BOOK REVIEWS functioning as a kind of limit to the purication of dispositions the prophets called for.

Isaacs sacrice he is effectively both priest and victim becomes a pregurement of the messiah who would deliver the limit or ultimate in response, the return of the gift of God (life) that is in some sense appropriate or adequate - which thereby becomes the acceptable sacrice and source for the effectiveness of all other sacrices, past and future. This expanded sacrice of Isaac lls out the suffering servant and replaces the Passover as the central act of Judaisms response and thereby of human response to Gods selfoffering, carried out on what became the Temple mount, and the ground of acceptability for all other Temple sacrices. Thus what seems new or strange to us about the gospels was familiar to Jews of the time. Christ-following Jews identied Jesus with the preexistent, eternal Word of God who is simultaneously the anticipated human Isaac whose response to God is so complete that it cannot be eclipsed or superseded; this is the basis for the urgent, uncompromising and denitive signicance announced about him in the gospels. Daly extends and strengthens these conclusions Girards insight that all by appropriating Rene

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humans begin life locked in mimetic rivalry. Both microscopically and macroscopically that is, individually and politically this threat is typically resolved by turning these heightened emotions violently against an outsider who is different, and thus easier to blame for the tension. The other becomes the scapegoat, whose death returns us to social order; this is the origin of sacrice. The Isaac-Jesus gure voluntarily undergoes such destruction to expose the lie the innocence of the victim on which the mechanism is based. This robs it of its effectiveness, and starts humanity on its second adventure (it was sacrice that made us human, if in a Hobbesian or fallen sense) that of substituting Christian sacrice (or anti-sacrice) as a kind of methadone to maintain order in society without falling back to the opium of scapegoating. We are inveterate mimetic creatures whereby we appropriate and mirror the desires of those around us; we are now called by the gospels to substitute the desires of Jesus for the ubiquitous desires of appropriative materialism that threaten to destroy us. Heythrop College

Patrick Madigan

Sacrifice and Community: Jewish Offering and Christian Eucharist. By Matthew W. Levering. Pp. x, 210, Illuminations: Theory and Religion. Malden MA, Blackwell, 2005, $90.00.

This book seeks to expound a theology of the Eucharist conscious of the roots of Christian worship in the cult of ancient Judaism, and in continuing dialogue with Judaism. The scope of the work, and its objectives, are admirable, and there can be no doubt that it will prove informative, particularly within the strand of Roman Catholic thought from which it emerges. There are, however, some aspects of the treatment which will be problematic for readers who do not share the theological orientation and are more critical in their reconstruction of Christian origins and of second temple Judaism. The discussion of the Jewish sacricial cult depends more upon the work of contemporary Jewish theologians than of critical scholarship, Jewish and Christian, of second temple Judaism. There is, similarly, too little attention to the evolution of the Christian Eucharist, and this too is somewhat selective. Consequently very limited appreciation is shown of the complexity of Jewish sacricial worship and the range of cultic motifs in Judaism for the early Church to reinterpret in its own ritual life. While the eirenic approach to Judaism is commendable, the manner in which it is pursued means that the riches of that tradition, and their appropriation and reinterpretation in early Christianity, are not appreciated. The Aqedah tradition is almost certainly attributed too much formative inuence on early Christian eucharistic theology, while the historical sacrices of the Jerusalem temple,

are virtually ignored. Conversely, the author is unduly dismissive of the contribution both to historical scholarship and to contemporary eucharistic theology of De Lubac, with whom he appears to be familiar only through a secondary source. The notion, crucial, one would have thought, to the title, of the Church as the Body of Christ is disregarded in favour of a eucharistic theology focussed exclusively on transubstantiation. While engaging with theologians of other traditions, particularly the (Russian) Orthodox, the theology expounded is essentially Thomist, articulated in contemporary philosophical categories. In places, particularly towards the end, Levering points to the crucial (pun intended) issue of how the worship of God relates to the corporate life of Christian communities. It would have been invaluable to see his insights expounded further. There can be no doubt that this book will be much appreciated within the theological tradition in which it was written, and more widely by theologians concerned with relating an inherited tradition of Christian worship and doctrine with contemporary philosophical and theological debates. But there is, inevitably, a great deal more in the Christian Eucharist, as well as the Jewish sacricial tradition, which remains to be drawn into theological discourse in the modern world. University of Zululand

N. H. Taylor