Chapter 1: A Strange Sort of Comfort
1. Gordon Graham, “Mystery or Mumbo-Jumbo?” Philosophical Investigations 7 (October 1984): 284ff.
2. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956, https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2944012–1918–1956 (accessed November 2014).
3. David Brooks, “What Candidates Need,” New York Times, April 6, 2015.
4. A. W. Tozer, “The Works of A. W. Tozer,” Daily Christian Quote, http://dailychristianquote.com/dcqchristianliving8.html (accessed November 2013).
5. Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 9.
6. Ibid.
7. John H. Leith, Basic Christian Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 25–27. Several differences between problems and mystery are drawn from Leith’s discussion.
8. Ibid.
9. James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door, 5th ed. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2009), 166ff. Sire offers an excellent summary of the New Age pursuit of mystery in his chapter “A Separate Universe: The New Age—Spirituality without Religion.”
10. John R. W. Stott, The Contemporary Christian (Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1992), 223.
11. Quoted in Diogenes Allen, Philosophy for Understanding Theology (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), 289. Allen points out that while twentieth-century skeptics saw Wittgenstein as an ally, he actually believed that there is more to reality than can be expressed through human words.
12. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, www.goodreads.com/quotes/232915-the-author -who-benefits-you-most-is-not-the-one (accessed August 2015).
1. E. L. Mascall, Words and Images (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1957), 78–79.
2. Ibid., 39.
3. Roger Hazelton, “The Nature of Christian Paradox,” Theology Today 6 (October 1949): 44.
4. Friedrich von Hügel, The Reality of God (London: Dent, 1931), 187.
5. John Macquarrie, Thinking about God (London: SCM Press, 1975), 33.
6. John Leith, Basic Christian Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 24.
7. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1957), 179ff.
8. Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008), 128.
9. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 423.
10. Hazelton, “Nature of Christian Paradox,” 44.
1. Fritz Rohrlich, From Paradox to Reality: Our New Concepts of the Physical World (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987), 114. “In all these cases the superseded model was not ‘wrong.’ It was simply found to be valid only in a much smaller domain of validity than was originally thought. In the same way, Newtonian mechanics is not ‘wrong’ just because we know about special relativity. It is just not a good enough approximation and is therefore restricted to a smaller domain of validity than was previously thought.”
2. Ibid., 143–44.
3. Thomas Kuhn, Metaphor, Paradox, and Paradigm: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970). Kuhn ushered the phrase “paradigm shift” into our everyday vocabulary. How often do we blithely speak of paradigm shifts today, not realizing the idea came from identifying the central role paradox plays in changing scientific worldviews? As with the wave/particle paradox, again and again paradox has brought scientists to the limits of human perception, to “think about that about which we cannot think.”
4. Rohrlich, From Paradox to Reality, 7. “[A]ll levels of reality are equally true. They just describe different approximations. Each level presents features of reality not found on other levels. For example, atomic physics tells us nothing about the nature of life which we learn from the study of living organisms. . . . [O]nly when all levels are considered together, i.e., when we have before us nature in all approximations, do we obtain a complete picture or at least a picture as complete as present-day science would admit.”
5. Jeffrey Astley, “Paradox and Christology,” King’s Theological Review 7 (Spring 1984): 9–13. Astley reviews several attempts to use the wave/particle duality, as well as indicates some of its limitations for theology.
6. James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Penguin, 2008), 68.
Chapter 4: Serious Playfulness
1. Robert H. Stein, The Method and Message of Jesus’ Teaching (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978), 19–20.
2. Gordon Graham, “Mystery or Mumbo-Jumbo?” Philosophical Investigations 7 (October 1984): 284ff.
3. Viktor E. Frankl, “Paradoxical Intention and Dereflection,” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice 12, no. 3 (Fall 1975): 226.
4. Paul Deschenes and Vance L. Shepperson, “The Ethics of Paradox,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 11 (Summer 1983): 92.
5. Ibid., 97.
6. Dennis D. Morgan, Dale H. Levandowski, and Martha L. Rogers, “The Apostle Paul: Problem Formation and Problem Resolution from a Systems Perspective,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 9, no. 2 (Summer 1981): 136–43. Descriptions and examples of first- and second-order change are taken from this article.
7. L. Michael Ascher, “Paradoxical Intention and Recursive Anxiety,” in Therapeutic Paradox, ed. L. Michael Ascher (New York: Guilford Press, 1989), 108.
8. L. Michael Ascher, “Therapeutic Paradox: A Primer,” in Ascher, Therapeutic Paradox, 6.
9. Elton Trueblood, The Humor of Christ (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 47.
10. Stein, Method and Message, 20.
11. There are also exceptions outside the Gospels, however. Consider “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Phil. 2:12–13, emphasis added) and “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14, emphasis added).
1. L. Michael Ascher, “Paradoxical Intention and Recursive Anxiety,” in Therapeutic Paradox, ed. L. Michael Ascher (New York: Guilford Press, 1989), 108.
2. L. Michael Ascher, “Therapeutic Paradox: A Primer,” in Ascher, Therapeutic Paradox, 7.
3. Dennis D. Morgan, Dale H. Levandowski, and Martha L. Rogers, “The Apostle Paul: Problem Formation and Problem Resolution from a Systems Perspective,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 9, no. 2 (Summer 1981): 136–43.
4. Edwin H. Friedman, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue (New York: Guilford Press, 1985), 50: “Seriousness is more than an attitude; it is a total orientation, a way of thinking embedded in constant, chronic anxiety. It is characterized by lack of flexibility in response, a narrow repertoire of approaches, persistent efforts to try harder, an inability to change direction. . . .”
5. Ibid., 51.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 205–7.
8. Brendan Nyhan, “When Beliefs and Facts Collide,” New York Times, July 7, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/upshot/when-beliefs-and-facts-collide.html?src=xps&abt=0002&abg=0.
9. Friedman, Generation to Generation, 52.
10. Ibid., 208–10.
11. Viktor E. Frankl, “Paradoxical Intention and Dereflection,” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice 12, no. 3 (Fall 1975): 228.
12. Matthew, DVD, directed by Reghardt van den Bergh (Visual Bible, 1997).
13. Elton Trueblood, The Humor of Christ (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 46–47.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 59.
1. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (New York: Penguin, 1986), 22.
2. Ibid.
3. Paul Deschenes and Vance L. Shepperson, “The Ethics of Paradox,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 11 (Summer 1983): 93.
4. Edwin H. Friedman, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue (New York: Guilford Press, 1985), 11–12.
5. Deschenes and Shepperson, “Ethics of Paradox,” 93.
6. Dennis D. Morgan, Dale H. Levandowski, and Martha L. Rogers, “The Apostle Paul: Problem Formation and Problem Resolution from a Systems Perspective,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 9, no. 2 (Summer 1981): 136–43.
7. Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), 38–39.
8. See Fred Craddock, As One without Authority, 3rd ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), for one of the earliest but still one of the best arguments for the inductive style so common in Jesus’ preaching.
9. Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008), 59–60.
10. Ibid., 31.
Chapter 7: Terror and Truth on Flight 451
1. Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008), 134.
1. Eric J. Cohen, “Induced Christian Neurosis: An Examination of Pragmatic Paradoxes and the Christian Faith,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 10 (Spring 1982): 5–12. This article describes Pavlov’s experiment and the three distinguishing criteria of the double bind.
2. Dan Greenberg, How to Be a Jewish Mother (Los Angeles: Price/Stern/Sloan, 1964), 16.
3. Cohen, “Induced Christian Neurosis,” 11.
4. Dennis D. Morgan, Dale H. Levandowski, and Martha L. Rogers, “The Apostle Paul: Problem Formation and Problem Resolution from a Systems Perspective,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 9, no. 2 (Summer 1981): 143.
1. L. M. Montgomery, Emily of the New Moon (London: George G. Harrap, 1928), 6.
2. Ibid.
3. Jimmy Chin interview, March 7, 2015, True/False Film Festival, Columbia, Mo.
4. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, 2nd ed., trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1950), 12–40.
5. Paul S. Fiddes, Freedom and Limit: A Dialogue between Literature and Christian Doctrine (Macon: Mercer Univ. Press, 1999), 6.
6. Ibid., 10.
7. Hugh Evan Hopkins, Charles Simeon of Cambridge (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977), 38.
8. Ibid., 177.
9. Ibid., 76.
Chapter 10: ’Course He Isn’t Safe . . . but He’s Good
1. C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (New York: HarperCollins, 1950), 79–80.
2. A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1961), 1.
3. Ibid., 89.
4. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943), 38.
5. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 46–47.
1. Diogenes Allen, Philosophy for Understanding Theology (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), 2.
2. Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (New York: Penguin, 2006), 6.
3. William P. Alston, Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1989), 147.
4. Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1993), 387.
5. Ibid., 396.
6. Ibid., 438, 446.
7. Ibid., 438.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., 454.
10. Ibid.
11. Donald McCullough, The Trivialization of God (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1995), 13–26. McCullough offers an excellent discussion of the ways mystery has been drained out of modern “trivial gods.”
Chapter 12: Who Chooses First?
1. Richard Foster, Money, Sex and Power: The Challenge of the Disciplined Life (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), 20.
2. D. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House; London: Marshall Pickering, 1994), 220.
3. Ibid.
4. Steven D. Boyer and Christopher A. Hall, The Mystery of God: Theology for Knowing the Unknowable (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2012), 167. I am indebted to Boyer and Hall for the ideas expressed in this paragraph. See pp. 166–71.
5. Ibid., 171. See the chapter “Mystery and Salvation,” pp. 147–75, for a thoughtful discussion about how God’s mystery transforms this “election/free will” debate, especially pp. 173–75 for helpful pastoral responses to people struggling with this issue from both the Calvinist and Arminian positions.
Chapter 13: Already . . . Not Yet
1. Abraham Kuyper, www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/385896.Abraham_ Kuyper (accessed November 2014).
2. George Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974), 94. Much has been written on the nature of parables that hide and yet simultaneously reveal, especially in regard to the mystery of the kingdom.
3. Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1987), 17.
4. Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008), 175.
5. Parker Palmer, The Promise of Paradox: A Celebration of Contradictions in the Christian Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980), 63.
6. Ibid., xxix.
1. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Garden City, N.Y.: Image, 1959), 100.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., 97.
1. Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006), 137.
2. See my article “Transforming the Dualistic Worldview of Ethiopian Evangelical Christians,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research (July 2015), 138–41.
3. Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. W. F. Trotter (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1958), 97.
4. Stanley J. Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), 131–32.
5. Nancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls or Spirited Bodies? (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006), 59–61. See also Robert Wright, “Can Machines Think?” Time (March 25, 1996), 50–56.
6. Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005), 79.
7. Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2009), 15.
8. Jim Sollisch, “Paradox of Modern Life: So Many Choices, So Little Joy,” May 20, 2011, Christian Science Monitor, www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0520/Paradox-of-modern-life-so-many-choices-so-little-joy (accessed November 2013).
9. Pascal, Pensées, 130.
10. Paul Tournier, The Seasons of Life (London: SCM Press, 1964), 11–12.
11. Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (New York: Plume, 1994).
12. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Garden City, N.Y.: Image, 1959), 94.
13. C. S. Lewis, A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis, ed. Clyde S. Kilby (New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1968), 21.
14. Gerhard von Rad, Genesis (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972), 169.
15. F. Dale Bruner, Matthew, vol. 2 (Dallas: Word, 1990), 588.
16. Quoted in Elton Trueblood, The Humor of Christ (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 74.
17. Thomas Merton, A Thomas Merton Reader, ed. Thomas P. McDonnell (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 16.
18. Ibid.
19. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 94.
20. C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 145.
Chapter 16: Treasure and Vessel
1. G. C. Berkouwer, Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1975), 207.
2. Ibid.
3. Fred Craddock, As One without Authority, 3rd ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), 41.
4. Arthur F. Holmes, Faith Seeks Understanding: A Christian Approach to Knowledge (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1971), 136.
5. Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), 79–92: “Protestant fundamentalism is, like liberalism, a child of the Enlightenment. It has sought to reassert the authority of the Bible in the new situation created by modernity. The concern was right, but the method was wrong. I am referring to a kind of fundamentalism which seeks to affirm the factual, objective truth of every statement in the Bible and which thinks that if any single factual error were to be admitted, biblical authority would collapse” (85). Newbigin elaborates: “I have every sympathy with the fundamentalist’s rejection of scholarship that denies any real authority to Scripture, but I cannot accept a kind of defense of the Bible that surrenders to the very forces threatening to destroy biblical authority” (86). N. T. Wright, in Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 183: “The rationalism of the Enlightenment infected even those who were battling against it.”
6. Martin Buber, I and Thou (Eastford, Conn.: Martino Fine Books, 2010).
7. Holmes, Faith Seeks Understanding, 132.
8. Ibid., 150ff.
9. Ibid., 132.
10. Ibid.
11. Craddock, As One without Authority, 71.
12. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/3, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1961), 247.
13. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), I.8.13, 92.
14. Ibid.
15. N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 181.
16. Ibid., 183.
17. N. T. Wright has winsomely written in many places of this biblical theme of new creation. A very readable introduction is Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).
18. Wright, Simply Christian, 184.
1. Stanley Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), 63–65. Grenz shows how the Trinity was neglected by most theologians over the last two centuries.
2. Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning and Living (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002), 23.
3. Grenz, Theology, 71–74.
4. For an excellent overview of the multifaceted nature of human love reflecting the love within the Trinity, see Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004), 76–82.
5. Plantinga, Engaging God’s World, 23.
6. Alister McGrath, Understanding the Trinity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1988), 148.
7. Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1988), 159.
8. Eerdman’s Handbook on the History of Christianity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1977), 158.
9. Diogenes Allen, Philosophy for Understanding Theology (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), 106.
10. Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Dutton, 2008), 216.
11. Plantinga, Engaging God’s World, 22.
12. Todd Hertz writes, “In his first movie since Titanic, James Cameron has made it worth the wait with a stunning milestone in filmmaking—and a storyline surprisingly rich in political and spiritual undertones.” “Avatar,” Christianity Today, December 17, 2009, www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/decemberweb-only/avatar.html (accessed March 9, 2015).
13. The definitive statement of this view is still considered to be that of Lynn White Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” Science 155 (1967): 1203.
14. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 101.
15. Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 318.
1. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Elucidation, trans. J. Riches (London: SPCK, 1975), 22.
2. John Macquarrie, Thinking about God (London: SCM Press, 1975), 41.
3. Paul Jewett, God, Creation, and Revelation: A Neo-Evangelical Theology (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2000), 192.
4. Diogenes Allen, Philosophy for Understanding Theology (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), 247.
5. Tony Campolo, We Have Met Our Enemies and They Are Partly Right (Waco: Word, 1985), 90ff.
6. Søren Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957), 123.
7. Robert E. Larsen, “Kierkegaard’s Absolute Paradox,” Journal of Religion 42 (January 1962): 34–43; Vernard Eller, “Fact, Faith, and Foolishness: Kierkegaard and the New Quest,” Journal of Religion 48 (January 1968): 54–68.
8. Howard A. Johnston and Niels Thulstrup, eds., A Kierkegaard Critique (New York: Harper, 1962), 218.
9. Roger Hazelton, “The Nature of Christian Paradox,” Theology Today 6 (October 1949), 57.
10. Recounted by, among others, Robert L. Perkins, Søren Kierkegaard (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1969), 12.
11. Alan Richardson, A Theological Word Book of the Bible (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 198.
12. Quoted in Eller, “Fact, Faith, and Foolishness,” 59.
13. Ibid.
14. Allen, Philosophy for Understanding Theology, 246.
15. Vernon Grounds, “The Nature of Faith,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (Fall 1963): 134: “Once faith has been exercised, however, the absurd loses its irrationality and paradox ceases to be a heavy burden for the intellect to carry.”
16. Allen, Philosophy for Understanding Theology, 245.
17. C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009), 9.
18. Cyril of Alexandria, quoted in Steven Boyer and Christopher Hall, The Mystery of God: Theology for Knowing the Unknowable (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2012), 135. See pp. 131–34 for an overview of the heresies that shortchanged the divinity or humanity of Jesus.
19. Campolo, We Have Met Our Enemies, 88.
1. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, chapter 11, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oliver_Wendell_ Holmes,_ Sr.#The_ Autocrat_ of_ the_ Breakfast_Table_.281858.29 (accessed July 2014).
2. Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004), 6.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Cheryl Forbes, Imagination: Embracing a Theology of Wonder (Portland, Ore.: Multnomah, 1986), 165.
6. Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992), 6.
7. George A. Lindbeck, “The Church’s Mission to a Postmodern Culture,” in Postmodern Theology: Christian Faith in a Pluralist World, ed. Frederick Burnham (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), 41. Lindbeck cites literary critic Northrop Frye’s conclusions in The Great Code for support of this position.
8. Ibid., 43.
9. Ibid.
10. Michael Macdonald and Andrew Tadie, eds., G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis: The Riddle of Joy (London: Collins, 1989), 37.
11. Ibid., emphasis added.
12. Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, Student’s Guide (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983), 34.
13. Michael Polyani, The Tacit Dimension (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966), 21–23. Lesslie Newbigin, in Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), 40–64, offers a very readable introduction to Polyani and draws out many contemporary implications, especially Polyani’s concept of personal knowledge.
14. Charles Kraft, Christianity with Power (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant, 1989). Kraft offers an excellent study of how worldviews are shaped by language.
15. David Robson, “There Really Are 50 Eskimo Words for ‘Snow,’ ” Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/there-really-are-50-eskimo-words-for-snow/2013/01/14/e0e3f4e0–59a0–11e2 -beee-6e38f5215402_ story.html (accessed February 2015).
16. Paul S. Fiddes, Freedom and Limit: A Dialogue between Literature and Christian Doctrine (Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press, 1999), 7.
17. Ibid.
18. M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 32.
19. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, www.goodreads.com/quotes/384067-if-you-want -to-build-a-ship-don-t-drum-up (accessed August 2015).
Chapter 20: If Not Certainty . . .
1. Os Guinness, Doubt (Tring, UK: Lion, 1976), 199.
2. Stanley Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), 408. Grenz speaks of three components of faith, recognized since the Reformation as notitia (knowledge), assensus (assent), and fiducia (trust). For my purposes, I did not consider assensus, or intellectual acknowledgment.
3. The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Part I, Book of Confessions (Louisville: Office of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church [USA], 2002), 31–32.
4. John H. Leith, Basic Christian Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 174.
5. A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1961), 1–2.
6. Ibid.
7. Pico Iyer, “The Folly of Thinking We Know,” New York Times (March 20, 2014).
8. Ibid.
9. See Dave Goetz, “Reaching the Happy Thinking Pagan: A Conversation with Apologist Ravi Zacharias,” Leadership Journal (Spring 1995): 18–27.
10. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941), 289.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., 331.
13. Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), 66–67. I am indebted to Newbigin for the ideas in this paragraph on Enlightenment-inspired certainty versus biblical faith.
14. Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2012), 116.
1. See Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Dutton, 2008), and William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008).
2. Ronald Hepburn, Christianity and Paradox: Critical Studies in Twentieth-Century Theology (London: Watts and Co., 1958). I choose Hepburn as a conversation partner at this point because his book has been pivotal in this field, and he represents linguistic philosophy, often the Christian faith’s most skeptical critic from a philosophical point of view.
3. Ibid., 16.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 17. On the liberal side of this issue, see Gordon Graham, “Mystery or Mumbo-Jumbo?” Philosophical Investigations 7 (October 1984): 281–94; for a conservative view, see Vernon Grounds, “The Postulate of Paradox,” Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society 7 (September 1974): 3–21.
6. Ibid., 22.
7. Ibid., 189.
8. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York: Harvest, 1984), 228.
9. Tertullian, The Anti-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1963), 525. See also Bernard Williams, “Tertullian’s Paradox,” New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Antony Flew and Alasdair Macintyre (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 190.
10. Gordon Graham, “Mystery or Mumbo-Jumbo?” Philosophical Investigations 7 (October 1984): 284ff.
11. Steven D. Boyer and Christopher A. Hall, The Mystery of God: Theology for Knowing the Unknowable (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2012), 161.
12. Graham, “Mystery or Mumbo-Jumbo?” 286.
13. Ibid., 288–89.
14. Boyer and Hall, Mystery of God, 161.
15. Anselm’s Prologion, quoted in Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Historical Theology: An Introduction (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1978), 172.
Chapter 22: Simplicity and Complexity
1. Along with naive realism and critical realism, postmodernism is called “creative anti-realism,” but this term seems overly complicated for this discussion. For a readable explanation of all three views, see David K. Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002), 321–25.
2. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press, 1970). See especially chapter 10, “Revolutions as Changes in Worldview.”
3. T. F. Torrance, Reality and Evangelical Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982), 41.
4. Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), 45–64. Newbigin offers a readable, concise overview of Polyani’s work.
5. Paul Hiebert, Missiological Implications of Epistemological Shifts: Affirming Truth in a Modern/Postmodern World (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press, 1999), 69.
6. Naugle, Worldview, 322.
7. Parker Palmer, The Promise of Paradox: A Celebration of Contradictions in the Christian Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980), 2.
8. Ibid.
1. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 88.
2. Ibid., 45.
3. Ibid., 34.
4. Diogenes Allen, Philosophy for Understanding Theology (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), 58–59.
5. Ibid.
6. Gunther Bornkamm, “Mysterion,” in Gerhard Kittle and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1977), 814.
7. Walter Bauer et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979), 532.
8. Louis Bouyer, The Christian Mystery (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1989), 15.
9. Bornkamm, “Mysterion,” 820.
10. Quoted in John Macquarrie, Thinking about God (London: SCM Press, 1975), 28.
11. Allen, Philosophy for Understanding Theology, 49.
12. Michael Foster, Mystery and Philosophy (London: SCM Press, 1957), 20.
13. Quoted in Macquarrie, Thinking about God, 32.
14. Ibid., 29. See also Allen, Philosophy for Understanding Theology, 265–70, who describes how Wittgenstein later changed his position.
15. Foster, Mystery and Philosophy, 46.
16. Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992), 20.
17. Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2012), 240. Peterson makes his statement in relation to the mystery of the cross, but I believe it holds true for all Christian mystery.
18. Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004), 6.
19. Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), 91.
20. Bornkamm, “Mysterion,” 803.
21. Macquarrie, Thinking about God, 34.
22. George B. Hall, “D. M. Baillie: A Theology of Paradox,” in Christ, Church and Society: Essays on John Baillie and Donald Baillie, ed. David A. S. Ferguson (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1993), 85.
1. L. Michael Ascher, “Therapeutic Paradox: A Primer,” in Therapeutic Paradox, ed. L. Michael Ascher (New York: Guilford Press, 1989), 6.
2. Keith E. Webb, The COACH Model for Christian Leaders (Lexington, Ky.: Active Results, 2012), 72.
1. The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Part I, Book of Confessions (Louisville: Office of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church [USA], 2002), 5.004.
2. D. M. Baillie, God Was in Christ (London: Faber, 1948), 114. See also George B. Hall, “D. M. Baillie: A Theology of Paradox,” in Christ, Church and Society: Essays on John Baillie and Donald Baillie, ed. David A. S. Ferguson (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1993), 77.
3. Ibid., 82.
4. Walter Isaacson, “In Search of the Real Bill Gates,” Time (January 13, 1997), 51.
5. John Jefferson Davis, Foundations for Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1984), 125.
6. Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008), 150.
7. Dave Goetz, “Reaching the Happy Thinking Pagan,” Leadership Journal (Spring 1995): 25.
8. Roger Hazelton, “The Nature of Christian Paradox,” Theology Today 6 (October 1949): 44.