The Open Secret: Natural Theology
— Review of McGrath 2009

Review of Alister McGrath, The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008). In Conversations in Religion and Theology 7(no. 2, 2009):194-200, and McGrath response, "On Secrets, Lilies, and Daisies," pp. 200-206. Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/37811

Book review of Alister McGrath's The Open Secret. Alister McGrath finds the search for a natural theology inconclusive, owing to a fundamental ambiguity of nature. Nevertheless, there is widespread hope that in, with, and under nature there is something sacred. By McGrath's account, one cannot understand nature except through Jesus' eyes. But does not Darwin open up human eyes to nature as much as does Jesus? Christians do detect transcendence in this wonderland Earth; that witness of "baptized imagination" can complement Darwinian evolutionary accounts.