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William J. Abraham, Crossing the Threshold of Divine Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 2006). xiv + 212 pp. $20.00 paper.

Reviewed by James K.A. Smith

Associate Professor of Philosophy
Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI
jkasmith@calvin.edu

William Abraham’s Crossing the Threshold of Divine Revelation occupies the fertile but
fragile space between philosophy and theology. His project runs counter to several
paradigmatic trends in contemporary philosophy of religion. First, rather than settling
for a thinned-out and generic “theism,” with its attendant (and rather generic) notions
of God, Abraham here continues his argument for what he calls “canonical theism”: a
thicker, confessional understanding of God that doesn’t settle for the lowest common
denominator yielded by “philosophical” reflection, but rather works from the
specificities of the church’s understanding of God as unfolded in the early church, prior
to the East/West schism. Unlike other philosophical theisms which are generated by
more arid academic concerns, Abraham’s articulation of canonical theism arose from his
earlier work on the evangelization of the Empire (see Abraham, The Logic of
Evangelism [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988]). “In bringing people to faith,” he here
summarizes, “the church articulated a very particular vision of God, creation, and
redemption that had to be seen as a whole and received as a whole” (xiii). That
Abraham’s canonical theism bubbles up from a logic of evangelism is an indicator of
why his project should be of interest for those working in the pentecostal/charismatic
tradition.
A second contrarian aspect of Abraham’s project is his courageous interest in
actually adjudicating between competing claims to divine revelation. In this respect, he
goes beyond dominant trends in both Reformed epistemology and postliberal theology
(pace Wittgenstein, Barth, and Lindbeck) which have tended to settle for a “negative”
apologetic—that is, they have generally settled for an approach that levels the playing
field and argues that religious beliefs are just as “warranted” as other beliefs. But this
approach pays little attention to classical apologetic questions of which religious beliefs
are true. In this sense Abraham is out to resist fideism on a neglected front. The result
is a unique kind of evidentialism: not an appeal to extra-canonical evidence in order to
justify revelation, but rather an appeal to revelation as evidence of the truth of the faith.
This question of adjudication takes on special interest, I believe, not vis-à-vis
naturalistic and secularist denouncements of the possibility of revelation, but rather in
the context of religious pluralism, and Islam in particular. To date, analytic philosophy
of religion has not provided resources for dealing with this sort of question. Abraham’s
work speaks into this lacuna.
Space does not permit an extensive summary of his argument. Central to his
project is reclaiming the centrality of divine revelation as one of the reasons we believe,
and to thus develop an integral epistemology of theology. Instead of first setting out
general conditions of what counts as knowledge and then showing how religious belief
meets these standards (what he calls “the standard strategy”), Abraham—following a
“principle of appropriate epistemic fit”—develops a unique epistemology that starts
from the particularity of canonical theism’s claims to divine revelation. He suggests that
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this maps better onto the actual phenomenology of how and why people believe. We do
not believe a revelation because we are satisfied that it is warranted under general
conditions of knowledge; rather, we first believe and then later, when challenged by
pluralism or unbelief, generate accounts that generate warrant for the revelation—and
the “evidence” or “warrant” might be provided by the revelation itself. (Thus Abraham
gives weight to miracles as evidence [pp. 74-76].) While Abraham takes his account to
be an alternative to the influential Reformed epistemology (RE) of Alvin Plantinga
(which Abraham would consider to be a case of “the standard strategy”), at times
Abraham’s approach sounds like an extension of RE. For instance, in emphasizing the
“naturalness” of accepting revelation, he concludes that “[w]e come equipped with an
original, native capacity to perceive God’s general and special revelation in the world”
(80). But that is remarkably similar to Plantinga’s account of religious belief—which
Plantinga would clearly affirm as based on revelation—as “properly basic.”
There is much more to be engaged in Abraham’s project, particularly from a
Pentecostal/charismatic standpoint. Indeed, it would be a suggestive line of research to
take up Abraham’s model as a framework for thinking about revelation from a
Pentecostal perspective. This is suggestive for at least several reasons: first, the richness
of canonical theism provides enough texture to absorb and honor the specificities of
Pentecostal belief and practice; second, Abraham is working with a philosophical
anthropology that honors the affective nature of the human person; and third,
Abraham’s account of divine revelation is justly concerned primarily with “canonical”
revelation. But his defense of divine revelation could also be extended for thinking
about ongoing revelation in tongues, prophetic utterances, and words of knowledge. In
this way, Abraham’s project could be “applied” elsewhere, in a way that would also fill in
some gaps in the current account.