Hesitations About Special Divine Action: Reflections on Some Scientific, Cultural and Theological Concerns

The new interest in special divine action has led to a close reading of the great debates and discussions of the early modern period in an attempt to understand contemporary resistance to the notion of divine action, and to develop strategies for reaffirming the notion in a refined manner. Although continuing engagement with and evaluation of the Humean legacy on miracles and divine action will be of central importance to this programme of review, there are other issues that also need to be addressed. In this article I identify some of the factors that have caused or continue to cause difficulties for the articulation of a concept of special divine action and I suggest how they might be engaged

Narrative theology in Religious Education

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in British Journal of Religious Education, 20 March 2013. Copyright © 2013 Taylor & Francis. Available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/01416200.2013.785931This article advocates a pedagogy of Religious Education (RE) based upon a narratival framework informed by both narrative theology and narrative philosophy. Drawing on the work of narrative theologians including Stanley Hauerwas, the article outlines the nature of the framework, describes the four phases of learning that comprise the pedagogy, and explains how such an approach can overcome existing difficulties in how biblical texts are handled within RE. Working from the narrative assumption that individuals and communities are formed by reading, sharing and living within stories, it suggests that the pedagogy might encourage pupils to think about how the lives of Christians are shaped by their interpretations of biblical narratives, to offer their own interpretations of biblical and other texts, and to consider the stories – religious, non-religious or both – which shape their own lives. In so doing, the article moves away from a ‘proof-texting’ approach to the Bible towards one in which pupils are enabled to think about the significance of biblical narratives for both Christians and themselves

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Christian theology. : An introduction.

Oxfordxviii, 510 p.; 25 cm

An explanatory mosaic

This chapter sets out the case for recognising the complexity of explanatory pathways, noting how many events in the natural world arise through multiple conjunctive causes. The image of an “explanatory mosaic” is developed to highlight the interconnectedness of such multiple conjunctive causes while at the same time recognising a degree of conceptual fluidity concerning the precise manner of their interaction. This approach counters reductionist attempts to offer a monolithic and restrictive account of the world which limit explanations to a single level or single perspective of engagement. Although the approach is easily applied to the biological and physical sciences, the recognition of causal multiplicity and complexity can be extended both to the theological and related domains, such as the interface of science and religion. Particular attention is paid to the notion of explanation in a religious (specifically a theistic) context. Finally, the article notes the importance of developing a broader intellectual framework which allows individual causal elements to be accommodated and correlated. It is argued that such conjunctive approaches to explanation offer a helpful and plausible way of bringing together what are often fragmented discipline-specific discussions of mechanisms, values and meaning

A passion for truth. : The intellectual coherence of evangelicalism.

England287 p.; 21 cm

Reformation thought an introduction.

Cambridgex, 212 p.; 23 cm

A Fine-tuned Universe:The Quest for God in Science and Theology

Recent research on science education has increasingly focused on the literacy challenges posed by multimodality. While students are required by government mandated syllabi to make a successful translation between different semiotic resources, there still remains a lack of research on the grammars and functionality of the specialized modalities to develop explicit instructions to improve literacy practices. This paper analyses the semiotic resource of chemical symbolism in secondary school chemistry textbooks with a Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis approach (SF-MDA). It is argued that chemical symbolism is far from a jargon or mere shorthand for language. Instead, it develops unique grammatical devices to realize sub-microscopic meaning and topological meaning, which outstrips the meaning potential of language. The current study also discusses how the SF-MDA approach could develop a visible pedagogy and improve chemistry education

Suprised by meaning: Science, faith, and how we make sense of things

Louisville, Kentuckyvii. 136 p.: bibli., index; 21 c