I understand and appreciate Abraham's provocative book as a brave criticism of the nature of our theologizing, as a cry of despair about the life-strangling character of so much of our theological endeavour. He has put deep-cutting questions on the table. He has correctly indicated that the patient is seriously ill. Whether his diagnosis is spot-on, is doubtful. Whether his medication will heal the patient, is even more doubtful. It definitely needs some serious rethinking, adjustment and refinement.

Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology is not light reading. The narrative history can be ponderous, and the price is prohibitive. And yet the book is a tour de force; it is a successful, provocative challenge to what may be a profoundly unbalanced feature of modern theology.

The great virtue of Abraham's book lies not, I think, in its discussions of particular thinkers (interesting and challenging though these always are) so much as in its clear analysis of what it is to epistemize the canon and of the deleterious effects of doing so. For this alone the book ought to be widely read and used by theologians as a tool for intellectual self-examination, for it is still too often the case, especially among Protestant theologians (Abraham's discussion of Ogden is especially good on this), that theological work is driven by inchoate and unnecessary yearnings for epistemic certainty, yearnings that would be better replaced by a passion for elucidating the Church's canonical heritage as a means of grace.

While this book is aimed primarily at his fellow philosophers and theologians, it deserves a wider readership as well. It is elegantly written and marked by numerous memorable lines and striking turns of phrase.

His historical narrative, in short, is a mixture of the persuasive and the unpersuasive. Unfortunately this mixture weakens the impact of the book. We can hope that Professor Abraham will produce or inspire others to produce improved versions of the historical narrative of which this is, in effect, a first draft.