What A Piece of Work Is Man

Readings in biblical anthropology:

Humanity is in a pretty bad place right now. The Christian can account for this. When we dethrone God we end up putting man in his place – something he was never meant to do. Thus when man seeks to destroy God he ends up destroying himself.

One of the classic lines from the classic 1908 volume Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton sums it up nicely: “The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world.”

This is the final piece in a quartet of articles I have just penned over the past four days. They have to do with biblical anthropology, what it means to be human, the war on personhood, and related matters. The three previous pieces are these:

Are Humans Simply Animals? – https://billmuehlenberg.com/2026/08/28/are-humans-simply-animals/

The Threat of Transhumanism, AI, and the New Digital Technologies – https://billmuehlenberg.com/2026/08/29/the-threat-of-transhumanism-ai-and-the-new-digital-technologies/

Are Humans Simply Machines? – https://billmuehlenberg.com/2026/08/30/are-humans-simply-machines/

The first and third pieces were proper articles, while the second and this one are bibliographies.

This one deals with a wide range of works on humans and humanity from biblical, theological, philosophical, scientific and psychological perspectives. Here then are 80 important books presented alphabetically by author that you should be aware of when it comes to biblical anthropology:

Aeschliman, Michael, The Restitution of Man: C.S. Lewis and the Case against Scientism. Eerdmans, 1983.

Allen, Ronald, The Majesty of Man: The Dignity of Being Human, 2^nd ed. Multnomah Press, 1984, 2000.

Baker, Marc and Stewart Goetz, eds., The Soul Hypothesis. Continuum, 2011.

Beauregard, Mario, Brain Wars. HarperOne, 2013.

Beauregard, Mario and Denyse O’Leary, The Spiritual Brain. HarperOne, 2007.

Beck, James and Bruce Demarest, The Human Person in Theology and Psychology: A Biblical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century. Kregel, 2005.

Berkouwer, G. C., Man: The Image of God. Eerdmans, 1982.

Berlinsky, David, Human Nature. Discovery Institute, 2019.

Blazer, Dan, Freud vs God. IVP, 1998.

Boa, Kenneth, Augustine to Freud: What Theologians & Psychologists Tell Us About Human Nature and Why It Matters. Broadman & Holman, 2004.

Brown, Warren, Nancy Murphy and H. Newton Malony, eds., Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature. Fortress Press, 1998.

Burke, Thomas, ed., Man and Mind: A Christian Theory of Personality. Hillsdale College,1987.

Carey, George, I Believe in Man. Hodder and Stoughton, 1976.

Clark, Kelly James, God and the Brain: The Rationality of Belief. Eerdmans, 2019.

Clarke, Peter, All in the Mind? Does Neuroscience Challenge Faith? Lion, 2015.

Cooper, John, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate. Eerdmans, 2000.

Corcoran, Kevin, Rethinking Human Nature. Baker, 2006.

Cortez, Marc, Christological Anthropology in Historical Perspective: Ancient and Contemporary Approaches to Theological Anthropology. Zondervan, 2016.

Cortez, Marc, ReSourcing Theological Anthropology: A Constructive Account of Humanity in the Light of Christ. Zondervan 2017.

Cortez, Marc, Theological Anthropology: A Guide for the Perplexed. T&T Clark, 2010.

Cosgrove, Michael, The Essence of Man. Zondervan, 1977.

Custance, Arthur, The Mysterious Matter of Mind. Zondervan, 1980.

Dickerson, Matthew, The Mind and the Machine. Brazos, 2011.

Dirckx, Sharon, Am I Just My Brain? The Good Book Company, 2019.

Egnor, Michael and Denyse O’Leary, The Immortal Mind: A Neurosurgeon’s Case for the Existence of the Soul. Worthy Books, 2025.

Elliott, Mark, ed., The Dynamics of Human Life. Paternoster, 2001.

Evans, C. Stephen, Preserving the Person: A Look at the Human Sciences. IVP, 1977.

Farris, Joshua, An Introduction to Theological Anthropology. Baker, 2020.

Fellows, Andrew, Humanity Matters: Re-enchanting Homo Sapiens. IVP, 2026.

Goetz, Stewart and Charles Taliaferro, A Brief History of the Soul. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

Green, Joel, Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible. Baker, 2008.

Green, Joel, ed., What About the Soul? Abingdon, 1987, 1999.

Green, Joel and Stuart Palmer, eds., In Search of the Soul: Four Views on the Mind-Body Problem. IVP, 2005.

Hammett, John and Katie McCoy, Humanity. Broadman and Holman, 2023.

Hasker, William, The Emergent Self. Cornell University Press, 2001.

Hoekema, Anthony, Created in God’s Image. Eerdmans, 1986.

Horton, Michael, Richard Lints and Mark Talbot, eds., Personal Identity in Theological Perspective. Eerdmans, 2006.

Hughes, Philip Edgcumbe, The True Image. Eerdmans, 1989.

Jeeves, Malcolm, Human Nature at the Millennium: Reflections on the Integration of Psychology and Christianity. Baker, 1997.

Jeeves, Malcolm, Mind Fields: Reflections on the Science of Mind and Brain. Lancer Books, 1993.

Jeeves, Malcolm, ed., From Cells to Souls – and Beyond: Changing Portraits of Human Nature. Eerdmans, 2004.

Jeeves, Malcolm and Warren Brown, Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion: Illusions, Delusions, and Realities about Human Nature. Templeton Press, 2009.

Kilner, John, Dignity and Destiny: Humanity in the Image of God. Eerdmans, 2015.

Kilner, John, ed., Why People Matter: A Christian Engagement with Rival Views of Human Significance. Baker, 2017.

Kline, Meredith, Images of the Spirit. Baker, 1980.

Lewis, C. S., The Abolition of Man. Macmillan, 1947.

Lints, Richard, Identity and Idolatry: The Image of God and its Inversion. IVP, 2015.

Macaulay, Ranald and Jerram Barrs, Being Human. IVP, 1978.

McConville, J. Gordon, Being Human in God’s World: An Old Testament Theology of Humanity. Baker, 2016.

MacKay, Donald, Brains, Machines and Persons. Eerdmans, 1980.

MacKay, Donald, The Clockwork Image. IVP, 1974.

MacKay, Donald, Information, Mechanism, and Meaning. MIT Press, 1969.

McDonald, H. D., The Christian View of Man. Crossway, 1980.

Machuga, Ric, In Defense of the Soul: What it Means to be Human. Brazos, 2002.

Marks, Robert, Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will. Discovery Institute, 2022.

Martin, Charles, How Human Can You Get? IVP, 1973.

Meilaender, Gilbert, Neither God Nor Beast: The Dignity of the Human Person. Encounter Books, 2009.

Menuge, Angus, Agents Under Fire: Materialism and the Rationality of Science. Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.

Menuge, Angus, Brian Krouse and Robert Marks, eds., Minding the Brain: Models of the Mind, Information, and Empirical Science. Discovery Institute, 2023.

Middleton, J. Richard, Liberating Image: The Imago Dei In Genesis 1. Brazos, 2005.

Moreland, J. P., and David Ciocchi, eds., Christian Perspectives on Being Human. Baker, 1993.

Moreland, J. P., The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism. SCM, 2009.

Moreland, J. P., and Scott Rae, Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics. IVP, 2000.

Payne, Ian, The Message of Humanity. IVP, 2025.

Pyne, Robert, Humanity and Sin. Word, 1999.

Rickabaugh, Brandon and J. P. Moreland, The Substance of Consciousness: A Comprehensive Defense of Contemporary Substance Dualism. Wiley-Blackwell, 2024.

Schaeffer, Francis, Back to Freedom and Dignity. IVP, 1972.

Scruton, Roger, On Human Nature. Princeton University Press, 2017, 2019.

Shatzer, Jacob, Transhumanism and the Image of God. IVP, 2019.

Sherlock, Charles, The Doctrine of Humanity. IVP, 1996.

Sickler, Bradley, God on the Brain. Crossway, 2020.

Smail, Tom, Like Father, Like Son: The Trinity Imaged in Our Humanity. Eerdmans, 2006.

Snead, O. Carter, What It Means to Be Human. Harvard University Press, 2023.

Strachen, Owen, Reenchanting Humanity. Mentor, 2019.

Swinburne, Richard, The Evolution of the Soul. Oxford University Press, 1986.

Taliaferro, Charles, Consciousness and the Mind of God. Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Trueman, Carl, The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity. Sentinel, 2026.

Vitz, Paul and Susan Felch, eds., The Self: Beyond the Postmodern Crisis. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006.

Wallace, Stan, Have We Lost Our Minds? Neuroscience, Neurotheology, the Soul, and Human Flourishing. Wipf & Stock, 2024.

Ward, Keith, More Than Matter? What Humans Really Are. Lion, 2010.

As for my favourites: All can be recommended, but those wanting volumes that deal a bit more with apologetic and philosophical angles can pursue the works by Lewis, Moreland, Schaeffer and Scruton.

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