Though a giant of North American ecclesiology, Joseph Komonchak has never written a monograph that definitively outlines his ecclesial vision. Martin Madar, who wrote his dissertation on Komonchak after taking a class with him, hopes to fill that lacuna. As the author recounts, although ecclesiology often appeared strangely abstract to him, “Not until I encountered the writings of Joseph Komonchak did the strangeness of ecclesiology begin to fade away” (164). For Madar, Komonchak's ecclesial realism, his ability to balance a church of God and its human face, stands as his chief theological achievement.

To capture this achievement, Madar charts Komonchak's thought with both nuance and depth. The book's second chapter outlines influences on him: the Second Vatican Council, his study under Bernard Lonergan, American Protestant theologians such as James Gustafson interested in balancing the church's human and divine character, and social theorists such as Peter Berger who furnished helpful categories for understanding the church. The third chapter summarizes incisively the foundations that Komonchak has attempted to supply postconciliar ecclesiology. Lonergan has made Komonchak sensitive to the need for a systematic ecclesiology that integrates first-order images and “models” of the church. In approximating that aim, Komonchak warns against false dichotomies between the gift of the church and our active task to enact it. So too, relatedly, Komonchak dismisses a “theological reductionism” that would abstract ecclesiology from a concrete set of Christian believers. For Komonchak, the “central challenge of ecclesiology is … how to understand the church as one reality comprising two dimensions: human and divine” (75). As Madar's first chapter illustrates, this question has plagued ecclesiology throughout the second millennium, especially after the Second Vatican Council.

The rest of the third chapter rehearses Komonchak's solution. Beneath all descriptive images of the church, Komonchak's foundational appellation for the church is a “congregatio or convocatio fidelium” (77). As a gathering, the church can be understood as a social reality, an “us.” And yet, the fidelium that enflames this congregatio distinguishes the church as an “us” gathered through the common gift of a divine grace that precedes us. Thus, the church takes on an “event” character as we actively and collectively realize this gift throughout our daily lives. Because of the ongoing, and so incomplete, character of this task, Komonchak believes that, rather than understanding it as incarnational (as does Lumen Gentium §8), the church is sacramental. Madar proffers that this claim strikes a balance between a church of God and its human face most effectively (88). Methodological implications follow: because the church is inescapably human, any responsible systematic ecclesiology must incorporate categories from the social sciences and history. The book's final two chapters demonstrate how Komonchak's ecclesiology informs his studies on the local church and ecclesial authority.

Madar achieves a difficult task in synthesizing the work of one he rightly calls “a visionary, deserving a distinguished place” (164) and “a master of balance” (165). Given Komonchak's legacy, this book deserves study in graduate seminars in ecclesiology; after all, no ecclesiology class worth its salt can leave his work untouched. One wonders, however, why Madar devotes only two paragraphs to Komonchak's understanding of the church as a “redemptive community” (87). Komonchak's wedding of ecclesiology with soteriology through Lonergan's theology of history stands as a breakthrough achievement; indeed, Komonchak spends a sizeable portion of his Foundations of Ecclesiology spelling out the implications of this claim for understanding ecclesial mission. Here, Madar could have also integrated Komonchak's penetrating analysis of the tensions during the drafting of Gaudium et Spes that have shaped the church's mission since the Second Vatican Council; this work receives no mention in the book. To have made room for it, perhaps Madar might have shortened his first chapter, which occupies almost a third of the book to relay a standard historical narrative of ecclesiology. So too might have Madar further discussed the relevance of Komonchak's insights for our current ecclesiological landscape. Although his book is largely expository, Madar does occasionally provide such commentary; in particular, he believes that Komonchak can provide significant foundations for Pope Francis’ retrieval of ecclesial synodality (102, 139, 151). Readers are left wanting for more contemporary applications like these. We can only hope that people like Madar continue to carry Komonchak's torch into the future.