Journal of European Baptist Studies, Volume 9, Number 2, January 2009

cal perspective. Contributions to the collection come from a variety of contextual and theological backgrounds and address a range of issues in baptistic theology, pedagogy, spirituality and history. In her engaging essay originally presented at the opening of the academic year at IBTS, Prof Nancey Murphy presents a snapshot of her extensive research on the history of theories of human nature in the offshoots of Latin Christianity. Considering the most recent stirring philosophical advances and building on the insights of her earlier works, she is arguing for a thoroughly non-reductive account of human nature. Prof Miroslaw Patalon’s paper reflects on the findings of phenomenographic research conducted among high school teachers of religion in Poland. Continuing to explore the viability of process theology for the purposes of religious education and interrelations dialogue, he asserts that John Cobb’s pedagogy of ecumenism provides a potent perspective for overcoming narrowness and isolationism in religious education. The renowned Baptist historian Dr Albert Wardin reflects further (cf. JEBS 7:3) on the challenging and controversial question of the origins of the Baptist movement in Imperial Russia. Against the simplistic views that Baptists were either entirely a product of a foreign (particularly German) missionary implantation or an amalgamation of indigenous movements of dissent within Russian Orthodoxy initiated by natives and divorced from any western influences, he argues for the dialectical nature of the origins of the Baptist movement on Russian soil in which both foreign and indigenous elements were incorporated. The last paper in this collection recognises the quality academic work of younger European Baptist scholars who have been working on their research degrees at IBTS. By complementing the strengths of McClendon’s narrativism with Stassen’s understanding of the ways in which discipleship, as described by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, can be seen concretely as the embodiment of the vision of the kingdom of God, Joshua Searle offers a more integrated perspective on Christian spirituality and spiritual formation for the baptistic tradition. The Revd Doc Dr Parush R Parushev, Academic Dean, IBTS How to Keep the ‘Non’ in Nonreductive Physicalism 5 How to Keep the ‘Non’ in Nonreductive Physicalism 1 Introduction In the course lectures I present at the International Baptist Theological Seminary, Prague, each year, I examine differences between modern and postmodern philosophical assumptions in the Anglo-American world, and then point out the consequences of these changes for various areas of theological research. In my seminars so far I first considered epistemological changes, and the difference they make for understanding theological methodology. Secondly, I examined modern and postmodern theories of language. Thirdly, I lectured on human nature, tracing the history