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John Behr The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2006 Pp. 186. $16.95 (paper).
Fr. John Behr has written a number of erudite, accessible, and important works, beginning with Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement (2000), arguably one of the most significant works on Irenaeus to appear since G. Wingren's Man and the Incarnation. Behr's Way to Nicaea (2001) and subsequent The Nicene Faith (2004) provide a fresh examination of the theological issues involved in the development of normative Christology and emerging Trinitarian theology and are revisionist in the best sense of the term. They not only demonstrate sensitivity to the historical and social factors at play in these debates but emphasize just as importantly the properly theological issues that were at stake. Behr's works reflect a historically informed awareness of just how theology was done, so to speak, in the first centuries, a perspective sometimes lacking in other studies of the same period.
The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death is the author's latest contribution. In a sense it is a book that could...