Notes

Chapter 1 Introducing Narrative Apologetics

. Ursula K. Le Guin, Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction (New York: Berkley, 1982), 22.

. For the accessibility and imaginative stimulus of the Gospel narratives for children, see Melody R. Briggs, How Children Read Biblical Narrative: An Investigation of Children’s Readings of the Gospel of Luke (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017).

. Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (London: Virago, 2005), 203.

. See, for example, Margaret R. Somers, “The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach,” Theory and Society 23 (1994): 605–49; Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps, “Narrating the Self,” Annual Review of Anthropology 25 (1996): 19–43; Crystal L. Park, “Religion as a Meaning-Making Framework in Coping with Life Stress,” Journal of Social Issues 61, no. 4 (2005): 707–29; Joshua A. Hicks and Laura A. King, “Meaning in Life and Seeing the Big Picture: Positive Affect and Global Focus,” Cognition and Emotion 21, no. 7 (2007): 1577–84; Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). My focus in this book is on the narrative quality of human experience and existence, rather than on narrative as a literary genre.

. Edmund Arens, “‘Wer kann die großen Taten des Herrn erzählen?’ (Ps 106, 2): Die Erzählstruktur christlichen Glaubens in systematischer Perspektive,” in Erzählter Glaube—Erzählende Kirche, ed. Rolf Zerfass, 13–27 (Freiburg: Herder, 1988); my translation.

. John Stephens and Robyn McCallum, Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Children’s Literature (New York: Garland, 1998), 3–23.

. Stephen Crites, “The Narrative Quality of Experience,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 39, no. 3 (1971): 291–311; Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, eds., Memory, Identity, Community: The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997).

. Jeffry R. Halverson, H. L. Goodall, and Steven R. Corman, “What Is a Master Narrative?,” in Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, 11–26 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

. For this phrase, see Stanley E. Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 147–74.

. Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel, 2nd ed. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2002), 61–62.

. Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 23.

. Gilbert Meilaender, “Theology in Stories: C. S. Lewis and the Narrative Quality of Experience,” Word and World 1, no. 3 (1981): 222–30.

. Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006), 29–69.

. Gwilym H. Jones, The Nathan Narratives (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 93–118.

. For the influence of the Enlightenment on the emergence of evangelicalism, see David W. Bebbington, “Evangelical Christianity and Modernism,” Crux 26, no. 2 (1990): 1–9.

. This concern is noted in Donald G. Bloesch, “Evangelical Rationalism and Propositional Revelation,” Reformed Review 51, no. 3 (1998): 169–81. Although Bloesch sees Carl F. H. Henry (1913–2003) as an important influence in sidelining the narrative aspects of the Bible, caution needs to be exercised at this point, as noted by Chad Owen Brand, “Is Carl Henry a Modernist? Rationalism and Foundationalism in Post-War Evangelical Theology,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 8, no. 4 (2004): 44–60.

. J. I. Packer, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God (London: Inter-Varsity, 1958), 101–14.

. For an excellent defense of this point, see Gunda Schneider-Flume, “Die vielen Geschichten der biblischen Tradition und die eine Geschichte Gottes: Zur Frage nach Einheit und Mitte der Schrift,” in Dogmatik erzählen? Die Bedeutung des Erzählens für eine biblisch orientierte Dogmatik, ed. Gunda Schneider-Flume and Doris Hiller, 31–50 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2005).

. For possible ways of integrating such multiple narratives, see Tom Billington, “Constructing Critical Resources for Research and Professional Practice with Young People: Feeling, Thinking, Learning, and Neuroscientific Narratives,” Qualitative Research in Psychology 10 (2013): 174–88.

. Christian Smith, Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 63–94.

. Alister E. McGrath, Enriching Our Vision of Reality: Theology and the Natural Sciences in Dialogue (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2017). More specifically, see Alister E. McGrath, “Narratives of Significance: Reflections on the Engagement of Anthropology and Christian Theology,” in Theologically Engaged Anthropology: Social Anthropology and Theology in Conversation, ed. J. Derrick Lemons, 123–39 (New York: Oxford University Press), 2018.

. Stanley Hauerwas, “On Keeping Ethics Theological,” in Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society, 23–50 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992).

. Stanley Hauerwas, In Good Company: The Church as Polis (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 41.

. Stanley Hauerwas, “The Demands of a Truthful Story: Ethics and the Pastoral Task,” Chicago Studies 21, no. 1 (1982): 59–71.

. Michael Goldberg, Theology and Narrative: A Critical Introduction (Nashville: Abingdon, 1982), 35 (my emphasis).

. Goldberg, Theology and Narrative, 35 (emphasis in original).

. Timothy P. Burt, “Homogenising the Rainfall Record at Durham for the 1870s,” Hydrological Sciences Journal 54, no. 1 (2009): 199–209.

. J. R. de Laeter et al., “Atomic Weights of the Elements: Review 2000 (IUPAC Technical Report),” Pure and Applied Chemistry 75, no. 6 (2003): 683–800.

. Alister E. McGrath, C. S. Lewis—A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2013), 351–52.

. For some helpful perspectives, see Craig van Gelder, “From the Modern to the Postmodern in the West: Viewing the Twentieth Century in Perspective,” Word & World 20, no. 1 (2000): 32–40.

. For the impact of this development on religious belief, see Christian Smith and Brandon Vaidyanathan, “Multiple Modernities and Religion,” in Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity, ed. Chad Meister, 250–65 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

. This does not mean that it is no longer important to affirm the truthfulness of the Christian faith; it is rather to recognize that this is no longer the primary question that preoccupies many in Western culture.

. Alister E. McGrath, Mere Apologetics: How to Help Seekers and Skeptics Find Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011), 13–25.

. John Gray, Seven Types of Atheism (London: Penguin, 2018), 9–10.

. Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1946), xiv.

. Karl Barth, Table Talk, ed. J. D. Godsey (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1963), 62.

. On this theme, see Alister E. McGrath, Mere Discipleship: Growing in Wisdom and Hope (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019).

. These three Greek words are difficult to translate into English but roughly mean “reason.”

. Krista C. McCormack, “Ethos, Pathos, and Logos: The Benefits of Aristotelian Rhetoric in the Courtroom,” Washington University Jurisprudence Review 7, no. 1 (2014): 131–55.

. Note the very limited use made of narrative in Plato: Stephen Halliwell, “The Theory and Practice of Narrative in Plato,” in Narratology and Interpretation: The Content of Narrative Form in Ancient Literature, ed. Jonas Grethlein and Antonios Rengakos, 15–41 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009).

. Peter T. Struck, “The Invention of Mythic Truth in Antiquity,” in Antike Mythen: Medien, Transformationen und Konstruktionen, ed. Ueli Dill and Christine Walde, 25–37 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009).

. Robert L. Fowler, “Mythos and Logos,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 131 (2011): 45–66.

. Austin Farrer, “The Christian Apologist,” in Light on C. S. Lewis, ed. Jocelyn Gibb, 23–43 (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1965), here 26.

. Ian James Kidd, “Epistemic Vices in Public Debate: The Case of ‘New Atheism,’” in New Atheism: Critical Perspectives and Contemporary Debates, ed. Christopher Cotter, Philip Quadrio, and Jonathan Tuckett, 51–68 (Dordrecht: Springer Verlag, 2017).

. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve, 2007), 5.

. Drusilla Scott, Everyman Revived: The Common Sense of Michael Polanyi (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 60.

. For discussion, see Alister E. McGrath, “An Enhanced Vision of Rationality: C. S. Lewis on the Reasonableness of Christian Faith,” Theology 116, no. 6 (2013): 410–17.

. C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?,” in Essay Collection (London: Collins, 2000), 21.

. Mark Bevir, “Narrative as a Form of Explanation,” Disputatio 9 (2000): 10–18. For the role of narrative explanations in the natural sciences, see Stephen P. Norris, Sandra M. Guilbert, Martha L. Smith, Shahram Hakimelahi, and Linda M. Phillips, “A Theoretical Framework for Narrative Explanation in Science,” Science Education 89, no. 4 (2005): 535–63.

. J. David Velleman, “Narrative Explanation,” Philosophical Review 112, no. 1 (2003): 1–25, here 1. More generally, see Ismay Barwell, “Understanding Narratives and Narrative Understanding,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67, no. 1 (2009): 49–59.

. Noël Carroll, “On the Narrative Connection,” in New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective, ed. Willie van Peer and Seymour B. Chatman, 21–41 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001).

. Wesley C. Salmon, Causality and Explanation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 320–29.

. See Anya Plutynski, “Explanatory Unification and the Early Synthesis,” British Journal for Philosophy of Science 56 (2005): 595–609; Rebecca Schweder, “A Defense of a Unificationist Theory of Explanation,” Foundations of Science 10 (2005): 421–35.

. See the early study of Stephen J. Read, “Constructing Accounts: The Role of Explanatory Coherence,” in Explaining Oneself to Others: Reason Giving in a Social Context, ed. M. L. McLaughlin, M. J. Cody, and S. J. Read, 3–19 (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1992).

. Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here? (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018), 257.

. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 197.

. Michael F. Steger, “Meaning in Life,” in Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology, ed. Shane J. Lopez, 679–87 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

. Robert A. Emmons, The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns: Motivation and Spirituality in Personality (New York: Guilford Press, 1999).

. See, for example, Joshua Seachris, “The Meaning of Life as Narrative: A New Proposal for Interpreting Philosophy’s ‘Primary’ Question,” Philo 12, no. 1 (2009): 5–23.

. W. V. O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951), 20–46.

. G. K. Chesterton, “The Return of the Angels,” Daily News, March 14, 1903.

. Chesterton, “Return of the Angels.”

. See Alister E. McGrath, “The Privileging of Vision: Lewis’s Metaphors of Light, Sun, and Sight,” in The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis, 83–104 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

. C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, October 18, 1931, in The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, 3 vols., ed. Walter Hooper (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2004–6), 1:977.

. Michael Bamberg, “Who Am I? Narration and Its Contribution to Self and Identity,” Theory & Psychology 21, no. 1 (2011): 3–24.

. Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, eds., Memory, Identity, Community: The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997).

. Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 87–116.

. Joseph Henderson, “Ancient Myth and Modern Man,” in Carl G. Jung, Man and His Symbols, 104–57 (New York: Doubleday, 1964).

. Joseph Campbell and Bill D. Moyers, The Power of Myth (New York: Doubleday, 1988).

. Stuart Voytilla, Myth and the Movies: Discovering the Mythic Structure of 50 Unforgettable Films (Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 1999).

. J. R. R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf (London: HarperCollins, 2001), 56.

. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, 71–72.

. Alister E. McGrath, “The Enigma of Autobiography: Critical Reflections on Surprised by Joy,” in The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis, 7–30 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

. McGrath, C. S. Lewis—A Life, 146–51.

. C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, October 18, 1931, in Collected Letters, 1:977.

. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, October 18, 1931, in Collected Letters, 1:977.

. Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 47–140.

. Eric Csapo, Theories of Mythology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 292–93.

. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” in Essay Collection, 142.

Chapter 2 The Theological Foundations of Narrative Apologetics

. N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 41–42.

. See, for example, George W. Stroup, The Promise of Narrative Theology: Recovering the Gospel in the Church (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981).

. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation (New York: Macmillan, 1960), 43–90.

. Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation, 43.

. Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation, 47–48.

. Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation, 45.

. Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation, 59–60.

. Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation, 90.

. Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation, 93.

. Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation, 109.

. Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation, 110–12.

. Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation, 120.

. Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation, 125.

. Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation, 126.

. Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation, 38–39.

. Niebuhr, Meaning of Revelation, 93.

. See Gordon E. Michaelson Jr., “Theology, Historical Knowledge, and the Contingency-Necessity Distinction,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (1983): 87–98, with especial reference to the view of the leading Enlightenment writer G. E. Lessing that the “contingent truths of history can never become the proof of the necessary truths of reason.”

. Two seminal German articles should be noted, both in the same edition of the journal Concilium: Harald Weinrich, “Narrative Theologie,” Concilium 9 (1973): 329–34; and Jean-Baptiste Metz, “Kleine Apologie des Erzählens,” Concilium 9 (1973): 334–42. German-speaking theology has developed this idea in its own distinct manner: see, for example, Gunda Schneider-Flume and Doris Hiller, eds., Dogmatik erzählen? Die Bedeutung des Erzählens für eine biblisch orientierte Dogmatik (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2005). My discussion in this work draws primarily on English-language scholarship.

. Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Biblical Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 51–65. Note especially Frei’s comments on prevalent perceptions about the relation of myth and narrative (267–81).

. Frei, Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 15–16.

. See the important analysis in Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).

. Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Towards a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 67.

. These are set out clearly in David K. Clark, “Narrative Theology and Apologetics,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 36 (1993): 499–515.

. This issue was discussed extensively at the 1995 Wheaton College Theology Conference: “Evangelicals and Postliberals in Conversation.” For my contribution to this conference, see Alister E. McGrath, “An Evangelical Evaluation of Postliberalism,” in The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals & Postliberals in Conversation, ed. Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Okholm, 23–44 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996).

. Donald G. Bloesch, “Evangelical Rationalism and Propositional Revelation,” Reformed Review 51, no. 3 (1998): 173.

. A good starting point is N. T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2013). For a different approach, see Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005).

. C. S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 265.

. Gary Comstock, “Truth or Meaning: Ricoeur versus Frei on Biblical Narrative,” Journal of Religion 66, no. 2 (1986): 117–41. See also Gary Comstock, “Two Types of Narrative Theology,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 55, no. 4 (1987): 687–717.

. Edward T. Oakes, “Apologetics and the Pathos of Narrative Theology,” Journal of Religion 72, no. 1 (1992): 37–58.

. As noted by Comstock, “Truth or Meaning.”

. See the points made by David K. Clark, “Narrative Theology and Apologetics,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 36 (1993): 499–515. For some evangelical concerns about narrative theology, see Carl F. H. Henry, “Narrative Theology: An Evangelical Appraisal,” Trinity Journal 8, no 1 (1987): 3–19.

. Alasdair C. MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (London: Duckworth, 1988), 350.

. L. Gregory Jones, “Rhetoric, Narrative, and the Rhetoric of Narratives: Exploring the Turns to Narrative in Recent Thought and Discourses,” Issues in Integrative Studies 11 (1993): 7–25.

. For some recent examples of this approach, see Adam Sparks, “The Fulfilment Theology of Jean Daniélou, Karl Rahner and Jacques Dupuis,” New Blackfriars 89 (2008): 633–56.

. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), xxvi–xxv.

. See Merold Westphal, Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), xi–xvii. For a more expansive response to this issue, see the excellent study of James K. A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), esp. 59–79.

. Frances Young, “Augustine’s Hermeneutics and Postmodern Criticism,” Interpretation 58, no. 1 (2004): 42–55.

. J. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, 23.

. See Alister E. McGrath, The Territories of Human Reason: Science and Theology in an Age of Multiple Rationalities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). This work echoes some of the themes found in Karl-Otto Apel and Matthias Kettner, eds., Die eine Vernunft und die vielen Rationalitäten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996).

. An ideology can be understood as an “attempt to represent the universal from the particular point of view of the dominant class” in such a way that this artificial social construction seems eminently reasonable and natural; see Claude Lefort, The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), 200.

. Michael S. Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 17.

. J. R. R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf (London: HarperCollins, 2001), 56. See further Verlyn Flieger, Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World (Kent, OH: Kent State University, 2002).

. Richard L. Purtill, J. R. R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality, and Religion (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003), 16–44.

. C. S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” in Essay Collection (London: Collins, 2000), 142.

. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?,” in Essay Collection, 16.

. Ragner Holte, “Logos Spermatikos: Christianity and Ancient Philosophy according to St. Justin’s Apologies,” Studia Theologica 12, no. 1 (1958): 109–68. More recently, see Mark J. Edwards, Image, Word, and God in the Early Christian Centuries (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013).

. Fabienne Claire Caland, “Le mythos spermatikos,” in Horizons du mythe, ed. Denise Brassard and Fabienne Claire Caland, 7–32 (Montréal: Cahiers du CELAT, 2007).

. Dorothy L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker (London: Methuen, 1941), 15–24. For comment, see Alister E. McGrath, Mere Discipleship: Growing in Wisdom and Hope (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), 73–84.

. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 172–73.

. Lewis, “The Seeing Eye,” in Essay Collection, 59.

. For a good example, see Cecilia Bosticco and Teresa L. Thompson, “Narratives and Story-Telling in Coping with Grief and Bereavement,” Omega 51, no. 1 (2005): 1–16.

. For two of the best, see Timothy Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (New York: Dutton, 2013); Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010). Stump’s criticism of technocratic philosophical approaches to suffering, which lack any sense of feeling with the subject, led her to explore narrative approaches as a way of reconnecting with real life, rather than getting lost in the technical abstractions and probabilistic algorithms that have become increasingly prominent in recent philosophical considerations of the problem of suffering.

. For a good overview, see Peter J. Kreeft, Making Sense out of Suffering (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant, 1986).

. G. R. Evans, Augustine on Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

. Ellen M. Ross, The Grief of God: Images of the Suffering Jesus in Late Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 91.

. Ann Loades, “C. S. Lewis: Grief Observed, Rationality Abandoned, Faith Regained,” Literature and Theology 3 (1989): 107–21.

. C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 44.

. Lewis, Grief Observed, 44.

. Keller, Walking with God, 58.

Chapter 3 The Practical Application of Narrative Apologetics

. Melody R. Briggs, How Children Read Biblical Narrative: An Investigation of Children’s Readings of the Gospel of Luke (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017), 33–52.

. C. S. Lewis, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to Be Said,” in Essay Collection (London: Collins, 2000), 527–28.

. Gilbert Meilaender, “Theology in Stories: C. S. Lewis and the Narrative Quality of Experience,” Word and World 1, no. 3 (1981): 228.

. Rowan D. Williams, The Lion’s World: A Journey into the Heart of Narnia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 27.

. Paul K. Moser, The Evidence for God: Religious Knowledge Reexamined (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 33–37.

. C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?,” “Myth Became Fact,” and “On Stories,” in Essay Collection, 10–21, 138–42, 491–504.

. This is not an entirely reliable interpretation of Feuerbach. It rests on George Eliot’s translation of Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity (1841), which renders his German term Vergegenstandigung as “projection,” where a more helpful translation would be “objectification.” See Max W. Wartofsky, Feuerbach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 206–10.

. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961), 30.

. Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 130.

. Sigmund Freud, Complete Psychological Works, 24 vols. (London: Vintage, 2001), 11:123.

. See his “Biographical Critique of Freud’s Atheism,” in Paul C. Vitz, Sigmund Freud’s Christian Unconscious (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 207–22.

. C. S. Lewis to Nancy Warner, October 26, 1963, in The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, 3 vols., ed. Walter Hooper (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2004–6), 3:1472.

. C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 143.

. See D. Francois Tolmie, “Salvation as Redemption: The Use of ‘Redemption’ Metaphors in Pauline Literature,” in Salvation in the New Testament: Perspectives on Soteriology, ed. Jan G. van der Watt, 247–69 (Leiden: Brill, 2005). See also Brenda B. Colijn, Images of Salvation in the New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010), 124–74.

. Tolmie, “Salvation as Redemption,” 262–66.

. I discuss this and related analogies in Alister E. McGrath, Mere Apologetics: How to Help Seekers and Skeptics Find Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011), 128–30.

. For this theme in Calvin, see J. Todd Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 42–64.

. Roger Scruton, The Face of God: The Gifford Lectures 2010 (London: Continuum, 2014), 45.

. For an excellent account of this development, see Frances M. Young and Andrew Teal, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and Its Background, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010).

. This was the famous view of Wilhelm Nestle, Vom Mythos zum Logos: Die Selbstentfaltung des griechischen Denkens von Homer bis auf die Sophistik und Sokrates, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1942). For an overdue corrective to the simplifications of Nestle’s approach, see Robert L. Fowler, “Mythos and Logos,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 131 (2011): 45–66.

. Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, 6th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), 207–24.

. Dorothy L. Sayers, Creed or Chaos? (London: Methuen, 1947), 32–35.

. C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 65.

. See Williams, Lion’s World, 49–73.

. Lewis, “The Grand Miracle,” in Essay Collection, 3–9.

. Lewis, “The Grand Miracle,” in Essay Collection, 4.

. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation (New York: Macmillan, 1960), 123–24.

. Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here? (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018), 271.

. R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 79.

. John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (London: Granta, 2002), 29.

. Gray, Straw Dogs, 14.

. Rowan Williams, interview by Jeremy Paxman, Newsnight, BBC Two, September 15, 2009, quoted in Andrew Goddard, Rowan Williams: His Legacy (Oxford: Lion, 2013), 254.

. Stanley Hauerwas and David Burrell, “From System to Story: An Alternative Pattern for Rationality in Ethics,” in The Roots of Ethics: Science, Religion, and Values, ed. Daniel Callahan and H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr., 75–116 (New York: Plenum, 1981).

. For the narrational aspects of this passage, see David J. Southall, Rediscovering Righteousness in Romans: Personified Dikaiosynē within Metaphoric and Narratorial Settings (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 113–47.

. Mark Roseman, The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution (London: Penguin, 2003).

. George Steiner, Language and Silence: Essays 1958–1966 (London: Faber, 1967), 15.

. For the story, see The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer, trans. Jesse L. Byock (London: Penguin, 1999), 63–65.

. C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 105.

. Lewis, Voyage of the “Dawn Treader,” 123.

Chapter 4 Biblical Narratives

. For a good introduction, see N. T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2013).

. The issues are ably summarized in Joel Edmund Anderson, “A Narrative Reading of Solomon’s Execution of Joab in 1 Kings 1–2: Letting Story Interpret Story,” Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament 1, no. 1 (2012): 43–62. The “Succession narrative” is generally held to consist of the extended block of text from 2 Samuel 9 to 1 Kings 2.

. See especially the important analysis of the role of narrative in Paul’s understanding of the gospel: N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (London: SPCK, 2013), 475–85. For a critical assessment of this approach, see Joel R. White, “N. T. Wright’s Narrative Approach,” in God and the Faithfulness of Paul: A Critical Examination of the Pauline Theology of N. T. Wright, ed. Christoph Heilig, J. Thomas Hewitt, and Michael F. Bird, 181–206 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016).

. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 4th ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), §115.

. David Egan, “Pictures in Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy,” Philosophical Investigations 34, no. 1 (2011): 55–76.

. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), 25.

. See the important essay in Gordon P. Baker, Wittgenstein’s Method: Neglected Aspects; Essays on Wittgenstein (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 260–78.

. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 34–35.

. See the rich collection of material gathered in Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider, and William H. C. Propp, eds., Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture and Geoscience (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2015). A case can be made for the exodus dating to the thirteenth century BC during the Ramesside Period.

. Cf. Josh. 24:17: “It is the LORD our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed.” For further discussion, see Brad E. Kelle, Telling the Old Testament Story: God’s Mission and God’s People (Nashville: Abingdon, 2017).

. Nathalie LaCoste, “Writing the Exodus in Egypt: The Role of Place in Shaping Jewish Narratives,” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 25, no. 4 (2016): 274–98.

. Frances M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 140–60.

. Michael Cameron, “Augustine and Scripture,” in A Companion to Augustine, ed. Mark Vessey, 200–214 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2012).

. John Chrysostom, Catacheses 3.24.

. For the original text of this sermon, see https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/draft-chapter-viii-death-evil-upon-seashore.

. Mary Midgley, The Myths We Live By (London: Routledge, 2004), 26–28.

. See Louis Pojman, Who Are We? Theories of Human Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Jonathan Jong and Aku Visala, “Three Quests for Human Nature: Some Philosophical Reflections,” Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences 1, no. 2 (2014): 146–71.

. See, for example, Scott M. Langston, Exodus through the Centuries (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 126–58; Tremper Longman, How to Read Exodus (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009), 143–74.

. See Avraham Faust, “Deportation and Demography in Sixth-Century BCE Judah,” in Interpreting Exile: Displacement and Deportation in Biblical and Modern Contexts, ed. Brad E. Kelle, Frank Ritchel Ames, and Jacob L. Wright, 91–104 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011); Jonathan Stökl and Caroline Waerzeggers, eds., Exile and Return: The Babylonian Context (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015).

. See especially Rainer Albertz, Israel in Exile: The History and Literature of the Sixth Century B.C.E. (Leiden: Brill, 2004).

. David M. Carr, “Jerusalem’s Destruction and Babylonian Exile,” in Holy Resilience: The Bible’s Traumatic Origins, ed. David M. Carr, 67–90 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).

. Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), 33–34.

. Blaise Pascal, Pensées (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003), 61 (no. 205).

. G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles (London: Methuen, 1909), 209.

. “Riders on the Storm,” on The Doors, LA Woman, Elektra K 42090, LP, 1971.

. The historical records, of course, suggest that many of the exiles chose to stay in Babylon after Cyrus permitted them to return home.

. For the history of Babylon as a literary trope, see Andrew P. Scheil, Babylon under Western Eyes: A Study of Allusion and Myth (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 195–294.

. Rikki Watts and David Pao see an “Isaianic new exodus” as a central motif of the Gospel of Mark and Acts, respectively; these seem to me to be overinterpretations of the biblical material. See Rikki E. Watts, Isaiah’s New Exodus and Mark (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997); David W. Pao, Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2000). There seems, however, good reason to suggest that Jesus is depicted as the messianic herald of Isaiah 52:7 or 61:1 at points: see R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 90–91.

. For detailed comment, see G. Walter Hansen, The Letter to the Philippians, Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 267–77.

. Hansen, Letter to the Philippians, 1–6.

. Epistle to Diognetus, 5. This letter probably dates from the second century.

. For the text and theological comment, see Alister E. McGrath, Theology: The Basic Readings (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), 210–12.

. Alister E. McGrath, “Reason, Experience, and Imagination: Lewis’s Apologetic Method,” in The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis, 129–46 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 136–37.

. Alister E. McGrath, “Arrows of Joy: Lewis’s Argument from Desire,” in The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis, 105–28 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

. C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (London: HarperCollins, 2004), 171.

. Emil Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung: Sechs Vorlesungen über das christliche Wahrheitsverständnis (Zürich: Zwingli-Verlag, 1938), 34. For comment, see Alister E. McGrath, Emil Brunner: A Reappraisal (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 166–69.

. Brunner, Wahrheit als Begegnung, 105.

. See especially Brian J. Wright, Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus: A Window into Early Christian Reading Practices (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017).

. For good discussions of this question, see Larry W. Hurtado, Why on Earth Did Anyone Become a Christian in the First Three Centuries? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2016), 46–108; Bart D. Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), 105–30.

. John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), 174.

. See, for example, the points made in Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, In the Footsteps of Christ: Hans Memling’s Passion Narratives and the Devotional Imagination in the Early Modern Netherlands (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013).

. Klyne Snodgrass, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 2.

. Leander E. Keck, A Future for the Historical Jesus: The Place of Jesus in Preaching and Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 245–47.

. David Stern, Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 103–14.

. Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 205, 227.

. For discussion, see Robert F. Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 113–23; Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 248–60.

. C. S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” in Essay Collection (London: Collins, 2000), 140.

. See, for example, John Haldane, “Philosophy, the Restless Heart, and the Meaning of Theism,” Ratio 19, no. 4 (2006): 421–40. For the importance of this theme in preaching, see the classic work of John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2011).

. See the helpful discussion of the “intuitions of the heart” in James R. Peters, The Logic of the Heart: Augustine, Pascal, and the Rationality of Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 10, 16.

. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 26–27.

. Jeffrey Bilbro, “Phantastical Regress: The Return of Desire and Deed in Phantastes and The Pilgrim’s Regress,” Mythlore 28 (2010): 21–37.

. C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1950), 10.

. Lewis, Pilgrim’s Regress, 10.

. Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004); idem, Home (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008). For an excellent discussion, see Alison Jack, “Barth’s Reading of the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead: Exploring Christlikeness and Homecoming in the Novel,” Literature and Theology 32, no. 1 (2018): 100–116.

Chapter 5 Strategies and Criteria for Narrative Apologetics

. This second approach is explored in Brian Godawa, Word Pictures: Knowing God through Story & Imagination (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009).

. See Rick Busselle and Helena Bilandzic, “Fictionality and Perceived Realism in Experiencing Stories: A Model of Narrative Comprehension and Engagement,” Communication Theory 18, no. 2 (2008): 255–80.

. C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” in Essay Collection (London: Collins, 2000), 99.

. The view of Karl Barth. For the development of this argument, see Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2001).

. See Charles Taylor, “The Church Speaks—to Whom?,” in Church and People: Disjunctions in a Secular Age, ed. Charles Taylor, Jose Casanova, and George F. McLean, 17–24 (Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2012). For Taylor’s relevance to apologetics and the ministry of the churches, see James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014).

. Sam Keyes, “How (Not) to Be Secular – A Review,” Bethinking, accessed September 25, 2018, https://www.bethinking.org/culture/how-not-to-be-secular-review.

. J. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular, 62.

. Robert Wuthnow, After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 3–9.

. Tomáš Halík, Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us (New York: Doubleday, 2009), 77. The English translation of this title unfortunately fails to pick up the nuances of the original Czech, Vzdáleným na blízku (To stand by the distant).

. Halík, Patience with God, 9. See further Tomáš Halík, “Church for the Seekers,” in A Czech Perspective on Faith in a Secular Age, ed. Tomáš Halík and Pavel Hošek, 127–33 (Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2015).

. Oliver O’Donovan, The Ways of Judgment: The Bampton Lectures, 2003 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), xiii.

. O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, xiii.

. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 249.

. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 249.

. J. R. R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf (London: HarperCollins, 2001), 71–72.

. Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 81. MacIntyre attributes this approach to Dante.

. For “progress as incorporation” in the development of scientific theories, see John Losee, Theories of Scientific Progress: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2004), 5–61. For unificationism as a form of scientific explanation, see Sorin Bangu, “Scientific Explanation and Understanding: Unificationism Reconsidered,” European Journal for Philosophy of Science 7, no. 1 (2017): 103–26.

. This topic is covered in standard textbooks, such as C. L. Tang, Fundamentals of Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). For some accessible reflections on the theological relevance of such developments, see John C. Polkinghorne, Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship (London: SPCK, 2007), 48–72.

. For comment, see Abraham Pais, Niels Bohr’s Times, in Physics, Philosophy and Polity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 192–96.

. See, for example, N. P. Landsman, Mathematical Topics between Classical and Quantum Mechanics (New York: Springer, 1998), 7–10; Franz Gross, Relativistic Quantum Mechanics and Field Theory (New York: Wiley, 1999), 18–22.

. Alister E. McGrath, “The Rationality of Faith: How Does Christianity Make Sense of Things?,” Philosophia Christi 18, no. 2 (2016): 395–408.

. Alister E. McGrath, “A Gleam of Divine Truth: The Concept of Myth in Lewis’s Thought,” in The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis, 55–82 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

. For analysis and comment, see Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Alister E. McGrath, The Big Question: Why We Can’t Stop Talking about Science, Faith, and God (New York: St. Martins Press, 2015); the UK edition of The Big Question was published as Inventing the Universe: Why We Can’t Stop Talking about Science, Faith and God (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015).

. Dawkins’s ridiculous vilification in The God Delusion of the atheist philosopher Michael Ruse as such an “appeaser” has been the subject of widespread derision: Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Bantam, 2006), 66–69.

. J. A. Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects (London: Longmans, Green, 1898), 1.

. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve, 2007), 47.

. Cary P. Gross and Kent A. Sepkowitz, “The Myth of the Medical Breakthrough: Smallpox, Vaccination, and Jenner Reconsidered,” International Journal of Infectious Diseases 3 (1998): 54–60.

. George M. Marsden, A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 131.

. For reflections on Shaw’s disturbing misjudgment, see Sally Peters, “Commentary: Bernard Shaw’s Dilemma; Marked by Mortality,” International Journal of Epidemiology 32, no. 6 (2003): 918–19.

. See especially Ronald L. Numbers, ed., Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

. John Gray, Seven Types of Atheism (London: Penguin, 2018), 9.

. For the historical complexities of narratives concerning science and religion, see Peter Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). One of the works that precipitated the cultural dominance of the “warfare” image was Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1896).

. For such an approach, see McGrath, The Big Question.

. See especially Gilbert Meilaender, “Theology in Stories: C. S. Lewis and the Narrative Quality of Experience,” Word and World 1, no. 3 (1981). Also relevant to this discussion are Louis Markos, Restoring Beauty: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful in the Writings of C. S. Lewis (Colorado Springs: Biblica, 2010); Michael Ward, “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best: C. S. Lewis on Imagination and Reason in Apologetics,” in Imaginative Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy, and the Catholic Tradition, ed. Andrew Davison, 59–78 (London: SCM Press, 2011).

. Christian Smith, Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 63–94.

. See especially Peter Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2004).

. Paul R. Thagard, “The Best Explanation: Criteria for Theory Choice,” Journal of Philosophy 75 (1978): 76–92; David H. Glass, “Coherence Measures and Inference to the Best Explanation,” Synthese 157 (2007): 275–96.

. C. Smith, Moral, Believing Animals, 64.

. C. Smith, Moral, Believing Animals, 87.

. Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Towards a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 9–35.

. This same basic theme is explored in both N. T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2016), and Michael S. Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 35–220.

. See, for example, Horton, Christian Faith.

. Wright, Day the Revolution Began, 74–76. These ideas are developed further in N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2014).

. Jonathan Aitken, Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed (Colorado Springs: Waterbrook, 2005), 192–211. For the wider impact of Lewis’s classic work, see George M. Marsden, C. S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity”: A Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).

. We have already noted C. S. Lewis’s attempt to facilitate the visualization of sin in The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” (see “Translation and Transposition: Visualizing Sin” in chap. 3).

. See, for example, Cecilia Bosticco and Teresa L. Thompson, “Narratives and Story-Telling in Coping with Grief and Bereavement,” Omega 51, no. 1 (2005): 1–16.

. Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (London: Penguin, 1992), 7.

. See especially Peter J. Conradi, The Saint and the Artist: A Study of the Fiction of Iris Murdoch (London: HarperCollins, 2001).

. Franco Moretti, “The Slaughterhouse of Literature,” Modern Language Quarterly 61, no. 1 (2000): 207–27.

. This is widely recognized as a core characteristic of detective fiction, which “exhibits narrative purity and intelligibility, having fully coherent stories with clear beginnings and closure at endings, in contrast to other modern fiction.” See Alan H. Goldman, “The Appeal of the Mystery,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69, no. 3 (2011): 261–72, here 263.

. See especially Dorothy L. Sayers, Les origines du roman policier (Hurstpierpoint, UK: Dorothy L. Sayers Society, 2003).

. Michael Goldberg, Theology and Narrative: A Critical Introduction (Nashville: Abingdon, 1982), 242.

. Sayers, Les origines du roman policier, 14.

. Barbara Reynolds, ed., The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: Child and Woman of Her Time (Hurstpierpoint, UK: Dorothy L. Sayers Society, 2002), 97.

. Catherine M. Kenney, The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990), 53–119.

Chapter 6 The Christian Story and the Meaning of Life

. Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (London: Vintage, 2012), 68.

. Crystal L. Park and Ian A. Gutierrez, “Global and Situational Meanings in the Context of Trauma: Relations with Psychological Well-Being,” Counselling Psychology Quarterly 26, no. 1 (2013): 8–25.

. Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas (New York: Continuum, 2003).

. Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy, 4th ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992). See further Paul T. P. Wong, “Viktor Frankl’s Meaning-Seeking Model and Positive Psychology,” in Meaning in Positive and Existential Psychology, ed. Alexander Batthyany and Pninit Russo-Netzer, 149–84 (New York: Springer, 2014).

. Joanna Collicutt McGrath, “Post-Traumatic Growth and the Origins of Early Christianity,” Mental Health, Religion and Culture 9 (2006): 291–306.

. See Karl Popper, “Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind,” Dialectica 32 (1978): 342.

. José Ortega y Gasset, “El origen deportivo del estado,” Citius, Altius, Fortius 9, no. 1–4 (1967): 259–76.

. Peter B. Medawar and Jean Medawar, The Life Science: Current Ideas of Biology (London: Wildwood House, 1977), 171.

. Peter B. Medawar, The Limits of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 76.

. Nicholas Rescher, The Limits of Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 209–10.

. Salman Rushdie, Is Nothing Sacred? The Herbert Read Memorial Lecture (Cambridge: Granta, 1990), 8–9.

. Keith Yandell, Philosophy of Religion: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, 1999), 16.

. On the importance of this point for the scientific study of religion, see Jonathan Jong, “On (Not) Defining (Non)Religion,” Science, Religion and Culture 2, no. 3 (2015): 15–24.

. For example, see William E. Paden, “Theaters of Worldmaking Behaviors: Panhuman Contexts for Comparative Religion,” in Comparing Religions: Possibilities and Perils?, ed. Thomas Idinopulos, Brian C. Wilson, and James C. Hanges, 59–76 (Leiden: Brill, 2006).

. From an evangelical perspective, see Arthur Holmes, Contours of a Christian Worldview (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983); Peter S. Heslam, Creating a Christian Worldview: Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004).

. André F. Droogers, “The World of Worldviews,” in Methods for the Study of Religious Change, ed. André F. Droogers and Anton van Harskamp, 17–42 (London: Equinox, 2014).

. Mark E. Koltko-Rivera, “The Psychology of Worldviews,” Review of General Psychology 8, no. 1 (2004): 3–58, here 4.

. On this “universal Darwinism,” see Richard Dawkins, “Darwin Triumphant: Darwinism as Universal Truth,” in A Devil’s Chaplain: Selected Essays, 78–90 (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2003).

. Mary Midgley, Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002), 17–18.

. Kristin L. Sommer, Roy F. Baumeister, and Tyler F. Stillman, “The Construction of Meaning from Life Events: Empirical Studies of Personal Narratives,” in The Human Quest for Meaning: Theories, Research, and Applications, ed. Paul T. P. Wong, 297–314 (New York: Routledge, 2012).

. For further discussion of the incarnational aspects of the “embodiment of meaning,” see Alister E. McGrath, “Christianity: The Embodiment of Meaning,” in Philosophies of Life, ed. Massimo Pigliucci, Skye Cleary, and Daniel A. Kaufman (New York: Vintage, 2019).

. Donatella Pallotti, “‘Out of Their Owne Mouths’? Conversion Narratives and English Radical Religious Practice in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of Early Modern Studies 1, no. 1 (2012): 73–95.

. Pallotti, “‘Out of Their Owne Mouths’?,” 74.

. Robert A. Emmons, The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns: Motivation and Spirituality in Personality (New York: Guilford Press, 1999). On the specific role of narratives in this process, see Dan P. McAdams, “Narrative Identity,” in Handbook of Identity Theory and Research, ed. Seth J. Schwartz, Koen Luyckx, and Vivian L. Vignoles, 99–115 (New York: Springer, 2011).

. Roy Baumeister, Meanings of Life (New York: Guilford Press, 1991), 29–57. See further Michael J. MacKenzie and Roy F. Baumeister, “Meaning in Life: Nature, Needs, and Myth,” in Meaning in Positive and Existential Psychology, ed. Alexander Batthyany and Pninit Russo-Netzer, 25–38 (New York: Springer, 2014).

. Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 68.

. Maurice S. Friedman, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue, 4th ed. (London: Routledge, 2002).

. See, e.g., Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Towards a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991).

. See especially Peter H. W. Lau, Identity and Ethics in the Book of Ruth: A Social Identity Approach (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011).

. Athena E. Gorospe, Narrative and Identity: An Ethical Reading of Exodus 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

. Raymond Carver, “Late Fragment,” in All of Us: The Collected Poems (London: Harvill Press, 1996), 294.

. Sigmund Freud, “One of the Difficulties of Psycho-Analysis,” Journal of Mental Science 67 (1921): 34–39.

. Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (London: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 3, 11.

. For a detailed discussion of Dawkins’s views, see Alister E. McGrath, Dawkins’ God: From “The Selfish Gene” to “The God Delusion,” 2nd ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014).

. Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2015), 133.

. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 21.

. Dawkins, Selfish Gene, 200–201.

. George Herbert, Works, ed. F. E. Hutchinson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1941), 184. For theological comment, see Alister E. McGrath, “The Alchemy of Grace: The Gospel and the Transformation of Reality in George Herbert’s Elixir,” in The Passionate Intellect: Christian Faith and the Discipleship of the Mind (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010), 45–55.

. See, e.g., Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. Barry Windeatt, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

. John Donne, Selected Poems (London: Penguin, 2006), 184.

. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 3.

. Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 154. A similar view is set out in Alex Rosenberg, An Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions (New York: Norton, 2011).

. Blaise Pascal, Pensées (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003), 425.

. Dawkins, Selfish Gene, vii.

. Michael S. Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 19.

. Much the same point is made in Paul’s analogy of the “body of Christ”; all members are important to its proper functioning and well-being, no matter how lowly they may seem (1 Cor. 12:12–27).

. See Alister McGrath, Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009), 159–70.

. N. T. Wright, “Faith, Virtue, Justification, and the Journey to Freedom,” in The Word Leaps the Gap: Essays on Scripture and Theology in Honor of Richard B. Hays, ed. J. Ross Wagner, C. Kavin Rowe, and A. Katherine Grieb (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 473.

. Wright, “Faith, Virtue, Justification,” 478.

. Wright, “Faith, Virtue, Justification,” 480.

. See the valuable study of G. A. Cohen, “Historical Inevitability and Human Agency in Marxism,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A 407, no. 1832 (1986): 65–87.

. Cohen, “Historical Inevitability,” 66.

. Wright, “Faith, Virtue, Justification,” 491.

Chapter 7 Handing Over

. For example, Alan H. Goldman, Aesthetic Value (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995).

. See the way of enabling children to grasp the significance of biblical narratives set out in Jerome Berryman, Godly Play: A Way of Religious Education (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 42–59.

. There is some useful material in Marijke van Vuuren, “Good Grief: Lord of the Flies as a Post-War Rewriting of Salvation History,” Literator 25, no. 2 (2004): 1–25.

. The Greek word apologia (Acts 22:1) is usually translated as “defense.” For the way in which Paul conducted such defenses in a theologically informed manner, yet within the parameters of accepted Roman legal conventions, see Bruce W. Winter, “Official Proceedings and the Forensic Speeches in Acts 24–26,” in The Book of Acts: Ancient Literary Setting, ed. Bruce W. Winter and Andrew D. Clarke, 305–36 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).

. For the various versions of this narrative and their significance, see N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2018), 41–59.

. Glen G. Scorgie, “Confrontational Apologetics versus Grace-Filled Persuasion,” Perichoresis 10, no. 1 (2012): 23–39.

. See, for example, Daniel M. Johnson and Adam C. Pelser, “Affective Apologetics: Communicating Truth through Humor, Ridicule, and Emotions,” Christian Research Journal 35, no. 6 (2012): 44–48; Adam C. Pelser, “Reasons of the Heart: Emotions in Apologetics,” Christian Research Journal 38, no. 1 (2015): 34–39.

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