Bibliotheca Sacra 134 (October 1990) 387-98.
Copyright © 1990 by
The Bible
as Literature
Part 4 (of 4 parts):
"With Many Such Parables": The
Imagination as a Means of Grace
Leland Ryken
Professor of English
The aim of this article is to explore a heresy
that rules vast
segments of evangelical Christianity. That heresy
is to defend a ne-
glect of the imagination and
the arts on the ground that believers
must be busy in God's work, assuming that God's work is never artis-
tic. Yet the Bible itself,
to say nothing of the creation in which
humankind lives, shows that God's work is partly
artistic.
One of my colleagues has several times conducted
an informal
poll in his art classes. He asks how many students
can say that in
their families any of the arts was talked about and
regarded as im-
portant. The percentage of such
families is exceedingly small. Then
when he inquires into the matter more precisely, he
finds that in the
overwhelming number of cases either
the families in which the arts
are considered important are non-Christian
families, or the affirma-
tion of art is something
that preceded conversion to Christianity.
Of all people on the face of the earth,
Christians have the most
reason to value the arts and the imagination. The
title of this arti-
cle speaks of the
imagination as a means of grace. This does not mean
that participating in the arts makes a person more
acceptable to God
or that the arts explicitly recall God's saving
acts. Instead it sug-
gests that the imagination is a means by which God
can reveal His
truth and beauty and people can respond with due
appreciation.
387
388 Bibliotheca
Sacra / October-December 1990
The Doctrine of
Creation and the Artistic
In countering the heresy that God's work
excludes involvement
in the arts, three great biblical principles may
be addressed. The
first is the doctrine of Creation. The Bible begins
by stating that God
created the world. That world is beautiful and
artistically pleas-
ing, as is known simply by
looking around and as the Bible confirms.
God looked at what He had created, and,
"behold, it was very
good" (Gen. 1:31). The psalmist wrote that the
creation proclaims
God's
handiwork (Ps. 19:1), implying that handiwork has value. In
the Garden of Eden God made to grow "every
tree that is pleasing to
the sight and good for food" (Gen. 2:9). This
is a double criterion-
one artistic, the other utilitarian. The conditions
for human well-
being have never changed since that moment. Can a
person justify
the time spent reading a novel or writing a poem or
visiting an art
gallery? In a Christian scheme of things, the
answer is yes.
God also created people in His own image (Gen.
1:26). What
does this mean? At this point in the biblical record
nothing is yet
known about the God of providence or redemption or
the covenant.
The
one thing known about God is that He creates. In its immediate
narrative context, therefore, the doctrine of the
image of God in
people emphasizes that people are, like God, creative.
A well-
known evangelical, when serving as a referee for one
of my book
manuscripts, wrote a marginal comment about
"the trivial view that
God's
image in people is a matter of creativity." Is this the impres-
sion a person gets when
reading Genesis 1? The comment is in fact an
evidence of the very heresy just mentioned.
What does the image of God in people say about
the arts? It af-
firms human creativity as something good in
principle, since it is an
imitation of one of God's own acts and
perfections. Abraham Kuyper
once wrote, "As image-bearer of God, man
possesses the possibility
both to create something beautiful, and to delight
in it."1 Christian
poet Chad Walsh has said that the artist "can
honestly see himself
as a kind of earthly assistant to God ... carrying
on the delegated
work of creation, making the fullness of creation
fuller."2 This ap-
plies equally to those who are not themselves
creative artists but
who delight to enter into the creativity of others.
And it stands as a
rebuke to those who disparage God's gift of creativity
in people.
1 Abraham Kuyper, Calvinism
(
1943),
p. 142.
2
Christian Imagination, ed. Leland Ryken (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981), p.
308.
"With Many Such Parables":
The Imagination as a Means of Grace 389
This then is one foundation for thinking Christianly about the
arts: the Christian doctrine of Creation assures
mankind that human
creativity can be honoring to God. God Himself
created a world that
is artistically beautiful and delightful as well
as utilitarian.
The Value of Beauty
and Artistry
A second biblical principle is that works of art
have value in
themselves, simply as objects of beauty and
artistry. For one thing,
the Bible makes no division of art into sacred and
secular.3 Art has
equal value in an everyday setting and in worship.
The Bible in-
cludes not only songs sung in
worship at the temple but also ones sung
in the everyday circumstances of work without
direct reference to
anything religious (Num. 21:16-18; Isa. 16:10; 52:8-9). The Song of
Solomon
is a collection of love lyrics that keeps the focus on human
love and does not explicitly bring God or spiritual
values into the
picture. The Bible records a patriotic elegy by
David about national
heroes that does not mention God (2 Sam.
As an extension of this unwillingness to divide
art into sacred
and secular, the Bible also refuses to make the
value of artistic form
depend on religious content in works of art. Consider the many ref-
erences in the Psalms and
elsewhere to instrumental music without
accompanying words. Can this be
legitimate, even in worship? In
Psalm
150 musical sound alone is said to praise God when it is offered
to Him as an act of worship.
The descriptions of the visual art that adorned
the Old Testa-
ment tabernacle and temple
are a gold mine of information about the
arts, and one of the important things learned is
that the art God pre-
scribed for these religious places was not
always specifically reli-
gious in its content. There
was a wealth of realistic or representa-
tional art that symbolized
nothing specifically religious. The pil-
lars of the temple were
decorated with pomegranates and lilies (1
Kings
and palm trees (vv. 29, 36). Given the stereotyped
notions of "sacred
art" that often prevail in Christian circles,
this might seem out of
place. As the Old Testament worshipers stared at the lampstand,
they saw, not angels and cherubim, but things of
natural beauty-
flowers and blossoms.
What should one make of this exuberance over the
forms of na-
ture in the most holy places
of Old Testament worship? Above all it
3 For a fuller discussion
of this and related points, see Leland Ryken, The Liberated
Imagination: Thinking Christianly about the Arts (
lishers, 1990).
390 Bibliotheca
Sacra / October-December 1990
completely undercuts any sacred-secular dichotomy
for art. What
God
created is a suitable subject for the artist. Since God made the
flowers and sky, they are worth painting or carving.
Most surprising of all, given current
stereotypes, was the pres-
ence of abstract or
nonrepresentational art in the tabernacle and
temple. Nonrepresentational art means art that
represents nothing
beyond itself, like a Persian tapestry. As the Old
Testament wor-
shipers approached the temple,
they saw two gigantic freestanding
pillars over 25 feet high. These monoliths had
no architectural
weight-bearing function. They did not
resemble anything in created
nature. They were simply beautiful and suggested by
their very size
and form the grandeur, stability, and power of God.
They also made
the worshipers feel small as they stood beside
them, and this, too,
made a religious statement in a purely artistic,
nonverbal way.
The artistic imagination is free to be itself.
What it produces
under the guidance of God is good in itself. The robe
of Aaron indi-
cates that. The embellishment
of Aaron's priestly garment was "for
glory and for beauty" (Exod.
28:2). Beauty and artistry are worthy in
themselves.
Some of the art in the Old Testament was
realistic, but there
was no requirement that it had to be so. The
decorations on Aaron's
garment included blue pomegranates. What's so
unusual about that?
In
nature there are no blue
pomegranates. An intriguing artifact in
the temple is the molten sea (1 Kings
basin 45 feet in circumference and holding up to
10,000 gallons of
ter. Under the brim were
engravings of gourds. The whole grand de-
sign rested on the backs of 12 statuesque oxen.
Nowhere in the real
world can one find a sea held up on the backs of
oxen. It is an utterly
fantastic conception, all the more delightful for
its imaginary quali-
ties.
Some of the literature in the Bible is equally
fantastic. In a sin-
gle short chapter of
Zechariah, for example, readers learn about a
flying scroll that destroys the wood and stone of
houses, a woman
named Wickedness sitting inside a cereal container,
and two women
with wings like those of a stork who lift the container
into the sky.
As
Schaeffer wrote, "Christian artists do not need to be threatened
by fantasy and imagination.... The Christian is
the really free per-
son ... whose imagination should fly beyond the
stars."4
An additional reason for believing that works of
art have value
in themselves emerges from what the Bible says
about the vocation
and gifts of the artist. Two key passages in Exodus
describe how God
4 Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible (
"With Many Such Parables":
The Imagination as a Means of Grace 391
called and equipped the artists who worked on the
tabernacle (Exod.
31:1-11;
35:30-36:2). God called the artists, filled them with His
Spirit,
inspired them with artistic ability, and stirred them up to do
the work. The impression gained from these passages
is that the
artist's calling is a glorious calling. Unlike
what often happens in
Christian
circles today, the artist's vocation was not regarded as
suspect or second best.
This, then, is a second way in which to think Christianly about
the arts: the Bible affirms that the artistic
imagination and its cre-
ations have value in
themselves, not simply for the religious or
ideational content they may contain. The arts do
not need to be de-
fended, as people throughout history have felt obliged
to defend
them, as something other than art. They have
integrity for what
they are in themselves. Christians find a place for
the arts as an aid
to worship, but not often as an act of worship.
Yet 91 out of 107 refer-
ences to music in the Psalms
specify God as the audience of music.5
The
principle that emerges from this is significant for the arts: any-
thing offered to God can become an act of worship.
This means that
artistic experiences, whether as creators or
participants, can be an
act of worship-a means of grace.
The value of the nonutilitarian
and the dignity of the concept of
leisure must also be acknowledged. The Christian
community lacks
an adequate theory of leisure and play. Regarding
recreation, in-
cluding the arts, as frivolous
or ignoble, Christians often sink to me-
diocrity by default. Yet the
wise use of leisure time is part of the
stewardship of life.6 No one could have
lived a busier life than Jesus
did during the years of His public ministry. Yet He
did not reduce
life to continuous work or evangelism. He took time
to enjoy the
beauty of the lily and to attend dinners.
Truth and the Imagination
The Bible, then, endorses artistic creativity
and encourages
Christians
to believe that artistic form and beauty have value in
themselves as gifts from God. This might be viewed
as the nonutili-
tarian side of the artistic
imagination. But the imagination is useful
as well as delightful. This leads to the question
of truth in art, or
the imagination as a vehicle for expressing truth.
This too is a value
of the arts. The imagination can express truth in
its own unique way
for the glory of God and the edification of people.
5
Dale Topp, Music in the
Christian Community (
Publishing
Co., 1959), p. 13.
6 For an elaboration of a
Christian view of leisure, see Leland Ryken, Work and
Leisure in Christian
Perspective
(Portland, OR: Multnomah Press, 1987).
392 Bibliotheca
Sacra / October-December 1990
What is this unique way of expressing truth?
Such truth as the
arts express is conveyed by means of the
imagination. The imagina-
tion images forth its subject matter. It does not work primarily by ab-
stractions or propositions but by
concrete images and experiences. As
Chesterton
put it, "Imagination demands an image."7 The arts take
concrete human experience rather than abstract
information as their
subject.
Can the imagination express truth? Look at the
example of the
Bible. The Bible is overwhelmingly literary in its
form. The one
thing that it is not
is what we so often picture it as being-a theolog-
ical outline with proof
texts attached. When asked to define
"neighbor," Jesus told a story. He constantly spoke in
images and
metaphors: "I am the light of the
world"; "You are the salt of the
earth." The Bible repeatedly appeals to the
intelligence through
the imagination. The prominence of music and visual
art in the wor-
ship described in the Bible has already been noted.
If it is doubted
that truth can be embodied in visual, nonpropositional form, look at
baptism and communion. They use physical images
that allow
people to experience spiritual realities.
It is therefore not surprising that Dorothy
Sayers links the
imagination with Christian theology. In a famous
essay on artistic
theory, she wrote,
Let us take note of a new word that has crept
into the argument by way
of Christian theology-the
word Image. Suppose, having rejected
the
words "copy,"
"imitation," and "representation" as inadequate, we sub-
stitute the word
"image" and say that what the artist is doing is to image
forth something or the other, and connect that with
"God ... hath spoken to us by His son, the
... express image of His per-
son."-Something which,
by being an image, expresses that
which it
images.8
"Imaging forth" is exactly what the
Bible repeatedly does. Its
most customary way of expressing God's truth is not
the sermon or
theological outline but the story, the poem, the
vision, and the let-
ter, all of them literary
forms and products of the imagination.
Think
of how much biblical truth has been incarnated in character
and event. To this can be added the poetry of the
Bible, including
the heavy incidence of image and metaphor in the
prose of the New
Testament.
The point is not simply that the Bible allows
for the imagina-
tion as a form of
communication. It is rather that the biblical writers
7 G. K. Chesterton,
"The Soul in Every Legend," in The Man Who Was
Chesterton,
ed. Raymond T. Bond (Freeport, NY: Books for
Libraries, 1902), p. 37.
8 Dorothy L. Sayers,
"Towards a Christian Aesthetic," in The New Orpheus, ed.
Nathan
A. Scott (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964), p. 13.
"With Many Such Parables":
The Imagination as a Means of Grace 393
and Jesus found it impossible to communicate the
truth of God with-
out using the resources of the imagination. The
Bible does more than
sanction the arts. It shows how indispensable
they are.
That the imagination is a vehicle of truth is
known also from
sources other than the Bible. An earlier article
referred to the dis-
covery of recent brain
research that shows that the two hemispheres
of the human brain respond to stimuli and
assimilate reality in dif-
ferent ways.9 The
left hemisphere is active in logical thinking,
grasping abstract propositions, and dealing with
language. The
right hemisphere is dominant in processing visual and
other sensory
experiences, in seeing whole-part relationships, in
grasping meta-
phor and humor, and in
experiencing emotion. The arts and the imag-
ination are essentially
right-brain media. Believers need to express
and receive God's truth with the right brain as
well as the left.
In Western culture at large, and perhaps
especially in the evan-
gelical subculture, the tendency
is overwhelming to assume that
truth is conceptual and propositional only. But the
arts, with their
emphasis on imagination, show that there is
another type of truth,
or a whole other way by which people assimilate
and know the
truth. Suppose a person is assembling an appliance.
If the directions
include a good picture, he may not even use the
written instructions.
It is a fallacy to think that one's world view
consists only of
ideas. It is a world picture as well as a set of
ideas. It includes im-
ages that may govern behavior even more than ideas
do. At the
level of ideas, for example, a person may know the
goal of life is not
to amass physical possessions. But if his mind is
filled with images
of fancy cars and expensive clothes and big houses,
his behavior will
likely follow a materialistic path. A person might say
that God
created the world, but if his mind is filled
with images of evolution-
ary processes, he will
start to think like an evolutionist. Someone
may know that he should eat moderately, but his
appetites override
that knowledge when his mind is filled with images
of luscious food.
The
imagination is a leading ingredient in the way people view re-
ality. They live under its
sway, whether they realize it or not. Ad-
vertisers seem to grasp this
better than people do in the church.
The Uses of the
Imagination in Teaching and Preaching
Thus far three biblical principles have been
suggested to combat
the assumption that doing God's work excludes a
commitment to the
imagination and the arts. Those principles are the
doctrine of Cre-
9 Leland Ryken, '"I Have Used Similitudes':
The Poetry of the Bible," Bibliotheca
Sacra 147 (July-September
1990): 260-61.
394 Bibliotheca
Sacra / October-December 1990
ation, the Bible's endorsement
of art as having value in itself, and
the Bible's example in confirming that the
imagination is one means
by which people can know and express the truth.
What are some
ways these principles may be applied to Christians
and especially
to teachers and preachers?
In view of the Bible's endorsement of the arts,
Christians need to
affirm artists and their work much more than they
typically do.
They
need to show from the pulpit and the Sunday school podium
and by their conversations and actions that they
believe the arts to
be important. Everyone has an imagination. Some
Christians have
sat in the pew for years and never been told that
their God-given
imagination is good. Art, music, and literature
deserve a more
prominent place in churches than they currently
have. They deserve
to be in the bulletin and church services, and
Sunday school classes.
It
would be helpful to have artists' nights when church members
display their own visual art or photography,
read their own poems
or stories, and perform music. Too little of
artists' gifts is seen in
churches today.
All this is in sharp contrast to what is found
in the worship de-
scribed in the Bible, where the arts were
flaunted to a degree almost
unheard of today. The idea of the beauty of holiness does not mean
much in contemporary worship, and one of the reasons
for the attrac-
tiveness of high church worship
to some evangelicals is that their
aesthetic inclinations are either starved or
offended in evangelical
churches.
There is no reason why the burden for artistic
expression within
the church should rest solely on the minister. Most
churches have a
core of people who are interested in the arts. They
are the logical
people to tap as resources for making the artistic
imagination a vital
part of church life.
Many Christians have been guilty of a great
abdication. They
cannot all be artists, but they can all respect and
participate in the
art that others create. The Christian church must
be active on every
front in society-in science, in economics, in
education, in politics, in
the arts, in the media. God gave His followers a
cultural command
as well as a missionary command. They should not
set these up as
vals. To relinquish the
presence of believers in any cultural area
only weakens the Christian voice in the culture as a
whole and
makes evangelism all the more difficult.
The attitude of Christians toward the arts says
something about
the God they proclaim, and often the wrong signal
is sent to the un-
saved. A missionary who wrestled with the issue of
how beauty re-
lated to her life in a
foreign culture came to this conclusion: "I be-
lieve my attitude toward
beauty and order, as reflected in my home
and lifestyle, says much to the people around me
about the God I
"With Many Such Parables":
The Imagination as a Means of Grace 395
serve. Therefore, I want to reflect ... something of
the artistry, the
beauty, the order of the one I'm representing, and in
whose image
I've
been made."10
Christians also need to acknowledge more fully
that the imagi-
nation is a leading means by which to express the
truth. Turning
from the pages of the Bible to the evangelical
subculture today, one
cannot help but be struck by the contrast in this
regard. The theolog-
ical abstraction and outline
have replaced the imaginative boldness
of the writers of the Bible. People no longer
trust the power of
metaphor or paint on canvas or musical sound to
express the truth. Je-
sus, however, did not
distrust the imagination. He told stories and
spoke in metaphor.
The non-Christian world has a better grasp of
the power of the
arts to persuade people than the Christian community
does. For ev-
ery "Chariots of
Fire," there are hundreds of movies that express an
untruthful or immoral view of life. Christians need
to believe that a
painting or piece of fiction can be as truthful
to life and to the Chris-
tian view of life as a
sermon or religious article can be. "Chariots of
Fire"
is as truthful an expression of Eric Liddle's
Christianity as is a
biography of him. This is not to suggest that
believers displace any-
thing with art, music, and literature. Rather, the
point is that these
too are ways in which God's truth and beauty can be
communicated.
The
Bible itself communicates the truth in all possible ways. And it
does so with obvious artistry. Christians need to
lay to rest the
heresy that God's work is never artistic.
A final application has to do with the sermon.
As a modern-day
Puritan
who believes in the primacy of the sermon in worship, I find
the state of the sermon in evangelical churches
alarming. It is in
deep trouble in most churches. This is concealed
from view because
churchgoers accept listening to the sermon as part
of the duties of at-
tending church. They theorize that as long as a
church is filled with
people listening to sermons, the sermon must be
flourishing as an in-
stitution. But sitting dutifully
through the sermon is not the same as
being excited by it or strongly impacted by it. The
average church-
goer finds something lacking
in sermons and feels mildly guilty about
not being as interested in sermons as he or she
would like to be. It
must be remembered that the visual media have
transformed what
audiences expect in a sermon. Contemporary
preaching has captured
the minds and sometimes the emotions of people, but
not their imagi-
nations.
One problem is the excessive tendency toward
theological ab-
straction in contemporary
preaching. If the imagination is a valid
10 Margaret Ho,
"Reflecting a God of Beauty," Eternity,
November 1982, p. 29.
396 Bibliotheca
Sacra / October-December 1990
means of communicating God's truth, then the
Christian message
needs to be imaged forth more than it is. A good
starting point is to
preach on literary parts of the Bible. There is no defensible
reason
why preachers should gravitate so naturally to the
most abstract
parts of the Bible, especially the Epistles. The
stories and poems
and visions of the Bible are important too.
And when preachers choose a literary text in the
Bible, it is im-
portant to approach it as
literature. A story or poem asks that the
readers and hearers enter a whole imagined world
and walk around
inside it. It conveys its truth by getting the readers
to share an expe-
rience. Reliving the story or
the thought process of the poet should
be the first item on the agenda of Bible
expositors. To do this will
require them to rethink their concept of a
three-part sermon. Instead
of imposing three propositional generalizations on
the text and dip-
ping into the text for supporting data, they must
first relive the story
or poem. Then they can deduce the principles and
apply them to the
lives of their listeners.
When expositors make an application, they need
to rely on their
imagination-their ability to picture
the truth in concrete terms.
The
imagination allows them to identify with people and experi-
ences beyond themselves.
Identifying with things "out there" is not
something that comes easily to preachers. The
voice of authentic
human experience with its suffering and longing is
not as common as
it should be in contemporary preaching. The
exceptions to that stric-
ture are the preachers who
rather quickly achieve popularity and
become celebrities. But the ability to identify with
actual human
experience is within the reach of every preacher or
teacher and
needs only to be cultivated.
Expositors tend to look on sermon or lesson
preparation in terms of
doing research for a lecture or paper. They should
view it more like
writing a story or poem. According to the usual
model, the preacher
or Bible teacher spends time reading Bible
commentaries and finding
illustrations for generalizations.
But as poets and fiction writers go
about their composition, the key ingredients in their
process are
memory, observation of life, introspection, reading,
and imagining.
Paradoxically the ability to identify with the
person in the
pew and to picture the truth concretely might begin
with introspec-
tion. Imaginative writers
are not afraid to look within and assume
that what they find there is of universal interest
and insight. The
minister or teacher who sits down to breakfast
and who transports
children to music lessons or Little League games
has the same ten-
sions and triumphs, the same
anxieties and longings, that ordinary
people have. Not to tap this source is a failure of
both nerve and
imagination, and it leaves congregations with
abstracted theology
as their Sunday diet.
"With Many Such Parables":
The Imagination as a Means of Grace 397
Observation is of course needed to supplement
introspection. The
way to empathize with people is to observe their
pain and tri-
umphs, their longings and
fears. Pressed for time as they are,
preachers can develop a network for gaining
insight into how a bibli-
cal passage applies to real life. The most
efficient means of doing
this is to assemble a small group Bible study that
studies the pas-
sage on which the next sermon will be based. The
application part of
the sermon is too big a task for one person to
produce alone.
In addition to needing more imaging of the truth
from the pulpit
and Sunday school podium, more innovation is also
needed. One of
the functions of the imagination is to defamiliarize what has be-
come