I’m still adding to my upcoming book on poetry, prose, and short stories titled Imaginative Apologetics: Braiding Beauty, Goodness & Truth. But the Introduction is finished. If you’d 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 classical apologetics lacks: meaning through story.[1] This lack is the method I use to accomplish the purpose of the book, which is to complement the rational and evidential with the imaginative.[2]
C. S. Lewis on Imagination
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.”[3] Reason and truth are necessarily correlated and defended throughout the corpus of his rational and evidential apologetics (e.g., Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, The Abolition of Man, Miracles, and God in the Docks). But so are imagination and meaning carefully correlated and fancifully crafted throughout the pages of his imaginative apologetics (e.g., The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy, and Till We Have Faces). No doubt, the infusion of reason and imagination, truth and meaning are not just his life’s work but his life’s story and, in turn, our life’s story, as well as the story of human history.[4]
Lewis moves to say, “Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.”[5] That is, while the imagination does not create the concept of truth, it does conjure up metaphors in order to better understand and express that truth. In expressing amorous love and sacrificial love, our imaginations might produce pictures of “a deep, swirling, cavernous ocean” or “a flower disrobing itself to sell its petals to the wind.” However, these metaphors do not create love. But they do help us visualize it, feel it deeply, and know what it means to us, personally.
Classical Apologetics
In today’s post-Christian world, there’s no shortage of sources that forfend the Faith. That goes for websites, videos, podcasts, books, blogs, journals, lectures, conferences, seminars, and more. There’s a preponderance of apologia out there that makes sound arguments for Christianity from diverse disciplines, such as, but not limited to biblical reliability, historicity, archaeology, and prophecy, as well as science, theology, ethics, psychology, and epistemology. In other words, there’s no epistemic reason not to be a believer, especially when considering the evidence of all these disciplines combined. One could even argue that there should be a “Cambrian Explosion,” culturally speaking, of well-trained Christian apologists who are setting their generation on fire for the kingdom of God. Sadly, the Church in the West appears to be experiencing the inverse phenomenon.
Justin Ariel Bailey agrees,
…the discipline of apologetics has fallen out of favor. Courses on apologetics—still required in many conservative schools—are no longer a part of the curriculum of mainline Protestant undergraduate and seminary programs.[6]
It doesn’t help that 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 categorical distinction between them as well as to explore the limitations and fickle nature of human emotions, I believe it’s wrong-headed to eliminate all talk of emotion that’s naturally roused when, say, discussing the enchantment of beauty from an integrated approach to Christian apologetics. 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.)
The Power of Fiction
Along with the content of aesthetics, employing an effective method is also critical. I propose story be incorporated into one’s apologia. The auger drill of imagination tills the rocky soil of arid reason, cultivating moral provocations found in the blossoming garden of metaphor, parable, and mythology.
Several notable apologists fill the position I’m endorsing, a position that Holly Ordway sees not as something new but as “the return to an older, more integrated approach to apologetics.”[7] To prove that this approach is both biblical and theological, I’ve chosen to showcase three important apologists: the older testament prophet, Nathan; the newer testament prophet, Jesus; and the contemporary literary scholar and theologian, C. S. Lewis. For the rest of this piece, I will dig deep into story to show a correspondence between these names and the literary devices they use—metaphor, parable, and mythology—respectively.
Old Testament Prophet Nathan’s Narrative Apologetic
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.[8] 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),”[9] 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 (Ch. 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 (axiomatic) rebuke against David, he fashions a metaphor in order to tell him a story about a rich man and a poor man in order to arise righteous anger.
Nathan tells of a traveler who comes to a rich man “who owns a very large number of sheep and cattle.”[10] 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 lamb the indigent man has.[11] 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.”[12]
Upon hearing this, David becomes enraged and immediately casts judgment on the rich man. Nathan tells him, “‘You are that man!’”[13]
By telling a story, Nathan creatively “snuck past the watchful dragons”[14] of sheer reason in order to awaken David’s moral imagination.[15]
New Testament Prophet Jesus’s Narrative Apologetic
Another person who told stories was Jesus of Nazareth. His masterful style of storytelling moved everyone who heard 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 all his money.
Due to a famine, he is forced to work as a hired hand for a farmer who takes care of pigs, which is 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 meagre almsgiving of the Greeks and Romans. He comes to the realization that he can go back home to work for his father as a servant since servants always have food. He plans not to perorate but to prepare a short speech that expresses shame over his sins against heaven and his father, knowing he is not worthy to be called his son, especially after asking for his inheritance while his father lives. That brash insensitivity was tantamount to saying, “I cannot 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.”[16] 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.
In the story, 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.”[17] Knowing something of 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….”[18] 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.[19] But we are awestruck to discover that the father gladly embodies this scandal as an act of love for his lost son.
Jesus’s story continues,
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.”[20]
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.”[21] But the story does not end there.
We’re told of the reaction of the elder son who becomes enraged by his father’s forgiveness for his impulsive brother in order to reveal to the religious leaders in the audience the hardness of their own 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![22]
Now the stage is set to better understand all the characters. The elder son, who epitomizes the religious leaders of the Law, refuses to welcome back his own brother, negating the notion that familial restoration calls for celebration.
It’s further telling that despite the way things appear,
…the elder son has apparently lived in alienation from his father.[23] 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.[24]
Joel B. Green continues,
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.[25]
As we can see, the older testament prophet, Nathan, and the newer testament prophet, Jesus, champion metaphor and parable to elicit an emotional response from their audience that complements the truth, which underlies their stories. It is these stories that give greater value to the truth.
C. S. Lewis’s Narrative Apologetic
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”[26]), and subjectively true because Aslan means something profoundly existential to readers (as well as to the fictional characters in the story like the Pevensies and the Narnians).
I would 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, which could help Christians today who incorrectly equate all 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.[27]
There is no question that 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.”
I assume Lewis would say something similar about the connection between Christ and comic book superheroes. No doubt, the sacrifice of Christ as true myth (or true mystery) has inspired the (mythological?) sacrifices of superheroes who sacrifice themselves for the good of the people they protect. Their actions, although untrue, are still meaningful because they tell the world what it should value—the virtue of sacrifice.
We need more myths that mimic the true myth, as long as “myth is a story that tries to explain the world”[28] with all its raw beauty and brokenness, and as long as it does not try to control the world the way 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.[29]
Let’s return to the relation of myth to Christianity. It’s well-known that G. K. Chesterton’s writings had an undeniable influence on Lewis’s conversion to Christianity.[30] Chesterton wrote that it’s “that pure and original truth that was behind all the mythologies like the sky behind the clouds.”[31] In this analogy, Christianity is the pure sky that does not move. But myths are like clouds that are constantly changing. One can call this inspiration “Biblical myth,” as long as what is meant is “myth became fact.”[32]
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.[33]
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 with awe-struck beauty and wonder. Lewis’s “myth became fact” is both universally true and mysteriously meaningful.[34]
In his Chronicles and Space Trilogy, Lewis takes advantage of “the meaningfulness of story” to make an argument to the best explanation for Christianity.
The Narrative Argument and the Argument from Desire
Donald T. Williams writes that 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.[35]
Without God’s existence, the human experience of creating and understanding story is relegated to random phenomena with no evolutionary advantage. The simple truth is—all stories require a storyteller who is outside the story, and humans are inherent storytellers. And the story of humanity is part of the grand story of the universe, which requires a divine storyteller who is outside the grand story.
The narrative argument falls under the umbrella of imaginative apologetics, as does the argument from desire, which take into account the meaning of the imagination and experience, which make sense of the human desire for God to know what it is like to become human and experience human emotions.
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.[36]
Our desire for myth and miracles is an indication that we have been designed for more than just survival.[37] 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?”[38] The simple answer is, “There is no survival value of the hunger for an unfolding plot with the arc of creation, fall, and redemption.”[39]
To be clear, the arguments from narration and desire do not preclude reason but imply a persuasive rationality (invoking ethos, pathos, and logos), which makes the arguments palpable and provocative to other admiring 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.”[40]
Donald T. Williams on C. S. Lewis’s Apologetic
Williams proves again helpful when he discusses the significant 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.”[41] This holistic or integrated approach is in defense of Judeo-Christianity, that is, it’s in the defense of True Faith. I would add that this approach also better understands God as a perfectly rational and creative Being, and thus, provides religious fodder to better worship God with his divine perfections and properties.
But what Lewis’s apologetic does not do is favor reason over emotion. Nor do his writings hyper-focus on reason at the expense of meaning. Why?
Because he dips his theological brush deep into the mixed paint of story, which is wasted on colorblind intellectual 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.[42]
Lewis’s apologetic is not one or the other; it’s neither the cold, mechanical reason of the Enlightenment nor the emotion-led, intuitive-based experience of the Romantics. It mirrors the good of both movements.
Moreover, the good of reason (head) and the good of emotions (heart) has been represented in scripture, and one could argue, the good that was present in the Creation, itself. Simply put, it’s the reason and experience of special revelation and general revelation, respectively. In a word, it—the good—is winsome wisdom.
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. “What we find in Christianity is a perfect blending together of reason and romance, a comprehensive understanding of reality that speaks to both head and heart, rationality and experience.”[43]
The jackets of classical apologetic books 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. As lief, these books adorn my bookshelves.[44] But in the spirit of an integrated approach that ministers to the whole person via reason, wonder, and beauty, arguments for Faith need to hold in balance the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty so we can speak au fait of redemptive beauty to a wider audience that makes decisions more from their feelings rather than from their intellect.
Heartless Apologetics
Classical 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 is precisely this type of attack against their neighbors that makes Christians seem smug, insensitive, and condescending, not to say anything about the fact that they’ve lost the initial opportunity to awaken the moral imaginations of their interlocutors with metaphor, parable, and/or true myth (true mystery).
Post-Postmodernism, Aesthetics, and Evangelism
Today’s post-post-modern Woke society is ripe for this type of aesthetic evangelism. A consistent cultural narrative shows that Wokeism believes itself to be objectively true, namely that the human experience is a universal reality that’s best lived by understanding, evoking, and learning from our emotions. It would behoove the kingdom of God to make ourselves aware that we share some things in common with our Woke friends: the importance of human emotions and the notion of universal truth, which holds that certain behaviors are de facto intolerant.[45]
Where we differ, however, is with the notion that emotions and experience trump reason. But even in the face of this twisted, transposed 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. Classical apologetics would be greatly complemented, and the kingdom of God greatly served, by remembering one meaningful fact: “The imagination is a truth-bearing faculty.”[46]
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,
reason and imagination.
[1] The distinction between classical and imaginative stems from the subgenre of apologia. In my opinion, what makes imaginative apologetics imaginative is the focus on the arts, more specifically, directly participating in things like drawing, sculpting, literature, film, music, dance, photography, architecture, fashion, etc., to advance the kingdom of God.
For other Christian apologists, they use terms like “imaginative apologetics,” “cultural apologetics,” “aesthetic apologetics,” and “narrative apologetics,” interchangeably.
[2] Holly Ordway offers a helpful metaphor to understand the detriment of lacking imagination:
Rational argument helps to remove the stones and chocking weeds from the field we seek to cultivate, but without imagination the soil is dry and hard and the seeds are easily scorched or blown away. Culturally, we are, as it were, in drought conditions for the sowing of the Word.
Holly Ordway, Apologetics and the Christian Imagination: An Integrated Approach to Defending the Faith (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road, 2017), 15.
[3] C. S. Lewis, “Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare,” in Rehabilitations and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1939), 157-8.
[4] See Alasdair MacIntyre’s explanation of the telos of human life embedded in narrative, shaped by moral tradition as we practice and adopt virtues essential to the good life. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theology, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame, IL: Notre Dame Press, [1981] 2007). Compare this to Paul Ricoeur’s account of narrative identity, which suggests that our sense of self is shaped by the hermeneutics (stories) we construct about ourselves. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988). Also worth engaging is Daniel Taylor’s work on how our narratives affect self-understanding, meaning in life, and a desired outcome (future), as well as community and belonging. Daniel Taylor, Tell Me a Story: The Life-Shaping Power of Our Stories (St. Paul, MN: Bog Walk Press, 2011).
[5] Lewis, “Bluspels and Flalansferes,” 157-8.
[6] Justin Ariel Bailey, Reimagining Apologetics: The Beauty of Faith in a Secular Age (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2020), 2-3.
[7] Ordway, 5.
[8] See 2 Samuel 7:11-14.
[9] Joel Rosenberg, King and Kin: Political Allegory in the Hebrew Bible (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986), 132.
[10] 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.
[11] James S. Ackerman brings our attention to the end of verse 3, where the narrator makes a connection between the ewe (female 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): 44.
[12] 2 Samuel 12:3b-d, NIV.
[13] Ibid., 12:7a, NLT.
[14] 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.
[15] 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: IVP, 2000), 39.
Ergo, I believe one is justified by making a distinction between rational reason and imaginative reason, whereby the former aims at propositional truth, and the latter, at relational meaning.
[16] Luke 15:20b, c, NIV.
[17] Darrell L. Bock, Luke: The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998), 413.
[18] Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, [1993] 2014), 221.
[19] See Joel B. Green, The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 585.
[20] Luke 15:22-24, NIV.
[21] Keener, 222.
[22] Luke 15:29-30, NIV.
[23] “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).
[24] See David B. Gowler, Host, Guest, Enemy and Friend: Portraits of the Pharisees in Luke and Acts, ESEC 2 (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 253, 255; Green, 585.
[25] Green, 586.
[26] Revelation 17:14, NKJV.
[27] C. S. Lewis, Letters of C. S. Lewis, eds. W. H. Lewis and Walter Hooper (New York: HarperCollins, 1966), 368 (italics in the original).
[28] Donald T. Williams, Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis (Tampa, FL: DeWard, 2023), 127.
[29] Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, vol. 1 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 11.
[30] Read XIV Chapter titled “Checkmate” in Lewis’s Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1955), 272-3.
[31] G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2007), 205.
[32] 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.
[33] C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: HarperCollins, [1947] 1996), 218 (Footnote 1).
[34] I cannot 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.
[35] Williams, 131.
[36] Ibid., 131-2.
[37] Not all forms of natural selection are antithetical to this desire-indicates-design-argument. Guided natural selection is one example. With a guided “hand,” the process of evolution is not blind but directed by intelligent design to account for our desire for myths and miracles. I’m not necessarily advocating for this view, I’m merely sharing its possibility and appeal to theistic evolutionists.
[38] Williams, 132.
[39] See Williams, 132.
[40] Lewis, “Bluspels and Flalansferes,” 157-8.
[41] Williams, 175.
[42] Ibid., 177 (italics in the original).
[43] Paul M. Gould, Cultural Apologetics: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019), 31.
[44] My collection of classical apologetic material is quite plentiful, in need of more bookshelves. And still, there seem to be more books and videos produced every year. Compare that to a modicum of material that deals with the Christian imagination, emotions, and/or beauty as a defense of Christianity.
Here is a short but prominent list of believers with an example of their imaginative works: George MacDonald, Phantastes; 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, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics; Holly Ordway, Apologetics and the Christian Imagination; Justin Ariel Bailey, Reimagining Apologetics; Scarlett Clay, The Apologetic of Art: How Beauty & Creativity Point to a Creator; Paul Avis, God and the Creative Imagination; Imaginative Apologetics, ed. Andrew Davison; Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo; Ted Turnau and Ruth Naomi Floyd, Imagination Manifesto; Marilynne Robinson, Gilead; Theological Aesthetics, ed. Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen; Chester J. Delagneau, From the Ashes We Rise, and Imagining Jesus. Imagining Jesus is an imaginative apologetic for children.
[45] I understand this will come as a surprise to my apologist friends who believe Western culture to be sold to moral subjectivism and cultural relativism, which it is. However, Woke ideology 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.
[46] C. S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, vol. 3, ed. Walter Hooper (London: HarperCollins, 2006), 1523.