The importance of endorsements

One of the first things that I generally do when evaluating a book is to flip to the back cover and look at who's endorsing the thing and what they have to say about the volume. In an ideal case, what I'd like to see is an endorsement penned by a vocal and visible opponent of the book's conclusion who is at the same time willing to stipulate the book accurately presents the opposing case as well.

One of the key features that I look in an author is their willingness to honestly interact with opposing views instead of misrepresenting them. I also look for authors who invite criticism of their works. Someone who won't accept criticism is simply not worth reading in my opinion. Neither is someone who won't admit to not knowing the answer to a question. In a public forum where response is more off the cuff and there is little time to dig for the correct response I relish hearing phrases such as "I don't know" or "This is not my area of expertise".

Today, gullchasedship posted the following extraction from a ramble on open-mindedness:

Caricatures of Catholic beliefs, when discovered for the parodies they are, lead one to Rome.

I think that in that phrase one can substitute a whole lot of other systems of belief.

I've been gathering some resources to begin reading about the Federal Vision and this seems to be one area in particular where the advocates are arguing that the detractors are mischaracterizing them. To quote Doug Wilson (HT: gullchasedship):

I am one of the most vocal advocates of the federal vision, and I deny all four of the characteristics of that vision as kinda assigned by Clark. These are strange doings. Somebody doesn't know what he is talking about. Either I am not in the federal vision at all, or the federal vision is not what its opponents claim, or it is not monolithic as its opponents claim. In any case, this book is out of line.

At the moment there seem to be relatively few books arguing against the Federal Vision, so I picked a copy of The Federal Vision and Covenant Theology: A Comparative Analysis. Given some the level of negativity on the book's Amazon reviews (phrases like "full of mischaracterizations and exaggerated claims"), I must say that I was a little distressed to see an endorsement from Michael Horton on the book's back cover.