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136 BOOK REVIEWS Christology and Spirituality. By WILLIAM THOMPSON. New York: Crossroad, 1991. Pp. 240. $27.50 (hardcover). The title of this work would better reflect its content if it were to read Contemporary Christologies and the French School of Spirituality, because the author has retrieved the major insights of that school (as well as those of selected other "incarnational mystics") in order to correct what he believes to be the imbalances in many contemporary christologies. Those imbalances, he proposes, are due to an overemphasis on methodology, critical history, and hermeneutics; the corrective supplied by the mystical heritage involves a return to, and a deeper appreciation of, contemplation, doxology, thanksgiving, praise, and ultimately -and especially-adoration. When this occurs, theology in general and christology in particular become forms of spirituality. Indeed, if mysticism is defined as " the consciously, deeply, radically, ' accomplished ' living out of Christian spirituality " (5) , which itself he defines as " attunement with the Spirit of Christ " (5) , theology and christology are ultimately called to become forms of mysticism. Many-if not most-of the themes that Thompson develops are rooted in the French School of spirituality (whose leading light was Cardinal Pierre de Berulle, founder of the French Oratory in the early seventeenth century) : the central focus upon adoration in Christian life, trinitarian christocentrism, a participative or " luminosity " model of truth, the significance of Mary as a christological source, the dynamic between clarity (theological precision) and love (or between " light " and " fire ") , the narrative or " theomeditative " character of theology and christology, the relation between "service" and "servitude," the centrality (and ascetical nature) of Christian experience in theology, the dialectic between theory and practice in general (or contemplation and action in particular) , and the importance of penetrating the " inner meaning " of the " mysteries " of the life of Jesus. These themesespecially the central one of adoration-" reverberate" through the other members of the French School (Madeleine de Saint-Joseph, JeanJacques Olier, Charles de Condren, St. John Eudes), as well as through its modern and contemporary representatives (Therese of Lisieux, Friedrich von Hiigel, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, and John Wesley). Given their importance in Thompson's treatment, some words about three of these themes in particular are in order: adoration, experience, and practice. The review will conclude with a short discussion of some correctives that the author proposes to contemporary " christologies from below" (correctives again rooted in the French School). BOOK REVIEWS 137 Adoration, Thompson holds, is crucial for the Christian life because only through it can "we move beyond manipulation and narcissistic possessiveness " in our relation to God; only by it can " we transcend the manipulative and the objectifying" (19). In adoration, "the focus shifts from ourselves to the Other " (67) and we apprehend, affirm, and enjoy the giveness of God (103). Following Von Hiigel, to whom Thompson attributes the modern rehabilitation of the concept, the "concrete and real" experience of adoration "intensifies the experi· ence of God's prevenience: the over-againstness of the religious experience , the 'grace' dimension" (103). "Adoration is what happens to love when it reaches sufficient depth" (111) ; it is what happens to contemplation when it reaches its "highest pitch" (136). The saints and mystics are characterized by the adorational experience in a " particularly intensified way;" they are " masters of adoration " (121). Thompson again follows the French School when he stresses that the incarnation may best he understood as the " irruption within history of adoration and service " (50) . Although, as Berulle puts it, "from all eternity there had been a God infinitely adorable," there still "had not been an infinite adorer" before the incarnation (51). The author agrees that" Jesus' entire being as incarnate is adoration" (51), and that Jesus, as the "God adoring God, has revealed the adorable glory of God" (101). Most vitally, the sovereign freedom and transcendence of God vis-a-vis the incarnation-so vital christologicallycan ultimately be recognized only by adoration: " where adoration weakens, so does incarnational faith," because the "personalization of God " in the incarnation, inextricably hound up with the supremely beautiful, sovereignly free subject, is compromised (165). Thompson returns again and again to these themes throughout the book, and adoration may well he the key concept...

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