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Christian Theology and Tragedy: Theologians, Tragic Literature and Tragic Theory. Edited by Kevin Taylor and Giles Waller. Ashgate Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011. 259 pp. $99.95 (cloth). This collection of essays plumbs the deep well of tragic literature, and from it brings forth nourishing water to stimulate and sustain the enterprise of theology. With insight and creativity, the authors probe how and where tragedy may illuminate Christian thought. The introduction, written by the editors, gives a general description of the goals of the book and some of the issues involved, as well as providing a brief description of the controversy over how exactly one should define “tragedy,” such that its resources can be utilized for the sake of theology. In the main text, first, several examples of literature, both secular and religious, are analyzed from the specific perspective of Christian theology: Judah, Samson, Saul, and Jesus (Ben Quash); Agamemnon and Abraham (Jennifer Wallace); Primo Levi and Dante (Vittorio Montemaggi); and Timon o f Athens and Job (Robin Kirkpatrick). Second, attention is paid to theologians who have addressed tragedy in their work: Donald MacKinnon (Giles Waller); Simone Weil (Adrian Poole); Hans Urs von Balthasar (Kevin Taylor); and C. S. Lewis (Michael Ward). Third, future directions for the interaction of theology and tragedy are sketched: Craig Hovey discusses the place of the Dionysian in Christianity by way of a close reading of Nietzsche; Larry Bouchard addresses the implications of the “juxtaposition” of contingency and culpability in the world, looking at Waiting fo r Godot and Denys Arcand s play Jesus o f Montreal; Douglas Hedley explores the definition of tragedy through the thought of Schopenhauer, Wagner, René Girard, and the concept of sacrifice; and David Cunningham writes of the importance of taking into account actual performances of drama when analyzing tragedy theologically. Finally, David Ford, the current Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University, provides a kind of epilogue, appraising some of the contributions and noting that a theological engagement with tragedy also has the benefit of moving theologically not only past its usual disciplinary borders, but indeed across the divide between sacred and secular study. To sketch the contents in this way may be to cause the book to sound more fragmented than it is. Several conversation partners are found in many places throughout the book: Aristotle, of course, but also Hegel and Nietzsche, as well as more contemporary writers such as George Steiner, Terry Eagleton, and David Bentley Hart. That continuity helps give more of a sense of an ongoing conversation happening across the chapters, even if the responsive voices are coming from many different perspectives. Because there is a great deal of diversity in topic and tone, an understandable result of having scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds

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represented, the essays do not always fit together seamlessly Their depth and quality, however, is such that none of them is superfluous. This is to the benefit of a reader, though it is to the detriment of a reviewer: the space of a book review cannot do justice to the many ideas that are worthy of further exploration. Of particular note, however, is Cunningham’s chapter “Tragedy Without Evasion: Attending [to] Performances.” His assertion that understanding tragedy is impossible without doing so in dialogue not only with texts, but also with actual performances of the texts, is a point that, once it is made (but only then), seems obvious. His examples—from Aeschylus (the Oresteia trilogy), Shakespeare (Julius Caesar), and Arthur Miller (All My Sons)—are thoroughly convincing; indeed, the essay casts a light backward over the preceding chapters, causing one to reconsider them in its wake. Moreover, he helpfully frames the discussion in dialogue with the critique of John Milbank, whose theological criticisms of tragedy are highly influential. It is a remarkable, even revelatory essay, and one hopes that Cunningham will follow through with his remark about preparing a longer treatment of the topic. Plato was famously suspicious of the tragic poets; not infrequently, Christian theologians have been as well. In many different ways, the authors of these collected essays show that, on the contrary, there is much to be learned from studying tragic literature that is decidedly edifying for the life of Christian faith seeking understanding. Jo e l D a n i e l s

Boston University Boston9 Massachusetts

A Silent Action: Engagements with Thomas Merton. By Rowan Williams. Louisville, Ky.: Fons Vitae, 2010. 96 pp. $19.95 (cloth). In A Silent Action, we find collected the fruit of four decades’ worth of Rowan Williams’s “engagements” with Thomas Merton. This short book consists of five essays and a poem, all of which appear elsewhere but few of which would otherwise be easily available. The book will prove extremely useful for anyone who is a student of Merton’s work or of Williams. But, even more importantly, the pieces collected show us how to wrestle with a modern spiritual classic, especially one as enticing as Merton’s life and prolific literary output, without losing the true subject matter of that classic in the quest for a relatively adequate interpretation. In other words, to borrow from the

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