An introduction to the thought of the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil and her relevance to theology.

Simone Weil - philosopher, religious thinker, mystic, social/political activist - is notoriously difficult to categorize, since her life and writings challenge traditional academic boundaries. As many scholars have recognized, she set out few, if any, systematic theories, especially when it came to religious ideas. In this book, A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone and Lucian Stone illuminate the ways in which Weil stands outside Western theological tradition by her use of paradox to resist the clamoring for greater degrees of certainty. Beyond a facile fallibilism, Simone Weil's ideas about the super-natural, love, Christianity, and spiritual action, and indeed, her seeming endorsement of a sort of atheism, detachment, foolishness, and passivity, begin to unravel old assumptions about what it is to encounter the divine.

"Two things need to be said in praise of this book and its ability to uncover Weil’s depth, leaving a good deal of her cutting edge insights about human selves intact, and not muted ... This book fortunately keeps a strong sense of Weil’s edge. But this is because, second, in talking about Weil’s issues, it does so by itself engaging those issues in some wonderfully concrete, contemporary ways. The use of studies, contemporary philosophical literature, including feminist philosophy, and the illustrations used to support those points are all exceptionally to the point ... Not only a very good, and insightful book on Simone Weil’s thinking, but a very good and wise book overall, that will bear close attention itself." - H-France Review