Have you ever considered what our society’s first knowledge discourse is? For years, it was theological, a perspective that gave birth to scientific inquiry. In recent years, a scientific worldview has displaced the knowledge discourse that gave it birth. Theology is only accepted in society today insofar as it presupposes the primacy of scientific knowledge. This is the challenge Paul Tyson grapples with in A Christian Theology of Science.

Science as first knowledge discourse is a stool supported by three legs:

1. Empiricism: “only what we can experience by sensation … and quantify counts as real” (185).
2. Rationalism: “only that which makes universal logical sense can be true. This view takes mathematical reason to be the language that describes necessary and casual relationships in all spheres of reality” (190).
3. Physical Reductionism: the perspective that takes “physical reality to be the only reality that defines nature, and it assumes that such physical nature is all that there is” (189).

Where do Christian theological statements such as the resurrection of Jesus fit in this? To be blunt, they don’t—and we need to stop pretending that they do. The efforts of theologians like Bultmann who worked on demythologizing scripture to make it palatable to a scientific worldview ultimately guts the gospel.

The centre of this book is an enlightening chapter (irony intended), “Rediscovering Christian Theological Epistemology.” Here, Tyson draws on Plato to conceptualize the relationships between various levels of knowledge and wisdom, taking into consideration the theological reality of the fall and its impact on human wisdom.

It is clear that science as a first-truth discourse has failed us:

In the age of continuous upheaval produced by the great acceleration, surveillance capitalism, global financial alchemy, unprecedented refugee flows, staggering military hardware, and global environmental degradation and climate change, are we still hoping that science will save us? Are we still thinking that scientific innovations and human progress are the same thing? As Jacques Ellul warned some time back, one of the most concerning features of living in our highly instrumental technological society is that we become the tools of our tools. The age of modern science could end very badly. (94)

A Christian Theological of Science is a rigorously argued book that calls for the renewal of theology as a first knowledge discourse for Christians. This is paradigm-shifting work that deserves a wide reading among Christian philosophers and educators.

Tyson, Paul. A Christian Theology of Science: Reimagining a Theological Vision of Natural Knowledge. Baker Academic, 2022.