Re: [asa] McGrath, Torrance, and Monistic View

Thanks Phil. The person I was speaking with isn't evangelical or Christian
at all in any traditional sense. He was criticizing McGrath's
evangelical-ness when he used the term "monist." Maybe he used the wrong
term?

On 10/15/06, philtill@aol.com <philtill@aol.com> wrote:
>
> David,
> I spent a week sitting in a TV studio as part of McGrath's audience while
> he taped a seminar on science and Christianity. During the entire seminar I
> never picked up that McGrath was anything other than an orthodox Anglican
> evangelical. I never picked up that he held to any monist ideas of God.
> Perhaps this is someone's interpretation of McGrath's beliefs, rather than
> McGrath's own interpretation of them.
>
> "Monism" usually means that belief that only One entity fundamentally
> exists, and that all the varied things we experience are really just
> manifestations of that One. Monistic faiths include Pantheism (incl.
> Hinduism), which asserts that everything is really God in the final
> analysis, and atheism, which asserts that everything is really non-God in
> the final analysis. Non-monistic faiths include Christianity, Judaism, and
> Islam, because they assert that God both exists and **created** things, and
> that this creating brought into existence things that stand as **other**
> than Himself. That is, there is a Creator/creation distinction in
> non-monist faiths, and so God is not the only thing that exists. It has
> been claimed that the good vs. evil distinction cannot exist in monism,
> since good is defined by the creator and non-good can only be a property of
> beings that are not the creator. Hence, good and evil ultimately
> just illusions in monist belief systems like Hinduism or atheism. I have a
> hard time believing McGrath is really monist.
>
> He seemed like a very nice person, and you might get to speak with him if
> you give him a call. He is not teaching right now because he won a
> Templeton fellowship to focus on research regarding the interface between
> science and Christianity, and he was very excited about that. He might be
> willing to talk with you if you introduce yourself stating your credentials
> and your interests.
>
> best,
> Phil
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dopderbeck@gmail.com
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Sent: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 3:38 PM
> Subject: [asa] McGrath, Torrance, and Monistic View
>
> I met someone today who teaches at Oxford with Alister McGrath. He
> mentioned that McGrath draws heavily on Barth and on Torrance, and described
> McGrath as "monistic," a position with which he strongly disagreed. He also
> mentioned that he had been on the board of the Templeton Foundation when it
> was first formed. What is the "monistic" position to which he referred, and
> what are the alternatives?
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Received on Sun Oct 15 17:35:45 2006