Arthur C. McGill – författare

How can an omnipotent God allow suffering and violence to pervade the world? Arthur McGill approaches this disturbing question by examining the concept of power that is violent, destructive, and dominative, and the power of God that is creative, totally open, self-giving, and expansive. Through consideration of power, McGill provides reflections on the nature of God's inner life in the Trinity and concludes that "service" characterizes God's relationship to the world, not "domination."

Arthur McGill did not write very much, but what he did write is as theologically suggestive and startling today as it was when it was written in the 1960s and 1970s. He was not well known during his lifetime, but those who cared about the work of theology knew Arthur McGill. Writing during the ascendency of the "Death of God" theologies, McGill''s words have a freshness that the more widely known theological writing of that time has lost. McGill wrote only two short books during his life, and just a handful of scattered essays, often published in obscure places. We are fortunate that Kent Dunnington has collected and introduced those essays here. The essays reveal a theologian with an uncanny and intrepid resolve to make theological claims illumine and unsettle our lives. As Stanley Hauerwas writes in his afterword to the collection, "To read McGill is to discover a way to do theology without fear. God knows from where he came, but McGill, as the chapters in this welcome and important book demonstrate, had the ability to make theology do work so that we might better negotiate the imponderable reality we call ''our life.''"

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Arthur McGill had numerous opportunities to air his rich theological musings outside of the classroom. We are now fortunate, some twenty-five years after his death, to have seventeen sermons brought to us by the aid of his wife Lucille McGill and editor David Cain (University of Mary Washington). These homilies reveal the core themes that distinguish his theological writings: relaxing in our neediness before God, participating in the death-to-life pattern of self-expenditure, and rooting our hope in the unique power of Christ. The collection culminates with what Cain notes as McGill''s signature sermon on The Good Samaritan, wherein we see that the reception of grace always precedes the extension of grace. In addressing day-to-day issues such as possessions, speech, loneliness, and anger, McGill is both prophetic and pastoral. He does not hesitate to say that the wickedness of Nineveh--alas!--is the wickedness of the United States. At the same time, he brings a refreshing word with theological depth about human suffering and the God who models ultimate vulnerability.

McGill has the power to make ideas, concepts, differing perspectives vivid--to ''in-flesh'' them. . . .Then comes the switch or reversal or inversion empowered by the very confrontation McGill has arranged. . . . McGill leaves only the demonic as the object of our worship. Just when we supposed that he was about to come to the defense of this world-governing, background God, he dismisses such a God, leaving us with the demonic, leaving us room to affirm our own doubts and perplexities, leaving us with a harsher formulation than we might have ventured, leaving us attentive to what he is going to do next and to where he is going to lead us. Because by now we are following him. --From the Introduction.

An enjoyment of the poet's art, as seen in the words of T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and Wallace Stevens. "e;As a Protestant theologian,"e; writes McGill in his preface, "e;I have always been puzzled that within the Christian community, poetry is often used for its insight into our modern miseries, but that it is rarely enjoyed as poetry. This book seeks to redress the balance."e;McGill focuses on three American poets--Eliot, Frost and Stevens--all of whom belong to the same poetic generation and thus provide a microcosm of poetry from this era. Influenced by Owen Barfield, John Crowe Ransom, and Cleanth Brooks, he identifies poetry with the fleshly aspect of experience, yet never as distinct from a spiritual aspect. "e;In the kingdom of God, people are created with flesh, reconciled through flesh, and glorified as flesh. To hide from the flesh for the sake of the spirit is to miss the Christian life. It is this danger which gives special meaning to the enjoyment of poetry."e; This experience of poetry, according to McGill, "e;is always a healthy antidote to spiritual pride."e;