This book is a very fitting omaggio from Bruce Morrill to his college professor and then continuing mentor, Bernard Cooke. Their association goes back to Morrill's senior year as an undergrad major in religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross through to Cooke's death (xii). The personal anecdotes throughout attest to a beloved personal and professional relationship. At times, however, some comments (e.g., 105, 109) as well as most of the introduction by Elizabeth Johnson (vii–viii) iterate certain injustices that they judge occurred to Cooke because he left the Jesuits, resigned from the ordained ministry, and chose to marry.

The book is a combination of excerpts from Cooke's published writings, excerpts from an unpublished forty-thousand-word memoir (xii), and Morrill's commentary on both. Morrill has succeeded in combining these sources into a very readable text.

Quite understandably, Cooke's writings on sacraments in general from Christian Sacraments and Christian Personality (1965) and later Sacraments and Sacramentality (1984/94) and on church ministry in Ministry to Word and Sacrament (1976) are the theological foci of this book. Morrill usefully offers background to each and comments about them.

Morrill indicates that some found Cooke's predicating sacraments on “friendship” and then on “marriage” at least incorrect if not indefensible (128). In the interests of full disclosure I admit to being among them. That this kind of intimacy is possible or even desirable at moments of liturgy and sacrament is highly problematic, not to say very questionable and perhaps even unnecessary. Liturgy and sacrament are church events, celebrated in a community of believers, people who do not necessarily know one another, leading to communal self-transcendence. (The critiques from Victor Turner and Ronald Grimes about such presumptions are ad rem here.)

The longer and much more fully researched Ministry book was itself marred from the beginning by the way Cooke structured it. Is it really proper to separate ministry into the following categories, each comprising a section of the text: ministry as formation of community, to God's Word, service to the people of God, ministering to God's judgment, and ministry to the church's sacramentality? This is a highly problematic method to follow because these separate what is really inseparable.

This is a very “time-conditioned” work, therefore not likely to attract readers who did not know Cooke personally or did not live at the time when his work was popular. The subtitle of the book speaks of “narrative theology,” which is certainly appropriate. Might one also add “autobiographical theology”?