Alister McGrath: There is a limit to reason; John Lennox: The battle is not between God and science
Alister McGrath: There is a limit to reason
Theologian and apologist Alister McGrath once thought that reason was a stumbling block to faith. But now the former atheist says human reason is limited, and cannot fully grasp the reality of God.
He was addressing more than 3,000 Christians at this year’s Keswick Convention, meeting in the Lake District.
Professor McGrath encouraged the Christians gathered to be bold in proclaiming the Trinity, saying that it gave people a framework for understanding God.
“The Trinity is a way of safeguarding our vision of God… making sure we never sell God short to ourselves or anyone else. In this challenging context in which to present God, we need to present God in all his fullness,” he said.
“The doctrine of the Trinity is this realisation that God is just so great, we are never going to fully able to make sense of him, even though we can trust him.”
Professor McGrath, head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture at King’s College London, was the first guest speaker to address this year’s convention.
He insisted that the Trinity and the Christian faith were not “irrational” and that believers need not be afraid of atheists and other critics.
“I [once] thought, this doctrine is just clearly bad mathematics, it’s just nonsense. You can only trust what reason can prove. That seemed to me at the time to be a good argument against the doctrine of the Trinity. But, we need to realise there are limits to what reason can take in,” he said.
“Sometimes things are so big and bright and luminous that we can’t take them in. Richard Dawkins limits reality to what we can prove. That is a terribly small and very uninteresting world. You can prove that two and two make four, but that doesn’t give you a reason to get up in the morning, to live and to hope.
“Atheism presents us with a narrow little world.”
He said one of the reasons atheists were so critical of Christians was because it detracted from having to look at their world and “realise how little it is”.
The Christian faith, he argued, makes sense “of itself” when it is experienced “within us” and in what can be seen around us.
“Christianity doesn’t go beyond reason, but recognises there are limits to reason. It opens up this great and bold picture of what things are really like. The fact that we have difficulty in taking something in doesn’t mean it is irrational, it just means our little minds find it very difficult to take in big things.”
He continued: “It goes beyond what we as human beings can master and understand. Atheism is simply a human philosophy. It says, what we can understand – that’s it. What you see is what you get. Christianity is saying: what you see is great, but it makes even more sense when you see the bigger picture and realise that what we can understand is only part of something bigger, but what we can see now is good enough to be going on with.”
John Lennox: The battle is not between God and science
There are scientists on both sides of the theist-atheist divide, Professor John Lennox has told this year’s Keswick Convention.
The convention is in its 138th year and organisers are reporting record crowds. On Monday, some 3,500 people came to hear the Oxford University mathematician speak.
Professor Lennox has given several talks at the convention so far on Genesis chapters one to three as well as a lecture exploring issues in public life.
He said that the meaning contained within Genesis was that God was the creator of the universe, contrasting with other ancient concepts of gods that were believed to have been created by the earth.
“The battle is not between God and science,” he said.
“There is a battle, between the worldview of theism and atheism, and there are scientists on both sides. [God Delusion author Richard] Dawkins and co will tell everyone that the only rationally intelligent position to hold is atheism. I feel the exact opposite. Atheism satisfies Dawkins’ definition of a delusion.”
In his lecture on Wednesday, Professor Lennox pointed out that scientific evidence had found religion to be good for people’s mental health and that human rights, and the provision of healthcare and education had Christian foundations.
He said it was important to realise that not all atheists were aggressive but he added that new atheism was doing “a great deal of damage” and that it was important for Christians to talk about them “because of the influence they have”.
The Keswick Convention has been meeting in the Lake District since 1875. This year’s convention got underway on Saturday and will continue until 2 August, during which time an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 people will attend.