Anyone looking for a carefully argued, well written, well documented, provocative and practical proposal for how Christians can be visibly and not just spiritually united will want to read this book. In many ways this is a masterful attempt, from a Reformed perspective, to engage in honest self-questioning and then to expand this into mutual engagement with other denominations by focusing on the eucharist. As the title suggests, George Hunsinger sees a very definite connection between the eucharist and ecumenism and in fact he argues throughout this work that ecumenical convergence will only be possible when the churches of the Reformation, without surrendering their essential beliefs, join together with Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox by explicitly affirming Nicene Christianity, a high view of the eucharist and ‘some sort of episcopal polity’ (pp. 314, 212).

Hunsinger explicitly opposes what he calls enclave theology, that is, a theology that is unwilling to learn from other traditions and the kind of liberal academic theology that refuses to allow the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed, along with the creed of Chalcedon, to dictate its understanding of Christ's person and work and of the church's social action. In the final section of the book he exploits this thinking with care and precision and to great effect in dialogue with H. Richard Niebuhr, showing brilliantly how and why critics of the Nicene faith are unable to understand properly key doctrines such as the atonement in its relation to the eucharist and the kind of practice that follows such understanding precisely because they have theoretically lost the necessary trinitarian connection which would enable them to do so. For Hunsinger, it is imperative to acknowledge the full deity of Christ and the inseparability of his person and work to understand his real presence and how our ethical behaviour follows from the gospel and is not a matter of legal action supposedly leading towards the gospel. Hunsinger's own ecumenical instincts seem to accord with those of Hans Küng when he wrote that ‘The road to unity is not the return of one church to another, or the exodus of one church to join another, but a common crossroads, the conversion of all churches to Christ and thus to one another’ (p. 21).

In four parts, the book begins with a very lengthy and thought-provoking discussion of real presence; moves to an interesting and important discussion of eucharistic sacrifice which represents a significant contribution towards an ecumenical understanding of the eucharist along with a preliminary discussion of ministry; then proceeds to an equally interesting and more thorough discussion of eucharistic ministry; and concludes with a very worthwhile discussion of the eucharist and social action, demonstrating how and why proper practice can only follow right belief as it did for the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 11.

As he does in a number of instances throughout this work with respect to difficult and divisive issues, Hunsinger argues e.g. that since the doctrine of transubstantiation is non-negotiable for Roman Catholics, a way forward could perhaps still take place since in many ways Eastern Orthodoxy, which is not unacceptable to Roman Catholicism in its eucharistic practice, ‘allows but does not require’ this doctrine and instead is open to a range of other views. Hunsinger very clearly wants to move away from a Zwinglian view of the sacraments which sees them more as mental actions (of remembrance with respect to the eucharist) or ethical responses to God's present actions in Christ and the Spirit than as means of grace (Calvin) and distances himself from Barth's view of the eucharist as well, since Barth engaged in the type of Reformation polemics that Hunsinger wishes to avoid. Hunsinger prefers to follow the thinking of Barth's student, Thomas F. Torrance, on the sacraments. He believes that even if the divided churches cannot come to full agreement on all issues, they can at least agree that differing views may be held in a way that is not church-dividing. While following Torrance is very helpful to him in his discussion of eucharistic sacrifice and ministry, there are unfortunately some problems when it comes to real presence.

Roman Catholics may be delighted to see how far this Reformed theologian is willing to move towards their officially defined understanding of real presence as ‘transubstantiation’ using what he deems to be a more acceptable mediating conception which is present in some patristic theology and in the thought of a number of Reformers such as Peter Vermigli, Martin Bucer and Thomas Cranmer. Hunsinger even thinks that Calvin and Luther came close to espousing this view. And he claims that he learned this from Thomas F. Torrance (pp. x, 46). This mediating conception is ‘transelementation’ (metastoicheiosis). But the fact that Torrance never espoused such a view and probably never would is an indication of why I suspect that Reformed theologians may be a good deal less delighted with this proposal, except perhaps for many of the eleven modifications of ‘transubstantiation’ offered by Hunsinger (pp. 74–5). There is no room in a brief review such as this to discuss this matter in depth. But it is worth noting that T. F. Torrance refused to focus on the elements when thinking about real presence and actually dismissed such an approach as a kind of phenomenalism which fails to realise that Christ's real presence is his spiritual presence and that we feed upon the body and blood of the risen, ascended and advent Lord in faith through the bread and wine and not in identity with them. Curiously, Hunsinger only cites one reference to Torrance's use of the word ‘transelementation’ in a discussion of Cyril's view of christology which does not represent any approval of the concept by Torrance for use in connection with the eucharist. While Hunsinger's discussion of the views of Thomas Aquinas and the Reformers is most interesting and instructive and would be very useful for a serious discussion of real presence, his own proposed solution to the traditional difficulties associated with real presence is not likely to solve very much for the Reformed. He is asking them to move away from an understanding of real presence which refuses to focus on the elements and towards a view which is embraced especially by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologians.

I think Reformed theologians would still object to a number of crucial ideas which materialise with the notion of ‘transelementation’. First, the notion that there is an identity between the sign and the thing signified such that ‘the sign becomes the reality without ceasing to be a sign’ (pp. 82, 92). That is one of the puzzling features of Hunsinger's argument. While he clearly and quite properly wishes to avoid any crude identification of bread and wine with Christ's heavenly body and blood, and while he wishes to envision this presence in a manner similar to what he calls a ‘Chalcedonian pattern’ of unity and distinction, without separation or confusion (p. 40), he also embraces the idea that signs are both identical with and distinct from the realities they signify, following Alexander Schmemann's symbolic view (p. 63). Unfortunately, there is an inherent difficulty with the symbolic view which will not allow Hunsinger to maintain consistently his own belief that the eucharist itself does not create community (p. 261) because part of the very symbolic view he embraces advances the theory that such symbols ‘are capable of communicating it [the reality]’ (p. 63). Second, this thinking leads to a view of causality which Hunsinger theoretically rejects, but then to some extent unhappily advances with the notion that the sacrament effects what it signifies and signifies what it effects (p. 78). Third, Hunsinger believes that Christ's body and blood actually are contained in the bread and wine. Even though Hunsinger is at pains to modify this with his Reformed view that Christ's own body and blood primarily contain the bread and wine, he still accepts the container view of this matter in its more traditional form as well (pp. 75, 170), a view unequivocally rejected by T. F. Torrance. Fourth, by focusing on the elements as he has, the entire issue of adoration of the host within the celebration and especially outside it, along with reservation of the host for the sick arises, whereas if one's attention is supposed to be focused on the presence of the risen and ascended Lord, then this issue might not even surface. While Hunsinger theoretically rejects views of causality which compromise the sole Lordship of Christ acting as the subject of the sacramental event, it is difficult to see how this Reformed position can be reconciled with the four points just mentioned.

Matters become even more difficult when we turn to Hunsinger's discussion of ministry which, in spite of the fact that he is able to muster a number of statements from the Roman Catholic side in support of the view that Christ is the sole High Priest and therefore the principal subject of the eucharistic celebration, the fact remains that for Roman Catholics the whole issue of apostolic succession and the nature of ordination must be understood in such a way that ordained priests or ministers are thought in some sense to differ in essence from the ‘common priesthood of the faithful’ (p. 205) and to have power over the eucharist and thus over their congregations in a hierarchical priesthood which tends to identify power in the church in the form of its bishops and priests with the power of Christ himself. That is one of the weaknesses of this book. Hunsinger faithfully presents the Roman Catholic views along with arguments by contemporary Catholic theologians rebutting those views. He then makes his Reformed case against identifying Christ with the church and against any ‘liturgical Pelagianism’ in a very convincing manner. But he follows that by asserting that Reformed theologians should stretch and accept something like the Roman Catholic view of ordination and ministerial activity, even though part of that view clearly involves the idea that the priest ‘continues’ Christ's function.

T. F. Torrance and Alasdair Heron, another theologian Hunsinger relies upon, both unequivocally rejected what they called ‘sacerdotalism’ with respect to the eucharist because it is the Lord's Supper and does not belong to the church and because they rejected any idea that priests or ministers ‘continued’ Christ's function. Hunsinger thoroughly agrees with them in this and yet he somehow believes this view can be reconciled with some version of the idea that priests and ministers act in persona Christi in the Roman Catholic sense (p. 207). While Hunsinger seems more than willing to accept a role for the bishop of Rome in a visibly united church, and while he clearly wishes to understand that role from within a Reformed perspective as a role of witness much more than a hierarchically legal understanding of transmitting grace to the rest of the church, it seems likely that any potential agreement will be thwarted by the Roman Catholic view of infallibility. Even Hunsinger, who is eminently patient in questioning views within his own tradition, realises that it will take the miraculous action of the Holy Spirit to overcome the difficulties between Christian churches created by the ‘nearly’ infallible declarations of the magisterium that it is impossible for women to be ordained priests, a view shared by leading Eastern Orthodox theologians (p. 235). Hunsinger's arguments in favour of women's ordination and against the current official Roman Catholic view are theologically sensible and plausible and are presented with care and precision; he demonstrates that the teaching that only men can be ordained is actually more an innovation than a traditional view, as claimed by the Roman Catholic Church. But there is a deeper issue running through all of this. How can a church change what is very nearly an infallible declaration that only men can act in persona Christi, especially if the church itself is understood as an opus operatum and thus as a sacrament? Will Reformed theologians ever be able to accept the view that ministers act in persona Christi in any sense without betraying their own Reformed view that no one but Christ can act in his own person? Simply adding a Reformed interpretation to a Roman Catholic teaching may not be enough to satisfy either side, but it may lead both sides to reflect more carefully upon just how they may move more towards Christ and thus more towards each other. If this book can initiate such a move, then it will become a very important book indeed.