The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Writing

by Leland Ryken (Editor)

The Christian Imagination brings together in a single source the best that has been written about the relationship between literature and the Christian faith. This anthology covers all of the major topics that fall within this subject and includes essays and excerpts from fifty authors, including C.S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, Dorothy Sayers, and Frederick Buechner.

Genres: Writing, Christian, Nonfiction, Theology, Christianity, Faith, Art

465 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Dr. Ryken has served on the faculty of Wheaton College since 1968. He has published over thirty books and more than one hundred articles and essays, devoting much of his scholarship to Bible translations and the study of the Bible as literature. He served as Literary Chairman for the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible and in 2003 received the distinguished Gutenberg Award for his contributions to education, writing, and the understanding of the Bible.

He is the father of Philip Graham Ryken

Reviews

[Randy Alcorn]

This is an extraordinary treasure of thought-provoking reflections, by many of my favorite authors (including Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton). The sections on “Imagination, Beauty and Creativity” and “Myth and Fantasy” were particularly rich, at times enchanting. “In Praise of Stories” was one of many intriguing articles I intend to go back to. I would read one or two of these delicacies, then force myself to put the book down, to contemplate what I’d read, yes, but also to ration out the precious remains. Whether you restrain your appetite and consume it over weeks or months, or gorge yourself in a day or two, you’ll find this a literary feast, to be read with pen or highlighter in hand. It’s also a bargain, since there are a dozen articles easily worth the price of the book. The Christian Imagination should not be resigned to literature classes. It deserves a place in homes that love, or want to love, great books, and long to enter worlds that lead to The World. If your imagination has gotten too wet to burn, this book is a flame-thrower.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read Thomas Howard's "Myth: Flight to Reality" on August 1, 2016. Used Woiwode's piece on realism in my book chapter on fantasy as realism.

I teach (kind of—students lead discussion) through this book in ENGL 485 (the senior seminar for English majors).

Part 1: A Christian Philosophy of Literature

Part 2: Imagination, Beauty, and Creativity

Part 3: To Teach and to Delight

Part 4: The Christian Writer

Part 5: The Christian Reader

Part 6: State of the Art: Success and Failure in Current Christian Fiction and Poetry

Part 7: Realism

Part 8: Myth and Fantasy

Part 9: Poetry

Part 10: Narrative

[Anna Stegeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just love this book! So beautiful and has wonderful essays from C. S. Lewis, Annie Dillard, Madeleine L’Engle, and more. I had to keep my notebook close by to copy down all the quotes I liked!

[Becky Pliego · Rating 5 out of 5]

2021; Fantastic. I’m so glad I picked it up again.

2012: You don't have to agree with every essay in this wonderful book, but I assure you, in every page you will find good food for the thought.

[Josiah DeGraaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books on writing. It’s basically a collection of essays by brilliant literary minds about the purpose of writing, how to write, and basically anything and everything having to do with writing. You have essays on the purpose of literature, on viewing literature as a form of art, on why modern-day Christian fiction is weak, and so many other fascinating topics. Poetry, fantasy, realism, narrative—it’s all in here. We have stuff by J.R.R. Tolkien, Francis Schaeffer, Flannery O’Connor, Madeline L’Engle…

If you're interested in writing, or just interested in literature, and looking at it from a Christian point-of-view, this is a must-have.

5 stars.

[Davis Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my most treasured books that I own. The diverse yet unified perspectives, chosen wisely and mindfully by the ever-insightful Ryken, have influenced my own scholarly aspirations toward developing a Christian poetics, my view of natural theology, and my hermeneutic for absorbing and considering literature. Whenever I need a shot of beauty in my life, I reread any one of these essays and I'm guaranteed to at least crack a smile at the sheer loveliness of it. Any Christian should own it, mark it, and cherish it—if you're not into literature, you need it most; if you already love literature, it will unveil many new and marvelous layers.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"That is why we not only learn from literature but enjoy it: it delights as it teaches."

A collection of essays, gathered together, to reflect on the relationship between the Christian faith and literature.

In the beginning, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I did not know what feelings the essays would invoke within me, if it would cause me to think about them long after they'd been read.

Of course, familiar and favorite authors, like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis for example, made me look forward to their essays the most. The others, who were either unfamiliar to me or who I did not care for the in slightest, were less looked forward to.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by how much thought was put into the collection. There were a few essays that I favored over others, some that I enjoyed as it served as food for thought, and a couple that could have been left out or skipped over completely.

On an unrelated note: it was also quite funny to read the annotations made by whoever owned the paperback copy before me.

[Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a wonderful collection of essays on the Christian perspective of the literary arts— both creating and appreciating them. Topics include the philosophy of beauty and imagination, the importance of myth and fantasy, literature, poetry, narrative, and hymnody. Most are good and many are excellent.

Some of the entries are by expected luminaries such as CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, GK Chesterton, Madeline L’Engle, TS Eliot, and Flannery O’Connor, but there are also great contributions from Francis Schaeffer, Gene Edward Veith, Frederick Buechner, Walker Percy, Annie Dillard, Daniel Taylor, Clyde Kilby, Brian Godawa, Wendell Berry, Susan Wise Bauer, Robert Siegel, and others.


I’m just going to save some passages I liked:

Only stories that recognize the inseparableness of plot and character matter to us in the long run. What we call plot-driven stories, which focus on events rather than on characters choosing, are always popular because they are always easy— intellectually and emotionally. They require little of us, and we are lazy enough to appreciate that. But the habitual enjoyment of such stories is actually a form of prostitution, offering momentary, superficial pleasure without the cost of commitment or human interaction. The great sin of most of the stories of popular culture—in film, television, novels, and the like— is not that they are violent or obscene or godless, but that they waste of our time. Since I can hear only so many stories in my life, why settle for anything less than the best ones?
And the best stories will always be about morality, about values, about how we should behave in the world. This is not a judgment based on piety or religious belief or a hyperactive conscience. It is a simple recognition of the nature of the human condition and the way story expresses that condition. I have argued that the essence of story is characters choosing. Because characters must choose (and refusing to choose itself a choice), they are inherently valuing beings. Every choice implies an underlying value— a because, an aught.
[…]
One of the experiences that can motivate our actions is experience with the stories from literature. This seems far-fetched to some, especially those who make a dubious distinction between literature in the supposedly real world. Are we genuinely prepared to say that working in an office building or shopping in a mall is real, while reading Tolstoy is not? Which engages us most fully as thinking, feeling, believing, questioning creatures? Which best draws out our humanity? Which is most likely to change us? Which, then, is more real? A story is something that happens to you, as much as a car wreck or job promotions or falling in love.
-Daniel Taylor

Christians often turn out to have an unenviable corner on the unimaginative and the commonplace?… Evangelical Christians have had one of the purest of motives and one of the worst of outcomes. The motive is never to mislead by the smallest fraction of an iota in the precise nature of salvation, to live it and state it in its utter purity. But the unhappy outcome has too often been to elevate the cliché. The motive is that the gospel shall not be misunderstood, not sullied, not changed in jot or tittle. The outcome has often been merely the reactionary, static, and hackneyed.…
There is a simplicity which diminishes and a simplicity which enlarges, and evangelicals have too often chosen the wrong one. The first is that of the cliché—simplicity with mind and heart removed. The other is that of art. The first falsifies by its exclusions; the second encompasses. The first silently denies the multiplicity and grandeur of creation, salvation, and indeed all things. The second symbolizes and celebrates them. The first tries to take the danger out of Christianity and with the danger often removes the actuality. The second suggests the creative and sovereign God of the universe with whom there are no impossibilities. The contrast suggests that not to imagine is what is sinful.
-Clyde S. Kilby

It is not only that the reading individual today (or at any day) is not enough an individual to be able to absorb all of the “views of life“ of all the authors pressed upon us by the publishers’ advertisements and the reviewers, and to be able to arrive at wisdom by considering one against another. It is that the contemporary authors are not individuals enough either. It is not that the world of separate individuals of the liberal democrat is undesirable; it is simply that this world does not exist. For the reader of contemporary literature is not, like the reader of the established great literature of all time, exposing himself to the influence of divers and contradictory personalities; he is exposing himself to a mass movement of writers who, each of them, think that they have something individually to offer,
but are really all working together in the same direction. And there never was a time, I believe, when the reading public was so large, or so helplessly exposed to the influences of its own time. There never was a time, I believe when those who read at all, read so many more books by living authors than books by dead authors; there never was a time so completely parochial, so shut off from the past. There may be too many publishers; there are certainly too many books published; and the journals ever incite to the reader to “keep up“ with what is being published. Individualistic democracy has come to high tide: and it is more difficult today to be an individual than it ever was before.
-TS Eliot

[Alex Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I’ve read about literature and writing, as regards the Christian faith. The sheer number of excerpts gives a wide variety of perspectives on plenty of topics. I would recommend to any Christian who likes books and to those who don’t (as it will help them see the value).

[Takim Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was given to me by one of my high school English teachers, Jonathan Koch, to recognize me for my service as president of the Creative Writers' Guild. It was the perfect gift. As a christian and an aspiring author I've long considered Lewis and Tolkien my primary role models, so reading about the creation of the Chronicles of Narnia and about Tolkien's thoughts on the purpose of fantasy was a joy. The philosophy of literature defended in this book puts many of my own half-formed theories into words and elaborates on them. I've always believed that imagination is one of God's greatest gifts and that literature is one of the best ways of expressing ultimate truth beyond mundane facts. Leland Ryken has done a great job of compiling a representative sample of the words of several renowned Christian writers into a cohesive argument for the significance of poesy in terms of faith.

[C.S. Wachter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took several months to carefully read through this wonderful book. It was well worth the time and effort. I recommend it not only to Christians in general, but also, specifically, to Christians who are writers.

[Danielle Williamson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know how some people get gifs on here but I would like to post one of someone crying inconsolably. That's how I feel to have finished this book. It was for a class, but this book will be my go-to reference and reread for any English pursuits in the future (both reading and writing). It is the best book I have ever read on the intersection between Christianity and creativity. What I didn't realize is that this book is made up entirely of essays from Christian thinkers and imaginists, each carefully curated and categorized according to genre. Notable essays are Simon Wise Bauer "On Writing Evil", Richard Terell, "Piety is Not Enough", and James Schaap's, "When a Spider is Only a Spider". It's such a thoughtful book, and I feel empowered to write having been brought through every issue of the literary world with some incredibly insightful guides. This may be the best book of my academic career.

[Anita Yoder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read excerpts for a Lit class. Great curated volume of wise, experienced, elegant writers on their craft.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome.

Helped fight my natural inclination to write off (booh...) the beauty of writing, of telling a story, of art.

I am inclined to propositional thinking, but sometimes my propositional attitude forgets that propositions are supernatural. Our propositions contain more of heaven and hell than we know. I.e. though propositions are thought to be understood only by the intellect, yet it is our souls, and the reality in which our souls live and breathe and move, in which the propositions in our mind are really alive.

Propositions, the true ones, speak of a true reality. And art, writing, or story telling, are all attempts to proclaim the same true propositions, but instead of focusing on the intellect, they focus on the feeling.

[They still hit the intellect, but not in the same way as: Jesus is Lord. Art can communicate the same truth, but it hits us differently. And we need that, we need both (beauty in truth and truth in beauty), because they both affect our souls].

Ex.

Proposition: Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the living beauty in the true proposition.

Art: Van Gogh's "Starry Night." The truth is in the artistry, the beauty it reveals is the beauty of God. The heavens are proclaiming of the beauty of our LORD.

[I think I need to think this through more. My writing is convoluted].

The one quibble I have with the book, or with some of the essays, is the inclination of artists to exaggerate the reality of their work. It is not enough that art can glorify God, but many still want to go one step further and make their art, in effect, divine. Or maybe it is that they seem to say that all art is God-breathed, which is true in a sense, but then they forget the rest of the story.

Eve and Adam eat the apple.

Evil enters the world. Hence, all our art must inevitably be tainted. And only Christ can redeem us, and it. Art has no redemptive qualities apart from Christ. I have no redemptive qualities apart from Christ. Feeding the starving children has no redemptive quality apart from Christ.

I.e. the redemption that there is in feeding starving children is brought about, and only able to happen, because of what Christ did at the cross and in the grave. The fact that we are allowed to help others is because of Christ. The fact that atheists are allowed to help the poor is based on what Christ did. Christ made it, and makes it, possible for good to be in the world. Because Christ IS the good.

We exist by the grace which rests on and in and because of Christ.

Common grace in a world of evil. And for the joyful few: Amazing grace.

So let us rejoice in the grace God has shown us, but let us remember that we still live in a world rampant with evil, even still in our own hearts. The good news, or true story, is that God has and is setting us free from this same evil to draw us near to Him.

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best anthologies I've ever seen. A fantastic resource for anyone researching and writing on the topic. While Ryken's focus is literature, much of what is said here could be applied to any other art form, or the imagination in general.

Even from looking at the table of contents, you can see how valuable this book is. Most of the "Viewpoints" are reprints from older works by people like Schaeffer, Annie Dillard, Lewis, Maritain, MacDonald, Kilby, O'Connor, Eliot, Chesterton, Tolkien, Wendell Berry, and L'Engle. Then newer scholars like Gene Veith and Chad Walsh have written essays specifically for this book. There's discussions on writing for children, the value of fantasy, methodology in hymn-writing, personal reflections from poets and screenwriters, and close readings of literature from the greats, like Dickinson, Austen, and Twain. Scattered throughout are quotes from great writers on reading, writing, and a general love of literature.

Quote:

“Why not? Because the world that gave birth to the high myths—to those huge worlds of story that are remote from us but terrifyingly close—that world has disappeared. It has disappeared under our interdict. For we have decided (sometime in the Renaissance it was and we finished the job in the eighteenth century) to recreate the world. It’s a very small one now, limited as it is by microscopes and telescopes and computers, and asphalt parking lots at MacDonald’s hamburger stands. And it’s a horror. It is, above all, boring, for mystery has fled from it. We have announced to anyone who cares to listen—and somehow one imagines that the angels and elves aren’t all that enthralled by the information—that we can explain everything. We know what our forefathers never guessed: that if you take things apart you can explain them and thus master them. And we’re dead right. You certainly can master them. The only difficulty is that the thing you’ve got the mastery of is a pile of pieces all taken apart. We haven’t found the spells (since we don’t believe in spells) to put them back together again. We’re in the position of all the king’s men in ‘Humpty Dumpty.’
By the eighteenth century the myth became sovereign that the analytic and rational capacity is absolutely adequate for unscrambling the mystery of the universe. Somewhere in the process the gods fled. The irony is that in the very effort of modern art to disentangle human experience from the transcendent, human experience turned to ashes” (Howard, “Myth: Flight to Reality” 340).

[A.K. Preston · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book belongs on the shelf of every Christian creative working in whatever medium, format, or genre. If you’ve been uncertain about the proper use of your talents and imagination within a Christian lifestyle - or faced misunderstanding or outright challenges from fellow believers, this book is for you. There’s a perception in many Christian circles that a walk of faith necessarily restricts or discourages the human imagination. On the contrary - it unleashed it. Being made in the image of an imaginative Creator - in fact - the greatest Artist of them all, humans too carry the gift of creation, be it in story, art, poetry, song, etc. This book is a compendium of essays by a variety of writers from various decades and backgrounds who have approached their craft with just such an understanding. If you have ever felt but have been unable to articulate the God-given nature of your talents and creative dreams - read this book. You’ll be enriched for the experience.

[Kyra Bredenhof · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a wonderful, insightful, and highly helpful collection of essays and quotations about how a Christian reads and writes. I learned so much in reading through this, and am already looking forward to rereading my favourite pieces. I always read it with a pencil in hand, highlighting the most important lines, taking notes, and marking things I want to remember. With insights from Tolkien, CS Lewis, Flannery O'Connor, TS Eliot, and many, many more, I felt I was learning from the very best. This book made me feel even more strongly the importance of literature for Christians, and the necessity of my task as a writer. I didn't agree with absolutely everything that was said, but I found much to think about and discuss.

[Kim Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of essays, though I could do without the little italicized quotes interspersed through the essays. They were more distracting than helpful.
Best read was the Three Faces of Evil by Susan Wise Bauer. Insightful and thought-provoking. Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton are a given for excellence, of course.

[Alyssa Bohon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful collection, I absolutely savored it.

There were maybe 2 of the 60(ish?) essays/viewpoints that clashed with my own views, but it brings out how really diverse this gathering is.

Highlights for me were T. S. Eliot on Religion and Literature, Susan Wise Bauer on The Christian Writer's Portrayal of Evil, Robert Siegel on Fantasy and the Limits of the Inexpressible, and Tolkien on Fairy Tales. I was nourished and inspired and want to keep this one on a shelf nearby to return to often.

[Whitney Grindberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll definitely be revisiting this one again!

[Regina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, inspiring reading...about reading and writing.

[Tim Vander Meulen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! What a fantastic compilation of critical essays from esteemed Christian authors! I could pull a sentence from half of the paragraphs in this book worthy of being plastered on my wall.
I’ve always wanted to find author’s perspectives on storytelling from a Christian perspective, and here it is, beginning with Sir Philip Sydney’s The Defense of Poesy back in 1580 to present authors such as Richard Terrel and Leland Ryken himself. The dialogue is ongoing, and I hope someday to be able to contribute to the discussion.
This book addresses nearly everything that I’ve been thinking about since I first started writing. What is a good story? What constitutes redemption in storytelling? How are stories related to the human condition and to God’s created world? I particularly appreciate the overarching proposition in these essays that stories, as well as man’s imagination, reflect a higher spiritual design.
Well done, Leland Ryken, for putting together this wonderful collaboration of brilliant insights into true storytelling! Most likely I’ll use this book as my bible, so to speak, for my own writing.

[A.L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read bits and pieces of this book while doing research for a paper. The pieces I read were great. How theology, literature, imagination, and narrative intersect is an interest area of mine. Ryken is a major player in this field, so I anticipate coming back to this book in the future. I was also glad that it was written at a thorough, but not overly academic level. It's an undergraduate reading level and avoids unnecessary complication with insider lingo. Recommended!

[Alyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read this book in one hard slog, I now see it will be most valuable to return to in dipping in and out, as the various essays and quotes become more relevant. Be that as it may, I don't regret reading it in one go: this book taught me a lot that I already knew, and a lot that I didn't. It is comforting to read the thoughts of people who love books, words and reading like I do, and inspiring to listen to them reinforce again and again the importance of all kinds of literature.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Varied selection of writings by Twentieth Century Christian authors.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is meant to be chewed slowly, leaving time between bites for the digestive processes to work.
Key Quotes:

It is evident on every page of his writings that Augustine was impacted for the good by his classical reading in spite of his cynical teachers and his own scruples, and sometimes he is not unaware of it. The pagan Cicero’s Hortensius was a major influence leading to his conversion to Christ. It “quite altered my affection, turned my prayers to thyself, O Lord, and made me have clean other purposes and desires.” It has this effect, he interestingly notes, because he made use of it not to “sharpen his tongue” but “for the matter of it” (109f). He had then, moments in which he recognized something in literature which the abuses that also exist ought not to deter us from seeking. (p. 5).

We “cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race” (Hughes 728). Spenser’s Guyon is a positive role model of uncloistered virtue who makes his authors a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas. Thus Sidney’s poet defeats the philosopher and the theologian. But even when a text promotes error, discernment is better than blindness, and “books promiscuously read” can help prepare us for life. If they do not, the fault lies not in the book but in the reader.(p. 14).

Christian art is defined by the one in whom it exists and by the spirit from which it issues: one says “Christian art” or the “art of a Christian,” as one says … the “art of man.” It is the art of redeemed humanity. It is planted in the Christian soul, by the side of the running waters, under the sky of the theological virtues, amidst the breezes of the seven gifts of the Spirit. It is natural that it should bear Christian fruit. (p. 53).

The poet is not a man who asks me to look at him; he is a man who says “look at that” and points. —C. S. Lewis, The Personal Heresy (p. 56).

Abelard raised a very foolish question when he asked: “What has Horace to do with the Psalter, Virgil with the Gospel, Cicero with the Apostle?” The answer is simply that Horace, Virgil, and Cicero clarify the human situation to which the salvation of God is addressed through Psalter, Gospel, and Apostle. —Roland M. Frye, Perspective on Man: Literature and the Christian Tradition (p. 56).

The young especially must be helped to take responsibility for what they glimpse—hints of beauty, visions of the future germinating in the present. And they must be pushed to project these insights in their own words and images for others to share. This does not mean applauding any and all of their dadaist flings. It means rather helping them to focus what they see. It means inciting them to clarify their own response to the world. It means helping them deal with their fears and destructive instincts, in order to discover their own capacity to insert themselves joyfully into the world—to give thanks for it—to participate in its transformation. It also means helping them acquire the vocabulary, visual and verbal, the basic disciplines and techniques, which make imaging possible. (p. 74).

No one needs padding from reality; we must learn early to see both its reflected glory and its ultimate inability to fit our wishes. We must learn early to seek God within the wounds that reality inflicts. There is indeed no better educator of the imagination than Job, since he ended up “seeing” God! The healthy imagination, rooted in contrition, is fully open to painful change; it is always ready to accept the new, however dazzling to human eyes. (p. 75).

“O man,” says St. Irenaeus of Lyons, it is not you who make God, but rather God who makes you. Wait patiently for the hand of your Artist, who makes all things at the proper time. Present him with a heart that is supple and docile, preserve the imprint that this artist has given you, protect in yourself the Water that comes from Him, without which you will harden and lose the trace of his fingers. In preserving the modeling, you will mount up toward perfection, for the art of God will cover what in you is only clay. His hands have fashioned in you your very substance; he will adorn you with gold and silver, inside and out, and the King himself will be captured by your beauty. (Against Heresies, IV, 39, 2) The highest role of human imagination is humble cooperation with this modeling of our own face by God Himself. Thank heavens, education of the Christian imagination is, first and foremost, in His hands. (p. 79).

Our own creation of beautiful things links us with our Creator. God was the first Quilter of prairies, the primal Painter (night skies, ferns, thunderheads, snow on cedars), the archetypal metal Sculptor (mountain ranges, icebergs), the Composer who heard the whales’ strange, sonorous clickings and songs in his head long before there were whales to sound them, the Playwright who plotted the sweeping drama of Creation, Incarnation, Redemption, the Poet whose Word said it all. God made us human beings in his image; we participate in creative intelligence, giftedness, originality. We each have the faculty of imagination deep within us, waiting, like a seed, to be watered and fertilized. Imagination gives us pictures by which to see things the way they can be, or the way they are, underneath. The prairie woman, hemmed into her sod house with her small children by months of sub-zero cold and snow, used her imagination redemptively. Around the traditional quilt patterns—double stars, wedding rings—her imagination pieced in the exuberant flowers and leaves that redeemed the long winter, that brought her soul back to life. She created beauty and richness from the ordinary stuff, even the castoffs, of her life. (p. 90).

Where linear, logical thinking may produce prose with a specific function—information or historical record or critical analysis or entertainment or instruction or narrative—poetry and art select and reflect on a small slice of human experience and lay it out there, a gift to anyone who is willing to look at it, savor it, and enter into the artist’s experience. The poet communicates experience in images and forms so precisely tailored, so personal, so multileveled that the insights go far beyond bare facts or mere usefulness. (p. 93).

Often, in the process of writing an article or a poem or an essay, I find myself “stuck,” confused, or unable to know in which direction the writing wants to go. That’s when I cry “Help!” and ask the Holy Spirit to guide my listening, my thinking, my creating, into channels that will bring me to the heart of truth for the work. I become a servant of the word, rather than its controller. And listening obedience, rather than preplanning, becomes my modus operandi. (p. 95).

We tend to think of our Creator in terms of the infinitely large, a deity of cosmic and supercosmic proportions. But not only do we have a God who creates mountains, oceans, planets, galaxies, universes. For our God, even the smallest details are significant, details like a mustard seed, a single pearl, a sparrow, a hair on a human head, an olive leaf in a dove’s mouth, drops of blood on a doorframe, a coin in the mouth of a fish. (p. 96).

Because the human intellect is fallen, secular knowledge is always partial and in a state of change, and we are in constant need of God’s revelation—the Word of God—which alone is the ground of truth. (p.120).

We enjoy the beauty of a sonnet or the artistry of an epic or the fictional inventiveness of a novel, we are enjoying a quality of which God is the ultimate source and performing an act similar to God’s enjoyment of his own creation. The way to show gratitude for a gift is to enjoy it. Literature and art are God’s gifts to the human race. One of the liberating effects of letting ourselves “go” as we enjoy literature is to realize that we can partly affirm the value of literature whose content or worldview we dislike. If God is the ultimate source of all beauty and artistry, then the artistic dimension of literature is the point at which Christians can be unreserved in their enthusiasm for the works of non-Christian writers. John Milton gradually came to deplore the ethical viewpoint of pagan authors, but he noted that “their art I still applauded” (Apology for Smectymnuus). Werner Jaeger, in his book on the classical tradition, claimed that “it was the Christians who finally taught men to appraise poetry by a purely aesthetic standard—a standard which enabled them to reject most of the moral and religious teaching of the classical poets as false and ungodly, while accepting the formal elements in their work as instructive and aesthetically delightful.” (p. 151).

Reading is not only a pleasure in itself, with its concomitants of stillness, quietness and forgetfulness of self, but in what we read many of our other comforts are present with us. —ELIZABETH GOUDGE, A Book of Comfort (p. 151).

The novelist doesn’t write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a world where something is obviously lacking, where there is the general mystery of incompleteness and the particular tragedy of our own times to be demonstrated, and the novelist tries to give you, within the form of the book, a total experience of human nature at any time. For this reason the greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama. The Christian novelist is distinguished from his pagan colleagues by recognizing sin as sin. According to his heritage he sees it not as sickness or an accident of environment, but as a responsible choice of offense against God which involves his eternal future. Either one is serious about salvation or one is not. And it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy. Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe. One reason a great deal of our contemporary fiction is humorless is because so many of these writers are relativists and have to be continually justifying the actions of their characters on a sliding scale of values. (p. 168).

Stories are sometimes most effectively told by limiting the scope of the tale. Although young writers often attempt to make their work appear universal by offering generic time and place settings, it takes a writer who is an experienced student of literature to discover, as James Joyce did in his works set in Ireland, that the universal is best expressed when grounded in the particular. (p. 192).

Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, i.e., God. — Conversations with Walker Percy Ed. Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985 (p. 194).

Great literature must treat evil, sometimes in a base and repulsive form … as do the Christian Scriptures. —ROLAND M. FRYE, Perspective on Man: Literature and the Christian Tradition

In The End of Education, Neil Postman argues that we cannot live without a narration—a story that “tells of origins and envisions a future, a story that constructs ideals, prescribes rules of conduct, provides a source of authority, and above all, gives a sense of continuity and purpose.” We tell ourselves stories that explain where we are, why we exist, why the world works the way it does.

The Christian story served this purpose well, with its narrative of a transcendent God and a personified Evil. But for twentieth-century Americans, the Christian story has been largely overwritten by snappier narratives. Postman offers the stories of inductive science, technology, and consumerism as examples. Each story offers us a purpose for living—the pursuit of knowledge, the mastery of the physical world, the accumulation of wealth.

The central theme found in Flannery O’Connor’s writing is the redemption of man; but, since her talent inclines her toward the portrayal of sin, she shows the effects of the redemption (i.e., grace) in a negative manner. She reflects the beauty of virtue by showing the ugliness of its absence. —JAMES F. FARNHAM, tribute to Flannery O’Connor in Flannery O’Connor: A Memorial, ed. J. J. Quinn

Kenneth Koch said in a book on the pleasures of reading and writing poetry rings true: “Read in the right way, poetry is a rich source of pleasure, knowledge, and experience. Not knowing poetry is an impoverishment of life such as not knowing music or painting would be, or not traveling.” Owen Barfield, in his book Poetic Diction, speaks of how the very element of strangeness in poetry is so powerful in the lives of some people that “it binds [them] to their libraries for a lifetime.”

All of life is the subject that should engage Christian poets.

Poetry appears less concerned with practical communication. It seems to arise out of silence and to disappear into silence. And while it is present, it behaves as if a disruptive child had gotten hold of the word processor, wreaking havoc on normal word order and creating rhythmic patterns that focus attention on themselves. It repeats sounds for effect. It forces decent nouns and adjectives into positions in sentences they never imagined. And it makes claims that are, on the face of it, outrageous—Love is a house where I have taken up abode. As a dialect, poetry appears to be impractical.

Too often poetry is thought to be impossibly far apart from ordinary human existence. Anyone’s mind is a teeming gallery of sensations and memories.… We all know the taste of things sweet or bland or sour, we all have known rage, we all feel the passion to recall even a painful past. A rich confusion of awareness underlies all human feeling, and the language for it surges all around us. The poet reaches into that rich confusion toward the wellspring of the surging speech of life. He must, through language alone, catch a tone, a perception, a quality of sensation and arrange a whole poem round the impulse of energy so captured. —M. L. ROSENTHAL. Poetry and the Common Life

The point of all the arts, including poetry, is to tell the truth about what it is to be human. For this, those of us who make art, finally, are responsible to God. But the question of truth in a poem is not so easy to settle. A poem is not a brief. It is meant to be an experience. So any proposition within the borders of a poem changes meaning if it is wrenched out and quoted. This point is easier to make about a script. I remember how shocked I was when I realized that Polonius is actually an old windbag and Shakespeare wrote “This above all, unto thine own self be true,” and all the lines of gorgeous poetry that follow it to make Polonius look pompous. Polonius always speaks majestically. As Gertrude points out, he needs more matter and less art. And yet I hear people quote those speeches as if Shakespeare had meant them straight.

I believe that the art for arts’ sake movement, for example, which led to confessional poetry, is heartbreakingly and awfully mistaken. Art is wonderful, but it cannot save us and it cannot be the whole point. And yet I do not believe that the point of art is to spread the gospel either. Take a look at the variety and subtlety of what God has created: giraffes, hedgehogs, the dawn, the mind-boggling world of a cell, the Milky Way. He is not didactic. He has a sense of humor. And He must be fascinated by His whole creation.

Generally for me a poem comes in a whoosh. Typed cleanly on the paper, it feels immense and splendid, like the creation must have seemed on the first morning of the world. I’m happy as a new mother—until I go back to look at it several days later. Then the work begins. I see it with the cold, beady eyes of a critic. I find fault with it. I consider throwing it away. Sometimes I do. But usually I begin the slow process of revision which can take from several months to five or six years. Crazy as it sounds, I love to revise. It gives me another chance. It’s like saying, Wait! That’s not what I meant at all. Let me take another stab at it! Paper and ink are endlessly forgiving. I thank God for these second chances, which sometimes become fifteenth chances and ninety-seventh chances. It is humbling and redemptive, the process of rewriting.

Maybe, writing poetry is for me a particularly loud or tall form of reading. I write poetry because it is my way of knowing the world. I try to tell the truth about what I know. But I also read and write poetry because I am having a love affair with the form. Poetry is an expression of hope. It is play. A lifetime is too short to exhaust its possibilities.

Writing with the hymns of his brother Charles as well as his own in mind, Wesley theorizes, May I be permitted to add a few words with regard to the poetry? Then I will speak to those who are judges thereof, with all freedom and unreserve. To these I may say, without offence, 1. In these hymns there is no doggerel; no botches; nothing put in to patch up the rhyme; no feeble expletives. 2. Here is nothing turgid or bombast, on the one hand, or low and creeping, on the other. 3. Here are no cant expressions; no words without meaning.… We talk common sense, both in prose and verse, and use no word but in a fixed and determinative sense. 4. Here are, allow me to say, both the purity, the strength, and the elegance of the English language; and, at the same time, the utmost simplicity and plainness, suited to every capacity. (iv)

Jane Austen has a fictional character say, when asked what she is reading, “Oh! it is only a novel,” adding, “Only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its variety, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language” (Northanger Abbey, chapter 5).

It is odd how hymns can trigger off memories of the past more strongly than visual scenes or smells.… If as a child I disliked the sermon, I loved the hymns, and this affection has remained with me. The soaring triumph of the processional Easter hymns, the celebration of All Saints’ Day, with the hymn “For All the Saints,” … and the plangent melancholy of the evening hymns, particularly “The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Has Ended,” sung while the church windows darkened and the mind moved forward to the walk through the churchyard between the gleaming tombstones in the evening dusk. Some of my early religious memories are of the hymns.… Some of them still have the power to move me to tears. —P. D. JAMES, Time to Be in Earnest

Human beings require stories to give meaning to the facts of their existence. For example, ever since we can remember, all of us have been telling ourselves stories about ourselves, composing life-giving autobiographies of which we are the heroes and heroines. If our stories are coherent and plausible and have continuity, they will help us to understand why we are here, and what we need to pay attention to and what we may ignore. A story provides a structure for our perceptions; only through stories do facts assume any meaning whatsoever. This is why children everywhere ask, as soon as they have the command of language to do so, “Where did I come from?” and, shortly after, “What will happen when I die?” They require a story to give meaning to their existence. Without air, our cells die. Without a story, our selves die. —NEIL POSTMAN, “Learning by Story”

At the same time that we insist that meaning is at the heart of story, we must be clear where that meaning lies. It lies in the whole story or not at all. Meaning inhabits story like a morning mist envelops a pine forest—everywhere present, but nowhere tangible. Detach meaning from the story and both die.

[Eric Yap · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays put together by Ryken on the Christian faith in literature, writing and reading. Contributing authors range from O'Flannery, Tolkien, Lewis, Elliot, Beuchner, Chesterton, Leithart, Percy, L'Engle, Kilby, MacDonald, Schaeffer, Veith Jr, and many more, and covers a whole range of subtopics like poetry, fantasy, movie, aesthetics, myth, realism, theological history of Christian literature, imagination and so on. Some essays were moving, while some others flew a bit too high for me, the fault lies with me of course, as a student of literature would have comprehended and appreciated more of the technicalities of literature and the wide spectrum of authors and famous works cited.

"Sidney takes it for granted, along with his opponents, that the purpose of education is the acquisition not of knowledge only but of virtue as well. So then: the moral philosopher tells you the precept of virtue, what ought to be, but he does it so abstractly that he is “hard of utterance” and “misty to be conceived,” so that one must “wade in him until he be old before he shall find sufficient cause to be honest.” The historian, on the other hand, tells a concrete story we can relate to; but he is limited to what actually has been and cannot speak of what ought to be. The one gives an ideal but abstract precept, the other a concrete but flawed example. But “both, not having both, do both halt”. How then do we get beyond this impasse?

By combining the virtues of history and philosophy, the poet then becomes the “monarch” of the humane sciences, the most effective at achieving their end, virtuous action. He can give us better role models—and negative examples too—than can be supplied by real life in a fallen world. “Disdaining to be tied to any such subjection [to nature], lifted up by the vigor of his own invention,” he makes in effect another nature. He has the freedom to do this because he is created in the image of the Creator. Greek and English rightly agree in calling the poet (from Greek poiein, to make) a maker, for people are most like God the Maker when they create a world and people it with significant characters out of their imagination. The very existence of literature, then, even when it is abused, is a powerful apology for the Christian doctrine of humanity and its creation in the image of God. Therefore, we should 'give right honor to the heavenly Maker of that maker, who, having made man to his own likeness, set him beyond and over all the works of that second nature: which in nothing he sheweth so much as in poetry, when with the force of a divine breath he bringeth things forth surpassing her doings.'

Here, then, is finally a profoundly Christian understanding of literature which does not merely salvage it for Christian use but finds the very ground of its being in explicitly Christian doctrine: creation, the imago Dei, the “cultural mandate” to subdue the earth. Christians alone understand why human beings, whether “literary” types or not, are impelled to make, tell, and hear stories. When Christians also do so, they are not so much spoiling the Egyptians as recovering their own patrimony. That is why we not only learn from literature but enjoy it: it delights as it teaches. And it conveys its kind of truth through the creation of concrete images which incarnate or embody ideas which would otherwise remain abstract and nebulous."

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had thought to call this book boring - which might have been a sad indictment on the titular subject. It's taken me a long time to get through it, and the reading often felt like wading.

Although it's a symposium of a wide array of Christian thinkers (nearly 50 of them) holding differing views, it seems to me the parts of the book that get the most bogged down are where it assumes that something called the 'Christian imagination' is a unified, singular thing that can be defined, and that good Christian writers and readers will (and should) display certain listed characteristics. In these parts, the book seems overly prescriptive, narrowing and didactic.

Where the book sparkles is where the discourse moves beyond this assumption and when the practitioners themselves (some of them very highly regarded practitioners at that) take the reigns. The symposium, the multiplicity of voices, wins out in the end. I found large parts of the second half of the book, which deal with realism, myth and fantasy, poetry and narrative, sparked outwards, rather than narrowing down the field of play. Worth the effort in the end.

[Jessica]

Interesting side note: Al Mohler wrote that to a great extent "our personal libraries betray our true identities and interests" in an article titled "By Their Books We Shall Know Them."

In "Other People's Books," Jay Parini writes:

It's not only the physical aspects of books that attract me, of course. In fact, I rarely buy first or elegant editions, however much I like to glance at them; good reading copies, in hardback or a decent paperback, are just fine . . . What interests me about other people's books is the nature of their collection. A personal library is an X-ray of the owner's soul. It offers keys to a particular temperament, an intellectual disposition, a way of being in the world. Even how the books are arranged on the shelves deserves notice, even reflection. There is probably no such thing as complete chaos in such arrangements.

[William Barrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christian poetry, Christian fiction, Christian movies produced by non-Christians? How can these be? Well known and highly skilled writers explain the themes and messages which identify a poem, a book, or a movie as Christian. At the same time, these writers define what makes really good poetry, fiction, and movies. The essays display their authors' literary skills — each is a work of art and academia. Reading these entries reminded me of the strangely enjoyable and exciting feeling of weightlessness achieved by cresting an asphalt sine wave at 60 mph. Line after line, crest after crest, this book alternately took my imagination on a ride and brought me back to the reality of writing again and again. Who would have thought a book about literature could draw a reader back to read it again ... and maybe again?