Alister Edgar McGrath was born on 23 January 1953 in Belfast. A historian, theologian, and Christian apologist, he is best known for his textbooks, Christian Theology: An Introduction and Theology: The Basics. In 1983, he was made Lecturer in Christian Doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, then became Principal of Wycliffe Hall and Professor of Historical Theology. In 2004, he was appointed Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, moving to King’s College London as Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education in 2006. McGrath retired as Emeritus Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford in 2022.
President of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics in 2006, he was Professor of Divinity at Gresham College in 2015 and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. A former atheist, he is a proponent of evolution and highly critical of Dawkins, calling him ‘embarrassingly ignorant of Christian theology’. Notable works include C.S. Lewis – A Life (2013), Emil Brunner (2014), Re-Imagining Nature (2016), The Territories of Human Reason (2019), Iustitia Dei (2020), J.I. Packer – His Life and Thought (2020), and Natural Philosophy (2022).
