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Dear Friends of Reasonable Faith,
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Since I have my speaking tour of England coming up in May, it seemed to me better to send out this monthly newsletter early, so that I might again request prayer for the upcoming events, rather than send it out late in the month after everything was over and done with. I will, of course, give you a full report once I get back, but for the time being, we do appreciate your prayers.
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Here, once again, is the itinerary for the trip:
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| England Tour 2026 | Tour Schedule
England
2026
| 30 April – 9 May · London · Durham · Oxford · Windsor
| | | | | 1
May
| | Royal Institution Theatre | 19:00 | “The Story of Everything: God, Consciousness, and the Meaning of Life”
— Dialogue · 90 min
| | | 2
May
| | Unbelievable? · Premier Christian Radio
“The Kalām Cosmological Argument”
— London Recording · 90 min
| | Podcast
“What is the Meaning of Life?”
— Practical Wisdom · Interview
| | | 4
May
| | Podcast · Theora Media
Interview with Jack Symes
— 90 min
| | Durham University
Dialogue with Philip Goff
— Dialogue · 90 min
| | | 5
May
| | Royal Institution Theatre | 19:00 | “The Purpose of Life”
— Dialogue · 90 min
| | | 6
May
| | Think Faith · Oxford with Justin Brierly
“Is Christian theism compatible with our best understanding of the nature of time?”
— Dialogue
| | OCCA · Town Hall, Oxford
“Christianity is Trending… But is it True?”
— Public Lecture
| | | 7
May
| | Royal Institution Theatre | 19:00 | “The Battle for Reality: Atheism v. God”
— Dialogue · 90 min
| | | 8
May
| | Eton College · Windsor
“A Brief Defence of the Christian Faith”
— Lecture + Q&A
| | | England Tour, Spring 2026
| 10 Days · 4 Cities · 9 Events
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You can click the images below for the event websites and ticket purchases:
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In addition to vol. IIb of my Systematic Philosophical Theology dealing with Natural Theology and with the Trinity, this month sees the release of a new book co-authored with the eminent Christian ethicist David Baggett entitled Reasonable Moral Faith (Baker, 2026). Dave is actually the principal author of the book, and so I can boast of what an excellent defense this book presents of the moral argument for the existence of God. The chart laying out the options is alone worth the price of the book:
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Each of the options in the chart has a chapter devoted to it, justifying our answer to each question until we arrive at last at the claim of Supernaturalism that moral truth depends on God.
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I think you’ll agree that the book’s cover is stunning, featuring an engraving by the great artist Gustav Doré depicting Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden after the Fall. It seemed an appropriate image for a book defending moral realism and God as the foundation of objective moral values and duties.
Meanwhile, I continue to write on various topics of eschatology like the second coming of Christ (both its nature and its timing) and the general resurrection of the dead. Although little of a philosophical nature has been written about the first of these topics, the second has been a topic of very active debate among philosophers of religion since the 1970s. The main question concerns the identity of the individual raised (either a person or a body) with the individual who died. Why is the resurrected individual the very same individual who died, rather than a mere replica or facsimile of the original?
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They need not be qualitatively the same, but they do need to be numerically the same individual for the resurrection hope to be valid: there is only one person involved, not two. The problem becomes really difficult in cases in which the earlier individual has been utterly destroyed, so that there is no bodily continuity between the earlier and later individuals. In that case, it appears that God must create afresh the individual that died. But why is it the same individual, rather than just a replica? The problem can be sharpened by imagining that God creates afresh, not one, but two individuals. There seems to be no basis for which, if either, is the original individual and which a replica.
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There has been a bewildering variety of solutions to this problem, some of them quite bizarre. The challenge is to find a solution that is both plausible and biblical. It seems to me that the doctrine of the soul and the intermediate state between physical death and resurrection goes a long way towards solving the problem because in that case, the person never actually ceases to exist when he dies physically. Rather he goes into a disembodied state, in which he exists until the return of Christ and the general resurrection of the dead. But while this solution suffices to guarantee personal identity, it does not solve the problem of the identity between the resurrection body and the pre-mortem body. On this score, however, it seems to me that philosophers have universally overlooked the fact that for ancient Judaism, the object of the resurrection was not the fleshly body, but rather the bones. (For a graphic picture of this see Ezekiel 37.1-14.) That’s why Jewish funerary practices included the careful preservation of the bones in ossuaries (bone boxes) after the flesh had decomposed. A reappreciation of this biblical view can go a long way, I think, towards solving the problem of the continuity of the earthly body with the resurrection body.
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Now all this must be put briefly on pause for my England tour. Thank you once again for sustaining us in prayer!
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For Christ and His Kingdom,
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