This volume in the Cambridge Companions to Religion series is an appropriate addition to its gallery of twentieth-century theologians. Karl Rahner (1904–84) was without doubt one of the greatest theologians of that century and perhaps the most influential Roman Catholic thinker in academic theology to date. This collection of articles pays tribute to four aspects of his work: spiritual, philosophical and theological roots; fundamental and dogmatic theology; reception and current influence; and evaluation and prospects. With the notable exception of Roman Siebenrock, who is the director of the Karl Rahner archives at the University of Innsbruck, no author with a German theological background contributes to this volume. This is a major omission since the influence of Rahnerian theology is still very much a German affair, apart from some Jesuit enclaves in the Hispanic and the Anglo-American world, where the study of Rahner comes second to the study of Ignatian spirituality. The absence of authors like Hansjürgen Verweyen, Magnus Striet or Thomas Pröpper is an opportunity missed. What is more, these German post-Rahnerian thinkers are not even mentioned in the index or bibliographies.

None the less, this mainly Anglo-American approach offers a balanced account of Rahner's transcendental method and theory of experience, and his Trinitarian theology and ecclesiology. In part i, some foundations of Rahnerian theology are well chosen, like its roots in Ignatian spirituality, the transcendental project or the centrality of grace and experience. In part ii, one could only have made a choice from the oeuvre of the prolific writer that Rahner was. The essay by Francis Schüssler Fiorenza on theological method is a clear starting-point for a study of Rahner, as are the contributions of Daniel Donovan on revelation and faith, and of David Coffey on the theology of the Trinity, perhaps Rahner's most important contribution to the history of theology. Siebenrock's account of the Christology is excellent, in both its historical, methodological and systematic treatment of the subject. In part iii, an attempt has been made to cover Rahner's influence on contemporary theology: it would have been interesting to learn what the future of his transcendental method might be. Michael Purcell touches on the subject by sketching Rahner's role in the passage from modernity to post-modernity, while Nicholas Adams provides an original comparison between George Lindbeck and Rahner. Part iv consists of an essay by Philip Endean and Karl Rahner himself. Endean offers a view on the challenges of Rahnerian theology for the future of faith in a modern world. By pointing at the understanding of experience as grace and of a theocentric worldview, he stresses the lasting importance of the Catholic thinker whose theology was fully modern, yet founded on divine promise rather then secular reason. Endean ends with the claim that Christian theology cannot survive with integrity without being at least anonymously Rahnerian.