It is entirely understandable that English-speaking readers with theological interests who pick up the first volume of The Glory of the Lord should feel that they are about to enter a somewhat inhospitable land. It may be discomforting for them to think that this is followed by six more, equally generous, volumes in the same series, or by fourteen further volumes if we are to include the Theo-Drama and Theo-Logic, which together make up Balthasar's project as a whole. Use of a tape measure or weighing scales will confirm that this is a very Germanic way of 'doing theology'. Readers will also quickly note that multi-volume works of this kind have to be read in their own particular way. Much of what is included is intended to exemplify the key ideas and does not need to be scrutinized with the same attentiveness as those passages or sections which set out the governing ideas of the entire project. The skill of reading a multi-volume work of this kind, then, is to identify as quickly as possible the guideline passages which are decisive for reading the whole. Many of these can be found in the first volume, Seeing the Form, and in the fifth volume (of the English edition) on modern metaphysics, although it is part of Balthasar's method to scatter highly judicious and insightful theoretical passages in the interstices of lengthy historical discussions.