Alister E. McGrath famous quotes

03-26-2025

Atheism, I began to realize, rested on a less-than-satisfactory evidential basis. The arguments that had once seemed bold, decisive, and conclusive increasingly turned out to be circular, tentative, and uncertain.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Atheist #Atheism #Argument
Faith is not something that goes against the evidence, it goes beyond it. The evidence is saying to us, 'There is another country. There is something beyond mere reason'.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Country #Reason #Evidence
Our present world contains clues...to another world-a world which we can begin to experience now, but will only know in all its fullness at the end of things.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Inspirational Life #World #Clue
Christianity israrely understood by those outside its bounds. In fact, this is probably one of the greatest tasks confronting the apologistâ€“to rescue Christianity from misunderstandings.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Tasks #Facts #Christianity
The Christian faith allows us to see further and deeper, to appreciate that nature is studded with signs, radiant with reminders, and emblazoned with symbols of God, our creator and redeemer.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Christian #Appreciate #Reminders
Within each of us exists the image of God, however disfigured and corrupted by sin it may presently be. God is able to recover this image through grace as we are conformed to Christ.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Grace #May #Able
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 E. McGrath

#Motivation #Law #Evil
The 20th century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed that religion caused intolerance and violence.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Violence #Paradox #Intolerance
We live on earth; our homeland is in heaven.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Heaven #Earth #Homeland
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 E. McGrath

#Meaning Of Life #Cost #Found
All the important things in life lie beyond reason... and that's just the way things are.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Lying #Important #Way
One of the best introductions to the history and ideas of Calvinism, packed with insight and wisdom.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Ideas #Calvinism #Introduction
At Oxford University, the certainties of my atheist faith (and atheism is a faith) began to crumble
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Atheist #Oxford #Atheism
Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Climate #Doe #May
The hallmark of intelligence is not whether one believes in God or not, but the quality of the processes that underlie oneâ€™s beliefs.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Believe #Quality #Belief
The idea of â€˜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 E. McGrath

#Ideas #Leaving #Calling
For Calvin, the creation reflects its Creator at every point. Image after images flashed in front of our eyes, as Calvin attempts to convey the multiplicity of ways in which the creation witnesses to its Creator: it is like a visible garment, which the invisible God dons in order to make himself known; it is like a book in which the name on the Creator is written as its author; it is like a theater, in which the glory of God is publicly displayed; it is like a mirror, in which the works and wisdom of God are reflected.
-- Alister E. McGrath

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

#Agreement #Together #Way
To reenchant nature is not merely to gain a new perspective for its integrity and well-being; it is to throw open the doors to a deeper level of existence.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Integrity #Doors #Perspective
For Luther, it (faith) is an undeviating, trusting outlook appointment life, a constant stance of the trustworthiness of the promises of God.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Promise #Trustworthiness #Luther
The English experience suggested that nobody really doubted the existence of God until theologians tried to prove it.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Existence #Prove It #Theologian
The solution was eventually found by Johannes Gutenberg, who made the breakthrough that finally established printing as the communication technology of the future. Similar ideas may have been under development around the same time in Prague and Haarlem. But in business, the key question is not about who else is in the race, it's about who gets there first. Johannes Gutenberg was the first to make the new technology work, ensuring his place in any history of the human race.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Communication #Technology #Ideas
When the old poets made some virtue their theme, they were not teaching but adoring,
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Teaching #Virtue #Poet
We must not think that religious concerns swamped all other social activities. They simply provided a focal point for them.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Religious #Thinking #Social
Imagination is the gatekeeper of the human soul.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Imagination #Soul #Gatekeepers
Clergy had a vested interest in retaining the old, ways, which made few demands of them as teachers, as spiritual guides, or as moral examples or agents.
-- Alister E. McGrath

#Spiritual #Teacher #Example
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 E. McGrath

#Biblical #Views #Rivers

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