The Australian theologian Scott Cowdell explores how "having faith" has changed under the influence of modernity and post-modernity in the West. He returns faith from pious sentimentality and arid philosophy of religion to the realm of "participating knowing," "paradigmatic imagination," and personal transformation where it belongs-as a "form of life," shaped by encounter with Jesus Christ and worked out through the Eucharistic community. This is shown to have been the typical understanding of faith from St Paul to the Fathers to the medieval monastic theologians. Since the rise of nominalism, however, modern individuals have struggled to maintain this participatory vision of faith as a formative habitat. Mysticism is as close as modernity got, while "officially" faith was annexed by modern Western culture, coming to share its anxious need for certainty and control - systemic, exclusive, and violent-tending. Scott Cowdell has written a wide-ranging book, bringing together several normally separate debates while tackling the problem from a distinctive perspective. He explores faith against the backdrop of secularisation, the collapse of community, and the encroachment of an intentionally destabilising consumer culture. He expounds the nature of desire in terms of imitation and rivalry, and the violent false-sacred roots of cultural formation evident in the modern Wests many victims, all according to the uniquely comprehensive vision of Rene Girard.

Finally, he dismisses todays growing mood of militant religious scepticism as philosophically outdated and out of its depth before the resilient confidence of a genuine living faith. What Cowdell calls "abiding faith" emerges as a venerable yet strikingly contemporary possibility. This is good news for todays "homeless hearts" - there is the gift of a secure identity and a mature spirituality on offer, within a liberating, inclusive, world-affirming, ecclesial form of life. "Scott Cowdell is remarkable. He works on a vast canvas and demonstrates a competence in the technical literature second to none; yet he writes in a compelling way about a mystical, relational faith that can and should be the basis of a modern, western apologetics. A tour de force that warrants careful study." - IAN MARKHAM, Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary "A theology of vast learning and generous spirit, rare in its mystically tinged but resolute faith. Even the non-Girardian reader may treasure the modest metaphysics and participatory knowing by which Cowdell builds his postmodern bridge between traditional and progressive faith.

" - CATHERINE KELLER, Professor of Constructive Theology, Drew University SCOTT COWDELL is an Associate Professor at Charles Sturt University, Australia and holds a research fellowship in public and contextual theology. An Anglican priest, he is Canon Theologian of the Diocese of Canberra & Goulburn.