Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology From the Fathers to Feminism [Paperback]

Standard accounts of canon reduce it to scripture and treat scripture as a criterion of truth. Scripture is then related in positive or negative ways to tradition, reason, and experience. Such projects mistakenly locate the canonical heritage of the church within epistemology, and Abraham charts the fatal consequences of this move, from the Fathers to modern feminist theology.

1. Orientation:Authority, Canon, and Criterion
2. The Emergence of the Canonical Heritage of the Church
3. Canonical Division between East and West
4. Canon andScientia
5. Theological Foundationalism
6. the Epistemic Fortunes ofSola Scriptura
7. Initiation into the Rule of Truth
8. Canonical Synthesis: The AnglicanVia Media
9. The Rule of Reason
10. Theology within the Limits of Experience Alone
11. The Canons of Common Sense
12. The Rough Intellectualist Road of a Sound Epistemology
13. More Light Amid the Encircling Gloom
14. Ending the Great Misery of Protestantism
15. Digging Still Deeper for Firm Ground
16. Feminism and the Transgressing of Canonical Boundaries
17. The Canonical Heritage and the Epistemology of Theology

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. --Theology Today

This is an unusually ambitious book ... a considerable achievement. It raises important issues, and affords many valuable insights in the course of its historical reflections. --Maurice Wiles,Journal of Theological Studies

Every issue and thinker is expounded clearly and concisely, with attention always drawn to strengths as well as weaknesses. To this non-specialist the argument was always accessible and regularly persuasive. --The Expository Times

William J. Abrahamteaches philosls*