Book Review: "The Fourth Cup" by Scott Hahn

On Holy Thursday and Good Friday last week I read Scott Hahn's The Fourth Cup: Unveiling the Mystery of the Last Supper and the Cross. I received this book in 2018 but had not read it until now. Scott Hahn combines his conversion story--familiar to some readers from his best-selling book written with his wife Kimberly Rome Sweet Home--with his scriptural and theological investigations of the meaning of the words Jesus spoke on the Cross before He died (quoted in St. John's Gospel) "It Is Finished." In the introduction Hahn mentions that he has presented his talk on "The Fourth Cup" many times and this book represents a fuller telling of the background to that presentation.

As he notes the question he sought to answer is "What" Is Finished? What is "It"? He was a Protestant when he first considered the question and as he studied it studied Jewish and early Christian sources it influenced his decisions as a pastor and professor. Those decisions led him and those attending his church and his classes to say that he was beginning to sound too much like a Catholic. In this book (I read Rome Sweet Home years ago and can't remember if he mentions this particular issue of his reading and research before his conversion) Hahn reveals that this effort to answer the question What is "It"? led him to study the teachings of the Catholic Church and to an even more momentous decision: to become a Catholic.

I do recall that he highlights the experience of attending Mass in the church at Marquette University and the great impact of that experience in Rome Sweet Home--and he includes that story in this book too.

Each chapter is divided into sections with punning headings: Hallel Can You Go?; Pasch, Presence, and Future; Sealed with a Curse; Seder Rite Words; Justin Case, etc. Those puns and word play shouldn't make the reader think that Hahn is not dealing with these questions of ritual, sacrifice, and salvation with appropriate depth and reflection. 

As I attended the Holy Triduum, especially as the Gospel of John was proclaimed on Good Friday, echoes of Hahn's book were in my ears.

Highly recommended. He succeeds in presenting his research and conclusions dramatically as they occurred in his own life and theologically in their meaning and impact on how we worship in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.