Animal Suffering and the Darwinian Problem of Evil: Introducing the Symposium

There is an old show business saying, often misattributed to W. C. Fields: “Never work with children or animals,” presumably because they will either behave unpredictably or steal every scene. John Schneider’s Animal Suffering and the Darwinian Problem of Evil boldly ignores this advice, and the result is a startling new take on the problem…
Hooked on (Poly)phonics: Voicing Plaudits and Plaints

It is a real pleasure to engage David Fergusson’s important new book The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach, not least because it is a (partial) answer to my ongoing prayers for doctrinal and spiritual renewal in the Church of Scotland. David arrived at New College (the faculty of Divinity of the University of Edinburgh)…
Whose Understanding? Which Conceptuality?

Introduction: Theology and Philosophy (In General) Lesslie Newbigin saw Western intellectual history as the confluence of two streams, one flowing from Greco-Roman antiquity, the other from the Christian Scriptures. The barbarian tribes that called Europe home during the medieval and early modern periods “were taught to think in Greek and Latin, but the story that…
Thinking Biblically & Theologically

Today marks the one-year anniversary of John Webster’s death. At the time he was, in my opinion and others’, the greatest living theologian writing in English, and perhaps in any language. This is the tenth installment of a series of tributes to the man and his theological project, a work in progress that was tragically…
John Webster: a testimonial

I write this on what would have been John Webster’s 61st birthday, 20 June 2016—if he had not gone directly to glory last month. I write to pay tribute to a person I described, long before his untimely death, as the greatest living theologian—the best theologian on earth. Such judgments of course say as much…