This is the first time that the classic work of Fr Afanasiev, originally completed in 1950, has been published in English. Alongside a resurgence of titles by Fr Sergius Bulgakov now in English, it forms a vital link – almost a generational link – between the thought of the latter and the writings of Fr Alexander Schmemann. Of course, the ‘eucharistic theology’ of Russian Orthodox émigrés has been around long enough to be both adopted and critiqued, east and west, yet this translation bears effective witness to what elicited such interest in the first place. The author's thesis contends that the post-Nicene model of canonical ecclesiology bears distressingly little resemblance to the model given in the earliest scriptural and patristic sources. He maintains that the primitive Church founded, governed and structured by the Holy Spirit loses much of its charismatic dimension, at least empirically, when subsumed by the alien principles of Roman law: strong words from one who taught canon law at St Sergius. His rehabilitation of the original ‘eucharistic ecclesiology’ begins by arguing for the royal priesthood of all believers who are ordained in the sacrament of baptism. These ‘laics’, not laity, enjoy a consecration whose role in the eucharistic celebration is every bit as priestly as the ‘clerics’. Chapter ii then explains the way in which early baptismal prayers and rites are a true charismatic ordination; there are not two strata, priests and laity, the one ordained and the other not. Nevertheless, the author then describes the legitimate separation of priest and laity in chapter iii, a functional separation that threatens to obscure their ontological unity. Afanasiev strongly underscores the full catholicity of the local Church prior to any ‘universal’ Church; in this local Church, God himself ordains laics for particular ministries, and the congregants themselves actually ‘receive’ such ordinands to specific ministries. Such is the ideal. The second half of the book pays sustained attention to the charism of presidency, particularly the proestos, within the eucharistic assembly. Afanasiev is keen to emphasise what appears like an oxymoron: the ‘charismatic order’ that construed the Church from start. A local Church simply could not exist for him without a ministry of presiders, even if the nature of bishops and presbyters in the primitive era differs from the nature of bishops and presbyters in the third and fourth centuries. As Afanasiev concedes true development (or degeneration) of these offices, he locates the essence of their development from within the Church; a supposed ‘uniformity’ of primitive ecclesial organisation exists from the start because of a uniform essence of the Church. The book concludes with his examination of how, via Ignatius, the office of the senior presbyter becomes the high priestly office of a bishop. Such an office, he opines, later weakens an understanding of the priestly status of all Christians, and the juridical, episcopal principle of the Church thus overtakes the eucharistic principle. It is a bit startling to read a book from the author of The Church which presides in love that has not one word to say in 300 pages about ecumenism, schism or heresy. The author's interests are elsewhere. Read alongside Metropolitan Zizioulas, he appears no less idealistic; read alongside Fr Florovsky, he appears no less sacramental in his definition of the Church. Fr Afanasiev joins a line of Orthodox theologians who attempt to understand the Church – that ‘subject which is not a subject’, according to Fr Schmemann – beyond the standard, canonical, approach. His voice, in this edition's English, sounds timely even now.