained vision throughout the book is the fact that what makes a Christian thinker ‘great’ is his or her ability to live their thought. ‘Truly,’ he writes in his presentation on St Francis, ‘the saints are the best interpreters of the Bible. As they incarnate the word of God in their own lives, they make it more captivating than ever, so it really speaks to us’ (p. 243). Each portrait, therefore, confronts the reader with the dynamics of holiness, the interchange between thought and action, out of which the credibility of Christian theology springs. And this gives rise to Benedict’s continual insistence on the relevance of these figures for us today; they call us to holiness, to faithfulness to the truth.

This is, of course, a book very obviously written by the Bishop of Rome to the Catholic faithful (each address was originally given to public audiences in the Vatican). Loyalty to the successor of Peter, theology circumscribed by the magisterium, the intercessory roles of Mary and the saints – these are certainly points of emphasis that not all readers will welcome. Yet the resounding note is theocentric; and, for Benedict, what each thinker demonstrates is that we can only hear such a note as we respond in faith to the person of Jesus Christ.

This is not a solely Western survey, nor is it blindly male focused. One is introduced, moreover, to figures often forgotten in the history of Christianity, such as Aphraates ‘The Sage’ and St Romanus the Melodist. There are, very occasionally, inclusions that might seem strange given the book’s title. We read of Germanus of Constantinople for example: ‘Despite the fact that from the theological viewpoint Germanus cannot be described as a great thinker, some of his works had a certain resonance’ (p. 171). Nevertheless, the book’s breadth is undoubtedly a source of enrichment.

Such breadth of vision also gives wonderful scope to encounter Benedict’s own profound spirituality and wisdom. One particularly striking instance comes during a discussion of John Climacus’ understanding of spiritual ascent: ‘The fact that the top of the “ladder,” the final steps, are at the same time the fundamental, initial, and most simple virtues is particularly important to me: faith, hope, and charity. These are not virtues accessible only to moral heroes; rather, they are gifts to all the baptized’ (p. 161). This is a book charged with realistic optimism.

Great Christian Thinkers, for all its particularity, is a remarkable expression of theological and spiritual continuity. Despite the enormous differences between the thinkers presented, this book reveals how the same Word can inspire men and women across the centuries to heights of thought and action that at first sight may seem impossible for most of us to achieve. It is Pope Benedict’s great gift to show that we may well be mistaken.

Richard McLauchlan

Pembroke College, Cambridge

Norman Tanner, New Short History of the Catholic Church , Burns & Oates: London, 2011; 280 pp.: 9780860124559, £16.99 (hbk)

To condense the history of the Catholic Church into a mere 280 pages is a hazardous undertaking, and Father Norman Tanner of the Gregorian University in Rome is to be congratulated on accepting the challenge and making a creditable and readable endeavour of it. He has divided his history into five sections. First he outlines the story of the Church from its Eastern and north African area of development during the first half of the first millennium; then he proceeds to cover the spread of Islam and the split between Rome and Constantinople. From the beginning of the second millennium, he gives a lively account of the rise of the Catholic Church of the West, the councils, reforming popes and spread of the great mendicant orders. He also provides us with a concise account of the great philosophers of the Medieval Church: Anselm, Abelard, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and their influence on theology, fundamental and natural.

His version of the history of the Reformation and the Enlightenment are unexceptional, at least from a Catholic point of view. He prefers ‘Early Modern Catholicism’ to the more familiar ‘Counter-Reformation’, as he is reluctant to fall into the trap of seeing the period from 1500 to 1800 as a mere response to the Protestant Reformation. This allows him to take in not only that decisive reforming influence, the Council of Trent, but also the wider independent developments that include the great missionary drives in North and South America and the Far East, and the explosion of Catholic imagination in art, architecture and popular religion.

With so little space left for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a mere thirty-five pages, I was surprised that he devotes six pages to the Catholic saints of the period, while granting Vatican I and II (with their epoch-making consequences) a similar number of pages. Clearly Father Tanner is reluctant to neglect what he calls ‘popular religion’; for that, after all, is what concerns the majority of Catholics. And yet he turns a blind eye to the huge impact of the continuing ban on artificial contraception, including the use of condoms by marriage partners infected with AIDS, and the scandal of abusing priests. These issues have, and continue to have, far-reaching consequences for the Catholic Church and its future, and merit more than an odd sentence or two, as against the comparatively extensive biography of St Jean Marie Vianney, the outlandish priest who whipped himself daily and slept on the floor.

A more serious absence, however, is Father Tanner’s failure to trace and emphasize papal social teaching in the century marked by the three great encyclicals: Rerum Novarum, Quadragessimo Anno and Centessimus Annus. Papal teaching on social, economic and political thought demonstrates the Church’s creditable rejection of Communism, Nazism and Fascism, while holding serious reservations about unrestrained capitalism. At the same time, Catholic social thought has, since Thomas Aquinas, promoted the importance of the ‘common good’ and ‘subsidiarity’ as the basis of morality, private and public, while pointing up the inadequacies of the Enlightenment ethics based on Kantianism and Utilitarianism. Following the economic crises since 2008, papal teaching may yet have positive global implications.

John Cornwell

Jesus College, Cambridge

Kenneth Stevenson (ed.), A Following Holy Life: Jeremy Taylor and His Writings , Canterbury Press: Norwich 2011; 224 pp.: 9781853119828, £24.99 (pbk)

Jeremy Taylor (1613–67) is more often cited than actually read. One of the ‘Caroline Divines’ who lived through the stormy days of the English Civil War, he was one of those who shaped the devotional life of the post-Restoration Church of England. However, only two of his works, Holy Living and Holy Dying, have had modern critical editions, and the vast quantity of his other work lies in the ten dusty volumes of his Whole Works, edited by Reginald Heber and Charles Eden as long ago as 1847. The late Kenneth Stevenson has published a selection of his work, with four main chapters: ‘The Life of Christ’; ‘Discipleship’; ‘The Sacraments, Liturgy and Preaching’; and ‘Sermons’.

Stevenson brings out very well the innovative and controversial nature of some of Taylor’s writing. He is not a simple conservative, though he is learned in the Fathers, especially the Greek Fathers. One of his early writings before the death of the king, Charles I, was in favour of a measure of religious toleration (1647); it may have sealed his fate with the really conservative Anglicans after 1660 and resulted in his being packed off to Ireland as Bishop of Down and Connor – he never held an English bishopric. But he valued a written liturgy, and offered some rewriting of the Prayer Book, reflecting Greek and Syriac traditions. His Communion Service includes private prayers for the priest as well as amplified prayers for the congregation. In the baptismal service, Taylor’s exhortation to the godparents provides more detailed instructions about their responsibilities than the Prayer Book; and there are moving prayers for widows and contrite sinners. Nevertheless Taylor did not believe in transubstantiation and did not regard the adoration of the sacrament as ancient.

If his readiness to tolerate religious diversity made him dangerous in the eyes of some, his ‘unsoundness’ on the doctrine of original sin aroused the suspicion of others. Taylor did not believe that the sin of Adam made us heirs of damnation, nor naturally and necessarily vicious; he allowed that there was a natural human tendency to evil, even as there was a capacity to do good, but that tendency was not properly defined as sin. Very few in his own day agreed with him on this point. Here Taylor may be regarded as a genuinely original thinker, just as he was in his views of friendship and sexuality.

In his writings on Christian discipleship, he had much in common with both Puritan and Catholic writers. Taylor would have caused discomfort to those fixed in their own traditions in any age. He wished ‘to persuade not dispute’ (p. 124), and certainly should not be left as an unread advocate for one view of the Church. This selection with its excellent introduction is to be welcomed as making Taylor accessible to a new generation.

David M. Thompson

Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge

David W. Bebbington, Victorian Nonconformity , Lutterworth Press: Cambridge, 2011; 78 pp.: 9780718892692, £15.25 (pbk)

Charles Dickens did Victorian Nonconformity a gross injustice in immortalizing characters such as Stiggins and Chadband as typical representatives of a dynamic and diverse religious tradition. As David Bebbington shows in this excellent introduction, thoroughly revised and updated from a text originally published in 1992, Protestant Nonconformity was numerically thriving and culturally significant in Victorian England (the book is careful not to trespass into the very different contexts of Scotland and Wales). Bebbington deftly sketches the background of Nonconformist denominations: ‘Old Dissent’ (Presbyterians, Unitarians, Independents/Congregationalists, Baptists and Quakers), with its roots in the seventeenth century) and ‘New Dissent’ (principally the fissiparous Methodist groups), born in the eighteenth century Evangelical revival. He examines Nonconformity’s appeal to rural and urban communities, to artisans and manufacturers, to women and men. He tabulates the wide range of religious and social activities which characterized the Nonconformist subculture (or counter-culture): worship (and especially preaching); Sunday schools; an extensive literary world; politics and philanthropy; and foreign missions. R. J. Helmstadter’s thesis, tying Nonconformity’s rise and fall firmly to nineteenth-century individualism, is carefully evaluated and effectively refuted. A concluding chapter offers pointers for the twentieth century and ascribes Nonconformity’s success in its Victorian heyday to Evangelical beliefs, an energetic and flexible mission strategy, and ‘a delicate balance between a robust individualism and a well-developed corporate sense’ (p. 60). This judicious and persuasive work, amply illustrated from contemporary sources and modern scholarship, is highly recommended.

Martin Wellings

Oxford

Irina Papkova, The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics , Woodrow Wilson Center Press: Washington DC/Oxford University Press: New York, 2010; 288 pp.: 9780199791149, £40.00/$65.00 (hbk)

Irina Papkova's book is a welcome addition to the relatively small number of monographs on this subject, whose contributions she assesses usefully, pointing out where she sees gaps in our knowledge and/or perception so far. Her study is clearly argued, and is firmly based on extensive fieldwork, interviews and close analysis of a wide range of primary and secondary sources. She covers the period from 1995 to 2008, making the point that this is an interim report within a still-evolving situation.

One of Papkova’s main theses is that it is not possible to treat the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as a unitary actor capable of influencing political processes in the Russian Federation. She argues that the perception in the literature has been of two ideologically opposed poles in the ROC, the conservative and the liberal, and of the former prevailing over the latter. She sees the situation as more complex and still fluid, with three ideological schools of thought: traditionalist, liberal and fundamentalist. Yes, the liberals have been sidelined (having taken a ‘sound beating’ (p. 53) from conservative forces in the late 1990s); but the traditionalists and the fundamentalists are still contending. The traditionalists have a vision of ‘Orthodox statism’ (p. 47); the fundamentalists have an apocalyptic mentality and also are critical of the hierarchy of the ROC, preferring to put their trust in ‘elders’ (startsy) (p. 62). Western (and Russian) media have tended to focus on the activities of fundamentalist groups and have often given the impression that they are the face of the ROC itself.

Turning to the political influence of the ROC, Papkova warns of the danger of assuming that ‘the church prefers’ automatically translates into ‘the government does’ (p. 8). She looks in detail at various areas in which the ROC has tried to influence the government and achieve changes, and concludes that the only area in which it actually succeeded was in securing the passage of the 1997 law on religion which replaced the original very liberal law of 1990, and that even that success was the result of a coincidence of agendas of players on the political scene at the time. Failures (such as the effort to have education in Orthodoxy included in state school curricula) arise because of various factors: internal disagreements between representatives of various tendencies in the ROC; different lobbying agendas being pursued simultaneously by different church players; and the fact that in Papkova's view (based on extensive interviews) Russian citizens are much less supportive of, or influenced by, the positions taken by the ROC than is widely assumed.

What of the future? Under Putin ‘the ideology of the regime itself has moved in a progressively secular direction, belying the highly visible reverence paid by state officials to the Russian Orthodox Church’ (p. 189). Documents relating to state security identify fundamentalism as a problem, and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that a future Russian government might attack the ROC itself for harbouring fundamentalists. Patriarch Aleksi II was able to keep a compromise between fundamentalists and traditionalists, but it is not clear to Papkova that the ‘mercurial’ Kirill (p. 197), who succeeded as patriarch in 2009, will be able to do the same; there is always the spectre of a church schism. The ROC does not easily get its way politically; and perhaps it is even vulnerable.

Philip Walters

Oxford

Will Donaldson, Word and Spirit: The Vital Partnership in Christian Leadership , Bible Reading Fellowship: Abingdon, 2011; 190 pp.: 9781841018256, £8.99 (pbk)

Those outside the Evangelical tradition of the Church may be surprised to discover what a wide spectrum of theology and conviction it contains. This book provides illuminating insight into two contrasting strands of that tradition. Donaldson writes as a charismatic evangelical on a mission. He is seeking to commend the integrity and fruit of his experience of the Spirit to a conservative, Word-centred tradition to which he is equally indebted and remains committed. After varied church ministry (that this reviewer acknowledges from personal experience) he now teaches leadership studies at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford – a theological college aligned strongly on the conservative wing of the evangelical spectrum. So he stands (painfully?) astride a major faultline for Evangelicals – that of Word and Spirit. Donaldson longs to see these two strands reconciled and living in creative partnership. Does he succeed? His style is irenic, very readable and meticulously biblical.

The book’s themes helpfully illustrate the character and priorities within these influential strands of contemporary Evangelical Anglicanism. But there are unresolved tensions in the approach. One is the question of the book’s stated focus. If it is about ‘Word and Spirit’ then it is something much wider than ‘leadership’ (and evangelicalism). But ‘Leadership’ is the actual concern of this book. This means evangelical leadership here or, more precisely, leadership within two self-defining strands of evangelicalism. ‘Leading’ and ‘preaching’ are also used almost interchangeably. And preaching means expository preaching. There are unquestioned assumptions in all this. And if you do not start here then it may not be obvious to know how to join the debate. The intuition is that Donaldson himself inhabits a wider world than this but is faithfully trying to mediate within it. But the debate tends to remain within the language and assumptions of two quite particular Christian worlds. And as, once again, each assures the other of their biblical fidelity, you feel both sides need to get out more, if only for some fresh air. When the Reformed theologian Jean-Jacques Suurmond wrote of his time spent within Pentecostal churches he called his book Word and Spirit at Play . By comparison Word and Spirit never quite relax together here.

One revealing feature of the book is how exclusively male these worlds remain. The foreword describes the Word and Spirit relationship as ‘two brothers in dispute’ and that is the way it continues. Donaldson gives to a female colleague the task of challenging the Church over the exclusion of women in leading roles – and the loss that is to all (p. 90). But while he endorses this view the rest of the book stands judged by the same measure. With that single exception women’s voices or leadership experiences never contribute to this discussion. And in eight pages of bibliography only one woman author is listed.

It means that one of the most divisive issues presently facing the Church of England – the full inclusion of women in the ministry of the Church – is never addressed. Given that conservative evangelicals are leading the opposition to this while Donaldson states his positive commitment to men and women in ministry, the omission is puzzling and surely a missed priority.

David Runcorn

Derby

Doug Gay, Remixing the Church: Towards an Emerging Ecclesiology , SCM Press: London, 2011; 129 pp.: 9780334043966, £17.99 (pbk)

Doug Gay offers this book as a contribution to the ongoing debate around the Emerging Church. He argues that the Emerging Church is engaging in a particular model of reflection which he describes as ‘hermeneutical ecclesiology’. This model is discussed as a reflection upon the author’s practice within Emerging Church congregations.

The first stage of this hermeneutical ecclesiology is ‘Auditing’, the process of a church evaluating its practice with a view to asking ‘what is missing in our way of being church?’ ‘Retrieval’, the second stage, is concerned with addressing the loss sensed as part of the audit, and to incorporate ancient practice and practice from other Christian traditions into its own. ‘Unbundling’ is the process of taking and using ecclesial practice from other contexts and applying them in ways which are different to their original use, to draw on liturgy from another tradition, for example, and use only those parts which are considered valuable to this new context. The process of ‘Supplementing’ follows, exploring how new practice develops as a reaction to the changes in a context. The final phase of reflection in Gay’s hermeneutical ecclesiology is ‘remixing’. Inspired by digital recording techniques, remix in ecclesial terms is the combination of disparate ecclesial elements which have been retrieved or supplemented to make a new whole.

The ‘unbundling’ phase, which Gay asserts can be seen repeatedly in Church history, highlights a difficulty that many people have with the Emerging Church, seen sharply in Davison and Milbank’s For the Parish. For Gay, unbundling is the removal of the baggage of tradition from practice, yet for Davison and Milbank it is through the lens of tradition that practice fully articulates the Christian message.

Throughout the book, Gay demonstrates that this reflection on ecclesiology can be seen throughout the history of the Church. Indeed, he notes in his conclusion that he has attempted to ‘point out family resemblances’ (p. 122). This is evidently an attempt to locate the Emerging Church conversation firmly within the Church catholic and to address the argument that the Emerging Church conversation is wholly new and unrelated to the tradition of the Church.

While the attempt to place Emerging Church within the Church catholic is commendable, it does highlight that the author’s hermeneutical ecclesiology is not unique to the Emerging Church conversation. The phases of reflection can be seen within the ecclesial traditions of many denominations and, if this book has a flaw, it is the lack of exploration of how or if the reflections of emerging ecclesiology are fundamentally different from those of ‘emerged’ ecclesiologies.

A readable and accessible book, this is a welcome addition to the ongoing debate and a step towards understanding how emerging ecclesiology may take shape. What is offered here is not an ecclesiology of the Emerging Church, but an exploration of how an ecclesiology may be formed. No doubt Gay’s work will aid reflection upon emerging ecclesiology, but will need to be revised as the journey continues.

Simon Edwards

Wesley House, Cambridge

Graham Tomlin, The Prodigal Spirit: The Trinity, the Church and the Future: The Trinity, the Church and the Future of the World , Alpha International: London, 2011; 192 pp.: 9781905887002, £8.99 (pbk)

This is a refreshing addition to the substantial collection of books on the Theology and the Ministry of the Holy Spirit. The subtitle suggests something magisterial – and this is indeed what we get, within the book’s brief compass. The Revd Dr Graham Tomlin is Dean of St Mellitus College and Principal of St Paul’s Theological Centre. As the introduction says, notwithstanding the author’s experience of seeing the Holy Spirit at work at Holy Trinity, Brompton, and the worldwide Alpha Network, the book is by no means an official ‘theology of Alpha’ but rather offers what the author calls ‘some theological reflections’ arising out of his experience (p. 11). The book, therefore, is a response to the ancient prayer ‘Come, Holy Spirit’ and seeks to address, through the lens of the theology of the Holy Spirit, the age-old questions of who we are and for what we are here.

Sandwiched between Introduction and Conclusion, the seven chapters of the book deal respectively with the Holy Spirit and: Identity, Calling, Experience, Character, Evangelism, the World and the Church. One of the strengths of the book is the way in which it draws on a wide variety of theologians, past and present, and offers insights from different spiritual traditions, whether Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant or modern theologies, acknowledging that each on its own is incomplete and stressing the need for each tradition to recognize the strengths of the others.

The striking title was suggested by Tomlin’s colleague Jane Williams: as the Father sends his Son into the far country of the world, so also the Spirit is sent ‘into that same far country to draw creation back into the embrace of the Father and the Son’ (p. 26). As a real experience of the age to come, the kingdom of God, the Spirit draws us not just into new resurrection life but also to share the walk of Jesus which took him to the cross. Tomlin emphasizes how the Spirit cannot be understood apart from the Trinity. As we embrace a new approach to the Trinity, we understand that ‘the Spirit is the only way into experiencing the love that lies at the heart of God, the love of the Father for the Son, and to the transformation such knowledge brings’ (p. 33). This emphasis on Trinitarian relationship shows us how what is needed is ‘theology in the Spirit’ (p. 35).

The often controversial gift of tongues Tomlin suggests, along with other spiritual gifts, should be seen as a way into the love of God. He sees ‘life in the Spirit’ not as an alternative to ordinary human life but as more like an extra dimension to it (p. 86). The Holy Spirit will bring about changes in the way in which we view both the world, including the family, politics and the environment, and the Church.

This is an intensely readable book, spiritually and intellectually stimulating and personally challenging. I cannot commend it too highly.

Matthew Hutton

Chedgrave, Norfolk

John Atherton, Christopher Baker and John Reader, Christianity and the New Social Order: A Manifesto for a Fairer Future, SPCK: London, 2011; 160 pp.: 9780281063604, £12.99 (pbk)

As the world is buffeted by a global financial crisis, this book steps back to determine how to create a more equal and progressive society by reflecting on responses to the last global crisis. William Temple’s 1942 book, Christianity and Social Order, offered a practical vision for the future after the 1930s depression and rejected a return to the pre-war status quo. Temple, influential in the Beveridge Report, provides a framework to compare, contrast and critique twenty-first-century challenges.

The authors offer a timely, quick-read analysis of the contemporary situation including valuable theological insights to shape the way forward. They start, as did Temple, with an apologetic for including faith perspectives in a society dominated by economic, political and scientific voices. They view British society as now being ‘post-secular’ and perceive a new social order characterized by ‘greater fluidity and multiplicity of identities, voices and methods of analysis and practice, and above all by a trend towards either greater reflexivity or greater certainty’ (p. xvii). The response of people of faith and secularists alike, the authors argue, should be constructive engagement beyond the flawed distinction of public and private spaces.

The book highlights work by the William Temple Foundation on the contribution of ‘religious’ and ‘spiritual’ capital. Recently, British politicians have expressed greater appreciation for the contribution of faith in initiatives such as Labour’s ‘Third Way’ and the Conservative’s ‘Big Society’. However, the authors note that ‘religious capital’ (the faith community’s practical contributions to local and national life) requires energizing by ‘spiritual capital’ (created by theological identity, worship practices, value systems and moral vision) (p. 98). Without an appreciation and encouragement of ‘spiritual capital’, the ‘religious capital’ is soon devalued through the process of institutional isomorphism.

Two of the five chapters explore the meaning of ‘wellbeing’ (pp. 22–44) and the ‘promotion of a wellbeing economy’ (pp. 45–74). The authors review definitions of ‘wellbeing’ and note, with grave concern, the UK’s National Accounts of Wellbeing excludes ‘religious experiences and traditions’ (p. 36) from its definition. The authors argue that people of faith will only gain a credible voice in ‘post-secular’ Britain with a pragmatic yet prophetic, evidence-based and progressive response using interdisciplinary analytical tools.

The penultimate chapter describes a role for faith in a just social order based on Temple’s theological anthropology yet alert to the tectonic shifts in welfare provision in the UK since his death in 1944. The book closes with guidelines for the promotion of ‘inclusive wellbeing’ (pp. 121–9) by prioritizing interventions for children, education, health, the environment, income and work, developing the financial system and the pursuit of greater equality. I missed reference to ‘spiritual capital’ or its constituent elements in this ‘manifesto for the pursuit of greater wellbeing’ (p. 129). Having made compelling arguments for its importance, the cultivation of ‘spiritual capital’ needs to be embedded in practice.

This book is a valuable introduction to many complex, contemporary issues and sets out important proposals for the development of a new social order out of the ruins of the latest – and probably not the last – global financial crisis.

Dean Pallant

The Salvation Army

Sebastian Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere: Public Theology as a Catalyst for Open Debate , SCM Press: London, 2011; 260 pp.: 9780334043775, £40.00 (pbk)

Over the last decade, public theology has emerged as a distinct field of theological inquiry, negotiating the tension between the privatization of religion and the desire to engage in dialogue with those outside Christian communities. Sebastian Kim’s Theology in the Public Sphere demonstrates both the promise and the challenge of this exciting new area of theology, weaving together several strands of Christian belief from across the world with the call to engage the ‘public sphere’. To this end, Kim sets out a brief description of the phenomenon as well as several examples of its application.

In the first part of the book, Kim summarizes the theoretical challenges to public theology, discussing the use of the Bible as a public book in African, Indian and Korean Christianities and giving a paradigmatic example of public theology (i.e. ‘Eco-theology’, or the Christian community’s response to climate change). In the second part he sets out four examples of public theology in ‘global context’: the problem of Christian conversion in India, class struggle in Korea, economic inequality in the international community, and the response to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In the third and final part, Kim turns his attention to three examples of public theology in Europe: the problem of pluralism that emerged from Rowan Williams’s notorious lecture on Sharia law in 2008, the Danish cartoon controversy in 2005–6, and racial and religious hatred bills that were put forward by the UK government in 2005.

Kim admirably avoids both triumphalism in addressing the Christian community’s promotion of justice and defeatism in examining its failure to have a perceivable influence on global affairs. His purpose is to provide samples of doing public theology in various contexts, providing not a systematic treatment of public theology but rather a demonstration of theology in a public mode. Without a doubt, Kim has succeeded in this goal. There are, however, two difficulties. The first is his concept of ‘public sphere’ (pp. 10–14): are we to presume that, though a Western notion of Christianity does not constitute a fair definition for global Christianity, a Western notion of the public sphere can be globally extended to apply to Africa, India and Korea? Kim rightly recognizes that our thought processes and institutions are particular to the West, but in this work he seems to think that the structure of a Western public sphere is, in fact, universal. The second difficulty has to do with the use of the term ‘prophetic’ (p. 170): Kim offers no grounds for discerning when a prophetic judgement is anything but a subjective assessment, expressing not ‘righteousness’ but our libido dominandi. In other words, the form of a prophetic utterance does not give a free pass to the content. We thus need some criteria to determine what is appropriately called ‘prophetic’ but, unfortunately, Kim does not give us any hint as to what these criteria might be. These two difficulties are, of course, in the purview of a more systematic treatise, and I raise them only to highlight the possible roadblocks for this promising form of theological inquiry. Theology in the Public Sphere will, no doubt, serve as an excellent introduction to public theology, a form of theological inquiry that will only grow in importance in the twenty-first century.

Jonathan D. Teubner

Trinity College, Cambridge

Eric Stoddart, Theological Perspectives on a Surveillance Society: Watching and Being Watched , Ashgate: Farnham, 2011; 198 pp.: 9780754667971, £50.00 (hbk)

Whether we consider the hacking of mobile phones by journalists or the government’s request that universities monitor the activities of Muslim students, issues of surveillance are everywhere in contemporary society. The intense aversion to risk (for political/and litigious reasons) and the more general erosion of the public/private distinction (most often for commercial reasons) that these two examples illustrate are currently shaping our lives in hitherto unimaginable ways. So this unusual book is a very welcome attempt to apply some theological wisdom to an area that has not been addressed by the traditional categories of systematic or political theology. Stoddart has compiled a wide breadth of thinkers from different disciplines to resource his reflections. He considers questions of our approach to technology more generally and the broader role of risk and its assessment, as well as the expected questions of privacy. There is a wealth of thought-provoking material that will resource many other theological projects.

This may have contributed to my sense at the end of the book that my concerns about surveillance and my desire to link them with a discussion of God’s purposes for the world had not been adequately addressed. Another reason may also be that Stoddart remains far more ambivalent about these concerns: ‘It would be invidious … ’, he argues, ‘to weigh up the pros and cons of surveillance and decide that, on balance, it is a good or a bad thing’ (p. 170). Rather, ‘we are each simultaneously benefiting and losing out as surveillance is turned towards us’ (p. 169). What he means, I understand, is that we are talking about an extremely wide range of practices, carried out for a range of motives, whose particular characteristics need to be teased out for their relative merits or dangers. This he attempts in the first chapter but with little theological input. Subsequent theological reflection seems more generalized.

Stoddart’s core idea is that we should not simply assert a call for privacy, which he views as a naive and nostalgic rejection of technology, but rather he calls us to cultivate the skill of ‘(in) visibility’, a practice through which we negotiate our own social presentation. This is certainly a skill I encourage students to foster as they indiscriminately narrate their lives on social networking websites. But, given the creeping forms of corporate and government surveillance over which we have little control, Stoddart’s claim that this is ‘a practice of liberative potential towards the flourishing to which God calls us’ (p. 158) seems unconvincing. There are different kinds of visibility and different kinds of ‘looking’ to which we make ourselves visible. Deep theological attention needs to be given to kinds of ‘watching and being watched’ at play in society today, for which theologians such as Jean-Luc Marion could provide a far better dialogue partner than Stoddart’s preferred Jürgen Moltmann. The theological basis that ‘it is the crucified god who knows what it is to be under surveillance’ (p. 170) does not bring enough critical analysis to address these urgent questions.

James Walters

London School of Economics

Mary McClintock Fulkerson and Sheila Briggs (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theology , Oxford University Press: Oxford and New York, 2011; 608 pp.: 9780199273881, £95.00 (hbk)

The focus for this handbook, essays by twenty-seven women representing at least ten nationalities and multiple religious traditions, is the impact of globalization on women and religion. Unsurprisingly, a conscious championing of postcolonial theologies and those from beyond the Global North and the Christian faith runs throughout. The editors are aware of the problematic nature of globalization as a category (e.g. its tendency to hegemonic assimilationism), but nonetheless affirm its value as a focus for questions of capitalism, nationalism, culture and communication as these pertain to feminist theologies. They acknowledge that tensions remain: the handbook arose out of a gathering of scholars in the USA which relied on international air travel (p. 5). It was published by a British press, and most of the contributors are Christian and Western influenced (p. 12), even if contributors such as Lisa Isherwood and the late Marcella Althaus-Reid are deeply critical of Christianity for its heteronormativity, hierarchy and reinforcement of structures of inequality. Globalization, too, spreads Westernizing discourses of modernity and democracy – though, they emphasize, it ‘also uncovers other narratives that rapidly decenter that of Western modernity’ (p. 10), a theme which recurs across the essays.

The ambivalent nature of phenomena such as hybridity, identity and patriarchy is acknowledged and discussed throughout. Questions of whether terms like ‘religion’ and ‘theology’ are themselves exclusively and irredeemably Western and/or Christian are also examined, as by Melissa Raphael and Serene Jones. Indeed, Jones argues that feminist theology need not inherently be informed by faith at all, but rather is grounded in broader concepts of community and flourishing. The editors agree that it is the ‘transnational feminist practice of solidarity’ (p. 5) which is central, not any particular confessional allegiance.

Among the most interesting chapters are Cheryl Kirk-Duggan’s Womanist reflection on globalization and narrative, in which she makes intertextual readings of the Tower of Babel narrative in Genesis 11, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the Live Aid pop song ‘We Are The World’, and what Kirk-Duggan terms ‘bio-texts’: women’s bodies, especially violated ones. Elina Vuola’s comparison of Latin American popular Mariology and the women’s folk-religious rituals of the Karelia region of Finland raises fascinating questions about the extent to which notions of the feminine divine arise across traditions and historical periods, and is similarly compelling.

Sheila Briggs’s galactic excursus into TV science fiction series encourages imaginative constructions of feminist theologies as narratives of other possible worlds and the non-inevitability of present global structures of oppression. Namsoon Kang reflects on the tensions surrounding the selfhood of Asian women who are multiply characterized by others, including Westerners and Asian men, and rendered ‘bearers of “intact” culture and custom’ (p. 118), who may simultaneously value their cultures’ heterogeneous traditions while deploring their sexism. Kang disrupts the common dichotomizing of universal versus local, arguing that in a globalized age there is no such thing as the purely local and that ‘celebrating the local and the particular should not be an excuse for ghettoization and compartmentalization of feminist theologies from various regions’ (p. 123). Indeed, the editors have heeded this warning, and have not arranged the volume according to religious tradition or geographical location: juxtaposing essays on, for example, tantric Hinduism (Neela Bhattacharya Saxena), Latino Afro-feminist Catholicism (Maricel Mena López), Latin American Pentecostalism (Nancy E. Bedford) and the Abrahamic religions in the Middle East (Azza M. Karam) points up areas of accord and difference in their approaches without making each piece simplistically overrepresentative of any given context.

The focus on globalization is a valuable one: globalization affects all contemporary theology, whether it is acknowledged or not. Musa W. Dube effectively highlights the ‘one-way traffic’ of the ‘global village’ (p. 386), noting that former colonizers (i.e. EU and US travellers) do not require visas to enter Botswana, whereas people travelling to these countries from the formerly colonized Botswana require extensive paperwork and may still be turned back even if everything is in order. Dube, Thandeka, Zayn Kassam and many other contributors emphasize that the inequities of globalization unduly affect women, whose already disproportionate poverty is exacerbated when ‘globalization’ equals a widening of privatization and neoliberal capitalist economic norms.

Nonetheless, globalization’s elevated place in this collection means that other areas – sexualities, women’s liturgical practices, ecofeminisms, and the uses and abuses of sacred texts – receive much less attention than one would expect in what sounds as if it is going to be a general or summary volume (though the chapters which do address them, like Dube’s and Teresa Berger’s, are particularly strong). To call the volume ‘Feminist Theology and Globalization’ might have risked pigeonholing it, but to publish it as The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theology risks baffling readers who expected something slightly different. The decision not to make the handbook a more comprehensive or systematic guide to the field was conscious – and the editors might justly observe that excellent overviews of feminist theology already exist elsewhere – but the volume is weighted slightly too much toward theoretical accounts of globalization at the expense of constructive outworkings which are specifically theological.

Some minor errors of editing, spelling and punctuation (e.g. recalcitrant apostrophes; a list which runs ‘first, second, second, thirdly’; the inconsistent rendering of Kwok Pui-lan’s name) will, for sterner readers, detract from what is otherwise an impressive resource. Overall, however, this is a commendable collection which, by taking the brave decision to hold globalization as pivotal, insists that Western, Christian perspectives cannot be taken for granted or rendered unproblematically normative. Just as feminist theologians averred in the 1960s and 70s that there was no such thing as ‘gender neutral’ theology, so these scholars now interrogate their own contexts, and the ways in which ethnicity, class and religious privilege affect elements of feminist theological discourse. The insistence here that theological reflection on women’s experience must also be theological reflection on poverty, maternal and infant mortality, and HIV-AIDS, is a powerful reminder that the ‘imagined community’ (p. 17) of theologians worldwide must be committed to justice and social change on a global scale.

Susannah Cornwall

University of Manchester

Christina Grenholm, Motherhood and Love: Beyond the Gendered Stereotypes of Theology , Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011; 224 pp.: 978-0-8028-6388-1, £16.99/$25.00 (pbk)

Last autumn, I attended a conference on ‘Motherhood and Priesthood’, the first of its kind. The fact that the conference was oversubscribed indicates the hunger for constructive discussion on a subject hitherto marginalized. Like many of the other participants, I was aware of the fact that this was indeed the beginning of something new, of silence broken, of experiences named, a conversation begun.

Christina Grenholm writes more generally about motherhood. Her conversation partners are less the experiences of women than the writings of a number of theologians, patriarchal and feminist, none of whom actually writes about motherhood from the point of view of personal experience.

Grenholm’s insights about love and vulnerability are the most fascinating aspect of her study, though the reader has to wade through some fairly dense theological (and exclusively theological) analysis to get to them. The strength of the work is the breadth of theological voices Grenholm takes to task, yet I missed some constructive engagement with other disciplines such as psychology as well as some understanding of the fact that ‘motherhood’ itself is socially constructed and indeed happens in a variety of contexts, some of which are beyond the confines of the hetero-patriarchal nuclear family and not all of which entail the choice to give birth, a choice about which Grenholm seems to be rather overconfident.

There is much to engage with in Grenholm's book, if it is read as the work of (unconsciously) contextual theology that it is. Like the conference about motherhood and priesthood, it is a contribution to a conversation that has only just begun. As a rather dense piece of systematic theology, it is probably less appealing to a British audience than it is to the Swedish context of the author or the North American one of the publisher. Yet, the point made by the author that our reflections about something so fundamental to humanity have to be part of our theological conversation in ways that take us beyond stereotypes is most eloquently made and demands further engagement.

Natalie K. Watson

Peterborough

Leslie C. Allen, A Liturgy of Grief: A Pastoral Commentary on Lamentations , Baker Academic: Grand Rapids, 2011; 208 pp.: 9780801039607, £13.99/$21.99, (pbk)

This is an extraordinary commentary. The recent upsurge of interest in the biblical book of Lamentations is a result, it seems, of its ability to speak to pain and suffering. In a world that faces both with alarming regularity the resource of Lamentations is like water to a thirsty land. Allen draws deep from the well and offers it to all who will drink. The book begins with an introduction from Nicholas Wolterstorff, who characterizes Allen’s work as ‘a book to be savored’ (p. vii), and this is a suitable description of the experience afforded the careful reader. As a ‘pastoral’ commentary, the volume enables its readers (especially pastors, counsellors or chaplains) to access Lamentations as a tool for what Allen calls ‘caregiving’: dealing compassionately with those who grieve (pp. 25–9).

Allen himself balances the roles of an academic professor and a chaplain, and his role as a chaplain comes through in powerful ways, most notably the maturity of insight on delicate subjects of suffering as well as anecdotal stories from his own chaplaincy that help to illustrate his discussion. The introduction (pp. 1–29) is aware of current critical discussion on the book and yet does not get bogged down into the minutiae of detail. Rather, it brings the scholarly discussion to bear on what he sees as the central themes of Lamentations: (1) the articulation of grief, guilt and prayer (esp. in Lam. 1—2); (2) the significant role of the wounded healer of Lamentations 3 who, in his pain, becomes a ‘caregiver’ for the community of sufferers; (3) the persistence of grief and the hope that it will end (Lam. 4); and (4) the community’s voicing of grief that marks a turning point in the poetry (Lam. 5). Allen suggests that Lamentations 5 is such a turning point because it is here that the community begins to process the grief that was expressed previously by Zion and the man in Lamentations 1—4. The communal articulation of grief, according to Allen, marks a positive movement in the processing of the pain of exile. It is in the fifth poem that all of the other themes are brought together and offered up to God in prayer.

The commentary proceeds in a linear fashion through the poems. The exegesis is helped by a section of ‘translation notes’, which provide rationale for some of the translation decisions Allen has made (pp. 171–9). A useful bibliography, both for Lamentations study, grief study, and pastoral care, resides in the back of the book (pp. 180–90) along with a scriptural index. All told, this is a valuable book for those who need a good word, healing balm and instruction for those who grieve. Highly recommended.

H. A. Thomas

Southeastern Seminary, Wake Forest, North Carolina

Brian Cummings (ed.), The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662 , Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2011; 896 pp.: 9780199207176, £16.99 (hbk)

With the three-hundredth and fiftieth anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer (1662) on the horizon, it is not surprising that renewed attention is being given to the liturgical text that has so profoundly shaped the religious imagination of English-speaking Christianity around the globe. Brian Cummings, whose admirable 2007 book The Literary Culture of the Reformation (OUP) broke new ground in understanding the contours of the literary and intellectual landscape of the sixteenth century, has prepared this edition of the whole family of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English prayer books, the Books of Common Prayer (BCP) promulgated in 1549, 1552 and 1662. There have been notable efforts at maintaining access to these texts over the years. The old Everyman edition of the First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI, first published in 1938, has recently been reprinted, giving us a compact edition of BCPs 1549 and 1552 that has always been useful for comparative study; and John Booty’s edition and exposition of BCP 1559 was reissued in 2005. But this is the first time that these three liturgical texts have appeared together in a readily available form and, more importantly, the first time in more than 125 years that they have been subjected to a single, meticulous editorial approach. This alone makes this volume something to be heartily welcomed.

Both liturgical scholars and those with more general interest in worship will find this edition of the texts a worthy addition to their libraries. The Introduction to this volume covers the history of the three liturgical projects, which, although familiar to specialists, provides a most helpful and compact refresher. But it is the thoughtful editorial decisions Cummings has made in his treatment of the texts themselves that give us a renewed understanding their power. While taking seriously (and describing clearly) the complexities of the textual variants of the BCP, he also enables the reader to approach the texts without undue impediment. Errors have been corrected, moderate modernizations in orthography and punctuation have been made, and rubrics have all been placed in italics. And to present each edition in its entirety, rather than in parallel columns (as per Parker [1877] and Brightman [1915]), allows the linguistic and theological progression from one liturgical world to the next to unfold naturally. Cummings rounds out the book with a set of ‘Notes’, detailing some of the liturgical antecedents of various elements, and a glossary, enabling those not used to reading this kind of material to negotiate Cranmerian and Elizabethan English.

The picky reader might wish to see a few more contemporary additions made to the bibliography, especially in the area of recent Cranmer studies; a more comprehensive index might have also made the book more useful. And although Cummings acknowledges in his Introduction that the Books of Common Prayer are ‘evidence’ for the liturgical life of those who have used them, he sometimes seems to forget that the liturgy is not fundamentally a text but rather the lived experience of worship, a human act. But Cummings is a scholar of English language and literature, and in his treatment of these sixteenth- and seventeenth-century prayer books we get a clear sense of why their words have echoed throughout the Western canon for centuries.

Susan White

Norwich, Vermont

David Runcorn, Fear and Trust: God-centred Leadership , SPCK: London, 2011; 128 pp.: 9780281063895, £9-99 (pbk)

Just as Michael Sadgrove mined the unexplored depths of Old Testament Wisdom literature in his book Wisdom and Ministry: The Call to Leadership (SPCK, 2008) and discovered priceless gems about godly leadership, so Runcorn has based his leadership reflections on a fascinating part of the Old Testament (1 and 2 Samuel) . He explains: ‘I found myself unexpectedly gripped by the account of a defining period in the history of ancient Israel. It tells of a people journeying from a tribal confederacy … to the beginning of a monarchy and the struggle to grow into one nation under king and God. What a remarkable amount of the story of 1 and 2 Samuel has in common with our own! … We too have a pre-occupation with “leadership” as a way of securing the future’ (p. 3).

Each chapter explores the different characters involved (Hannah, Samuel, Saul, David, Jonathan and Rizpah) and uses them to reflect on what God was doing through their lives and ministries. There is no attempt to glamorize them or make them out to be ‘heroes of the faith’. They are presented with all the honesty and frankness of the Old Testament text, and God’s hidden purposes are revealed in and through their chequered histories. Through our attentiveness in reflective prayer and in our patient waiting on God to reveal his purposes, we too can discern his presence in the midst of the complexities of life and ministry.

This book will prevent us from being overly convinced that good management theory and leadership strategies will win the day; it will save us a programme-driven ministry that leaves us (and our congregations) emotionally and spiritually exhausted. It invites us into a ‘post-heroic’ (p. 3) vision of leadership that resists the allure of power, control and prestige and replaces it with a spirituality of weakness, vulnerability, suffering, prayerfulness, reflection, silence, servanthood and a costly trust in God. The kind of leader that Runcorn invites us to emulate ends up looking a lot like Jesus.

The author is extremely well qualified to talk about the spirituality of leadership arising from this Old Testament narrative. He has been the parish priest of a local church and has trained future leaders at theological college. He has also worked for a diocese in areas of vocational development and spiritual formation, and offers spiritual direction. His insights come out of the wealth of this ministerial and vocational experience.

This book deserves a careful reading by all those of us involved in the awesome task of Christian leadership. Some of us will be leaders already of local churches or Christian organizations, some of us will be theological educators teaching the skills and qualities needed for Christian leadership, some of us will be on a vocational journey towards ordained (or other forms) of ministry. It is medicine for our souls, and an antidote for our anxious drivenness!

Will Donaldson

Wycliffe Hall, Oxford

John D. Brewer, Gareth I. Higgins and Francis Teeney, Religion, Civil Society, and Peace in Northern Ireland , Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2011; 272 pp.: 9780199694020, £60.00 (hbk)

Part oral history project, part technical sociological analysis and part penetrating evaluation, this important book chronicles and assesses the roles of Irish churches in Northern Ireland’s slow transition from deadly conflict to a kind of peace. It is important because this is a neglected area; as the authors point out, churches and para-church organizations are readily blamed for their contribution to the social conditions that preceded the conflict but they are rarely seen as contributors to the peace process.

The authors (all, to some degree, participants in the processes they describe) begin by establishing the theoretical framework for the discussion of the churches’ role. Fortunately, this is not too technical for non-specialists (like this reviewer) to follow. We are taken through the various developments in Putnam’s concept of ‘social capital’, Alexander’s work on ‘civil society’ and the more recent term, ‘spiritual capital’. Then, they introduce research based on interviews with church and para-church leaders and members and with a smaller number of people from civic and political life. Last, they offer their own interpretation of what went on during the crucial years of conflict transformation and offer a kind of balance-sheet assessment of the churches’ strengths and weaknesses.

The churches of Ireland have a complex history of relationships (sometimes antagonistic) with each other and with the holders of political power. They have tended to be much more effective at developing a form of social capital that binds together those within a particular religious community than one that builds bridges between communities. Yet, in spite of this and other weaknesses, they have contributed both to the cessation of armed conflict and (to a limited extent) the development of a civil society in which further conflict is less likely. A number of church leaders, often without the support of their wider community, were involved in ‘back channels’ of communication during the period when official contact with combatants was politically difficult. The sacred space of churches provides safe places that ‘make redemptive scripts easier to issue, they encourage and facilitate them and enforce the realization that it is not just combatants who need redemption’ (p. 106).

But the book ends on a more negative note. The churches have concentrated too much on their own constituencies and not enough on their role within wider society. Because they left peacemaking largely to mavericks operating on the edge of church institutions, rather than adopt a prophetic stance, they have forfeited moral legitimacy in the civil society that is developing. ‘The capacity of the institutional church to inherit the future is diminished by the responsibilities of the past’ (p. 230).

The authors are at pains to point out the complexities of social, political and religious life in Northern Ireland. Their work deserves close reading both by those who are discerning the Christian response to its present problems and those who are more generally interested in the role of churches in divided and conflicted societies.

Richard Clutterbuck

Edgehill Theological College, Belfast

Abby Day, Believing in Belonging: Belief and Social Identity in the Modern World , Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2011; 240 pp.: 9780199577873, £55.00 (hbk)

Abby Day addresses a crucially important question in this book. Why was it that so many British people chose to tick the box marked Christian in the 2001 UK census when so few of them either attend church or subscribe to the central tenets of the Christian faith. What was in their minds when they did this? Day responds to these questions both theoretically and empirically. She draws on the resources of several disciplines (notably anthropology and sociology) to elucidate the meaning of ‘belief’. She also records the results of her own research in this field – a three-generational enquiry into the nature of belief in a small Northern town. Using secondary sources, she examines her results in a comparative perspective, drawing in particular on American and Canadian data.

This is a well-written account in three sections. Section 1 contains the introductory material; Section 2 outlines and reflects on the empirical findings; and Section 3 draws more general conclusions. Most important among the last is Day’s well-argued conviction that belief is a social rather than individual act and is ‘worked out’ in practice. I agree. Following current social-scientific usage, she suggests that belief is ‘performed’. Performative belief, moreover, is multi-dimensional and moves between the human and the divine.

I welcome a book that examines in detail the everyday beliefs of ordinary British people. Linking this topic to the results of the 2001 census was an excellent move and established very sharply the central research questions of this enquiry. I welcome, thirdly, the detailed qualitative research undertaken by Day which complements the statistical data in this field. We meet real people in this book who tell us interesting and insightful things. Lastly, I am impressed by Day’s ability to set her work in a continuing intellectual tradition.

I am less happy, however, that the book tips at times into intellectual jargon which isn’t really necessary. ‘Anthropocentric, performative, Christian Nominalism’ (p. 189), though carefully explained, is a mouthful by any standards. I would also query the innovativeness of Day’s approach – a claim which she strongly asserts. In many ways her work echoes Timothy Jenkins’s Religion in Everyday English Life: An Ethnographic Approach (Oxford: Berghahn 1999) which comes to very similar conclusions, though it predates the census. A third point concerns the comparative framework. Britain, the United States and Canada demonstrate very different profiles of religiousness. Nominalism most certainly exists in all three places but varies considerably in its nature. The existence of a parochially based established church is central to the English case and has no equivalent in the new world.

The Church of England is indeed established but has, relatively speaking, a weak understanding of membership – an ambiguity that leaks into the culture. In this sense England is very different from the Nordic countries, where the notion of membership (underpinned by church tax) remains strong, in popular as well as ecclesiological understanding. The predilection of Nordic scholars for the idea of ‘belonging without believing’ follows from this. Interestingly, one such scholar told me in the mid-1990s that what Scandinavians believe in is ‘belonging’ (Grace Davie, Religion in Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 3).

Grace Davie

University of Exeter

Gavin D’Costa, Paul Knitter and Daniel Strange, Only One Way? Three Christian Responses to the Uniqueness of Christ in a Religiously Plural World , SCM Press: London, 2011; 240 pp.: 9780334044000, £25.00 (pbk)

This is an admirably conceived and well-executed book. Three friendly theologians who are equally concerned with the way Christians respond to the complexities of religious pluralism but with vastly different points of view have set out in this book to engage with one another in trenchant and forthright discussion. Two are Roman Catholic (Gavin D’Costa and Paul Knitter) with quite different stances: the first holding firmly to the teaching of the magisterium and expounds the teaching of Nostra Aetate, Lumen Gentium and Dominus Iesus, denying that other religions are means of salvation (though in Part 3 he refines this position); Knitter owes much more to Karl Rahner, Paul Tillich and Raimundo Panikkar and describes himself as a ‘double-belonger’, a Buddhist-Christian, as in the title of his 2009 book Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian (p. 53). The third author (Daniel Strange) holds ardently to Protestant Reformed orthodoxy with its presupposition of an epistemologically authoritative biblical revelation. This a priori approach, Strange writes, ‘sees all non Christian religions in antithesis to Christianity’ (p. 135). These positions are set out courteously and provocatively in Part 1. In Part 2 the dialogue begins with each writer responding to the other two and Part 3 enables each one to respond to the criticisms of the others. The conversation covers an enormous range of theological discourse with many fresh insights. Their arguments are enriched by wide-ranging bibliographical resources. It is not possible for readers to avoid taking positions of their own on the issues surrounding Christian uniqueness and accordingly the book will be invaluable for theological students (and their teachers) whether in the classroom or library. Church leaders and general readers will also find the format and presentation very attractive. D’Costa, Knitter and Strange model for all of us serious thoughtful inter-Christian dialogue and we owe them a debt of gratitude.

Kenneth Cracknell

Norwich, Vermont

Robert N. McCauley, Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not , Oxford University Press: New York, 2011; 352 pp.: 9780199827268, £18.99/$29.95 (hbk)

This book is to be added to the considerable corpus on religion and science. But instead of tackling the subject on epistemological, methodological or metaphysics grounds, it looks to a different arena: the cognitive foundations of religion and science. The provocative title of this book exactly describes its thesis though it takes considerable further definition of terms before the meaning becomes clear.

For those who are unfamiliar with cognitive science there are substantial jargon and concepts to swallow, but it is well worth the initial effort as once the key ideas are assimilated the author leads the non-specialist through a well structured and fascinating journey into the human mind.

This branch of cognitive science deals with how the brain/mind represents and processes information in perception, thought and action. The main concept of his argument is that religion is ‘natural’ because it depends on certain intuitive and universal ways of information processing. This processing occurs in perception systems that operate unconsciously, automatically and unreflectively. They arrive early in life and are insensitive to culture. In contrast, science is defined as ‘unnatural’ because it needs to be learnt and is abstract, speculative and difficult. Religion is ‘natural’ because of its prehistoric origin, ubiquity and independent recurrence. Science is ‘unnatural’ because it is rare and specialized. The author admits that the differentiation is not entirely clear cut, and that some cross-over does occur (for example, academic theology requires specialism and effort).

In the first chapter the author introduces ideas about how the brain/mind acquires knowledge. To present his concept of ‘natural’/‘unnatural’, he then uses the example of how we learn actions before moving on to the more abstract areas. In Chapter 2, he goes into depth about the theory of the ‘natural’ operation of the brain, different concepts of brain/mind construction and how the mental state of ourselves and others are apprehended. In Chapter 3, the ‘unnaturalness’ of science is explained in detail and compared, in Chapter 4, to the cognitive ‘naturalness’ of religion, focusing on what the author describes as ‘popular religion’.

The implications of science being ‘unnatural’ and religion being ‘natural’ are discussed in Chapter 5 beginning with a critique of the independence model of interaction. These conclusions are wide ranging and surprising, especially the timely and urgent assertion that science is fragile. It also describes extremely well the need for a public understanding of science and the social arrangements surrounding its pursuit.

This book is unrepentant in its materialism and deliberately narrow in its understanding of the religion and science debates. At times I did not recognize, or find familiar, the ‘religion’ that the author was discussing. Greater attention might have been given to the interaction of theology with ‘popular religion’. There were occasional frustrations for the theist reader, when the author of this thoroughly scientific book gave away his own perspective with polemical hints, which too often colour the science and religion conversation.

But these comments aside, this book remains a worthwhile and exciting new addition to the dialogue.

Gillian Straine

Oxford

John Polkinghorne, Science and Religion in Quest of Truth , SPCK: London, 2011; 160 pp.: 9780281064120, £9.99 (pbk)

There are many models which attempt to account for the similarities and differences between science and religion, many of them succinctly summarized by Ian Barbour many years ago in his Issues in Science and Religion. John Polkinghorne here pays tribute to that seminal work while presenting his own somewhat different account based on his reading of Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge. The theme, which will be familiar to those who know Polanyi, is that we commonly misunderstand the kind of knowledge possible in science and the role of conviction in the maintenance of scientific theory. Once that thesis is accepted, the relationship between science and religion becomes much easier to grasp. Words like elegance (Dirac), commitment (Polanyi) and aesthetics (Poincaré) add to the vocabulary relating science to religion without detracting from the power and sophistication of scientific understanding.

‘It is a central thesis of this book that both science and theology can lay claim to a degree of truthful understanding that warrants their insights being described under the rubric of critical realism’ (p. 15). We are back now in familiar territory. But the problem of a lack of serious engagement with philosophy, common to all Polkinghorne’s books, and about which he is still, I think, unrepentant (cf. my review of his Exploring Reality in 2006), therefore persists: to start from critical realism is to beg most of the really challenging questions about the very ‘truth’ that is the subject of the book. ‘Science’s concern is with truth, understood as correspondence with reality’ (p. 1) isn’t, and arguably cannot be, where the philosophical debate begins.

Polkinghorne ends by drawing our attention to the universality of scientific agreement, pace minor arguments about fundamentals, as contrasted with the manifest and profound differences between the world’s great religions, which he rightly says are not just different ways of expressing the same reality but completely different views of the nature of that spiritual reality. He sees coming to terms with the full significance of that genuine and deep diversity as one of the great challenges being posed to contemporary Christian theology. This contrast between science as universally shared belief and religion as personal conviction is echoed particularly strongly in the book itself. Where Polkinghorne is talking about quantum theory, black holes and evolution, he has and need have no recourse to his own personal convictions; but towards the end of the fourth chapter, ‘Theology and Science in Interactive Context’, he acknowledges that most of his religious assertions have been little more than personal speculations. In my view, while that gulf between public agreement and personal conviction is so wide, the connection between theology and science as human enterprises remains unbridged, and the quest for truth unfinished.

This is an interesting book full of John Polkinghorne’s usual insights – I particularly liked the description of the Bible as a ‘spiritual laboratory notebook’ (p. 112) rather than a set of proof texts – but it leaves those of us who have followed his long and distinguished career with many of the same questions we started with, because it does not deal with the deep and important philosophical questions that gnaw at the roots of critical realism. And that, for me at least, is a serious shortcoming in a book about the quest for truth, because I believe that it is only in unravelling those mysteries that the common ground between religion and science can be discerned and the real gulf between public scientific conviction and private religious belief bridged.

John Puddefoot

The Aga Khan Academy, Hyderabad, India

David Fisher, Morality and War: Can War Be Just in the Twenty-First Century , Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2011; 320 pp.: 9780199599240, £25.00 (hbk); 9780199661053, £16.99 (pbk)

In this book, which began as a PhD thesis, a senior civil servant involved in the decisions that led Britain to join recent conflicts in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan considers the morality of contemporary warfare. The book is a restatement of just war theory in the context of the foreign invasions launched by Western powers since the Second World War, with a particular focus on the last twenty years. All of these invasions were ‘justified’ with reference to foreign policy goals – the suppression of communism, the suppression of terrorism, the prevention of human rights abuses, the quest for secure sources of energy – that are not at face value commensurate with conventional casus belli arguments. Fisher therefore turns to the doctrine of ‘humanitarian intervention’ in order to justify these modern ‘moral’ wars, a doctrine which he outlined in some detail ten years before it was taken up by Tony Blair and the roots of which Fisher traces to Vitoria and Grotius. According to Fisher’s statement of the doctrine the presumed rule of non-intervention by military means may legally be set aside when governments commit extensive human rights abuses against their own people. On these grounds Fisher argues that the intervention of Vietnam to topple the Pol Pot regime was justified, and that the West ought to have intervened to prevent the Rwanda massacre. On the same grounds he argues that Britain and the United States were wrong to invade Iraq in 2003, though he does not offer a judgement on Afghanistan.

Fisher writes well and offers a clear restatement of the just war tradition, with a particular emphasis on the modern recovery of virtue ethics. He also gives fascinating glimpses into the mind of one of the behind-the-scenes shapers of British foreign and military policy in the last twenty years. While recognizing the ‘protean’ reality of war as an always dangerous beast liable to get out of control, however, Fisher gives insufficient recognition to the contrast between war and forms of resistance to evil which are more consistent with the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Greater sensitivity to theological alternatives to the just war argument might have permitted recognition of the moral hubris of Britain’s, and the United States’, use of military and covert intervention since the Second World War from Korea and Iran to Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. In all these cases the consequences of intervention have been enduring and grave not only for civilians in these countries but also ultimately for Britain and the United States in the phenomena sometimes called ‘blowback’, which range from migration pressures and religious extremism to international terrorism. Most of the present crisis points in international relations – Korea, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan, Palestine – are places where the moral hubris of Britain and/or the United States led to military interventions that have disastrously misshaped these and surrounding nations for decades to come. A greater preparedness to resist the political resort to war on the part of civil servants such as Fisher, as well as religious leaders – rather than the promulgation of new doctrines to justify military adventurism – would in the long run have served British and American interests better in the last sixty years, even leaving aside principled arguments about the morality of war.

Michael Northcott

University of Edinburgh

Steven R. Guthrie, Creator Spirit: The Holy Spirit and the Art of Becoming Human , Baker Academic: Grand Rapids, 2011; 240 pp.: 9780801029219, £14.99/$24.99 (pbk)

Guthrie seeks to understand and ground a theological understanding of the artistic experience from the particular perspective of Pneumatology. Reflecting on the association between art (or beauty) and the spirit-ual, he offers us an exceptional contribution to the ongoing dialogue between theology and the arts that weaves together our comprehension of art, the Holy Spirit and our own humanity.

The book begins by outlining how the relationship between art and spirituality has been articulated over the centuries. Drawing on authors and artists past and present, from the worlds of philosophy, theology, musicology and the arts, he addresses issues such as how to ‘talk’ about art when one of its characteristics is representing the ‘ineffable’ and the spiritual dimension of art ‘versus’ the ‘embodied’ nature of human life and the role of music in building up the Body of Christ. He then addresses the issue of artistic ‘inspiration’, from the perspective of the artist and the (often opposing) ways in which it has been ‘explained’. He challenges what he calls a ‘pneumatology of possession’ in which the relationship between divine and human creativity is one of competitive opposition, proposing instead a ‘pneumatology of gift and freedom’ by which artists are gifted and graced with prophetic freedom to ‘reimagine’ the world according to God’s plan. Finally, he skillfully presents the theme of beauty in relation to eschatology, offering a tremendously clear summary of the thought of the last centuries in regard to the notions of beauty and form and their link with art.

The book is an insightful and balanced exploration of the subject matter, drawn from sacred Scripture, Tradition (in particular Athanasius) and current theological thought in relation to contemporary experience. It sketches a thorough and balanced theological understanding of artistic activity in connection with a Christian understanding of anthropology and the Spirit’s role in transforming us to be fully human. Any limitations I perceive only emerge as a result of its strengths: at times it seems as if the resolution comes too soon, and areas in which art would challenge us to expand our understanding are ‘solved’ and situated before they can provoke and ‘upset’ us. For example, according to Guthrie, the aesthetic and the spiritual both originate in love (cf. p. 19), but can hate or anger not also be artistic ‘sources’? He rightly contrasts the impersonal description of the inspiring Spirit with the Christian one of a personal presence, but ‘personhood’ is a complex term in the history of theological thought. Could the creative process within and beyond Christian circles not widen our very understanding of who the Spirit is? But these are perhaps more dialogue points than limitations, and in the growing area of theology and the arts Guthrie’s book is insightful and thought provoking. It will be an invaluable resource both for those researching and teaching in the newly emerging area of theological aesthetics.

Maeve L. Heaney

Jesuit School of Theology, Santa Clara University, California

Elaine A. Heath, The Gospel according to Twilight: Women, Sex and God , SPCK: London, 2011; 176 pp.: 9780281066612, £9.99 (pbk)

When reading this book, I had an inescapable feeling that the target audience is actually concerned parents. On the first page, the author begins anecdotally with her daughter thrusting a copy of Twilight into her hand, and the feeling never leaves that the overarching question is, ‘Should my evangelical daughter be reading this?’ If you have so far succeeded in escaping the clutches of Twilight it is best described as a teen(tween)-targeted emo-styled series of books and films centred on a rocky relationship between two anaemic school children, one of whom is a vampire. Heath’s book critiques the series, although without reference to the wider vampire cultural saturation, whether HBO’s gore and sex-fuelled True Blood, inspired by Charlaine Harris’s novels, Joss Whedon’s Buffy and spin-offs, or Anne Rice’s novels. Nor is there any interest in glancing back past Hammer Horror to Bram Stoker, the Romantic poets, or further to the wild folklore of anthropologists. This book is purely about the Twilight phenomenon under evangelical scrutiny.

There is then a fair degree of warning – most of it driven from a healthy feminist abhorrence at the weakness of the female characters, stereotyping and the unhealthy relationships – though one perhaps should not be entirely surprised at relationships with the undead verging on ‘abusive’. Given that Twilight’s audience is young adolescent girls, however, Heath is right to lament the problematic relationships, not least the perversity of werewolf ‘imprinting’ (read grooming). At the same time, her concerns over misogyny and mormon theology, while well placed, chime oddly when contrasted with her own contentious position. Disabusing us of stereotypes of maladjusted teenage girls is one thing, but countering with the good wife of Proverbs 31 (defined largely in terms of home, husband and wearing purple) is a peculiar strategy. Heath purports an overarching theology of the ‘Good Family’, which various liberal theologies might question, as they might also question her casual equation of abortion with murder (p. 72).

Throughout Heath maintains a strong line in defending the genre against those who would say all such work is of the devil and her attempt to engage theologically with a totem of popular culture is laudable. Certainly her argument sometimes overleaps itself in finding a strong soteriology and even the ‘resurrection power of life in Christ’ in the vampire’s bodies. These themes are present in all vampire literature but Twilight represents one of the most secularized and romanticized versions of this. And rather than being personifications of ‘monstrous evil’, ‘demonic’ or about ‘spiritual warfare’ (p. 121), the vampire is a rather more subtle character, as feminist, gay and postcolonial readings have unearthed, at least since the complexities of Bram Stoker’s 1897 creation.

For those of a stringently Protestant persuasion (with all that blood there is no mention of the Eucharist here) and a cautious eye on the romantic idealizations and gender performance of their younger brothers and sisters, this may be the beginning of useful conversations. Theology must pay attention to its popular incarnations and Heath is right to raise some of the darker questions of this latest Hollywood revamp.

Brutus Green

London