With my morning coffee steaming on the counter and nothing better to do, I went back to McGrath’s Christian Theology and began looking for more examples where he reuses material. I assure you that this is my last installment. In this list we will see that McGrath continues to borrow heavily between the books Christian Theology, Reformation Thought and Historical Theology, in some cases using the same sentences or even paragraphs in all three books. In one case it appears that he has used at least one sentence in four different publications. We will also see that portions of text in Christian Theology also appear in the following books by McGrath: Studies in Doctrine, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea, Science and Religion: A New Introduction, and in McGrath’s essay on “Darwinism” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science. The extent to which McGrath freely reuses his own material across a broad range of sources is truly staggering.
So without further ado, here is the list:
One and 1/2 paragraphs in the section on “The Augustinian Legacy,” p. 355, compare to McGrath, Studies in Doctrine (Zondervan, 1997), p. 379.
Christian Theology, pp. 359-61 compare to Reformation Thought (fourth ed.), pp. 120-122.
A paragraph in Christian Theology, p. 362, compare to Reformation Thought, p. 133 and Historical Theology, pp. 159-160.
Paragraph beginning “For Luther, as for the reformers in general,” Christian Theology, p. 364 compare to Historical Theology: An Introduction, p. 163 and Reformation Thought: An Introduction, p. 137 and The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, vol. 2, p. 368 (Google did not provide a view of this final source)
Paragraph beginning “Grace is a gift not a reward” in Christian Theology, p. 365 compare to Reformation Thought: An Introduction, p. 191.
The section titled “The Darwinian Controversy…” on Christian Theology, p. 371, compare to McGrath, “Darwinism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, p. 681, and McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea (Harper One, 2007), p. 379.
Christian Theology, pp. 371-73 compare to McGrath, Science and Religion: A New Introduction, 2nd ed. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 38-41.
The section titled “Martin Luther” in Christian Theology, p. 381 compare to Historical Theology, p. 172 and Reformation Thought, pp. 147-148.
The section titled “The radical Reformation” in Christian Theology, po. 383-4 compare to Historical Theology, p. 173, and Reformation Thought, p. 149.
