Professor Wiles's book makes a first-rate introduction to the subject. It has the honesty, the quiet persuasiveness and the penetration which we have come to associate with his work. Let those who undervalue theology read it and then ask themselves if theology is either a soft option or an irrelevant pastime. R.P.C. Hanson, Times Literary Supplement

'It is a lively, stimulating, and surprisingly thorough treatment, and one which certainly conveyed to me "the worthwhileness and the excitement of the subject"..... It is a book which examines with equal concentration both the role of rigorous critical scholarship and its implications for the living faith. John Witheridge, Theology

This book is not an outline of Christian theology or a handbook of Christian belief, but an enquiry into the status of theology, and an account of the sorts of issue theologians study. The first half of the book approaches theology from the inside, by looking at the way its various aspects are studied - the Bible, Church history, doc