The Concept of God | Morality | Science and religion | Personal Idealism | The Bible | Christian Living | Christian Doctrine | Religions | Comparative Theology | Systematic Theology | Personal Biography
The Concept of God
The Concept of God (1974)
An early work, influenced by Wittgenstein, and before my espousal of Personal Idealism.
Rational Theology and the Creativity of God (1982)
The development of the idea of a temporal, dynamic, and creative and relational God
Holding Fast to God (1982)
A defence of the objective reality of God, in debate with Don Cupitt’s ‘Taking Leave of God’
God – a Guide for the Perplexed (2002)
A literary record of the human search for the divine throughout the world
Divine Action (2007)
A study of how one can speak of God acting in the world
Why There Almost Certainly is a God (2008)
A reply to Richard Dawkins’s ‘The God Delusion’
The God Conclusion/ God and the Philosophers (2009)
How most classical philosophers have affirmed God, and what sort of God they have affirmed
The Evidence for God (2014)
The major signs in the world of the existence of God
The Christian Idea of God (2017)
see under SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY
Sharing in the Divine Nature (2020)
see under SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY
Morality
Ethics and Christianity (1970)
The relation between morality and Christian belief
The Development of Kant’s View of Ethics (1972)
A study of Kant’s ethics which shows that it is more consequentialist than is often thought
The Divine Image (1976)
An outline of Christian ethics as objective, attitudinal, and teleological
The Rule of Love (1989)
Reflections on the Sermon on the Mount
Morality, Autonomy, and God (2013)
Divine commands, the autonomy of morality, and human freedom
Science and Religion
God, Chance, and Necessity (1996)
An argument that evolution is not random, but that necessity, chance, value, and purpose have an important place in the explanation of the world. It is partly a response to Jacques Monod’s ‘Chance and Necessity’
Pascal’s Fire (2006)
Pascal spoke of a ‘God of the philosophers’ and a ‘God of Fire’. This book tells the story of the growth of science, which has often generated a god of philosophers, and its close interrelationships with religious faith, with its God of faith. It argues that these are the same God, with both very positive as well as sometimes very negative relations
The Big Questions in Science and Religion (2008)
An allegedly even-handed treatment of 10 big questions about science and religion, from how the universe originated to the nature of consciousness
Re-thinking Order (2016) edited with Nancy Cartwright
A collection of essays, mostly by scientists, challenging the notion of absolute laws of nature, and offering different views of natural order in the cosmos.
Personal Idealism
In Defence of the Soul/Defending the Soul (1992)
A defence of the idea of the soul, consciousness, and intelligence as emergent elements of the universe
More Than Matter? (2010)
A response to my one-time tutor Gilbert Ryle’s book ‘The Concept of Mind’, arguing that there is what he called ‘a ghost ‘ (a private consciousness) in ‘the machine’ (the material body)
The Christian Idea of God (2017)
see under SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY
The Priority of Mind (2021)
>An argument that the ultimate reality is mind, and matter is its expression and medium of knowledge, feeling, and action.
My Theology – Personal Idealism (2021)
A short book showing how the philosophy of Idealism can be a foundation for Christian faith
The Bible
What the Bible Really Teaches (2004)
How the Bible says things very different from what many people think, and gives good news of universal salvation, love of all life, and non-violence
The Word of God? (2010)
On the nature of the Bible as a developing, diverse, poetic, and richly metaphorical spiritual text
Love is His Meaning (2017)
see under CHRISTIAN LIVING
The Mystery of Christ (2018)
see under CHRISTIAN LIVING
Parables of Time and Eternity (2021)
The parables of Jesus, arranged and expounded so as to express a theology of divine demand, judgment, forgiveness, reconciliation, and universal fulfilment
Christian Living
The Christian Way (1976)
Meditations and prayers for Christian living, written for a parish in which I served
The Living God (1984)
Christian beliefs – talks given to a parish in which I served
The Rule of Love (1989)
see under MORALITY
Love is His Meaning (2017)
How to understand the teaching of Jesus, and the symbolic language he used
The Mystery of Christ (2018)
Meditations and Prayers on the person of Christ as portrayed in the Gospels
Christian Doctrine
The Turn of the Tide (1986)
Radio talks given on the BBC on Christian faith
A Vision to Pursue (1991)
Talks on Christianity given to Religious Studies students at King’s College, London
God, Faith, and the New Millenium (1998)
What Christian Faith looks like if modern science is believed
Christianity, a Beginner’s Guide/a Short Introduction (2000)
Different interpretations of Christianity discussed and compared
Comparative Theology (2003), ed. T.W.Bartel
18 essays by philosophers and theologians on my work
Re-Thinking Christianity (2007)
How Christianity has changed over the centuries, and is still changing
Christianity – a Guide for the Perplexed (2007)
A new look at some old Christian doctrines, and a history of the idea of God
The Philosopher and the Gospels (2011)
An interpretation of the Gospels as teaching conditional salvation for all, that Christ is a cosmic figure present throughout all the universe, and that Christian faith is primarily about human fulfilment in God
Is Religion Irrational? (2011)
Originally a supposedly popular course on reason and faith
By Faith and Reason (2012). Ed. Curtis Holtzen and Roberto Sirvent
An edited collection of journal articles by me in journals and other of papers in other books
Re-Imagining the Trinity (2016), a symposium on the Trinity in the journal ‘Philosophia Christi’, vol. 18, number 2
10 contributors discuss my suggestions about the Trinity – see ‘Christ and the Cosmos’ (2015)
Spirituality and Christian Belief (2024)
seeing Christian faith as a spiritual way of fulfilment, not an authoritarian set of dogmas.
Religions
Concepts of God/Images of Eternity (1987)
Ideas of Ultimate Reality in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism – their affinities and differences
The Case for Religion (2004)
A short comparative history of world religions, and its future prospects
Is Religion Dangerous? (2006)
A response to claims that religion is dangerous, by pointing out that is is also of immense and unique goodness
Religion in the Modern World (2019)
A more formal account of the place of religion in the contemporary world, and the prospects for the future of world religions
Comparative Theology
Religion and Revelation (1994)
The first of a five volume series considering central doctrines in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. This one is on revelation and its analogates
Religion and Creation (1996)
The second volume, on the origin and ultimate nature of the universe
Religion and Human Nature (1998)
The third volume, on differing ideas of the human person
Religion and Community (1999)
The fourth volume, on types of religious institution
Religion and Human Fulfilment (2008)
The fifth volume, on the diverse moral principles and goals of religion
Systematic Theology
Christ and the Cosmos (2015)
Expounding Christ as the cosmic pattern and all-including goal of the universe, manifest in human form on this planet in Jesus of Nazareth; and expounding the Trinity as three inseparable aspects of God
The Christian Idea of God (2017)
A Personal Idealist concept of God, as a cosmic mind of supreme value, who manifests as love in relation to autonomous created persons
Sharing in the Divine Nature (2020)
The idea of the goal of all things as a union of self-shaped persons and values in a creative communion of being in God.
Karl Barth on Religion: a Critique (2024)
A detailed critique of Barth’s ‘Church Dogmatics’, vol. one/two. It defends a liberal theology against Barth’s attacks
