The Christian Face of the Scientific Revolution Issue 76 | 2002 Purchase this issue

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The field of science and religion has experienced something of an academic boom in recent years-no doubt due in part to funding organizations such as the John Templeton Foundation. Most of the following resources go beyond the scientific revolution, but all have substantial material on that era.

An accessible entree to questions about Biblical interpretation and the scientific revolution is Charles Hummel, The Galileo Connection (IVP, 1986). The book contains neatly interwoven mini-biographies of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Pascal, along with chapters on biblical interpretation and on flashpoints of modern science-faith conflict.

One of the best academic introductions to this area is still David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers, ed., God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science (University of California Press, 1986). Its fascinating essays are concise treatments of the relationship between Christianity and science in different periods and groups.

For readers looking for a synthesis of the issues at stake in this relationship, a good tour guide is Ian Barbour. Start with his Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (Harpercollins, 1997), a significantly expanded version of the standard text, Religion in an Age of Science.

One of the most penetrating and readable authorities is John Hedley Brooke. See especially his Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives(Cambridge University Press, 1991) and his Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion(Oxford University Press, 2000). The latter is an updating, with Geoffrey Cantor, of the author's Gifford Lectures. It traces the relationship of Christianity and science through history, busts ...