review of Protestants in an age of science. by T.D. Bozeman. review on amazon. book is outofprint and i had to borrow it from the UofA library.
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4 out of 5 stars = Old Princeton's doxology for 19thC science, built by Bacon
Reviewer: rmwilliamsjr from tucson, arizona USA
This is a scholarly work, by a competent historian and excellent writer, the book will get nowhere near the attention and reading it deserves, perhaps explaining why it is out-of-print.

The people who need to read it the most, are perhaps the least likely to read it, the young earth creationists. The author has at least two high level motivations to write this book. The first is to demonstrate specifically how in a particular time and place, early 19thC America, a particular religious group, Old Princeton as heir of Reformation Calvinism, works to tie religion and culture together to solve societal intellectual problems. pg 174 "It may be questioned whether religious leaders at any previous point in the nation's past ahd achievd a more unabashed union of gospel and culture than this."(this referring to the Presbyterian Old School baconist interpretation of both science and religion) Secondly, he desires as a historian to cast light on the thoughts of today by tracing their roots historically and philosophically. "It is therefore feasible to suggest that the most important contemporary echo of Baconian biblicism in not to be heard within Presbyterianism as such, but within the huge party of conservative evangelicalism which has adherents within every denomination and which today perpetuates in varying degrees the essential theological tents of Fundamentalism, including biblical inerrancy." pg 173

We are used to the analogy of religion and science at war, we are less accustomed to the 19thC thinking of the two books of God; special revelation in the words of the Bible, and general revelation in the book of nature, as read by science. The two books, not warfare is the analogy that dominated American religious thought, especially the particular school represented by Princeton, until the rise of Darwinianism in 1870's. The contention that the two books, as written by the same reasonable God could not contradict each other is crucial to the theology as explained in the book. The book develops the theme that a particular way of reading both books, Baconism developed as a reaction to the French Enlightment with its accent on the unfettered by religion rise of man's Reason to explain the world.

The best part of the book is what he calls the doxological relationship of theology to science. pg 78 "More often, religious values were stated explicitly. Edward Everett, as usual, captured the full essence of current conceptions: 'the great end of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to fill the mind with noble contemplations, to furnish a refined pleasure, and to lead our feeble reason from the works of nature up to its great Author,' Everett considered this 'as the ultimate aim of science.'" Having grown up in a world dominated by materialist science the chapter on doxological science was reason enough to have spent the time reading this book. That our forefather's in the faith, at a crucial time in the development of the relationship of modern science and theology; saw science as anawe-inspiring, devotional subject is a breath of fresh cool air on a world presently seen by science as aloof, uninterested in humankind, random, and downright unfriendly, dominated by forces of impersonality certainly not a loving God.

book recomendation
i believe it was on this forum that i found reference to _where do we come from?_ by kein and takahata. i owe that person a big thank you for pointing out simply the best book i have seen yet on human evolution. surprisingly he will and does take the time to introduce ideas in such a way that an educated intelligent layman will get the tools to understand the discussions. this is very unusual and very well done.

it is good enough, and complete enough to recommend it as the basis for any real discussion of the issues. for it brings everyone who reads it uptodate with the crucial points of evolution. that is really the reason so much of the creation evolution debate is a question of "he said, she said" because the common base of knowledge on the subject is often shallow. people seem to prefer not to do their homework and talk without trying to grasp the facts of the discussion via intensive study of the fields involved.

if anyone has similiar recommendations please share them with me.

from _protestants in an age of science_ chapter 4 "doxological science and its enemies" pg 87.

quote:
But it was not enough merely to affirm science as a handmaiden of devotion. If science had a sublime potential as an ally of belief, it also possessed possibilities of a more menacing sort. Improperly guided, it could spring out of its doxological traces, trample faith, and demoralize the inquiring spirit of man with a vision of an amoral, aimless cosmos. Presbyterians were keenly aware of the prospect that science, falsely conceived, could become a snaring noose of unbelief. To begin with, bloated with a growing sense of its own procedural and institutional autonomy, science easily could be transformed into a merely secular enterprise. Further, the Newtonian view of nature rested upon a frankly materialistic atomism which seemed ever capable of dissolving the teleological and therefore meaningful perspectives proffered by religion. And these pressures, secularism and materialism, when not governed by a taut framework of religious perception, were constantly finding release in "heretical" formulations manifestly incompatible with important biblical principles. At no time did orthodoxy manage to expunge the fear that science was tensely ready to break clear of the snug alliance with religion cherished by defenders of a theological world-view.

end of quote

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