Edgar Andrews, an emeritus professor of materials science at London University, is not afraid of a challenge. Having about five years ago authored a 300 page book entitled "Who made God?", he now turns his attention to the subject of Man – taking in huge tracts of human knowledge well beyond his specific expertise.

Andrews' approach is pretty head-on. He first examines the evidence from cosmology of the universe as a possible home for sentient life. He then moves on to the biosphere and the question of human origin and uniqueness. Finally he turns to the testimony of the Bible, the historicity of the first man Adam and the Fall, leading to the advent of the last Adam, the resurrection and the consummation of all things.

The wide sweep of the book is breathtaking and the author's grasp of the various disciplines involved is impressive. Of course he cannot speak with equal authority on each subject, and sometimes the list of authorities he calls in aid of his own position is a bit thin. But he contrives, with a sure touch and not a little humour, to give the reader a conducted tour through such realms as the intricacies of multiverse and string theory at one extreme and the flights of Berkeleyan idealism at the other. Not many writers could do that.

At what sort of readership, then, is the book aimed? Its uncompromisingly Biblical stance will be an immediate turn-off for the sceptical scientist. Wisely, perhaps, it makes no overt evangelistic appeal to the uncommitted. It will, however, confirm the faith of some who may have been shaken by the recent torrent of rationalist pseudo-science. And maybe its greatest usefulness will be in awakening in a young mind the desire to explore, with a Christian key, the vast new treasures that are opening up in such fields as cosmology, biology and informatics.

This book is available to buy from Amazon.

Donald Mackay, Knox Church, Perth