Primary Scripture

The King James Version (KJV). All Scripture quotations in this book are from the Authorized Version of 1611.

Dead Sea Scrolls Translations

Vermes, Geza. The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English. London: Penguin Books, 1997.

Wise, Michael, Martin Abegg Jr., and Edward Cook. The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996.

Historical Sources

Josephus, Flavius. Antiquities of the Jews. Book XIII, Chapter V, Section 9.

Josephus, Flavius. The Jewish War. Book VI.420 reports roughly 1.1 million dead in the siege of Jerusalem (AD 70), a figure modern historians regard as inflated; referenced in Appendix A6.

Josephus, Flavius. The Life of Flavius Josephus (Vita). Section 12, where Josephus likens the Pharisees to the Stoics — a comparison reflecting his apologetic framing for a Roman audience; referenced in Chapter 9.

Eusebius of Caesarea. Ecclesiastical History (Historia Ecclesiastica). Book 3.25 lists the disputed New Testament books (antilegomena); referenced in Chapter 26.

Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 126b. The Jewish tradition that the saliva of a firstborn son carried healing properties. Referenced in Appendix A3.

The Lineage of the Lucifer Myth

Referenced in Chapter 13’s “The Lineage of the Story” section to trace the angelic-fall narrative from Jewish apocryphal antecedents through the Patristic and medieval Christian tradition to its dominant literary form in Milton.

1 Enoch (the Book of the Watchers). Third century BC. Pre-Christian Jewish apocryphal text containing the rebellion narrative of the Watchers (Genesis 6 angels), an antecedent to the broader angelic-fall imagination though not specifically about Satan. Not in the Hebrew canon, not in the Septuagint as canonical.

2 Enoch (Slavonic Enoch). Late first century AD or after. Introduces Satanail, an archangel who falls through pride before the creation of man.

Life of Adam and Eve and Apocalypse of Moses. First century AD. Tell the story (in the Latin Life of Adam and Eve; the Greek Apocalypse of Moses lacks the episode) of Satan refusing to bow to Adam at the creation, being cast out for that refusal, turning his envy on the first couple. The proximate source of the medieval Vita Adae et Evae tradition and of the shared Near Eastern tradition behind the Islamic Iblis narrative.

Tertullian. Against Marcion. Circa 207-212 AD. Applies Ezekiel 28 (II.10) and Isaiah 14 (V.11, 17) to the devil in passing — the earliest major Christian applications of the texts Origen would later build into the angelic-fall doctrine. Referenced in Chapter 13.

Origen. De Principiis (On First Principles). Third century AD. The first to build the pre-temporal angelic fall into doctrine, welding Isaiah 14 to Ezekiel 28 — texts Tertullian had already applied to the devil in passing (Against Marcion II.10; V.11, 17). Origen’s heavy Platonism is the proximate channel through which Plato’s metaphysical assumptions entered the patristic reading of those prophetic texts. The chain from Plato to the Christian Lucifer myth runs through Origen first.

Augustine. City of God (De Civitate Dei). Books XI-XII. Fifth century AD. Systematized what Origen began. Developed the angelic-fall narrative theologically, named pride as the cause of Satan’s rebellion, and gave the doctrine the gravitas of the Bishop of Hippo. Every Western theologian after Augustine inherited this framework.

Pseudo-Dionysius. The Celestial Hierarchy. Circa 500 AD. The canonical codification of the nine angelic orders, the structure the medieval West built on. Referenced in Chapter 13.

Gregory the Great. Homilies on the Gospels and other works. Sixth century AD. Fixed the nine choirs of angels in the Latin West and placed Lucifer at the top before his fall. The hierarchical angelology Milton later inherits is Gregory’s bequest.

Caedmon’s Hymn and the Anglo-Saxon Genesis B. Seventh through tenth centuries. Put Satan’s rebellion into English-language verse a thousand years before Milton.

Vita Adae et Evae (Latin Life of Adam and Eve). Medieval Latin text circulating widely through the Middle Ages, popularizing the narrative of Satan’s pride at being asked to worship Adam.

Mystery plays of the late medieval period. Dramatized Satan’s fall for village audiences across Europe.

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, Questions 63-64. Thirteenth century. Systematized the angelic doctrine for high Scholastic theology — including the stars-as-angels reading of Revelation 12:4 (I.63.8) that Milton would later dramatize — treating Satan’s pride and fall as established Christian metaphysics. The doctrine entered every Catholic and Reformation textbook from this systematization forward.

Theological Works

Athenagoras of Athens. On the Resurrection of the Dead. Second century. An early marriage of the Platonic immortality of the soul to the Christian doctrine of bodily resurrection; engaged in Chapter 28’s objections as a candidate for the “first dogmatizing” of eternal conscious torment.

Augustine. Confessions (VII.12.18) and Enchiridion (11-14). Augustine, a Neoplatonist before his conversion, carried the Platonic axiom into Christian doctrine: evil has no substance of its own but is a privation of good (privatio boni). Engaged in Chapter 13. His Homilies on the First Epistle of John (Tractate 7.8, “Love, and do what you will”) is quoted in Chapter 21.

Aulen, Gustaf. Christus Victor. Translated by A. G. Hebert. London: SPCK, 1931. The classic study of the ransom (“Christus Victor”) theory of the atonement and its patristic dominance; referenced in Chapter 13.

Beebe, Gilbert. Editorials in Signs of the Times. Old School (Primitive) Baptist periodical, founded New Vernon, New York, 1832; Beebe edited it until his death in 1881. His editorials are collected in A Compilation of Editorial Articles Copied from the “Signs of the Times,” 7 vols. (Salisbury, MD: Welsh Tract Publications). His reading of the “angels that sinned” (2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6) as false preachers is engaged in Appendix A2.

Berkhof, Louis. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1938. The standard infralapsarian Reformed systematic; charted against the framework in Appendix I.

Bruce, F. F. The Canon of Scripture. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1988. On the Synod of Hippo (393) and Council of Carthage (397); referenced in Chapter 26.

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge. III.25.12, on the final state, is referenced in Chapter 28.

Cheung, Vincent. The Author of Sin. 2014. Essay collection by a Clarkian occasionalist; the one prior published affirmation that God is the author of sin without the author/cause hedge. Referenced in Appendix I.

Clark, Gordon H. Religion, Reason and Revelation. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1961. Clark’s axiomatic Scripturalism and his treatment of God as the cause (not author) of sin; referenced in Chapter 5 and Appendix I.

Clark, Gordon H. What Do Presbyterians Believe? The Westminster Confession: Yesterday and Today. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1965. Clark’s exposition of Westminster theology and his historic-premillennial eschatology; referenced in Appendix I.

Douma, Douglas. The Presbyterian Philosopher: The Authorized Biography of Gordon H. Clark. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2017. The documentation of Clark’s life and thought, including his unpublished Berkeleyan metaphysics; referenced in Appendices I and J.

Edwards, Jonathan. Freedom of the Will. 1754. Edwards’ defense of the compatibility of moral necessity and moral agency. Referenced in Appendix A6.

Edwards, Jonathan. Notes on the Mind. Unpublished during Edwards’ lifetime. Contains his most explicit idealist commitments.

Edwards, Jonathan. Religious Affections. 1746. Edwards’ account of the affections as the seat of true religion is the closest theological precedent to the framework’s pre-propositional reading of the feelings. Referenced in Appendix E.

Edwards, Jonathan. The End for Which God Created the World. 1765. Edwards’ idealist ontology, largely ignored by his theological heirs, is the closest historical predecessor to operational idealism. See Appendix J.

Fortner, Don. The Attributes of God. Grace Baptist Church of Danville. Fortner’s articulation of preventing-prevenient mercy. Quoted in Appendix A3’s section on prevenient grace.

Fortner, Don. Basic Bible Doctrine. Grace Baptist Church of Danville. Sovereign grace systematic with irresistible-effectual-call emphasis. Referenced in Appendix A3.

Fortner, Don. Discovering Christ Day by Day. Grace Baptist Church of Danville. Contains Fortner’s explicit two-part formulation of prevenient grace (providential grace and preparatory grace). Quoted in Appendix A3.

Fudge, Edward William. The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment. 3rd ed. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011. The standard modern statement of conditional immortality (annihilationism), arguing from the apollumi and olethros destruction texts, the consuming fire of Isaiah 66:24, and the Edom-smoke of Isaiah 34:10 behind Revelation 14:11 that the final punishment is the irreversible destruction of the whole person rather than unending conscious torment. His exegetical case is engaged in Chapter 28’s objections.

Gill, John. A Body of Doctrinal Divinity. London, 1769.

Gill, John. An Exposition of the New Testament. London, 1746-48. Gill’s forensic reading of “made sin” (2 Cor. 5:21) — Christ “made sin” by imputation, “not really and actually a sinner” — is cited in Appendix A1.

Gregory of Nyssa. On the Soul and the Resurrection. Fourth century. With Isaac of Nineveh, a source for the Eastern “river of fire” reading of hell engaged in Chapter 28.

Grudem, Wayne. Christian Ethics: An Introduction to Biblical Moral Reasoning. Wheaton: Crossway, 2018. Grudem’s termination-of-the-Mosaic-covenant framework and his Sabbath position; referenced in Appendix I.

Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Zondervan; Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994. The most widely used contemporary evangelical systematic; charted against the framework in Appendix I and referenced in Chapter 28.

Hodge, Charles. Systematic Theology. 3 vols. New York: Charles Scribner, 1871-73. The standard nineteenth-century Princeton systematic. His warning that he could not discern “a hair’s breadth” between pantheism and Edwards’s idealism (cited via Horton) is answered in Appendix J; his affirmation of common grace is engaged in Chapter 19.

Hoeksema, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1966. Protestant Reformed and supralapsarian, rejecting common grace and the well-meant offer; charted against the framework in Appendix I.

Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian). The Ascetical Homilies. Seventh century. The Eastern reading of the divine fire as one presence experienced as glory by the saved and torment by the lost; engaged in Chapter 28.

Kalomiros, Alexandre. “The River of Fire.” 1980. The popular modern statement of the Eastern “river of fire” view of hell; engaged in Chapter 28.

Kuyper, Abraham. Common Grace (De gemeene gratie). 3 vols. Amsterdam, 1902-05. The seminal Reformed articulation of common grace — a non-saving favor God shows all men in providence and the restraint of sin — which the framework denies in Chapter 19.

Luther, Martin. The Bondage of the Will. 1525.

Luther, Martin. Preface to the New Testament. 1522. The “right strawy epistle” (eyn rechte stroern Epistel) remark on James, dropped from later printings; in Luther’s Works, vol. 35 (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1960), 362. Referenced in Chapters 12 and 26.

Mahan, Henry T. Bible Class Commentary. Multi-volume New Testament series. Darlington, England: Evangelical Press. Sovereign-grace preacher quoted in Chapters 6 and 30.

Poythress, Vern S. In the Beginning Was the Word: Language — A God-Centered Approach. Wheaton: Crossway, 2009. The closest contemporary Reformed thinker to operational idealism, though Poythress never commits to the idealist position. See Appendix J.

Spurgeon, Charles H. Sermons and occasional writings, including his 1874 public defense of smoking in The Daily Telegraph (London). Spurgeon’s posture toward Christian liberty and toward the doctrines of grace is engaged in Chapters 27, 28, and 30 and in Appendix A7.

Toplady, Augustus. The Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England. London, 1774.

Van Til, Cornelius. The Defense of the Faith. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1955. Van Til’s insistence that “there are no brute facts” leans idealist, but he explicitly rejected idealism by name due to its association with Hegel.

Articles and Online Resources

Higby, Bob. “Dead Sea Scroll Evidence.” pristinegrace.org.

Higby, Bob. “Infralapsarianism vs. Supralapsarianism: Selection vs. Election.” pristinegrace.org. The analytic basis of Appendix D’s distinction between selection and election.

Higby, Bob. Four-part study on baptism. pristinegrace.org. Shaped the baptism theology of Chapter 22.

Higby, Bob. Various articles on sovereign grace theology. pristinegrace.org.

Clark, Gordon H. “Supralapsarianism.” pristinegrace.org. The statement of supralapsarian logic (“the logical order of any plan is the exact reverse of its temporal execution”) quoted in Chapter 5 and Appendix D.

Douma, Douglas. “On Clark’s Millennial Arguments.” douglasdouma.com, June 2, 2016. The source of Clark’s premillennial argument quoted in Appendix I.

Douma, Douglas. “Notes on Ronald H. Nash’s Lecture Series: History of Philosophy and Christian Thought.” douglasdouma.com, April 1, 2019. Nash’s testimony that Clark’s own metaphysics was Berkeleyan idealism (“in his own system of metaphysics Gordon Clark was an Idealist very much in the Berkeleyian camp,” lecture 26); quoted in Appendices I and J.

Erkel, Darryl. Various articles on participatory ecclesiology. pristinegrace.org. Erkel’s work shaped the ecclesiology of Chapter 23 and has been the author’s held position for twenty-six years.

Zens, Jon, ed. Searching Together. Periodical (formerly Baptist Reformation Review). Zens’s decades of work on the participatory ekklesia and the New Testament church walked alongside Erkel’s in shaping the ecclesiology of Chapter 23.

Reisinger, John G. Sound of Grace. Periodical. New Covenant Media. Reisinger’s work on old-covenant-to-new-covenant discontinuity was the bridge the author walked from Dispensationalism into New Covenant Theology and eventually into Bob Higby’s Modified Covenant Theology. The covenantal architecture this book renders passed through Reisinger on its way to MCT.

Kraft, Brandan. “Grace Gems from the Dead Sea Scrolls.” pristinegrace.org.

Kraft, Brandan. “Modified Covenant Theology.” pristinegrace.org.

Kraft, Brandan. Various articles on sovereign grace theology, 2005-2026. pristinegrace.org.

Van Weelden, Mary. “No Room for Post-Millennialist Optimism: Considering the Saints and the City of Chaos in Isaiah 24-27.” Modern Reformation, April 17, 2026. https://www.modernreformation.org/resources/essays/no-room-for-post-millennialist-optimism-considering-the-saints-and-the-city-of-chaos-in-isaiah-24-27. Van Weelden’s exegetical work on Isaiah 24-27 gives the biblical-theological spine to the amillennial rejection of post-millennialism that Chapter 27 argues from posture and sovereignty. Referenced in Chapter 27.

Philosophy of Mind, Cognition, and Science

The pre-propositional architecture of Appendix E (“the feelings architecture”) stands on independent precedents in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. The information-theoretic reading of physics is engaged in Chapter 3 and Appendices G and H.

Damasio, Antonio. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994. The somatic-marker hypothesis: body states inform decisions before conscious thought. Referenced in Appendix E.

Gendlin, Eugene T. Focusing. New York: Everest House, 1978. The “felt sense” — pre-verbal meaning that carries real information before words. Referenced in Appendix E.

James, William. The Principles of Psychology. 2 vols. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1890. The “fringe” of emotional awareness that precedes conscious thought. Referenced in Appendix E.

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. The distinction between fast, pre-conscious System 1 and slow, deliberate System 2. Referenced in Appendix E.

LeDoux, Joseph. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. The two-pathway model and the twelve-millisecond amygdala response that grounds the timing claim used throughout. Referenced in Appendix E.

McGilchrist, Iain. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. The right hemisphere attends pre-linguistically; the left handles propositions. Referenced in Appendix E.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. 1945. Translated by Colin Smith. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962. Pre-reflective consciousness, where the body knows before the mind articulates. Referenced in Appendix E.

Polanyi, Michael. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. “We know more than we can tell.” The closest philosophical precedent to the framework’s account of tacit, pre-propositional knowing. Referenced in Appendix E.

Polanyi, Michael. The Tacit Dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966. Referenced in Appendix E.

Smith, James K. A. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Cultural Liturgies, vol. 1. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009. Humans as fundamentally desiring creatures whose pre-reflective practices shape the heart. Referenced in Appendix E.

Smith, James K. A. Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works. Cultural Liturgies, vol. 2. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013. Referenced in Appendix E.

Wheeler, John Archibald. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links.” In Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Tokyo, 1989. Wheeler’s “it from bit” proposal — that every physical thing derives its existence from information, from yes-or-no answers — is engaged as a secular witness to Hebrews 11:3 in Chapter 3 (“Bit from God”) and in Appendices G, H, and A12.

Bell, J. S. “On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox.” Physics 1, no. 3 (1964): 195-200. The theorem behind the entanglement tests; referenced in Appendix H.

The Born-Einstein Letters. Translated by Irene Born. London: Macmillan, 1971. Source of Einstein’s spukhafte Fernwirkung (“spooky action at a distance”); referenced in Appendix H.

Freedman, Stuart J., and John F. Clauser. Physical Review Letters 28 (1972): 938; Alain Aspect, Jean Dalibard, and Gerard Roger, Physical Review Letters 49 (1982): 1804; B. Hensen et al., Nature 526 (2015): 682. The experimental confirmations of Bell’s theorem, culminating in the loophole-free test; the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Aspect, Clauser, and Zeilinger. Referenced in Appendix H.

Heisenberg, Werner. “Uber den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik.” Zeitschrift fur Physik 43 (1927): 172-198. The uncertainty principle; referenced in Appendix H.

Pais, Abraham. “Einstein and the Quantum Theory.” Reviews of Modern Physics 51 (1979): 863-914. Source of Einstein’s “does the moon exist when no one is looking?”; referenced in Appendix H.

Scholarship and Reference Works

Modern biblical, historical, and lexical scholarship cited in the endnotes.

Barr, James. “Abba Isn’t ‘Daddy’.” Journal of Theological Studies 39 (1988): 28-47. The corrective that Abba is the intimate household address of a son, not the nursery “Daddy”; referenced in Chapter 15.

Bauckham, Richard. The Climax of Prophecy. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993. The gematria of “Nero Caesar” and the 616/666 textual variant at Revelation 13:18; referenced in Appendix A6.

Chadwick, Henry. Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon, 1966. The shared Alexandrian-Platonic milieu of Origen and Plotinus; referenced in Appendix A1.

Charlesworth, James H., ed. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. 2 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1983-85. Translations of 1-2 Enoch and the Life of Adam and Eve used in Chapter 13.

Daniell, David. William Tyndale: A Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. On Tyndale’s share of the Authorized Version; referenced in Appendix A1.

Hengel, Martin. Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period. 2 vols. Translated by John Bowden. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974. The Hellenization of Second Temple Judaism; referenced in Chapter 9.

Lane, Anthony N. S. “Calvin and Article 5 of the Regensburg Colloquy.” In Calvinus Praeceptor Ecclesiae: Papers of the International Congress on Calvin Research, Princeton, August 2002, edited by Herman J. Selderhuis, 233-263. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2004. On the 1541 colloquy’s agreed articles and its breakdown over justification; referenced in Appendix A5.

Nickelsburg, George W. E. 1 Enoch 1. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001. The critical commentary on the Book of the Watchers; referenced in Chapter 13.

Schiffman, Lawrence H. Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994. On the Qumran community, the “Wicked Priest,” and the “Seekers of Smooth Things”; referenced in Chapter 9.

Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990. The text of the Chalcedonian Definition (451); referenced in Appendix A1.

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (BDAG). 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Cited for diatheke in Chapter 7.

Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB). Oxford: Clarendon, 1906. Cited for ra’ in Chapter 13.

Koehler, Ludwig, and Walter Baumgartner. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT). Translated and edited under the supervision of M. E. J. Richardson. 5 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1994-2000. Cited for goel (Chapter 9) and ra’ (Chapter 13).

Works Referenced in Contrast

Berkeley, George. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. 1710. Berkeley’s subjective idealism (esse est percipi) is distinguished from operational idealism in Appendix J. Perception is passive. Authorship is intentional.

Bostrom, Nick. “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 211, 2003. The secular simulation hypothesis is engaged in Appendix G and contrasted with operational idealism in Appendix J.

Cranmer, Thomas. The Book of Common Prayer. London, 1549; revised 1662. Drawing on the medieval Sarum Use. Its marriage-vow language (“till death us do part”) is critiqued in Chapter 29 and Appendix N as carrying a Platonic devaluation of the body into the English-speaking wedding.

Darby, John Nelson. The Collected Writings of J. N. Darby. Edited by William Kelly. 34 vols. London: G. Morrish, 1867-1900. The originator of modern dispensationalism and the pretribulational rapture, engaged in Chapter 27 and Appendix A6.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit. 1807. Hegel’s absolute idealism became the foundation of liberal Protestant theology and the reason the Reformed world rejected idealism entirely. See Appendix J.

Hoffman, Donald D. The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. New York: W. W. Norton, 2019. Hoffman’s Interface Theory of Perception and Conscious Realism argue that spacetime and objects are an evolved survival interface and that consciousness, not matter, is fundamental. Engaged as a secular witness against materialism in Appendix H and distinguished from operational idealism, with its pantheist exit critiqued, in Appendix J.

Horton, Michael S. “Panentheism and Jonathan Edwards.” Modern Reformation, April 30, 2016. https://www.modernreformation.org/resources/articles/panentheism-and-jonathan-edwards. Horton charges Edwards’ idealism with panentheism and cites Hodge’s warning. The framework responds in Appendix J.

Hynek, J. Allen. The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1972. The founding astronomer of serious UFO study, whose later interdimensional turn is engaged in Appendix A8.

Johnson, Phil. Correspondence regarding pristinegrace.org and the charge of “hyper-Calvinism.” See Appendix K.

Keel, John A. UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970; and The Mothman Prophecies. New York: Saturday Review Press, 1975. Keel’s “ultraterrestrials” hypothesis is engaged in Appendix A8.

LaHaye, Tim, and Jerry B. Jenkins. Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days. Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1995. First of the Left Behind series; the pop-culture face of the pretribulational rapture, engaged in Chapter 27.

Lindsey, Hal, with Carole C. Carlson. The Late Great Planet Earth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970. The bestseller that took dispensational end-times speculation mainstream, engaged in Chapter 27.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. 1667. Public-domain text via Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26. Direct citations in Chapter 13: Book I.24-26 (the theodicy mission statement, “justify the ways of God to men”), Book I.262-263 (“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”), Book V.659-666 (the inherited and elaborated cause of Satan’s fall: envy at the Son’s exaltation), Book V.710 (the “third part of Heaven’s host” narrative read into Revelation 12:4). Milton stands at the end of a fourteen-century lineage that runs from Plato through Jewish apocryphal sources, Origen, Augustine, Gregory the Great, the Anglo-Saxon poets, and Aquinas. He did not invent the angelic-fall narrative. He gave it its dominant literary form. His stated mission to “justify the ways of God to men” is the law of Plato turned into iambic pentameter.

Plato. Republic. Circa 380 BC. Translated by Benjamin Jowett (1871, public domain via Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1497). Direct citations in this book: Republic II.379c (the central “God is not the author of evil” sentence), II.380b (the prohibition: “suicidal, ruinous, impious”), II.380c (the rule of the city), VI.508e-509b (the Form of the Good as epekeina tes ousias, “beyond being”), X.617e (the Myth of Er and the prophet of Lachesis: “the responsibility is with the chooser, God is justified” — aitia helomenou theos anaitios). The “law of Plato,” that the deity must never be proposed as the author of evil, is critiqued throughout this book. Augustine’s De Libero Arbitrio is identified in Appendix N as Republic X.617e in Christian dress.

Pope Paul VI. Humanae Vitae (On the Regulation of Birth). Encyclical. Vatican City, 1968. Rome’s prohibition of all artificial contraception, quoted and answered in Appendix A8.

Protoevangelium of James (the Infancy Gospel of James). Apocryphal infancy gospel, circa AD 150-180. The proximate source of the perpetual-virginity-of-Mary tradition, discussed in the Foreword and Appendix A3.

Scofield, C. I., ed. The Scofield Reference Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1909. The annotated Bible that systematized and popularized dispensationalism, engaged in Chapter 27.

Image Credits

“Cosmic Cliffs” in the Carina Nebula (NGC 3324), Chapter 3. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI (James Webb Space Telescope). Released July 12, 2022; not under copyright, per NASA’s media usage guidelines.

Plato (bust), Old Library, Trinity College Dublin, Appendix N. Credit: Photograph by Yair Haklai, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bust_of_Plato_in_the_Old_Library,_Trinity_College_Dublin-2.jpg. Cropped from the original.

Saint Augustine in His Study (c. 1480), fresco by Sandro Botticelli, Appendix N. Credit: Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510); public domain (PD-Art). Church of Ognissanti, Florence. Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sandro_Botticelli_050.jpg.

Gustave Doré, Abdiel Attacks Satan (1866), illustration for John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Chapter 13. Credit: Gustave Doré (1832-1883); public domain (the artist died in 1883, and the work was first published in 1866). Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:6-188_This_greeting_on_thy_impious_crest.jpg.

Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora, double portrait (1529), Chapter 10. Credit: Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder; public domain (PD-Art). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (inv. 1160 and 1139). Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Workshop_Lucas_Cranach_d.%C3%84._-Doppelportr%C3%A4t_Martin_Luther_u._Katharina_Bora(Uffizien).jpg.

Martin Luther as an Augustinian monk (posthumous portrait, after 1546), Appendix M. Credit: Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder; public domain (PD-Art). Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg (inv. Gm1570). Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Martin_Luther_as_an_Augustinian_MonkFXD.jpg.

Bishop George Berkeley (c. 1730), portrait by John Smibert, Appendix J. Credit: John Smibert (1688-1751); public domain (PD-Art). National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 653), via the Google Art Project. Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Smibert_-Bishop_George_Berkeley-_Google_Art_Project.jpg.

John Gill, D.D. (1697-1771), eighteenth-century engraving, Appendix I. Credit: Engraving published by George Keith, London; public domain (the work was published in the eighteenth century). Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Gill,_PA04574.jpg. Cropped from the original.

John Calvin (1509-1564), portrait by the French School, Appendix I. Credit: French School (anonymous, sixteenth century); public domain (PD-Art). Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_John_Calvin,_French_School.jpg.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), engraving, Appendix J. Credit: Engraving after the period portrait; public domain (the engraving is of nineteenth-century date or earlier). Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jonathan_Edwards_engraving.jpg.

G.W.F. Hegel (1831), portrait by Jakob Schlesinger, Appendix J. Credit: Jakob Schlesinger (1792-1855); public domain (PD-Art). Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hegel_by_Schlesinger.jpg.

The Holy Women at Christ’s Tomb (c. 1597-1598), painting by Annibale Carracci, Chapter 24. Credit: Annibale Carracci (1560-1609); public domain (PD-Art). State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Annibale_Carracci_-Holy_Women_at_Christ%27_s_Tomb-_WGA4454.jpg.

Gordon H. Clark (1902-1985), photograph, Appendix I. Credit: Reproduced in good faith under fair use, for identification and critical commentary on the subject’s work. Image rights are believed to rest with the Gordon H. Clark estate / the Gordon H. Clark Foundation.

Herman Hoeksema (1886-1965), photograph, Appendix I. Credit: Reproduced in good faith under fair use, for identification and critical commentary on the subject’s work. Image rights are believed to rest with the Reformed Free Publishing Association / the Protestant Reformed Churches in America.

Louis Berkhof (1873-1957), photograph, Appendix I. Credit: Public domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Berkhof.png.

Wayne Grudem (b. 1948), photograph by Joshua D. Brooks, Appendix I. Credit: Joshua D. Brooks, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/). Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wayne_Grudem_2011.jpg.

Brandan Kraft (b. 1975), photograph, Appendix I. Credit: Author’s photograph; courtesy of the author.

Brandan Kraft, early in his programming career, Preface. Credit: Author’s photograph; courtesy of the author.