IMAGINATIVE Apologetics Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition Foreword by John Milbank Edited by Andrew Davison k Andrew Davison, ed. Imaginative Apologetics Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2011. Used by permission. Davison_ImagtinativeApolo.indd 3 2/21/12 10:00 AM foreword These websites are hyperlinked. monologues take the form (in some measure) of apologias, which are never without extreme ambiguity. In his first long poem,Paracelsus, the www.bakerpublishinggroup.com message would seem to be that the speaking protagonist has tried to www.bakeracademic.com perfect the human race through power under the inspiration of romantic love, while wrongly despising the little that can be made of faint loves or www.brazospress.com even hates that conceal an unadmitted love at their hearts. And yet he is www.chosenbooks.com brought to the realisation that he is ‘from the over-radiant star too mad / to drink the light-springs’ by one ‘Festus’, whose very name surely invites www.revellbooks.com caution in the reader who recalls Acts and another eponymous diagnosti- www.bethanyhouse.com © 2011 by Andrew Davison cian of supposed insanity. This surely further invites her to read Paracel- sus’ final hope for a day when human advance through a mere refusal of E-book copyright sample. Published in 2012 by Baker Academic the worst will be surpassed, and his own offer of full ‘splendour’ can be a division of Baker Publishing Group admitted on earth, as truly belonging to Christian eschatology parsed in © 2000 by Copyright holder P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakeracademic.com terms of a magical or technological release of all natural powers.2 Published by Baker But in other poems by Browning this order of apologetic and of suspi- a division of Baker Publishing Group First published in the UK by SCM Press (an imprint of Hymns Ancient & Modern) in 2011 cious counter-apologetic is exactly reversed. Thus in Fra Lippo Lippi the P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.website.com Printed in the United States of America painter protagonist offers us a counter-apology for his sensual inability to paint soul and spiritual symbol by persuasively suggesting that our only All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval human way to these things must be through physical beauty, and that we system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, E-book edition created 2010 3 recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief need to be constantly reminded of this by a humbly mimetic art. More All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a quotations in printed reviews. complexly, in Bishop Bloughram’s Apology, Browning’s supposed satire retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, on Cardinal Wiseman, we are drawn into a smug contempt for the Bishop’s Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file at the Library of Congress, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the defence of a half-belief ensuring his own worldly comfort far more readily publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. Washington, DC. than any other metier, only to be drawn up short by the circumstance that ISBN 978-0-8010-3981-2 this very crassness has given him an insight into the ‘dangerous edge of ISBN ***-*-*****-***-* things / The honest thief, the tender murderer, / The superstitious atheist, The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the 4 time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse demirep / That loves and saves her soul in new French books.’ Similarly, Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of them or vouch for their content or permanence. we are easily led to despise Bloughram’s offering to people of semi-mytho- Congress, Washington, DC. logical consolation, only to be once again surprised by his profundity in Old Testament Scripture copyright information. the face of the implications of the modern scientific outlook when he sug- gests that if we lose the idea of Pan’s face appearing in the clouds, we will Unless otherwise indicated, New Testament Scripture quotations are from whatever soon lose also our belief in the reality of the clouds themselves.5 we list here. Bloughram proves himself to be, despite everything, in this Protestant satire, the Catholic spokesperson for the half-hints of the sacramental 2 Robert Browning, ‘Paracelsus’, Book V, in Poems of Robert Browning (London: OUP, 1912), p.498. 3 Browning, ‘Fra Filippo Lippi’ in Browning: a Selection, ed. W.E. Williams (Harmonds- worth: Penguin, 1974), pp 194–206. 4 Browning, ‘Bishop Bloughram’s Apology’ in Browning: a Selection, pp 220–51; this quo- tation p. 232. 5 ‘Bishop Bloughram’s Apology’, p. 247. xix Andrew Davison, ed. Imaginative Apologetics Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2011. Used by permission. SCM_Imaginative Apologetics_FM.indd xix Manila Typesetting Company 04/15/2011 09:43AM Davison_ImagtinativeApolo.indd 4 2/23/12 10:34 AM Contents List of Contributors ix Foreword xiii john milbank Introduction xxv andrew davison Faith and Reason Reconsidered 1 1 Proofs and Arguments 3 john hughes 2 Christian Reason and Christian Community 12 andrew davison Christian Apologetics and the Human Imagination 29 3 Apologetics and the Imagination: Making Strange 31 alison milbank 4 Apologetics, Literature and Worldview 46 donna j. lazenby 5 The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best: C. S. Lewis on Imagination and Reason in Apologetics 59 michael ward Being Imaginative about Christian Apologetics 79 6 Atheism, Apologetics and Ecclesiology: Gaudium et Spes and Contemporary Unbelief 81 stephen bullivant 7 Christian Ethics as Good News 98 craig hovey v Andrew Davison, ed. Imaginative Apologetics Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2011. Used by permission. SCM_Imaginative Apologetics_FM.indd v Manila Typesetting Company 04/15/2011 09:43AM contents Situating Christian Apologetics 113 8 Cultural Hermeneutics and Christian Apologetics 115 graham ward 9 Moments and Themes in the History of Apologetics 126 richard conrad op 10 The Natural Sciences and Apologetics 142 alister e. mcgrath Bibliography 158 Index 165 vi Andrew Davison, ed. Imaginative Apologetics Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2011. Used by permission. SCM_Imaginative Apologetics_FM.indd vi Manila Typesetting Company 04/15/2011 09:43AM This book is dedicated to two sets of friends, preachers and theologians who saved my faith as an undergraduate: to those who introduced me to the Christian philosophical tradition of the West, among them Caroline and Hans Pung, Fr Tom Weinandy and David Albert Jones, and to those who reintroduced me to the humane dignity of the Church of England, among them Fr Mark Everitt and the community at Merton College Chapel. If I owe these people a debt that I cannot repay, then I hope that I may at least join in their work. Andrew Davison, ed. Imaginative Apologetics Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2011. Used by permission. SCM_Imaginative Apologetics_FM.indd vii Manila Typesetting Company 04/15/2011 09:43AM Contributors Stephen Bullivant is Lecturer in Theology and Ethics at St Mary’s Uni- versity College, Twickenham. He has written widely on Catholic social teaching and Catholic responses to atheism. He is the co-director of the Non-religion and Secularity Research Network. His forthcoming mono- graph on Catholicism and atheism is entitled The Salvation of Atheists and Catholic Dogmatic Theology. Richard Conrad is a Dominican friar. He teaches Christian doctrine and sacramental theology at Blackfriars, Oxford, where he is the vice-regent. He is also a part-time lecturer at the Maryvale Institute, Birmingham. He is the author of The Catholic Faith (Continuum, 1994) and The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit (CTS, 2009). Andrew Davison is the Tutor in Doctrine at Westcott House, Cambridge, and an affiliated lecturer of the Cambridge University Divinity Faculty. He has been Tutor in Christian Doctrine at St Stephen’s House, Oxford, a member of the Oxford University Theology Faculty and Junior Chap- lain of Merton College, where he had previously studied chemistry and biochemistry. Craig Hovey is Assistant Professor at Ashland University in Ohio, where he teaches Christian ethics and doctrine. His publications include To Share in the Body: A Theology of Martyrdom for Today’s Church (Brazos Press, 2008), Nietzsche and Theology (T&T Clark, 2008), Speak Thus (Cascade, 2008), and the forthcoming Bearing True Witness: Truthful- ness in Christian Practice (Eerdmans). John Hughes is the Chaplain of Jesus College, Cambridge. His interests and publications span theology, philosophy and ethics. His book on the theology of work, The End of Work, was published by Blackwell in 2007. ix Andrew Davison, ed. Imaginative Apologetics Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2011. Used by permission. SCM_Imaginative Apologetics_FM.indd ix Manila Typesetting Company 04/15/2011 09:43AM contributors Donna J. Lazenby is training for ordained ministry at Westcott House, Cambridge. She gained her PhD in theology from Cambridge University in 2009, writing on points of contact between Christian mysticism and the literary aesthetics of Virginia Woolf. She is author of a forthcoming book on Christian apologetics and the occult in contemporary literature (Cascade – Wipf & Stock). Alister E. McGrath is Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education, and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture at King’s College London. He has written extensively on the relation of Christian theology and the natural sciences, and has a special interest in the area of Christian apologetics.