With this volume, editors Mary Ann Hinsdale, IHM, and Stephen Okey seek to accompany readers who are trying to understand what “human being” and “becoming” mean in “an increasingly violent and threatened world” (1). Almost three years into a pandemic, this is an even more pressing task. Divided in four parts, the volume covers methods, themes, figures, and contemporary issues in theological anthropology. Well written, researched, and edited, this handbook is an outstanding resource on Christian theological anthropology.

Part 1, “Methodology,” examines classical, modern, and postmodern methodological approaches to theological anthropology. The three chapters present clear, concise overviews of the major characteristics of classical, modern, and postmodern approaches to theological anthropology. They also offer brief assessments of the paradigms, so readers can see both the possibilities and limits of each approach. For example, in Kevin M. Vander Schel's assessment of modern methods, he notes that the “turn to the subject” both allows for a dynamic, yet concrete notion of human being and also reifies white male subjectivity. A number of authors in the volume contend with such possibilities and limits, making the methodological chapters invaluable for introducing and framing the handbook overall.

Part 2, “Key Themes,” lays out important themes in theological anthropology, with chapters on creation, imago dei, relationality, finitude, sin, grace, and freedom. In addition to presenting the theme as it has developed in Christian Scripture and history, authors also reflect on contemporary trends. Thus, Michelle A. Gonzalez draws impressively on Roberto Goizueta to illuminate imago dei through Jesus’ passion and suffering, Latino/a popular religion, and communal anthropology. And even as Shawn Colberg offers an impressive introduction to grace in Scripture and ancient, medieval, Reformation, and modern Christianity, his discussion of ecumenical dialogue and liberation theology at the contemporary frontiers gives readers a wonderful sense of how Christian theological understandings of grace continue to evolve.

Part 3, “Key Figures,” is the largest section of the handbook. It presents the theological anthropologies of Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Edward Schillebeeckx, Bernard Lonergan, John Paul II, Rosemary Radford Ruether (who, unfortunately, recently passed away), M. Shawn Copeland, and Orlando Espín. Authors give readers more than a simple presentation of each figure's thought by offering real insight into them. For example, Candace L. Kohli offers an important corrective to the dominant scholarly interpretation of Martin Luther's anthropology and instead reads it through his pneumatology. Susan Abraham reflects creatively on Rahner's notion of transcendence for twenty-first-century cyborgs (technologically enhanced humans). Néstor Medina deftly foregrounds context and culture in drawing out a theo-ethics of humanness in Orlando Espín's work.

Part 4, “Contemporary Constructive Concerns,” articulates emerging challenges and questions in theological anthropology: artificial intelligence, disability, racism, gender complementarity, neuroscience, neoliberalism, and emerging scientific research. These chapters reflect constructively at the edges of Christian anthropology today. Stephen Okey's outstanding chapter on artificial intelligence (AI) examines ways AI can help us understand what it means to be a human person and whether AI can be a person. Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones prophetically exposes the theology of race operating within Christian life and anthropology. Vincent J. Miller assesses neoliberalism's effect on human beings as it is produced through the markets. He calls for Catholic anthropology to resist an individualistic, competitive, and callous model of humanity in favor of an intrinsically interrelational one.

The handbook offers a uniformly excellent resource for advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and interested readers. Each chapter is short and accessible, easily read alone or together with other chapters. The volume's major limitation is the limitation of any handbook: space. The editors had to make tough choices and chose largely to focus on Roman Catholic and North Atlantic perspectives. In this regard, the handbook is not comprehensive (nor could it possibly have been so). As a result, it may not be the final word on the subject (pun intended), but it is a remarkable resource of many major thinkers and themes in Christian anthropology.