This is a work that is very nicely written and that does a number of things rather well. It considers how the theology of a Church Father (Basil of Caesarea) was informed by Scripture, and how this might have something to teach more recent attempts (Stanley Hauerwas, Rowan Williams). There is also the author’s own constructive project, to offer an account of a theological ontology of the reading subject and the scriptural text. Or, in his own words: ‘The motivation of Part I is to answer theological questions—how Basil uses theological categories to describe hermeneutical space, the practice of reading, and interpretation’s ecclesial location’ (p. 23). In this first section we get Basil’s view of the purpose of angels as spiritual paradigms, the centrality of Deut. 15:9’s ‘be attentive to yourself’, and the Cappadocian account of the spiritual life as one of dispossession. There is a useful interaction with Martha Nussbaum on humans becoming divine, with reference to Odysseus’ rejection of Calypso. For Basil any transcendence is only eschatological: it is a transcendent ‘dimension’ (Dupré), an orientation rather than an actuality. Biblical language is medicinal and, as about ‘persons’ and mysteries rather than essences, is metaphorical. The discussion of progression in reading Scripture in Basil and Gregory of Nyssa would have benefited from Ron Heine’s work (Gregory of Nyssa’s Treatise on the Inscriptions of the Psalms [Oxford, 1995].) Basil viewed the Old Testament law as good as far as it went—and, even if the law is ‘past’, the covenant is still going. In the Christian life there is to be no turning aside, but rather a sustained looking to the end. ‘The way’ from Ps. 1:1 is explained in terms of turning off evil and ‘not doing’ certain things, a via purgativa, as it were. Amphilochios was praised by Basil for wanting to put truth in the service of certain practical ends.