Alister McGrath Quotes

21 Sourced Quotes

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
The success of the Inklings also helps us to see criticism in a positive light. There are, unfortunately, people who boost their own sense of importance by criticizing others as a matter of principle. Yet within this community, criticism was a mark of respect and commitment.

Alister McGrath
If worldviews or metanarratives can be compared to lenses, which of them brings things into the sharpest focus? This is not an irrational retreat from reason. Rather, it is about grasping a deeper order of things which is more easily accessed by the imagination than by reason.

Alister McGrath
We live in a world of competing narratives. In the end, we have to decide for ourselves which is right. And having made that decision, we then need to inhabit the story we trust.

Alister McGrath
Surely the better way is to pursue a generous orthodoxy, seeing disagreements in the context of the greater agreements which bind us together.

Alister McGrath
Good does not triumph unless good people rise to the challenges around them.

Alister McGrath
Deep down within all of us is a longing to work out what life is all about and what we're meant to be doing.

Alister McGrath
Puzzles lead to logical answers; mysteries often force us to stretch language to its limits in an attempt to describe a reality that is just too great to take in properly.

Alister McGrath
The reading of literature opens our eyes, offering us new perspectives on things that we can evaluate and adopt.

Alister McGrath
Hope is a settled state of mind, in which we see the world in its true light, and look forward to our final homecoming in heaven.

Alister McGrath
Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.

Alister McGrath
The English experience suggested that nobody really doubted the existence of God until theologians tried to prove it.

Alister McGrath
A failure to understand something does not mean it is irrational. It may simply mean that it lies on the far side of our limited abilities to take things in and make complete sense of them.

Alister McGrath
If there is no ultimate reality, it's pointless to think about how we might get there.

Alister McGrath
Anyone who thinks about the great questions of Christian theology soon finds out that a lot of them have already been addressed. It is virtually impossible to do theology as if it had never been done before. There is always an element of looking over one's shoulder to see how things were done in the past, and what answers were then given. Part of the notion of tradition is a willingness to take seriously the theological heritage of the past.

Alister McGrath
The most radical question which anyone can be asked is not how much their possessions cost, but whether they have found something of value - that is, something that makes living worthwhile.

Alister McGrath
Manz, formerly one of Zwingli's closest allies, held that there was no biblical warrant for infant baptism. Refusing to recant his views, he was tied up and drowned in the River Limmat.

Alister McGrath
The idea of 'calling' was fundamentally redefined: no longer was it about being called to serve God by leaving the world; it was now about serving God in the world

Alister McGrath
When the old poets made some virtue their theme, they were not teaching but adoring,

Alister McGrath
We must not think that religious concerns swamped all other social activities. They simply provided a focal point for them.

Alister McGrath
The state is concerned with the promotion of outward righteousness arising from the individual being constrained to keep the law. The Gospel alters human nature, whereas the state merely restrains human greed and evil, having no positive power to alter human motivation.

Alister McGrath