becoming. He does not deal with why new systems and life formsemerge. Is it due to the Darwinian survival of the fittest? Is there a godbehind such emergence bringing the world to be? These questions donot seem to have an answer. Similarly, he issues a call to action;however, the question of what kind of action or what the action hopesto accomplish is never dealt with. Thus, the goals Connolly wants toaccomplish are never communicated to the reader. In the course of hisargument this is not a major criticism, but a criticism nonetheless.

One may wonder what this text has to with religion and/or theol-ogy? For religion scholars and theologians, Connolly’s text offers someunique insights. Mainly, his analysis, while traditionally atheistic, takesinto account religion as one of the complex systems at work in ourworld. He takes into consideration the role that religion has in shapingand forming the imaginations of its adherents, to the point where hecan include it among discourses from biology, physics, psychology,sociology, and others. And, while his text is often not easy to getthrough, he does offer a compelling understanding of a pluralisticworld. Thus, for those interested in the intersection of religion andpolitics or those exploring critical theory or pluralism, Connolly’s textoffers a lot of fodder for thought. It is a highly imaginative, well thoughtout piece that can expand our understanding of the world in which welive.

Nathan CrawfordPlymouth, IN

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The Theology of Hugh of St Victor: An Interpretation, Boyd TaylorCoolman, Cambridge University Press, 2010 (ISBN 978-0-521-88625-3),258 pp., hb £53rirt_1053 302..432

Hugh of St Victor (d. 1141) was perhaps the most important of a sig-nificant group of teachers belonging to the Abbey of St Victor, justoutside the city walls of Paris, in the first half of the twelfth century – anera of intellectual and social change of such significance that it is fre-quently referred to as a ‘renaissance’. St-Victor itself aimed to couplethe new intellectual developments of the schools with the older idealsof monasticism, and Hugh’s theological writings have as their explicitpurpose the cultivation of good practice, religious and moral. It is in thislight that Coolman presents Hugh. He isolates an overarching theme inHugh’s work – that of reformation, or the ‘re-formation’ of the Christian,construed not merely as restoring what was lost at the Fall (or, as

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Coolman thinks of it, ‘deformation’), but changing the original form forthe better. The notion of form is richly textured, both scriptural andphilosophical: the Christian is to be structured in a new way. And this isachieved in part by construction: building a house, or, in Hugh’s ‘mastersymbol’, an ark, for divine indwelling. Coolman divides his presenta-tion into three parts, the first two of which loosely follow the bipartitedivision of Hugh’s major systematic treatise – De sacramentis, dividedinto the work of creation (formation) and the work of redemption(re-formation). The third part then describes the practices that lead tore-formation: memory, meditation, and moral behavior. Notions ofform and its relatives (reformation, deformation) are closely related toaesthetic ones – beauty, ugliness – and one important feature of Cool-man’s book is its emphasis on Hugh’s understanding of form in thisway: form as beauty.

I should say that this is an excellent introduction to the overall sweepof Hugh’s theology and its purposes. But it is not alone in being such anintroduction: in 2009–2010 no fewer than three were published, eachwith roughly similar concerns and similar conclusions: the one hereunder review; one by Paul Rorem in OUP’s Great Medieval Thinkersseries; and Reading and the Work of Restoration by Franklin T. Harkins,published by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto.Rorem focuses on Hugh’s theological pedagogy, and his book consistsmainly of a compressed summary of the contents of all of Hugh’sextensive theological and pedagogical oeuvre. In his quest for thorough-ness, Rorem sacrifices a great deal of depth. But he gives a good senseof the overall content of Hugh’s thought. Harkins and Coolmanhave rather closer affinities: both focus on the notion of restoration/reformation. They differ in details: Coolman makes the notion of refor-mation central, and explanatory of the notion of restoration, and showsthat Hugh persistently understands restoration in this more technicalway. He stresses more than Harkins the role of beauty, and the ultimategoal of re-forming the human race to something more than it was inAdam – from esse (being) to pulchrum esse (being beautiful). And thisallows Coolman to structure his work rather more elegantly thanHarkins does. But Coolman’s Hugh seems to have lived in an intellec-tual (though not cultural) vacuum: Coolman is good at placing Hughwithin the context of twelfth-century reform movements and ideas, butHarkins is much better on the general intellectual background to thewealth of concepts used by Hugh. For example, despite his welcomeemphasis on aesthetics in Hugh’s theology, Abbot Suger is mentionednot once. Equally, the notion of form is assumed with almost no attemptat explaining or contextualizing it in its Neoplatonic and Augustinianuses.

We do not need all three books – we perhaps need no more than one.Someone interested in a basic introduction to the whole expanse of

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Hugh’s thought should choose Rorem (who includes, incidentally, anexcellent appendix on the presence of Pseudo-Dionysius in Hugh’stheology). Someone interested in the Latin background to Hugh’sthought (Augustine, Cicero), should choose Harkins. But someonewanting a detailed reading offering an in-depth account of the integra-tion of the scholastic and the monastic should choose Coolman. What inmy view would be really valuable, given the existence of any one ofthese books, is something none of them provide: a serious analyticstudy of the dense theological content of Hugh’s understanding ofcentral Christian doctrines, and its background in earlier theologians.

Richard CrossUniversity of Notre Dame

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Les réalisations du renouveau trinitaire au XXe siècle [TheRealizations of the Trinitarian Renewal in the 20th Century],Emmanuel Durand and Vincent Holzer (eds.), Les Éditions du Cerf,2010 (ISBN 978-2-204-09136-7), 352 pp., pb €35rirt_1054 304..434

This collection of essays accompanies the editors’ 2008 volume, Lessources du renouveau de la théologie trinitaire au XXe siècle (Paris: LesÉditions du Cerf, 2008), to augment the growing understanding of theinter-confessional theological renewal that gained momentum in thelast century. A third volume on Trinitarian practical theology is forth-coming. Following the retrieval of biblical and patristic theologies, thisvolume contends that a profound renewal moved Trinitarian theologybeyond dusty De Trinitate scholastic manuals and, in the words ofBenoît Bourgine, ‘place[d] the Trinity at the center of theological debate’(p. 62). Emmanuel Durand briefly introduces this Catholic and Protes-tant renewal. Essays are classified into sections that portray the birth,manifestations, societal impact, and theological reception of thisrenewal.

Camille de Belloy’s and Durand’s essays provide the spiritual andontological foundations for later Trinitarian theologies. De Belloyshows how Ambroise Gardeil laid the foundation for Trinitarian con-ceptualizations of revelation by re-asserting the connection between thespiritual life and speculative theology. Gardeil explored the mind’sreceptivity to divine revelation and articulated how God inhabits thehuman soul by grace. By a close reading of Barth’s Church DogmaticsII/1, Durand articulates how Barth used the terms ‘act’ [Akt] and ‘event’[Ereignis] to signify the centrality of Christ’s incarnation into history for

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