I have known
Charles
Prince for roughly 40 years. I know him as a minister with some 50
years of experience, and as a scholar having graduated from Abilene
Christian University and Harvard Divinity School. He is a brilliant man
with a strong academic background and a long and outstanding career at
various congregations of the churches of Christ. The purpose of this
book is stated as follows in the forward (page xiii) of the book:
My
purpose is to stimulate a
dialog between the
scientific ideas of origins and the biblical teaching about creation.
This dialog is desperately needed not only between groups of
individuals who hold these beliefs, but also between the warring parts
weighing the minds and hearts of many believers. I believe this war is
both unnecessary and destructive. It is time to seek peace.
Prince
points out that “What undermines dialog is a
sense of superiority or disdain for one’s dialog partners” (page 20).
We have personally found this certainly to be true. The book then sets
out to educate us about why dialog is needed, what it is, and why we as
humans need to understand that not we nor anyone else has all the
answers. There is a chapter on how scientists and believers each
operate and how this contributes to a failure to be able to have
meaningful dialog. These sections of the book are very useful and
helpful to any reader.
Chapters three to five of the book deal with how the
Bible writers convey the message of the creative acts of God, and how
these methods have come to us in Genesis 1 and 2. This is a
literar
y/philosophical/theological
approach that discusses the use of
poetry, stories, and language in conveying information. Prince is well
educated in this subject area and takes exception to the way
fundamentalists read the creation accounts. His fourth chapter is
titled “A New Approach to the Interpretation of the Creation Stories in
Genesis.” The last part of the book discusses world view issues and how
questions of free will, determinism, and man’s relationship to the
cosmos can be resolved to satisfy thinking in the world in which we
live both from a Christian and scientific standpoint.
This is a challenging book which is going to target
advanced college students, ministers, and academics at the university
level. It is not aimed at high school students or the general reader.
For the person who wants a challenge to think differently and come to
an academic viewpoint that is different from what he might have had in
the past, this book will be very useful. The title of the book comes
from the question that you may want to think about--after the seventh
day was over (as well as what was God resting from and why did He have
to rest), what would or is God doing during the eighth day? If that
question makes you smile and wonder you will want to read Prince’s book.
The books that are reviewed on these pages are not available
through us, unless Does God Exist? printed them. Those books can be
obtained from a local bookstore or through many online bookstores.
