This article is about John Cassian and Prosper of Aquitaine's understanding of grace and free will as put forward during the initial phase of the Western Church's struggle to define the doctrine of grace in the wake of the Pelagian controversy. Although both figured prominently in this struggle, both Cassian and Prosper's later understandings of grace and free will, which appreciated the diverse expressions of grace, failed to have any influence on the terms of the debate set forth in the Pelagian controversy. The history of the debate on grace and free will followed the mutually exclusive model in which salvation was the result of either grace or free will. Cassian and Prosper, who both offered an alternative to the mutually exclusive model, have not been fully recognised for their innovative views.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in this debate on a book that I have watched in the making, from a distance, over the past ten years or more. Richard Burridge was a faithful participant in the New Testament Ethics Seminar at the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, a seminar that I had the privilege of co-chairing, along with Wolfgang Schrage and Andreas Lindemann. During the years of that working group Richard presented early drafts of material that adumbrated the basic themes of Imitating Jesus. Consequently, he and I have been discussing our common interests in these matters for quite a while. Anyone who reads Richard's substantial new work alongside my earlier book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, will see that we don't always agree, but there are actually a fair number of commonalities – perhaps more commonalities than would be conveyed by a casual survey of Richard's explicit references to my work.

Richard Burridge is best known for his book, What are the Gospels?, which argues convincingly that the gospels belong within the broad generic category of the Graeco-Roman biography. The consensus that ‘the gospels are not biographies’ rests on a set of modern assumptions about what a biography should contain; measured against the yardstick of ancient biographies, however, the gospels clearly represent the same kind of literature. Of course, that does not mean that they are in every respect like other Graeco-Roman bioi or vitae. The gospels remain distinctive. One indication of this distinctiveness is that the title attached to them is not bios tou Iesou or the like, but euaggelion kata . . . followed by an evangelist's name. The gospels intend to be more than just a further contribution to the biographical literature of the ancient world. Burridge allowed that ‘gospel’ might represent a distinctive and new ‘subgenre’ within the broader biographical genre; there is no difficulty about such a move if we understand genre as a dynamic concept rather than a static one. Perhaps we might want to qualify the claim that ‘the gospels are biographies’ by stating instead that ‘the gospels represent a new development within the biographical genre’.

For the six years I was at Hartford Seminary (which is one-third Muslim), I had the enjoyable challenge of teaching Christian doctrine to Muslims. I have lost count of the number of conversations I have with Muslims who invite me to compare the Bible and the Qur'an and admit that the Qur'an looks much more like the Word of God than the Bible. In every case, I would push back and insist that they are not comparing like with like. For Christians, the primary Word of God is the Eternal Word – the Word made flesh in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. In fact, I would explain the right way to compare the Qur'an is not with the Bible but with the Eternal Word made flesh. The incarnation is the Christian equivalent of the Qur'an. And perhaps it is better to see the Bible as closer to the Hadith. At this point, the same question is asked: ‘but how is it possible to read a life?’

I am extremely grateful to everyone who participated in the discussion of my book, Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics. Thanks go first to Professor Kenneth Newport for organising and chairing the session on the ‘Use, Influence and Impact of the Bible’ at the SBL Meeting in Boston in November 2008, as well as for his interest in the project over the last decade. Also each of the panellists have contributed so much to my work throughout the gestation and writing of this book.