My research interests are topics on the borderlands of philsophy and theology, and they also take in the history and philosophy of science, Patristics, and modern Christian doctrine. I am currently writing a book about the sources, norms, and ends of Christian theology. I am a keen rock climber and mountaineer, and have been known to publish about theology and mountaineering – though I do not draw upon climbing as a source of sermon illustrations. I am also a keen photographer, mainly of landscapes.
As an undergraduate, I read Philosophy at the University of York (BA, 1982) and Theology at the University of Oxford (MA, 1984), followed by postgraduate studies in Theology, also at Oxford (CTh, 1985 and DPhil, 1999).
Books
- Ed., Within the Love of God: Essays on the Doctrine of God in Honour of Paul S. Fiddes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)
- Ed., God, Mind and Knowledge (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014)
- Ed., Realism and Religion: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007)
- Realism and Christian Faith: God, Grammar, and Meaning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
Articles and Research Papers
- ‘From Rational Apologetics to Witness Apologetics’, Antonianum (June 2015)
- ‘Experience and the Doctrine of God’, in A. Moore, ed., Within the Love of God: Essays on the Doctrine of God in Honour of Paul S. Fiddes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 61-76
- ‘Theological Objections to Natural Theology’, in R. Re Manning, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 227-43
- ‘”Nearer my God to Thee”? Theological Reflections on Mountaineering’, Anvil 28.1 (June 2012)
- ‘Should Christians do Natural Theology?’, Scottish Journal of Theology 63.2 (2010), pp. 127-45
- ‘Reason’, in K. Tanner, I. Torrance and J. Webster, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 394-412