KNOWING CHRIST
By Alister McGrath
Hodder & Stoughton. 216 pages. £6.99
ISBN 0 340 75678 0
How does one go about writing a review of a book which on the back cover is hailed as 'A modern classic by one of the most respected theologians of our time'? The title itself, Knowing Christ, inevitably invites a comparison with another book which on its front cover is described by John Stott as 'A spiritual classic of the 20th century', Dr. J. I. Packer's Knowing God.
I well remember reading Dr. Packer's book as a young student in the 1970s and being so overwhelmed by its depth, richness, clarity and biblical profundity that I began to wonder whether I was a Christian at all! It would have been a delight to have said the same of Professor McGrath's book which sadly lacks all the superlative qualities of Knowing God. Which is really a great pity. For here is an author of tremendous ability and a sincere desire to ensure that Christianity does not remain at the level of the head alone, but also that it engages the heart and will. However, the path that he has chosen fails to achieve in the 21st century what Dr. Packer managed at the end of the 20th century.
Pilgrimage
With refreshing honesty, Dr. McGrath describes his own spiritual pilgrimage from Marx to Christ as a student at Oxford. Obviously, as a man of great intellect, McGrath was not too taken by the impression given by some of the CU speakers that 'the hallmark of Christian maturity was a point-blank refusal to think about the Christian faith'. One wonders whether the assessment that 'Sermons at Oxford churches with large student congregations seemed to stress the importance of knowing the Bible rather than knowing Christ' reflects the root of the problem which surfaces throughout this book, namely, that to what was perceived as an over-cerebral approach to the Christian faith, which results in arid scholasticism, Dr. McGrath has over-reacted so that one of the main ways of 'knowing Christ' is by the use of techniques in which the Bible takes on the form of an imaginative instigator.
