The author distinguishes three stages in St. Paul's concept of the Church: St. Paul begins with the Old Testament notion of the Chosen People of God, whose term is Christ. Its continuation is the Christian community, the heir of the promises, the true Church of Moses, the true Temple. The second stage is seen in St. Paul's missionary experience which deepens this concept. In the great Epistles to the Corinthians, Galatians and Romans the Christian community is distinguished from its Jewish antecedents by faith in Christ as the promised Messias. The new Israel of God, one body in Christ by their faith, are the several Gentile churches. The final stage is marked by the Captivity Epistles, when new problems have forced the Apostle to make his ex-pressions more precise. Christ is now shown in his cosmic role and the Church (again in the singular) as his heavenly Body, filled with his Spirit.

Such an analysis is inevitably more complex than that offered by standard theologies, but it is also far richer and certainly more true to St. Paul's mind. Père Cerfaux, who is also the author of Clirist in the Theology of St. Paul, insists on studying St. Paul's thought in its chronological setting, finding in it a gradual develop-ment towards a synthesis. His distinctive contribution to Pauliné theology is a refusal to treat the Epistles as a quarry from which St. Pauls thought can be hewed and set in a system of our own choos-ing. This work should be of the greatest interest to Christians of all denominations who are concerned over the meaning of the Church.