Christopher C. Knight, The God of Nature (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007).
Christopher C. Knight is Senior Research Associate at the Von Hugel Institute, St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, England. Knight has been teaching and writing about the dialogue between science and religion for many years. He is also the author of Wrestling with the Divine (2001), which also is in the Theology and the Sciences series by Fortress. The Theology and the Sciences series explores theological questions posed by various scientific disciplines. Notably, the editor and advisory board members of this series represent a broad spectrum of theology, as well as an international character.
In this book, Knight explores the views of the conservative majority within Christendom in sixteen different essays, mostly related to special divine action, also known by the descriptive phrase, strong theistic naturalism. Knight’s book does not displace science, nor to plead for special exceptions on special occasions, but sees God as always active in the universe and its laws. Knight forges a third way of thinking about divine engagement with the world beyond vitalism and reductionism, known as emergence. Higher levels of complexity naturally unfold, in this model, as a result of the interplay of chance and natural law upon the potentials that God bestowed into creation at its beginning. Knight sees God’s intimate involvement with creation and history as being exemplified in the reality of the incarnation. By focusing on the incarnation, Knight brings fresh insight to the questions of providence, miracles, personal prayer, the virgin birth, and the ascension of Jesus.
A strong point within the book is Knight’s explicit attempts to assert a heavily Eastern Orthodox-influenced theology of nature. He considers the Eastern Patristic Fathers of the Church to have lasting significance and relevance regarding the acts of God within the natural world, which is greatly reflected in the chapters regarding the faiths of the world and the action of God, the faiths of the world and the logos of God, the fallen world and natural law, and the fallen world and divine action. I find these four chapters to be particularly strong, argued in a constructive manner, and from an inductive approach. In his discussion of the possibility of contemporary miracles, Knight takes a strong stand against the prevailing Western analysis of the miraculous in general and causality in particular. Knight notes that “wonder,” as Hume deemed it, in truth refers to nothing supernatural, per se (34), and that instead of causality being reducible to temporal succession and contiguity, there should be multiple levels of explanation for causation (35).
A notable weakness of the book was its chapters on art and sacrament (10), and upon ecological and feminist perspectives on the incarnation (14). Knight is effective in offering a Neo-Thomistic influenced Eastern Orthodox perspective of divine action within the natural world. It is Neo-Thomistic in the sense that Knight recognizes the efficacy of both primary causes and secondary causes within nature. His model of strong theistic naturalism is able to eschew the pitfalls of deism (its absentee-type vision of God), while at the same time allowing for nature to possess an active role in its own production. This Knight does by large measure with his advocacy of the notion of panentheism – that God is in the world, but He is more than the world at one and the same time. All in all, this book is to be recommended for those who have interest in divine action within the modern world, as well as those who possess interest in the perpetual debate of natural theology. Seminary students, postgraduates, and interested laity alike should find much fodder for further debate of these issues within this book.
Bradford McCall
Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA, USA.