Abstract
Michael Brooks’ recent contribution to the science and religion literature, Good God, is simultaneously both intriguing and frustrating. Intriguing, because it asks many of the important, useful questions that are absolutely central to an ecclesial commitment to take science seriously – an aim which he quite rightly highlights as key to contemporary apologetics. Frustrating, because the answers he gives to these questions remain rather unconvincing.
Brooks’ thesis rests on two contentions – that the God of classical theism is impossible to reconcile with the God of the Christian tradition, and that our contemporary scientific understandings are more ‘description’ than ‘explanation’, leaving space for God to take more of an interventionalist role in the created order than might otherwise be allowed. The first of these contentions, while undergirded with some thoughtful and well-sourced argument, appears to fall somewhat short both in its engagement with classical theism (which is often presented in rather caricatured ways) and in the answer it presents for the problem of moral evil: namely, that ‘God’s holiness prevented God from being able to see how depraved humanity would be’ (p. 7). Similarly, while interesting, his argument that ‘natural evil and death are required to mitigate the effects of moral evil’ did not convince this reader, at least in the ways that it is laid out in the book. There are valuable and important issues raised here, but the analysis doesn’t quite convince.
Brooks’ engagement with the created order provides an argument for what is essentially intelligent design, and while again some of the questions raised are interesting (particularly his deep and accessibly written thinking on quantum mechanics), there is rather too much of a God of the gaps here. At times – and particularly towards the end of the book, when addressing matters of eternal life and time as a concept – there are really helpful insights, including questions of how this mortal life might relate to the eternal, but it feels that a little frequently Brooks gets so caught up in trying to argue his particular understanding of theodicy that he misses the woods for the trees.
In a sense, this is an attempt at a work of systematics about something which has so far evaded, and continues to evade, that kind of analysis. Brooks’ attempt is an honest one and one that shows the combination of deep learning in both science and religion, but his thinking would benefit from being in conversation with experts in both classical theism and evolutionary theory in order to sharpen up some of the assumptions and challenge some of the premises on which he makes his argument.
That said, books like this are needed because their authors are willing to grapple with the challenge that the real world presents to traditional Christian doctrinal understandings. Brooks makes the argument that we need to be able to say more than merely shrugging in the face of evil, and he is doubtless right. Yet whether we will ever move from a hint towards a systematic explanation remains very much to be seen.