Quotes by Alister McGrath
Alister McGrath (b. 1953) — Theologe, Biophysiker und christlicher Apologet · anglikanisch · Vereinigtes Königreich
Alister McGrath (* 1953) ist ein britischer Theologe, Biophysiker und anglikanischer Priester, der lange an der Universität Oxford lehrte. Bekannt wurde er durch theologische Standardlehrbücher sowie als Apologet im Dialog zwischen Naturwissenschaft und christlichem Glauben und in der Debatte mit dem Neuen Atheismus. Heutigen Bibellesern vermittelt er eine intellektuell fundierte Reflexion über das Zusammenspiel von wissenschaftlicher Rationalität und biblischem Sinnhorizont.
Era: Today
Recurring topics: Doubt & Hard Questions, Wisdom & Understanding, Faith & Trust, God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit, Freedom & Truth, Meaning & Identity, Service & Love of Neighbour, Church & Congregation
Quotes by Alister McGrath
Apologetics aims to convert believers into thinkers, and thinkers into believers.
Alister McGrath
The human quest for beauty is thus really a quest for the source of that beauty, which is mediated through the things of this world.
Alister McGrath
For Christian writers, religious faith is not a rebellion against reason, but a revolt against the imprisonment of humanity within the boundaries of reason alone.
Alister McGrath
Apologetics is about persuading people that there is a door to another world, a door that perhaps they never realized existed.
Alister McGrath
Christianity tells a big story. It allows us to see our own story in a new way.
Alister McGrath
To be asked to minister without an informing vision of God, however, is like being told to make bricks without straw.
Alister McGrath
Lewis began to realize that atheism did not, and could not, satisfy the deepest longings of his heart or his intuition that there was more to life than what was seen on the surface.
Alister McGrath
True love involves a willingness to change, to become more like the ones we love. Love is dynamic, not static.
Alister McGrath
Doubt is natural within faith. It comes because of our human weakness and frailty… Unbelief is the decision to live your life as if there is no God. It is a deliberate decision to reject Jesus Christ and all that he stands for. But doubt is something quite different. Doubt arises within the context the faith. It is a wistful longing to be sure of the things in which we trust. But it is not and need not be a problem.
Alister McGrath
The faith by which we are justified is faith. Faith is like a channel through which the benefits of Christ flow to us. We are not justified on account of faith; we are justified through faith. It is the work of Christ, not our faith, which is the foundation of justification. Faith itself is a gift of God.
Alister McGrath
To its critics, the study of theology distracts from real life. But, at its best, theology inspires and informs precisely the committed and caring ministry.
Alister McGrath
Beneath all the rhetoric about relevance lies a profoundly disturbing possibility – that people may base their lives upon an illusion, upon a blatant lie. The attractiveness of a belief is all too often inversely proportional to its truth… To allow “relevance” to be given greater weight than truth is a mark of intellectual shallowness and moral irresponsibility.
Alister McGrath
Good does not triumph unless good people rise to the challenge that is around them.
Alister McGrath
New ideas can be supremely bad ideas, and by the time people realize how bad they are, it is sometimes difficult to get rid of them.
Alister McGrath
Christian doctrine is unique in that it is an intellectual response to the historical activity and revelatory disclosure of God. Doctrine is rational reflection upon God’s saving activity in Jesus Christ. Foundational to the idea of “doctrine” is the fact that we need to be told what God is like. It is not ours to determine what kind of God we will believe and obey. It is God’s to determine to show Himself to us. Doctrine is our effort to articulate what He has made known. Doctrine is the divinely authorized attempt to describe God in accordance with how He has revealed Himself in creation, in history, in Jesus Christ and in the Scriptures. In doing so, doctrine also serves to expose false interpretations of reality, false concepts of God. It is the aim of doctrine to make sense of the individual’s and the church’s experience of God as He has made Himself known in Jesus Christ.
Alister McGrath
Curiously, Dawkins and Dennett remain firmly committed to the outmoded notion that science and religion are permanently in conflict, an idea often referred to as the warfare thesis.
Alister McGrath
Tradition is a willingness to read Scripture, taking into account the ways in which it has been read in the past. It is an awareness of the communal dimension of Christian faith, which calls shallow individualism into question. There is more to the interpretation of Scripture than any one individual can discern. It is a willingness to give full weight to the views of those who have gone before us in the faith.
Alister McGrath
God's existence may not be proved, in the hard rationalist sense of the word. Yet it can be affirmed with complete sincerity that belief in God is eminently reasonable and makes more sense of what we see in the world, discern in history, and experience in our lives than its alternatives.
Alister McGrath
Sources: wikipedia.org, cslewis.org, ox.ac.uk, cam.ac.uk
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