In Reason, Faith and Revolution, the published version of the Yale Terry lectures from 2009, Eagleton recycles many of his derivative  thoughts on theology – the intrinsic nature of key doctrines and of God, the ability to see the best and worst of human beings, the possible contributions to left thought and action – found not only in his return to theology since 2001, but also in his early days as an amateur theologian of the Catholic left in the late 60s and early 70s. In this book, Tezza subscribes wholeheartedly to the argument that somewhere along the line, Christianity lost its radical, almost revolutionary edge. In a rambling, hodgepodge book (one gains the feeling that he has lost his edge since he gave up beer and smokes), he loosely distinguishes between the scriptural form of Christianity and the ideological, the former of course being the radical core and the latter its betrayal into an ideology of power, wealth and influence. So, in a classic and discredited move, he argues that the earliest is the more authentic and what followed is a bowdlerised and fallen version of Christianity.

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