NOTES

1. Lisa Miller, Newsweek, March 25, 2010.

2. Geza Vermes, “Myth or History: The Hard Facts of the Resurrection,” Times of London, April 6, 2009.

3. Nanci Helmich, USA Today, March 23, 2010.

4. Two good surveys of how this skepticism over the Gospels developed are found in Ben Witherington, The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1997) and N. T. Wright, Who Was Jesus? (London: SPCK, 1992).

5. For popular level treatments, see C. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP, 1987), Craig A. Evans, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP, 2008), as well as the more popular and older F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Eerdmans, reissued 2003 with a foreword by N. T. Wright). For analysis of these philosophical underpinnings of much skeptical biblical scholarship, see C. Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith (Oxford University Press, 1996), and Alvin Plantinga, “Two (or More) Kinds of Scripture Scholarship” in Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford, 2002).

6. A. N. Wilson, “Why I Believe Again,” The New Statesman, April 2, 2009. Unlike Rice, Wilson’s return to faith came not so much from an examination of biblical scholarship as from the weaknesses he saw in the philosophical objections to Christianity. But the New Statesman accompanies his article about returning to faith with an ironic picture of Wilson, carrying his skeptical 1992 book about Jesus, yet now looking upward, toward heaven.

7. Anne Rice, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (New York: Ballantine, 2005), p. 332. While Rice’s relationship with the church and institutional Christianity remains complicated, she returned to belief that the Bible gives us a trustworthy portrait of Jesus.

8. See D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), p. 173.

9. Emile Cailliet, “The Book That Understands Me,” in Frank E. Gaebelein, ed. A Christianity Today Reader (Tappan, NJ: Fleming Revell, 1968), p. 22.

10. Ibid., p. 31.

11. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1977), p. 151.

12. Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), pp. 20–23.

13. Lewis, p. 151.

14. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 1072.

15. C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (1956; repr. New York: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 196.

16. George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin (London: Blackie and Son, 1888), pp. 155–212.

17. George MacDonald, Sir Gibbie: A Novel (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1879), p. 149.

18. George MacDonald, Lilith (1895; repr. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2007), p. 176.

19. Charles Wesley, “And Can It Be That I Should Gain.”

20. Reprinted in Cynthia Heimel, If You Can’t Live Without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet? (New York: Grove, 1991), pp. 13–14.

21. C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952; repr. New York: HarperCollins, 1994), pp. 115–16.

22. N. T. Wright, For All God’s Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), p. 1.

23. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels As Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), p. 343ff.

24. Quoted in Bauckham, p. 343n.

25. Elisabeth Elliot, Through Gates of Splendor: 40th Anniversary Edition (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1981), p. 267.

26. C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (New York: HarperCollins, 1978), p. 81.

27. George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin (London: Blackie and Son, 1888), p. 223.

28. “How Firm a Foundation,” att. John Keith, 1787 (modernized).

29. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, translated by John Wilkinson (New York: Knopf, 1964).

30. Franz Kafka, The Basic Kafka (New York: Pocket, 1984), p. 169. See also Franz Kafka, The Trial. Mike Mitchell, translator (New York: Oxford, 2009).

31. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (New York: HarperCollins, 2002) p. 312.

32. Quoted in Stuart Babbage, The Mark of Cain: Studies in Literature and Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), p. 17.

33. Quoted in Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos? (New York: Harcourt, 1949), p. 39.

34. Ibid., p. 38.

35. Christina Kelly, “Why Do We Need Celebrities?” Utne Reader (May/June, 1993), pp. 100–101.

36. The critical study was Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans, translated by Carl C. Rasmussen (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1949). See the entry on Romans 1:17. This is also how Martin Luther read this verse, though many modern commentators differ. See the standard Luthers Werke, Volume 34, p. 337.

37. Matthew 5:18.

38. James Proctor, “It Is Finished.”

39. James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 221.

40. John Newton, The Works of the Rev. John Newton, Volume VI (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1985), p. 185.

41. William Vanstone, Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1977).

42. Cf. A. M. Stibbs, “Blood is a visible token of life violently ended; it is a sign of life either given or taken in death. Such giving or taking of life is in this world the extreme, both of gift or price and of crime or penalty. Man knows no greater.” Quoted in Leon Morris, The Cross in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), p. 219n21.

43. J. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark, p. 254.

44. See Acts 2:24; 1 Corinthians 15:54–56.

45. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1958), p. 174.

46. For two commentaries that read this text in this way, see James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark, p. 260 (he understands Jesus to be referring to his resurrection), and also D. A. Carson, Matthew: The Expositors’ Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), Volume II, p. 382. Carson reads the Matthean version of this saying as referring to the multiplication of the church.

47. Ibid., p. 175.

48. C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Essays (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), pp. 36–37.

49. Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion Is Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 15, and Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (London: Oxford, 2002), p. 56.

50. “The Expansion of Christianity: An Interview with Andrew Walls” was accessed at www.religion-online.org/showarticle .asp?title=2052.

51. J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (London: Bloomsbury, 1997), p. 216.

52. C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (New York: Collier/Macmillan, 1970), p. 169.

53. Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: Harper, 1996), p. 90.

54. This image can be viewed online at www.zinzendorf.com/feti.htm.

55. “The Excellency of Jesus Christ” in The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader, ed. W. H. Kimnach, K. P. Minkema, D. A. Sweeney (New Haven: Yale, 1999), p. 163.

56. The Josephus reference is given in Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark, p. 341.

57. Edwards explains that the popular imagination conveniently overlooked the Old Testament references to the temple being a place for the nations to come and worship. See Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark, p. 343.

58. The tabernacle was the temple’s precursor—a portable sanctuary during Israel’s wilderness wanderings.

59. John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. This seventeenth-century work is available in many printed versions and is also online in its entirety. J. I. Packer’s modern “Introduction to The Death of Death in the Death of Christ” is an important short essay in its own right.

60. D. A. Carson, Love in Hard Places (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002), p. 61.

61. “The Martyrdom of Polycarp,” in Cyril C. Richardson, Early Christian Fathers (New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. 153.

62. John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 154.

63. C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1963), pp. 96–97.

64. Jonathan Edwards, “Christ’s Agony.” This is available in numerous published forms, and is on the Internet at several addresses. It was accessed at www.ccel.org/ccel/edwards/sermons.agony.html.

65. C. John Sommerville, The Decline of the Secular University (London: Oxford, 2006), p. 70.

66. Michael Wilcock, The Message of Luke: The Savior of the World (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1979), p. 86.

67. For example, see Isaiah 13:9, 10; Jeremiah 15:6–9.

68. For example, see Psalm 84:11.

69. Albert Camus’ quote is found in Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), p. 226.

70. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), pp. 1148–1149.

71. See chapter Before on Bauckham’s argument that the Gospels are eyewitness testimony.

72. Joni Earekson Tada, Heaven: Your Real Home (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), p. 51.

73. Ibid., p. 53.

74. J. R. R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf and The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), pp. 68–70.

75. See Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and their Friends (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979), pp. 42ff.

76. See 1 Corinthians 15:19–20; Colossians 1:13–14.

77. Robert W. Jenson, “How the World Lost Its Story,” First Things 36 (October 1993), pp. 19–24.