Father Gerald O'Collins is no stranger to the topic of divine revelation. The subject takes centre stage in several of the more than seventy books he has written through his decades of teaching and research, most recently in his Revelation: Towards a Christian Interpretation of God's Self-Revelation in Jesus Christ (OUP, 2016). As the mirrored subtitle indicates, our book extends that project by carefully distinguishing (on the one hand) divine self-revelation from biblical revelation, and (on the other) biblical inspiration as originating cause from inspiration as ongoing effect, in order to examine afresh how the Bible functions as a source of truth for Christian faith. The result is no dry recitation of the status quaestionis or mere rehearsal of previous work, but an up-to-date, constructive account communicated in the form of a wise and winsome interdisciplinary exploration.

The book's argument unfolds as follows: After a brief preface bemoaning the neglect of the topic in modern scholarship, the first four chapters gather information from a variety of sources and perspectives in order to prepare the reader for a more detailed delineation of the subject matter in Chapters 5–10. The opening chapter provides some orienting principles for the discussion by evaluating two important twentieth-century accounts of biblical inspiration, those of Karl Barth (1886–1968) and Raymond F. Collins (b. 1935). Among its important conclusions is the insistence that ‘any adequate treatment of biblical inspiration should begin with the reality of the Scriptures themselves’ (p. 17, emphasis original). Thus the second and third chapters turn to an examination of four Old Testament books (Genesis, Psalms, Isaiah and Sirach) and four New Testament voices (the Gospel of Matthew, the writings of Paul, the Book of Revelation and Jesus' own reading of the Jewish scriptures). For O'Collins, examining ‘the reality of the Scriptures themselves’ includes every discoverable element of textual identity, including what can be known of a biblical text's composition, content, canonization and ongoing history of effects. Indeed, it is this careful attention to biblical texts as simultaneously inspired in the past and inspiring throughout history that forms the backbone of the book as a whole.

‘We have only a limited knowledge of how inspiration as a cause has worked and continues to work’, O'Collins writes, ‘but we have considerable information about the impact of earlier biblical books upon later sacred writers … and superabundant information about the inspiring effect of the Holy Spirit, working through the scriptures, on the worship, belief, and life of innumerable believers’ (p. 195). Hence the fourth chapter offers a richly detailed consideration of the inspiring history of the scriptures’ impact on Christian liturgy, hymnody, proclamation, doctrine, literature and the visual arts. But this wide-ranging celebration of scripture's inspiring function does not lead O'Collins to give short shrift to what can be known from scholarly reconstruction of a text's inspired composition. In fact, the author often breathes new life into old historical-critical compositional deductions by reconsidering them in light of theological convictions about God's larger work of self-revelation.

All of this previous work to distinguish (without separating) inspiration as cause and effect sets the reader up for the remaining chapters, which strive to distinguish (without separating) specifically biblical inspiration, the larger work of God's self-revelation and the function of the Bible as an ongoing source of truth for believers. To this end, the short fifth chapter provides a series of considerations for outlining the relationship between revelation, tradition and scripture, which enables to the author to turn to a more in-depth, detailed explication of ten characteristics that are specific to biblical inspiration in Chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 8 applies these insights to a reflection on the formation and ongoing authority of the New Testament canon itself. Given his insistence on understanding inspiration as both cause and effect, Chapter 9 is devoted to a quick reconsideration of three ‘intentions’ that must be duly respected, that of the author, the text and the reader. The book then concludes, in the tenth chapter, with ten summary principles for theologians as they enter the task of interpreting scripture.

Throughout, O'Collins adopts a style that is appropriate to the weight of the subject matter: patient, deliberate, balanced and meditative, unhurried but never pedantic. He shepherds the reader through the immense field of discussion, drawing attention along the way to the sort of details that are only discovered after decades of immersion in the subject matter. A study of this breadth will unavoidably lead specialists to wish for greater detail at points, but that should keep no one from celebrating the gift O'Collins has provided in this panoramic view of a landscape that is too often insufficiently explored.