What does it mean to be human?

For most of us, subjectively, the everyday experience of being human probably hasn’t changed very much, but we may be aware of a storm of questions blowing furiously outside the house, rattling the windows and loosening tiles. What does it mean to be male and female? What is a “normal” state of mental health? Are ethnicity and nationality essential to our humanity? Are we anything more than compliant consumers of goods and services? Is AI making the human mind redundant? And as we enter the Anthropocene, are we—paradoxically—losing control of our destiny?

To be human is not just to be one thing. It is to be part of a story with a past, a present, and an imagined future.

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Consuming the world
The consumption of the planet’s resources—food, land, natural materials, fossil fuels—and the failure to deal with the waste products are central characteristics of modern societies. Scientific progress, technological ingenuity, and cheap energy have produced a massive acceleration in consumption… ()
Why I think Brian Zahnd’s discussion of Jesus, the Church, the Bible, and Christianity is outdated
In a Substack post, Brian Zahnd looks at four key theological “entities” and warns of the “theological mischief” that happens when the “critical distinction” between them is not properly respected. The Church, the Bible, and the religion of Christianity are all good and important things, but not as… ()
Why (and where) you should get some theological (by which I really mean biblical) education
The term “polycrisis” gets used a lot these days to name a peculiar consequence of globalisation: the collision of expanding systems in shock—energy, climate, geo-politics, finance, etc., with AI accelerating the chaos—in a confined planetary space. ( | 2 comments)
Some exegetical notes on the “worship” of Jesus, the “trinitarian” formula, and the “end of the age” in Matthew 28:16-20
In the last paragraph of the Gospel of Matthew, the risen Jesus is “worshipped” by his disciples, whom he sends into the world to baptise new disciples “in the name of Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:16-20). This has been a foundational text both for global mission (the “… ( | 1 comment)
Against Wright and Bird: among other things, why the wolf dwelling with the lamb is not new creation
In chapter three of Jesus and the Powers, N. T. Wright and Michael Bird explain how they understand the “powers” of the book’s title. They are “what we would call ‘earthly’ or ‘political’ rulers and what we might call any ‘non-human’ or ‘supernatural’ quasi-personal ‘forces’ that stand… ()
N. T. Wright and Michael Bird on the church between Jesus and Caesar
At the end of chapter one of their book Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies, Wright and Bird make—or one or the other of them makes—the important point that the end of one story is also the beginning of another… ()
N. T. Wright and Michael Bird on kingdom, empire, and the God of history. Hurrah!
I think that N. T. Wright and Michael Bird may slowly be coming round to seeing things my way, even if they’re not aware of the fact. In the first chapter of their co-authored book, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional… ()