Book Review — The Passionate Intellect

Hardcover: 210 pages

Publisher: InterVarsity Press (July 2010)

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Alister McGrath’s Website

 

I recently had the opportunity to review Alister McGrath’s The Passionate Intellect. The book, subtitled “Christian Faith and the Discipleship of the Mind,” explores the practice of Christian theology and its relevance to the modern church and to Western culture. It is based on lectures and addresses given over the course of several years by McGrath, a Christian apologist and theologian who has gained public recognition as a speaker and author. Dr. McGrath’s credentials as a former atheist and an accomplished academic theologian with doctoral degrees in molecular biophysics and divinity give him a unique perspective in discussions of science, atheism, and Christianity.

The first chapters of The Passionate Intellect primarily discuss the functions of theology as an aid to faith and understanding for the individual and the benefits of theology for the Christian community. The combination of the academic writing style and the subject matter made this part of the book a difficult read; analysis of a field of study is, to me, less engaging than the field of study itself. However, McGrath communicates very clearly his passion for a relationship with God that transcends intellectual understanding. Theology for McGrath is not merely a dry study of the history or meaning of God’s actions in this world, but a pursuit that should “leave us on our knees, adoring the mystery that lies at the heart of the Christian faith.” He advocates a theology that is rooted in a personal desire to know God more deeply, is useful to the church, and that informs apologetics and evangelism. For the church as a whole, he argues that theology can hold the church to a dynamic orthodoxy, making religious truth accessible to a changing culture while remaining faithful to original apostolic teaching.

From these first chapters, McGrath moves into a discussion of engaging with our culture. For me, McGrath’s strength lies in these subjects; he tackles the supposed conflict of science and religion, the implications of Charles Darwin’s ideas, and the “new atheism” with thoughtfulness and an impressive command of both history and the natural sciences. He criticizes the dogmatic assumptions inherent in the arguments of scientific atheists, particularly Richard Dawkins, who argue that good science is incompatible with religion. In this section, McGrath devotes a well-balanced chapter to the implications of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species for the Christian faith. In my opinion, the most fascinating chapter in the book follows the chapter focusing on Darwin. In chapter nine, “Augustine of Hippo on Creation and Evolution,” McGrath describes the conclusions that Augustine (354-430 A.D.) drew after much reflection and study of Scripture regarding God’s creation of the universe. Of course, Augustine was not responding to Charles Darwin or his work (Augustine predated Darwin by fifteen hundred years or so), but his conclusions are remarkably applicable to the current creation debate.

The last several chapters focus on the new atheists’ metaphysical and sociological arguments, and their intellectual heritage. McGrath thoroughly addresses the new atheists’ assertion that “religion poisons everything,” a sound bite coined by Christopher Hitchens (2007) asserting that religion is responsible for most of the social ills in the world. This popular argument most commonly blames violence (particularly wars, terrorism, and abuse) on religion. The author dismantles the argument piece by piece, drawing from history, philosophy and sociological research to support his case.

Alister McGrath is reasonable and meticulous when discussing the history and sociology of Christianity, enthusiastic about science, and passionate regarding the prospect of a life spent getting to know God. The Passionate Intellect is the product of a believer who expresses his faith with intellectual integrity and a remarkable command of the historical and scientific evidence. This book is a valuable resource for Christians seeking to clarify their thinking on the issues at the intersections of science, modern atheism, and Christianity. The Passionate Intellect is confirmation that a vibrant intellectual life is fully consistent with a deep faith in God.

— Reviewed by Desmognathus.  A follower of Jesus Christ, a wife, and a mother. She has an M.S. in biology and a Ph.D. in ecology, and enjoys philosophy and theology. She likes rock climbing and dislikes celery.  Desmognathus now blogs at Fish Nor Fowl.

* Many thanks to InterVarsity Press for providing a review copy.

Philosophy Word of the Day — Grammatical Form

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“The apparent surface form of an expression, in comparison with the underlying logical structure.  In any language some expressions may resemble others in appearance, yet differ fundamentally in their kind of meaning.  Such expressions may then be said to be similar in grammatical, but different in logical form.

“In Through the Looking Glass Alice said she saw nobody on the road, and the King envied her her eyes: ‘It’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!’  Lewis Carroll was thus representing him as being misled by the similarity in grammatical form between ‘nobody’ and ‘somebody’ into construing both words as having the same logical form, that is, as both referring to a person.”

— A Dictionary of Philosophy (2nd ed.), Antony Flew, ed., 135.

Philosophy Word of the Day — Critical Realism

“Critical realism affirms that objects exist independently of our thoughts about them (realism) and asserts that human knowledge of reality is a progressive dialogue between knower and known (critical).  Critical realists argue that in human perception some qualities or properties accurately represent external objects while some sensory data do not accurately represent reality.  Thus critical realists locate their position between direct realism, which takes the immediate objects of perception to be external objects, and antirealism, which denies that the human mind can know anything external to itself.

In philosophy of science, critical realism upholds the real existence of the entities and processes that are investigated and endorses scientific method as a form of rationality that is appropriate for confirming theories (and thus generating knowledge) about a real world that exists independently of the human mind.” [. . . ]

— Michael L. Peterson in A Science and Religion Primer, 73.

 

Science and the Early Church

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“In Augustine’s influential view, then, knowledge of the things of this world is not a legitimate end in itself, but as a means to other ends it is indispensable.  The classical sciences must accept a subordinate position as the handmaiden of theology and religion—the temporal serving the eternal.  The knowledge contained in classical sciences is not to be loved, but it may legitimately be used.  . . .

“Does endowing scientific knowledge with handmaiden status constitute a serious blow against scientific progress?  Are the critics of the early church right in viewing it as the opponent of genuine science?  I would like to make three points in reply.

(1) It is certainly true that the fathers of the early Christian church did not view support of the classical sciences as a major obligation.  These sciences had low priority for the church fathers, for whom the major concerns were (quite properly) the establishment of Christian doctrine, defense of the faith, and the edification of believers.

But (2), low or medium priority was far from zero priority.  Throughout the Middle Ages and well into the modern period the handmaiden formula was employed countless times to justify the investigation of nature.  Indeed, some of the most celebrated achievements of the Western scientific tradition were made by religious scholars who justified their labors (at least in part) by appeal to the handmaiden formula.

(3) No institution or cultural force of the patristic period offered more encouragement for the investigation of nature than did the Christian church.  Contemporary pagan culture was no more favorable to disinterested speculation about the cosmos than was Christian culture.  It follows that the presence of the Christian church enhanced, rather than damaged, the development of the natural sciences.”

— David C. Lindberg in Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion, ed. Ronald L. Numbers, 16, 17.

The Missing Links — March 7, 2011

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• Streaming Videos from the 2010 St. Thomas Summer Seminar in Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology.  The speakers included Alvin Plantinga and Peter Van Inwagen with talks on the epistemology of religious belief, science and religion, and the problem of evil.

• Alexander Pruss, professor of philosophy at Baylor, writes on “Eight Tempting Big-Picture Errors in Ethics,” such as “Sometimes you should do the wrong thing” and “Some areas of life are exempt from morality.” Other papers by Pruss are available here.

• Calvin’s Virtual Library of Christian Philosophy is another fine source of free articles and papers by Christian philosophers.

• An interesting collection of critical reviews of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion.

• Insightful non-Christian critique of the new atheists at ABC Australia. “The militant atheist bandwagon – driven by Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Dennett – continues to paint their theist opposition as irrational simpletons who favor superstition and myth over reason and science.”

• The top philosophy journals according to a poll of 36,000 contributors.  The top 10 are:

1. Journal of Philosophy
2. Philosophical Review
3. Philosophy & Phenomenological Research
4. Nous
5. Mind
6. Ethics
7. Philosophical Studies
8. Synthese
9. Philosophy & Public Affairs
10. Analysis

Philosophy Word of the Day — Thomas Nagel

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“American moral and political theorist.  Born in the former Yugoslavia, Nagel was educated at Cornell, Oxford, and Harvard.  He taught at Princeton from 1966 to 1980, and subsequently at New York University.  His work is centrally concerned with the nature of moral motivation and the possibility of a rational theory of moral and political commitment, and has been a major stimulus to interest in realistic and Kantian approaches to these issues.

“One of the most discussed papers of modern philosophy of mind has been his ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’, arguing that there is an irreducible, subjective aspect of experience that cannot be grasped by the objective methods of natural science, or by philosophies such as functionalism that confine themselves to those methods.  Works include The Possibility of Altruism (1970), Mortal Questions (1979), The View from Nowhere (1986), and Equality and Partiality (1991).”

— Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, 244.

* Some will remember that Nagel came under attack in 2009 for naming Stephen C. Meyer’s book Signature in the Cell one of the best books of the year.  Philosopher and historian David Gordon, among others, came to Nagel’s defense.