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his most diYcult: its message is to be found more accessibly

in Faith and Speculation, from over twenty years later: on the
disparity of accessibility being pointed out, he observed, con-
siderately, of the earlier volume, Ah well, we had not learnt
to write then. Yet the doctrine, central to his theology, of double
agency, whereby Gods creative activity necessarily makes itself
felt with indirectness (God makes things make themselves) is
his dominant message, worked out imaginatively in one context
after another. It is expounded here by Edward Henderson with
great clarlty. But it is fitting to have preceded it with Diogenes
Allen on Farrers spirituality.
It is rare these davs, and was so already in Farrers time, for
a theologian to spread his mind and then his writing as wide
as he did. For even if his work has been seen as uneven in its
ready acceptability, there is no doubting its dazzling quality,
its sheer brilliance of mind. Since Farrers sudden death in 1968
he has become what in his lifetime he rarely was, the object
of attention and enthusiasm, with conferences on both sides of
the Atlantic and graduate theses as well as articles and books,
including this rounded and creative collection.
doi:10.1093/jts/fli233 LESLIE HOULDEN
Emeritus Professor,
Kings College London

The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Edited by EDWARD T. OAKES, SJ and DAVID MOSS.
Pp. xviii 282. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004. ISBN 0 521 81467 7 and 89147 7. Hardback
45/$70; paper 16.99/$25.
HANS URS VON BALTHASAR has always been a controversial
figure: the object of intense, occasionally uncritical, admiration
by some, but dismissed by others with a kind of baZed amaze-
ment. I doubt that this volume of essays will do much to alter
the opinions of those who have already reached firm conclu-
sions about the theological stature of the man about whose
person and writings such contradictory opinions swirl, but a
publication such as this, the latest in a long and distinguished
series of Cambridge Companions, inevitably confers a certain
status upon him. Whatever doubts his detractors may have,
Balthasar is here placed in a pantheon of figures which include
not only St Paul, Thomas Aquinas, and Martin Luther, but
 REVIEWS 799
Jesus Christ himself: a sure indication of the esteem in which
he has come to be held.
For those who may be interested in his thought but are
still undecided as to where exactly they stand in regard to it, and
for those who may still be puzzled by his writings, this book
will be one of the best instruments for investigating and grasping
the essential features of his vast and complex body of writings.
The nineteen contributors, themselves well-known and highly
regarded theologians, historians, and philosophers, submit the
most important areas of his thought to critical examination and
perform their task of exposition in essays that are, for the most
part, both informative and lucid. This latter quality is partic-
ularly welcome when one is dealing with writings as complex
as these and encountering a theologian whose mind is as protean
and whose style is as dense and allusive as Balthasars. That the
vast body of his work presents the reader with peculiar problems
is readily acknowledged by the editors in their introduction
where they draw attention to the perplexity that seems to be
an inherent part of everyones reaction to Balthasars thought
(p. 1). It is not so much the sheer bulk of the work that is the
problem, nor even its variety; much of the perplexity arises
out of the paradox that is the person of Balthasar himself, for
we have, in this thinker, someone who is, disconcertingly, both
intensely traditional and notably idiosyncratic; and this paradox
irradiates every text he produced. It helps to explain the
fascination of his achievement as a theologian and each of the
essays illuminates this unusual amalgam of orthodoxy and
unconventionality from a diVerent angle. It should, however,
be stressed that this volume is not intended to be an introduc-
tion to the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar; it is a com-
panion, and precisely because it is what it says it is, it makes
demands on the reader. It would a mistake, therefore, to approach
it with the assumption that it is a beginners guide; though, of
course, it is always possible that it might enable a reader wholly
unfamiliar with his writings to find a way in to the complexities
of his thought. But on the whole the contributors seem to have
assumed their readers to possess some familiarity with, if not the
primary texts themselves, at least a more than superficial knowl-
edge and grasp of the theological and philosophical traditions to
which their subject is heir.
The essays are primarily analytical and explicatory in
character, often illuminating areas of Balthasars thought that
are diYcult and obscure with admirable clarity and precision. It
is interesting to see that the relative brevity of the contributions
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has in no way resulted in superficiality of treatment or a
trivialization of the subjects under discussion; in fact the con-
straints of the form seem to have worked to the advantage of
the subject. Many much longer studies have lost themselves
in tangles of complication and obfuscation; here, by contrast,
the contributors have been compelled, no doubt willingly, by
excellent editors into clarity and concision. Karen Kilbys essay,
Balthasar and Karl Rahner, for example, is a marvel of com-
pression, conveying in a few thousand words both the essen-
tial diVerences between these two magisterial expounders of
the Catholic theological tradition and also the significance of
these diVerences for the development of that tradition. GeoVrey
Wainwrights contribution on an often neglected aspect of
Balthasars theology, his eschatology, comes to focus on the
question of apokatastasis and concludes with imagining an
encounter between the theologian and a character called the
Infernalist. It cleverly reveals the tension in Balthasar between
the drive to universalism and his desire to remain faithful to
a tradition which is anchored in the belief in the radical
freedom of the individual to choose salvation or damnation.
While Balthasar stops (just) short of a universalist belief, we
may still be permitted to follow his reasoned and imaginative
justification for a universal hope (p. 123).
There are only two instances in which I would have wished
for longer essays and more detailed analyses: Corinne Crammers
One sex or two? Balthasars theology of the sexes and Aidan
Nicholss: The theo-logic. It is hardly surprising to find that
Crammers contribution is the most critical of all the essays in
the volume. Balthasars theological exposition of sexual diVer-
entiation and the construction of an ecclesiology that is heavily
dependent on such theological anthropology have long been
among the most controversial aspects of his thoughtpossibly
the most controversial. Many of the objections she raises
are legitimate and telling but the essay also contains a number
of questionable assertions and a statement about scientific
evidence (p. 104) that would need extensive documentation and
careful scrutiny before it could be admitted as an argument.
However, a generous evaluation would submit that it was lack of
space rather than a lack of subtlety in thought that makes this
essay one of the least satisfactory, as well as one of the most
provocative, of the contributions. My wish for a longer essay
from Aidan Nichols is of quite a diVerent kind and is partly
caused by my own diYculties with the third part of Balthasars
trilogy. The Theo-logic has always seemed to me the most
 REVIEWS 801
problematic and unconvincing of the major texts: I perceive a
gap between the intention and the achievement, and Aidan
Nichols, for all his ability, fails to persuade me that it is coherent
in the way that the two earlier parts of the trilogy are. Would
a longer essay with more detailed analysis have accomplished
the diYcult task of revealing the Theo-logic as a masterpiece
of twentieth-century theology? I doubt it. Perhaps the fault lies
not in Nicholss exposition but in the text itself.
Nineteen essays and 270 pages could hardly provide a com-
prehensive survey of Balthasars achievement, nor is this volume
intended to be comprehensive in that sense. Even so, there are
two surprising omissions. First: a discrete study of the relation-
ship between the thought of Balthasar and that of Adrienne
von Speyr. While there are essays on Balthasar and Karl Barth
and Balthasar and Karl Rahner, there is no essay on Balthasar
and Adrienne von Speyr. To be sure nearly every essay to a
greater or lesser extent acknowledges its significance, but given
Balthasars own, perhaps extravagant, claims about the relation-
ship, it seems odd that no contribution devoted solely to the close
examination of its unusual character has been oVered. Secondly,
there is no essay which attempts to assess the influence of
Balthasar on either Catholic life and thought or on the wider
theological landscape. (Edward T. Oakess Envoi: The future of
Balthasarian theology, good though it is, does not really address
this matter.) It could, perhaps, be argued that there is no place
for this kind of evaluation in a volume that is an expository
companionand I recognize the force of this assertion.
Nonetheless, some such attempt would have made a fascinating
epilogue or supplement to the book, for it could be argued
that Pope John Paul II, who was profoundly influenced by
Balthasars thinking, through his numerous encyclicals sought
to bring the theological perspectives of the Swiss theologian
strongly to bear upon the shape of the daily life and thought of an
entire generation.
doi:10.1093/jts/fli235 BRIAN HORNE
London