Editorial board
Editorial Board
Editorial Board
Pages: 2-2
Editorial
Editorial
Keith Fox
Pages: 5-6
Articles
Table of Contents
Table of contents
Pages: 3-4
The ‘Scientific’ Interpretation of the Bible and the Victorian Conflict between Science and Religion
James C. Ungureanu
Pages: 7-30
Abstract
Historians of science and religion need to pay more attention to how historical-critical scholarship influenced perceptions of the relationship between science and religion in the Victorian era. In this paper, I would like to begin redressing this problem by examining how the rise of biblical criticism in general, and the issues of Christology in particular, had influenced views of the relationship between science and religion at the end of the nineteenth century. Indeed, almost all members and promoters of ‘scientific naturalism,’ including the Victorian coterie of the X-Club, Thomas H. Huxley, John Tyndall, and Herbert Spencer, among others, constructed their views on science-religion relations in response to historical-critical scholarship. Moreover, even the so-called ‘cofounders’ of the ‘conflict thesis,’ John W. Draper and Andrew D. White, were significantly affected by this literature. That is, developments in biblical criticism directly impacted how White, Draper, and others of their ilk understood the relationship between science and religion. By examining more carefully how historical criticism played a significant role in the thought of these writers during the Victorian period, I hope to relocate the origins, development, and meaning of the science-religion debate at the end of the nineteenth century.
Zoology and Job 40: Review and critique of the arguments for Behemoth as a dinosaur
Philip J. Senter
Pages: 31-62
Abstract
Job 40:15–24 describes a monstrous creature named Behemoth, whom ancient Jewish literature treats as a supernatural monster. In contrast, much literature of the thirteenth century and later applies a zoological approach, interpreting Behemoth as a species of animal, usually the hippopotamus in publications from 1663 onward. Since 1974, numerous advocates of the zoological approach have reinterpreted Behemoth as a dinosaur, usually a sauropod. Arguments for Behemoth as a sauropod include allegations that Job 40 describes an animal that is herbivorous, aquatic, docile, and indomitable; drinks large amounts of water; has strong bones, strong hips, a bulbous midsection, tight sinews, and a cedar-like tail; and is the largest land animal that God made. Here, I investigate the relative popularity and temporal duration of each such argument and determine which such arguments are based on sound interpretations of the Hebrew text. This investigation reveals that no argument for Behemoth as a dinosaur survives scrutiny. Several, notably including the argument that Behemoth’s tail is like a cedar, are based on misinterpretations of the Hebrew text. In contrast, all parts of the Hebrew text are consistent with the interpretation of Behemoth as a primordial, supernatural monster.
Thomas Aquinas in Dialogue with Modern Causal Explanations
Michael Salvatore Politz
Pages: 63-82
Abstract
Within modern science, the rich explanatory power of causality has been relocated down to a simple, lacking notion of causality implicitly defined as ‘the material origin of a series.’ Through the course of this paper, I examine two prominent examples in modern science where this notion of causality is on full display. The first of these examples is the origin of the universe as espoused by the Big Bang theory. The second is the mind/body problem. In both cases, the modern notion of causality, as the origin of a material series, is utterly deficient in explanatory power. To rescue the notion of causality, I detail the classical view of causality as espoused by the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition and shown clearly in the Christian Faith. Most importantly, I show how reintroducing immaterial causality would absolve the explanatory gap in both cases. With this fuller notion of causality, I show how the origin of the universe and the mind/body problem are only problems considering the modern, deficient sense of causality. If the view of immaterial causality found in the Christian tradition is allowed, ample explanation is given as to the mechanics of both the origin of the universe and the mind/body problem.
Donald MacCrimmon MacKay (1922 – 1987): Scientist and Accidental Philosopher. A Critical Appreciation
George M. Coghill
Pages: 82-102
Abstract
In this paper I present an overview of the life and work of Donald MacCrimmon Mackay, a distinguished Christian polymath who made significant contributions across a number of domains in science and philosophy in the middle part of the 20th Century, and the centenary of whose birth was in 2022. After a brief biographical sketch, we will review his contribution to theology & science, the main ones of these being: complementarity, an innovative concept relating information and matter, and mind and brain; and logical indeterminism, a proposed solution to the problem of free will and determinism. I hope that this overview will stimulate interest in, and further exploration of, his ideas.
Donald M. MacKay’s Contributions to The Research Scientists Christian Fellowship and Christians in Science: The Early days
Malcolm Jeeves
Pages: 103-107
Natural Philosophy: On Retrieving a Lost Disciplinary Imaginary
Alister McGrath (Christopher Oldfield)
Pages: 147-149
Essay reviews
A Christian Response to Iain McGilchrist’s panentheistic natural philosophy
David McIlroy
Pages: 108-127
Abstract
Iain McGilchrist’s The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World offers a comprehensive diagnosis and demolition of reductive materialism, naturalism, and scientism. Our academic disciplines and wider culture are caught in a left-brained feedback loop, in which the interconnectedness of things and the fundamentality of relationships is denied. What has been ruled out of account is the right-brained perspective, which is holistic, open to imagination and intuition, and prepared to trust that apparent contradictions can be harmonised. Through rigorous analysis of neuro-scientific findings, discussions of quantum physics, music, and a wide range of other disciplines, McGilchrist not only debunks the ‘nothing buttery’ of reductive materialism but goes on to offer his own visions of consciousness, material reality, and how we should understand their inter-relatedness. McGilchrist arrives, over the course of more than 1,300 pages, at a panentheistic process theology position. As a model of natural philosophy, his work is exemplary. From a Christian perspective, there is much to praise in his painstaking work destroying the golden calves of our age. The desideratum which remains, however, is sufficient recognition of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and his centrality to all things.
Book reviews
Human Becoming in an Age of Science, Technology, and Faith
Philip Hefner (Todd Kantchev)
Pages: 128-129
God and Gaia: Science, Religion and Ethics on a Living Planet
Michael S Northcott (Robert White)
Pages: 131-133
Navigating Faith and Science
Joseph Vukov (Christina Biggs)
Pages: 133-134
Naturalism in the Christian Imagination: Providence and Causality in Early Modern England
Peter N. Jordan (James Hannam)
Pages: 134-135
Is God Really Legit? Making sense of faith and science
Neil Laing (Malcolm S. Buchanan)
Pages: 135-137
The Person in Psychology and Christianity: A Faith Based Critique of Five Theories of Social Development
Marjorie Lindner Gunnoe (Peter Hampson)
Pages: 137-138
Four Views on Christian Metaphysics
Timothy M. Mosteller (ed.) (Stephen Walley)
Pages: 138-139
Cosmic Chemistry: Do God and Science Mix?
John C. Lennox (Keith Fox)
Pages: 139-142
God’s Gift of Science: Theological presuppositions underlying exploration of the natural world
Graeme Finlay (Michael Fuller)
Pages: 142-143
Dawn. A Proton’s Tale of All That Came to Be
Cees Dekker, Corien Oranje, and Gijsbert van den Brink (Peter J. M. van der Burgt)
Pages: 143-144
Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard—and Still Is
Terryl & Nathaniel Givens (Pu Ji (Preston))
Pages: 144-146
Theology and Technology, Volume 1: Essays in Christian Analysis Theology and Technology, Volume 2: Essays in Christian Exegesis and Historical Theology
Carl Mitcham, Jim Grote, and Levi Checketts (Scott Ryan Maybell)
Pages: 146-147
Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence and Place in the Digital Age
Felicia Wu Song (Brian Monahan)
Pages: 149-150