Alister McGrath's 2009 Gifford Lectures: A Fine-Tuned Universe

If there was a prize for the year’s most efficient theology publisher, it would have to go to the hard-working people at WJK. Less than two months ago, Alister McGrath was presenting his 2009 Gifford Lectures in Aberdeen; earlier this week I was surprised to find that the published lectures had already landed on my doorstep! The lectures are published as Alister E. McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology (WJK 2009), 262 pp.

The material here forms a sequel to McGrath’s recent extended essay, The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology (Blackwell 2008), where he argued that a new “natural theology” could provide not a causal explanation for the cosmos but instead an “explanatory unification” which makes sense of various (otherwise very strange) observable phenomena. Nature can thus become a bearer of transcendence – not through any inherent capacity in nature itself (after all, there is no mere uninterpreted nature, but only different constructed “readings” of nature); but when nature is seen through the lens of a Christian trinitarian ontology. This whole approach to natural theology is best summed up in C. S. Lewis’s famous remark: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

A Fine-Tuned Universe develops this approach through a particular case study: the so-called “anthropic principle”, which describes the universe’s peculiar and puzzling friendliness towards life.

McGrath’s argument is that the universe’s fine-tuning is consonant with a Christian picture of the world. At the core of the book is a scientific-theological reading of Augustine. In a series of engagements with contemporary science (the constants of the universe; the origins of life; the chemistry of water; the constraints of evolution; the teleology of evolution; and emergence), McGrath argues that Augustine’s creation theology provides resources for making theological sense of both the origins of the universe and the processes of Darwinian evolution. 

There is no notion here of “proving” the existence of God or the truth of Christian teaching; instead, McGrath’s claim is that there is a coherent “fit” between the observable world and the imaginative resources of Christian tradition. “What is observed within the natural order resonates with the core themes of the Christian vision of God” (p. 95). More than that, he also argues that Darwin’s theory of natural selection opens the way to a theological reevaluation of Augustine’s creation theology: read retrospectively in the light of biological evolution, Augustine becomes an important resource for thinking of creation in terms of “both primordial actuality and emergent possibility” (p. 216).

One of my own discomforts with “natural theology” lies in the romanticism with which it is usually undertaken: theologians reflect on an imaginary world of idealised peace and harmony and perfection, instead of taking seriously the apparent blindness and ugliness and brutality that is so easily perceived in the created order. Even a thinker as probing and sensitive as T. F. Torrance – with his immense ruminations on the order and structure and rationality of the natural world – seems far too little impressed by what Karl Barth called the “shadow side of creation,” the fact that creation’s “goodness” is a difficult and demanding article of faith rather than an observable phenomenon.

So it’s to his credit that McGrath – unlike most exponents of natural theology – underscores the fact that Christian theology must try somehow to account for these “two sides” of nature. Nature is, as Luther put it, simul bona et mala: it is marked by “beauty and ugliness, joy and pain, good and evil” (p. 80). McGrath suggests that nature should thus be interpreted within the context of the economy of salvation, so that we perceive the created world to be “decayed and ambivalent,” a “morally and aesthetically variegated entity whose goodness and beauty are often opaque and hidden, yet [is] nevertheless irradiated with the hope of transformation” (p. 82).

I’m not sure McGrath’s approach – which leans so heavily on notions of coherence, rationality and order – provides a full response to the forceful criticism (as developed, e.g. by Hauerwas and Jüngel) that natural theology tends towards a theologia gloria, leaving no place for the cross of Christ. But his remarks about creation as both bona et mala are surely a step in the right direction, and, hopefully, a step away from any mere romantic “re-enchantment” of the world. (As far as I can tell, nothing could be less “enchanting” than the idea that Christ’s bloody death on a cross discloses the true grain of the universe.)

In any case, this is a significant and very fascinating book. McGrath has been working around the theme of “nature” for several years now – but his best work is found in these two latest volumes, The Open Secret and A Fine-Tuned Universe.

On the quirkiness of theologians

It was very nice to spend some time with Alister McGrath while he was here in Brisbane today. We were talking about the personal quirkiness of theologians, and McGrath related this splendid anecdote about Eberhard Jüngel:

One day, while Jüngel was giving a lecture to his students, he broke off mid-sentence and started writing something down. The students waited patiently – and Jüngel continued writing silently. This went on for some time. When the students finally became restless, Jüngel looked up and said: “Well, if you had a thought this good, you would write it down too!”

Alister McGrath in Brisbane

If you’re in the Brisbane area, you might like to come along and hear Alister McGrath on Monday night. He’ll be giving an evening lecture on “The Bankruptcy of Atheism”.

Alister McGrath's scientific theology: is it scientific?

The latest issue of Theologische Zeitschrift 63:1 (2007) includes a fascinating exchange between Alister McGrath and Heiner Schwenke.

In his article, “Theologie als Mathesis Universalis? Heinrich Scholz, Karl Barth und der wissenschaftliche Status der christlichen Theologie” (pp. 44-57), McGrath introduces his project of Scientific Theology to German-language readers by exploring the debate between Karl Barth and Heinrich Scholz over the “scientific” status of Christian theology. He emphasises the priority of ontology over epistemology, and the fact that theological science is responsible: that is, it seeks to respond to reality itself; and its findings are accountable both to the Christian community and, ultimately, to God himself. The crucial thing in this article, however, is McGrath’s translation of “scientific theology” as “naturwissenschaftliche Theologie” – it is this choice of terminology that draws such sharp criticism from Heiner Schwenke in the following article.

Schwenke’s article (pp. 58-78) is entitled “Epistemischer Partikularismus als Weg der Theologie? Warum Alister McGraths ‘naturwissenschaftliche Theologie’ nicht naturwissenschaftlich ist” (“Why Alister McGrath’s ‘Scientific Theology’ Is Not Scientific”). Schwenke’s basic argument is that McGrath “abuses” the term “scientific,” i.e. naturwissenschaftlich (p. 77).

Schwenke argues that the essence of the scientific method is “epitemic universality” – and he criticises McGrath’s attempt to turn scientific method simply into one “epistemic particularity” alongside other methods. The mark of any authentic science is that its findings are “intersubjectively reproducible,” and thus universally available. Theology can be scientific, then, only when its statements are formulated as hypotheses which can be verified through repeatable tests.

For Schwenke, the problem with McGrath’s project is that it does not include this dimension of reproducibility – and thus instead of developing a universal method of knowing, it relies merely on a particular form of knowing which is accessible only to believers. For instance, McGrath claims that theology should presuppose a basic commitment to scripture – whereas such commitment to authority, in Schwenke’s view, undermines the very possibility of theology’s scientific status. McGrath “again introduces absolute epistemic authority into scientific methodology – after we had successfully rid ourselves of such authority at the dawn of modernity!” (p. 75).

One of the central arguments of McGrath’s Scientific Theology is that each science has its own distinct object and thus its own distinct methods of knowing. But Schwenke sees this simply as special pleading for theology: “If each science has its own method according to its own object, and if there are no general methodological specifications, then it would be impossible to deny the ‘scientific’ character of McGrath’s own methodology” (p. 74). What McGrath is really seeking, then, is “to use the term ‘scientific’ for his theology but nevertheless to be free to select his own theological method – a method which has little chance of being recognised as ‘scientific’ by natural scientists” (p. 74).

Further, Schwenke argues that McGrath’s view leads to dire ethical consequences. Heisenberg has described the scientific endeavour as a bridge that can connect different people-groups. But this can occur only where the universality of the scientific method is affirmed. In our current environment, where global peace is threatened by religious conflict, such scientific “bridging” is especially urgent. But it is undermined by McGrath’s pursuit of “epistemic particularity” – effectively, such a move seals off theology from public dialogue with other religions. While McGrath labels his theology “scientific,” he really ends up with a “religionistic theology” (religionistische Theologie) which cannot be tested or questioned by people outside the confines of the Christian community (p. 77).

In short, therefore, Schwenke insists that McGrath’s methodology represents a “fatal escape into the dead end of epistemic particularity” (p. 77). It fails to meet the requirements of authentic “scientific” method, and it undermines the ethical demands of inter-religious dialogue.

This is certainly the most vigorous methodological critique of McGrath’s project yet published. I sympathise with Schwenke’s general perspective – especially his commitment to the public accessibility of theological discourse – but I think his interpretation of McGrath (and, more broadly, of the theological task itself) has some deep flaws. I’ll try to address these problems soon in another post.