The effect of the Enlightenment bifurcated not only faith and reason but also imagination and knowledge. “[S]ome philosophers of the Enlightenment thought that image and imagination simply clouded and obscured the pure dry knowledge that they were after” (Guite, Faith, Hope and Poetry, 2). This was done in vast contrast to the age when fables, stories, and myths communicated knowledge, albeit through the medium of fertile imaginations.
This is why the late Oxford Professor of Poetry, Seamus Heaney, titled his lectures The Redress of Poetry, whereby he defends the notion that poetry balances, in the words of Guite, “our vision of the world and ourselves” (Ibid., 1). The restoration of poetry is no small endeavor.
I have personally experienced the amorphous gulf between knowledge and imagination in the sandbox of my experiences with Christian thinkers. Some have labeled poetry or story-telling too subjective or interpretive.
To that I say, “Conveying propositional truth claims about the kingdom of God through story or parables didn’t seem to bother Jesus.” I would also like to add that “it’s the experience or interpretation that gives knowledge its meaning, and meaning is what makes it powerful.” So I take issue with Francis Bacon’s aphorism of “knowledge is power.” It’s the imagination that makes it powerful, and by “powerful” I mean attractive and delightful.
May we continue to holistically serve the kingdom according to Pascal’s aphorism which states that true religion is both reasonable and thus reverential, as well as attractive: “Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. Attractive because it promises true good” (Pascal, Pensées, §12).
I am thankful to the relatively recent rise of Christian apologists and theologians who see the value of doing imaginative or cultural apologetics, such as C.S. Lewis, Paul Gould, Malcolm Guite, Francis Schaeffer, and Kevin Vanhoozer, to name just a few thinkers and creatives.