Mathematics through the Eyes of Faith: a review

James Bradley and Russell Howell have put together this exploration of the relationship between mathematics and Christian faith. The book is intended primarily for students, and could even be used as curriculum supplement for a Christian educational setting. Each chapter is completed with exercises for the student, some of which are legitimate mathematical exercises that would engage even quite advanced undergraduate mathematics students. Even without the exercises, it is a good read for anyone who wants an introduction to the philosophy of mathematics from a Christian perspective.

The main questions addressed in this book are philosophical in nature; concepts from mathematics are used primarily as instruments to stimulate thinking about the "big questions." Chapters 1 and 2 give an introduction to these big questions and an historical background in order to set the stage for the next eight chapters, which are entitled, Infinity, Dimension, Chance, Proof and Truth, Beauty, Effectiveness, Epistemology, and Ontology, respectively. These titles all allude to the "big questions" introduced in Chapter 1. The final chapter is "An Apology" for mathematics, encouraging students who might take an interest to pursue mathematics as part of a greater search for truth, and as a particular way of serving God in the world.

The authors have given a very balanced and sophisticated treatment of each of the subjects they have introduced. They have refrained from picking a side on any issue for which there appears to be room for more than one consistently Christian view (which is virtually every issue). Consider, for instance, the issue of "Chance" in the universe. It is common for believers to contrast chance with God's sovereignty; however, this can hardly be the whole story, for reasons both scientific and theological. Howell and Bradley have laid out in Chapter 5 a case for theistic determinism and a case for theistic nondeterminism. At the heart of the debate is the notion of ontological uncertainty, the state of being actually governed by chance, so that no additional knowledge could possibly remove uncertainty. Theists naturally divide on this issue as much as non-theists do; the determinist may argue that God's sovereignty and omniscience excludes ontological uncertainty, whereas the nondeterminist may argue that God has created this universe with a freedom of its own.

Perhaps that is the great puzzle of this book: is there any particular way of seeing mathematics "through the eyes of faith"? It is not so much in the answers as in the questions that Howell and Bradley demonstrate the relationship between mathematics and faith. There is no one Christian position on the ontology of numbers, or on the nature of proof; rather, there are distinctively Christian questions that we may ask. For instance, if mathematical certainty implies genuine, sure knowledge about reality, does that mean we can "know the mind of God" through mathematics? Or is mathematics merely a creaturely activity, which, just like all human thought, is in an important way eternally distinct from God's thought?