Faith in the Living God.

Faith in the Living God. By John Polkinghorne and Michael Welker. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001. viii and 151 pages. Paper. $16.00.

This dialogical book grew out of a joint course taught by Welker and Polkinghorne in Heidelberg in the summer of 1999. The reader is invited into a conversation with these two well-known theologians who offer different approaches to the quest for the "truth of the living God"--Polkinghorne primarily through discourse with physics and Welker through encounter with cultural theories. Asserting that "religious convictions and certainties have to be ready to warrant truth claims" (p. 5), both are committed to a stance of critical realism, the particularities of trinitarian Christianity, and a willingness to engage the "windows" to reality opened by all forms of human experience.

Following an autobiographical introduction, the book is organized in two main parts. In Part I, each author discusses his understanding of faith in God the creator, faith in Christ, and faith in the Holy Spirit. Each essay is followed by comments from the other author and a response by the original author. Part II offers methodological essays that explore the respective "windows" of scientific inquiry and cultural criticism more fully.

Both authors challenge the individuality at the heart of Western culture by stressing the relationality of human life and the communal nature of the truth-seeking task. Polkinghorne offers an interesting discussion of the communal reality of "faith in Christ" in light of the patterns of interrelationality in the physical world (p. 54). Welker discusses the Pentecost event out of which "a new communality arises in the midst of preserved differences between culture, nation and language" (p. 87).

In a very short space, these authors offer an interesting landscape of the contemporary engagement of theology with science and cultural criticism. Their nonpolemic dialogue is refreshing and engaging. Pastors and teachers will find helpful resources to address "troubled friends and educated despisers of Christianity" (p. 139).

The one criticism is the brevity with which so many ideas are treated. However, the footnotes direct interested readers to the authors' previous works for fuller accounts of their views.

Cheryl Peterson

Marquette University 

Milwaukee, Wisconsin