Alister E. Mcgrath, Theology: the Basics

Alister E. McGrath, Theology: The Basics

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Chapter 1: Faith

John Calvin’s definition of faith in Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559)

“Now we shall have a right definition of faith if we say that it is a steady and certain knowledge of the divine benevolence towards us, which is founded upon the truth of the gracious promise of God in Christ, and is both revealed to our minds and sealed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”

Chapter 2: God

Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), on calling God “Father”

“By calling God ‘Father,’ the language of faith indicates two main things: that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority; and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children. God’s parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood, which emphasizes God’s immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature. The language of faith thus draws on the human experience of parents, who are in a way the first representatives of God for man. But this experience also tells us that human parents are fallible and can disfigure the face of fatherhood and motherhood. We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard: no one is father as God is Father.”

Chapter 3: Creation

Belgic Confession (1561), on knowing God through nature and Scripture

“We know [God] in two manners. First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, which is before our eyes as a most beautiful book, in which all creatures, great and small, are like so many characters leading us to contemplate the invisible things of God, namely, his eternal power and Godhead, as the Apostle Paul declares (Romans 1:20). All of these things are sufficient to convince humanity, and leave them without excuse. Second, he makes himself known more clearly and fully to us by his holy and divine Word; that is to say, as far as is necessary for us to know in this life, to his glory and our salvation.”

Chapter 4: Jesus

Dorothy L. Sayers, Creed or Chaos? (1947), on the divinity and humanity of Christ

“It is quite useless to say that it doesn’t matter particularly who or what Christ was or by what authority He did those things, and that even if He was only a man, He was a very nice man and we ought to live by His principles: for that is merely Humanism, and if the ‘average man’ in Germany chooses to think that Hitler is a nicer sort of man with still more attractive principles, the Christian Humanist has no answer to make . . . The central dogma of the Incarnation is that by which relevance stands or falls. If Christ was only man, then He is entirely irrelevant to any thought about God; if He is only God, then He is entirely irrelevant to any experience of human life . . . Teachers and preachers never, I think, make it sufficiently clear that dogmas are not a set of arbitrary regulations invented a priori by a committee of theologians enjoying a bout of all-in dialectical wrestling. Most of them were hammered out under pressure of urgent practical necessity to provide an answer to heresy.”

Chapter 5: Salvation

Augustine of Hippo (354-430), sermon on Christ as the lion of Judah the lamb of God

“If Christ had not been put to death, death would not have died. The devil was conquered by his own trophy of victory. The devil jumped for joy, when he seduced the first man, and cast him down to death. By seducing the first man, he killed him; by killing the last man, he lost the first from his snare. The victory of our Lord Jesus Christ came when he rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven. It was at this point that the text from the Book of Revelation, which you heard read today, was fulfilled: ‘The lion of the tribe of Judah has won the day’ (Revelation 5:5). The one who was slain as a lamb is now called a lion – a lion on account of his courage, a lamb on account of his innocence; a lion, because he was unconquered; a lamb, because of his gentleness. By his death, the slain lamb has conquered the lion who ‘goes around seeking someone to devour’ (1 Peter 5:8). The devil, on the other hand, is here called a lion for his savagery, rather than his bravery . . .The devil jumped for joy when Christ died; and by the very death of Christ the devil was overcome: he took, as it were, the bait in the mousetrap. He rejoiced at Christ’s death, believing himself to be the commander of death. But that which caused his joy dangled the bait before him. The Lord’s cross was the devil’s mousetrap: the bait which caught him was the death of the Lord.”

Chapter 6: Spirit

Sarah Coakley, on the role of the Spirit in prayer (article, 1998)

“What is being described in Paul is one experience of an activity of prayer that is nonetheless ineluctably, though obscurely, triadic. It is one experience of God, but God as simultaneously (i) doing the praying in me, (ii) receiving that prayer, and (iii) in that exchange, consented to in me, inviting me into the Christian life of redeemed sonship. Or to put it another way: the ‘Father’ (so-called here) is both source and ultimate object of divine longing in us; the ‘Spirit’ is that irreducibly – though obscurely – distinct enabler and incorporator of that longing in creation – that which makes the creation divine; and the ‘Son’ is that divine and perfected creation, into whose life I, as pray-er, am caught up . . . As John of the Cross puts it in a lovely passage in The Spiritual Canticle (39.3.4), not coincidentally quoting Romans 8: ‘the Holy Spirit raises the soul most sublimely with that His divine breath . . . that she may breathe in God the same breath of love that the Father breathes in the Son and the Son in the Father.’
The Spirit, on this view, note, is no redundant third, no hypostasized afterthought, no cooing ‘feminine’ adjunct to an established male household. Rather, experientially speaking, the Spirit is primary, just as Pentecost is primary for the church; and leaving noncluttered space for the Spirit is the absolute precondition for the unimpeded flowing of this divine exchange in us, the ‘breathing of the divine breath,’ as John of the Cross puts it.”

Chapter 7: Trinity

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (1932-67), on the divine self-revelation

“The question of the self-revealing God which thus forces itself upon us as the first question cannot, if we follow the witness of Scripture, be separated in any way from the second question: How does it come about, how is it actual, that this God reveals Himself? Nor can it be separated from the third question: What is the result? What does this event do to the man to whom it happens? Conversely the second and third questions cannot possibly be separated from the first . . . God reveals Himself. He reveals Himself through Himself. He reveals Himself. If we really want to understand revelation in terms of its subject, i.e., God, then the first thing that we have to realize is that this subject, God, the revealer, is identical with His act in revelation, and also with its effect. It is from this fact, which in the first instance we are merely indicating, that we learn we must begin the doctrine of revelation with the doctrine of the triune God.”

Chapter 8: Church

Isaac Watts, “We Are a Garden Walled Around” (hymn, 1707), on the nature of the church

We are a garden walled around,
Chosen and made peculiar ground;
A little spot enclosed by grace
Out of the world’s wide wilderness.
Like trees of myrrh and spice we stand,
Planted by God the Father’s hand;
And all his springs in Zion flow,
To make the young plantation grow.
Awake, O, heavenly wind! and come,
Blow on this garden of perfume;
Spirit divine! descend and breathe
A gracious gale on plants beneath.

Chapter 9: Sacraments

Faith and Order Commission of the Protestant World Council of Churches, “Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry” (1982), on New Testament images of baptism

“Baptism is the sign of new life through Jesus Christ. It unites the one baptized with Christ and with his people. The New Testament scriptures and the liturgy of the Church unfold the meaning of baptism in various images which express the riches of Christ and the gifts of his salvation. These images are sometimes linked with the symbolic uses of water in the Old Testament. Baptism is participation in Christ’s death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-5; Colossians 2:12); a washing away of sin (1 Corinthians 6:11); a new birth (John 3:5); an enlightenment by Christ (Ephesians 5:14); a reclothing in Christ (Galatians 3:27); a renewal by the Spirit (Titus 3:5); the experience of salvation from the flood (1 Peter 3:20-21); an exodus from bondage (1 Corinthians 10:1-2) and a liberation into a new humanity in which barriers of division, whether of sex or race or social status, are transcended (Galatians 3:27-28; 1 Corinthians 12:13). The images are many but the reality is one.”

Chapter 10: Heaven

John Donne, “Death be not proud (Holy Sonnet X)” (poem from “Divine Meditations,” 1609-10), on the defeat of death

Death be not proud, though some have
called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st, thou dost
overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou
kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy
pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee, much more
must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and
desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.