Professor Christopher Insole from our Department of Theology and Religion is set to publish a new book, If God is the Answer, What is the Question?, offering a fresh way into one of the most enduring—and often frustrating—human debates: belief, unbelief, and what people actually mean when they argue about God.
Published in June 2026, the book brings together decades of Insole’s teaching and research in philosophy and theology, inviting readers to look beyond entrenched “for or against” positions and towards the deeper hopes, fears, and longings that often sit beneath them.
Rather than treating God as a single, fixed idea, the book suggests that people frequently talk past one another because “God” can function as an answer to very different kinds of questions—about justice, harmony, freedom, meaning, or the limits of what the intellect can settle.
Insole’s approach is philosophical as well as personal, weaving together thinkers including the Stoics, Spinoza, and Kant alongside reflections on religious experience, and asking what happens “when the facts run out”—and why philosophy still matters at that point.
The book has already attracted enthusiastic endorsements from prominent writers and theologians.
“An illuminating and accessible book, conversational, honest, personal, but also marked by formidable intellectual clarity.” — Rowan Williams
“Philosophy as it ought to be done: thoughtful, modest, many-sided, engaging, deeply learned and absolutely accessible… reading this book will surely open up new ways of thinking about belief, unbelief and much besides.” — Karen Kilby
Insole is Professor of Philosophical Theology and Ethics at Durham and President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion.
He is also developing curriculum resources: materials describe him as having designed a module intended to be taught to sixth-form pupils in Catholic schools in England and Wales as part of a core curriculum in religion and philosophy, due to launch in September 2026.
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