The Reenchantment of Nature, by Alister McGrath

Alister McGrath, professor of historical theology at Oxford, began his professional career in the natural sciences (molecular biophysics). That scientific training has served him well, especially in books like this. His deepest passions, which emerged when he converted to Christianity (evangelical Anglicanism), have been theological. He began his professional theological career in the mid-1980s with a number of scholarly studies in historical theology. His 1986 history of the doctrine of justification, Iustitia Dei, has been regarded as a landmark work by some critics.

More recently, McGrath has shifted his focus to works of a systematic and apologetic character. Enormously productive, he has published some 20 books in the past five years alone. Clearly at home in the world of  academic theology, he has also authored a number of helpful popular works on Christian thought, as well as a widely noticed study on the cultural influence of the King James translation of the Bible. Any new work by McGrath must therefore be taken seriously.

Though McGrath does not say for whom he has intended this book, it quickly becomes apparent that it is a work in apologetic theology written for those who either are without faith or whose faith needs intellectual bolstering. In an engaging, often personal style, McGrath takes on some of the most noted cultured despisers of Christianity: critics like the historian Lynn White Jr., who blame Christianity for the environmental crisis, and polemical atheistic scientists like the zoologist Richard Dawkins, as well as a variety of philosophical "deconstructionists." These are relatively easy targets for a writer as well tutored in the history of Western thought and the dialectics of debate as McGrath (one hears the echoes of many after-dinner discussions at places like Oxford).