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 paintings including Sir Edward John Poynter’s The Prodigal’s Return, Amedeo Bocchi’s On the Lawn, Jacopo Bassano’s The Last Supper, Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ, Antonio Ciseri’s Ecce Homo, Salvador Dali’s Christ of St. John of the Cross, and El Greco’s Pietá, McGrath’s new volume vividly explores the divine compassion that led God to sacrifice his only son to save a world oppressed and unable to help itself.
