This book reflects many years of research and reflection by a seasoned Christian philosopher. It complements well the literature in this field. The author retired as a professor of psychology and philosophical anthropology at University College Dublin in 2008. He is now an adjunct professor in philosophy at Notre Dame University, Sydney, Australia.

Purcell has a very good knowledge of the current state of the natural sciences concerning human origins. Among other things, he considers some significant recent findings in paleontology and genetics. While he thinks “survival of the fittest” is still an important factor in evolution, he thinks an understanding of evolution today also needs to include notions of punctuated equilibrium, evo‐devo (internal genetic factors), evolutionary convergences, “and for some authors, the recognition of the role of animal consciousness in evolution” (107). Purcell acknowledges Darwin's theoretical greatness in developing a diachronic (over a period of time) context for biology. He thinks Darwin, however, “lacked the intellectual tools … to differentiate the different and complementary roles of natural science, philosophy and revelation” (115).

While criticizing “scientism” and “reductionism,” Purcell advocates the complementarity of natural science, philosophy, and revelation. He presents quite a comprehensive understanding of human nature, referring to a wide variety of sources from ancient myth and Greek philosophy to contemporaries such as Eric Voegelin, a philosopher of anthropology and history. Among others, he applies Bernard Lonergan's insights on emergence, development, understanding, and freedom to the data of the natural sciences and human experience. Purcell speaks of Lonergan as a contemporary Thomist who thinks God “the Creator shares his existence and creativity with his created, secondary causes” (140).

Purcell neither provides a detailed exegesis of the biblical creation accounts found in Genesis nor takes a literalist approach. He thinks any attempt at “concordism,” trying to fit the text of Genesis with contemporary scientific evidence is “a complete misreading of the text” in its context (71). Rather, he endorses Stanley Jaki's view that Genesis communicates “that God has created all that is in the world” (70) and Joseph Ratzinger's view that creation through God's word in Gen. 1 expresses “the truth that the universe” is the product of “‘intelligence, freedom,’ and ‘the beauty that is identical with love’” (70–71). Purcell embraces the Judaic‐Christian faith, which “is rooted in a belief that everything depends upon God, or better, all is a gift from God” (119).

Adapting Thomas More's “theeward,” he speaks of the person as intrinsically relational or “youwards” and if “self‐giving is reciprocated, we become persons‐in‐communion, moving from youwardness to wewardness” (295). Purcell understands these in the light of Martin Buber's I and Thou and New Testament agape personal and interpersonal love, which involves participation in the friendship of God.

While clearly embracing our physical continuity with the rest of the universe and life, Purcell explores at some length what makes us humans unique as compared to other primates and hominids, including our capacities related to symbolization, language, understanding, and freedom, and our limitless orientation to beauty, meaning, truth, and goodness. Among other things, he explains unique features of the human brain and vocal tract as the material basis for language and understanding. Related to explicating certain questions of truth, goodness, and evil, he uses some poignant concrete examples, such as Socrates, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Jewish Auschwitz victim Etty Hillesum, and leading Nazi Albert Speer. In the light of an interdisciplinary approach this book makes the case that we are not only quantitatively different from other forms of life, including other primates and hominids, but also qualitatively different. I recommend it.