This book by Raúl Kerbs, Doctor of Philosophy, will surely make an impact on philosophers and theologians. In it he develops the subject of assumptions or presuppositions and analyzes their effect on Christian theology. On the topic of identity, the author asserts that the Bible claims to be its own interpreter. But the adoption of a philosophical interpretation eventually blurs Christianity’s biblical identity. The major concern of interpretation in both philosophy and theology is the concept of God and presuppositions attached to this concept. From that starting point the author leads the reader on a journey through the Western and Greek as well as Western and Christian thought.

The discussion of the subject begins with the pre-Socratics era. For Heraclitus, reality was cyclic and subject to change. Thus he elaborated his reflection from the standpoint of a temporal reality. Parmenides, however, looked for a reality beyond time and change. For him, knowledge and the essence of things were timeless and unchanging. This presupposition would eventually dominate philosophy as a whole. Then Socrates came with the idea that there are true concepts for all things. This inspired Plato to search for these concepts.

Kerbs proposes that Plato endorsed Parmenides in his search for the being of things within a timeless frame, thus labeling the temporal and material things as not real. To define the essence of things is to go beyond them. It is to stop their temporal flow, to freeze it into an ideal being. Later on, the Aristotelian distinction between form and matter further developed the already installed dualism. The form is the timeless and unchanging reality. It was with Aristotle that metaphysics reached its definite shape.

In the chapter devoted to biblical interpretation Kerbs confronts the reader with the turning point between philosophy and Bible thought. According to him, Exodus 3:14, 15 is a biblical interpretation of self. There, Moses receives a revelation of God’s ontic as well as historic presence. There, God’s revelation connects His historical presence with a past and a future. God’s being is revealed in His historical manifestation. The Bible does not make a distinction between God’s timeless level and the historical level of His work on behalf of His creation. Thus the Bible must be read from its own interpretative presuppositions, and these are not the same as those of philosophy. The Bible offers a cognitive foundation to interpret God’s being within time, not from the timelessness and changelessness of the Greek philosophy.

Then the author moves on to show that it was during the conflict between the Christian faith and philosophy that the early Christian Fathers adopted the presuppositions of philosophy that became the unchallenged assumptions of biblical interpretation. Augustine was decisive on the theological thought because for Christian theology the temporal and historical world of biblical revelation is not the realm of the true knowledge. Thus, God’s being is interpreted according to Parmenides and Plato. According to Augustine, theology based on revelation is neither the realm of true being nor of true knowledge. For him, theology must seek the truth beyond the Bible. Thomas also applies to his inquiry on God the philosophical categories of timelessness and changelessness. Through Thomas, theology borrowed methods, demonstrations, and presuppositions from philosophy. As a consequence, the harmonization of reason and faith was reached on the basis of the philosophical interpretation. In the chapter devoted to Ockham, Kerbs seeks to break the hegemony of scholasticism without abandoning the philosophic interpretations of the presuppositions about the mind.

In the chapter about the theology of the reformers, Kerbs shows that there was not a discontinuity with the past in regard to the matters already discussed. Although Luther seemingly tried to distance himself from philosophy, he again interpreted God from the presupposition of timelessness. For Calvin, the immaterial, eternal, and spiritual reality is the only true one. According to him, all—including evil—has been decreed by God beforehand. Orthodox Protestantism did not escape the presuppositions of philosophy on the self and God. In the twentieth century, some evangelicals recognized that the theology of the Protestant orthodoxy was not opposed to philosophy and that a moderated Aristotelianism dominated the Protestant thought of both the Lutherans and the Calvinists.

In sum, Dr. Kerbs’s thesis is that the Greek philosophical epistemology based on reason validates the presuppositions of “timelessness” and “changelessness,” which in turn conceptualize the ontos and the theos. In the Bible, on the contrary, the theos decides the epistemology and its presuppositions in the “historicity” and “revelation” which in turn determines the ontos of the God of the Bible. Here lies the biblical identity of Christianity. This makes necessary not a de-construction, but a con-struction of Christian theology as a whole.

The book is a groundbreaking, thought-provoking must-read for those involved in the adventure of thinking; it includes twenty charts, 150 graphic helps, and a general and basic bibliography.