These are two quite different books covering similar ground, setting out to plough furrows but ending up merely harrowing the ground. The ground is modern-day questioning of the concept of Nature, and the need of a theological answer. The first book takes its origin in a colloquium held at Lancaster in March 2000. Four papers from that colloquium, with responses, constitute Part 1 of the book. The first paper, by the editors, entitled ‘Genetically Modified Theology’(!) argues that public concern about GM is more than a surface apprehension about the risks involved that can be soothed away by scientific statistics and thin consequentialist ethics. Rather it runs deep, and is ‘religious in nature’. In his reply to this paper Christopher Southgate agrees that there is a theological point to be raised (human being's hubris in the face of creation), but thinks the public concern is rather more prosaic: a thick ethical distrust of private profit versus common good. The third paper in part 1 (Michael Banner) criticises the efforts of two ethicists (Bernard Williams and David Wiggins) to re-interpret away the ‘religiousness’ of public concern by talking of it as a healthy (Promethean) respect for the treacherousness of nature, or a holy dread of the sublime. Banner thinks we must stand firm against such weakening of our Judaeo-Christian tradition, and reaffirm the importance of God's call to a Sabbath rest to temper our technological servility of labour. The part of Michael Reiss's response to this that particularly interests me and which sums up my feeling about the whole book, is his statement that Banner wants to return to building the Temple; whereas ‘unlike Ezra and Nehemiah, I am more concerned at how we can worship in Babylon than return to Jerusalem’.

It seems to me that the book tries to jump in one leap up the ladder of science, ethics, religion, theology, revelation. It uses ‘theology’ as a sort of trump card to shortcut a whole series of good, proper discussions at the scientific, ethical and philosophical level. The editors seem to share a sociological disdain for claims of scientists to be pursuing objective truth; consequentialist ethics is pilloried without adequate account of what secular (rather than religious) ethical values it is overlooking; and there is a vagueness about the word ‘theology’ that disguises whether we are talking (philosophically from reason) about a creator God or (Christianly from revelation) about the history of salvation. Grace cannot heal our world by a sort of evangelical fervour of rebuke; it must befriend that world from within, paying it every secular respect owing to it.

But to end there would be to do the book gross injustice. If I cannot go along with the furrow that it is attempting to plough, I can still recognise that the ground is turned over well, this way and that way, and thoroughly. Part 2 (called Reflections from Specific Cases) covers very good discussions on moving genes from species to species (Reiss) and just experimentation on animals (Stephen Clark). Part 3 returns to the point that I think exaggerated – the theological nature of public concern – but in the process reports some very interesting survey data. Part 4 suggests new and old theological approaches (Ellul, Aquinas) and contains a puzzling chapter from Peter Scott which seems to oppose a theology of the eschatological sabbath to one of the initial creation sabbath; whereas perhaps the theological problem is just how to combine these: the nature given to us and the nature to be transformed by us. A lot of thinking and labour has gone into the book, and it is worth reading.

The second book is a one-man effort (a printing of Gifford Lectures given in 1997–8), but in some ways is even less unified. The author was a professor of genetics, and writes as a scientist most of the time (though one very opposed to the school of thought that says nature is ‘nothing but’ matter). For the early part of the book he traces the growth of science and especially evolutionary science; and then by way of a discussion of ecology and ‘Green science’ approaches a religious notion of human being as steward of God's creation, which is ‘God's book of works’, parallel to the scriptures, ‘God's book of words’. But then the lectures seem to fizzle out, without managing to wed the two books. There is a chapter on awe with a brief reference to bible wisdom, and another chapter entitled ‘Science and the Cross’ which in nearly twenty pages mentions the cross only once (on page 231). Possibly the author was constrained by the peculiar concept of natural theology that Adam Gifford prescribed to those giving his lectures; the end of practically every lecture refers to this problem in some way or another. But the result is that it is difficult to see the furrow that the author thinks he is ploughing (the stewardship one, I think). However, in the course of the book he does a very thorough job of harrowing the ground. I should guess that quite 50% of the text offers quotations from a multitude of different sources, some old, some very new, all of them interesting. And the author himself writes with experience and attractiveness; so that the book is very informative and alive on every page.