Alister E. McGrath

Lewis had experienced more trauma than most of his modern readers ever will.

Lewis is a rare example of someone who liked to think about life's great questions because they were forced on him by his own experience.

Lewis wanted us to understand that the inner world is shaped by stories.

Lewis created a new kind of marriage between theological reflection and poetic imagination.

Science proceeds by inference, rather than by the deduction of mathematical proof. A series of observations is accumulated, forcing the deeper question: What must be true if we are to explain what is observed? What "big picture" of reality offers the best fit to what is actually observed in our experience? American scientist and philosopher Charles S. Peirce used the term "abduction" to refer to the way in which scientists generate theories that might offer the best explanation of things. The method is now more often referred to as "inference to the best explanation." It is now widely agreed to be the philosophy of investigation of the world characteristic of the natural sciences.

Human logic may be rationally adequate, but it is also existentially deficient. Faith declares that there is more than this - not contradicting, but transcending reason.

For Christian writers, religious faith is not a rebellion against reason, but a revolt against the imprisonment of humanity within the cold walls of a rationalist dogmatism.

A god that can be reduced to what reason can cope with is not a God that can be worshiped.

Christianity tells a big story. It allows us to see our own story in a new way.

To its critics, the study of theology distracts from real life. But, at its best, theology inspires and informs precisely the committed and caring ministry.

TO BE asked to minister without an informing vision of God (which is what theology is really all about), however, is like being told to make bricks without straw. What keeps people going in ministry, and what, in my experience, congregations are longing for, is an exciting and empowering vision of God, articulated in a theology that is integrated with worship, prayer, and social action.

Though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief.

Lewis at his best is about trying on ways of looking at the world.

Beneath all the rhetoric about relevance lies a profoundly disturbing possibility - that people may base their lives upon an illusion, upon a blatant lie. The attractiveness of a belief is all too often inversely proportional to its truth... To allow "relevance" to be given greater weight than truth is a mark of intellectual shallowness and moral irresponsibility.

Lewis is like a gateway, making the riches of Deep Church more accessible.