Dr Robinson has written an important book about God, Christ, the nature of religion and morality. He does not claim to be a professional theologian; it is not, as he says, his academic field, but the book will nevertheless be of great interest to theologians as well as to the general reader, and it deserves a more discriminating reception than it has so far received in the press. Those of us in particular who are grateful to the Bishop for his work in his own field of New Testament scholarship will want to pay him the compliment of treating his book seriously and critically.

The book suffers a good deal from the author’s lack of acquaintance with the history of theology. Thus he can open Chapter Two with the astonishing statement: ‘Traditional Christian theology has been based upon the proofs for the existence of God.’ This is, of course, flatly untrue. Traditional theology has always been based on faith in the Word of God. Whether and how God may be known apart from such revelation is itself a question within theology. To satisfy oneself that this is so one needs only to read the first three questions of such a classic of traditional theology as the Summa Theologica. In fact we might well complain that the area of theology connected with such proofs has been unduly neglected in recent years by conventional theologians—one good effect of the Bishop’s book may be to remind us that this is after all an important topic. He exemplifies some of the mistakes that may be made when it is neglected.