A very important insight of Van Til is his notion of Common Grace. Here is William Dennison’s words on Van Til’s notion:

Readers of Plato’s dialogues must be sensitive to what literary critical scholars refer to as the “Socratic problem,” that is, the task of separating which concepts belong to Socrates (470/ 469– 399 BC) and which concepts belong to Plato. Although a number of ideas continue to be subject to speculative analysis, many scholars follow Aristotle’s (384– 322 BC) lead, maintaining that the doctrine of Forms that appear in the middle and later dialogues belongs to Plato. 137 For Plato the Form world and his view of the human soul are closely related. 138 With respect to knowledge, everything must exist in the transcendent Form world in order to be known and exist in the immanent empirical universe in which human beings dwell. As Plato unpacks his view of anthropology, the human soul is said to be the residence of the knowledge of Forms. In this analogical construct between the objects in the transcendent Form world and the objects in the immanent empirical universe, the soul grasps those objects as it possesses the quality of immortality. 139 Likewise, according to biblical revelation, the Christian religion presents a position that the human soul never dies, that is to say, the soul is immortal. Plato and biblical revelation agree— the soul is immortal. If one believes that biblical revelation is the record of the infallible revelation of the true God of heaven and earth, and that all human knowledge is either directly or indirectly dependent upon God, then in some manner the God of the Bible communicated the truth that the soul is immortal to Plato. Calvin’s analysis is insightful at this point. Calvin held that, as created in the image of God, Plato believed that the soul was immortal because of the “seed of religion” within him, that is to say, the seed of religion “engraved” the immortality of the soul upon his soul. 140 In Reformed language, Plato’s belief regarding the soul’s immortality was a result of a common grace insight. In this context, Calvin provided excellent insight into the tension between common grace and human depravity. 141 Calvin stated that the soul functions in two basic ways: (1) “ruling man’s life” with respect “to the duties of his earthly life”; and (2) “arous[ ing]” man “to honor God” in meditating “upon the heavenly life.”

142 As Calvin interacted with Plato’s view of the soul, he chose to address human depravity with respect to the second point. 143 In light of the fall into sin, humanity is corrupt and, thus, cannot perceive clearly and correctly in order to honor God. Nevertheless, Calvin went on to say, there are some “remnants” of God’s image in humanity which explain such common grace declarations from Plato’s lips. Calvin acknowledged that such assertions appear in the context of the speaker being encompassed by the vices of human corruption. Indeed, the presence of these vices within the soul produces various versions of the soul— some more corrupt than others. 144 Calvin himself acknowledged this degradation of vices among fallen human beings by stating that a better definition of the soul can be extracted from Plato than from the other philosophers of his day because Plato reflected better on the “image of God in the soul.” 145 Even so, in the same section of the Institutes, Calvin exposed the corrupt aspects of Plato’s view of the soul by attacking the latter’s alleged view of two souls within a person— a sensitive soul and a rational soul. 146 Hence, as Calvin advanced his common grace insight into Plato’s understanding of the soul, he soon dissolved that insight by applying the antithesis to Plato’s formulation. 147 Before we turn more specifically to that antithesis, we need to direct the Christian academician to the next area of inquiry: does the content of Plato’s view of the immortality of the soul agree with the content of the Christian view of the immortality of the soul as disclosed in biblical revelation? 148 In order to answer this question, we must have some competent grasp of the view of the soul’s immortality in each system of thought. With respect to Plato, the analysis calls for an examination into the structures of his view of the soul as it functions coherently in his system. Hence, although an empirical comparison reveals that both Plato and biblical revelation teach that the soul is immortal, the task remains to discover whether both present the same understanding of the soul. Without a coherent understanding of how a concept functions within another thinker’s system, no judgment can be made about whether that concept is antithetical to one’s own system. For introductory purposes, Plato’s view of the soul interfaces with his view of the Form world and his contribution to the chain of being.

In this context, the soul interfaces with his theory of epistemology— what is referred to as his recollection theory of knowledge, which, in turn, presupposes a cyclical movement of souls. Furthermore, the cyclical movement presupposes his particular construct of reincarnation. In the Phaedo, Socrates faced the immanence of death. In fact, the dialogue presented the day of execution. After discussing suicide with his select group of friends, Socrates entered into a general discussion of his position with respect to death and the immortality of the soul. 150 After all, his friends found him quite amenable to the imminence of death. In their unfolding discussion, Socrates’s companions realized that his comfort and peace with death emerged from his system of beliefs. But what are some of the key components that constitute those beliefs? Socrates maintained that one of the chief aims of a philosopher is to practice for the occasion of death. 151 Death is not the end; rather, for Socrates, the practice for death is directed toward the reward that comes after death. Since Socrates was a philosopher, he had a unique platter of bountiful rewards awaiting him. He would enjoy the companionship of wise gods and good men. Also, in the afterlife he would relish an eschatological state of the good and the realization of greater blessings. In light of these characteristics of the afterlife, R. Hackforth contended correctly, that “at bottom Socrates’ faith is in the moral order of the universe, which demands that a good life on earth should have some reward hereafter.” 152 Indeed, for Plato, faith and knowledge (reason) are interlocked in Socrates’s belief in life after death. 153 In fact, Plato underlines this point in a statement that Cebes, one of Socrates’s friends, makes in the process of the discussion. Cebes states that to believe in the immortality of the soul entails a great amount of “faith and persuasive argument.”
In fact, as faith and rational persuasive argumentation are intertwined, the dialogue evolves toward one of its central theses, that is, that the soul is immortal, and that the philosopher alone enjoys eternal existence in the Form world without embarking on another cyclical journey back into the empirical world which he just departed. Socrates, as a philosopher, had strong courage, therefore, in the face of death. In order to construct a portrayal of Socrates’s courage, Plato begins with the question of what constitutes death. The answer provided is that death is “the separation of the soul from the body.” 155 In order to make his case for defining death in this manner, Socrates begins by noting the philosopher’s distinctions between vices and virtues. Simply put, for him, characteristics associated with the body are not good, whereas characteristics associated with the soul are good. More specifically, the body is spoken of as the pleasures of food, drink, and sex, and it includes the desire for, as well as the wearing of, distinguished clothes, shoes, and bodily ornaments. The body is associated with the darker side of moral vices: wants, desires, fears, and various illusions (i.e., passions, will, and emotions). Additionally, the senses are associated with the body, and, thus, they are inferior in acquiring knowledge. In sum, in contrast to human virtue, the body is inherently “evil.” 156 On the other hand, the soul in its pure state is reason functioning without interference from the body. In order to attain this state of purity, the soul must approach the object with thought alone. In this realm of thinking, things exist in themselves, that is, the doctrine of Forms can exist in pure thought (e.g., Justice, Good, Beautiful, Size, Health, Strength). The soul is, therefore, the residence of truth, wisdom, and pure knowledge. Herein, the task of the philosopher is set. Since the philosopher’s task is defined by reality, good judgment, and understanding, Socrates points out to his friends that the philosopher alone is equipped for the task of freeing and separating the soul from the body. He is able to attain this objective because in his training he is taught to approach an object of knowledge with reason or thought alone. Being trained in wisdom and reason, he has the ability to free or release his mind from the senses. 157 In doing so, he is able to prevent diseases, contaminations, impediments, confusions, and illusions which the body brings to the soul. 158 Only the philosopher, by means of thought, has this type of access to the soul, the residence of pure Forms. The elite status of the philosopher is exposed: his superior use of reason, thought, intellect, and logic determines his standing as the highest individual on the hierarchical chain of being. Every other human being is in a state of degradation with respect to the philosopher. It is in light of this view of the inner harmony of the soul and the hindrances of the body that Socrates must defend that the soul exists after death. Socrates’s defense deals with more than just a dualistic construct of the body and the soul. Rather, the soul is integrally wrapped in various crucial components of Socrates’s worldview as part of a coherent system of belief.

So far we have already noticed some of these elements: the body-soul dualism, the superiority of the wise and intellectual soul, the position of the philosopher, and the definition of freedom. As we proceed, our interest is not to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of Socrates’s arguments or their validity; instead, our concern is to grasp some key components of his arguments concerning the immortality of the soul. In this regard, we will focus on two arguments which are sufficient to illustrate the antithetical nature of his position in relation to the historic orthodox Christian position. These two are his cyclical and his recollection arguments. Plato set up the cyclical argument in the context of a dialogue between the skeptic Cebes and Socrates. Cebes suggests the position taken by some in his day— that after death the soul no longer exists since it is “shattered [dissipated; disbanded] like breath or smoke.” 159 In response, Socrates invokes the ancient theory about the recycling of souls. Socrates inquires of Cebes whether souls of men who have died continue to exist in the underworld since in that case, the ancient theory states that those souls which arrive in the underworld are from here, and those souls which arrive back here are from there. 160 Herein is the cycle. In addition, this understanding is set up in the context of opposites. 161 Socrates states that opposites come from opposites; specifically, whenever we have a pair of opposites which are on a par with each other, they are generated from each other in a cycle of perpetual recurrence, for example, waking and sleeping, greater and smaller. 162 Life and death are also in the category of recurring opposites. In the construct of cyclical recurrence, Socrates maintains that each process in the cycle must be reversed by its opposite in order to exist. For example, the process of moving from waking to sleeping can only exist if there is a return from sleeping to waking. Likewise, the process of living to dying can only exist if there is a return from dying to living. This process must be cyclical rather than linear. If it were linear, then the soul would enter into a sleepless state, and, life would eventually cease. As we can see, however, life does not cease. For life to continue with respect to the soul, as the soul separates from the body in death, the soul must reenter a body for life. Simply put, it can be said that as the soul enters a body, it becomes incarnate in the body.

For Socrates, every reincarnation is an incarnation. The cyclical argument of opposites affirms a doctrine of reincarnation as part of Plato’s view of the immortality of the soul. Socrates’s recollection argument arises from a connection with his cyclical rotation argument. 163 For Socrates, the recollection argument is fused with epistemology. If learning is the recovery of knowledge possessed in a previous existence (recollection), the soul, the source of true knowledge, must have existed somewhere before it was incarnate in a human shape in order to possess understanding. In the flow of the dialogue, the discussion moves from Cebes to Simmias who enters the conversation not as a skeptic, but as one who wants to be reminded about the content of the recollection theory. 164 Socrates comes to his assistance with the example that when a person sees, hears, or perceives one thing, that person not only knows the object being perceived but also thinks of another such object. For example, Socrates uses the imagery of a lyre. Seeing a lyre, it would be customary for a person also to imagine a boy playing a lyre. This image of the boy playing a moment the object that is seen is only the lyre in isolation. 165 In the recollection of an object, then, the object is perceived not only in isolation but also in relation to its function— the person perceives both the lyre and the tune from the lyre. With this illustration before Simmias and his companions, Socrates turns to the crux of his argument; he speaks of the intersection of the doctrine of Forms and the common statements of knowledge. Herein, he employs another illustration: as two people talk about whether two sticks are equal, one sees them as equal, and the other does not see them as equal. Socrates points out that people can only speak of sticks being equal if they know what Equal is in the Form world. Consequently, Equal stands behind the senses as something different from the judgment by the senses of two things equal to each other. Equal in the Form world and equal things perceived in the sensual world are not the same. 166 Clearly, we have knowledge of equal in the sensual world, so Socrates argues that we had to have a prior knowledge of it. In other words, Socrates argues that a person must possess the knowledge of Equal before ever applying it to equal objects. Only by prior contact with the Form world would an individual know what equal is. The general principle is, therefore, that all human learning is acquired by means of recollection. We have this knowledge before birth; it is lost, and it is reestablished by the senses— recollected.

The conclusion of Socrates’s argument is quite simple for our purposes: if the Forms exist before one’s birth, then one’s soul exists before one’s birth. For Plato, through Socrates’s argument, the existence of the Form world is a necessary part of the proof for the immortality of the soul. Another critical component of Plato’s cyclical recurrence is his view that the immortality of the soul is dependent upon an intimate connection with other biological creatures, such as insects, birds, and donkeys. In Plato’s construction, a soul that is polluted by the impure elements of the body (e.g., eating, drinking, and sexual gratification) gravitates to a continual existence on earth. 168 Explicitly, in the cycle of reincarnation, inferior souls polluted by the human body depart from the body in death but hang around graveyards waiting for a biological creature to enter. Indeed, these souls pay the penalty for their life of vice; they must wander around “monuments and tombs,” waiting to dwell in another living creature that corresponds to their moral conduct while dwelling in a human body in their prior life. 169 Obviously, in Plato’s understanding, some animals and insects have souls. Meanwhile, as these souls dwell in such creatures, they wait for a human being to be born in order to reenter a human body. (Hence, the cycle of the soul functions in the following manner: the soul released through death lingers around graves → it enters a biological creature → it enters into another human body.) When the soul enters another human body, it enters at the same level of the vice it practiced when it departed its previous human body. For example, a person who was a glutton in a previous life returns as a glutton. However, the chain of being is not fixed, so the person returning to life can move up or down the chain of being: For Plato, the goal is to move to the status of the philosopher where the cycle ceases. Only the philosopher lives forever in the afterlife, free from returning into the body— a state that Plato compares to that of another creature, a swan.

In view of Reformed orthodoxy’s historic creeds and their understanding of the teaching of the soul in Scripture, Plato’s view of the soul is a departure. Reformed orthodoxy would not agree that Scripture teaches the immortality of the soul as dependent upon the cyclical motion of the soul between the Form world and the empirical world (reincarnation). As well, Reformed orthodoxy would not concur that human knowledge is a recollection of knowledge from within the Form world, encountered as the soul makes contact with the Form world in its revolving cycle of perpetual motion in and out of bodies. Simply put, the interrelationship between the Form world and the immortal soul is not the Archimedean point on which the Bible predicates the immortality of the soul. For this reason, Plato’s holistic construct of the immortality of the soul is antithetical to the holistic teaching of the immortality of the soul found in Holy Scripture. The Bible teaches that male and female were created with an immortal soul (Gen 1: 26– 28; 2: 7; 2: 21– 23). Reformed orthodoxy has clarified Scripture’s teaching about the immortal soul.

For example, the Vallérandus Poullain Confession made the following statement about God’s image: “And therefore He made him [man] after His own image and likeness, giving him, to wit, a soul which is a spirit, as God Himself is, and also immortal, albeit it hath a beginning.” 170 Pollanus’s (1520– 1557) last phrase is important; theologians have maintained that an essential attribute of God is that he is immortal. On the other hand, although an immortal soul is said to be an essential characteristic of human beings, it must be noted that this immortality is given by God. God’s nature alone is immortal (1 Tim 6: 16), whereas the human soul’s immortality is derived from God’s creative activity. In order to clearly distinguish between the Creator’s immortality and the creature’s immortality, Calvin states that “the term ‘soul’ [is] an immortal yet created essence”— it is characterized as “immortal spirit.” 171 When viewing human beings as image of God, it is the spiritual soul that clearly distinguishes them from the brutes— the engraving of the divine and immortal essence which gives life to a human body (Ps 16: 10; Matt 10: 28; Luke 16: 22– 23; 2 Cor 5: 6, 8; Heb 12: 9; 1 Pet 1: 9). The human fall into sin and its penalty of death, to be sure, raises the issue now as to how this “immortal spirit” is to be viewed at the moment of death. As Reformed exegetes reflected upon this subject, a position emerged that maintained continuity with historic orthodoxy: at the moment of death, the soul immediately separates from the body and continues consciously to live either as a recipient of Christ’s blessings or as an object of God’s wrath (Eccl 12: 7; Luke 16: 23– 24; 23: 43; Acts 7: 59; 2 Cor 5: 1– 8; Eph 4: 10; Phil 1: 23; Heb 12: 23; 1 Pet 3: 19; 4: 6). 172 On the basis of such biblical texts as those just listed, Calvin was convinced that the soul’s immortal essence continues to survive in the intermediate state between the death of the body and the final resurrection of the body. Calvin is cautious, however, about reading too much into the intermediate state; he warns the church to remain within the domain of Scripture’s teaching.

For example, Calvin states, “Scripture goes no farther than to say that Christ is present with them [believers upon death], and receives them into paradise . .  . that they may obtain consolation, while the souls of the reprobate suffer such torments as they deserve.” 173 Indeed, Calvin maintains that the soul continues a conscious existence of life after death (Luke 16: 14– 41). In other words, the soul continues to live in the intermediate state between temporal death and the final resurrection of the body. The secondary standards of the Reformed tradition give testimony to this biblical truth. For example, chapter 32, section 1 of the WCF states, “The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption: but the souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them.” 174 Furthermore, theologians in the Reformed tradition have readily maintained that the human body must be viewed as an integrated whole with the soul.

Bavinck summarizes the position: “And precisely because the body, being the organ of the soul, belongs to the essence of man and to the image of God, it originally also participated in immortality.” 175 Bavinck’s position that the image of God includes the immortality of the body and the soul in the original state stimulates questions. In order to remain within our own context, however, those questions will remain mute. Rather, we note merely that Bavinck’s position accents the antithetical distinction between the biblical view of immortality and Plato’s view of immortality. After all, Bavinck acknowledges that Christians had been too accepting of Platonic nuances about the immortality of the soul. 176 Under the direction of biblical revelation and the confessional standards, Bavinck demonstrates the teaching of Scripture to be in strict contrast to Plato, that is, for Bavinck the body is not inherently mortal and evil. 177 Specifically, as disclosed in NT revelation, the immortality of the soul is never to be separated from the resurrection of the body as patterned in the resurrection of Christ’s body. In view of the fall into sin, Bavinck forcefully affirms his point regarding the body and soul “violently torn from the soul by sin, it [body] will be reunited with it [soul] in the resurrection of the dead.”Plato’s conception of immortality, of course, incorporates no such relationship between the body and the soul. As we are confronted with Bavinck’s position, we could become suspicious as to whether he affirms a traditional understanding of the intermediate state. We even note that he is more reticent to speculate about that condition of existence than Calvin was. In fact, Bavinck admits that, in his view, the Bible is mostly mysterious and silent about the intermediate state. Even so, Bavinck affirms that Scripture teaches that the soul continues to exist as an immortal subsistence after physical death (Luke 16: 14– 41). 179 Bavinck wishes to make clear that though the living eternal soul continues to exist after physical death, the intermediate state is not, however, the final state. In this “interim period,” Christ “is not content with the redemption of the soul, but effects also the redemption of the body.” 180 What was not completed for Adam and Eve in the garden will be completed in the final consummation. Hence, for Bavinck, the final condition of the intermediate state is the full-orbed projection of Adam and Eve’s destiny as described in Scripture and reflected in the Heidelberg Catechism: “That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ” (Q& A 1; cf. Q& A 26, 37, 57– 58, 125; Rom 12: 1– 2; 1 Cor 6: 12– 20; 1 Thess 5: 23). What belongs to believers in Christ’s redemption is grounded in one’s state of existence prior to the fall, and what was designed in the pre-fall state was predicated upon the final eschatological existence in Christ’s total redemption for all believers of Christ’s bride. Scholars who make it their practice to explore the Christian landscape of higher education will find it difficult to prove that the deterioration of a once outstanding orthodox institution has been the result of that body’s stressing the antithesis between Christian thought and non-Christian thought too much. Rather, I would suggest that the secularization of any such institution occurs because the epistemological, metaphysical, ontological, and ethical truth of the integrative and progressive infallible revelation of the triune God of the Bible has been compromised under what Reformed thought refers to as common grace. In reality, as I have attempted to make clear, a particular concept can only be a common grace insight if it agrees with the truth of the inner fabric of progressive biblical revelation.

Unfortunately, too many Christian academicians, for the sake of their own conceptual tolerance toward adopting non-Christian thought, have justified their activity under an incorrect representation of the rubric of common grace. Often this misrepresentation follows a popular pattern. Christian academicians adopt into their discipline principles from non-Christian thought, and, while doing so, they synthesize those principles of choice into the distinct methodological structure of their discipline. At this point, such an academic journey is taken with minimal reflection upon a biblically informed, Christ-centered epistemological approach to their discipline. To be sure, perhaps the Christian academician will note this neglect at some point and will act. In consequence, the academic will take the step of baptizing the secular principles and methodology with abstract and isolated proof-texts from Scripture. Possibly this scenario is too simplistic, but, in my judgment, the truth is in its simplicity. In my estimation, this picture illustrates a dominant trait of the descent of any institution from a Christian education grounded in historic orthodoxy. With abstract biblical proof-texts in hand, without any true integration of their discipline with progressive biblical revelation, such Christian academicians simply justify a methodology that uses selected precepts of rationalism, empiricism, realism, idealism, romanticism, naturalism, materialism, existentialism, structuralism, or post-structuralism without any significant critique of the Archimedean premises of the methodology of their choice. Out of this state of affairs, in combination with the current obsession that Christian higher education must be socially and culturally relevant, it is not surprising that the dominant controlling ethos of Christian higher institutional life has become a critical-social hermeneutic, that is, a method of interpreting the fallen creation by means of a generic metanarrative of impact, renewal, and transformation of social and cultural realms and norms for the sake of a socio-academic construct of Christ’s kingdom. After all, it is thought, since the evolving movement of history and culture is so distant from the history and culture portrayed in the biblical narrative or the ecclesiastical creeds, the most that can be employed from the Bible and the creeds for the current age is a set of abstract principles which direct and justify a social/ cultural agenda for the academic enterprise. The deterioration of the historic roots of Christian orthodoxy upon the campuses of Christian learning is straightforward. Christian academicians isolate individual concepts and methods of choice from non-Christian thinkers and adopt them into their own Christian worldview. 181 In contrast, the directive that needs to be followed is that every concept and method presented by a non-Christian thinker must be subjected to a holistic critical analysis within the structure of the thinker’s own system. As concepts and methods are scrutinized and subsequently placed alongside a holistic philosophical understanding of the content of the revelation of God’s Word, then the non-Christian system under investigation is exposed for what it is— an antithetical system at odds with the truth of God’s Word. As demonstrated in our Platonic illustration, only after doing this analysis is the Christian academic in the position to truly evaluate the common grace concepts presented by the non-Christian. Recognizing the antithesis running through any common grace insight, the Christian academic can approach the particular concept grasped by the non-Christian and correctly comprehend and commend it within the scope of the revelation of God’s truth. In our presentation of Plato’s view of the immortality of the soul, we acknowledged that although Plato understood the soul as immortal (a common grace insight) this conception placed within the holistic structure of his thought emerges as one antithetical to the biblical position of the soul’s immortality. 182 Indeed, we cannot pursue the truth unless we begin with the truth. 183 This essay is intended to encourage those who may be marginalized in academia because of their commitment to the historic roots of the theological and ecclesiastical identity of the institution in which they serve. I have attempted to suggest a way to conduct rigorous academic teaching and scholarship in a manner that will not surrender commitment to God’s Word and the historic roots of one’s tradition. Concerning my own commitment to the Reformed tradition, I have found enlightening the directive of Van Til, which is submissive to God’s Word and the exposition of that Word as summarized in the ecumenical creeds and the Reformed secondary standards. Inside the framework of this paradigm, I have found myself, within the frailty of a fallen mind, sufficiently equipped to engage any system of secular thought. In fact, when a biblical transcendental analysis is employed with respect to the encyclopedia of thought, the contemporary socio-cultural world will never have the endowment to set the agenda of Christian academia. Rather, the full-orbed message of the gospel always sets the agenda for interacting with culture— entreating conformity and service to Christ through repentance and faith. Such language may seem archaic and foreign to the pluralism embodied within the present halls of the Christian academy. Nevertheless, some within those corridors wish to preserve the historic roots of the Christian religion as grounded in the self-attesting Christ of Scripture. If you count yourself among these, then allow your voice to be heard from your seat in the academy— not from those seats where even Michel Foucault (1926– 1984) would have to endure nausea as the powerful elites and masses drown you out, but, in the imagery of Christ, from your designated chair of humility (cf. Luke 11: 43; 20: 46; Matt 16: 24– 25; 1 Pet 2: 21– 25). Just perhaps, those who have ears might hear and, thus, Christian education committed to historic orthodoxy will survive as a unique beacon rather than as just another species of the broad secular educational genus. Why should it not be that every institution within Christian academia would participate in the posture of the Queen of Sheba before the encyclopedic wisdom of Solomon, the pre-figure and type of the encyclopedic wisdom of Christ (see 1 Kgs 10: 4– 5; 2 Chr 9: 3– 4). Confronted with the picture of the eschatological glory of Christ’s wisdom in the temporal life of Solomon, the spirit of Sheba fully dissipated and was immersed solely and absolutely in the eternal wisdom of the Christ of Scripture.

Dennison, William D.. In Defense of the Eschaton: Essays in Reformed Apologetics (Kindle Locations 1938-2201). Wipf & Stock, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.