It is not uncommon for focused thematic applications or overviews of Levinas's writings (e.g. in translators' prefaces to his works in English) to leave the uninitiated reader in a state of greater perplexity about his overall project than would avoiding the secondary commentaries altogether and moving straight into the original texts. Levinas and Theology refreshingly avoids that tendency and has many good things to say in its favour. The book contains excellent summary explications of the basic aspects of Husserl and Heidegger on which Levinas's work draws so heavily. These are presented with a clarity, simplicity and conciseness which demonstrates a great depth of understanding of the whole phenomenological tradition on the author's part, and which can thus be illuminating both for readers already familiar with Levinas and those who are not.

The overview of Levinas himself, focused, as it is, specifically on his past and potential contributions to theology, is by and large equally well structured, touching instructively on many of the main Levinasian themes, and generally pursuing clear lines of reasoning within each chapter.

It would have been helpful for a clear chronology of Levinas's works to have been included. Levinas's philosophical thought developed considerably from the earlier to later periods, and there can be a tendency in this book to ignore that, especially when it tries to bring some of the earlier, more easily theologically resonant material, to bear upon his later work, which thus misrepresents it. It can accordingly be made to seem that Levinas's mature (and more powerful) thought is more harmonious with central Christian themes than it really is. This becomes especially pronounced in the author's treatment of ‘incarnation’ in Levinas as ‘enfleshed’, when Levinas himself in his later philosophical writings strongly distances himself from incarnation understood in any such way (see e.g. Totality and Infinity, 210–218, especially 204, 206, 208). But this is a relatively minor grievance compared to the many other good things the book has to offer.