The Scientific Enterprise and Christian Faith by Malcolm A. Jeeves (review)

704 BOOK REVIEWS death in 1955, The Divine Milieu has come to be recognized as a classic of spiritual theology, a magnificent presentation of Catholic spirituality, and a work of unquestionable orthodoxy. Although it seems unbelievable today, Teilhard was, despite heroic efforts, unable to get the book past ecclesiastical censors. And so, in 1942, fifteen years after completing the mansucript, Teilhard was still trying to get a nihil obstat for The Divine Milieu. The apostolic delegate to China appointed Father Allegra to censor the manuscript. Father Allegra found things that appeared to him to be " shocking," " daring," and " even wrong." He disapproved the work on the gounds that it was ambiguous, confused the natural and supernatural orders, and was inadequate in its treatment of sin, the Cross, and redemption. The apostolic delegate instructed Father Allegra to tell his findings to Teilhard, and so began a series of weekly conversations between the author of this book and Teilhard de Chardin. These conversations are more or less reco;Jstructed and presented here in the form of a dialogue between Teilhard and the author. This work, then, is not a scholarly study but a memoir of some conversations, written decades later in the form of a dialogue. The general topic of the dialogue is John Duns Scotus's doctrine of the primacy of Christ; the book is, in fact, simply a popular explanation of the Scotist doctrine. There is little of substance of Teilhard de Chardin's thought; Teilhard serves merely as a foil, somewhat in the manner of Anselm of Canterbury's Bozo, for Allegra's explanation of the Scotist teaching on Christ's primacy. It is really just as well that Father Allegra is the star of his book rather than Teilhard, for the author shows almost no understanding of Teilhard's thought. For a thorough and scholarly discussion of the relationship between Scotus's idea of Christ primacy and Teilhard's Christ-Omega, the reader is referred to Robert G. North, Teilhard and the Creation of the Soul (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1967.) The book is attractively presented, and the translator's notes are excellent. Gregorian University Rome, Italy RoBERT L. FARleY, S. J. The Scientific Enterprise and Christian Faith. By MALCOLM A. JEEVES. Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1971 Pp. 168. $2.25. In the late summer of 1965, a one-week conference was held in Oxford, England, of thirty-six participants from ten countries. All of them were professed Christians and the large majority practicing scientists holding academic positions in their specialties. Each prepared a position paper in BOOK REVIEWS 705 advance which was shared with all the others. The author, a professor of Psychology from Australia, drew the material for this book from these papers and from the conference discussions. The first half of the book is devoted to the possibility of maintaining simultaneously without contradiction a Christian view of reality and a scientific view of reality. This problem is first approached by contrasting the Greek and Hebrew views of God and nature. In Greek thought nature is uncreated and eternal, therefore, divine. Man with his reason tries to understand nature but never to change it. By contrast, in the Biblicai view nature is created by God and sustained at every moment by his power. It is neither eternal nor divine and the worship of any part of nature is always idolatry. Man has been given dominion by God over all other creatures. Man continually changes nature either blessing it or cursing it. It was the peculiar combination of Greek rationalism with Biblical contingency beginning in the late sixteenth century and flowering in the seventeenth which led to the scientific enterprise and the full development of modern science. Against this background, the question of God's activity in the world as related to the laws of nature is discussed. Several ways of looking at this relationship are considered, but no one of them is found to be satisfactory. The key to a solution to the problem is felt to lie in the continual activity of God in holding the whole of creation in being. The treatment concludes with a rather good and certainly helpful discussion of miracles. My...