The Scriptures suggest that Christians are to grow up into the “mind of Christ” or, as Craig Keener calls it, the “mind of the Spirit.” While there have been a few recent works that discuss how mental sharing between the human person and the divine person(s) might contribute to sanctification (for example, Alston), there are not any that discuss a mereological account of how the mental union works with reference to the bodily resurrection. Since I understand the human’s eschatological union with the divine to be the occasion of theosis, I offer in this paper a metaphysical model of at least one aspect of theosis: a part/whole relationship between the mind of a human and the mind of the Spirit, with reference to the eschatological bodily resurrection. I call the union “mental saturation.”

Two recently published collections of essays—Free Will and Theism, edited by Kevin Timpe and Daniel Speak, and Free Will and Classical Theism, edited by the late Hugh McCann—represent the state of the art in current analytic philosophy and analytic theology with respect to issues at the intersection of the metaphysics of free will and Christian theism that have vexed philosophers and theologians throughout Christian history. Despite a marked imbalance of incompatibilist (mostly libertarian) authors over compatibilist authors in both volumes, the essays in these collections advance the discussion in significant ways, and I indicate some of those ways.

In Who’s Afraid of the Unmoved Mover? Postmodernism and Natural Theology, I defend natural theology against its postmodern evangelical detractors, including Myron Bradley Penner. Penner rejects natural theology because it attempts to ground knowledge of God in human reason, and he claims that my treatment of Acts 17:16–34 is fatal to my argument. However, Penner does not engage my explication of the doctrine of general revelation. The catastrophic effects that Penner perceives turn out to be only against a straw man of the version of natural theology that I defend.

Andrew Shepardson contends in Who’s Afraid of the Unmoved Mover that the combined postmodern objections of Carl A. Raschke, James K. A. Smith, and me, to natural theology, fail. Here I focus only on the issue of idolatry and natural theology, as one way of demonstrating a fundamental inadequacy characteristic of Shepardson’s rebuttal of postmodern challenges to evangelical appropriations of natural theology. I argue that contrary to Shepardson’s contention, Acts 17 does not support evangelical appropriations of natural theology, but operates with a view of reason consistent with my postmodern one and opens postmodern possibilities for understanding natural revelation.

A key takeaway from the recent volume Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique is that no version of theistic evolution that adheres largely to consensus views in biology is a plausible option for orthodox Christians. In this paper we argue that this is false: contrary to the arguments in the volume, evolutionary theory, properly understood, is perfectly compatible with traditional Christian commitments. In addition, we argue that the lines between Intelligent Design and theistic evolution are not as sharp as most scholars have assumed, such that many who self-identify as Intelligent Design adherents would also qualify as theistic evolutionists.

What Michael J. Murray and John Ross Churchill offer as “Mere Theistic Evolution” is an intriguing proposal that should be taken seriously by Christians who are convinced of the truth of classical Christian theology while also engaged in respectful and appreciative dialogue with the natural sciences. In this essay, I argue that the main theological arguments against theistic evolution put forth in the influential volume Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique are not decisive against mere theistic evolution. The proposal raises many interesting and important issues, and it deserves further engagement.

Many Christian scholars have argued that standard versions of evolutionary theory and orthodox theological commitments can be reconciled. Some theistic evolutionists or “evolutionary creationists” have argued that evolutionary mechanisms such as random mutation and natural selection are nothing less than God’s way of creating. Though I dispute the logical coherence of these attempted reconciliations elsewhere, I argue here that there is little reason for Christians to attempt them, since an accumulating body of evidence from multiple subdisciplines of biology casts doubt on the creative power of the main evolutionary mechanisms. Thus, rather than addressing the question, “Can a meaningful doctrine of divine providence or creation be reconciled with mainstream evolutionary theory?” this essay will address the question of whether Christians should, or need to, attempt such a reconciliation at all.

In this essay we respond to the comments of Tom McCall, William Lane Craig, and Stephen C. Meyer on mere theistic evolution.

Murray and Churchill argue correctly that theistic evolution as they define it is theologically compatible with orthodox Christian doctrines concerning divine providence, natural theology, miracles, and immaterial souls. I close with some reflections on mutual misunderstandings of Intelligent Design proponents and theistic evolutionists that arise because each sees the other as a distorted mirror image of himself.

In this paper, I argue that Plantinga maintains it is possible to come to know that Christianity is true, but only from the inside. Further, since Plantinga argues that one’s judgments about the epistemic status of Christian belief depend upon one’s prephilosophical metaphysical views, his position amounts to the claim that the Christian community has privileged access to truth and that non-Christians are ill-equipped to evaluate their beliefs. The upshot of Plantinga’s position is, I suggest, that people from different communities will disagree about the epistemic status of religious belief, and reason is simply incapable of adjudicating those disputes.

This paper seeks to demonstrate why the existence of suboptimal design in biology does not offer a reason for Christians to reject the biological case for Intelligent Design (ID). In it, I argue that Christians who critique ID based upon alleged deficiencies within biology fail to imagine the various ways in which a divine designer might bring about certain biological effects. That is, such critics presumably envision a simplistic notion of divine causation—where God either directly brings about every biological effect, or is not involved in any biological effect. Such either or thinking, I maintain, is theologically unnecessary.

Giving the impression that perichoresis solves the “threeness-oneness problem” or the “two natures–one person problem” without an explanation of how perichoresis works is problematic; as such, an explanation of perichoresis ought to be provided. I provide one way to address this problem by drawing upon the work of Eleonore Stump. In contrast to approaches that avoid the metaphysics of perichoresis I provide an account of the metaphysics of perichoresis and suggest that a Stump-inspired account of perichoresis—that is, an account that places an emphasis on the notion of sharing some aspect of the mental life—deserves serious attention by those who feel the weight of the problematic use of perichoresis.

In recent decades consciousness science has become a prominent field of research. This essay analyzes the most recent book by a leading pioneer in the scientific study of consciousness. In the The Feeling of Life Itself Christof Koch presents the integrated information theory and applies it to multiple pressing topics in consciousness studies. This essay considers the philosophical basis of the theory and Koch’s application of it from neurobiology to animal ethics.