This text is both a timely and tempered engagement with the theological approaches captured under the umbrella of the name ‘Panentheism’. Emerging from discussions and colloquia made possible by the science and religion programme at the USA-based Templeton Foundation, this text follows in a long line of editions concerned with making public the dialogue between scholars of religion, theologians, philosophers and scientists. The most recent was a critically acclaimed volume (edited by the physicist-priest John Polkinghorne, Eerdmans, 2001) which was concerned with creation as the kenotic act of God. The present volume, under the guidance of the process philosophical theologian Philip Clayton and biochemist-priest Arthur Peacocke, continues in the rich vein of erudition wrought in that text.

Following a three-fold epigraph of etymology and mysticism in Eastern and Western guises with respect to panentheism, the book offers an introduction by Peacocke which aims to prepare the ground for the reader to understand the contemporary context and depth surrounding God’s transcedence over and immanence in the cosmos. Also included in the matter prior to the essays is a collection of paragraph-length summaries of the contributions. These serve not as shortcuts to understanding more lengthy arguments, but rather as keys into what sometimes appear to be more complex chapter headings. What follows is separated into three sections according to the type of interpretation of God-world relations: first panentheistic, then scientific and finally, theological. This last perspective is divided into Eastern and Western expressions. Though it should be noted that within the three sections consensus is rarely commonplace. Sensibly, however, the editors and publishers chose to include an afterword by Clayton in which he attempts an assessment and typological categorisation of each author.

Under normal circumstances a review such as this one would express the aims and structure of the text and then follow that with some critical interaction of the overall argument. In a volume of collected essays, with concerns as distant as the geographical location of the contributors themselves, such a task is complicated, especially if one’s aim is a fair consideration of each chapter on its own terms, using the logic particular to each context. However, it is here, within this complex matrix of theological, ethical and scientific concerns that the books’ great strength is established. This book is not an apologetic for panentheism, for as the differing emphases and the analysis of chapter one express; it is problematic to assemble a typography that fits every expression from a process philosophy of religion to the more strictly theological, doctrinally rich incarnational and sacramental theologies of the established Church. Rather it serves as a useful sourcebook for contemporary renderings of panentheism, as well as highlighting the most recent work of major theorists. The sense one is left with having read and re-read these essays is that panentheism is a term wielded in many guises, with a greater range of influence than this reviewer previously understood. In view of the issues presented in this book the challenge is whether more classical expressions of God’s action in the world, especially those with an emphasis on the interaction of Christology, pneumatology the Christian doctrine of creation, can respond in a way that sees a sharpening of its own ideas rather than a mere reiteration of concerns.

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