Something Greater is Here

by Kenneth J. Howell

What does a man do when he arrives at a place in his career where he is doing what he always wanted to do, only to find that he really wanted something more? In his mid-thirties Kenneth Howell was teaching in a Protestant seminary after nine years of Presbyterian ministry. After receiving the highest degree possible in his field, he was exactly where he wanted to be. The future looked very bright. But two nagging questions wouldn’t let him alone. Is what he believes really true? Does he really understand what it means to be a Christian? And the is this all there is to being a Christian? Could there be a deeper spirituality out there that he had not yet encountered?

Those questions kept Kenneth Howell up at night. He tried to avoid, ignore, and suppress them, but they wouldn’t go away. He was faced with a tough choice. Either pursue the truth and the God of all truth with integrity and zeal, or sit back into a comfortable life of familiar places and familiar faces. He decided that he really had no choice. It was all or nothing.

As he tried to answer these questions, Kenneth Howell began to find life more difficult, not easier. His pursuit of truth, goodness, and love gradually led him into a world he had only vaguely glimpsed from afar. It was a world filled with things he had always longed for. It was the fullness of truth.

115 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 17, 2015

About the author

Kenneth J. Howell, Senior Fellow of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, is Director of the John Henry Cardinal Newman Institute of Catholic Thought and Adjunct Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Illinois.

Dr. Howell holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Indiana University and a Ph.D. in the History of Christianity and Science from the University of Lancaster (U.K.).

A Presbyterian minister for eighteen years and a theological professor for seven years in a Protestant seminary, Dr. Howell was confirmed and received into the Catholic Church in 1996.

Dr. Howell is the author of several books, including: God’s Two Books: Copernican Cosmology and Biblical Interpretation in Early Modern Science (University of Notre Dame, 2002); Mary of Nazareth: Sign and Instrument of Christian Unity (Queenship Press,1998); and, Meeting Mary Learning Guide: Our Mother in Faith (Catholic Century), Ignatius of Antioch Polycarp of Smyrna Early Christian Fathers.

He and his wife, Sharon, have three children. They live in Champaign, Illinois.