Taking Things Further
This book is not a theology textbook, but it may stimulate you to want to know more about this discipline and to follow through on some of the writers that I engage with in the text. Happily, you can find an enormous amount of helpful material on theological issues and individual theologians online. However, I will mention some printed resources that may also be useful.
If you’ve found this book interesting, you might like two others I wrote, which are used to teach Christian theology throughout the world in colleges, seminaries and universities. Both are based on lectures that I gave at Oxford University in the 1980s and 1990s, and have been updated and expanded over the past 30 years:
Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction 6th edn (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016).
Alister E. McGrath, Theology: The Basics 4th edn (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016).
The first is long and comprehensive; the second is shorter and easier to read. However, both are accessible.
It really helps to engage with original texts so that you can read other theologians with a sense of the approach they take and the ideas they develop. I’ve written two such collections of texts (or ‘readings’). Each introduces the text in question and guides you through it, telling you what to look for:
Alister E. McGrath, The Christian Theology Reader 5th edn (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017).
Alister E. McGrath, Theology: The Basic Readings 3rd edn (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018).
Again, both these textbooks are designed to be accessible. The first is very comprehensive; the second is shorter and easier to read.
If you want to know more about my own journey as a theologian and some of the ideas that I find especially interesting, you might like to take a look at these:
Alister E. McGrath, My Theology: Return from a Distant Country (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2021).
Alister E. McGrath, Through a Glass Darkly: Journeys through Science, Faith and Doubt (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2020).
I also maintain a website on which I post videos of my theological lectures and reflections: <alistermcgrath.net>. All content is free and may be copied, shared or downloaded.
Although you may find my own introductions to theology helpful, there are many other wonderful guides to the field. I recommend the following, all of which are widely used in theological education at a variety of levels:
Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
David Ford, Theology: A Very Short Introduction 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
David Ford and Rachel Muers eds, The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology Since 1918 3rd edn (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005).
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine 2nd edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994).
Mark A. McIntosh, Divine Teaching: An Introduction to Christian Theology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008).
Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology 2nd edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004).
Roger E. Olson, The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014).
Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasmun, For the Life of the World: Theology that Makes a Difference (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2019).