It seems both enterprising and risky to ask for a review of this book from someone who is an Anglican (with Barthian sympathies), a Brit, an exegete (of the Old Testament), and the author of his own book on the subject. But the book is an interesting and instructive read for someone who doesn't take the same things for granted as the author, though if readers of this review get the impression that I consequently misunderstand things, they are probably right.

The book arrived for review only after Fr. Farkasfalvy's death; it is neat that he lived to see it published because the subject had long interested him. He notes how he began his theological study in the pre–Vatican II theological context and has thus watched and taken part in developments and reflection on this book's subject that began with Dei Verbum and in due course issued in the Pontifical Biblical Commission report The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture in 2014.

The book interweaves two strands. It offers a theological presentation in a systematic theological order, as is suggested by the title, and also a historical account of Catholic reflection over the past sixty years that incorporates the author's personal reminiscences and opinions. The combination adds to the book's interest; one often feels as if one is overhearing someone talking over dinner in an entertaining, slightly random, and slightly indiscrete fashion. On the other hand, the interweaving means that the theological issues never get systematically expounded, they only get repeatedly re-raised. The dogmatic scheme of revelation—inspiration—canon does give shape to dogmatic discussion, whereas Protestant theologians don't really know how to go about interrelating these loci. And whether they do or not, the subject of authority is the one that really bothers them, in a way it does not bother Catholic theologians. I don't mean that I think the collocation revelation—inspiration—canon really works; but at least it exists.

A key observation in the book notes how the theology of inspiration came to be taught by systematic theologians, while exegesis was taught by scholars who had never taken a course on inspiration (40). Catholic scholarship thus fell into the same dichotomy that has long characterized Protestant scholarship. I enjoyed the anecdotal account of the commission's members’ worried response to the nature of their remit. They were to think about inspiration, but they felt they were just exegetes who had mostly “studied inspiration in rather inadequate courses in Fundamental Theology” (97). My own reflection arising from reading the results of their work is that, ironically, they sidelined their exegetical expertise and reported on the scriptural books’ understanding of inspiration on the predetermined framework of the dogmatic assumptions they brought to it.

This is regrettable as well as ironic because (as I see it) attention to the Scriptures’ own way of thinking about revelation, inspiration, and related topics is key to progress in clarifying the issues that preoccupy Fr. Farkasfalvy. But neither Catholic nor Protestant scholars go down that route. Fr. Farkasfalvy returns again and again to the question of the relationship between divine and human authorship in the Scriptures, mostly because of the way it relates to questions about truth or inerrancy that are a central concern of The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture. A more exegetical approach to the scriptural texts reveals the instructive variety of forms that the interrelationship of divine and human can take. It also undermines the assumption that bedevils both Catholic and Protestant discussion that there actually is a link between inspiration and truth/inerrancy. The Scriptures' own references to the Holy Spirit's relationship to the Scriptures see the implications of that relationship quite otherwise, as is hinted at by a comment Fr. Farkasfalvy picks up from Henri de Lubac that Origen would see the main effect of inspiration as lying not in inerrancy but in the unfathomable depth of meaning in texts (137). Facilitating our investigation of those riches is surely at least as important as fretting over inerrancy.