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Islamic Theological Themes: A Primary Source Reader. Edited by JOHN RENARD. Oakland, Calif.: UNIVERSITY of California Press, 2014. Pp. xviii + 461. $70, £48.95 (cloth); $35.95, £27.95 (paper).
John Renard has produced a series of readers on Islamic themes in recent years, among them Windows on the House of Islam: Muslim Sources on Spirituality and Religious Life (1998) and Tales of God's Friends: Islamic Hagiography in Translation (2009). These books have been constructed with pedagogical aims in mind and, as such, they make a considerable contribution to the resources available in our discipline. It can also not be denied that such volumes are functional for many of us already in the profession, providing ready access to material with which we might not yet be fully familiar and supplying fluent translations of sometimes challenging material from which we can benefit.
This latest reader is of substantial interest, in part because it develops the idea of theological themes much further than one might expect in such a context. Structured in five sections, the book commences in part one with the Quran and hadith and their interpretation, just as one might well anticipate. Themes of transcendence, immanence, revelation, freedom, and responsibility are highlighted in the scriptural sources. Exegetical treatments are provided of the "throne verse" (Q 2:255) in...