Book Review: The Spirit of Creation by Amos Yong

I wish there was a shelf in the bookstore called "Interdisciplinary." It would have to be a curated shelf, because there's lots of books that claim to be interdisciplinary, but only a few that truly are -- in which it could stand on its own in more than one discipline, and which is accessible to practitioners of all. Come to think of it, such a shelf might not exist because there might not be enough good books to stock on it. At any rate, The Spirit of Creation would fit on that shelf, combining theology (and a specifically Pentecostal angle on that theology) with philosophy of science and becoming more than the sum of its parts. Since one of the themes of the book is emergence, that result is entirely appropriate.

Yong has a knack for describing historical developments in both science and theology with a few sentences more effectively than others in many paragraphs. His description of the historical development of the concept of "laws of nature" accomplishes in a few pages what takes whole chapters in other places. This means that I can put his ideas together with scientists' ideas (like those of Terrence Deacon, in particular) and I suspect that something genuinely novel will emerge.

[My only hesitation comes in a late section on parapsychology, which I found unconvincing and unnecessary at the first reading (to be clear, I'm still going back and forth with myself on the necessity of it to the overall argument), although Yong's disclaimers at the beginning do a good job of insulating it from the rest of the argument. My biggest concern comes with how antagonists could take that section out of context and try to discredit the rest of the very good arguments as a result.]

Most importantly, Yong's pentecostal faith provides a necessary and helpful perspective that informs and enhances my own faith perspective -- and my science perspective. The specific thoughts on emergence seem to point a way forward that I've been thinking about for the whole week since I finished this book, and so it has already stuck with me and will continue to do so. File this on the top shelf.