In this volume, authors Alan Bailey and Dan O’Brien examine the full import of David Hume’s arguments and the context of the society in which his work came to fruition. They analyze the nuanced natured of Hume's philosophical discourse and provide an informed look into his position on the possible content and rational justification of religious belief. The authors first detail the pressures and forms of repression that confronted any 18th century thinker wishing to challenge publicly the truth of Christian theism. From there, they offer an overview of Hume's writings on religion, paying particular attention to the inter-relationships between the various works. They show that Hume's writings on religion are best seen as an artfully constructed web of irreligious argument that seeks to push forward a radical outlook, one that only emerges when the attention shifts from the individual sections of the web to its overall structure and context. Even though there is no explicit denial in any of Hume's published writings or private correspondence of the existence of God, the implications of his arguments often seem to point strongly towards atheism. David Hume was one of the leading British critics of Christianity and all forms of religion at a time when public utterances or published writings denying the truth of Christianity were liable to legal prosecution. His philosophical and historical writings offer a sustained and remarkably open critique of religion that is unmatched by any previous author writing in English. Yet, despite Hume’s widespread reputation amongst his contemporaries for extreme irreligion, the subtle and measured manner in which he presents his position means that it remains far from clear how radical his views actually were.

The book of Isaiah places a distinctive emphasis on the miraculous. It speaks about the miraculous more than any other book of Scripture. Because miracle runs through the whole of the prophecy, careful attention to it, as John Goldingay gives it here, not only unfolds the message of Isaiah but allows the theme to become a detailed commentary on the God of miracles. Miracle is a tricky word, so Goldingay defines what is meant by the miraculous in Isaiah before considering the miraculous features throughout the book: in testimonies to Yahweh's extraordinary communication with people such as prophets, in reminders of Yahweh's extraordinary acts long ago, in reports of the extraordinary acts whereby Yahweh rescues his people within the book's temporal framework, in promises of Yahweh's extraordinary acts of restoration in the future, and in Yahweh's extraordinary acts toward other peoples. What of the miracles of long ago? Did God create the world, devastate it and then start it off again, summon Abraham, deliver Israel from Egypt, drown the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, take the Israelites through the wilderness, dispossess the Canaanites, defeat the Midianites? What about the miracles that come after, including those witnessed in the New Testament--especially the raising of Jesus from the grave? Goldingay points to the interweaving of miracle with narrative in Isaiah itself to provide a clue: these are stories about real events which, with the help of the Spirit of God, have become narratives that captivate and edify.