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.

Cortez, Marc. 2008. Embodies Souls, Ensouled Bodies. T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology. T &T Clark.

Crick, F. H. C. 1994. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. Macmillan.

Frith, Chris D. 2008. “Social Cognition.” Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 363: 2033–39.

Harrison, Peter. 2017. The Territories of Science and Religion. Paperback edition. University of Chicago Press.

Lilienfeld, Scott O, Elizabeth Aslinger, Julia Marshall, and Sally Satel. 2017. “Neurohype: A Field Guide to Exaggerated Brain-Based Claims.” In The Routledge Handbook of Neuroethics. Routledge.

Midgley, M. 2014. Are You an Illusion? Heretics (Durham, England). Acumen. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6hHtnQEACAAJ.

Midgley, Mary. 1994. Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and It Meaning. Paperback edition. Routledge.

Midgley, Mary. 2005. “Mapping Science: In Memory of John Ziman.” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 30 (3): 195–97.

Murphy, Nancey. 1998. “Human Nature: Historical, Scientific, and Religious Issues.” In Whatever Happened to the Soul. Fortress Press.

Rickabaugh, Brandon, and J.P. Moreland. 2024. The Substance of Consciousness: A Comprehensive Defense of Contrmporary Substance Dualism. John Wiley and Sons.

Rodzeń, Jacek, and Paweł Polak. 2025. “Introduction to This Religions Special Issue: Natural Sciences as a Contemporary Locus Theologicus.” Religions 16 (8). https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16081020.

Russell, Colin R. 1985. Crosscurrents: Interactions Between Science and Faith. IVP.

Skaff, Jeffrey. 2019. “Barth on Theological Anthropology.” The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Karl Barth: Barth and Dogmatics, 185–96.

Tallis, Raymond. 2011. Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity. Acumen Publishing.

Torrance, Alan J. 2004. “What Is a Person?” In From Cells to Souls and Beyond. Eerdmans.

Zizioulas, John D. 1975. “Human Capacity and Human Incapacity: A Theological Exploration of Personhood.” Scottish Journal of Theology 28 (5): 401–47

Barely conscious(ness)

You may not have been conscious of it, but big arguments have been swirling around the issue of consciousness (for the example that prompted this post see here). Science had, then didn’t have and now again has big problems with consciousness. You know an argument is in trouble when its starting point is the denial of probably the one thing we are all aware of (at least when we are awake and healthy) – our consciousness. Descartes was so sure of his that he based his philosophy on it (the famous “I think [doubt] therefore I am”). But you might be surprised to learn that for a good chunk of the 20^th century in science, a good chunk of scientists were convinced that either it did it not exist or if it did, it didn’t “do” anything. They were the behaviourists, represented by B. F. Skinner (he of the infamous box). Consciousness was “nothing but” (ie reducible to) behaviour (by which they primarily meant movement) or propensities to behave. Don’t feel any need to understand any this (a notion which clearly assumes some degree of consciousness on your part!), because such views didn’t last long into the second half of the twentieth century. Behaviourist schemes clearly didn’t work, and the starting point was in any case fatally flawed.

But historically there had been an ongoing struggle to accommodate subjective, first-person, mental states (consciousness) within a thoroughly empirical (scientific) approach to our understanding of ourselves. Those devoted to the nineteenth century theory/myth of the conflict between science (good) and theology (bad), didn’t want to provide any space for the immaterial (whether soul or mind – for current purposes assume that both words name the same thing). But not having a satisfying material explanation for what we are all most aware of was a bit of a problem. If claiming that things like mental states did not exist was not viable, what to do? Well, assuming there was a thoroughly material explanation for our private interior self (potentially another fatally flawed assumption), given the powerful new tools of neuroscience such phenomena had to be explicable in terms of what was going on in the brain (that clearly material lump of stuff inside our heads). So there arose an empirical subdiscipline within neuroscience, that of “consciousness studies”.

Writing 10 years ago in the inaugural editorial of the journal “Neuroscience of Consciousness” the editors credited a 1990 paper by Crick and Koch as marking “the rebirth of consciousness science as a serious exercise”(Seth et al. 2015; Crick and Koch 1990). The publication of the new journal reflected “the maturity of this rigorous and empirically grounded approach to the science of subjective experience”. While they themselves made no claim that this was necessarily the only available approach to subjective experience, such a claim had already appeared in Crick’s book, published the previous year (Crick 1994). Crick and Koch claimed in their paper that “Everyone has a rough idea of what is meant by consciousness” and avoided a “precise definition”. This, along with other knotty issues, was left to one side “otherwise much time can be frittered away in fruitless argument”, implicitly a criticism of what had gone before. Philosophy (and certainly theology) had had its day. It was now over to science to explain the previously inexplicable, even consciousness (see Chemero and Silberstein 2008). This particular body swerve would prove to be costly.

Now, thirty five years on from the “rebirth of consciousness science”, where stands the project that had reached “maturity” ten years ago? Franken and colleagues recently published the results of a survey of consciousness researchers who attended two consecutive annual meetings of the Association of the Scientific Study of Consciousness (established in 1994 and later the sponsor of Neuroscience of Consciousness) to investigate “the theoretical and methodological foundations, common assumptions, and the current state of the field of consciousness research” (Francken et al. 2022). Among the issues they found “a lack of consensus regarding the definition and most promising theory of consciousness” and “that many views and opinions currently coexist in the consciousness community. Moreover, individual respondents appear to hold views that are not always completely consistent from a theoretical point of view”. Lest it be felt that this is a rather slim basis on which to form a view as to the current state of the field, Seth and Bayne (2022) reported in a recent extensive review that “in the case of consciousness, it is unclear how current theories relate to each other, or whether they can be empirically distinguished”. They recommended “the iterative development, testing and comparison of theories of consciousness” . Franken et al (2022) used ten different theoretical constructs in their survey, Seth and Bayne (2022) identified a “selection” of twenty-two “theories of consciousness” (see their Table 1) which they grouped into four broad categories and Kuhn (limiting himself to “materialism” theories) identified fourteen neurobiological theories, to which he added lists of philosophical (N=12), electromagnetic (7) and computational/informational (4) theories (Kuhn 2024). Confused? Well, it turns out the field of consciousness studies is.

An attempt to follow Seth and Bayne’s advice, using a “large-scale adversarial collaboration” to experimentally compare predictions made by two of the major competing theories of consciousness (“global neuronal workspace theory”, GNWT vs “integrated informational theory”, IIT) recently reported results in Nature (Ferrante et al. 2025; see also the accompanying Nature Editorial). The evidence that emerged partially supported and partially challenged both theories. However, the aftermath is more revealing. In response to the preprint and media coverage of the paper (the actual Nature paper was submitted for publication in June 2023, accepted for publication in March 2025 and published in April 2025) a long list of researchers (including recognised leaders in neuroscience) put their names to an open letter on the PsyArXiv preprint server condemning the exercise as flawed, calling IIT “pseudoscience” and objecting to its characterisation as a leading candidate theory for explaining consciousness at all (Fleming, et al. 2023). Proponents of GNWT also called into question the discussion of the results and the conclusions drawn (Naccache et al. 2025). All of this suggests that what flowed from Crick and Koch’s avoidance of a definition of consciousness was basic conceptual confusion. But many had claimed that this was the problem at the time; this was precisely the charge made against the field by the philosopher Peter Hacker not long after its “rebirth” (Bennett and Hacker 2003, 239–44; see also Hacker 2012). Nobody is sure what it is they’re talking about, and even those who do claim to know what they mean usually agree that the have no way of measuring the “it” they are clear about. So the next time you read a headline about “understanding” consciousness, just be aware – we don’t.

It’s not just the state of the specific scientific sub-field of consciousness research that appears to have problems and confusions. Concerns have emerged from within the wider materialist camp. Some more history is in order. The philosopher Thomas Nagel is perhaps best known for his classic paper “What is it like to be a bat?”; with regard to the problem of consciousness, the philosopher Patricia Churchland called this paper a “watershed articulation” (Nagel 1974; Churchland 1996). The problem which Nagel drew attention to was the one left by the demise of the behaviourists; the “subjective character of experience” (the what-is-it-like-to-be-ness) was not captured “by any of the familiar, recently devised reductive analyses of the mental”. Materialist accounts of thinking people left something vital out of the account. So he suggested that what was needed were new studies of the subjective and the mental partially answered in subsequent development of consciousness studies described above.

But that was then, what about now? Advances in neuroscience have definitely occurred. With all that  we know now (all those lovely coloured brain scans, snapshots of what goes on while people think), surely a thoroughly materialist account of us, which leaves the concept of the immaterial (be it mind or soul) lying redundant in its wake, is possible? Or at least given such progress, we should be in a position to see clearly how in principal it might be possible. Writing in 2012, Nagel was, if anything, more concerned than he was in the 70’s. Consciousness remained one of the major sticking points causing his concern: “The fundamental elements and laws of physics and chemistry have been inferred to explain the behaviours of the inanimate world. Something more is needed to explain how there can be conscious, thinking creatures..” (Nagel 2012, 20). And yet his concerns went beyond the existence of (as yet unexplained) consciousness to the wider materialist project: “The inadequacies of the naturalistic and reductionist world picture seem to me to be real”(Nagel 2012, 22). He did not find theism (the “polar opposite” of materialism) “any more credible than materialism as a comprehensive world view”, but was having a problem trying to imagine naturalistic accounts that were able to accommodate previously excluded elements like consciousness (or purpose, belief, love and the like). He concluded by accepting as conceivable that “the truth is beyond our reach, in virtue of our intrinsic cognitive limitations” (Nagel 2012, 128). The philosopher Mary Midgley took Nagel’s argument (along with those made by others) to provide evidence that the “credo of materialism” was “beginning to fray around the edges” (Midgley 2014, 14). Things haven’t improved since.

Does any of this matter? On one level, not really. You are still you, even although there is no scientific explanation for you in material terms. At least no one is now claiming that because of the lack of that explanation “you” don’t exist. Fundamentally, of course, I would be argue that science with its third-party, observational statements, which necessarily leave out of the account things like purpose, hope, love, agency and the like (ie things that really matter to us), can only ever provide a partial account of what we are as “persons” (something most scientist are clear about – usually). As Midgley and many others have argued the argument that only science defines or explains important stuff, including what we are as persons, is a monstrous overreach. Such claims are still occasionally made, but this view too is “fraying”.

But there are of course other sources of data, other (complimentary) ways of reasoning, other views of who and what we are as persons (something I touched on previously). If the materialist program is faltering, these need to be heard again. Wonder what (the decidedly immaterial) God thinks?

[PS: I don't normally provide references to the literature in these posts, but as I happened to have them to hand, I thought it would be churlish not to....]

Bennett, Maxwell R, and Peter Michael Stephan Hacker. 2003. Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Blackwell.

Chemero, Anthony, and Michael Silberstein. 2008. “After the Philosophy of Mind: Replacing Scholasticism with Science*.” Philosophy of Science 75 (1): 1–27. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.1086/587820.

Churchland, Patricia S. 1996. “The Hornswoggle Problem.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 3 (5–6): 402–8.

Crick, F. H. C. 1994. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. Macmillan.

Crick, Francis, and Christof Koch. 1990. “Towards a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness.” 2 (263–275): 203.

Ferrante, Oscar, Urszula Gorska-Klimowska, Simon Henin, et al. 2025. “Adversarial Testing of Global Neuronal Workspace and Integrated Information Theories of Consciousness.” Nature 642 (8066): 133–42. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08888-1.

Fleming, S.M, Chris D Frith, M Goodale, et al. 2023. “The Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness as Pseudoscience.” Preprint, PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/zsr78.

Francken, Jolien C, Lola Beerendonk, Dylan Molenaar, et al. 2022. “An Academic Survey on Theoretical Foundations, Common Assumptions and the Current State of Consciousness Science.” Neuroscience of Consciousness 2022 (1): niac011. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niac011.

Hacker, P. M. S. 2012. “The Sad and Sorry History of Consciousness: Being, among Other Things, a Challenge to the ‘Consciousness-Studies Community.’” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 70: 149–68.

Kuhn, Robert Lawrence. 2024. “A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications.” Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 190 (August): 28–169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2023.12.003.

Midgley, M. 2014. Are You an Illusion? Heretics (Durham, England). Acumen. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6hHtnQEACAAJ.

Naccache, Lionel, Claire Sergent, Stanislas Dehaene, Xia-Jing Wang, Michele Farisco, and Jean-Pierre Changeux. 2025. “GNW Theoretical Framework and the ‘Adversarial Testing of Global Neuronal Workspace and Integrated Information Theories of Consciousness.’” Neuroscience of Consciousness 2025 (1): niaf037. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niaf037.

Nagel, Thomas. 1974. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review 83: 435–50.

Nagel, Thomas. 2012. Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. Oxford University Press.

Seth, Anil K., and Tim Bayne. 2022. “Theories of Consciousness.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 23 (7): 439–52. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-022-00587-4.

Seth, Anil K., Biyu J. He, and Jakob Hohwy. 2015. “Editorial.” Neuroscience of Consciousness 2015 (1): niv001. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niv001