In this ground-breaking study, LaCouter offers a brilliantly eloquent and razor sharp analysis of one the modern tradition's great theorisers of prayer. Everyone credits Balthasar with making one of the strongest turns to prayer in modern theology, but this is the most extensive and doctrinally rigorous investigations to date in English-language scholarship of how the 'drama of prayer' actually plays out in Balthasar's famously prayerful theology. The unashamedly doctrinal structure of the book is used creatively to leverage unseen aspects of Balthasar's theorisation of prayer, chart its reception by modern theology, and respond patiently and comprehensively to some of Balthasar's most formidable critics. Balthasar and Prayer is, simply speaking, a foundational work for anyone interested in modern theology.

Ashley Cocksworth, University of Roehampton, UK

Balthasar and Prayer not only deftly elucidates the nature of prayer as trinitarian, Christological, and eschatological, but also makes sense of Balthasar's sprawling corpus, its complex reception, and how the thematic of prayer animates the deep structures of his thought. In this bold and masterful performance, LaCouter enacts the very parrhesia he recommends!

Jennifer Newsome Martin, The University of Notre Dame, USA

In Balthasar and Prayer, Travis LaCouter offers a valuable exegesis of Hans Urs von Balthasar's theology of prayer and makes a convincing case for Balthasar's account of prayer as a meaningful framework through which to engage in Balthasar's theology on the whole … The book commends itself as an excellent contribution to the present state of Balthasarian scholarship, both outlining prayer as a crucial piece in Balthasar's theological thought and showing how Balthasar's hermeneutic of prayerful theology might transform not only an understanding of Balthasar's larger theological project, but rather encourage new fruitful-even prayerful-ways of explicating theology in the present time.

Joel Clarkson, The Heythrop Journal