BOOKS Creation and Cosmology & Science, Art and Christianity

Reviews

REVIEW BY KIRKUS DISCOVERIES

“A brief work that argues for the synthesis of Christian faith and scientific discovery.

Brun (Creation and Cosmology, 2009) attempts to square the circle of Stephen Jay Gould’s famous “non-overlapping magisteria”: the worlds of religion and science. He does so with intellectual rigor and a surprising amount of success, beginning with some fairly large ideological conceptions: “Any serious discussion between Christian theology and science must accept that nature is free to become itself,” he writes. “This is to say that there is no interference from supernatural entities into the natural creative process.” Modern physics, he observes, has demonstrated that physical laws are the results of the natural process, not the superimposed dictations of a “super-nature.” Brun’s view, which draws on the work of the famous Jesuit theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, is that nature is the result of God’s Word, but it is also “free to become itself” without interference from supernatural forces, and that human science is also free to explore it. The author may run into trouble with more doctrinaire readers, not only for flatly declaring that all religions are human inventions, but also for exploring beliefs regarding God’s limitations; Panentheism, he says, believes that God is good and encourages good, but “cannot prevent evil from happening.” He also champions the notion of what he calls “syntheses” of the natural and the spiritual world, typified by the human drive to produce classical music or paintings, for example; the author’s side-discussion of the work of painter Wassily Kandinsky is quite engaging. Despite some distracting typos, the book’s arguments are persuasive. Ultimately, it asserts what many others have hopefully asserted before: that religion and scientific inquiry are only enemies when they’re being shortsighted: “Christianity has always adhered to the notion that faith must seek understanding,” Brun writes. “Therefore, Christian faith cannot ignore the understandings gained by science.”

A slim but powerful entry in the long-running debate between science and religion.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/rudolf-b-brun/science-art-and-christianity/

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REVIEW BY John F. Haught, Ph. D. Senior Fellow, Science & Religion

“A learned effort at the seemingly impossible—reconciling the central claims of science with the basic truths of Christianity. As the 19th century’s scientific revolution exploded into the unprecedented developments of the 20th, christian believers were forced, in more dramatic ways, to square new science— evolution, quantum physics, relativity—with long-held spiritual beliefs. As the modern age grew ever more modern, many believed that the putative disparities between science and religion forced individuals to choose one of the two. In his new collection of very erudite (if not always accessible) essays, Brun suggests that the faithful need not make that choice—that a third solution can split the difference between science and religion and allow us to use the tools of the former to see god in nature. Much to his credit, he does not cut corners, wisely avoiding the pseudo-scientific—and ultimately false—claims put forth by inexact amalgamations like the so-called “creation science” or the more recently discredited “intelligent design.” These schools of thought merely gravitate toward the inevitable gaps in scientific knowledge and shoehorn the divine into them. To this issue the author sharply writes, “it would be foolish indeed to again argue for a god of the gaps!” It would be equally foolish to try to hastily summarize Brun’s intricate arguments regarding the “theology of nature.” Suffice it to say that his reasoning only periodically works, but his writing is intellectually honest and spiritually daring. As familiar with hard science as he is with complex theologies, he brings an exacting mind to a daunting task and leaves readers the wiser. A remarkable, thorough collection of academic essays.”

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REVIEW BY C. David Grant, Professor of Theology

“Rudolf Brun is a rarity in the modern academy. A developmental biologist retired from years of research and teaching at Texas Christian University, he studied as a young scholar with the significant Catholic thinker Hans Urs von Balthasar and sat in on lectures of Karl Barth. Thus, from his earliest education he has had the heart and soul of a Christian intellectual, seeking to make sense of his experimental work in biology in a larger context. He has devoted his time since retirement at working out a Christian understanding of cosmology, the results of which are contained in his new book, “Creation and Cosmology.” Brun takes utterly seriously that science describes cosmology as being fully explainable as the product of natural laws: Brun’s God is no intervening deity in the process of nature. But rather than conclude therefore that God does not exist, Brun sees this as an affirmation of the fundamental Christian affirmation that God is love: God so loved creation that God gave creation freedom to create itself, apart from God. Only in this way, says Brun, can creatures have the freedom to truly love God in return. As is evident from his references to Hegel, Descartes, and Hume—and to Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure—to name a few, Brun works his way through philosophical and theological texts as he weaves his position together. Not all will agree with Brun’s conclusions and the way that he holds a radically naturalistic view of creation together with a traditionally orthodox notion of Scripture and Christology. Nonetheless, it is a worthwhile trek to follow his argument along to see the way that one steeped in science, theology, and philosophy constructs a view of religion and science today that tries to take all three equally seriously.”