Return from a Distant Country by Alister McGrath

Abstract

Reviewed by: Return from a Distant Country by Alister McGrath Mark Mattes Return from a Distant Country. By Alister McGrath. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2020. 92pp. This slim volume belongs to the Fortress “My Theology” series which, according to the back page, allows thinkers “a platform to reflect on the meaning of God in their lives and the way they have constructed their life of faith.” McGrath is a well-known theologian, intellectual historian, and Christian apologist currently serving in a religion and science chair at Oxford University. As a youth, McGrath was an atheist. He became a Christian after he read thinkers who challenged the notion that knowledge is reducible to the scientifically verifiable (since, after all, that view is not itself scientifically verifiable), such as Karl Popper, as well as experiencing ambiguity through Marxism. Marxism helped McGrath appreciate a “Big Picture” approach to reality but as he started reading theology, he found it less satisfying than Christianity. While earning a doctorate in Molecular Biophysics in 1978, he concurrently read C. S. Lewis. Although Lewis was a popularist, his thinking was rich, grounded in decades of reflection on how faith and wider culture intersect. [End Page 456] After becoming a Christian, McGrath studied with Gordon Rupp and published books in historical theology, offering interpretations of Luther’s theology of the cross, the history of justification by grace alone through faith alone, and the perspectives of first- generation Reformers. Additionally, McGrath contributed to late twentieth-century discussions about the relationship between science and religion and defended faith against Richard Dawkins’ attacks. As a result, he helped Anglican clergy understand and convey the rationality of religious belief (22). The most important factor in McGrath’s appreciation of the Christian faith is precisely its ability to offer a satisfying, comprehensive approach to reality. That said, theology is best seen as discerning mystery throughout the world and not particularly as an exercise in “problem solving” (34). With respect to science, McGrath contends that science deals with how things work while theology deals with what things mean (66). Currently theologians should direct clergy and laity to immerse themselves in the tradition and discover treasures there that address people in their needs today. This volume is valuable because it offers a pithy summary of how a man who is both a theologian and a scientist finds compatibility between the two when so many do not. Mark Mattes Grand View University Des Moines, Iowa Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc