I’m still adding to my upcoming book on poetry, prose, and short stories titled Imaginative Apologetics. But the Introduction is finished. If you would like to read the precursor to this book, then enjoy From the Ashes We Rise.
I give you the Intro to Imaginative Apologetics.
IMAGINATIVE apologetics promotes and pursues what rational apologetics lacks: Meaning through metaphor. This lack is not the focus of the book but rather the catalyst, which is to complement the rational with the imaginative.[1]
C.S. Lewis once wrote, “I am a rationalist. For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”[2] From this, we can deduce that reason and truth are necessarily correlated, as is imagination and meaning. That being quite obvious. What is truly telling and inspiring is the implication that reason and imagination, truth and meaning are complementary parts to that galactic-sized enterprise we call knowledge. Lewis moves to say, “Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.”[3] That is, while the imagination does not create the concept of truth, it does conjure up and flirt with existing metaphors in order to better understand and express that truth. For example, in expressing amorous love, our imaginations might produce pictures of “serenading the sun” or “ascending blonde rays of light.” However, these metaphors don’t create love. But they do help us visualize it, feel it deeply, and know what it means to us personally.
In today’s post-Christian world, there is no shortage of sources that defend the Faith. That goes for websites, YouTube videos, podcasts, books, blogs, journals, lectures, conferences, seminars, seminaries, and more. On paper, there is enough apologia out there that makes sound arguments for Christianity from diverse disciplines, such as, but not limited to, biblical reliability, historicity, archaeology, prophecy, and doctrine, as well as science, theology, ethics, epistemology, and psychology. In other words, there is no rational or moral reason not to be a devoted disciple of Jesus Christ. One could even argue that, therefore, we should be entering a Cambrian Explosion, culturally speaking, of widespread, well-trained Christian apologists who are setting their generation on fire for the kingdom of God. Sadly, the Church appears to be experiencing the inverse phenomenon.
There seems to be a paucity of pervasive influence, so much so that serious engagement with Christian teaching appears to be waning. Nominal Christianity is on the rise. And it does not help that rational or classical apologetics draws a hard line in the proverbial sand between reason and emotions, favoring the former over the latter. While I understand the need to make a category distinction between them, as well as to explore the limitations and fickle nature of human emotions, I believe it is fallacious to eliminate all talk of emotion that is naturally stimulated when, say, discussing the beauty of God’s design in creation from our biblical worldview and defense of Christianity. And the reason for this chasm of conviction, besides the obvious—rebellion toward God based on the depravity of the human condition—is that apologists have become hyper-focused on reason at the expense of meaning. (More on this later.)
Along with the content of aesthetics, the method we employ must also be amended. I suggest that story be incorporated into one’s apologia. By “story” I mean the employment of fiction—replete with moral provocation and literary elements—should complement the arid, no-nonsense landscape of apologetics expanding its constraining boundary to include metaphor, parable, and mythology.
Several apologists come to mind in defense of the position I’m endorsing: The older testament prophet Nathan; the newer testament prophet Jesus of Nazareth; and, loosely speaking, the contemporary prophet C.S. Lewis. I would like to start off by saying that not only were these sage men in favor of what has been coined “imaginative apologetics,” they were also successful at getting people to repent or draw closer to God via this integrated approach—reason and imagination, truth and meaning—of experientially defending Judeo-Christianity.
The court prophet Nathan was instrumental in delivering to King David the messianic promise—that through his royal lineage God will provide a flesh-and-blood successor, and the throne of his kingdom will be established forever.[4] However, the next message Nathan delivers to David is not as joyful.
Let’s start with some background essentials from 2 Samuel 11: David—who stayed in Jerusalem during the spring time instead of leading his troops into battle against the Ammonites, as well as sending his commanding officer, Joab, in his place—lusted after Bathsheba, the beautiful wife of one of his mercenaries, Uriah the Hittite. Uriah was away at war when David secretly called for Bathsheba, had intercourse with her, and impregnated her. The King then tried to cover up his sin by summoning Uriah home to have sex with his own wife, contradicting “the wartime soldier’s ban against conjugal relations (cf. I Sam. 21:4-7),”[5] so the child would appear to be Uriah’s. The orthodox Israelite refused. Once David’s plan was foiled, he had Uriah put on the frontline where he knew he’d be killed. And it happened as the King orchestrated, which greatly displeased the LORD.
The next thing that happens (chapter 12)—God sends the prophet Nathan to rebuke David. But the interesting thing about Nathan, which is relevant to my case for imaginative apologetics, is that instead of engaging in a straightforward (obvious) rebuke against David, he tells him a parable about a rich man and a poor man in order to arise righteous anger.
We are told that a traveler comes to the rich man “who owns a very large number of sheep and cattle.”[6] But instead of killing one of his own sheep to prepare for his guest as part of ancient Near Eastern hospitality, the rich man steals and kills the only ewe lamb the poor man has.[7] Scripture tells us, “He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.”[8]
Upon hearing this, David becomes enraged and immediately casts judgment on the rich man. Nathan tells him, “‘You are that man!’”[9]
By telling a story, Nathan creatively “snuck past the watchful dragons”[10] of sheer reason and matter-of-factness (i.e., what is obvious) in order to awaken David’s moral imagination.[11]
Another person who told stories was Jesus of Nazareth. His masterful style of storytelling moved everyone who heard one of his parables, including friends, as well as enemies. He knew the hearts of his audience members and spoke to each one, sometimes through the same parable. Take for example the Parable of the Prodigal Son as recorded in Luke’s gospel.
Jesus starts the relational narrative by talking of a father and his two sons. The younger son demands his inheritance, leaves home for a distant (non-Jewish) land, lives a life of reckless indulgence, and then squanders it all. Due to a famine, he’s forced to work as a hired hand for a farmer who takes care of pigs, which are significant in the story since swine symbolize ceremonial uncleanliness. Starving, he seeks to eat the pods that are meant for the pigs. But none are given to him, according to the poor almsgiving of the Greeks and Romans. He finally realizes he can go back home to work for his father as a servant, since servants always have food. So he prepares an earnest speech that expresses shame over his sins against heaven and his father, knowing he’s not worthy to be called his son, especially after asking for his inheritance while his father lives. This brash insensitivity is tantamount to saying, “I can’t wait for you to die. I want my portion now.”
Christ continues to use symbolism and imagery to reveal the secrets of the kingdom of God to his disciples: “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”[12] The father represents our heavenly Father. The lost son who returns home represents a sinner who repents. The extent of the father’s compassion has deep cultural significance.
It’s surprising that the father runs to embrace his son because “[n]ormally the father waits to be addressed by the son and to receive some indication of respect before responding. But God’s compassion is exceptional.”[13] Knowing something about the clothing of that time period is also culturally enlightening: “[T]he father would have to pull up his skirt to run. … It was a breach of an elderly Jewish man’s dignity to run….”[14] So we see that in the honor-shame culture of Second Temple Judaism, it was shameful for a Jewish man to lift up his garment, exposing his naked legs in public, in order to run.[15] But we are awestruck to discover that the father in the story, who represents our heavenly Father, gladly embodies this scandal as an act of love for his lost son.
Jesus resumes to unpack the story: “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”[16] It’s important to note that the “best robe” would’ve belonged to the father, and the ring would’ve been a family signet ring, symbolizing “reinstatement to sonship in a well-to-do house.”[17] But the story does not end there.
We are told of the reaction of the elder son who becomes enraged by his father’s forgiveness for his impulsive son for the purpose of revealing to the religious leaders their hardened hearts. The elder son stands outside, refusing to enter. The father has to go out and plead with him. Jealous and bitter, he answers his father: “‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’”[18]
Now the stage is set to better understand all the characters, especially who and what they represent. The elder son, who represents the religious leaders of the Law, refuses to recognize his father’s lost son as his own brother, crassly negating the notion that familial restoration calls for extravagant celebration. It’s further telling that despite the way things appear, “the elder son has apparently lived in alienation from his father.[19] Even now he acts outside cultural norms vis-à-vis his father—refusing to come in, failing to address him as Father, stressing his servitude to his father, and complaining (in the context of a party!) about the maltreatment he has received from his father.”[20]
Joel B. Green comments, “Scribes and Pharisees are invited to find themselves represented in the parable as the elder son—responsible and obedient, it would seem, but failing in their solidarity with the redemptive purpose of God. Will they identify with God’s will and, having done so, join repentant sinners at the table? … The parable is open-ended, and so is the invitation.”[21]
As we can see, the Older Testament prophet, Nathan, and the Newer Testament prophet, Jesus, champion metaphor and parable to elicit a prescribed emotional response from their audience that complements the truth—like a treasure map meant to be followed—underlying their stories. It’s these stories that give greater value to the truth.
More recently, C.S. Lewis—an expert in uniting pagan myth with Christian truth—believed mythology is an imaginative way to experience a richer reality. His Chronicles of Narnia encapsulate the gospel as “true myth”: True myth with epistemological value or experiential significance; true myth that is both objectively and subjectively true; objectively true because the referent—Aslan (the true king of Narnia)—is referring to the historical person of Jesus Christ (“King of kings”[22]), and subjectively true because he means something profoundly existential to readers (not to mention, to the fictional characters in the story like the Pevensies and the Narnians).
I’d like to discuss further what Lewis means by “true myth” by quoting from a letter he wrote to Arthur Greeves about his conversation with J.R.R Tolkien and Hugo Dyson on Addison’s Walk on October 18, 1931. I believe it will help Christians today who incorrectly equate myth with untruth:
“Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself … I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose ‘what it meant.’”
Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.[23]
There is no question Lewis believes “the story of Christ” in the gospels is objectively true since “it really happened” in history. Thus, he does not believe in Christ as a mythological hero in the same imaginative vein as “Balder, Adonis, Bacchus.” Then what does he mean when he says “Christ is simply a “true myth”?
Let’s start by shedding light on his use of the word “myth,” which was the source of him being “mysteriously moved” when he read about a fictitious deity who sacrifices “himself to himself.” This is similar to how I feel about reading a comic book or watching a superhero movie where the superhero sacrifices himself for the good of the people he protects. While the superhero is a fictitious (contemporary mythological?) character, his sacrifice is meaningful because he’s telling the world what it should value—the virtue of sacrifice. Simply put, “[a] myth is a story that tries to explain the world”[24] with all its wonder. But it doesn’t try to control the world like reason does. A quote from the posthumous Harold Goddard should suffice: “To our age anything Delphic is anathema. We want the definite. As certainly as ours is a time of the expert and the technician, we are living under a dynasty of the intellect, and the aim of the intellect is not to wonder and love and grow wise about life, but to control it.”[25] So what is the relation of myth to Christianity?
It is well-known that G.K. Chesterton’s writings had an undeniable influence on Lewis’s conversion to Christianity.[26] Chesterton wrote that it is “that pure and original truth that was behind all the mythologies like the sky behind the clouds.”[27] Likewise when I watch a cinematic adaptation of a comic book superhero, I can’t help but think of Christian narrative as its root inspiration.
One can call this inspiration “Biblical myth,” as long as what is meant is “myth became fact.”[28] Lewis expounds on this short but meaty sentence: “Just as God is none the less God by being Man, so the Man remains Myth even when it becomes Fact. The story of Christ demands from us, and repays, not only a religious and historical but also an imaginative response.”[29] What Lewis is implying is that the hypostatic union of Christ as wholly God and wholly man is both true and mysterious. And we are to respond appropriately with conviction of it being a fact of religion and history, as well as enabling this doctrine (of Christology) to evoke the imagination. Lewis’s “myth became fact” is both universally true and mysteriously meaningful.[30]
In his Chronicles and Space Trilogy, Lewis takes advantage of “the meaningfulness of story” to make an argument to the best explanation for Christianity. Donald T. Williams writes, the narrative argument “identifies an aspect of human experience—the meaningfulness of story, particularly of myth—that is difficult to explain on a secular basis but which makes good sense if certain Christian doctrines are true.”[31] The narrative argument falls under the umbrella of imaginative apologetics, as does the argument from desire, which takes into account the meaning of the imagination and experience to make sense of the human desire for God to know what it’s like to become a bonafide human being.
Williams puts his pulse on the problem if the desire argument is not true: “[I]f evolution has been adapting me to function in a purely material world, and if that is the totality of my existence, then why do I have desires for things not in this world? That only makes sense if this world is not the only world.”[32] Our desire for myth and miracles is an indication that we have been designed for more than just survival. For “[w]hat is the survival value (if evolution is supposed to be our ultimate story) of the hunger for meaning that such stories feed?”[33] The simple answer is, “There is no survival value of the hunger for an unfolding plot with the arc of creation, fall, and redemption.”[34]
To be clear, the arguments from narration and desire do not preclude reason but imply a cogent rationality that makes the arguments understandable to other rational minds. Lewis, who was devoted to studying and writing fantasies of faith, was no mystic or fideist. By his own admission, “I am a rationalist.”[35]
Williams proves again helpful when he discusses the uniquely important role of imagination and reason in Lewis’s apologetic: “One of the reasons C.S. Lewis is uniquely important as a Christian thinker and apologist is the way he integrates reason and imagination in his expository writings as well as his fiction, all in the service of truth.”[36] This holistic or integrated approach is in defense of Judeo-Christianity, that is, Truth! I would add that this approach also better understands God as a perfectly rational and creative Being. And thus provides fodder for better worship of God and his attributes.
But what Lewis’s apologetic does not do is favor reason over (healthy) emotion. Nor do his writings hyper-focus on reason at the expense of meaning. Why? Because he dips his brush deep into the mixed paint that is wasted on colorblind, rational apologists today: “…Imagination combined with Reason can give us meaningful truth, truth that impacts us on other levels than mere academic intellectual assent. This is truth that can appeal to head and heart together.”[37] Sadly, some apologists believe they’re doing Christianity a service by proliferating reason while eliminating emotions, as if head and heart, or reason and emotion, are mutually exclusive.
The jackets of rational apologetic books, if I can use an amalgam of examples, talk about defending Biblical truth from the post-Christian, post-modern culture that has elevated paganism, relativism, and emotions above Judeo-Christian monotheism, objective truth, and reason. Gladly, these books adorn my bookshelves.[38] But in the spirit of an integrated approach that ministers holistically to the whole person via intellect, beauty, imagination, emotions, etc., arguments for Faith need to hold in balance the Transcendentals of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Not just Truth (and/or Goodness). So we can speak redemptive beauty to a wider audience that makes decisions from their “gut” or emotions.
Rational apologists devoid of aesthetic and psychological tools, such as the narrative argument and the argument from desire, like to say that “Truth doesn’t care about your feelings.” And it’s this type of attack against their neighbors that makes Christians seem smug, emotionally insensitive, and condescending, not to say anything about the fact that they’ve lost that initial opportunity to awaken the moral imaginations of their interlocutors with metaphor, parable, and true myth.
Today’s post-post-modern Woke society is ripe for this type of aesthetic evangelism. A consistent cultural narrative would show that this progressive liberal ideology holds that Wokeism is objectively true. And not to espouse Wokeism is objectively false. So we share in common the notion of universal truth with our Woke friends.[39] Where we differ however is with the idea that emotions and experience trump reason. But even in the face of this twisted, transposed Woke principle, there is rife opportunity for compassionate Christian apologists to be witnesses of the importance of human emotion and experience, and how they complement and, in some cases, inform reason. Although they are not its master. Rational apologetics would be greatly complemented, and the kingdom of God greatly served, by remembering one meaningful fact: “The imagination is a truth-bearing faculty.”[40]
This anthology—of poems, prose & short stories—like my other work, From the Ashes We Rise, is a model of the integrated approach I’m fostering.
Happy hunting for truth and meaning!
Chester J. Delagneau
November 2024
Temecula, Ca.
[1] That is not to say that rational apologetics is closed off to the imagination. But rather that it does not typically seek it out.
[2] C.S. Lewis, “Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare,” Rehabilitations and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1939), 157-8.
[3] Ibid.
[4] See 2 Samuel 7:11-14.
[5] Joel Rosenberg, King and Kin: Political Allegory in the Hebrew Bible (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986), 132.
[6] 2 Samuel 12:2, NIV. “The ‘sheep and cattle’ in the parable symbolize David’s many wives, a fact clarified in the succeeding verses.” Ronald F. Youngblood, “1 & 2 Samuel,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 3, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 942.
[7] James S. Ackerman brings our attention to the end of verse 3, where the narrator makes a connection between the ewe lamb and Bathsheba: it “‘was like a daughter/bat (as in bat-šeba‘) to him.’” James S. Ackerman, “‘Knowing Good and Evil’: A Literary Analysis of the Court History in 2 Samuel 9-20 and 1 Kings 1-2,” Journal of Biblical Literature 10 (1990), pp. 44.
[8] 2 Samuel 12:3b-d, NIV.
[9] 2 Samuel 12:7a, NLT.
[10] C.S. Lewis, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say What’s Best to Be Said,” in On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature (Orlando, FL: Harvest Books, 2002), 47.
[11] In the words of Donald G. Bloesch, “A propositional truth is immediately accessible to reason whereas a narrational truth can be grasped only by a heightened imagination.” Donald G. Bloesch, The Holy Spirit: Works & Gifts (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 39.
[12] Luke 15:20b, c, NIV.
[13] Darrell L. Bock, Luke: The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998), 413.
[14] Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, [1993] 2014), 221.
[15] See Joel B. Green, The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 585.
[16] Luke 15:22-24, NIV.
[17] Keener, 222.
[18] Luke 15:29-30, NIV (italics added).
[19] “Thus, e.g., breaching the kinship values operative in his world, he has wished for a celebration with his ‘friends’ rather than with his father (and family).” Green, 585 (Footnote, 252).
[20] See Gowler, Portraits of the Pharisees, 253, 255; Green, 585.
[21] Green, 586. To be clear, “…this narrative [contrasted with the narratives other parables] presents neither son as a model uniformly to be followed or avoided. God delights in the repentance of prodigals, but he would prefer that they not have to sink so low before coming to their senses. God [also] cherishes the faithfulness of those who obey his will but does not want them to despise the rebellious who have repented. The parable is strikingly open-ended.” Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990), 179 (emphasis added).
[22] Revelation 17:14, NKJV.
[23] C.S. Lewis, Letters of C.S. Lewis, eds. W.H. Lewis and Walter Hooper (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1966), 368 (italics in the original).
[24] Williams, 127.
[25] Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, Vol. 1 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 11.
[26] Read XIV Chapter titled “Checkmate” in Lewis’s Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1955), 272-3.
[27] G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2007), 205.
[28] See C.S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), 63-7.
[29] C.S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1947), 218 (Footnote 1).
[30] I can’t help but think that Lewis would agree with the assessment of revelation as narration rather than proposition: “A narration is a truth that is expressed through the telling of a story and may take the form of poetry as well as prose. Its truth is gleaned through an existential participation in the drama being depicted, so it is more experiential than strictly logical.” Bloesch, 39.
[31] Williams, 131.
[32] Ibid., 131-2.
[33] Ibid., 132.
[34] See Williams, 132.
[35] Lewis, “Bluspels and Flalansferes,” 157-8.
[36] Williams, 175.
[37] Ibid., 177 (italics in the original).
[38] My collection of classical apologetic material has filled up my bookshelf. And still there seem to be hundreds more that are being written every year. Compare that to a modicum of material that deals with the Christian imagination, emotions, and/or beauty as a defense of Christianity: Byung-Chul Han, Saving Beauty; Paul M. Gould, Cultural Apologetics; Malcolm Guite, Faith, Hope and Poetry; G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man; C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters; Donald T. Williams, Answers from Aslan; Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Theo-Drama; Holly Ordway, Apologetics and the Christian Imagination; Paul Avis, God and the Creative Imagination; Imaginative Apologetics, ed. Andrew Davison; Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo; Chester J. Delagneau, From the Ashes We Rise, and Imagining Jesus. Imagining Jesus is an imaginative apologetic for children.
[39] I understand this will be surprising to my apologist friends who believe the Western culture to be sold to moral subjectivism and cultural relativism, which de facto it is. However, Woke ideology—which is really just a revamped form of cultural Marxism—has rebelled against this post-modern relativist philosophy in favor of a post-post-modern unrelenting agenda informed by identity politics, critical theory, intersectionality, and social justice.
[40] C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Vol. 3, ed. Walter Hooper (London: HarperCollins, 2006), 1523.