Endnotes
1 The idea of a book that understands us is not a strange one. A bookstore has plenty of books that seek to help us understand ourselves to greater or lesser degrees. I think of books about Myers Briggs Personality Types or the Enneagram. Given the title, this essay will have autobiographical aspects to it as well as reflect my interests in culture, literature, philosophy and theology.
2 Emile Cailliet, Journey into Light (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan: 1968), 16.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., 17. Original italics.
6 Ibid., 18.
7 John Piper, A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), 26-27. Original emphases. Piper explains what he means by the phrase “the glory of God” in the following way: “Close to the heart of what makes the glory of God is the way his majesty and his meekness combine,” 217. That combination is seen in Jesus Christ, 225-6.
8 It may seem strange to treat the sixty-six books that make up the Bible in such a unified way. But Christians believe that behind the many authors writing over many centuries the supreme author was God himself. Moreover the Bible writers themselves can personify the Bible of their own day in such unified terms. Paul the Apostle did so in writing to Christians in ancient Galatia (Galatians 3:8): ’“Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”’ Even secular thinker Jordan Peterson is astonished that the collection of books that make up the Bible “has a story.” In fact, he describes the Bible as “the world’s first hyperlinked text” with some “65 thousand cross-references.” See Jordan Peterson, “Biblical Series 1: Introduction to the Idea of God,” https://jordanbpeterson.com/ accessed 3/13/2018.
9 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.vi.1
10 Jean Paul Sartre quoted in Richard Askay and Jensen Farquhar, Apprehending the Inaccessible: Freudian Psychoanalysis and Existential Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1960), 230.
11 Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape: The Controversial Classic (New York: Random House, 1967).
12 Interview with Richard Dawkins, http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/transcript/dawk-frame.html accessed 2/21/2018. It is important to note that Dawkins is describing humankind as he sees it and not advocating a morality of selfishness. See Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 4-5, 267.
13 Jordan Peterson, “Biblical Series 1: Introduction to the Idea of God,” https://jordanbpeterson.com/ accessed 3/13/2018. Peterson himself thinks that this view is mistaken. The phenomenon of human consciousness, he argues, suggests that we are more than specs. Peterson is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. Renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking makes a similar point: “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the universe. That makes us something very special.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/03/14/stephen-hawking-quotations/423145002/ accessed 3/14/2018.
14 Augustine, The City of God, Book XIV, Chapter 11, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102.iv.XIV.11.html accessed 3/14/2018.
15 Andrew Goddard, “Jacques Ellul’s Theological Writings,” https://ellul.org/themes/theme-ellul-and-theological-writings/ accessed 3/8/2018.
16 Elton Trueblood, A Place to Stand (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 14-15.
17 Jean-Paul Sartre quoted in https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7285836-man-is-a-useless-passion-it-is-meaningless-that-we accessed 3/20/2018 Also see Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1984), 784.
18 Peter Singer, “Speciesism and Moral Status,” http://www.oswego.edu/~delancey/Singer.pdf accessed 2/21/2018.
19 Mark Coffey, “Ten Reasons Why I Love/Hate Peter Singer,” https://philosophynow.org/issues/59/Ten_Reasons_Why_I_Love_Hate_Peter_Singer accessed 2/27/2018.
20 To think clearly needs criteria. Three in particular come to mind. Is the view logical? That is to say, can you consistently think it through without falling into contradiction or incoherence? This is the logical adequacy criterion. Put another way, is this view thinkable? Another one is to ask, “Can you live as though your view is true to reality?” This is the existential adequacy criterion. Put another way: Is this view livable? This is the criterion that Singer’s care for his mother falls foul of. For the Christian a third question to ask is whether a view is scriptural. That is to say, Is it found commended in the Bible or consistent with what is commended in the Bible? This might be called the scriptural adequacy criterion.
21 Martin Luther King Jr., Sermon, Ebenezer Baptist Church. Quote found in Keller, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), 86-87. In contrast, Peter Singer explicitly rejects any idea of human beings as made in the image of God. Ibid.
22 John Wyatt, Matters of Life and Death: Human Dilemmas in the Light of the Christian Faith, fully revised (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2009), 98. He sees the Lego Kit view as an outworking of the Enlightenment philosophy of the 18th century.
23 Ibid., 98-99.
24 Ibid., 60.
25 Cardinal Angelo Sodano, “Homily,” http://www.motherteresa.org/yearoffaith/MT.html accessed 3/8/2018. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s secretary of state, was Pope John Paul II’s personal representative at the service held September 13, 1997. (Original emphases.)
26 Blaise Pascal, Pascal Pensées, revised edition, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 34.
27 Ibid. 29.
28 I don’t mean “narcissism” in a technical sense of a personality disorder. Rather, I am using the word in the more general sense of excessive self-concern or egocentrism. See “Narcissism” in https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/narcissistic accessed 4/6/2018.
29 I say “toxic self-concern” because there is a self-care that is entirely appropriate.
30 As Lesslie Newbigin, drawing on Nicol McNicol argued. See Paul Weston, Lesslie Newbigin, Missionary Theologian: A Reader (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 55.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5.
34 As such some argue that the exploitation, rather than the intelligent use, of natural resources is a duty. The outcome of such an understanding can be dead rivers and barren landscape. Peter Singer is rightly critical of such an attitude. Even so his exposition of Christianity borders on caricature. See my “Singer on Christianity: Characterized or Caricatured,” Gordon Preece, ed., Rethinking Peter Singer: A Christian Critique (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2002), 95-105.
35 Friedrich Nietzsche, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/137-he-who-has-a-why-to-live-for-can-bear accessed 2/27/2018.
36 Jordan Peterson, “Biblical Series 1: Introduction to the Idea of God,” https://jordanbpeterson.com/ accessed 3/13/2018.
37 Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), 74.
38 Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” http://www.skeptic.ca/Bertrand_Russell_Collection.pdf accessed 2/21/2018.
39 Ibid. Contemporary scientific speculation about the future of the universe is hardly cheery. Journalist Jaime Trosper describes four scenarios: The Big Slurp, The Big Crunch, The Big Freeze and The Big Rip. https://futurism.com/four-ways-the-universe-could-end/ accessed 2/21/2018.
40 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/kant-first-critique-cambridge.pdf (A805/B833), accessed 3/13/2018. The book that understands me is full of insights that address all three of Kant’s questions. An important question that Kant does not raise is, What is real?
41 For a fine analysis of Luther’s understanding of reason, see G. A. Gerrish, “Luther, Martin”, in Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: The Macmillan Co. and The Free Press, 1967), 5.109-113.
42 Any appeal to truth per se is uncomfortable for a postmodern mindset. Philosopher Richard Rorty captured that mindset when he argued that “truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.” However, in my experience subjectivism gives way to objective truth claims whenever a person gets the wrong change in a store. Then there is an objective truth that can be known and vociferously argued for until the right change is given. For the Rorty quote see https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/284543-truth-is-what-your-contemporaries-let-you-get-away-with accessed 3/19/2018. A simpler distinction I like is that between magisterial reason and instrumental reason. Magisterial reason makes the ego the adjudicator of all truth. Instrumental reason is reasoning in the service of the quest for truth.
43 Socrates, “Apology,” in Eric H. Warmington and Philip G. Rouse, eds. Great Dialogues of Plato, trans. W. H. D. Rouse (New York: Mentor Books, 1956), 443: “[L]ife without enquiry is not worth living for a man.”
44 Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, “My Train Wreck Conversion”, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/january-february/my-train-wreck-conversion.html?start=1 accessed 11/14/2017.
45 Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, “You are What – and How – You Read”, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/you-are-whatand-howyou-read/ accessed 11/14/2017.
46 Ibid.
47 Quoted in Lindsey Carlson, “’Rosaria Butterfield: Christian Hospitality is Radically Different from ‘Southern Hospitality.’” https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/april-web-only/rosaria-butterfield-gospel-comes-house-key.html?utm_source=ctweekly-html&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=21045732&utm_content=580150717&utm_campaign=email accessed 4/30/2018.
48 When I review what I have written above I feel like a travel writer. I am trying to describe a place that my reader may never have seen. That’s why later in this essay I will give some tools for engaging with the Bible for yourself, or how to visit Ely Cathedral in person.
49 A mental or written file of puzzles generated by reading Scripture and the experience of life that are awaiting further light (AFL).
50 Caitlin Casey is a scientist at the University of Texas. See http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160610-it-took-centuries-but-we-now-know-the-size-of-the-universe, accessed 2/1/2018.
51 Online the text may be found in a modern English version at https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=John&qs_version=NIV
52 This was the experience of philosopher Dallas Willard as an undergraduate. See Gary W. Moon, Becoming Dallas Willard: The Formation of a Philosopher, Teacher and Christ Follower (Downers Grove: IVP, 2018), 63-64. Amazingly this experience took place in a laundromat as Willard began to read the Gospel of John to pass the time.
53 See the article by Peter Blowes, http://matthiasmedia.com/briefing/2009/01/the-swedish-method/ accessed 10/17/2017. Blowes recommends reading a passage of 10-15 verses each time.
54 Peter Blowes, ibid, takes the method further with more symbols for those with some acquaintance with the Bible. He suggests “a set of circling arrows “to show the interrelation of ideas in the passage. A heart symbol captures the central idea in the passage. A circle with an arrow coming out of the circle indicates the “innate central application”.
55 A good resource for digging deeper is D. A. Carson, ed., NIV Zondervan Study Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015).
56 John Piper, Glory, 21.