McGrath, Alister E. The Science of God: An Introduction to Scientific Theology.

Grant, W. Matthews

MCGRATH, Alister E. The Science of God: An Introduction to Scientific Theology. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004. xiv + 271 pp. Paper, $25.00--Intended as an introduction to his three-volume A Scientific Theology (Eerdmans, 2001-2003), this new book from the prolific, evangelical, Oxford theologian sketches an approach to theological method that McGrath has been developing for two decades. The adjective in the title, "scientific," captures at least three important aspects of McGrath's approach. In the first place, McGrath maintains that Christian theology is, indeed, a science in the broad sense of the term. It is "a distinct legitimate intellectual discipline in its own right, with its own sense of identity and purpose" (p. ix).

A second feature of McGrath's project, aptly described as "scientific," constitutes part of his defense of theology as a "legitimate intellectual discipline." One of the ways McGrath defends the intellectual integrity of theology is by showing that there are strong parallels between the way claims are justified and theories developed within the sciences and within Christian theology. The natural sciences are thus, for McGrath, a "comparator and helpmate for the theological task" (p. 12).

Finally, McGrath's approach may be called "scientific" by virtue of engaging the sciences from the resources provided by the Christian tradition. The sciences are not only a helpmate for theology; theology itself can help illuminate and make sense of certain aspects of the scientific enterprise. The Christian doctrine of creation, for instance, makes sense of the apparent presupposition of the sciences that the natural world has an intelligible order, an order that can be apprehended by the human mind (p. 113).

The bulk of The Science of God is divided into three parts: "nature," "reality," and "theory," named for the subtitles of the three volumes of McGrath's trilogy. In "nature," McGrath argues that once the theologian has abandoned the untenable Enlightenment view that nature admits of only one interpretation, he will be free to deploy the Christian interpretation of nature as creation toward the resolution of various problems in philosophy and science. Included is a disappointing discussion of natural theology, where McGrath, conceding far too much to Barth, insists that natural theology "must begin from premises which are founded on revelation" (p. 74). He also makes the patently false, if not unprecedented, assertion that the project of offering arguments for and about God apart from revelation is a recent invention of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In "reality," McGrath rejects the Enlightenment belief in "universal" human reason, while at the same time rejecting the postmodern view that sees reality as a social construction. Seeking a middle between these extremes, McGrath favors a tradition-mediated conception of reason of the sort developed by Alasdair MacIntyre, while embracing the critical realism of philosopher of science, Roy Bhaskar. McGrath offers extensive criticism of George Lindbeck for his coherentist approach to doctrine, which sees doctrine not as making truth claims about an independent reality but as serving only to regulate the language and practice of the Christian community. While more sympathetic with John Milbank, McGrath has criticisms for this contemporary theologian as well, especially for his failure to engage and draw from ideas outside the Christian tradition.

In "theory," McGrath offers a sensible defense of doctrinal Christianity against certain anxieties, such as that doctrine forestalls an authentic engagement with the realities to which it refers. According to McGrath, "an 'undogmatic' Christianity is only a possibility ... if the Church ceases to regard itself as having anything distinctive to say to the world around it" (p. 191). McGrath defines doctrine as "a theory which is an accepted teaching of the Church" (p. 177), and as a "communally authoritative teaching regarded as essential to the identity of the Christian community" (p. 178). These definitions leave the reader wondering what McGrath means by "the Church," and who has the authority to determine what is essential to the identity of the community. It might be thought that McGrath need not address these questions in a book of this sort. Yet their relevance reemerges when McGrath suggests that the key to ecumenical rapprochement is the recognition that certain doctrines have functioned historically as "social demarcators between ecclesial traditions" (p. 193), and that, without necessarily denying the truth of these doctrines, their demarcating function can be "declared to be no longer valid" (p. 193).

The Science of God touches on a great many topics, and it is difficult to identify two or three theses that unify the book as a whole. Theologians will likely find McGrath's work most interesting as an alternative to the approaches taken by prominent Protestant theologians such as Lindbeck and Milbank. Philosophers will find McGrath's book a useful source of examples, drawn from a variety of disciplines, of the way in which rational enquiry proceeds within and between traditions.--W. Matthews Grant, University of St. Thomas.