Book reviewed by Charles Sherlock, October 2024

A Christian Theology of Science: Reimagining a Theological Vision of Natural Knowledge
by Paul Tyson
Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2022; xiv + 208 pages
ISBN 9781540965516, first edition, paperback
AUD$35 

Paul Tyson is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at The University of Queensland. Such a context involves ongoing engagement with the academic world beyond Christian theology, and this shows on every page of A Christian Theology of Science. It is an engagement shaped by the Western philosophical heritage, from Plato and Aristotle through Augustine and Aquinas to Kant, Descartes, Marx, Ricouer, and more. Tyson is acutely aware of what matters for Christian theology and how it engages with modern Western life. 

Karl Kruszelnicki is one of Australia’s best known science popularisers, and an effective one. Yet, Tyson’s book shows why his—and many others’—perspective on “science and religion” is so unhelpful (for example, see Kruszelnicki’s “Father of the Year” piece in Good Weekend of August 31, 2024, p. 22, link is paywalled). Seeing science and religion as running alongside one another, as Kruszelnicki does, is a false trail, Tyson shows. This perspective sidelines religion into the private sphere; then everything in the public sphere, including the sciences, operates around power rather than principle. Yet it is a path taken by well-meaning Christians such as Isaac Newton, one that keeps God at a distance from creation. What is needed, Tyson argues, is a Christian theology of the sciences, for the sake of both. This calls for reflection on the basic questions of knowing, meaning, and purpose. In this respect, Tyson’s book recalls the work of Elizabethan philosopher–theologian Richard Hooker, which developed a Christian theology of society. 

I concluded my review of Paul Tyson’s earlier “popular” work, Seven Brief Lessons on Magic, by writing “More please!” This, his new book, fulfils that request more than adequately. A key term is “first truth discourse”: what do I assume is true? As a disciple of Christ, I espouse a Christian worldview. But how different are my foundational—my “common sense”—ideas from society around me? What “first truth discourse” guides how I shop, work, invest, travel—and approach science?  

In responding to this question, Tyson lays a reader-accessible base in the introduction and chapters 1 to 3, beginning with “The Difference between And and Of” in the book’s title. Chapter 1 gives “Starting Definitions” of science and Christian theology (faith grounded in the Nicene Creed). Chapter 2 explores how Christian theology is viewed through the three elements of the “Truth Lens of Science”: empiricism, rationalism, and physical reductionism. Chapter 3 brings these chapters together, highlighting the importance of distinguishing essence from existence, and laying “Theocentric versus Egocentric Foundations.” 

The demand on readers grows steadily as the book progresses. For those with little philosophical background, I suggest that the last chapter (9) could well be read next. This reprises the technical topics addressed in the intervening chapters. The concluding position reached—one not free of ambiguity—is described as “A Confident and Uncomfortable Stance.” As an excellent example of living by faith, not sight, it is taken further in the epilogue, “The Future?” (love the question mark!). A glossary offers practical help to readers needing to have ideas (“pure matter,” “supernatural”) or terms (“teleological,” “voluntarism”) explained; it could well be read before chapters 4 to 8 are considered. A helpful index and bibliography round out the book. 

From his engagement with the academic world beyond theology, Tyson explores three major issues in chapters 4 to 8: the history of the emergence of the empirical sciences (4 to 6); how we truly know something (7); and the importance of mythic truths, notably “Adam and the fall” (8). In what follows, it is impossible to do more than offer a terse outline of what are nuanced, engaging, and persuasive reflections.  

The historical emergence of science is analysed with attention to the philosophical shifts involved and where they lead. Chapter 4 explores the three elements of the “lens of science” through the “Truth Lens of Christian Theology.” Particular attention is paid to “physical reductionism,” the idea—prevalent in the West today—that material existence is all there is. In a striking analysis, Tyson shows that its roots go back much further than Thomas Huxley or Richard Dawkins, to nominalism (William of Ockham) and the concept of “pure matter.” Chapter 5 follows up by considering the “Remarkable Reversal” from the 1870s in the relationship between Christian theology and the sciences. Chapter 6 looks ahead: what might thinking “After” science or “After” theology look like?  

Knowledge grounds the sciences of every sort, as it does for Christian theology. But, as Descartes and Kant asked, on what grounds do we truly know something, rather than our impression of it? This involves epistemology, the philosophical exploration of knowing (I lost count of the number of times “epistemological” occurs!). Chapter 7—the longest—engages with this question from Plato and Aristotle through Augustine to Aquinas to the Enlightenment and onward. Particular attention is paid to the complexities involved in seeing things through natural and divine light. Tyson argues that, while empirical science had its origins in the “first truth” of Christian theology, these roots have been set aside in “Post-Victorian Science.” Solid reading but illuminating. 

“Myths” involve more than fairy tales: they are the often-unarticulated sense of what lies at the base of social life. Though usually stable for long periods, they can change: as Tyson shows, the myth of “secular progress” that undergirds much environmental damage has faltered in the public mind. He takes up Ricoeur’s term “Mythos” to describe four “mythic archetypes” that shape what human societies assume lie underneath their common life: violence, the fall, tragedy, and exile.  

But why all this seeming aside from the focus on theology of/(and) science? Because a major myth of modern science is that suffering, harm, wrong, and evil are built into existence. Such a myth reduces all relationships to power, leaves the universe without hope and meaning, and is impossible for Christian theology. Christian theology insists that sin, evil, and the like are intruders rather than intrinsic to creation, which is on the way to being healed and renewed in Christ. So, the “fall” described in Genesis 3—let the reader find out how Tyson understands this—must be taken with full historical seriousness. As I would put this in class, rephrasing Arius, “There was a then when sin was not.” 

* * * 

This is a groundbreaking book. It takes with full seriousness the theological questions around the sciences (and much else in the modern West). Tyson articulates an attractive blend of the wisdom of centuries with contemporary insights. He shows the philosophical and practical emptiness of “physical reductionism” that is widely presumed in Western cultures, not only in the academy but in social and mass media. Tellingly, a number of times Tyson notes how inconceivable physical reductionism is in the “first truth discourse” of Indigenous Australians (for example, pp. 92–93, 120, 152–153)—a gift that modern Australia would do well to receive.  

But Tyson also puts up a stop sign against “conservative” Christian approaches to “science and religion” that effectively take Christ out of theology. The most significant aspects of Tyson’s work, however, are the positive elements sketched of a Christian theology OF science, and the stimulation they give to developing them further. A call to take up! 

As an academic, Tyson is scrupulous in developing and documenting his thesis, and precise in using technical terms. This book addresses the academy, and is being well-received there, given the wide variety of back cover blurbs. It could speak to a wider audience, however, notably undergraduates in the sciences and theology, if repetitions and technical vocabulary were reduced. But this last comment applies in hope to Paul Tyson’s next book.  

I have no hesitation in commending A Christian Theology of Science, not only to those involved in the sciences and theological work, but to anyone wanting to explore what “first truths” are shaping modern Western societies.