Knowing Christ

Is this a classic?

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.

And so on several occasions the reader is encouraged to enter into the Bible stories as a participant, maybe seeing themselves as one of the characters in the drama. For example, here we have Dr. McGrath advocating one of the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola: 'Imagine our Lord before you, hanging upon the cross. Talk to him about how the creator became a human being, and how he who possessed eternal life submitted himself to physical death for our sins. Then I shall reflect upon myself and ask: What have I done for Christ? What am I now doing for Christ? What ought I to do for Christ? As I see him hanging upon the cross, I shall meditate on what comes to mind' (p.202).

Major difference

Here we have focused for us the major and most significant difference between Knowing Christ and Knowing God. The latter proceeds according to the Evangelical belief that the way to know Christ is to know the Bible. There is no dichotomy and perhaps the churches in Oxford which were packed out with students had it right after all. What is more, the way one gets to know the Bible, and allow it to fire the imagination, is not by employing imaginative techniques, but by prayerfully paying close attention to what God is saying through the text.

In fact, over and over again Dr. McGrath, in encouraging readers to explore the way of some of the 'mystics', does the very thing Dr. Packer warns against in his chapter, 'The Only True God'. For this is to create mental images which both dishonour God and mislead his people. So contra Packer, McGrath writes: ' I felt it helpful to let my imagination build up a picture of Christ dying on the cross. Sometimes I would just read the passion narratives and allow this picture to build up naturally; at others, I would use some of the great works of art which depict the crucifixion as windows of contemplation' (p.157).

Meditations

Dr. McGrath feels that one of the main ways to get people to appreciate the benefits of Christ and to respond in love and adoration is to meditate on the physical sufferings of Christ and we are encouraged to imagine it, 'feel' it and react to it (especially chapter 15). Packer, on the other hand, as do the biblical writers themselves, unpacks the doctrinal significance of the cross in such a way that one feels convicted by it and drawn to it in utter devotion. In fact it is quite striking how restrained the gospel writers are in their depiction of the crucifixion, but how keen they are to trigger biblical connections in the minds of the readers to draw out its significance in God's plan of redemption.

Dr. McGrath's approach is, without wishing to sound too harsh, both sentimental and shallow, whereas Dr. Packer's is sanctifying and deep. This is borne out when one looks at what is written on what has always been considered to be the heart of evangelical spirituality - the cross. Dr. Packer, in a litany of chapters links God's grace, love, judgment and wrath, all of which are displayed so movingly in the cross where Christ is presented on our behalf as an atoning substitute. Dr. McGrath's book, on the other hand, contains no mention of the wrath from which we are saved.

The nearest we get to it is when Dr. McGrath relates how he is helped by meditating on the pain and the passion as expressed in a poem by Bernard of Clairvaux, 'O sacred head sore wounded', when he writes: 'As I use my mind, I begin to understand some of the key theological ideas. I should have been on the cross, Christ was there, in my place, bearing the pain that should have been mine.' Contrast this with Packer: 'The gospel tells us that our Creator has become our Redeemer. It announces the Son of God has become man "for us men and for our salvation", and has died on the cross to save us from eternal judgment. The basic description of the saving death of Christ in the Bible is propitiation, that is, as that which quenched God's wrath against us by obliterating our sins from his sight... By this means justice has been done, for the sins of all that will ever be pardoned were judged and punished in the person of God the Son, and it is on this basis that pardon is now offered to us offenders.'

There a weightiness and compulsion to Packer's language and description which is simply not to be found in McGrath's book. To be sure, Dr. McGrath does say that the biblical images at core show that sin leads to a separation from God, but the seriousness of this at the moral level is never spelt out in such a way that one is left with the convicting necessity and wonder of Christ's atonement as we are with Packer.

Missing logic

To use Dr. Lloyd-Jones's phrase about preaching, there is something of the 'logic on fire' which is missing in this book. Instead of a careful, creative unpacking and application of the Bible which would allow it to speak of the riches and person and work of Christ, there is an attempt to use the Bible in a way it itself does not encourage and, which in the long run, would lead to a diminishing of its authority. And so we have this amazing non sequitur following John's account of Jesus's appearance to Mary in the garden (John 20.11-16): 'There is no attempt on the part of the risen Christ to persuade Mary with rational arguments that he is risen. Christ does not offer any logical proof of his resurrection. He simply speaks Mary's name, and she responds with his.' But of course! The appearance is the proof to Mary.

So what is the point? It is that which, according to Dr. McGrath, is further illustrated by Jesus's appearance to Thomas, viz: 'The encounter between Christ and Thomas demonstrates that the supreme ground of faith is not argument or reasoning, but a personal encounter with Christ, whose living presence banishes our doubts' (p.95). But what does this mean in practice for us today? Surely, the appearance of the risen Jesus to Mary, the other disciples and finally Thomas all form part of the cumulative evidence as we have it presented in Scripture which enables us to encounter Christ in our own experience as we repent and trust, hence John 20.30, following on from v.29 (where McGrath leaves his account), 'Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.'

It is obvious that Dr. McGrath does not believe that one can know Christ apart from Scripture, but there are occasions when he comes pretty close to giving that impression when he speaks in such terms as these.

Wide appeal

We are left with a book which will have a wide appeal. But that breadth of appeal is only to be gained by the sacrifice of a depth of biblical theology, not the dry arid stuff which Dr. McGrath rightly shuns, but the moving, magisterial applied theology of the likes of Dr. Packer. If only Prof. McGrath made a vigorous and determined effort to embrace the sort of theology modelled by Packer, with his impressive intellectual ability and his lovely Christ-orientated spirituality, he could become one of the most respected Reformed theologians of our time.

Is this a classic?

Pilgrimage

Major difference

Meditations

Missing logic

Wide appeal

Melvin Tinker

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