According to Merriam-Webster an epigraph is “a quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme.” If William P. Young felt it necessary to use these quotes at the beginning of the chapters, it suggests that he has read a reasonable amount of the author’s work and consequently knowing a little about the source of the epigraphs will improve the reader’s understanding of Young’s book The Shack.
Chapter 11 – Here Comes Da Judge
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” Albert Einstein.
Albert Einstein is famous for winning a Nobel Prize in physics. Many of his quotes can be quite enlightening for Christians. However, some of his thoughts about God are relatively unorthodox. Deists claim him as one of their own and at The World Union of Deists website the following statement of Einstein’s belief can be found “(The following is from Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer, Princeton University Press) ‘I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.’”
“Oh my soul…be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.” T.S. Eliot
Eliot defined his faith in the following statement. "I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature, and a royalist in politics." Many argue over the nature and strength of Eliot’s faith and his writings are inspirational for people from various religious backgrounds including Taoists.
Chapter 12 – In the Belly of the Beasts
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.” Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal lived and died a Roman Catholic and his life is summed up nicely by the website The Adherents which is devoted to collecting adherent statistics and religious geography citations. Their summation states “Blaise Pascal, physicist and layman, was an intellectual pilgrim passionately concerned with the relation of religion and science in his search for truth.” When he died, he was working on writing an Apology for the Christian Religion.
However, while Pascal pursued God his entire life, his work is often misused and has been particularly influential for Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henri Bergson, and the Existentialists.
“Once abolish the God and the government becomes the God.” G.K. Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton, a well-known Christian writer, lived from 1874-1936. His non-fiction works are nearly all about Christian theology and much of his fiction included Christian characters and or themes.
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