It is a bold person who seeks to describe the character of Anglican identity. This church so often appears to be a living example of ‘all things to all people’. Paul Avis has, however, produced a book that gives weight and substance to the vexed question of authority within the Anglican Church. He demonstrates that, whether we are considering the conservative protestant movement within Anglicanism or its traditional catholic history or anything in between, Anglican theological method has always balanced scripture, tradition and reason in its understanding of authority. There is great variation across the traditions of the Anglican Church as to how these three are understood and held together. Nevertheless, whether you are talking of Calvinism, the Anglican catholic tradition or the varieties of Broad Church movements in the history of theological thinking in the Church, all make use of these three foundations for authority.

In a much-needed and oft-forgotten exploration of the history of authority in Anglicanism, Avis establishes the way in which such theological thinking has been influenced by the wider intellectual climate. Thus he reminds us of the Reformers' debt to Renaissance humanism, of Hooker and the seventeenth-century divines' use of Aquinas and the tradition of natural law, and the of influence of the Enlightenment in all its varied forms on the eighteenth-century church, including John Wesley. This is an important balance to some contemporary ecclesial thought, which sometimes seems to do its work without any historical roots and with an insufficient grasp of how English theological tradition has been enriched by these wider intellectual and cultural movements.

Although Avis does not give much space to experience, his theme has not forgotten the wider political context within which the Anglican Church has shaped its life across the centuries. This is especially true of the seventeenth century, with its history of religious conflict and war and of the struggle of many to find a way of thinking and being that made sense of such a divided world. To have a book that gives real space to exploring people such as Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes and how their formative work related to the internal theological and ecclesial thought in the Church of England is enriching and stretches our understanding of how the Anglican tradition developed. It is gratifying to hear an author explore the way in which it is possible to view John Wesley as an Enlightenment figure. In that he follows the interesting work of Gertrude Himmelfarb (The Roads to Modernity), who not only takes a similar view but also points to the unique experience of the Age of Reason in the English and Scottish contexts.

Avis' evident love of the Anglican tradition in no way compromises his critical assessment of its contributors across the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries (the period covered by the book). Without necessarily agreeing with them, he seeks to rescue Hobbes and Locke from the idea that they were necessarily hostile to faith and to the English Church.

This is a book that requires the reader to engage with the history of ideas and of theological work and to form an opinion on where it is thought that Holy Scripture, the tradition of the churches' credal work across the ages and the riches of creative and reasoned ideas interplay in the forming of the Anglican mind in our time. How might they help us meet the intellectual and ethical challenges facing us and the human race today? Paul Avis has laid some strong foundations for this task.