Meagher's approach to analyzing seven of Shakespeare's plays (he claims this is the introduction to a larger work he is planning that will examine the entire canon) is a terrific new way of examining Shakespeare. In much the same way as a theatrical director would, Meagher searches the text for clues as to the original performance, explaining many of the inconsistencies and editorial confusions that have abounded since the 17th century. Quite readably, this book examines Shakespeare's treatment of place and time, his approach to his sources, and most interestingly - his use of the common theatrical practice of role-doubling to have fewer actors play many parts. Reading this book with a good facsimile of Shakespeare's First Folio (the first collected works of Shakespeare, published in 1623) is helpful, but not necessary. I highly recommend this to any student or teacher who thinks they understand Shakespeare.

Meagher presents this issue: How does Christianity become acceptable to intelligent people who reject the Bible's veracity? His solution is to discard all objectionable Bible claims, i.e., those claims which intelligent people find to be untrue, illogical, or incompatible with their perception of a compassionate God. This is called the truing of Christianity, or "reconstructed Christianity."

Reconstructed Christianity requires that the Bible be discredited as the revealed word of God so that objectionable claims may be discarded as the imaginative works of man. Meagher lauds the "dismantling of the Bible's divine authority" as "the best thing that has happened to Christian culture since it gave up the conviction that God will roast non-Christians forever." (pp. 93, 94). "There is no authority except us," he says. (p. 208.)

Reconstruction theology cannot concede a single instance of divine revelation as this would allow the camel's nose under the tent. To illustrate, if one were to admit the possibility that the phrase "love your neighbor as yourself" was communicated to the mind of man from a transcendent God, one must also acknowledge that the phrase "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire" might also have divine origin. This is unacceptable because the latter phrase is considered by intelligent people to be uncompassionate.

Meagher's reconstructed Christianity has a substantial, logical hole: Its premise cannot be proven. Meagher cannot prove that the Bible is solely the product of man's imagination. As to the proposition that the Bible contains divine revelation, he says, "There is no way to refute such a claim; it could, in fact, be entirely true." (p. 87.) Though he cannot refute it, Meagher repudiates traditional Christianity and describes the revealed God of the Bible as intolerable, irredeemably false, and morally outrageous. Meagher's renunciation of a Divine Revealer in the face of his own admission that His existence can not be logically refuted and "could, in fact, be entirely true" exposes the flimsy intellectual foundation for reconstructed Christianity.

What does Meagher offer in place of the living God? After taking Occam's razor to traditional Christianity and carving away all that is unnecessary (which to Meagher is all that is untrue or subject to reasonable criticism), he is left with the bare-boned principle that "God is an imaginative option." (p. 141.) Meagher's chief reason for encouraging people to choose the imaginative option is that practitioners of this thought system manifest signs of the "good life" which he identifies as "a steady brightness of the eyes, the easy physical grace that expresses mindfulness, attitudes of capacious generosity, laconic simplicity of expression, remarkable poise in the midst of adversity, a gracious readiness to endure real hurts without resentment...." (p. 215.) However, Meagher faults the dialectical apologists who rely on exactly the same point to support their own theology; namely, that believers in the revealed God of the Bible live more salutary lives than if they didn't so believe. (pp. 68-69.) If the argument doesn't work for traditional Christianity, it cannot sustain Meagher's reconstructed Christianity.

Is there a Most High God or is there only an imaginative option? As Meagher observes, neither proposition can be proved of disproved by the application of worldly wisdom. But that which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered the heart of man, has been made known by the Spirit. Throughout the history of the Church, credible, sincere, intelligent Christians have testified to experiencing spiritual communion with a transcendent God; men and women who were wise enough to discern the difference between tricks of the imagination, or altered consciousness, and the presence of the living God; who were accused and persecuted from within the church and without as suffering from delusions or demons, yet held fast to the authenticity of this communion and intelligently defended it. It is the personal testimonies of these great souls that I would set against the arguments of the intellectuals.

In the days of the apostles, the preaching of Christ crucified was foolishness to the Greeks who made altars to the Unknown God. Little has changed. The gospel of Christ is still considered foolishness by the worldly wise, who now worship the Imaginative Option.