© 2023 The Authors. Modern Theology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. REVIEW OF PAUL TYSON, A CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY OF SCIENCE PETER HARRISON I was delighted to see Paul Tyson’s A Christian Theology of Science appear in print. By way of full disclosure, I was in the fortunate position of watching the book take shape in real time and to have had (at times, lively) discussions with its author about its central claims. Like any stimulating new work that seeks to lay out a new agenda, the book not only articulates a bold thesis, but at the same time raises a host of new questions. What follows is a brief summary of the book’s argument as I understand it, followed by some of the questions I was left with having completed it. These mostly concern the overall framing device of the book—what Tyson refers to as ‘the first truth discourses’ of science and theology. A second, and relatively brief set of questions is to do with what follows from Tyson’s analysis for our evaluation and understanding of modern science. A Christian Theology of Science is part of a relatively new and (literally) unapologetic trend to relocate the science-theology discussion into the heart of Christian theology. 1 The central argument of the book is that modern science embodies a worldview that is incompatible with, and indeed opposed to, a genuinely Christian worldview. Tyson speaks in this context of the ‘first truth discourse of science’ which he opposes to ‘the first truth discourse of Christianity’ (1-3). The historical thesis is that in the West, from the seventeenth century onwards, the latter was gradually displaced by the former. Tyson identifies the first truth discourse of science with a form of reduc- tive materialism (24-25), while the first truth discourse of Christianity entails belief in doctrinal propositions that coincide broadly with traditional symbols of faith such as the Apostle’s Creed (12, 110). The normative thesis is that unless we recognize the implicit tension between these competing discourses, any attempt to understand the relationship between science and religion is doomed to failure. Tyson argues that this is true for most of such efforts since the nineteenth century: these are variously cate- gorized as ‘adaptation’, ‘withdrawal’, and ‘appropriation’ (5-7, cf. 83-88). Adaptation, 1 For further examples see the essays in After Science and Religion: Fresh Perspectives from Philosophy and Theology, edited by Peter Harrison and John Milbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), and New Directions in Theology and Science: Beyond Dialogue, edited by Peter Harrison and Paul Tyson (London: Routledge, 2022); Michael Hanby, ‘“Rules” for Theological Engagement with the Sciences’, Theopolis, February 16, 2023. DOI:10.1111/moth.12910 Modern Theology Month 2023 ISSN 0266-7177 (Print) ISSN 1468-0025 (Online) Peter Harrison Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Level 5, Forgan Smith Tower, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, AUSTRALIA Email: peter.harrison@uq.edu.au