This helpful volume in the Foundations for Faith series is modestly sub-titled ‘The Basic Issues’, and consists of a series of discussions on such questions as ‘Natural Revelation’, ‘Special Revelation’, ‘Infallibility’, and so forth. As we might expect in a book by this author, its strength is in its analysis and ground-clearing, and in a general area in which much has been published in recent years this lends The Divine Revelation a distinctive quality.

Those who are familiar with books written by philosophers will know the kind of approach to expect, although others may be surprised by such as the following (which opens the second chapter): ‘Are there mammoths? The readiness of most people who are reading this book to say “No” to the question rests partly on the ability to use the concept of a mammoth and so distinguish mammoths from unicorns and giraffes.’ The author’s point here is to introduce a discussion of what kind of thing a special revelation would be, such that we would know how to answer if asked whether there had been one or not.

If that kind of discussion seems aridly philosophical it is also exceedingly helpful in the clarity with which it sets up the ‘basic issues’ facing the student as he comes to address the question of revelation. Discussion has been bedevilled by the failure to give time to the kind of clarification exercises of which this book is made up. Paul Helm’s approach, having discussed what it is he is talking about, is then to bring biblical and theological material into play. This is not in any sense mere philosophy of religion.

Each chapter is helpfully supplied with a selection of material for further reading.

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