More about his theology: McGrath is considered one of the leading developers and proponents of scientific theology. There is a long tradition within Christian theology of drawing on intellectual resources outside the Christian tradition as a means of developing a theological vision. This approach is often referred to by the Latin phrase ancilla theologiae (a ‘handmaid of theology’). The evolution of thought and method from Newton to Einstein vitalized scientific theology. Scientific theology argues that the working methods and assumptions of the natural sciences represent the best—or the natural—dialogue partner for Christian theology.
Here too logico-deductive argumentation from static concepts and mechanistic systems are rejected. There is another reorientation of man’s knowledge leaving epistemic and cosmological dualism behind in operations that have to do with the unity of form and being. Scientific theology is concerned with the discovery of appropriate modes of rationality or cognitive instruments with which to enter into the heart of religious experience; and therefore with the development of axiomatic concepts with which to allow interior principles to be disclosed, and in that light to understand the rational structure of the whole field of God’s interaction with man and the world.
Scientific theology takes Einstein’s knowing and being and his understanding of reality as a whole and applies this method of theology in Christian theology. If the world is indeed the creation of God, then there is an ontological ground for a theological engagement with the natural sciences. It is not an arbitrary engagement, which regresses back to Newtonian engagement, but it is a natural dialogue, grounded in the fundamental belief that the God about whom Christian theology speaks is the same God who created the world that the natural sciences investigate.
 Alister E. McGrath, The Science of God: An Introduction to Scientific Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 18-19. There are five distinct classes of things—time, space, matter, energy, and the things relating to conscious life—form with their combinations the known universe. The fifth class must, like the previous, be permanent in quantity, variable in form, and cannot be destroyed. This may be simply labeled as “spirit.” In natural science dialogues, this element is often referred to as “God,” though it does not necessarily carry the theological meanings with it.
 Thomas F. Torrance, “Einstein and Scientific Theology,” Religious Studies 8 no. 3 (1972): 244.
 Both the natural sciences and Christian theology are to engage with the nature of reality—not deciding this in advance, but exploring and establishing it through a process of discovery and encounter. McGrath, The Science of God, 21-22.