John's latest book, strikes out from where that text left off, although John suggests it is more of a prequel, and it is much easier to read. It's slim at 200 pages, and set to become another key text for people wanting to understand theology in a post-modern context.

What I love about the book, is that John put's himself into it, theology is part of his journey and story, this is not esoteric academics, but someone who has been trying to make sense of his own questions and those of his students in the real world.

So if like John you value your evangelical heritage, appreciate the process the reformers undertook, and want to engage meaningfully with our post-modern context, this is the book for that. I love John's sub title, for the book, 'A Post-conservative evangelical approach'.

This book will undoubtably be added to the numerous theological books which elicit either enthusiasm or revulsion from its readers. I hope that I fall into neither camp. John Franke, co-author of the important book 'Beyond Foundationalism' (with Stanley Grenz) here offers his account of the nature, purpost and task of Christian theology. His account is self-consciously nonfoundationalist, communitarian and missional. Franke seeks to engage and appropriate developments in postmodern sociology of knowledge and epistemology to aid in the construction of theology that will aid the church in its call to participate in the mission of God and embody the image of God.

Much in Franke's account overlaps with the material in 'Beyond Foundationalism.' However, there are some important developments in this book that merit attention. First, Franke substantially broadens his engagement with postmodern thinkers in this book beyond those discussed in 'Beyond Foundationalism.' Second, in this book Franke is much more intentional about exploring how theology should be shaped in such a way as to aid the church in its missional task in the world. Third, Franke is a bit more precise in his discussions of foundationalism and his reasons for rejecting it in the volume than in his previous work. For all these reasons, I think this book is an important contribution to the evangelical discussions of theological method and should be given a wide reading.

I did have some disappointments with elements of this book, notwithstanding its helpfulness. First, Franke's engagement with postmodern thought is still a bit to cursory and enthusiastic for my taste. Interestingly enough, nearly all of his engagement with postmodern thought is actually engagment with sociology and cultural anthropology rather than postmodern philosophy. The continental philosophers barely make an appearance in Franke's discussion. For this reason I find Kevin Vanhoozer, James K.A. Smith and Merold Westphal's engagment with postmodern philosophy to be a bit more substantial and helpful. Secondly, I am still unconviced by Franke's account of the authority of Scripture. His distinction between the meaning of the Spirit speaking though the text and the communicative intent of the author is, I think, an unnecessary dichotomy. Thirdly, while I liked a lot of the work that Franke did to try to establish an epistemology that was grounded theologically (and trinitarianly) I was left a bit disappointed by how this important idea was left undeveloped. All he really does is repackage a bit of Bruce Marshall's work and then not really develop or explicate it. This just left me wanting a more developed and explicit account.

However, as stated above, this book is very well done and quite helpful at key points. I do think it is the best articualtion of the "Grenz/Franke" proposal for theological method that has yet been articulated. It wil undoubtably be helpful to theological students and to thoughtful Christians who have a mind toward engaging the postmodern context.