As so often, McGrath brings his understanding of the natural sciences into creative dialogue with theology. Although the subject matter may seem to be very different, he carefully notes the ways in which theologians and scientists share similar patterns of thought. Among the most important of these is that doctrines, like scientific theorems, are never disengaged, unquestionable abstractions that sort out all our problems for us. Rather, in both fields, the search is for the best explanation that allows for complex and sometimes competing perspectives to remain in view; for a map which draws disparate but interdependent elements into unity without eliding their individual complexity.
The highlight of the book is perhaps the final chapter in which these insights crystallise around a discussion of the doctrine of salvation, which functions as a case study for the approach of the work as a whole. McGrath concentrates on four metaphors for salvation: cultic sacrifice, restoration of wholeness, liberation from bondage, and adoption into a family. There is no single univocal theory of salvation; far less is it an intellectual puzzle. Rather, the New Testament gives us a diversity of images, which, none the less, can helpfully be mapped and woven together, as they are in the author’s expert hands.
In this free chapter from "The Nature of Christian Doctrine: Its Origins, Development, and Function", @alisteremcgrath offers an extended critical assessment of George Lindbeck’s Nature of Doctrine (1984).
Read now: https://t.co/LbLhlQ9uL7 pic.twitter.com/CCmQJDt66w
— OUPReligion (@OUPReligion) April 6, 2024