In a handcart…..

The world seems to become an ever stranger and darker place every day. Although let me qualify that statement by pointing out the work being done by the words “seems” and “become”. “Seems” alerts us to two different possibilities. How I perceive things to be and how they actually are, may be two different things. My perception is always limited and imperfect. Even in the most immediate and simple of situations it is clearly possibly for me to misperceive. Facts, it turns out, are often slippery and rarely straightforward. This doesn’t mean that I can’t know anything, it just means that I have to accept that I never know everything infallibly. Normally this doesn’t matter. I know enough, and know it well enough, to do the normal things in life I have to do. So do you. But this can be deceptive and can lead us to the erroneous conclusion that we know more than we do, and that we are wiser than we are. So I hope there is always a certain humility with which I approach the topics I discus here. I don’t think I have ever written anything knowing that it was incorrect, or based on incorrect information. That doesn’t mean I haven’t, just that I have to be open to correction because I might have!

That’s all mainly to do with limitations. But it also also possible to be misled by only having certain types and pieces of information available to drive perceptions. We may live in an information age, when we can apparently know almost in an instant about events on the other side of the planet, or where almost every aspect of life is being surveilled by some sort of imaging device attached to the omnipresent interweb. And these days of course I no longer have to find my way to a networked computer to access this apparently bottomless well of information. All I have to do is put my hand in my pocket and take out my smartphone. I confess I am inclined to believe what I see on screens (whether small or large). And yet, very often a particular someone is choosing particular images and not other, alternative images. Choices are being made about their framing and how they are juxtaposed with other images, all before they are presented to, or selected by, me. They are thus never unfiltered, even if they are unedited. Occasionally (always?) such choices are driven by agendas and unspoken prejudices that are rarely revealed along with the images. So not only can I not know the whole story, but the whole story is rarely if ever presented to me, further complicating any interpretation on my part. And to top it all off we now have the twin problems of an allegedly biased and polarised media on the one hand, and the risk of social media echo chambers on the other, both of which poison the information space. One is the problem of other people, the other the problem of me. The truth may be out there, but it is often well obscured by lots of extraneous trivia and non-truth.

But the idea of some situation or another “becoming” also carries a certain amount of baggage requiring a bit of thought. It suggests a change from one state to another state with time. Indeed, usually the idea is a change from a previously good state to a now much worse state. This can become a self-reinforcing narrative that everything is in decline compared to some bygone age, whether long ago or just in our recent past. It’s not that that a decline is not in progress. But is worth pausing and reflecting on whether this really is what’s going on. It’s too easy to be paralysed into inaction by the idea of an inevitable and terminal decline, which is then just fatalistically accepted.

Consider the recent (and awful) antisemitic assaults in London, in which two Jewish men, simply and quietly going about their daily business were stabbed, apparently with the aim of killing them. One particular individual stands accused of what is a heinous crime (a physical assault with murderous intent) made worse by its antisemitic motivation. But more widely, the idea is that this is symptomatic of an increasingly violent society in which order is breaking down, and specifically symptomatic of a recent normalising of hatred of and hostility towards Jewish people. Now it is worth saying (again) that this incident was awful, and if it was motivated by a hatred of Jewish people (ie antisemitism) then this has to be repudiated and combatted by more than words. And for the majority non-Jewish population in this part of the world, we have to ask why and how such attitudes take root among us. This is not someone else’s problem, it is ours. The idea that an identifiable part of our population is under threat (and they feel that they are) says something about us all. But on this occasion it’s the wider narrative that I want to examine.

The psychologist Steven Pinker has been writing for a while (eg see "The Better angels of Our Nature) about the mismatch between how people feel about “things”, and how things actually are. He points to some general trends that are rooted in data. Global life expectancy has been rising steadily for years (<50y in 1950 to >70 in 2026); and according to the World Bank global poverty has at the same time been falling steadily. But of course those are based on gross averages, and may conceal as much as they reveal. If we zoom in on UK crime stats, homicide is generally down over the last twenty years, as are incidents of violence. The general picture from both Police records and the National Crime Survey (which is independent of the Police and more about the actual experience of crime; see here) is an improving one. Most of the population, most of the time is more or less unaffected by crime directed personally at them. But of course this is not news, at least not the sort that gets reported. Not the sort of thing that whips up a social media storm. And there are lots of vested interests involved in persuading us that things are bad and getting worse. Something must be done!

And of course there are things that need to be done. Against a general context of improvement the rise of both anti-Semitic violence as well as that perpetrated on other minorities (“hate crime” remains stubbornly high after rising through the 2010’s) is even starker. Even if the general picture is improving, the fact that various minorities are being attacked again says something about us all. It also remains to be seen how the coarsening of public life observed in Western democracies, the normalisation of lying and scapegoating, the rise in populist simplism, will feed through to the everyday experience of the vast mass of ordinary people. Politicians seem to comfort themselves with the idea is that all they are doing is reflecting a public mood. And in a democracy, plausibly, this is what we should expect. But this is hardly leadership. On the other had it might be argued it was ever thus. Is Trump worse than Nixon, who famously lied, cheated and burgled his way into power? And while the UK population seems noticeably disenchanted with Starmer, who it is claimed is politically and economically inept (although it’s probably too early to tell), no-one except the most partisan could accuse him of the levels of incompetence (Truss) and lying (Johnston) we endured relatively recently.

There is work to do. But let’s not be befuddled into thinking that we’re all heading to hell in a handcart.

Easter III: Not knowing, knowing and believing

The picture is the famous “Duck-Rabbit” bistable image. A bistable image is simply one which can lead to one of two precepts. Although most people can switch between the competing percepts of either a duck or rabbit, it can’t really be seen as some kind of intermediate or mixed figure. There are a number of such figures, widely used in psychology experiments and at dinner parties (and occasionally in blogs). It demonstrates that what you see is not determined entirely by what you see (i.e. the image that is at the back of your eye), but is affected by what you know. When Peter and Susanne Brugger asked a large group of experimental participants in October what they perceived, they were likely to say “bird”; at Easter participants were more likely to say “bunny”. This was found for both young and old participants even although, presumably, the older participants had no strong beliefs about Easter bunnies. Nevertheless, just the notion of the Easter bunny lurking somewhere in the cognitive background was sufficient to bias what their participants saw.

It seems fairly likely that if you start with something that we all regard as absolutely and immutably true, something that is believed essentially by all of us, something that has been believed almost as long as there have been people to believe anything, such a belief (which is probably thought of as knowledge) is likely to have a rather oversized effect on how we interpret what our eyes tell us. Believing is likely to be seeing rather than the other way around. But given what a fractious, disagreeable bunch human beings tend to be, what could we possibly all agree on? Well, how about that dead people stay dead? Suppose you had seen your best friend die, what would your expectations be? Surely you would not, indeed could not, expect to see them alive again (in the sense we normally mean when we say “alive”)? This is not to deny that very often people report hallucinations of recently departed loved ones. Indeed such hallucinations have long been the subject of study. But while such experiences are often regarded as important, rather than dismissed by those who experience them, and are often an important aspect of grieving, they rarely if ever lead to claims that the loved one in question is no longer dead.

Now consider the situation where the death in question is relatively sudden, brutal and unjust, and where the deceased is a significant public figure (and their death is likewise significantly public). And that after death, normal burial rites are carried out (if only in a rushed and partial way), and no-one is in any doubt about the “deadness” of the deceased. How are they likely to be regarded, at least with reference to their physical remains and existence? Note that I am making a distinction between their physical existence (ie in the normal sense of being alive) and their possible continuing influence in terms of their previous statements, philosophy or teaching. While there might be some ongoing existence of, and interest in, the latter, the former has clearly ended. At least that would be the normal, almost universal expectation, and therefore that is what everyone would see. Indeed to claim something different would entail encountering overwhelming scepticism. If one were to come to believe the assertion that the deceased was now alive, to persuade anyone else of this would require extraordinary and copious evidence. And precisely because of the normal expectation, even the evidence would be seen in a particular way, leading to the “normal” conclusion. It would be a really hard sell. Would such an effort even be worth making?

And yet last weekend, and particularly last Sunday, many of us were celebrating precisely such an extraordinary and unlikely event. Not one that happened recently either, but one which occurred (if it occurred) a long time ago, but has been remembered and celebrated ever since. How come​? Well, there is evidence of course, in the form (for us) of written documentation. That’s not just in terms of the Gospel accounts, which detail the rising of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. Paul probably wrote his first Corinthian letter in the mid-50’s AD, about ten years before Mark wrote his Gospel account (probably the first of the four to be written) and about fifteen to twenty years after the event in question. It is clear from what he writes in 1 Cor 15, that it was broadly believed not only that Jesus had quite literally returned from the dead, but that he had then been seen by a group of his first followers, and then by a large number of others who were still alive at the time of writing. He then goes on to demonstrate why Jesus resurrection is so central to the Gospel that he (Paul) preached, the same Gospel that is preached today. He is insistent that he is not talking about some kind of mere “spiritual” event, or some shared experience, or the enduring legacy of an important teacher. He was rather claiming that the unlikely, the normally impossible, had happed and that it was pivotal. It was a claim that cost him respect and honour among various groups (not least his own people, the Jews), and eventually cost him his life.

What Paul was doing in part was reporting what had been the consistent earlier report of Jesus’ intimates. Having found Jesus’ burial place to be bodiless on the third day after His very public death, it seems very unlikely that Peter and others would have made the outrageous claim that He had actually returned from the dead were it not actually true. Peter had not reached his conclusion on the basis of some mystical experience, nor had he reached it quickly and easily. He had initially had seen an empty tomb, but saw an empty tomb, not the site of a resurrection. He and his friends “knew” that dead people stay dead. And they did not jump to the conclusion that Jesus was alive. One of Jesus female followers, on actually seeing Jesus (such is the claim), assumed not that it was Jesus, but that she was seeing someone else. Two other early disciples, who had also heard of the empty tomb, did not imagine that this meant Jesus was alive. So strong was the effect of their knowledge that He was dead, that even as He walked alongside them they didn’t see Him, but some other stranger (arguably another clear instance of the duck/rabbit effect). But they, and Peter and Mary, along with Paul and many others were convinced by prolonged exposure to the risen Jesus, a risen Jesus who ate with them, walked and talked with them. Jesus too was well aware of how difficult His new post-resurrection life was to believe.

But His return to life was not just believed as an isolated fact. How could it be? Such a thing, if true, would entail a fundamental alteration of not just how we think, but how we live and everything else in between. For if Jesus was alive, if He is alive (something that He Himself had claimed would happen), if he was correct in making such an outrageous prediction, then everything else He claimed and said would need to be re-evaluated in the light of the singular fact of His resurrection. This is precisely what seems to have so impacted those early followers. A dead Jesus is just another minor rabbi, and one who was guilty of lies and distortions (like His claim that He was going to rise from the dead). A risen Jesus is who He says He is, and demands our worship (the conclusion that “doubting” Thomas reached upon seeing Him) and commitment. Lies rarely evoke in the liars the kind of commitment that marked those early witnesses of the living, risen, Jesus.

This particular piece of knowledge, that Jesus is alive, once accepted and responded to appropriately (once “believed” in Bible terms) then affects everything else that we see. Nothing can ever be quite the same again.

Easter II: It was traumatic….

I’ve been thinking about death recently. No, I’m not depressed (at least not yet), but there’s a lot of it about. I mentioned that my dad died just a few weeks ago. And we’ve had rather a lot of funerals at Church just recently (with another one coming shortly). All that is close to home. But one doesn’t have to look very far to find death further afield. How quickly the thousands killed in Gaza disappear from the media spotlight as the World’s attention (along with its cameras) turns to a new war in the Middle East. Mercifully(!) the death toll there is probably only in the hundreds (at least currently), but the number is tragically growing daily. And that’s not to mention the “old” war in Ukraine, with a death toll in the tens of thousands (at the very least). Easy enough to write, not difficult to total, but so many of these deaths are an utter disaster to those intimately involved with them. The kind of traumatising disaster from which folk never fully recover.

Although for the most part in modern life we do what we can to distance ourselves from it, death is part and parcel of life. Although (outside of war and major incidents) we sanitise it, even ignore it, it is in reality inescapable and unavoidable – at least eventually. In that sense it is not a choice. But imagine if it were. Imagine if it was not inevitable. The obvious question is what would you give to avoid it? Presumably anything short of life itself (that would be self-defeating). But such a question is so hypothetical they it is not worth spending time on. Except that death, even in this fallen world, is not inevitable for everyone. God doesn’t die. You might argue that He is so far removed from death anyway that this hardly counts. He is not “one of us”, so how would this change anything? Except that the Christian claim is that He became one of us. Further, that He became one of us precisely to die. I’ve already discussed that in the person of Jesus He lived as one of us aware that he was heading inexorably toward His death. And there is very good reason to think that he knew about His impending death in detail that went beyond even what He told His first followers ahead of it happening. What kind of death was it to be? The worst imaginable.

The human imagination is a powerful thing. But it is part of our fallen lot that it has so often spawned really horrible ways of bringing about death. There’s no need to list them. But in terms of intensity of pain, degradation and humiliation, crucifixion must be near the top of the list. It was designed to be. We have even managed to sanitise the cross by turning it (even with a body attached) into an item of jewellery. But in Jesus’ world, everyone understood whatwas involved in crucifixion. And on the first Good Friday, they (or those who wanted to) actually observed what was involved. That this was the type of death that Jesus had chosen seems so implausible that multiple theories have been advanced as to why His death was variously an accident or miscalculation. All of these are speculative, and none of them is consistent with what we actually know of Jesus’ intentions. But the stuff that we can imagine, and in that sense can enter into and understand, is as nothing compared to what was unique about the particular death that Jesus elected to endure.

From His perspective what was really difficult, and the thing that in His humanity He appears to have struggled with, was that he was going “to be made sin”. That’s not speculation, that’s how the Apostle Paul described what is going on as Jesus hangs on the centre cross on the first Good Friday. Not that He becomes a sinner, but that He becomes sin and a sacrifice for it. The sin in question is mine and yours and therefore in a sense has to be at one remove from Him. Nevertheless the idea is that He becomes what we naturally are, and as such God Himself vents His justified and just anger on Him, so that it might be both exhausted and turned away from us. Again, this is so appalling, and from a certain perspective so unjust, that many theories have been advanced to explain what is happening on the cross in a different way. But the wonder of it is in part that He knowingly and willingly goes to the cross in the full knowledge of what is going to transpire. In the full knowledge of a kind and extent of anguish that you and I can’t imagine. But also in the full knowledge of what this is going to achieve.

As an aside, there is another aspect that we often forget. In a way that is probably impossible for us to fathom, Jesus’ humanity is never divorced from His divinity (He is God incarnate). What that must mean is that He always knows that He has the power to call a halt to proceedings, or in some sense divinely rescue His humanity and lessen the impact of what frail, pathetic creatures are seeking to inflict on their Creator. Yet he does not. He surrenders His human will to the divine will, and suffers as one of us, but also representative of all of us. That second aspect is precisely why it has to be Him, and not merely a man who happens to be a very good and exemplary prophet or moral superstar.

Meanwhile, what of the effect of the death of this particular person in this particular manner, on those closest to Him at the time? No every death is tragic (although most are in their way). Not every death is traumatic. It is genuinely difficult to think of the death of a Hitler, Mao or Stalin as anything other than justified. In my own case, my observation of my own father’s death was that while it brought us the pain of bereavement (which is always a complicated experience) it was neither unexpected nor traumatic. I realise that this is not always the case, but that’s how it was for me. Dad’s time had come; there was little element of choice. It was in many ways a relief. And it was transformed by what Jesus accomplished. But at the time of Jesus death, to those first followers, to those who were bereaved on that Friday, it was so unexpected (even if it shouldn’t have been), counter to their expectation and just plain horrible, that the trauma for them is difficult to imagine. And for them to see much beyond the events of that day, is surely too much to expect. We know the whole story, they did not. It is to their credit that they inform us about how devastated they actually were. My suspicion is that I would have been just as devastated and traumatised.

In the normal course of events this story should probably have ended with their trauma, or perhaps some moral they derived from it. If that were really the case we probably would never have heard of any of them, or any of their story. That you are reading this is a small piece of evidence that this is not where the story in fact ends. Fortunately it’s really difficult to miss what happens next.

Easter I: It didn’t/doesn’t appear from nowhere….

I know it sometimes feels like it, but Easter doesn’t just appear as if by magic and then just as quickly disappear. Nor is it primarily driven by a commercial imperative with its own timetable - Christmas decorations down, then valentine’s cards and treats, and then all of a sudden chocolate eggs appear, to be followed by rabbits of assorted sizes and constitutions. These are all distractions apt to convince the unaware and unthinking that there is nothing of importance going on, beyond obtaining an early spring sugar-rush. But there is more to Easter than eggs. And there is a then as well as a now.

The “then” I have in mind is of course some time around 30AD. As with all ancient history, some of the detail has probably been lost in the mists of time. But not being able to know everything with certainty is not the same as not being able to know some things with a fair degree of confidence. Real, 100%, cast-iron, completely proven certainty only ever exists within the confines of logic and mathematics, and is never likely to be available in the much messier world populated and shaped by fallen, fallible men and women like us. But, in tracing the events that led to what we now call Easter, we are well served by what is found in the Bible. This is not the place to rehearse why after thousands of years of critical scrutiny (and deliberately destructive scrutiny in the case of the Western academic tradition of the last couple of hundred years) the Biblical narrative still carries authority. It’s not difficult to track down accounts of why and how this should be, from the technical, through the polemical to the popular. But as a starting assumption, let us take the Biblical accounts of what we now refer to as Easter to be coherent and accurate, albeit they are neither journalistic or written in the linear way that modern academic history is written. Actually, if we consider only the Gospels, the writers are clear with us as readers that they are selecting their material and assembling it to present Jesus and His claims as they perceived Him to be making them. In other words they are more transparent about their methods and motives than your average podcaster or Tick-tock influencer.

What is clear from the Gospel accounts is that there is much about that first Easter that should have come as no surprise at all. But things being said and things being heard are two very different things. What comes across is that the person at the centre of it all, and the person driving events (rather than being driven by them) is Jesus Himself. Now, again, this is no surprise if Jesus is who He claims to be. A straightforward reading of the Gospels shows that Jesus did things that only God could do, expecting observers to draw the obvious conclusion. Just have a read of the account of His healing of the paralysed man let down through the roof into the middle of a room where He was speaking. He did things that were amazing but that also reminded his original Jewish audience of things God had done in the past, like when He fed thousands of people with bread in a wilderness area. Remind you of anything? Think Exodus, think 5000. He accepted things that only God should rightly accept, as when Thomas declares Him to be Lord and God and in so doing offers worship (although admittedly this comes at the end of the story). And He claimed, in terms, to be identical to God. It seems odd that this is disputed. Actually, this is sometimes a bit obscured in the English translation. In the Greek in which the Gospels are written, it leaps out from the text more than once. Of course there were those in His original audience who heard exactly what He was saying and were outraged by all. All of which gradually builds an expectation of some sort of climax. Either He must be exposed as an enormous fraud or…..

But to their credit, the Gospel writers (or at least Matthew and John who were with Jesus from near the beginning of His public ministry) make clear that there is another reason why the events of Easter should have been no surprise. Jesus laid out precisely what was going to happen in considerable detail, and did so repeatedly. He talked about location, rejection, crucifixion and resurrection all before they happened. Hours before the critical events He even explained why he was being so forthcoming. He was letting them know so that they would know that He knew! Consider why this matters. Jesus was neither simply following events as they unfolded, nor a hapless victim of miscalculation. If he didn’t intend what happened to happen he had ample opportunity to plot a different course. But from very early on, well before anything was apparently inevitable, He is very clear about both the purpose and shape of those first Easter events. Arguably, of course, well before Jesus arrived on the scene at all, it had all been first hinted at (as early as Genesis Ch3!), and then described in some detail (Isaiah Ch53). Those who heard Him speak might have had cause to feel somewhat embarrassed that they didn’t get it. But we know much more now than they did at the time, and do we get it? There is a greater purpose unfolding in the events of Easter, greater in a sense that the events themselves, although dependant upon them actually happening. What happened matters. But that should not distract from what it means.

So it turns out that the first Easter (not that it was called that) did not just appear. It had been long promised, and long prepared. And this Easter does not just appear either. The life, death, resurrection, ascension and return of Jesus is not just for one part of the year. All of these are rooted in history and yet in the person they concern have a daily relevance. He, through who He is and what He has done, restores, shapes, motivates and provides daily (even momentary) hope for life and living. Christmas, Easter, birth, death resurrection, return; these are not just disconnected ideas to be dissected and argued over. It all fits together in one big picture.

Not to be missed.

I buried my dad...

Although it says in my blurb that this blog is partly a family blog, I have rarely (if ever) written here about my family. I suppose that’s partly because bearing my soul is one thing (not that I have), but bearing the souls of others seems (at least to me) a bit tasteless, intrusive and unfair. They all are their own people after all, persons and not mere objects to be dissected, examined and discussed publicly. But all families have significant milestones, and we reached one a few weeks ago. While it was not particularly pleasant, neither was it ugly. And while it would be wrong to claim that it was the sort of thing one looks forward to, it was something that was inevitable and to that extent expected.

My dad, known to most people as Charlie, was born on the 4^th June, 1934, and died on the 6^th January, 2026, aged 91. We buried his mortal remains on 28^th January. He lived what to many would seem a very ordinary life, and I suppose to many he seemed a very ordinary sort of man. But I am one of only two people in the whole wide world who could call him dad. And in that I was privileged. In terms of the usual metrics by which we tend to attribute value, he was neither rich or particularly successful. He was born, lived and died in Glasgow, and never travelled particularly extensively. He wasn’t brilliant academically and didn’t have much in terms of school qualifications. He didn’t build up a business empire or climb to the top of one of the professional greasy poles. He trained as a joiner (a carpenter in other parts of the world). He was a very good joiner (and plumber, plasterer and maker of interesting toys); he used his skills mainly to make our lives more comfortable rather than to make money or obtain fame. He was a husband, dad, grandad, uncle and friend to many. But this list leaves out the one thing that made him the man (and dad) he was, and explains his enduring influence. He was a Christian.

It is said of lots of folk that when they were alive they were a gentleman. Occasionally, even still, that might be qualified by the adjective “Christian”. “Christian gentleman” was a term used of dad at his funeral service; I think this was apt. It could be taken to mean lots of things. I take it to mean something very specific. When he was a teenager dad had a personal encounter with Jesus (the Jesus who is described, and whose words are recorded in the Gospels). Now I know that logically such a claim will be taken by some to mean that dad was deluded. These days it is perhaps more likely that such a claim will be politely indulged as his “truth” (and respected as such). But as such it would not have much significance beyond dad. But he didn’t see things that way, and did not talk about encountering Jesus personally as something of only personal significance. He saw this as a real encounter that marked the beginning of a relationship, a relationship that was in no way weakened or diminished on the 6^th January. I was one of many beneficiaries of that relationship, because he introduced me to the same Jesus. I don’t mean that he showed me into a room in which someone was standing and said “This is Jesus”. He didn’t have to. In fact, over the years he said very little to us directly. He had his expectation of us, but these were rarely articulated. But he made sure that we knew who Jesus was, and what he had done, and what he had claimed. And he largely left it up to us to decide what to do with the information, how to respond to it while he just carried on being dad.

What greatly eased the last few week of his life was the knowledge that he remained secure in that relationship that began when he was a teenager. It was obviously not a passing phase; it lasted the length of the rest of his life, and beyond. It brought us certainty and hope where very often I have observed fear and despair. Instead of euphemisms and platitudes, we had truth, and I am even tempted to say certainty. Certainty has, of course, become deeply unfashionable. That which was once assumed to bring certainty has been systematically attacked and undermined, and apparently abandoned by many. For some this brings with it the advantage of living without the constraints familiar to former generations. The claim is that by throwing off the shackles derived from, for example, the Bible, we have arrived in a period of freedom. While of value to humanity at an earlier period in our development, the guardrail and guide trusted in previous times are no longer needed. How is that all working out? Whether with regard to family dynamics, sexual ethics, public values and behaviour, not well it would seem. Not that there was ever a golden age when all was peace and light. But it does not seem as through we have evolved and arrived at a place of contentment; the former myths of inevitable progress seemed to have turned to ash. Dad grew up in the war years, in the east end of Glasgow. He grew up in no idyll and knew a much harder life that I ever did (in part thanks to him). He was a realist and practical man, not an idealist and philosopher. And yet, in his relationship with Jesus, he was transformed, and that relationship endured.

And now? Well there is much I cheerfully admit I do not know. I can’t tell you where dad is with any geographical confidence, But I can tell who he is with. I can’t tell you in any great detail what state he is in, but I can tell you it is much better than any other state he could be in bar one – his final state. I know that his current state is no longer embodied, because we put his body in a wooden coffin and buried it, yet he was not there. So he now exists in a disembodied state. I know these things because I have been told them, they have been revealed by the same source who revealed much else that I have found in my own experience to be reliable. Now I, like dad, could be completely deluded. That we should both share the same delusion, deriving comfort and hope from it, seems a bit unlikely but is clearly logically possible. And of course I cannot know with mathematical certainty that if and when my time comes, like dad, I will rest secure in Jesus awaiting a future day when I again will be embodied and will live again, with dad and many others besides, in a much different world. But I was never really that impressed with mathematical certainty because it only ever seemed to apply in very specific mathematical circumstances, quite removed from the rest of life (and death). I’ll stick with the certainty of faith. A faith that was demonstrated and lived out before my very eyes by dad, one that is shared rather than inherited.

New year, new pile....

As promised, and carrying on the (recently established) tradition of detailing some of my reading for 2026 (who knows what tangents and byways await), here are some of my thoughts on the pile of books that has appeared, as if by magic, in my study. And yes, I know I’m repeating myself, but at the bottom (and serving as a foundation) is my Greek New Testament. I will spare you the details of what and why (mainly because I’ve mentioned them before). I see no need to be shy about my commitment to what God has said (though note that He says it just as clearly in English as in koine Greek) and to its being foundational. And to it providing the necessary framework for my other thinking. “How quaint” some might say. Or perhaps “how closed minded”. But we all think within a framework, and we all (to use a metaphor beloved of both Calvin and N.T. Wright) look at the world through spectacles. The spectacles themselves, because they are not usually observed but the means of observation, don’t often attract attention - until they do. At least I am explicit about my framework.

As in previous years I have a major theological reading project in mind for 2026 that is next up in the pile. I first encountered Herman Bavinck, Dutch reformed theologian, educator, politician and polymath, at the very outset of my MTh studies at Union. Bob Latham introduced us to Bavinck’s “organic” view of Scripture, and I plumped for the assessment essay comparing this view with Warfield’s view of Scripture. James Eglinton’s (excellent) biography of Bavinck had just appeared, so I obtained a copy to get a more rounded view of the man. Proved to be a good move on my part, and ever since, Bavinck has been on my radar. Last year I read his “Christianity and Science” and began obtaining the four volumes of “Reformed Dogmatics” from various second-hand sources. Volume 1 sounds dry (it’s his preamble discussing dogmatics and its history), but it has been (I'm 100+ in) an excellent historical introduction not just to dogmatics but also to theology, philosophy and various points in between. I’m looking forward to Bavinck’s company throughout 2026.

Last year much of my reading was related to the paper I was writing on neuroscience and theology. But that hadn't really been the topic at the front of my mind (until it was!). My MTh dissertation was about the Biblical basis of human friendships. The general topic of friendship is again being revisited from multiple perspectives partly because its retrieval is seen as vital in a culture now so marked by chronic loneliness and its deleterious consequences. The starting point for many are the ancient accounts of friendship to be found in Plato, but particularly Aristotle. Now Aristotle was a bright chap who said many interesting and helpful things, and who still exercises a profound influence over Western thought (and for all I know much more widely too). His thinking on friendship was mediated to the Roman/Latin world by Cicero, who in turn was a major influence on Augustine, who is one of the towering figures in Western theology. Long story short, if friendship is important for us, then we should  find a basis for it not so much in Aristotle but revealed in Scripture. Now, this might not seem like a bold claim. But there have been those who have suggested that there isn’t much in Scripture about friendship, and indeed that it might actually be in conflict with Christian teaching. So because friendship always has voluntary and exclusive aspects it conflicts with the commandment to love even my enemies (etc, etc). I won't reproduce my dissertation here (because you can actually find it here), but I aim is to edit it down and tart it up and submit it in article form somewhere or other. Hence the need to update and extend my reading on the topic and the books on the pile relating to friendship.

In addition to theological accounts (Summers and Bequette), I thought I’d dip into some of Robin Dunbar’s work. Our paths crossed briefly in the University of Liverpool, prior to his move to Oxford. His is a scientific, evolutionary account of human relationships. He is perhaps best known for coining “Dunbar’s number” – the expected average number of stable relationships a human being can maintain (with various caveats). My reason for wanting to read such an account is simple. If relationships (including friendship) are fundamental to our humanity, then a completely naturalistic account of them should be possible. Their qualities, the effects of their absence, what makes for their flourishing, what causes their breakdown and so on, all of these are observable, and I’m assuming have been observed. Among other things it will be interesting to see if Dunbar’s stance is that once a naturalistic account has been given, there is nothing more to say. But as ever the science (as opposed to the smuggled metaphysics) will be fascinating. Whether any of this will be relevant to what I eventually write, we will see.

Given my background, I need to continue my education in the humanities and there are lots of classics that I have never touched. I have read a bit of ethics in my time, although usually secondary accounts for apologetic purposes. So I decided to continue my education with Macintyre's “After Virtue”. It so happened that N.T. Wright, in discussing the importance of ethics in Paul’s theology (although Paul would not have thought about it in our siloed terms) quoted his own “Virtue Reborn”. I decided these would make a nice pair to read back-to-back. Whether they in any way complement each other again, we will see.

So far, so good. But I might need some light relief. I decided to turn to a comedian for it. Marcus Brigstocke is both funny and clever (the two often seem to go together). I admit I came across “God Collar” in a charity shop, but it wasn’t just the bargain price the attracted me to this particular read. I spend relatively little time among atheists, certainly less than I spend with their writings. But I could perhaps be accused of holding the views I hold because I know little of the alternatives and rarely expose what I hold dear to scrutiny, even ridicule. As it turns out, this would be unjust. I often find the opposite to be the case. Many who think they have rejected God have never actually seriously encountered Him or sought to. In part this is because people like me are rarely who or what we should be, given what we claim to believe; we are terrifically bad adverts for those beliefs. But fundamentally we are not (or should not be) recommending ourselves as paragons or examples. I see nothing that indicates that any group of other human beings or the institutions they have built are worthy of worship (although some may have other important reasons for their existence and uses). It is God Himself who is worth listening to. And fortunately for us, God thinks so too. It turns out that the speaking God speaks! The problem is that He is often not heard, or even when heard, heeded. Anyway, we’ll see if Marcus is alive to such distinctions.

But finally to more trusted friends and allies. I have encountered some of the earliest Christian writers (after the Apostles themselves) in the writings of others. But (just as with God Himself) I can hear from the “men” themselves (or at least a few of them). So I picked up the Penguin Classics edition of “Early Christian Writings” (including writings of Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp). I have encountered Polycarp before thanks to reading Irenaeus’ “Against Heresies” (worth it for the riff on vegetables as names for the various Gnostic entities; 1:11:4). Context is everything though. So I decided I’d better read a bit about the context of the second century, hence Grant on the second century “apologists”.

This should be enough to get me going.

Reading for 2025 (no further)

The title of this post is, I admit, a bit cryptic. You’ll have look back at this January post to get it. But having tee’d up my reading for the year, all neatly piled up, I thought it was only fair to say something in retrospect about it. Then next year (i.e. next week) I’ll say something about my plans for 2026. Only one item will appear in both piles and it is foundational metaphorically and physically. My Greek New Testament has been well used (if not the “Intermediate Greek Grammar” that also appeared with it). I’ve carried on trying to read part of my daily Bible reading in Greek (2025 was a New Testament year), before switching to English, as well as with my weekly reading group in which we’ve mostly been reading John’s writings. Again, because it’s the Tyndale reader’s edition, I’ve benefitted from the help given on each page, which saves me reaching too often for my copy of BDAG (if you know, you know), which was a 2025 birthday present. Currently Tyndale House in Cambridge, whose efforts produced this version of the Greek NT, are expanding and upgrading their library facilities. More power to their elbow. They do vital work that is of continuing benefit to the wider church.

My big “theological reading project” for the year was N. T. Wright’s “Christian Origins and the Question of God”. As before, the idea was to read a little bit every day and knock off the whole thing over the year. And very useful it has been too. Even when the material is hard, and the language a bit convoluted, Wright is always an educational, and even occasionally an entertaining, read. The early volumes have been a really helpful in understanding the intellectual background (not to say ferment) of second temple Judaism which is the wider context into which Jesus steps and Paul later appears. The main thrust of much of this is that this is (unsurprisingly) a Jewish context, something that some Christians (or at least some theologians) have at various points attempted to extinguish from the reality that is the history. Right at the centre of it all is the middle volume (“The Resurrection of the Son of God”), which must stand as one of the best explorations of the resurrection ever written (at least in English) and quite a lot else besides. Some of this material even turned out to be relevant to my other big project of the year (of which more below). The final volumes focus on Paul and his theology; although what theology, his or anyone else’s, actually is turns out to be a tricky question). One of the main themes is again that Paul doesn’t suddenly stop being Jewish and then determines to set up some rival “religion” (although what constitutes a religion also turns out to be quite tricky). Rather, he comes to the startling conclusion that Jesus, albeit the crucified Jesus, has been demonstrated to be the promised Messiah (by the resurrection), has fulfilled one set of promises long made to Israel by their covenant making, covenant keeping, creator God, and has inaugurated the fulfilment of anther set. And to stop uppity Gentiles like me becoming too cocky, I should just remember that I’m the odd branch that has been grafted into a Jewish rootstock. Interesting to read against the background of the recent antisemitic atrocities in Manchester and Bondi Beach. Having succeeded in reading through to the end, I’m going to miss my daily dose of N.T.!

I did plan some “lighter” reading in the form of Hillary Mantell’s “Wolf Hall” trilogy. This was inspired by the BBC adaption of course. It turns out to be a sort of mixture of history and theology. Alas, it turned out no to be “light” enough. I did get to the end of the first book in the trilogy but then I gave up. Mantell is of course a Booker Prize winner; that should have warned me. History I like, and theology I’m committed to. Historical theology (which I suppose you could argue is what N.T. was writing and what I enjoyed reading in the form of Calvin’s Institutes last year) I have enjoyed. There is some historical fiction I’ve enjoyed (I learned all about the Napoleonic wars from Denis Wheatly’s “Roger Brook” stories) but not so much this. I might have another go at Cromwell in 2026, but no promises.

At the top of my 2025 pile was some of the reading that was necessary for a paper I was writing on neuroscience (my former interest) and theology. Some of this was to do with basic philosophical problems that arise when we consider what we are as persons (eg are we made of one kind of stuff which is only physical or is it more complicated than that?), and some were taken up with previous theological responses to what assumed to be the inescapable philosophical consequences of the advances in neuroscience over the last fifty years. Some of those responses left a lot to be desired. It still astonishes me that some in theology fell for the line that the only valid questions are scientific questions and therefore only science can give valid answers. This is basically to make an a priori commitment to a particular form of materialism (only physical stuff exists) which makes explaining things like money and football scores inexplicable in any useful way. And of course it rules as invalid the question “does God exist?” assuming you take God to name an entity that is immaterial. You no longer have to prove He doesn’t exist, because you’ve already decided the issue. There are many supporters of such a position. What is interesting is that, however large that number used to be, it is almost certainly declining. This kind of view leaves unexplored lots of things that actually we are all very aware of including God Himself. You can only go on for so long telling people that questions about such things are invalid. Materialism is its various forms is increasingly viewed as being inadequate (see further here).

Having done lots of reading round the topic I wrote my paper and submitted it. One reviewer loved it, one hated it, and the third thought that what I had produced was good as far as it went, but that I had ignored the important topic of “neurotheology”. So, I had to do more reading, and a bit of writing, and submit a revision. Such exercises are always akin to a negotiation. Whether I’ve done enough for the editor remains to be seen.

Perhaps one day what I’ve written will be on someone else’s reading list. More on my 2026 reading pile shortly.

Christmas observation is interpretation

All observation is interpretation; I’m sure someone must have said that before. It has certainly been widely discussed. We never simply “see”. Facts are never delivered to us neatly isolated from everything else and wrapped up in a bow. Or to change the metaphor, there is no truth tree that if shaken drops fully formed, ripened and reliable facts into our laps to be consumed. That’s just not how the universe is. That said, there is stuff to be known, observations to constructed and interpreted. And it is sometimes interesting to note when something that is knowable, is not known by folk you’d think would know better. I was surprised by the surprise of Melvyn Bragg this morning on the R4 “Today” programme (which he was guest editing) when he discovered that the Bible accounts of Jesus birth do not specify three wise men (there are three gifts, but the number of “magi” isn’t given). I would have expected Melvyn to know his Bible better than that. Slightly later on I was also surprised at the surprise of “the undercover economist” Tim Harford (presenter of “More or Less” a programme about numbers), who was confused both about the number of “wise men” and their status. He appeared to think they were kings, again something that isn’t claimed by the Gospel writers. What is actually stated in Matthew and Luke’s birth narratives is basic stuff and eminently knowable (if apparently widely unknown). However, even many of the “facts” about that first “Christmas” even if known could appear somewhat underwhelming (as discussed previously). So both before and after the key event (the actual birth of Jesus) help is provided for us to understand something of the significance of what is going on. To help us interpret what we can observe correctly. You wouldn’t want to get this wrong.

Luke lays out, in great detail and as part of his “orderly account”, many of the preparatory moves. After centuries of what seemed like divine silence (the theme of a previous post), and several degrees of confusion amongst the Jews of the period (was their exile over or not? had their God forgotten about them? why were they still under gentile rule not to say oppression?), things suddenly started to happen almost as though to tee up a coming main event. The story of Zechariah and Elizabeth (the parents of John the Baptist) never really figures in modern nativities, but Luke clearly sees it as highly relevant to the story of both Jesus birth and His later public ministry. But it also acts as a bit of a wake up call. And Mary’s older (and certainly more experienced) cousin Elisabeth provides her with necessary support when bizarre things also happen to her. But even having been alerted that something pretty amazing is going to happen, the significant facts of Jesus actual birth are so intrinsically unbelievable, that many at the time (and certainly since) assume a simple explanation for a) Mary being pregnant and b) Joseph not being the father. After all, the problem was not that Joseph (and everyone else) did not know where babies come from, rather the problem was that he did (hence his initial idea of quietly divorcing his betrothed). And yet, as amazing as Jesus conception and birth are, the climax of the story could simply be perceived to be what looks like a fairly ordinary baby, albeit laid in a feeding trough. To this extent, it is difficult to see what the fuss is about (particularly if we miss some of Gabriel’s hints and how they relate to the angel’s own personal history).

So, because all observation is interpretation, and because interpretation always requires subsidiary facts (or a network of background beliefs and assumptions), we’re given some help. This is aimed at helping us understand not so much the how but the who of Bethlehem. This is where the shepherds and the “magi” come in, and their focus is on who the baby is, not so much how or where the baby was to be found (although neither of these is unimportant). Of the two, the shepherds are perhaps given both the most and the most dramatic help to understand what they will be seeing when they look into that feeding trough. Like Mary they have a scary encounter with an angel (no doubt made scarier still by the “glory of the Lord” which also appeared). Like Mary they are told things that for them (as they would have been for any of us) are scarcely reconcilable. On they one hand they will find themselves looking at the Messiah (Luke uses the Greek equivalent “Christ”) who has indeed come to save or rescue His people (the clue was in His name of course). And there is a heavy hint as to His divinity too; in calling Him “Lord” (κυριος, kyrios) Luke uses the Greek word used for God’s name in the Greek translation of the Old testament). But on the other they’ll be staring at a baby! The magi make their way from the east (we aren’t told from whence or precisely when) guided by a sign in the sky and their own learning. They sought extra help from the very earthly source of King Herod of course. They think they are looking for a king, it is apparently Herod who works out they are looking for the Messiah. What is often missed about these (probably Gentile) men, is that when they see the baby they fall down and worship Him. Clearly they are not merely seeing a baby and being suitably appreciative. Nor is their action merely one of respect. It is one of worship – they too are looking on not just a baby, but a being who is worthy of their worship. But this was revealed, rather than worked out, just as it was for the shepherds.

It would take lots of other people a long time to work out what these two groups were told. Some never got it. Many still don’t. If you just observe a story about a baby (or perhaps several contradictory stories about a baby – something else I heard on the radio this morning) you will be seeing but yet not seeing. That too turned out to be true of lots of people who would see and hear the man the baby grew up to become, and lots of people who hear (or indeed read) about Him today. 

Happy Christmas.

Deeply unimpressive

It is hard to imagine anyone splashing the headline “Pregnant teenager has baby”. It’s just not that impressive. Teenagers have been having babies for about as long as there have been teenagers. Even when some tribal, cultural or legal norm is being breached, it is not an unheard of event, and therefore not that exceptional. Of course it could (and does) have major impacts on those immediately involved. It may be a personal tragedy or be accompanied by unalloyed personal and family joy. But what is very unclear is why the rest of us should be that interested in the specifics. I suppose today if the teenager concerned had famous or influential parents one could imagine the paparazzi camping out at the bottom of their driveway. Or again if the circumstances of the pregnancy were in some way controversial. But that says more about the state of contemporary tastes and culture (not to mention the bottom-feeding habits of some sections of the modern media) than it does about the intrinsic interest to the rest of us of such an event. As for “Pregnant teenager in the ancient world has a baby” – well, that’s an even more unlikely headline.

Yet all over the world today it is precisely such a story that is in the minds of literally billions of people. For so many of us this is such a normal and ordinary part of our annual routine it’s worth considering how remarkable this is given how unremarkable the circumstances of the original birth appeared to be, at least superficially. The mother-to-be in question is of course Mary, and she was indeed (probably) a teenager. The biblical accounts do not provide her age, but she was probably around 16 when she discovered she was pregnant. She was “betrothed” at the time, something that sounds a bit like modern, Western engagement, but was considerably more serious. There was a formal contract between families at the point of betrothal. A “bride-price” had been agreed and probably paid. If anything untoward were to happen (e.g. if she was found not to be a virgin when it came to the yet-to-happen consummation of the marriage) a divorce would be required to dissolve the betrothal. In fact, all that remained was for Mary to move in with her husband-to-be and the marriage to be consummated. This is where it gets interesting. If her betrothed had been the father-to-be there would have been no big issue with Mary being pregnant. But both she (and he for that matter) appeared to know that this was not the case. So when he heard Mary was pregnant Joseph did indeed intend to divorce her (quietly, because he was a decent soul). She, meanwhile, was making some unusual claims. But one can understand the psychology of the situation and of many of those involved. Why this should really be a story that would spread far beyond the confines of a first century Judean village is hard to fathom. It is hardly a pot boiler of great proportions.

The actual birth certainly had dramatic moments but is again fundamentally not that impressive. Joseph’s attitude to Mary had changed, so that now he was sticking by her. There is an account of a somewhat forced, and no doubt for Mary a difficult journey, necessitated by Roman bureaucracy. Mary and Joseph were almost certainly not the only people travelling, explaining why at their destination accommodation was at a premium. This is also why the baby, when it arrives, is to be found in that part of a first century Judean house normally used for animals. While this might sound odd or noteworthy to us, at the time it probably was more practical than strange. And not strange at all given the pressures and seemingly arbitrary obligations inflicted on an oppressed people by an occupying empire. In any case, not long after the birth, the usual rituals were being observed, and shortly thereafter things settled seemed to settle down for a while. All deeply unimpressive stuff. If there was a ripple of interest, it should have died away pretty quickly. Except it didn’t and it hasn’t.

As unimpressive as these events may have seemed to some, even to some of those fairly close to them, they happened in a particular context and were accompanied by some very odd goings on. First, there were the circumstances of the baby’s conception. One can understand a certain scepticism that probably met Mary’s account, perhaps initially garbled, of an angelic messenger who, while providing sparse biological detail in our terms, was very specific about who it was that was behind the events about to descend upon her. It is fairly unlikely that such an account would have been believed were it not for two accompanying facts. Firstly, something surprisingly similar had recently happened to her cousin Elisabeth. A baby who was angelically promised and then arrived to a couple (actually a well connected couple) who were beyond the baby stage. Secondly, Mary’s husband was apparently interdependently angelically informed that although the baby was not his, he was still to take Mary as his wife (hence the change in Joseph’s attitude). After the event, there were also strange visitors who sought out the baby, visitors who spanned time, distance and social standing. Early on there were working men, local shepherds, with yet more stories of angels. Later there were educated and wealthy men of social standing, (probably) Gentiles no less, who had travelled from the east. They were important enough to merit access to the local king, thinking they would find the child that they sought in a palace. Eventually they found him in much humbler, unimpressive, surroundings. But they focussed not on the circumstances of the child’s birth or on his current circumstances but on the child himself whom they deemed of such importance that they actually bowed before him and presented gifts.

I grant you, this all appears now to be building into something that might attract attention (it certainly attracted King Herod’s). But then steps were taken to damp that attention down. So, Joseph takes Mary and the child away for a time, far to south, away from the attention of the king. Only later do they hear that they had escaped potential disaster. Then they return to an obscure northern part of their own country famous for nothing, or at least for nothing other than being obscure, northern and the source of “nothing good”. It’s almost as though someone wanted all the odd things about His birth forgotten (did they really happen?) and the whole thing to look unimpressive. The baby would of course eventually grow up, and Scripture itself makes clear that there was much that would remain personally unimpressive about Jesus of Nazareth (as He would be known). For those without eyes to see He would have “no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). 

It is at this time of year we focus on the start of His human journey. But it’s what happens subsequently, all that He does and says, that indicates that something more is going on here at the beginning than just the birth of a baby to mixed up teenager. Jesus can only be deeply unimpressive to those without eyes to see and ears to hear. It turns out there is so much more to all of this than often meets the eye.

Deeply unimpressive? See for yourself.

On Christmas plans….

What plans do you have for Christmas? Perhaps you have a particular present in mind for that special one (or have been thus instructed). But you’re leaving the actual purchase to the last minute (Christmas eve would be ideal). Imagine though. You turn up at a suitable retail outlet only to discover that they’ve sold out! You would just have to switch to plan B. Or perhaps you have a Christmas journey planned. The tickets have been bought, the hotel booked. Imagine though. You turn up on time at your favourite local airport to discover all flights have been grounded by a software glitch somewhere in Austria! No doubt about it. Plan B again. Such things don’t happen to us often. But the plans we make often depend on lots of other people and things over which we have absolutely no control. Lots of moving parts that we need to run smoothly. Usually they do, occasionally they don’t. And on those occasions when Plan A doesn’t work out, plan B has to be pressed into service. Some people seem to think about the first Christmas (i.e. the birth of Jesus – although that wasn’t any kind of Christmas) as a sort of divine plan B.

Why might such a thought occur to anyone? Because before any of the “Christmas” events transpired there was a whole series of happenings and history that had unfolded over the preceding centuries. Some of the players in this history thought they had a handle on what was going on, and indeed that they were central to God’s big plan. That a big plan was needed was clear from almost the beginning. Things were just not as they were intended to be, and that applied to people too (you’ll find the reason for this laid out in Genesis chapter 3). With a devastating flood and the destruction of the tower at Babel, things seemed to go from bad to worse to confused. But then, from around Genesis 12 (actually the hints are right there in what appears to be the unmitigated disaster of Genesis 3), a coherent strategy emerges. This involved the God who made everything calling an obscure man named Abram out of idolatry (i.e. the worship of things that are not God) and making extravagant promises about blessing coming to everyone on earth through him and his descendents. Gradually, from that man (eventually renamed Abraham), who took God’s promises seriously and trusted the God who made them, a people emerged and came to prominence. Not that it was all plain sailing. From a human point of view it seemed to take a long time and a circuitous route. And once or twice the whole thing seemed to be on the verge of complete collapse. At the time when Abraham’s descendents were numerically strong enough to be called a nation, they actually had to be rescued from slavery and oppression while residing far from the place they had been promised. Their whole rescue experience, in both symbol and reality, turned on God being faithful to His original promise even in the teeth of their consistent failure to live like Abraham (ie trusting God). But their very failure to be the people they were supposed to be pointed to a basic flaw within them that they shared with rest of humanity (the same flaw that affects all of us today). They were no more or less flawed than anyone else; in this respect they were representative of us all.

Eventually it looked like God had given up on them. Although they owed Him everything, they kept playing fast and loose with His, although He was constantly proving Himself true to that original promise. They even returned to the sort of idolatry that their ancestor had been rescued from. Eventually everything appeared to fall apart. It looked as though, like so many other ancient cultures, they were to be washed away by successive waves of history. So if ancient Israel, for that’s who we’re thinking about, was plan A, and it was through Israel the rest of us were to be blessed, the plan appeared to be in big trouble. The whole of the Old Testament of the Bible is their story. It is a story of repeating patterns, and of a promise which, while often forgotten, was never quite erased.

Out of the ruins something (someone!) long promised eventually arrived. His coming wasn’t new in the sense of something different (i.e. plan B because plan A hadn’t worked) because it fell precisely into those patterns and expectations set up by the whole of the Old Testament, something many of the writers of the New Testament go out of their way to demonstrate from Mark to Revelation. But it was new in the sense that when it happened it was simply not what was being looked for, to the extent that many, both at the time of the promised One’s arrival and since, completely miss what’s going on. All that had happened in Israel’s history, what appeared to be wasted time and effort, turned out to precisely illustrate what was about to happen and more besides. It all turned out to be part of one big plan (A).

Israel’s experience, real and excruciating as it was, actually served to reveal the magnitude of the problem. That was necessary because human beings don’t generally understand just how awful their natural predicament is and therefore the magnitude of the solution that is required. It turns out that promises, encouragements, rules, religious systems, all of which work from the outside of a person, can’t ultimately fix the problem, which for all of us, for all of time, has been on the inside (the unfixed flaw mentioned above). But it’s almost as though part of plan A was to illustrate that problem in detail, and how not to sort it, before the actual solution was presented.

Here’s the big difference between God’s plans and ours. We often need plan B because we don’t have the power to deliver plan A. There are always things outwith our control that can (and sometimes do) interfere. But the thing about God is there is nothing outwith His control or beyond His power. So there was never going to be anything to interfere with, or thwart, plan A even if looked to human eyes as though there was. Something amazing is happening when Jesus is born in Bethlehem. His birth isn’t a sign of the failure of plan A and the need for something new (plan B). It’s actually the next part of the unfolding plan, brining us closer to the crux of plan A.

I hope you Christmas plans work out. God's plan certainly is.

Theology and its mojo

I noted previously that the great materialist project that dominated thinking about who we are as persons (and much else) may be, in Mary Midgely’s word, “fraying”(Midgley 2014, 14). This is seen specifically in avowedly materialist attempts, emanating from the neurosciences, to give a rigorously physical/material account of our conscious, internal, subjective, first-person states (i.e. mental states), within a materialist metaphysical framework that claims that not only is this doable, but once done there will be nothing left to say about who/what we are. The problem is, the science is basically confused and the metaphysical claims seem suffused with overreach (for reasons discussed here). But might theology (leaving to one side for the moment what is meant by theology) have something to offer in this space?

First, a step back to what seems like a different time (i.e. the last quarter of the twentieth century). Within the broadly evangelical camp, some, like theologian Joel Green and philosopher Nancy Murphy (both influential voices from Fuller Seminary), viewed science, specifically neuroscience (and explicitly in Green’s case Churchlandian neurophilosophy) as having a role in framing their views of human ontology, requiring a degree of reinterpretation of classic theological texts and teaching (Green 2008, 16). Now it is clearly true that neuroscience has an important contribution to make to our self-understanding (particularly with regard to our present embodied state), but they appeared to hand to neuroscience (or particular implications that were argued to flow from it) an overarching authority, allowing it to be an arbiter of what can, and what cannot, be said. This seems to be complimentary to the approach of other materialists/physicalists who went much further and argued that science in general, and with regards to human human ontology that neuroscience in particular, were able to provide, by themselves, a full understanding of who we are, what the universe is, and what our place in it is. Outside theology, there was a reaction to such claims, which were criticised in the general case as scientism, and in the specific case of neuroscience as “neurohype” and “neuromania” (Midgley 1994, 108; 2014, 5; Tallis 2011; Lilienfeld et al. 2017). Another aspect of the reaction is the claim that in the twenty-first century “[w]e are witnessing a resurgence in substance dualism” partly because “promissory materialism” has not delivered an explanation of everything, including consciousness (Rickabaugh and Moreland 2024, 5–6). Given these observations and the “fraying” described by Midgley, might it be that far from being irrelevant and to be eliminated by the materialist project (claims that emanated from scientists like Crick on one hand, and philosophers like the Churchlands on the other), theology is in a position to make a positive contribution?

If theology is to make such a contribution then “it cannot allow its agenda and suppositions to be determined by current theories of mind or brain any more than than by the prevalent sociological, philosophical, or cultural analyses of personhood”; there needs to be clarity “about what is proper to the theological and scientific fields of enquiry respectively” (Torrance 2004, 213,214). This is a view obviously at odds with, among others, Crick, summarised in the final chapter of “The Astonishing Hypothesis” which had the intriguing title of “Dr Crick’s Sunday Morning Service” (Crick 1994, 255–63). Writing of religious beliefs, rather than theology (but in Crick’s view they surely amounted to the same thing), he asserted that “by scientific standards, they are based on evidence so flimsy that only an act of blind faith can make them acceptable”; “true answers are usually far from those of conventional religions. If revealed religions have revealed anything it is that they are usually wrong” (Crick 1994, 258). Hardly a recipe for a fruitful dialogue. But some thirty plus years after this was written neither should it be assumed to be representative (e.g. see Rodzeń and Polak 2025 and the various contributions in the Special Issue they introduce).

Theological anthropology developed in a number of ways during the twentieth century and in one interesting respect it is Karl Barth who figures predominantly and whose influence continues to be important (Anderson 1982, 18; Torrance 2004, 207). Barth grounded his anthropology in christology, a move he characterised himself as “deviating from tradition” (see Skaff 2019, 186). Cortez, who examined the mind/brain debate (including Murphy’s non-reductive physicalism) in detail, claimed that “the significance of this christological shift … cannot be overstated. Indeed a growing number of Christian theologians locate modernity’s inability to understand human nature in the fundamentally misguided attempt to derive a complete picture of the human person independently of the perspective provided by the person of Jesus Christ” (Cortez 2008, 4). With regard to Murphy, Cortez notes that there was a movement in the opposite direction, explicitly working from the implications of the mind/brain debate (configured within a framework provided by neuroscience) to christology, with no consideration of movement from christology to anthropology (Cortez 2008, 5; quoting from Murphy 1998, 23).

Christology is, of course, a theological construct, not a scientific or neuroscientific one. It is examined and developed using theological tools and methods. It can of course all become very technical. But this is just as true of modern science. The relative inaccessibility of the cutting edge of where science is at any one time is not taken to provide a reason for it to be dismissed as untrue or unbelievable just because it is only truly accessible to professional practitioners. For those whose expertise is not theological to make claims about theological constructs being intrinsically unbelievable or irrelevant (essentially claims like Crick’s) out of ignorance about appropriate tools, methods, data, history and so on, would be just as ridiculous. But this is what has been going on for a while and has had far more credibility as an approach than it ever deserved.

For those wedded to the conflict metaphor for the interaction between science and theology, as representing inevitably conflicting ways of looking at reality, such developments within theology (like christological anthropology) will simply be taken to indicate the continuation of the conflict. But the conflict metaphor has long been acknowledged by historians of science as a polemical Victorian myth, albeit with some recent popular proponents (Russell 1985; Harrison 2017). Precisely because christological anthropologies spring from theology doing a theological task using appropriate theological methods, the categories involved are distinct from those of neuroscience. But this also means that they can be related to contemporary debates which are usually configured exclusively in terms of neuroscience and brain functions in interesting ways. It is significant that the incarnation (a thoroughly theological concept) has been argued to be compatible with both physicalism and dualism (two very different approaches to the mind/brain problem) by different proponents in the mind/brain debate (Cortez 2008, 5; see footnote 12). But it takes careful work and thought to relate the incarnational and the neural, and much of this work remains to be done. There are other intriguing convergences between christologcial anthropology and developments in neuroscience. In his discussion of “personhood”, Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas argued for the fundamental ontological importance of “a movement of communion”, where ontological identity is to be found “only in a being which is free from the boundaries of the ‘self’”(Zizioulas 1975). This strongly relational view, which both looks back to Barth and is consistent with the work of a long list of key figures in recent theological anthropology, parallels and potentially compliments developments in neuroscience represented by research into “theory of mind” and social cognition both of which stress the relational (Torrance 2004, 208; Brüne and Brüne-Cohrs 2006; Frith 2008). How deep this convergence goes, also requires work and thought.

In gaining a rounded understanding of ourselves, there is clearly an important role for neuroscience to play. It is able provide information from a third-person perspective about the physical brain mechanisms involved in the generation of human experience (now explicitly including conscious experience), how these mechanisms develop, the ways in which they change as we age and about aspects of what happens when eventually our embodied existence fades. But this information is partial not exhaustive, it generates a particular kind of map guiding our self-understanding. Theology has the role of providing another kind of map for some of the same terrain. The challenge is in aligning the different maps, not assuming a priori that one is right and one is wrong (Midgley 2005).

Materialism is fraying, theology is perhaps getting its mojo back. Just as well. There’s work to do.

Anderson, Ray S. 1982. On Being Human: Essays in Theological Anthropology. Eerdmans.

Brüne, Martin, and Ute Brüne-Cohrs. 2006. “Theory of Mind—Evolution, Ontogeny, Brain Mechanisms and Psychopathology.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 30 (4): 437–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2005.08.001.

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