Abstract
In this ambitious book, Alister McGrath explores human nature from a scientific and religious perspective, allowing him to tackle some ‘ultimate questions’ asked by anyone reflecting seriously on the meaning of existence. In many respects, this is a spirited attack on the Enlightenment. Although McGrath acknowledges the immense contribution of science to modern society, he challenges two key assumptions: positivism and the notion of the innate goodness of human nature.
The book opens with a welcome plea for epistemic humility in the face of the mystery of human existence. A mistake of both scientific positivism and religious fundamentalism, McGrath insists, is to assume that it is possible to have a privileged view of reality. On the contrary: there are no definitive answers to life’s core questions and we cannot grasp any ‘objective truth’ that lies beyond the contingencies of history, culture and cognitive bias. However, after stating that any claim to a privileged viewpoint is undesirable and impossible, McGrath announces that Christianity, uniquely, possesses just such a viewpoint – vouchsafed by divine revelation. While I admire his attempt to negotiate the tightrope between pluralism and exclusivism, such a bald assertion seems unconvincing in the light of his argument up to this point.
I found the final part of the book – ‘What’s wrong with us?’ – the most problematic. McGrath is certainly right that the Enlightenment’s ‘dogma of the intrinsic goodness of humanity is a patently false notion’ (p. 140). Human nature is indeed ‘damaged’ and ‘broken’, and we need to recover a sense of sin. What concerned me, however, was his view of the origin of this sin. Christian theology has classically maintained that the innate tendency for human aggression and violence is a result of early humanity’s conscious rejection of God’s will. However, for McGrath, such a view is no longer tenable. We are, he insists, created in sin. There was never a point when humanity ‘fell’: our ‘sinful’ predispositions are simply the product of our animal ancestry.
While this may be accurate scientifically, it raises theological problems. For instance, if we are not born free, how can we be held morally responsible for our actions? And how realistic (or morally just) would it be for God to require us to transcend our innately selfish instincts when those instincts are necessary for survival in a ruthlessly competitive world? Furthermore, in what sense can we follow McGrath in saying that Christ is the ‘solution’ to the ‘sin’ of the world when it appears that it was Christ (as God) who endowed us with these selfish instincts? McGrath is in danger of being in the illogical situation of accepting the conclusions reached by the earliest Christians (we are saved by Christ), but rejecting the grounds on which they came to these conclusions (we need salvation because early humanity sinned against God).
The Elizabethan dramatist Fulke Greville once famously wrote that ‘wearisome humanity’ was ‘created sick, commanded to be sound’. In his enthusiasm to embrace Darwinian evolution, McGrath has made such a view – which is antithetical to Christian belief – the basis of his theological anthropology. I prefer the notion that we were ‘created sound’ but, as a result of our rejection of God’s will, fell into a state of sin. Such an account of early humanity may indeed be scientifically problematic, but at least it is theologically coherent. Notwithstanding these reservations, McGrath has produced a thought-provoking book that is guaranteed to stimulate debate about issues of perennial human concern.