LAUSR

in Williams’s theories of mediation. Even though Williams perceives divine agency as tranquil and procreative, he comprehends creation as distressed. Jesus himself is a concentration of the conflicting pressures and tensions, that demonstrates what it is to be human. Williams opines that the separate, divergent Gospel accounts maintain the original intent of Christian storytelling, to entice the listener into the dramatic tensions of Jesus’ life. The pinnacle of this tension occurs with the silence of the cross. G. explains that Williams highlights the dual opacity and intensity of the mediation in this God-event. “The generative reality of God comes to us most decisively through the syncrisis of silence and inarticulacy that is a tortured and incoherent body dissolving toward death” (109). The scholar holds that the Resurrection cannot exist as a historical event, but is perceptible only in its effects. Interestingly, for Williams the most powerful and central theology of the Resurrection event is Jesus’ legacy of absence, not presence. His body no longer stands as an item in the universe, but a generative and creative non-presence. The missing conclusion to Mark’s Gospel validates that Jesus’ future cannot be definitively narrated. “This non-presence is the mode in which Christ is the ‘last word’ to us, engendering perennial growth. A resuscitated corpse, one that can be itemized in the world, might provide a more determining word” (165). The author argues that Williams’s eschatology links closely with his Christology, as the conditions of fallenness and the struggles of living in creation are interrelated. Christ’s “last word” of non-tragic end stands in the middle of Creation. God endlessly restores and guides human beings in a return to Him, overcoming any instances of tragedy. G. stresses that Williams’s eschatology maintains creatures in their settings of origin, in which they heal and grow in their relationships to one another. The author proffers that Williams’s eschatology could be bolstered by a more direct account of the possibilities inherent in the end-times. Nevertheless, G. credits Williams’s innovative re-centering of theology away from the primordial fall to the “last word” that endlessly engenders life-giving possibilities. G.’s volume generally accomplishes his goals of constructing Williams’s Christ, from his theological logic and an array of publications. It exhibits a meticulous investigation of passages and balanced appraisal of Williams. The book tends to be stronger on ontology and soteriology, but lighter on the teaching and prophetic roles of Jesus. While the book would be a difficult text to navigate for those not in the discourse, it would be well suited for those acquainted with Christology and Williams’s scholarship.