I have big plans getting underway this year!
“New directions in 2019” might sound like a New Year’s resolution, but it really isn’t. These plans came to be some months ago, but it just happens that I’ll be putting them into effect this year.
In February this year I’m returning to study. I will begin a psychology degree. And why would I do that? There are a few reasons.
I’ve had this post sitting in draft for a few days as I pondered whether or not to post it. Obviously I decided to press that button.
A long time ago I announced that I was going to write a series of articles on the various New Testament passages tied up in the issue of the role of women in the church, specifically when it comes to ordination and preaching. Shortly thereafter the blog fell relatively silent. Plenty of people have been accessing the material that’s already here, which is great to see, but my output is negligible.
I won’t go into all the reasons this happened, because my life is my own (well, it’s God’s and self-ownership is a lie so I suppose I mean that some parts of my life are private) and I don’t intend to share it all. But one of the main reasons this series was not forthcoming is the same as one of the reasons why my writing output here plummeted. This blog post, which will hopefully signal the start of a bit more activity here, is about as close to a window on my psyche as you’re likely to get in writing. It’s partially a vent, and certainly not designed to persuade you of anything, nor is it an invitation to argue about whether or not what I say here is true. Here’s the reason:
Human beings are terrible.
I’m coming out. Yes, I’m going Anglican, no, I haven’t lost my mind, and here’s roughly how and why it happened (and is still happening).
As I indicated in my last blog post (on entering the Anglican fray on marriage), my family and I have begun to attend the Anglican Church. I say “attend” because nothing has been signed in blood and no dark ceremonies have been performed to make anything official, but I’m sure that will happen in due course. I’ve even redecorated the blog in honour of this move.
This will be a surprise to some people.
A while back I posted a draft version of my paper “William Hasker at the Bridge of Death.” Since then, I’ve received feedback on the paper from both William Hasker and Nancey Murphy, for which I’m very grateful. As it turns out, I still think Dr Hasker’s theory of emergentism and post-mortem survival of the mind has a major problem, and I don’t think his criticisms change that, but they did help me to tweak parts of the paper, which is to be published in Philosophia Christi.
The bottom line remains the same: A mind/self that is genuinely emergent on the brain will cease to exist if that brain ceases to exist, and if it is able to survive as a self/mind when the brain has ceased to exist, then it turns out not to be emergent on the brain after all.
The finished version of the paper can be found here.
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