1. The history of this ancient fortress city is fascinating, including what we can learn about early Christianity from it. For a general introduction from Yale University with pictures and graphics, see http://media.artgallery.yale.edu/duraeuropos/dura.html. On the house church, one recent study is Michael Peppard, The World’s Oldest Church: Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura-Europos, Syria (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), though some of Peppard’s conclusions about early Christianity are unsubstantiated. Thanks to Robert S. Kinney for first making this connection for me in Hellenistic Dimensions of the Gospel of Matthew: Background and Rhetoric, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2/414 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016).
2. C. Kavin Rowe, One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 171.
3. Peter J. Leithart, The Theopolitan Vision (West Monroe, LA: Theopolis Books, 2019), 9.
4. Nick Offerman, Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man’s Fundamentals for Delicious Living (New York: Dutton, 2013).
5. See, for example, Jack Jenkins, “‘Nones’ Now as Big as Evangelicals, Catholics in the US,” Religion News Service, https://religionnews.com/2019/03/21/nones-now-as-big-as-evangelicals-catholics-in-the-us/.
The Genius of Ancient Philosophy
1. I would like to thank various schools and people who helped me explore these ideas at various stages of their development, including Todd Billings and Kristen Deede Johnson, who invited me for lectures at Western Seminary, and Robert Yarbrough, who invited me to deliver the Bantam Lectures at Covenant Seminary.
2. Steve Martin, A Wild and Crazy Guy, Warner Brothers Records, 1978.
3. This line comes from his routine A Wild and Crazy Guy. For more on Martin’s own journey, see the delightful autobiography of his early life, Born Standing Up (New York: Scribner, 2007), in which the themes of philosophy and comedy are interwoven.
4. There is comparable wisdom to be found in the Asian traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism. My focus on Greek philosophy here is largely because of my greater familiarity with it and because of the more direct interaction between this tradition and that of the Bible and early Christianity. But the overall point I am making about Greek and Roman philosophy is patently true of the Eastern traditions as well—they are teaching a way of life that promises happiness.
5. What Is Ancient Philosophy? is the title of one of the most important books on Greek philosophy in the twentieth century, written by Pierre Hadot. Hadot shows that ancient philosophy was a way of life. The English translation of the 1995 French edition is What Is Ancient Philosophy?, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2004).
6. One of the oldest and leading academic journals that explores ancient Greek and Roman thought is appropriately called Phronesis.
7. See the summary report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/suicide/index.html.
8. See Stephen Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (New York: Penguin, 2019).
9. Darius Karłowicz, Socrates and Other Saints: Early Christian Understandings of Reason and Philosophy, trans. Artur Sebastian Rosman (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017), 66.
10. Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy?, 153. See also his book Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1995).
11. Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy?, 56.
12. Quoted in Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy?, 56–57.
13. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.1, trans. W. D. Ross, Internet Classics Archive, accessed March 10, 2020, http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html.
14. This is the image from one of the most famous passages from ancient philosophy: the cave scene from book seven of Plato’s Republic.
15. From Dante’s The Divine Comedy. This translation of the Latin is from Erich Auerbach, Dante: Poet of the Secular World, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: New York Review Books, 2007), 151.
16. This is the description used by Hadot to describe Greek philosophy. He unpacks “spiritual exercises” to mean “practices which could be physical, as in dietary regimes, or discursive, as in dialogue and meditation, or intuitive, as in contemplation, but which were all intended to effect a modification and a transformation in the subject who practiced them.” What Is Ancient Philosophy?, 6.
17. Kant, Lectures on the Philosophical Encyclopedia, quoted in Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy?, xiii.
18. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1910), 17.
19. The Good Place, season 1, episode 1, “Pilot,” aired September 19, 2016, on NBC.
The Philosophical “Big Ideas” in the Old Testament
1. A readable and informative description of Moses in synagogue art, including at Dura-Europos, can be found in Géza G. Xeravits, “The Figure of Moses in Ancient Synagogue Art,” in Mosebilder: Gedanken zur Rezeption einer literarischen Figur im Frühjudentum, frühen Christentum und der römisch-hellenistischen Literatur, ed. Michael Sommer et al., Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 390 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 415–28, accessible on the author’s page at www.academia.edu.
2. Yoram Hazony, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
3. Hazony, Philosophy, 12.
4. Hazony, Philosophy, 4.
5. Much of this discussion on knowing in Scripture is informed by several works by Dru Johnson, including Scripture’s Knowing: A Companion to Biblical Epistemology (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015); Biblical Knowing: A Scriptural Epistemology of Error (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2013); and Knowledge by Ritual: A Biblical Prolegomenon to Sacramental Theology (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016).
6. Hazony suggests that the central theme of Jeremiah is “the question of how it is possible for the individual to distinguish truth from falsity and right from wrong in the face of the wildly contradictory views being promoted by prophets, priests, and political leaders” (Philosophy, 24–25). Jeremiah’s reflections “constitute an early and substantively interesting attempt to develop a theory of knowledge” (Philosophy, 25).
7. For a more detailed exposition of this idea, see Gregory Vall, “An Epistemology of Faith: The Knowledge of God in Israel’s Prophetic Literature,” in Mary Healy and Robin A. Parry, eds., The Bible and Epistemology (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007), 30–36. My comments here are largely dependent on this insightful discussion.
8. Much more could be said on this point, including the observation that the central theme of spiritual harlotry or adultery in Hosea can also be connected with this emphasis on knowledge, via the understanding that “knowing” is already integrated with (sexual) intimacy from Gen. 4:1 on.
9. The phrase “the fear of the LORD” is very important and appears fourteen times in Proverbs, not only as the conclusion to the prologue to the book (1:1–7) but also at other important junctures in the book such as 9:10 and 31:30. See the helpful discussion in Ryan P. O’Dowd, “A Chord of Three Strands: Epistemology in Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes,” in Healy and Parry, The Bible and Epistemology, 67–68.
10. Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “Wisdom Literature,” in Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Craig G. Bartholomew, Daniel J. Treier, and N. T. Wright, eds., Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 849.
11. Garrett DeWeese has a succinct discussion of how Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes function in these ways in his book Doing Philosophy as a Christian (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2011), 55.
12. Hazony, Philosophy, 24.
13. Hazony, Philosophy, 59.
14. Hazony, Philosophy, 61.
15. Hazony, Philosophy, 61. For a helpful chart of the structure of the books of the Hebrew Bible, see Hazony, Philosophy, 35.
16. The quote and ideas here are from Hazony, Philosophy, 63. While I find Hazony’s arguments about the Hebrew Scriptures convincing, he regularly misunderstands and misrepresents Christianity as if it distorts this vision. Quite the contrary, the New Testament sees itself as the fulfillment of this same goal and vision of being a blessing to all nations (thus fulfilling the promise to Abraham) through the coming of God’s own Son, Jesus the Christ.
17. Hazony, Philosophy, 23.
18. Gary W. Moon, Becoming Dallas Willard: The Formation of a Philosopher, Teacher, and Christ Follower (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2018), 83.
19. Moon, Becoming Dallas Willard, 83.
The Philosophical “Big Ideas” in the New Testament
1. This re-creation can be found here: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a234/1282186/.
2. Joan Taylor, What Did Jesus Look Like? (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018), 123–24.
3. Taylor, What Did Jesus Look Like?, 132.
4. Taylor, What Did Jesus Look Like?, 136.
5. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings (New York: Ballantine Books, 1965), 166.
6. Seneca, Letter 108, in Selected Letters, trans. Elaine Fantham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 24.
7. Dallas Willard has explored Jesus’s intellectual prowess in his essay “Jesus the Logician,” which can be found in his book, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006).
8. We have long called these nine macarisms the “Beatitudes” because of the Latin word that is used to translate Matthew’s Greek text, beatus (pronounced “be-a-toos”). Both Matthew’s Greek word makarios and the Latin translation beatus were used when a philosopher would pronounce to his disciples the way to find true happiness. Makarios was used alongside eudaimonia in Greek philosophy as vision casting for how to live well.
9. Robert Kinney, Hellenistic Dimensions of the Gospel of Matthew (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 215.
10. Framing humanity’s sin problem as a matter of worship or love is a deeply Augustinian tradition. Helpful resources to explore this more include James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2016), and David K. Naugle, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).
A Big Emotional Debate
1. George Saunders, “Escape from Spiderhead,” New Yorker, December 13, 2010, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/20/escape-from-spiderhead. The story also appears in his collection Tenth of December: Stories (New York: Random House, 2013).
2. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (2004), s.v. “emotion.”
3. Kevin Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 404–5.
4. Vanhoozer, Remythologizing, 404.
5. Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
6. This discussion and throughout the rest of the chapter has been greatly helped by Matthew Elliott’s Faithful Feelings: Rethinking Emotion in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2006).
7. Plato, Phaedrus 246b.
8. Elliott, Faithful Feelings, 60.
9. Descartes’s The Passions of the Soul, completed in 1649, reflects the new scientific and materialistic view of the world that quickly came to dominate European understanding.
10. Elliott, Faithful Feelings, 23.
11. Marc Alan Schelske, The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2017), 25–26.
12. This discussion is informed by Elliott, Faithful Feelings, 66–69.
13. Elliott, Faithful Feelings, 63.
14. Nussbaum, Therapy, 78.
15. Ludwig Edelstein, The Meaning of Stoicism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 2, quoted in Elliott, Faithful Feelings, 76.
16. Elliott, Faithful Feelings, 76–77.
17. Nussbaum, Therapy, 96–97.
18. Elliott, Faithful Feelings, 52. The following account is based on Schelske’s discussion of Damasio in Wisdom of Your Heart, 125–28.
19. Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995), 34–51, esp. 46–51.
20. Damasio, Descartes’ Error, 51. After exploring the many possibilities of why Elliot was unable to make decisions, Dr. Damasio concludes, “I was certain that in Elliot the defect was accompanied by a reduction in emotional reactivity and feeling” (51).
21. Elizabeth Johnston and Leah Olson, The Feeling Brain: The Biology and Psychology of Emotions (New York: Norton, 2015), 308–9.
22. Elliott, Faithful Feelings, 54.
Christianity’s Sophisticated Solution
1. I cannot provide a comprehensive list of the emotions attributed to God in the Old Testament, but here are some representative examples: loving (Jer. 31:3; cf. John 3:16; 1 John 4:8); being angry (Deut. 9:22; Ps. 7:11; cf. Rom. 1:18); grieving (Gen. 6:6; Ps. 78:40); being jealous (Exod. 20:5; 34:14; Josh. 24:19); having compassion (Deut. 32:36; Judg. 2:18; Ps. 135:14).
2. For a great discussion of the history and theology of impassibility, see Kevin Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 387–433.
3. Marc Alan Schelske, The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2017), 120.
4. John Calvin, Commentarius in Harmoniam Evangelicarum, comments on Matthew 26:37, quoted in B. B. Warfield, “On the Emotional Life of Our Lord,” in The Person and Work of Christ (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1989), 93.
5. Warfield, “Emotional Life,” 93.
6. Warfield, “Emotional Life,” 139.
7. Warfield, “Emotional Life,” 141.
8. Bill Bright, Have You Made the Wonderful Discovery of the Spirit-Filled Life (1966; repr., Orlando: New Life Resources, 2005); for an online version, see https://www.cru.org/us/en/train-and-grow/spiritual-growth/the-spirit-filled-life.html.
9. Italics in Scripture quotations have been added for emphasis.
10. “What Is Stoicism? A Definition & 9 Stoic Exercises to Get You Started,” Daily Stoic, https://dailystoic.com/what-is-stoicism-a-definition-3-stoic-exercises-to-get-you-started/.
11. This translation comes from my The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), 217–18.
The Necessity of Relationships
1. Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety (New York: Random House, Modern Library, 2002), back cover.
2. From the publisher’s description for the 2007 Random House edition.
3. Stegner, Crossing to Safety, 96.
4. Terry Tempest Williams, introduction to Stegner, Crossing to Safety, xvi.
5. Roy F. Baumeister and Mark R. Leary, “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin 117.3 (1995): 497–529.
6. Baumeister and Leary, “The Need to Belong,” 497.
7. The best translation of the Moralia is found in 15 volumes of the Loeb Classical Library. The “Advice to Bride and Groom” is in Moralia, vol. 2, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt, Loeb Classical Library 222 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 299.
8. Elizabeth Brake, “Marriage and Domestic Partnership,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, winter 2016 ed., https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marriage/.
9. Cicero, On Duties, ed. M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 1.53–55, pp. 22–23.
10. According to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts website: https://www.mass.gov/service-details/why-is-massachusetts-a-commonwealth.
11. Anne Rooney, How the World Works: Philosophy from the Ancient Greeks to Great Thinkers of Modern Times (London: Sirius, 2019), 162.
12. Rooney’s discussion of Plato and Aristotle is succinct and helpful. See How the World Works, 163–66.
13. Fred Miller, “Aristotle’s Political Theory,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, winter 2017 ed., https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/.
14. Miller, “Aristotle’s Political Theory.”
15. Rooney, How the World Works, 164–65.
16. Miller, “Aristotle’s Political Theory.”
17. Lauren Faust, “My Little NON-Homophobic, NON-Racist, NON-Smart-Shaming Pony: A Rebuttal,” Ms., December 24, 2010, https://msmagazine.com/2010/12/24/my-little-non-homophobic-non-racist-non-smart-shaming-pony-a-rebuttal/.
18. J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” in The Tolkien Reader (New York: Ballantine Books, 1966), 34.
19. Vatican Saying 52; translation and discussion from John M. Rist, “Epicurus on Friendship,” Classical Philology 75, no. 2 (1980): 122.
20. As quoted and discussed in Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy (New York: Penguin, 2001), 57.
21. One particularly helpful and readable discussion of Aristotle on friendship is chapters 1 and 2 of Kevin Vost’s The Four Friendships: From Aristotle to Aquinas (New York: Angelico Press, 2018).
22. Michael Pakaluk, Other Selves: Philosophers on Friendship (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), xi.
23. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 5.31, in Lives of Eminent Philosophers: Books 1–5, trans. R. D. Hicks, Loeb Classical Library 184 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), 478–79. Craig Keener has an excellent discussion in The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 2:1004–13.
24. This is the title of the 2018 translation by Professor Philip Freeman: How to Be a Friend: An Ancient Guide to True Friendship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).
25. Philip Freeman, “How to Be a Good Friend, according to an Ancient Philosopher,” Time, October 9, 2018.
26. See “Friends Like These: On Thoreau and Emerson,” Daegan Miller’s Los Angeles Review of Books review of Jeffrey S. Cramer’s Solid Seasons: The Friendship of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/friends-like-these-on-thoreau-and-emerson/.
27. Pakaluk, Other Selves, x.
28. Wesley Hill, Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2015), 6–7.
29. Niobe Way, Deep Secrets: Boys, Friendships, and the Crisis of Connection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), discussed in Hill, Spiritual Friendship, 8–9.
30. Hill, Spiritual Friendship, 7.
31. Aimee Byrd, Why Can’t We Be Friends? Avoidance Is Not Purity (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2018). Thanks to Anna Poole Mondal for this helpful resource and summary.
32. Hill, Spiritual Friendship, 15–16.
33. Craig A. Williams, Reading Roman Friendship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 17, quoted in Hill, Spiritual Friendship, 16n4.
Christianity’s Renewed Relationships
1. For more discussion of how Matthew treats family and how this relates to soul care and therapy, see my article “Christian Psychology and the Gospel of Matthew,” Edification: The Journal of the Society of Christian Psychology 3, no. 2 (2009): 39–48.
2. Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (Altenmünster, Germany: Jazzybee Verlag, 2015).
3. Peter J. Leithart, The Theopolitan Vision (n.p.: Theopolis Books, 2019), xiii.
4. This paragraph follows Leithart, Theopolitan Vision, 14.
5. Leithart, Theopolitan Vision, 15–17.
6. Leithart, Theopolitan Vision, 11.
7. This paragraph is based on the helpful articulation of Jack Franicevich in his essay, “On Friendship,” posted at https://theopolisinstitute.com/on-friendship/, August 20, 2019. The quote from Hugh Black is found there as well.
8. Scholars regularly emphasize the kinship relationship between Ruth and Naomi, but I think it is helpful to recognize their relationship as also being an example of faithful friendship.
9. Plutarch called parrēsia the “language of friendship.” For a more thorough exploration of the term and its context, see Clarence E. Glad, Paul and Philodemus: Adaptability in Epicurean and Early Christian Psychagogy, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 81 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 104–6. Thanks to Cody King for this reference.
10. Seneca, Letter 3, “On True and False Friendship,” in Letters from a Stoic, vol. 1, trans. Richard Mott Gummere, reprinted in Seneca Six Pack: Six Essential Texts (Los Angeles: Enhanced Media, 2016), 31.
Humans, We Have a Problem
1. There has been some debate over the centuries about this statement. The times when animals appear to commit suicide is best explained as the result of severe changes that create aberrant behavior, not the psychological state that leads a person to imagine their own death. A well-researched article on this is Melissa Hogenboom, “Many Animals Seem to Kill Themselves, but It Is Not Suicide,” BBC, July 6, 2016, http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160705-many-animals-seem-to-kill-themselves-but-it-is-not-suicide.
2. Deadpool, directed by Tim Miller (Los Angeles: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2016).
3. Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (Altenmünster, Germany: Jazzybee Verlag, 2015), 211.
4. Darrin McMahon, Happiness: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007), 3.
5. Augustine, The City of God, 211.
6. For an insightful critique of the limited metaphysical vision of Harari, see Roger Scruton, “The Turing Machine Speaks: Silicon Valley Guru Yuval Noah Harari’s Chilling Post-Humanism,” City Journal (Summer 2019), https://www.city-journal.org/yuval-noah-harari.
7. Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 376.
8. Harari, Sapiens, 391.
9. Harari, Sapiens, 391.
10. Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age (New York: Free Press, 2011), xi.
11. John M. Grohol, “Mental Health Professionals: US Statistics 2017,” World of Psychology (blog), PsychCentral, April 9, 2019, https://psychcentral.com/blog/mental-health-professionals-us-statistics-2017/; Matthew Jones, “11 Billion Reasons the Self Help Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know the Truth about Happiness,” Inc., October 19, 2017, https://www.inc.com/matthew-jones/11-billion-reasons-self-help-industry-doesnt-want-you-to-know-truth-about-happiness.html; Lindsay Myers, “The Self-Help Industry Helps Itself to Billions of Dollars,” BrainBlogger, May 23, 2014, https://brainblogger.com/2014/05/23/the-self-help-industry-helps-itself-to-billions-of-dollars/.
12. This comes from Jeff Guin’s biography, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014).
13. Alain de Botton and John Armstrong, Art as Therapy (London: Phaidon, 2013), 64.
14. De Botton and Armstrong, Art as Therapy, 5.
15. “The School of Life: What We Believe,” The School of Life, accessed March 11, 2020, https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/tsol-what-we-believe/.
16. This is from the description of the seminar “Finding Meaning without Religion,” taught by Pierz Newton-John at the Melbourne, Australia, branch of the School of Life, https://www.theschooloflife.com/melbourne/events/workshops/finding-meaning-without-religion/.
17. Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion (New York: Vintage, 2012), 11–13.
18. Hector and the Search for Happiness, directed by Peter Chelsom (Los Angeles: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2014).
19. Unsigned review of Hector and the Search for Happiness, by François Lelord, trans. Lorenza Garcia, Publisher’s Weekly, accessed March 23, 2019, https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-14-311839-8.
Christianity’s Whole, Meaningful, and Flourishing Life
1. Justin, Second Apology 8.13. Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, vol. 2, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1867), 83.
2. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Karamozov Brothers, trans. Ignat Avsey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 69.
3. Augustine, City of God 19.1, in The City of God, Books XVII–XXII, trans. Gerald G. Walsh and Daniel J. Honan, The Fathers of the Church 24 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 187.
4. Darius Karłowicz, Socrates and Other Saints: Early Christian Understandings of Reason and Philosophy, trans. Artur Sebastian Rosman (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017), 48.
5. For an excellent scholarly treatment of the theme of happiness throughout the Bible, see Brent Strawn, ed., The Bible and the Pursuit of Happiness: What the Old and New Testaments Teach Us about the Good Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
6. For further exploration of the Beatitudes, the translation of happy/flourishing, and connection with Psalm 1, see my The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018).
7. True happiness depends on right knowing, and right knowing depends on trusting the right authorities. See Dru Johnson, Scripture’s Knowing: A Companion to Biblical Epistemology (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015), 16.
8. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 1–2. Piper’s discussion can be found in John Piper, Desiring God, rev. ed. (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2011), 19–20.
9. C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 65.
10. Irenaeus, Against Heresies (n.p.: Aeterna Press, 2016), 372.
11. Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart, Hope against Hope: Christian Eschatology in Contemporary Context (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1999), 83.
12. David Elliot, Hope and Christian Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 5.
13. David K. Naugle, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 13–17.
14. C. Richard Snyder, Handbook of Hope: Theory, Measures, and Applications (San Diego: Academic Press, 2000).
15. John Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and the End of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 48.
16. Polkinghorne, The God of Hope, 48–49.
17. Sara Groves, “This House,” track 6 on Fireflies and Songs, Integrity Music, 2009.