The order of things : explorations in scientific theology / Alister E. McGrath.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 230-251) and index.

Taking the Enlightenment seriously -- Renewing the quest for reliable knowledge -- On developing a scientific theology -- Introducing the essays -- Alister McGrath's scientific theology -- A review article by Dr. Benjamin Myers, University of Queensland -- Is a scientific theology intellectual nonsense? : engaging Richard Dawkins -- The universal scope of the natural sciences -- Darwinism and the impossibility of theology -- Faith and evidence in science and theology -- Theology as a virus of the mind? -- Does theology impoverish our view of the universe? -- A university sermon on natural theology -- Towards the restatement and renewal of a natural theology : a dialogue with the classic English tradition -- Natural theology : an autobiographical reflection -- Natural theology as discernment -- The golden age of English natural theology -- The Boyle lectures and the problem of heterodoxy -- William Paley and the divine watchmaker -- The challenge of Darwinism for natural theology -- Incarnation, Trinity, and natural theology -- Responding to Karl Barth : natural theology as a specifically Christian undertaking -- Tradition, interpretation and the discovery of God : natural theology and menos paradox -- Cognitive and perceptual approaches to natural theology -- Stratification : levels of reality and the limits of reductionism -- Stratification in Nicolai Hartmann -- Stratification in Roy Haskar -- Stratification, emergence, and the failure of reductionism -- Mathesis universalis : Heinrich Scholz and the flawed quest for methodological uniformity -- The evolution of doctrine : a critical examination of the theological validity of biological models of doctrinal development -- Nature as a source of theological models -- The notion of doctrinal development -- Universal darwinism and the development of culture -- Are human ideas and values outside the Darwinian paradigm? -- Darwinianism, Lamarckianism, or what? : the indeterminate mechanism of cultural evolution -- Cultural evolution : an historical case study -- Directing evolution : Antonio Gramsci and the manipulation of cultural development -- The memetic approach to intellectual evolution -- Doctrinal development : are there islands of theological stability? -- Contingency, history and adaptation in the evolutionary process -- Contingency, history and adaptation in the development of doctrine -- Chalcedon, metaphysics, and spandrels : evolutionary perspectives on the chalcedonian definition of faith -- Assimilation in the development of doctrine : the theological significance of Jean Piaget -- Piaget on reflective abstraction -- Assimilation to Jewish religious norms : ebionitism -- Assimilation to Roman cultural norms : pelagianism -- Assimilation to Anglo-Saxon cultural norms : Christ as hero -- The achievement of equilibration : factors encouraging theological accommodation -- A working paper : the ordering of the world in a scientific theology -- A working paper : iterative procedures and closure in systematic theology -- The church as the starting point for a scientific dogmatics -- Starting from the visible reality of the church -- Can theology be empirical? : John Locke versus John Dewey -- The church as an empirical social reality -- Stanley Hauerwas on seeing the church -- Transignification and transvaluation : the church and new ways of seeing things.