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KOTERSKI, Joseph W. An Introduction to Medieval Philosophy: Basic Concepts. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. viri + 247 pp. Paper, $29.95 - Koterski's stated intention in writing this book was to introduce newcomers to a set of themes and background assumptions developed by mainly Latm-speakmg, medieval philosophers. Starting with the "relation of faith and reason," he traces how Anselm's classic ' fides quaerens intellectum" grew out of a Neoplatonically-influenced "philosophia Christi," which, with its interplay of sapientia and scientia, patristic and Augustinian thinkers had used to explain their vision of reality and to ascertain the allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses of scripture through a scientific analysis of its literal (historical and metaphorical) sense. They are shown to have known the risk they were taking of altering the revealed truth, distorting its historical particularity, or losing its holistic orientation, but deemed it worth taking to avoid reducing Christianity to just another mythic religion. With the rise of the universities and the 12th century recovery of Aristotle's texts, Koterski explains, new dialectical methods of reasoning and philosophical faith in indemonstrable first principles were generated, giving rise to a sharper distinction between theology and philosophy, but never (despite fideist and nominalist tendencies) to a complete severance.