Taking three terms from the letters of Paul as a thematic guide, Kevin Mills investigates the respective roles of faith, hope and love in language and interpretation, and uses them to uncover and to question some of the key assumptions in deconstructive and postmodernist discourse. Its critical approach to interpretation theory (from Origen onwards), challenges the reader to reassess Pauline categories such as 'letter' and 'spirit', and to re-think the possibility of Christian engagement with contemporary literary theory.