Anglican belief and practice allows that God communicates through his Word as well as through the beauty of his works. The trick, of course, is to keep the two sources of communication in balance. Nowhere is this balance better struck than in the writings of the atheist-turned-Anglican-clergyman Alister McGrath. McGrath takes Scripture very seriously as an unshakable source of truth for belief. At the same time, McGrath recognizes that God also communicates through art and literature. McGrath draws on these two different sources to teach us more about God and about how to live in light of what he has communicated. McGrath also offers a thoroughgoing defense of God’s existence, again drawing not only evidence from Scripture but from the beauty of creation.
Illuminated by a series of fine art paintings, Alister McGrath’s new volume seeks to engage both the mind and the imagination as he explores why the Church set its faith and hope on the extraordinary, brilliant, and bold idea that Jesus Christ is God incarnate. Poetry, prayer, and theological reflection are interwoven with commentary on the ideas conveyed through works such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Ecce Ancilla Domini, Jacopo Bassano’s Miraculous Draught of Fishes, and Vincent Van Gogh’s Good Samaritan.
