Where are you at with the book, The Myth of the Blueprint?

(Note from Greg)

The Myth of the Blueprint is the third volume of a planned trilogy on “Satan and Evil” for InterVarsity Press. Volume I is God at War, and Volume II is Satan and the Problem of Evil. I had initially thought the book would be completed by 2002 or 2003. I was very wrong — obviously, since it’s not out yet. Indeed, it now looks like the project won’t be completed until 2012.

It’s simply a massive project. The biggest academic undertaking of my life. My goal is to trace two major Hellenistic (Greek) philosophical traditions which, I shall argue, significantly influenced the early church’s theology away from a biblically based warfare worldview into the classical, deterministic-tending, blueprint worldview. First there’s a monistic-tending trajectory, broadly represented in the Platonic tradition, in which time and change are considered imperfections and somewhat unreal and thus perfection is identified with timelessness and immutability. Second there’s a fatalistic-tending trajectory, broadly represented in the Stoic tradition, in which freedom and contingency are considered illusory, for cause and effect are understood deterministically.

Many others have claimed Hellenistic philosophy influenced the theology of the early church, but most attempts to prove this have focused on the early church’s view of Jesus as divine, the Trinity and salvation.  In my estimation, this is, to a large extent, barking up the wrong tree.  A few have rightly argued that Hellenistic thinking influenced the early church’s view of God as timeless and utterly immutiable, but no one has demonstrated this rigorously (while there have been a number of rigorous attempts to disprove it).  And still fewer have claimed, let alone demonstrated, that Hellenistic philosophy influenced the early church’s views on free will and predestination. This is what I’m setting out to demonstrate.

To substantiate my thesis, I’ve had to study just about every major western thinker (and even many minor ones) from around 600 BC to 500 AD, including all the early church fathers. (Like I said, it’s massive).This has in turn required that I acquire a working knowledge of Latin and classical Greek (I know koine (biblical) Greek, but its quite different from classical Greek).   Also, the amount of secondary literature on this topic is mind-boggling. Many scholars have argued against my thesis and I need to critically interact with all of them if my thesis is to be credible. (I now have over two gigabytes of notes on primary and secondary readings!). Much of this secondary literature is in German and French. I once was able to read in these languages pretty fluently but I’ve (inexcusably) let them slip over the last 20 years. So it’s very slow going!

Add to this the fact that I keep taking breaks to do other projects that grip my passion (and to keep my sanity) and you can begin to understand why this book will likely not be completed until 2012.  I have just recently (September, 2008) receive permission from InterVarsity to make this a two volume work, with approximately 1,000 pages in each volume. The first volume will focus on the trajectory of Hellenistic thought that influenced early Christian thinker to embrace a timeless, wholly immutable view of God. The second will focus on the trajectory that led them to embrace a deterministic view of providence.  Both of these lines of influence undermined the early church’s warfare world and moved it toward a blueprint worldview.

Thanks for your interest — and your patience.

ps. I’ll post findings from my research on my blog from time to time.