476 SHORT NOTICES

the titles this is not a book of comparable calibre. It sets out basic
material for determining a Christian doctrine of the Spirit from
Scripture, fourth-century trinitarian teaching, John Calvin and
Karl Barth. But the scriptural evidence is presented and inter-
preted too much in the light of later doctrine to be satisfactory.
The book as a whole has little by way of new insights to offer. Its
doctrinal concerns go hand in hand with the related question of

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how faithful the Church is today to the way of life in the Spirit
depicted in the New Testament.
MAURICE WILES

Belief in God in an Age of Science. By JOHN POLKINGHORNE.

Pp. xv+133. (The Terry Lectures.) New Haven &
London: Yale University Press, 1998. ISBN o 3 07294 5.

J O H N P O L K I N G H O R N E is noted for his series of elegantly

expressed books on various aspects of the increasingly significant
engagement of theology with a scientific understanding of the
world. In these 1996 lectures he returns in a more popular vein
to a number of themes treated more fully in his earlier books: the
claimed revival of a 'natural' theology; the methodological com-
parison of science and theology; and the problem of how to render
intelligible particular divine action in an orderly, divinely-created
world. This last he bases on his own, widely disputed and not at
present widely accepted, derivation of ontological indeterminacy
in chaotic phenomena from their epistemological unpredictability.
This and some other much-debated issues—such as the usefulness
of ontological, as against functional, assertions concerning the
relation of the divine to the human in the incarnation—are force-
fully presented from an orthodox theological standpoint. His
espousal of a critical realism in both theology and science is
accompanied by shrewdly directed shafts against the relativism of
post-modernist theology and the strong programme in the soci-
ology of scientific knowledge. He makes percipient criticisms of
the attempts of some professional theologians (Pannenberg and
Moltmann) to recruit scientific ideas for their theology and urges
them all to undertake a more thorough dialogue with the scientists
in order to become less 'domesticated and anthropocentric'. This
work is recommended to any theologian seeking a readable intro-
duction to Polkinghorne's views on themes which have been prom-
 SHORT NOTICES 477
inent in the vast amount of sophisticated work on science and
theology that has emerged in the last 30 years.
ARTHUR PEACOCKE

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Dictionary of Ethics, Theology and Society. Edited by
PAUL BARRY CLARKE and A N D R E W L I N Z E Y . P p . xxxiii
+ 926. L o n d o n & N e w York: Routledge, 1995. I S B N o 415
06212 8. £ 8 5 .
As the editors declare in their introduction, 'the purpose of this
Dictionary is an ambitious one', but it was well worth undertaking.
To relate theology and ethics to developments in the social sciences
requires scholars who are at home in more than one discipline
and have the basic, philosophical, capacity to assess the implica-
tions they have for one another. It is reassuring that the editors
were able to find so many contributors who exhibit this capacity
and have been able to produce admirably balanced essays.
Inevitably some authors, particularly in the area of sexual ethics,
favour a rejection or drastic reformulation of traditional positions
without any serious attempt to consider how they might be
defended.
The basic problem is well stated in an essay on 'Sexuality' by
Anthony P. M. Coxon: 'the development of any new sexual theo-
logy or ethics has to take account not only of tradition, but especi-
ally of the insights and impact of the human sciences on thinking
about sexuality, but their implicit and necessarily heuristic relativ-
ism does not provide a means of deciding on moral issues involved
in a sexual relationship or action' (p. 758).
In a long essay on 'Ethics' Paul Barry Clarke makes an attempt
to resolve this problem, but finds it difficult to go beyond what
he takes to be Alasdair Maclntyre's view that we are caught up
in systems of ethics which, although they may claim universality,
are irredeemably particular.
The editors are entirely right in stressing the importance of
these issues for theologians and moralists, and have provided a
valuable resource for those ready to address them.
BASIL MITCHELL