Galileo, is one of the Christian Encounters series produced by Thomas Nelson. It tells the life of the mathematician and inventor Galileo Galilei. The author seeks through a summary telling of Galileo’s life to make the case that Galileo was a devout Christian who “never once balked at the authority of the Church, even when he could safely do so.” He also wants us to realize that the debate Galileo had with the church was an internal debate over the interpretation of Scripture as opposed to one of secular science versus those of faith.
I wanted very much to like this book, but I found it’s shortcomings prevented me from doing so. Perhaps I could simply state that at the end of the book I could not tell you what Galileo was famous for and that, in and of itself, is a problem. At the beginning of the book I often had difficulty following the authors line of thinking. The author has a unique sense of humor that was frequently demonstrated at the end of paragraphs. Early in the book it was mostly amusing, but it grew tiresome because it frequently read like a bad pun or a cliche and the formula was overused. To be honest, if I had not agreed to write a review for this book, I would not have finished it. In the end, the author makes a case for Galileo being faithful to the church, but I do not believe that he made a case about his personal faith in God.