John Piper outet sich hier als begeisterter Leser von G. K. Chestertons “Orthodoxie” – nach eigener Aussage das einzige Buch der Bibel, das er mehr als zweimal gelesen hat. Die Gemeinsamkeiten?
- We both marvel that we are swimming in the same boundless sea of wonders called the universe.
- We both are amazed not by sharp noses or flat noses, but that humans have noses at all.
- We both think it is just as likely that the reason the sun rises every morning is not because of some so-called “law,” but because God says, “Do it again.” And that he says it more like a delighted child than a dour chief.
- We both believe logic and imagination are totally compatible and that neither will be useful without the other.
- We both believe that the magic of the universe must have meaning, and meaning must have someone to mean it.
- We both believe that the glories of this world are like goods rescued from some primordial ruin — a ruin whose evidences are everywhere.
- And we both believe that paradox is woven into the nature of the universe, and that resisting it drives a person mad. “Poets don’t go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. . . . The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”
Und: Der Calvinismus, den Chesterton hasste, ist nicht derselbe, den Piper liebt.
