Claims of the Bible and of Science

This book captures one of the most volatile moments in Victorian religious life. When Bishop John William Colenso publicly questioned the historical accuracy of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, he ignited a firestorm within the Church of England. One anxious layman brought his urgent questions to Frederick Denison Maurice, the era's most intellectually daring Anglican theologian. The resulting thirteen letters form a remarkable exchange: a concerned Christian honestly grappling with doubt, and a theologian refusing to retreat into easy answers or authoritarian pronouncements. Maurice argues that genuine faith need not fear honest inquiry, that the spiritual truths of Scripture transcend literal historical verification, and that shrinking from intellectual confrontation only weakens religion's credibility. These letters preserve a pivotal debate that still resonates: how believers negotiate between religious tradition and the advancing methods of modern criticism.