Standard accounts of canon reduce it to scripture and treat scripture as a criterion of truth. Scripture is then related in positive or negative ways to tradition, reason, and experience. Such projects mistakenly locate the canonical heritage of the church within epistemology, and Abraham charts the fatal consequences of this move, from the Fathers to modern feminist theology.

Asserting that the "return to Wesley" that is represented in the Quadrilateral is "intellectually wrongheaded," William J. Abraham argues that the Quadrilateral is not, and should not be, United Methodist doctrine. Abraham's lively treatise makes a provocative appeal for a reasoned exploration of the significance of the UMC's doctrinal identity. He reveals how churches have faced incompatible doctrinal proposals within their midst and examines the specific issues facing the United Methodist church as a whole.

The Western church is currently awash in a sea of renewal movements so much so that she is in danger of drowning. Across the church's many denominations and great theological divisions there is a persistent quest for change, reflected in repeated calls for "revival," "reform," revitalization," and "restoration." We now have so much literature on the topic that one is hard-pressed to keep up with it, let alone evaluate it critically. In"The Logic of Renewal"William Abraham helps church leaders and members get their bearings in the renewal debate by analyzing the most salient proposals for...

The last few decades have seen a revolution in debates about the rationality of Christian belief. Among the array of current options for justifying religious belief, however, nearly every one assumes that a general theory of knowing and a minimal version of theism must be adopted before the rationality of Christian belief can be tackled.
In "Crossing the Threshold of Divine Revelation" William J. Abraham confronts both of these assumptions, arguing that epistemology must begin with its particular target of inquiry in Abraham s case the full-blooded canonical theism of the early, undivided...

Discusses conversion, baptism, morality, and the Holy Spirit and argues that evangelism is an initiation into the kingdom of God.

The book provides an original and important narrative on the significance of canon in the Christian tradition. Standard accounts of canon reduce canon to scripture and treat scripture as a criterion of truth. Scripture is then related in positive or negative ways to tradition, reason, and experience. Such projects involve a misreading of the meaning and content of canon--they locate the canonical heritage of the church within epistemology--and Abraham charts the fatal consequences of this move, from the Fathers to modern feminist theology. In the process he shows that the central...