Notes
1 The phrase has also been used to designate C. S. Lewis’s own approach to Christianity: see Will Vaux, Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C. S. Lewis. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004, 17. I use the phrase in a broader sense, which embraces the theological approaches found in Lewis, and their counterparts within the Christian tradition.
2 Alister E. McGrath, The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008.
3 Alister E. McGrath, A Fine Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.
4 To be published as Alister E. McGrath, Darwinism and the Divine: Evolutionary Thought and Natural Theology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2011.
5 Most notably, see Alister E. McGrath with Joanna Collicutt McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine. London: SPCK, 2007.
6 Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve, 2007, 282.
7 Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, 7.
8 For my own small contribution to this celebration, see Alister E. McGrath, ‘The Shaping of Reality: Calvin and the Formation of Theological Vision’. Toronto Journal of Theology 25 (2009): 187–204. This article is an edited version of my keynote address to the University of Toronto’s Calvin Congress in June 2009.
9 I have in mind especially Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution (which we have already noted); and Karen Armstrong, The Case for God. New York: Knopf, 2009.
10 C. S. Lewis, ‘Is Theology Poetry?’ in C. S. Lewis: Essay Collection. London: Collins, 2000, 1–21; quote at p. 21.
11 The notion of the ‘interpretive community’ was set out by Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980, 147–74.
1 Mere theology: the landscape of faith (1)
Based on an introductory lecture given at St Mellitus College, London, in September 2009 to students preparing for ordained ministry in the Church of England.
2 Mere theology: the landscape of faith (2)
Based on an introductory lecture given at St Mellitus College, London, in September 2009 to students preparing for ordained ministry in the Church of England.
1 From ‘Brief Life Is Here Our Portion’, translated by John M. Neale, 1851.
3 The gospel and the transformation of reality: George Herbert’s ‘The Elixir’
Based on a paper read to the Literature and Theology Seminar, Oxford University, in November 2007.
1 Augustine of Hippo, Sermo 88.5. See further Roland J. Teske, ‘Augustine of Hippo on Seeing with the Eyes of the Mind’ in Ambiguity in the Western Mind, edited by Craig J. N. de Paulo, Patrick Messina and Marc Stier. New York: Peter Lang, 2005, 72–87.
2 Iris Murdoch, ‘The Sovereignty of Good over Other Concepts’ in Existentialists and Mystics, edited by Peter Conradi. London: Chatto, 1998, 363–85; quote at p. 368.
3 Augustine, Sermo 88.5.5.
4 For a detailed analysis of this point see Alister E. McGrath, The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008, 115–216.
5 Examples of works of importance to recognize and explore this point include: Joseph Summers, George Herbert: His Religion and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968; William H. Halewood, The Poetry of Grace: Reformation Themes and Structures in English Seventeenth-Century Poetry. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970; Ilona Bell, ‘“Setting Foot into Divinity”: George Herbert and the English Reformation’. Modern Language Quarterly 38 (1977): 219–41; Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979; Elizabeth Clarke, Theory and Theology in George Herbert’s Poetry: ‘Divinitie and Poesy Met’. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997; R. V. Young, Doctrine and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Poetry: Studies in Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, and Vaughan. Cambridge: Brewer, 2000.
6 See Heather A. R. Asals, Equivocal Predication: George Herbert’s Way to God. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981, especially 26–9. Note also Martin Elsky, Authorizing Words: Speech, Writing, and Print in the English Renaissance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989, 147–83.
7 For example, see the analyses in Donald R. Dickson, The Fountain of Living Waters: The Typology of the Waters of Life in Herbert, Vaughan, and Traherne. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1987; Richard Leonard Caulkins, George Herbert’s Art of Love: His Use of the Tropes of Eros in the Poetry of Agape. New York: Peter Lang, 1996.
8 See Bruce A. Johnson, ‘The Audience Shift in George Herbert’s Poetry’. Studies in English Literature 35 (1990): 89–103. Note that I have generally used modern English spelling in reproducing Herbert’s poetry.
9 The use of ‘glass’ in this poem may also take up some Pauline themes, most notably those found in 2 Corinthians 3.18: ‘But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory.’ See Ronald G. Shafer, ‘George Herbert’s Poetic Adaptation of St Paul’s Image of the Glass’. Seventeenth-Century News 35 (1977): 10–11.
10 Debora K. Shuger, Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance: Religion, Politics, and the Dominant Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990, 91–119; Harold E. Toliver, George Herbert’s Christian Narrative. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993, 183–225.
11 F. E. Hutchinson remarks that ‘no poem of Herbert’s better shows his skill in revision’: see F. E. Hutchinson, The Works of George Herbert. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941, 541. The three main sources for Herbert’s Temple are the Williams manuscript (MS Jones B 62 at Dr Williams’s Library, London), the Bodleian manuscript (MS Tanner 307 at the Bodleian Library, Oxford), and the first printed edition of 1633.
12 For comment, see Janis Lull, ‘Expanding “the Poem Itself”: Reading George Herbert’s Revisions’. Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 27 (1987): 71–87. See also Lull’s later study The Poem in Time: Reading George Herbert’s Revisions of The Church. Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1990.
13 This is the argument of Charles Molesworth, ‘Herbert’s “The Elixir”: Revision towards Action’. Concerning Poetry 5 (1972): 12–20.
14 Helen Constance White, The Metaphysical Poets: A Study in Religious Experience. New York: Macmillan, 1936, 181–2; Clarence H. Miller, ‘Christ as the Philosopher’s Stone in George Herbert’s “The Elixir”’. Notes and Queries 45 (1998): 39–40; Yaakov Mascetti, ‘“This Is the Famous Stone”: George Herbert’s Poetic Alchemy in “The Elixir”’ in Mystical Metal of Gold: Essays on Alchemy and Renaissance Culture, edited by Stanton J. Linden. Brooklyn, NY: AMS Press, 2005, 301–24.
15 Urszula Szulakowska, ‘The Tree of Aristotle: Images of the Philosopher’s Stone and their Transference in Alchemy from the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Century’. Ambix 33 (1986): 53–77. For a rich collection of texts illustrating the cultural fascination with alchemy, see Stanton J. Linden, The Alchemy Reader: From Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
16 The definitive study of this development remains Stanton J. Linden, Darke Hierogliphicks: Alchemy in English Literature from Chaucer to the Restoration. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1996.
17 Linden, Darke Hierogliphicks, 106.
18 Richard Sibbes, A Learned Commentary or Exposition, upon the First Chapter of the Second Epistle of S. Paul to the Corinthians (London, 1655), 257; cited in William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism. New York: Harper & Row, 1957, 125.
19 Linden, Darke Hierogliphicks, 154–92.
20 See, for example, Vittorio Tranquilli, Il concetto di lavoro da Aristotele a Calvino. Milan: Ricciardi, 1979; George Ovitt, The Restoration of Perfection: Labor and Technology in Medieval Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987.
21 For attempts to identify and produce one such elixir, see Donald R. Dickson, ‘The Hunt for Red Elixir: An Early Collaboration between Fellows of the Royal Society’. Endeavour 22 (1998): 68–71.
22 See the strident criticisms of Helen Vendler, The Poetry of George Herbert. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975, 270–2, especially the comments concerning its ‘infantile vocabulary’. It is normally the closing stanzas of Herbert’s poems which tend to be formulaic and credal in form (see, for example, ‘Jordan (I)’ and ‘Antiphon (I)’). However, in this case, the opening stanza was the last to be composed, thus setting the credal framework for the subsequent imaginative exploration of the issues. See further Barbara Leah Harman, Costly Monuments: Representations of the Self in George Herbert’s Poetry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.
23 The original poem includes a second stanza, omitted from versions printed in English hymnals: ‘Not rudely, as a beast, / To run into an action; / But still to make Thee prepossest, / And give it his perfection’. While emphasizing the importance of ‘perfection’, this stanza is widely regarded as inferior to the remainder of the poem.
24 It is also possible that ‘glass’ may designate a mirror. However, the use of the window image in ‘The Windows’ suggests that this is more likely to be Herbert’s intended application in ‘The Elixir’.
25 A question which arises at this point concerns the extent to which Herbert has been influenced, directly or indirectly, by Augustine of Hippo’s theory of signs: see especially Richard Todd, The Opacity of Signs: Acts of Interpretation in George Herbert’s ‘The Temple’. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986. Todd argues that Herbert incorporates Augustine’s understanding of the tension between the separate (though clearly related) worlds of res and verbum into his theory of poetic expression and poetic ‘reading’ expressed in The Temple.
26 Herbert discusses the significance of Christ’s death and resurrection in many poems in The Temple, especially ‘Redemption’ and ‘Easter’.
27 Herbert’s reference to questions of social status are discussed in Cristina Malcolmson, Heart-Work: George Herbert and the Protestant Ethic. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Malcolmson’s essentially Marxist reading of Herbert interprets this section of ‘The Elixir’ as a rationale for ‘the drudgery needed for the maintenance of the traditional order’ (170). This materialist reading of Herbert totally fails to locate it within the Protestant work ethic, and above all the transformation of the social status of work which it accomplished.
28 See, for example, Easter; Love (III).
29 On this, see Andrew Walker, ‘Scripture, Revelation and Platonism in C. S. Lewis’. Scottish Journal of Theology 55 (2002): 19–35.
30 For this Christianized version of Platonism found in Augustine of Hippo, one of Lewis’s theological lodestars, see Philip Cary, Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 63–76.
31 See Brad Prager, Aesthetic Vision and German Romanticism. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2007, 2–9.
32 C. S. Lewis, Collected Poems. London: HarperCollins, 1994, 128. For comment, see Don W. King, ‘Topical Poems: Lewis’ Post-Conversion Poetry’ in C. S. Lewis: An Examined Life, edited by Bruce L. Edwards. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, 292–3.
33 Note especially the references to the acquisition of the capacity to ‘have such sight’ (l. 7).
4 The cross, suffering and theological bewilderment: reflections on Martin Luther and C. S. Lewis
Based on a lecture given at the Centre for Mentorship and Theological Reflection, Toronto, Canada, in June 2009.
1 See the discussion in Roy Baumeister, Meanings of Life. New York: Guilford Press, 1991.
2 See his letter to Mary van Deussen, dated 18 June 1956, in which he comments that apologetics ‘is very wearing, and not [very] good for one’s own faith. A Christian doctrine never seems less real to me than when I have just (even if successfully) been defending it.’ C. S. Lewis: Collected Letters, edited by Walter Hooper. 3 vols. London: HarperCollins, 2006, vol. 3, 762.
3 For an introduction, see Joseph E. Vercruysse, ‘Luther’s Theology of the Cross at the Time of the Heidelberg Disputation’. Gregorianum 57 (1976): 532–48; Dennis Ngien, The Suffering of God According to Martin Luther’s Theologia Crucis. New York: Peter Lang, 1995. This became the topic of my first book: see Alister E. McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross: Martin Luther’s Theological Breakthrough. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985.
4 D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: Böhlaus, 1910), vol. 5, 163. ‘Vivendo, immo moriendo et damnando fit theologus, non intelligendo, legendo aut speculando.’
5 Martin Luthers Werke, vol. 5, 176. ‘Crux sola est nostra theologia.’
6 Martin Luthers Werke, vol. 5, 179. ‘Crux probat omnia.’
7 Heidelberg Disputation, Thesis 20: Martin Luthers Werke, vol. 1, 354.
8 See here Ronald Rubin, ‘Descartes’ Validation of Clear and Distinct Apprehension’. Philosophical Review 86 (1977): 197–208.
9 For excellent studies, see Robert Kolb, ‘Luther on the Theology of the Cross’. Lutheran Quarterly 16 (2002): 443–66; Sybille Rolf, ‘Crux sola est nostra theologia. Die Bedeutung der Kreuzestheologie für die Theodizeefrage’. Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 49 (2007): 223–40. The question of how Luther’s theological reflections of this period are to be updated to deal with today’s questions needs careful exploration: see Oswald Bayer, Martin Luthers Theologie. Eine Vergegenwärtigung. Tübingen: Mohr, 2003. Martin Luthers Werke, vol. 1, 354.
10 For the importance of this point, see Richard G. Tedeschi and Lawrence G. Calhoun, Trauma and Transformation: Growing in the Aftermath of Suffering. London: Sage Publications, 1995; Joanna Collicutt McGrath, ‘Post-Traumatic Growth and the Origins of Early Christianity’. Mental Health, Religion and Culture 9 (2006): 291–306.
11 Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace. London: Routledge, 2002, 81.
12 Weil, Gravity and Grace, 84.
13 There is a parallel here with Lewis, when he notes that we shall one day find ourselves in a place in which ‘our apparently contradictory notions … will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem.’ C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001, 71.
14 See, for example, Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969, 216. For further reflection, see John D. Caputo, ‘In Praise of Ambiguity’ in Ambiguity in the Western Mind, edited by Craig J. N. de Paulo, Patrick Messina and Marc Stier. New York: Peter Lang, 2005, 15–34.
15 See here the point made by Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics. London: Continuum, 1997, 24: ‘The system, the form of presenting a totality to which nothing remains extraneous, absolutizes the thought against each of its contents and evaporates the content in thoughts.’
16 For a fuller treatment of Luther’s complex notion of the ‘hidden God’, see Hellmut Bandt, Luthers Lehre vom verborgenen Gott: Eine Untersuchung zu dem Offenbarungsgeschichtlichen Ansatz seiner Theologie. Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1958; McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, 148–90.
17 C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain. New York: HarperCollins, 2001, 91. Note also the later comment (p. 94) that pain ‘plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul’.
18 Lewis, A Grief Observed, 6–7.
19 John Beversluis, C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985, 150.
20 See Ann Loades, ‘C. S. Lewis: Grief Observed, Rationality Abandoned, Faith Regained’. Literature and Theology 3 (1989): 107–21.
21 Martin Luthers Werke: Tischreden, vol. 1, 16. ‘Sola autem experientia facit theologum.’
5 The theatre of the glory of God: a Christian view of nature
Based on a talk given to graduate students at King’s College London in March 2009.
1 Richard Faber and Renate Schlesier, eds, Restauration der Götter: Antike Religion und Neo-Paganismus. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1986; Stefanie von Schnurbein, Göttertrost in Wendezeiten. Neugermanisches Heidentum zwischen New Age und Rechtsradikalismus. Munich: Claudius Verlag, 1993.
2 Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
3 For a good account, see Patrick Sherry, ‘Disenchantment, Re-Enchantment, and Enchantment’. Modern Theology 25 (2009): 369–86.
4 For anticipations of this, see Abigail Lustig, ‘Natural Atheology’ in Darwinian Heresies, edited by Abigail Lustig, Robert J. Richards and Michael Ruse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 69–83.
5 Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980, 147–74. For further reflection on this important idea, see Gary A. Olson, Justifying Belief: Stanley Fish and the Work of Rhetoric. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002.
6 I argue this point in detail in Alister E. McGrath, A Scientific Theology: 1 – Nature. London: T&T Clark, 2001, 81–133.
7 William Whewell, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 2 vols. London: Parker, 1847, vol. 1, 1.
8 For this idea in Hobbes, see Richard Tuck, ‘The “Christian Atheism” of Thomas Hobbes’ in Theism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, edited by Michael Hunter and David Wootton. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, 102–20.
9 Dorothy L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker. London: Methuen, 1994, preface [n.p.].
10 I here take issue with the simplistic and misleading interpretation of this and other Christian themes found in Lynn White, ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’. Science 155 (1967): 1203–7.
11 On this, see Susan Elizabeth Schreiner, The Theater of His Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin. Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press, 1991.
12 Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, 2.
13 For an excellent analysis of Irenaeus’ statement of the concept, see John Behr, Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 34–85; Eric F. Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 51–141.
14 For a theological discussion of this theme, see the magisterial study of Julius Gross, Geschichte des Erbsündendogmas: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Problems vom Ursprung des Übels. Munich: Reinhardt, 1960.
15 Jam Lambrecht, ‘The Groaning of Creation’. Louvain Studies 15 (1990): 3–18.
16 John Ruskin, Works. Edited by E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn. 39 vols. London: Allen, 1903–12, vol. 7, 268.
17 Ruskin, Works, vol. 5, 333.
18 See, for example, William Lane Craig, ‘The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe’. Truth: A Journal of Modern Thought 3 (1991): 85–96.
19 William Whewell, Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology. 5th edn. London: William Pickering, 1836, vi.
20 For a good account, see Johannes Maria Stenke, John Polkinghorne: Konzonanz von Naturwissenschaft und Theologie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006.
21 John Polkinghorne, Science and Creation: The Search for Understanding. London: SPCK, 1988, 20–1.
22 The argument is set out in detail in Alister E. McGrath, The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008; and Alister E. McGrath, A Fine Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.
23 Iris Murdoch, ‘The Darkness of Practical Reason’ in Existentialists and Mystics, edited by Peter Conradi. London: Chatto, 1998, 193–202; quote at p. 198.
24 See the influential analysis in Roy Baumeister, Meanings of Life. New York: Guilford Press, 1991.
25 For a similar idea in Romantic poetry, see Thomas Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.
26 Joseph von Eichendorff, ‘Wünschelrute’ (my translation); in Joseph von Eichendorff, Gedichte, ed. P. H. Neumann. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1997, 32. For comment on the theological significance of this poem, see Alister E. McGrath, ‘“Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen”? Gedanken über die Zukunft der natürlichen Theologie’. Theologische Zeitschrift 65 (2009): 246–60. The original German text reads as follows: ‘Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen, / Die da träumen fort und fort, / Und die Welt hebt an zu singen, / Triffst du nur das Zauberwort.’
6 The tapestry of faith: theology and apologetics
Based on a lecture given at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics in March 2009.
1 See, for example, Douglas John Hall, The End of Christendom and the Future of Christianity. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997; Darrell Guder et al., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998.
2 Michael W. Goheen, ‘As the Father Has Sent Me, I Am Sending You’: Lesslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum Publishers, 2000.
3 Martin Kähler, Schriften zu Christologie und Mission. Gesamtausgabe der Schriften zur Mission, edited by Heinzgünter Frohnes. Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1971, 190: ‘Die älteste Mission wurde zur Mutter der Theologie.’
4 Kähler, Schriften, 190.
5 David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in the Theology of Mission. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991, 11.
6 For useful reflections, see John G. Stackhouse, Humble Apologetics: Defending the Faith Today. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 131–205.
7 Avery Dulles, A History of Apologetics. 2nd edn. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2005, xix.
8 On Pelagianism, see Alister McGrath, Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009, 160–70.
9 Jonathan Edwards, Treatise on the Religious Affections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959, 305.
10 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions I.i.1. On this point, see further Klaas Bom, ‘Directed by Desire: An Exploration Based on the Structures of the Desire for God’. Scottish Journal of Theology 62 (2009): 135–48.
11 See Corbin Scott Carnell, Bright Shadow of Reality: Spiritual Longing in C. S. Lewis. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999.
12 On the cultural relevance of this point, see the classic study of Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973. For a theological analysis of the cross, see Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction. 4th edn. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, 326–59.
13 See the discussion in David K. Clark, Dialogical Apologetics: A Person-Centered Approach to Christian Defense. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1993.
14 For detailed studies of this major text, see the classic study of Robert F. Zehnle, Peter’s Pentecost Discourse: Tradition and Lucan Reinterpretation in Peter’s Speeches of Acts 2 and 3, Nashville, TN-0-: Abingdon, 1971. Although dated in some respects, the work remains an important analysis of the text itself and its underlying strategy.
15 See Bertil Gartn-0-er, The Areopagus Speech and Natural Revelation. Uppsala: Gleerup, 1955.
16 See Bruce W. Winter, ‘Official Proceedings and the Forensic Speeches in Acts 24–26’ in The Book of Acts in Its Ancient Literary Setting, edited by B. W. Winter and A. D. Clarke. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994, 305–36.
17 For a detailed exploration of these issues, see Alister E. McGrath, The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008, 221–315.
18 Austin Farrer, ‘The Christian Apologist’ in Light on C. S. Lewis, edited by Jocelyn Gibb. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1965, 23–43. Quote at p. 26.
19 See, for example, the approach in Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2007.
20 Simone Weil, First and Last Notebooks. London: Oxford University Press, 1970, 147.
21 C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy. London: Collins, 1989, 138.
22 C. S. Lewis, Rehabilitations and Other Essays. London: Oxford University Press, 1939, 158.
23 I explore this point further in Alister E. McGrath, ‘Erzählung, Gemeinschaft und Dogma: Reflexionen über das Zeugnis der Kirche in der Postmoderne’. Theologische Beiträge 41 (2010): 25–38.
24 See Roy Baumeister, Meanings of Life. New York: Guilford Press, 1991. Baumeister’s analysis of the importance of questions of identity, value, purpose and agency is of major importance to Christian apologetics.
7 The natural sciences: friends or foes of faith?
Based on an informal presentation to science graduate students at Oxford University in May 2009.
1 For my views on Richard Dawkins’ understanding of the relation of science and religion, see Alister E. McGrath, Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.
2 Stephen Jay Gould, ‘Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge’. Scientific American 267/1 (1992): 118–21.
3 Charles A. Coulson, Science and Christian Belief. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1958, 22.
4 I develop this point in Alister E. McGrath, The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008.
5 I explore this point in my 2009 Gifford Lectures: see Alister E. McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.
6 For a good popular account and debunking of most of these myths, see Ronald L. Numbers, ed., Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
7 Denis Noble, The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
8 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, 21.
9 Noble, Music of Life, 11–15; quote at p. 13.
10 M. R. Bennett and P. M. S. Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, 372–6.
11 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. London: Bantam, 2006, 196.
12 For a detailed analysis of the difficulties, see Liane Gabora, ‘Ideas Are Not Replicators but Minds Are’. Biology and Philosophy 19 (2004): 127–43.
13 Website at <http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/>.
14 Bruce Edmonds, ‘The Revealed Poverty of the Gene–Meme Analogy – Why Memetics Per Se Has Failed to Produce Substantive Results’. Published online in January 2005. <http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/2005/vol9/edmonds_b.html>. Accessed 10 March 2008.
8 Religious and scientific faith: the case of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species
Based on the 2009 Eric Symes Abbott Memorial Lecture, delivered at Westminster Abbey, London, in May 2009.
1 All six editions are now easily accessed online: <http://darwin-online.org.uk/>. For those preferring to use printed sources, see Morse Peckham, ed., The Origin of Species: A Variorum Text. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959.
2 William Kingdon Clifford, ‘The Ethics of Belief’ in The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1999, 70–96.
3 William James, ‘The Sentiment of Rationality’ in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1897, 63–110.
4 Gerald E. Myers, William James, His Life and Thought. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986, 460.
5 For a good account, see Christiane Chauviré, ‘Peirce, Popper, Abduction, and the Idea of Logic of Discovery’. Semiotica 153 (2005): 209–21.
6 Charles Darwin and Nora Barlow, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–1882: With Original Omissions Restored. New York: Norton, 1993, 118.
7 Scott A. Kleiner, ‘Problem Solving and Discovery in the Growth of Darwin’s Theories of Evolution’. Synthese 62 (1981): 119–62, especially 127–9. Note that substantially the same issues can be discerned in Johann Kepler’s explanation of the solar system: Scott A. Kleiner, ‘A New Look at Kepler and Abductive Argument’. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 14 (1983): 279–313.
8 William Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. 2 vols. London: John W. Parker, 1847, vol. 2, 36. As has often been pointed out, Whewell’s theory of induction is open to criticism: see, for example, Laura J. Snyder, ‘The Mill–Whewell Debate: Much Ado about Induction’. Perspectives on Science 5 (1997): 159–98.
9 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. 6th edn. London: John Murray, 1872, 164.
10 For the best general statement of this method, see Peter Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation. 2nd edn. London: Routledge, 2004.
11 See especially the detailed study of Elisabeth Anne Lloyd, ‘The Nature of Darwin’s Support for the Theory of Natural Selection’ in Science, Politics, and Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 1–19.
12 The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. F. Darwin. 3 vols. London: John Murray, 1887, vol. 2, 155. Hutton deserves much greater attention as a perceptive interpreter of Darwin: see, for example, John Stenhouse, ‘Darwin’s Captain: F. W. Hutton and the Nineteenth-Century Darwinian Debates’. Journal of the History of Biology 23 (1990): 411–42.
13 Karl R. Popper, ‘Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind’. Dialectica 32 (1978): 339–55.
14 Snyder, ‘The Mill–Whewell Debate’. Snyder elsewhere argues that Whewell’s views on induction have been misunderstood, and merit closer attention as a distinctive approach: Laura J. Snyder, ‘Discoverers’ Induction’. Philosophy of Science 64 (1997): 580–604.
15 Christopher Hitchcock and Elliott Sober, ‘Prediction vs. Accommodation and the Risk of Overfitting’. British Journal for Philosophy of Science 55 (2004): 1–34. The ‘weak predictivism’ defended by Hitchcock and Sober has parallels elsewhere: see, for example, the careful assessment of approaches in Marc Lange, ‘The Apparent Superiority of Prediction to Accommodation as a Side Effect’. British Journal for Philosophy of Science 52 (2001): 575–88; David Harker, ‘Accommodation and Prediction: The Case of the Persistent Head’. British Journal for Philosophy of Science 57 (2006): 309–21.
16 Spencer used the phrase in his Principles of Biology (1864); Darwin incorporated it into the fifth edition of the Origin: ‘This preservation of favourable variations, and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest.’ Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. 5th edn. London: John Murray, 1869, 91–2.
17 On which see Michael Bulmer, ‘Did Jenkin’s Swamping Argument Invalidate Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection?’ British Journal for the History of Science 37 (2004): 281–97.
18 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. 3rd edn. London: John Murray, 1861, 296.
19 Vítezslav Orel, Gregor Mendel: The First Geneticist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, 193.
20 Darwin, Origin of Species, 6th edn. 444. This comment is not present in earlier editions of the work.
21 See, for example, John Hedley Brooke, ‘The Relations between Darwin’s Science and His Religion’ in Darwinism and Divinity, edited by John Durant. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985, 40–75; Frank Burch Brown, The Evolution of Darwin’s Religious Views. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986; Nick Spencer, Darwin and God. London: SPCK, 2009.
22 <http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/>.
23 Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2002, 118–21.
24 These comments are noted in a letter to Asa Gray, dated 28 July 1862: see Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. F. Darwin, vol. 3, 272–4.
25 Charles Kingsley, ‘The Natural Theology of the Future’ in Westminster Sermons. London: Macmillan, 1874, v–xxxiii; quote at p. xxiii.
26 Kingsley, ‘The Natural Theology of the Future’, xxv. Note also Kingsley’s emphasis on divine providence in the direction of the evolutionary process (xxiv–xxv).
27 See Kingsley, ‘The Natural Theology of the Future’, xiii–xiv.
28 See further Randal Keynes, Annie’s Box: Charles Darwin, His Daughter and Human Evolution. London: Fourth Estate, 2001.
29 See the analysis in John Hedley Brooke, ‘“Laws Impressed on Matter by the Creator”? The Origins and the Question of Religion’ in The Cambridge Companion to ‘The Origin of Species’, edited by Michael Ruse and Robert J. Richards. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, 256–74.
30 William James, The Will to Believe. New York: Dover Publications, 1956, 51.
31 For the ability of Christian theology to cope with such theoretical anomalies, see Alister E. McGrath, A Scientific Theology: 3 – Theory. London: T&T Clark, 2003.
32 For the importance of the notion of ‘eschatological verification’, see John Hick, ‘Theology and Verification’ in The Existence of God. London: Macmillan, 1964, 252–74.
33 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. London: John Murray, 1859, 171. For examples of such ‘difficulties’, see Abigail J. Lustig, ‘Darwin’s Difficulties’ in The Cambridge Companion to ‘The Origin of Species’, ed. Ruse and Richards, 109–28.
9 Augustine of Hippo on creation and evolution
Based on an informal lunchtime talk given to a small group of graduate students of biology in London in November 2008.
10 Does religion poison everything? The new atheism and religious belief
A public lecture given at the University of Reykjavik, Iceland, in September 2008.
1 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. For a brief response to this book see Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine. London: SPCK, 2007.
2 Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve, 2007. It is instructive to compare this with Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-hunts, and the End of Slavery. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.
3 Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2004. A fourth work is sometimes mentioned in this context: Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. New York: Viking Penguin, 2006.
4 Dawkins, The God Delusion, 249.
5 For an excellent philosophical critique of Dawkins, see Keith Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God: Doubting Dawkins. Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2008.
6 For further exploration of this point, see Peter Harrison, ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; Daniel L. Pals, Seven Theories of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996; Samuel J. Preus, Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.
7 Mary Midgley, Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears. 2nd edn. London: Routledge, 2002. See further my discussion earlier in this collection of essays of how Dawkins transposes Darwinism into an ideology (86–7).
8 On this, see Donald E. Brown, Human Universals. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991, 48.
9 See the important study by Jung H. Lee, ‘Problems of Religious Pluralism: A Zen Critique of John Hick’s Ontological Monomorphism’. Philosophy East and West 48 (1998): 453–77. Lee focuses on So¯to¯ Zen Buddhism, which resists pluralist as much as atheist attempts to theoretical religious reductionism, whether from a pluralist or atheist perspective.
10 Martin Marty with Jonathan Moore, Politics, Religion, and the Common Good: Advancing a Distinctly American Conversation About Religion’s Role in Our Shared Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000.
11 Diego Gambetta (ed.), Making Sense of Suicide Missions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
12 Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. New York: Random House, 2005.
13 Scott Atran, ‘The Moral Logic and Growth of Suicide Terrorism’. The Washington Quarterly 29/2 (Spring 2006): 127–47.
14 Richard E. Wentz, Why People Do Bad Things in the Name of Religion. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1993. See also Sudhir Kakar, The Colors of Violence: Cultural Identities, Religion, and Conflict. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
15 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Seabury Press, 1972. See also Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
16 The classic philosophical analysis of the emergence of totalitarianism in the twentieth century remains Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, 1951. In Arendt’s analysis, religion is not seen as a significant contributing factor to this development.
17 For exploration of this theme, see Richard A. Burridge, Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007.
18 For a good discussion, see Keith Ward, Is Religion Dangerous? Oxford: Lion, 2006. See further David Martin, Does Christianity Cause War? Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
19 Anna Dickinson, ‘Quantifying Religious Oppression: Russian Orthodox Church Closures and Repression of Priests 1917–41’. Religion, State & Society 28 (2000): 327–35. See further Dimitry V. Pospielovsky, A History of Marxist–Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987; William Husband, ‘Soviet Atheism and Russian Orthodox Strategies of Resistance, 1917–1932’. Journal of Modern History 70 (1998): 74–107.
20 Joseph Frank and David I. Goldstein (eds), Selected Letters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987, 446.
21 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Devils, translated by Michael R. Katz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, 691. This major work is also known by other titles in English, including ‘The Possessed’.
22 The literature is helpfully summarized by Dickinson, ‘Quantifying Religious Oppression: Russian Orthodox Church Closures and Repression of Priests 1917–41’.
23 Dawkins, The God Delusion, 273.
24 Dawkins, The God Delusion, 249.
25 Alexandru D. Popescu, Petre Tutea: Between Sacrifice and Suicide. Williston, VT: Ashgate, 2004.
26 Dawkins, The God Delusion, 259.
27 Daniel C. Dennett, ‘The Bright Stuff’, New York Times, 12 July 2003. See also Richard Dawkins, ‘The Future Looks Bright’, Guardian, 21 June 2003.
28 Chris Mooney, ‘Not Too “Bright”: Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett Are Smart Guys, but Their Campaign to Rename Religious Unbelievers “Brights” Could Use Some Rethinking’. Skeptical Inquirer, March–April 2004.
29 Michael Shermer, How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God. New York: Freeman, 2000, 71.
30 See, for example, Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
31 ‘La superstition est à la religion ce que l’astrologie est à l’astronomie, la fille très folle d’une mère très sage.’ See Voltaire, Treatise on Toleration, edited by Brian Harvey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 83. On Voltaire’s alleged ‘atheism’, see Arnold Ages, ‘Voltaire and the Problem of Atheism: The Testimony of the Correspondence’. Neophilologus 68 (1984): 504–12.
11 Atheism and the Enlightenment: reflections on the intellectual roots of the new atheism
Based on a public lecture given at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, in December 2009.
1 See, for example, Paul Kurtz, What is Secular Humanism? Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006.
2 For an excellent account, see Mason Olds, American Religious Humanism. Minneapolis, MN: University Press of America, 1996.
3 See, for example, Charles G. Nauert, Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. For a useful collection of essays, see Jill Kraye (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
4 James K. McConica, Erasmus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
5 On which see Erica Rummel, Erasmus’ Annotations on the New Testament. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986. For the impact of Renaissance humanism on the origins of the Reformation, see Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, 34–66.
6 Paul Kurtz, ‘Re-enchantment: A New Enlightenment’. Free Inquiry Magazine 24/3 (April–May 2004).
7 Louis K. Dupré, The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004, 12–17. See also Frederick C. Beiser, The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. The complexity and diversity of Enlightenment ‘rationalism’ has been a major theme of recent scholarship: see, for example, Julie Candler Hayes, Reading the French Enlightenment: System and Subversion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
8 For reflections on the importance of this development for Christian apologetics, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, ‘The Migration of the Theistic Arguments: From Natural Theology to Evidentialist Apologetics’ in Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment, edited by Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986, 38–80.
9 On this final point, see Hitchens’ plea for a ‘New Enlightenment’: Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve, 2007, 277–83.
10 For an excellent discussion of the general issues, see Winfried Schroeder, Ursprunge des Atheismus: Untersuchungen zur Metaphysik- und Religionskritik des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Tubingen: Frommann-Holzboog, 1998. On the French situation, see Jennifer Michael Hecht, The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology in France. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, especially 41–134.
11 Terry Eagleton, ‘Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching: A Review of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion’. London Review of Books, 19 October 2006. For Eagleton’s own perceptive and critical comments on this important issue, see Terry Eagleton, Holy Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
12 Leszek Kolakowski, ‘The Idolatry of Politics’ in Modernity on Endless Trial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990, 146–61.
13 Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, 28.
14 Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution, 87–9.
15 Leszek Kolakowski, ‘Can the Devil Be Saved?’ in Modernity on Endless Trial, 75–85.
16 J. R. R. Tolkien, ‘Mythopoeia’ in Tree and Leaf. London: HarperCollins, 1992, 85–90; quote at p. 89.
17 The Works of John Locke. 10 vols. London: Thomas Tegg, 1823, vol. 8, 447.
18 Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? London: Duckworth, 1988, 6. The diversity of notions of ‘reason’ within the Enlightenment has led many scholars to query whether the use of the singular term ‘Enlightenment’ can be sustained. There seem to be several ‘Enlightenments’ – or at least a wide range of implementations of a single Enlightenment agenda, if this can indeed be defended. See especially James Schmidt, What Is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996.
19 Mark D. Chapman, ‘Why the Enlightenment Project Doesn’t Have to Fail’. Heythrop Journal 39 (1998): 379–93; quote at p. 380.
20 Leszek Kolakowski, Metaphysical Horror. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001, 1–2.
21 A point made repeatedly throughout Leszek Kolakowski, The Main Currents of Marxism. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976–8.
22 A point famously emphasized by Karl R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957. For comment from a (then) leading atheist writer, see Anthony Flew, ‘Human Choice and Historical Inevitability’. Journal of Libertarian Studies 5 (1981): 345–56.
23 See Grace Davie, Europe: The Exceptional Case. Parameters of Faith in the Modern World. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2002.
24 See, for example, Scott Thomas, The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations: The Struggle for the Soul of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
25 See the points made by Max Horkheimer in his interview with Helmut Gumnior: Max Horkheimer, Die Sehnsucht nach dem ganz Anderen. Ein Interview mit Kommentar von Helmut Gumnior. Hamburg: Furche-Verlag, 1971.
26 As noted and illustrated by J. W. Burrow, The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848–1914. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000, 56–67.
27 Graeme Garrard, Counter-Enlightenments from the Eighteenth Century to the Present. London: Routledge, 2006. Note especially the section dealing with the ‘return of faith and feeling’ (55–73).
28 Leszek Kolakowski, ‘Concern About God in an Apparently Godless Age’ in My Correct Views on Everything, edited by Zbigniew Janowski. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2005, 173–83. Quote at p. 183. For a more rigorous exploration of this theme, see Charles Taylor, A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007.
29 Leszek Kolakowski, ‘Revenge of the Sacred in Secular Culture’ in Modernity on Endless Trial, 63–74. Theological engagement with Kolakowski at this point (or any, for that matter) is rare: for a luminous exception, see Peter Hebblethwaite, ‘Feuerbach’s Ladder: Leszek Kolakowski and Iris Murdoch’. Heythrop Journal 13 (1972): 143–61.
30 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 153. For this ‘metaphysical need’, see Tyler T. Roberts, Contesting Spirit: Nietzsche, Affirmation, Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998, 49–53.
31 Peter Poellner, Nietzsche and Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 9.
32 Kolakowski, Modernity on Endless Trial.
33 An excellent example of such a neo-conservative reading of the Enlightenment is found in Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments. New York: Knopf, 2004.
34 Matthew Arnold, Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (1855), line 98.
35 Zygmunt Bauman, ‘On Writing: On Writing Sociology’. Theory, Culture & Society 17 (2000): 79–90; quote at p. 79.
36 Leszek Kolakowski, ‘Man Does Not Live by Reason Alone’. New Perspectives Quarterly 26/4 (2009): 19–28.