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A Passion for Truth: The Intellectual Coherence of Evangelicalism,by Alister McGrath, (InterVarsity, 256 pp., $19.99, hardcover). Reviewed by Roger E. Olson, professor of theology at Bethel College in Minnesota and editor of the "Christian Scholar's Review."

With "A Passion for Truth," British evangelical theologian Alister McGrath presents a promised and long-awaited statement of evangelicalism's intellectual credibility--indeed, its superiority over other Christian traditions. Markedly missing, however, is any triumphalistic note, such as one might have detected in McGrath's earlier "Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity" (IVP, 1995). In the present volume, the Oxford scholar presents evangelicalism as sufficiently mature and confident to learn from other contemporary schools of theology without compromising its distinctives. A Passion for Truth has its weaknesses, and critical readers will notice them without much effort. Nevertheless, it represents the strongest statement of evangelical intellectual vitality and competitiveness that has appeared in at least two decades. This is the book to give to nonevangelical, theologically minded friends, colleagues, and relatives. It will go far toward unburdening them of misconceptions about evangelicalism.

"A Passion for Truth" is not a work of systematic theology. McGrath calls it a "prolegomena for the foundation of an evangelical mind" and explains that its purpose is to explore evangelical Christianity's intellectual foundations with a view toward establishing its inner consistency while exposing the contradictions and vulnerabilities that beset rival traditions.

The first half of the book contains McGrath's vision of what constitutes "evangelicalism" and his explication of two major evangelical intellectual foundations: the centrality of Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture. According to McGrath, evangelicalism is a type of Christianity (or, perhaps better stated, authentic Christianity itself!) marked by commitment to Jesus Christ as God's unsurpassable self-revelation, Scripture as God's authoritative written word, the experience of conversion as a special work of God by which one enters into a saving relationship with God, and evangelism. All of this is quite familiar, and so McGrath moves on quickly to a more controversial point.

While few will disagree with McGrath's assertion that "Evangelical Christianity is . . . unashamedly Christ-centered," some will balk at agreeing that "[f]or Christians, Jesus is the embodiment and self-revelation of God. At the heart of the Christian faith stands a living person, not a book." McGrath decidedly places Jesus Christ at the center, core, and foundation of Christianity and finds this a strength of evangelicalism--its Jesus-centeredness. Of course, he is careful to explain that he is not playing Jesus against Scripture. In fact, the two are for him inseparable. However, throughout this volume the author continually hints that evangelicals need to rediscover the centrality of the divine revelation in a person, which has always been its strength and sure foundation.

McGrath's chapter on the authority of Scripture is rather lengthy and, at times, convoluted. Nevertheless, it constitutes the real heart of "A Passion for Truth." McGrath affirms and defends the normativity of Scripture and its rule over all culture, experience, reason, and tradition. At the same time, however, he criticizes some evangelical theology for neglecting the experiential, contextual, and narrative dimensions of the theological enterprise. In this chapter, as at other points throughout "A Passion for Truth," McGrath deplores evangelical theology's tendency to ignore or neglect the narrative nature of Scripture and to reduce it to a source book of doctrinal propositions. He diagnoses this as a symptom of twentieth-century evangelicalism's capitulation to Enlightenment modes of thought.

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June 17 1996, Vol. 40, No. 7