Science & Faith: Student Questions Explored
Hannah Eagleson, ed. Hendrickson, 2019, 136 pages
Reviewed by Thomas J. Carrico
In the February 2025 issue of SciTech†, PASTCF Board President Arnold Rots noted that many scientific discoveries have been accidental byproducts of other planned experiments and lauds the pursuit of these lines of inquiry. He rightfully points out, though, the limits on this type of serendipitous exploration: practical limits such as the time limits of dissertations, institutional limits including the size of the research team, along with financial and political constraints.
These connections are a prelude to the way that another scientist, Vera Rubin, followed up on an unexpected question from Rots’s own research. In recognition of her discoveries related to dark matter (along with the rest of her successes), the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile was named after her. At present, though, Rubin’s biographical information on the observatory’s website is being haphazardly edited to remove references to the facts of gender disparity in science and the benefits of gender diversity, to avoid seeming to support D.E.I. initiatives. So, in addition to the intersecting areas of concern that Rots has already pointed out — practical, institutional, budgetary — we now add the cultural politics of gender and equality and the power politics of writing scientific history.
Hannah Eagleson’s edited volume, Science & Faith: Student Questions Explored (2019) provides introductory frameworks to rudimentary discussions on these issues. The book is divided into four parts which are further divided into several short chapters. Each chapter concludes with a series of questions meant to help facilitate small group discussion.
Parts One and Two may frustrate those who wish to dive into the complicated intersections like those addressed in Rots’s recent column. This is by design. Members of scientific and faith communities offer firsthand reflections on the ways they have made sense of scientific inquiry in light of their faith and vice versa. These testimonies establish that scientific inquiry and faithful reflection are compatible by highlighting commonalities such as wonder, awe, discovery, and seeking. This is explicitly against ideas that the two spheres are incompatible or that religious reasoning is irrelevant and irrational. Rather than confrontational, though, these essays encourage respectful dialogue and conversation.
Part Three delves more specifically into theological arguments about creation and creationism and lays the groundwork for more complicated discussions. One essay argues for prayerfully cultivating a culture of grace while noting that these discussions do not occur in a vacuum; disagreements about faith and science may have their basis in “reasons that are neither scientific nor theological” (53). The other two essays in this section explain various theologies as well as differing ways of interpreting scripture and remind the reader that “any shift in position on origins entails a shift in theology, which may affect your relationship with your church, friends, and family” (58).
The closing part contains five essays, three of which, all written by James C. Ungureanu, combine to form that author’s call to action based on the history of science and religion. Before this trilogy, though, readers are reminded that scientific discovery impacts most (if not all) aspects of contemporary life. Scientific literacy is therefore not only necessary, but it will intersect with behaviors, values, and policymaking. This section also includes a helpful framework for evaluating expert opinions when we are not the experts. The final three essays provide a grand narrative of history that may also serve as the first chance for a small group to engage in arguments about the intersecting areas of concern with which this review began. Augustine’s “handmaid theory” of truth — that truth may be discovered outside the realm of theology, but all truth is ultimately God’s truth and the church should use it — begins Ungureanu’s account of this history. He then traces the development of universities and scholasticism by way of monasteries, highlighting Aquinas’s distinction between natural and scriptural revelation. This led to the belief that there are some truths attainable by reason and some truths attainable by scripture. In hindsight, the author views this as a concession to natural theology and the sciences that resulted in contemporary debates that are skewed more toward scientific authority than theological truth. On his reading, liberal Christians have become not only deferential to science but dismissive of Christian theology. Looking back on the history of Augustine to the present, the author states that
The one pattern that does consistently emerge, however, is that by holding such negative attitudes toward traditional Christian theology, liberal Protestants of the early modern period actually eliminated the very possibility of having a genuine Christian dialogue with science, rather than just a monologue dominated by science (103).
He reclaims Augustine’s “handmaiden” approach and calls for Christians to adopt a more explicitly theological posture toward conversations of science and faith. While the author frames his call to action as a rebalancing of the scales of authority, these essays seem to undermine the respectful and dialogical calls of previous chapters. Further, as contemporary debates occur at the intersection of science, religion, politics, money, institutional limitations, gender, and other inequalities and as imagery from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale dystopia permeate the zeitgeist, there must be better Christian frameworks than that of “handmaid.” As stated above, Science & Faith is a fairly successful introduction to basic discussions of complicated issues. Unfortunately, as someone who is aware of the many cultural and political implications of these debates, I spent the early chapters wondering which implications were being left out and whether it was in the service of introductory accessibility. While this book had some successes, was certainly readable by a general audience, and would likely generate good small group discussions, the closing section of the book assured me that my initial skepticism was warranted.
