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The book's success at engaging postmodernism responsibly is noteworthy, and is in line with the larger Christian trend of discarding the bad from the Enlightenment project and affirming the positive about postmodernity. When that does not suffice, each chapter has suggestions for improvement. It is a little disappointing (especially so in the last part, concerning contemporary issues) that the "Christian response" in each chapter was relegated to the end; in contrast with the rhetoric of the introduction and conclusion, it leaves the reader feeling that Christians can only react to trends in culture, not start new, positive ones.

Be aware; some familiarity with general logic or philosophy is helpful in the denser chapters on the nature of math, and although MPA makes no specific claim to be a systematic history or philosophy of math, it is detailed enough that some readers might take it to be one. There are plenty of stellar references included on both counts; use them!

What is the upshot for me, then? After good descriptions, well-reasoned blows at much that is bad, and good suggestions for the future, MPA outlines a program for a lot of future Christian thought in math in an exciting conclusion. For a young Christian mathematician who delights in knowing the mind of God, that means there is a lot to look forward to.

Karl-Dieter Crisman is a doctoral student in mathematics at the University of Chicago. His work this year is supported by a departmental grant from the National Science Foundation.

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Books & Culture Corner appears Mondays at ChristianityToday.com. Earlier Books & Culture Corners and Book of the Week include:

Getting Beyond Victimology | A provocative collection of essays for "the black silent majority." (Feb. 3, 2003)

Strange Bedfellows | Christopher Hitchens and Christopher Caldwell collaborate on a collection of political writing. Has the millennium arrived unnoticed? (Jan. 27, 2003)

Encounters of the Gods | Christianity and Native American religion in early America. (Jan. 20, 2003)

Books Present, Books Past, and Books to Come | Plus: A new format for this column. (Jan. 13, 2003)

Double Indemnity Meets Dead Souls | A conversation with novelist Richard Dooling. (Jan. 6, 2003)

Books of the Year | The top ten. (OK—make that twelve.) (Dec. 30, 2002)

Entertain Us | Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the rapture of distress. (Dec. 16, 2002)

Boys Will Be Boys | A new book by a leading Christian feminist scholar inadvertently reveals the flawed assumptions underlying much talk about "flexibility" in gender roles. (Dec. 9, 2002)

Street Cred | Dave Eggers: The portrait of an artist as a … what? (Dec.2, 2002)

Epicurus'—and Darwin's—Dangerous Idea | How we became hedonists. (Nov. 18, 2002)

Weird Science? | A Darwinian debate continues. (Nov. 11, 2002)

Of Moths and Men Revisited | A Darwinian debate. (Nov. 4, 2002)

Angels in Heaven | A game that's more than a game. (Oct. 28, 2002)

Number One with a Bullet | America's foist family as a tool for evangelism. (Oct. 21, 2002)

Train Up a Child | Helping children to become intimately familiar with Scripture. (Oct. 14, 2002)

Acting Like Those 'Evangelicals' | Guilty as charged? (Sept. 30, 2002)

Ugly Evangelicals | Is this us? (Sept. 23, 2002)

Herbie Goes Bananas | The rise and fall and rise and fall and rise of the VW Beetle. (Sept. 16, 2002)

So Far, So Near | A graduate of Murree Christian School in Pakistan, the site of a deadly assault by Islamic terrorists in August, reflects on his growing-up years, on what has changed in the interim, and on the beleaguered Christian community in Pakistan (Sept. 9, 2002)

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February (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47