Divine Windows: Seeing God through the lens of science

Dive into Divine Windows – where science and faith meet. Looking through a fresh lens of wonder, play and order, scientist and minister David Gregory invites you to see something of God’s creative hand on the world around us revealed by the creativity of science. Through reflective commentary and an inspiring series of nature and science imagery like those seen in popular documentaries, the shaping of creation by a higher purpose is revealed in the vision of the universe unveiled by science.

‘This book leads the reader through metaphor, wonder and play to a deeper appreciation of science and God. If you have wondered how science and religious faith can be held together, this book is for you.’ Dr Bethany Sollereder, lecturer in science and religion, The University of Edinburgh

‘This is a book of profound pictures – stunning images of the cosmos coupled with pictures of the wonder and playfulness of being both a scientist and a Christian. David Gregory explodes the myth that science and faith are boring! Rather he stimulates the imagination and engages curiosity to get to a picture of God that is compelling and liberating.’ David Wilkinson, professor of theology and religion, Durham University

‘David Gregory doesn’t just argue that science and faith can coexist – he shows us how science can become a sacred lens through which we glimpse the presence of God. As a filmmaker, I believe in the power of image, beauty and story to open hearts and reawaken the imagination. This book does exactly that. It invites the people to rediscover a deeper vision of Christ – not just as the Lord of Sunday mornings, but as the one in whom stars burn, tectonic plates shift and every breath holds divine mystery. This is not just a helpful book. It’s a needed one.’ The Revd Andy Thomas, Baptist pioneer minister, producer and director, Fuelcast Films

‘This is a wonderful book that truly opens divine windows. David Gregory moves effortlessly between science and faith with an easy style that gives the reader confidence to explore these vast topics together. David explores the way art and science interweave and stimulate our imagination to see new horizons. Prepare to be inspired!’ The Revd Margot R. Hodson, director of theology and education, The John Ray Initiative

‘Here is an affirmation of the visual and of imagination, awe and wonder in both science and theology… We are given a deep groundwork as preparation for spiritual reflection on scientific images, before being let loose to explore some pictures from astronomy for ourselves, with enough scientific and theological content to fire the imagination. This is a beautiful book to give to thinking friends, family and colleagues, as well as a resource for the church.’ Dr Ruth M. Bancewicz, church engagement director, The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion

This book is delightfully full of the familiar and the unfamiliar. Incredible images and arresting turns of phrase are brought together to give fresh perspectives around the intermingling of science, theology and the arts. It is most worthy of your time, your attention… and your spirit. Take up its invitation to dwell in all the richness and beauty that being a creature alive in God’s creation involves today!’ Dr Gavin Merrifield, general secretary of Christians in Science

‘Using his studies and experience of both science and theology David Gregory gives useful reflections to aid the praise and worship of our creator and the creator of the whole cosmos. David helpfully encourages us to use our imagination and powers of observation in discovering the infinite love of the creator, the creator’s genius and invention displayed through design and ever fresh novelty and originality, wisdom, order and playfulness of creation… I believe that this book will help many in their contemplation and worship.’ The Revd Dr John Weaver, former principle of Cardiff Baptist College and vice president of The John Ray Initiative

‘We have all got caught up in science versus religion as an idea we have to live with “and it has blinkered us.” What David Gregory through Divine Windows aims to do is to move into plain view the narrative imagination from which most of the scientific method actually emerges – and therefore create a space where this whole, stagnant debate can be reframed. David believes that this is an unexplored territory and through reframing we will be able to see the fingerprints of God and that will lead to human flourishing.’ Michael Harvey, missional entrepreneur, director ‘God and the Big Bang’

‘This book is written in a very accessible and engaging style. But the reader should not be fooled – this is a book full of ingenuity and subtlety of thought, shedding fresh light on familiar debates and opening up telling visual imagery to offer the explorer paths into a deeper appreciation of the wonder of God’s cosmos. Warmly recommended!’ Professor Christopher Southgate, University of Exeter

Transforming Ministry, spring 2026. Review by Roger Thornington

In this intriguing book, Gregory, a Baptist minister with a PhD in Physics, develops the concept that, just as traditional icons in Orthodox worship act as divine windows into the eternal, nature itself can provide us with our own icons as windows into the divine presence. The first five chapters describe how his own scientific career and Christian faith developed in parallel. The sixth chapter reveals his own eight ‘Divine Windows’: star, moon, earth, aurora, dust, life, other worlds and finally cosmos. Each is illustrated with images from NASA’s archives – divine windows from the scientific world – some with a supporting biblical text. Gregory suggests that the worship of our Creator should be nourished by embracing the wonder that can be discerned in our natural world and in our deeper scientific knowledge and understanding of our complex environment. This book will challenge those who see no God behind creation but will delight the rest of us as we celebrate these amazing signs of the unseen presence in our worship and in the care of our world.

Reviewed by Roger Thornington

Baptist Times online 26.11.25. Review by Rob Ellis

Many of us are familiar with David Gregory’s work in helping us to think about science and faith. The former Baptists Together President has once again skilfully combined his theological know-how with his scientific, and produced here an accessible and attractive book in which he both gives us some reasons to believe that Christianity and science need not be in opposition to one another, and also to understand that the findings of science can be a source of wonder which deepens our appreciation of God and his creation.

The result is an excellent little book. BRF, too, are to be congratulated on the design and quality of the publication, which features high quality photographs as a component. Gregory’s hope is to enable many of us to see both faith and science differently, and perhaps provide a fresh way of “inviting people to encounter God” [p. 14].

The books has two parts. In the first part Gregory sets out some of the theory which will undergird the later material. While this could get fairly technical, Gregory handles matters with a commendable lightness of touch. He explains how, in patterns first begun in the middle ages, people in the western world moved towards ways of looking at the world which tended to reduce the opportunity for us to discern God in and behind the natural world — or anywhere else, for that matter, apart from ‘within.’

Gregory suggests that science may in fact offer what Peter Berger’s famously described as “signals of transcendence” allowing us to see beyond the surface to the deeper meaning of the world around us, a meaning located in God and the divine purpose. While in the west, some writers have spoken of a sacramental quality in creation which have mitigated this problem, Gregory notes that Eastern traditions of Christianity have sometimes avoided it, most obviously through the use of icons: stylised works of art which may become windows through which we see God.

Gregory suggests that what is required is that we might approach scientific knowledge rather more like the way we approach art. If we are to ‘re-enchant’ the world, learn to see it as creation rather than just nature, then Gregory suggests we might have to learn to allow our imaginations to be stretched and perceptions of reality to be challenged. Works of art draw us in, make us respond. Art challenges how we see ourselves and the world around us, reshapes the narratives we tell and think we are part of, opens up new possibilities and discloses hidden truths. Art does things to us.

Dave Gregory is suggesting that we might look at some of the images produced by scientific work in just such a way — and so, be “done to” in a similar way to our encounter with a work of art.

The second part of the book offers eight such encounters — eight images produced by scientific exploration which we might see as icons: images through which we catch something of the divine presence and purpose. The images are stunning, and reproduced to a high standard in the book.

Intriguingly, each of the images has been made artificial in some way in order to make them scientifically useful, as scientists use their imaginations to fuse images together or modify colours. So, for instance, we have a triptych of images of the sun taken in different wavelengths of UV light; and a fusing of two images of sunrise and sunset on Mars; and the enhancing of colours in the phytoplankton bloom.

Each of the images comes with Gregory’s commentary, which helps us to look a them with more comprehension. There is some fascinating scientific knowledge shared in these commentaries, as well as the theological or spiritual insights which lift the images from the realm of information to nourishment.

I would think most people who preach regularly would want to get this book if only to snaffle ideas from these ‘windows.’ In places an eco-imperative is gently given: how appreciating a particular aspect of the created order and our place in it ought to make us more aware also of our responsibility for God’s world. But for the most part it is to the elements of playfulness and wonder which Gregory directs us.

The windows did their work on this reader. It was Rabbi Lionel Blue who I first heard advise that to teach a child to pray, one first has to teach them wonder. I wondered!

If Dave Gregory has the appetite and the time, I suspect there is another volume waiting to be written. This book focuses on images of or from space, but there could be other focuses in biology or mathematics, for example. A more detailed theological discussion could also address some of the issues touched upon but not considered in any detail.

However this book is not primarily a theological argument so much as an exercise in learning to see the world as God’s, learning to see nature as creation. Some theory lays a path to the windows, but what Dave Gregory wants to do is help us to look through the windows at creation with new joy and wonder. Job done.

Reviewed by Rob Ellis, Regent’s Park College, Oxford

https://baptist.org.uk/Articles/728616/Divine_Windows_by.aspx