George Grant and the Theology of the Cross: The Christian Foundations of His Thought

George Grant is considered by many to be Canada’s foremost political philosopher. But while his sweeping criticisms of technological globalization may be well known, the religious passion that informed his thought has been largely obscured from public view. In this book, Harris Athanasiadis shows Grant to be not just a philosopher but a mystic, not just an intellectual but a man of faith.

Although Grant did not write about his faith to any great extent, he claimed that it was the inspirational centre of everything he thought and wrote. As this book reveals, beneath the philosophical, social, political, ethical, national, and moral issues that Grant tackled throughout his career was a fundamental concern with theodicy - the problem of faith in God in a world of conflict, suffering, and tragedy. Athanasiadis argues that Grant’s thinking was driven by a passion to see God in spite of all that might contradict such a vision. He illustrates Grant’s profound engagement with what Luther described as ‘the theology of the cross,’ and goes on to show how this theological orientation developed significance for Grant as he struggled with various thinkers and intellectual movements. One of his most important influences was the philosopher/activist/mystic Simone Weil, who helped Grant find language through which to articulate a theology of the cross within a twentieth-century secular North American context.

This book explicates the theology that drove Grant’s intellectual quest, thus providing a key to his essentially mystical nature. The author makes a compelling case that the philosopher was at heart a theologian.