e possibility of consciously and deliberately choosing to enter into that life, or consciously and deliberately refusing that life. Saying yes to life is giving conscious assent to that which, as Augustine pointed out (*On Free Will* 3.7.20), we already choose, viscerally, as it were, on a pre-reflective level. However, the ability to say yes to life remains a "grace." We admonish people to choose it because "it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them which believe." Insofar as we recognize the choice and reject the life which is proffered, we suffer the penalty--unhappiness, Augustine said, is the just reward of ingratitude (*On Free Will* 3.6.18). In my opionion, the tradition has permitted its adherents to make this choice only on an unconscious level. It is only by letting the dialectic of the problem carry us beyond good and evil that we have become fully conscious of that upon which our life depends. In Part Three, we presented an alternative approach to the Christian myth--one which was intended, practically speaking, to captivate the imagination, bringing it into the service of our essential self, without, however, violating our reason. Its chief theoretical advantages were said to be that it avoids the problem of evil; is not threatened by modern philosophy (however "positivistic"); and it escapes Nietzsche's chief criticisms of Christianity. It remains for the reader to decide whether or not this dialogue between the tradition and those opposed to the tradition has been fruitful. For me, its fruitfulness is confirmed by the renewed relationship I have experienced with my Self and my God. END NOTES 1. This contradiction is presented poetically in *The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam*--see Appendix "A," below. 2. This is C.S. Lewis's approach to the problem in *Mere Christianity*. See Book Four, Chapter 3, "Time and Beyond." Cf. *The Screwtape Letters*, Letter XXVII. 3. *Apropos* of "justice" and "power," the following...
