Alister E. McGrath | Natural Theology
Natural theology is widely recognized as a bridge between the Christian faith and the natural sciences on the one hand, and the world of arts and literature on the other. McGrath has made significant contributions to the development of this field of theological reflection in recent years. His interest in this field was signalled in a sermon preached before the University of Oxford in November 2001, and the first volume of his trilogy A Scientific Theology (2001-3). These were followed by three major book-length publications, as follows. In 2008, McGrath published The Open Secret, the expanded version of his 2008 Richardson Memorial Lectures at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. These set out his basic approach to natural theology, which he interpreted, not as "proving the existence of God from an appeal to nature", but of appreciating the resonance between the Christian faith and what is actually observed in nature. This "inferential" or "abductive" (Charles Peirce) approach to natural theology corresponds much more closely with the methodology of the natural sciences. The history of natural theology is such that this kind of aprpoach fits easily within the spectrum of possibilities recognized by Christian theologians, including the specific approach which acheived dominance around the time of the Enlightenment - namely, proving the existence of God from nature. McGrath argued for a recovery of older approaches to natural theology, including avoiding an exclusive emphasis upon the rationality of faith. For McGrath, natural theology is about the exploration of the truth, beauty and goodness of nature, and discerning their deep congruence with the fundamental themes of the Christian faith. This was followed in 2009 by A Fine Tuned Universe, an expanded version of McGrath's February 2009 Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen. Here, McGrath developed the conceptual foundations of the approach to natural theology which was set out in The Open Secret, and applied it specifically to what are usually described as "anthropic phenomena". Arguing that such phenomena prove nothing, McGrath pointed instead to their fundamental resonance with core themes of the Christian tradition. In particular, McGrath emphasised the explanatory superiority of a Trinitarian vision of God over its deistic and theistic alternatives. In 2011, McGrath published an expanded version of his 2009 Hulsean Lectures at the University of Cambridge, dealing with the impact of evolutionary thought on natural theology. Darwinism and the Divine focussed on two issues. First, the work considered the deveopment of the English tradition of natual theology from about 1650 to 1850, pointing out its distinctive features. In particular, the work concentrates on William Paley's famous work Natural Theology (1802), contextualizing this within the intellectual culture of its age. It is shown that Paley's approach represented a popularised version of ideas which were regnant in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and which were already falling out of favour with intellectual culture by 1800. The radical changes in English natural theology between 1802 and 1850 are considered, along with the impact of Darwin's theory of natural selection. The historical conclusion is simple: Darwin's theories unquestionably call Paley's approach into question. But other approaches are not affected; indeed, some are given a new lease of life. Paley was simply not typical of his age. The second part of the book moves to the present age, and considers the relation of natural theology and evolutionary thought in the early twenty-first century, noting how the notion of teleology remains deeply embedded within contemporary thinking about the evolutionary process. It is concluded that natural theology has a future in the post-Darwinian world.
The following works by McGrath are particularly relevant to this discussion: A Scientific Theology: Volume 1 – Nature. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2001).
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