The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St. John of the Cross.

Williams's book is also an updated edition of a book first published under the title Christian Spirituality more than a decade ago. Based on lectures he gave in England, Williams explicates the spiritual doctrine of a select number of spiritual masters from the second century down to the period of Saint John of the Cross. He deals with his chosen figures in historical order but his work is too narrowly chosen to appreximate anything like that of a history of spirituality. His observations on various figures are stimulating enough. I liked his description of Aquinas under the rubric of the ecstatic. His pages on the early martyr and apostolic father, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, were quite moving. Despite its brevity and the magnitude of the topic there are some very instructive reflections in this somewhat sketchy work.

My less than total enthusiasm for this book, however, is based mainly on the less than thorough way in which it was revised. For one thing, it simply will not do to ramble through a millennium and a half of Christian spirituality and, apart from a glancing paragraph on Julian of Norwich, ignore women as totally as Williams does. Some reflection on spiritual mistresses just needed to be added. Furthermore, in the updated readings, the job of revision seems half done. Williams still recommends E.A. Peers for John of the Cross, seemingly unaware of the Kavanaugh/Rodriguez edition of the Collected Works, and cites the Penguin versions of the English mystics despite the wonderful editions now available in the Classics of Western Spirituality. Finally, should a second printing of this book appear, Origen's name should get spelled correctly on the back cover. A little thing like that, I'm afraid, is an indication of the speed with which this "updating" was done.