Author: Mark Vernon

Malcolm Guite and I join Justin Brierley on Justin’s Unbelievable radio show to talk about how the Inklings, the group of Oxford intellectuals including CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and Owen Barfield, made sense of Christian faith. Mark Vernon shares how he draws on Barfield’s approach in his new book ‘A secret history of Christianity’. Theologian-poet… Continue reading The faith of the Inklings, with Malcolm Guite

“Without soul, there would be no tools,” I write at the Perspectiva blog. “The human niche is one marked by an openness to the transcendent.” Narrative accounts of human evolution are big right now. You may well have read Noah Yuval Harari’s Sapiens and its follow up, Homo Deus. And there are others, such as… Continue reading Human evolution and soul

This piece was published at Christian Today. Pascal’s Wager has become a notorious reason to believe in God. The French mathematician and philosopher proposed that it’s rational to believe in God because if you’re wrong it won’t make any difference, but if you’re right it might make every difference as to where you spend eternity.… Continue reading Was Pascal right about belief?

Human consciousness has shifted dramatically over the last 5000 years. Evidence as diverse as prehistoric archeology, ancient social structures and the history of words suggests as much. In particular, it looks as if our sense of being individual selves is a relatively recent perception. It changes our relationship to nature, the cosmos and gods. In… Continue reading The evolution of the self

The words of the last Inkling himself open this discussion I had on Barfield’s thought with the editor of the Barfield Literary Estate website, Rory O’Connor. It was a pleasure to talk about thinking and imagining, rainbows and spirit, climate change and the future. For our conversation, click here.

The Toronto psychologist, John Vervaeke, has reached romanticism in his series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. He is moving into the area that Owen Barfield considered core. In this discussion, that ranges across the ideas of Kant, Romanticism, psychotherapy and Christianity, I sketch how Barfield’s notion of final participation offers a sense of the way… Continue reading Romanticism and the meaning crisis

A couple more podcast talks have been published. Skeptiko with Alex Tsakiris – a penetrating exchange considering not only the place of Christianity in the evolution of consciousness but the significance of everything from NDEs to UFO experiencers today, and how Owen Barfield’s ideas help illuminate them. Challenging Opinions with William Campwell – another feisty… Continue reading Testing Christianity and the Evolution of Consciousness

Rupert Sheldrake and I have published the latest in our series of conversations, this time on Living in an Age of Spiritual Crisis. The depth of the environmental crisis is becoming clearer. Social crises are around us, too. But do these realities stem from a deeper spiritual crisis? We discuss whether we’ve become uncoupled from… Continue reading Living in an Age of Spiritual Crisis

I very much enjoyed this conversation with Paul VanderKlay, talking about Owen Barfield, CS Lewis, Christianity then and now…