The ‘silent film’ choice is more than a conceit; The Artist does some very clever and interesting things with the form. For one thing, the absence of spoken dialogue brings the role of the musical score to the forefront: one of the things that struck me about the film was that, although the score served in the place of dialogue much of the time, it felt much less manipulative than many of the musical scores for films with spoken dialogue.

The need to use title cards for key lines of dialogue heightens the impact of those chosen words and draws the audience’s attention to the acting, movement, and visuals as consciously chosen elements of the story. Thematically, there’s also an interesting use of silence within the story: the characters too often find themselves unable to find the right words to say what needs to be said. And throughout the film, there are some surprising tweaks with the use of sound and the conventions of the genre… I won’t spoil any of them, but suffice it to say that The Artist is self-aware enough to be funny and clever at times, without over-doing it.

What I want to talk about now, though, is how The Artist has another layer to it. Over and above being a well done film, it shows forth the truth about God’s grace in a powerful way.

I don’t know if the filmmakers are Christian or not, but that doesn’t matter anyway. What matters is that, without showing a single explicitly religious image, and without making any reference to faith whatsoever, The Artist gives a clear and compelling vision of sin and grace.

In fact, I would argue that the very absence of conventionally Christian imagery is precisely what allows the film to speak so powerfully. (“Speak” being even more of a metaphor than usual here!)

The Artist traces the career of George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a silent-film star who is on top of the world for a while, only to find that with the rise of ‘talkies,’ his style of film is no longer in demand. As a new starlet, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), rises to fame, Valentin sinks into obscurity, all the while clinging to his own vision of what a film should be. I won’t give away the ending, but suffice it to say that he gets all the way to the bottom, losing his marriage and his home… and is confronted with the choice of how to respond to the generosity of Miller, who is determined to do her best to help him.

One of the things that makes The Artist notable is that it shows Valentin’s failings at a deeper level than we might expect. Valentin may be tempted to have an affair with Miller at the very beginning, and certainly there is a tension between them born out of attraction, but — this is important — he never acts on it, nor even allows himself to be put more in the way of temptation by seeking her out or calling her. Valentin ends up powerfully in the grip of sin, but not the sin we are conditioned to expect from Hollywood celebrities.

Indeed his marriage ends, but it is worth noting that he and his wife are both responsible for its decay. She is jealous, resentful, and cold; as things get worse, he is depressed, withdrawn, and bitter. He broods over his fall from fame, and she tells him “I am unhappy.” What we see is a depiction of two selfish people unable and unwilling to reach out: neither of them can see a ‘we’ past their individual, miserable ‘I.’ That’s not the sensational breakup that we might expect in a film about Hollywood – but it’s far more likely to strike home for viewers. Certainly it did for me.

We might reasonably ask whether we should care whether Valentin succeeds or not. Isn’t he just chasing the fleeting favor of the crowd? Certainly his acting might not have the same merit as finding a cure for cancer, but it has its place: after all, even cancer researchers need relaxation and stress relief, and a film might be just the thing after a long day in the lab. George Valentin’s problem is not in the value of his work, but in his attitude: his fall begins when he starts thinking it’s all about him.

Rather than thinking how he can best serve his audience as an entertainer, Valentin demands that the audience adore him on his own terms. It’s pride, not artistic integrity, that drives him to keep making silent films — but he dresses it up as integrity, and so hides his own sin from himself.

So Valentin continues to decline. He is, at a certain point in the film, a pathetic figure. He’s not particularly likable. He has blown his chances, failed repeatedly by his own fault.

And yet the film has a happy ending.

It’s possible to see this ending as undeserved; to say that Valentin did not merit the persistent efforts of Peppy Miller to save him, that by rights he should have died miserable and alone, since after all it was his own fault that he ended up where he was, and even after his rescue he’s never going to do anything particularly worthwhile in absolute terms.

That’s the point.

Is there any better illustration of God’s grace?

Valentin could be me. He could be any one of us – all the more so because he doesn’t do anything wrong by the standards of the world. He doesn’t have an affair, or steal from the company, or kill anyone. He just clings to his miserable pride and tries to save himself by his own efforts – in this case, by financing his own silent film. At a certain point, he even sees quite clearly that pride is destroying him – and he still cannot let it go.

That’s a clear picture of trying to live without grace. It’s a picture of our need for salvation, shown in a way that hits home and gets past the mental filters that mark certain concepts as ‘religious’ and thus separate in some way from actually living one’s life.

George Valentin is not quite Everyman, but he’s close. And Peppy Miller is not quite Grace, but she’s close. Close enough for me to think that The Artist might be the best Christian film I’ve seen in a long time.

Even if it’s not trying to be Christian.

The Spiritual Journey in Dante’s Divine Comedy. This is a collection of five podcasts taking the listener through Dante’s Divine Comedy. It’s intended mainly for those who have not read the Divine Comedy. I hope that listening to some, or all, of this podcast series will inspire you to read Dante’s great poem for yourselves.

Imaginative Apologetics: A Reflective and Analytical Review. This essay collection is one of the most important books I read in 2011. It sets out key concepts for a new (and badly needed) way of doing apologetics. Here’s another bit of good news: an American edition is coming out in May. You can pre-order it here on Amazon.

Why Story Matters: Reuniting Reason and Imagination. This short piece outlines the importance of the work I’m doing now. “Even when we’re completely wrong about the way the world works, with our lives completely out of touch with the living God, we are drawn to narrative, imagery, characters – story. Such is the power of storytelling. Rightly used, Story can help re-connect Reason and Imagination – and in so doing, help re-orient us toward Truth.”

Accessible Apologetics: Curriculum Review. Another popular post was my review of Mikel Del Rosario’s excellent apologetics curriculum. Check out his website: Apologetics Guy.

A Visit to the Future C.S. Lewis College. Last winter, I took a trip to visit the Northfield site of the future C.S. Lewis College, and wrote this post about it. Little did I know at that time that I’d be drawn into more and more work with the C.S. Lewis Foundation – returning to the campus for Vacation with a Purpose, attending the Summer Institute at Oxbridge, serving as faculty for the Southwest Regional Retreat, and now writing at the Kilns as a Scholar in Residence for a couple of weeks… Check out the CS Lewis Foundation website for more information!

Planet Narnia by Michael Ward – Book Review. Did CS Lewis really have an over-arching theme for the Chronicles of Narnia, drawing on the medieval imagery of the seven heavens? And after more than fifty years, did scholar Michael Ward really figure out the secret? I started reading Planet Narnia with a great deal of skepticism… and ended up convinced. If there’s one book of Narnia scholarship that you should get right now, it’s this one (or, if you prefer the less academic, more lay-reader version, try The Narnia Code.)

Literary Apologetics: Faith, Hope and Poetry by Malcolm Guite: An Extended Review. This review, which originally appeared at Apologetics 315, gives an in-depth discussion of the single most important book I read in 2011; Malcolm Guite lays the groundwork (and sets the standard) for poetry as a mode of apologetics and a way to think through questions of faith. Get the book here, and go visit Malcolm Guite’s blog as well, for poetry and all sorts of good things.

Guite is opening a door into quite new territory for most apologists, and thus he begins, rightly, with an extended introduction setting out the issues that he will address, and why they are important. To begin with, he notes that a cultural shift is underway. We now have a “wider debate in modernist and post-modernist times about the relations between imagination and reason as ways of knowing.”[1] At least in the American Evangelical world, this debate has often played out simply as a critique of postmodern influence in the church, but the larger issue of the role of the imagination in apologetics, theology, and Christian experience is much more significant. Guite argues that “if renewed claims are to be made for the imagination as a truth-bearing faculty, we need both to understand why it came to be marginalised and also to ask in what ways it is consistent with, and complementary to truths arrived at by other means.”[2]

Why poetry? The questions that Guite is asking could be addressed through the study of other literary forms, but he argues that poetry is “peculiarly fitted” to answer these questions: “[Christian] theology depends both on written scriptures and also on the radical idea that the Word behind all words and scriptures has been made, not more words, but flesh. Poetry may be especially fitted as a medium for helping us apprehend something of the mystery embodied in that phrase ‘the Word was made flesh.’”[3]

The introductory chapter is worth the price of the book all by itself. Guite addresses the question of what, exactly has been lost in modern Western culture, examining the effects of the Enlightenment and of post-modernism on faith and poetic language. Over against the reductionism of the Enlightenment and the inevitable descent into meaninglessness of post-modernism, Guite argues that “a full understanding of the mystery of language and the truth-bearing capacity of the poetic imagination requires a critical approach to language which is alert both to the immanent and the transcendent, and indeed to the unique power of imagination to move between the two.”[4] Faith, Hope and Poetry is precisely an attempt (and a successful one) to take such an approach to poetry.

Guite is well aware that imagination is viewed with suspicion in some areas of the Christian tradition, noting that “A fear of imagination as being fallen and degraded leads to theology being “pursued and presented in highly syllogistic and logical form, as pared of imagery as possible.”[5] However, “The problem with this approach is it privileges one faculty over against another, as though reason were itself somehow less ‘fallen’ than imagination… the ‘ideological argument’ of syllogistic theology is no less ‘fallen,’ provisional, and seen through a glass darkly than any of the resonant and mysterious images available to the imagination. But there is this difference, that abstract language pretends to a precision, a finality which it cannot deliver, and this, ironically, is what makes it potentially more idolatrous than the images of which it is so suspicious.”[6]

Neither imagination nor reason, then, is ‘better’ or ‘less fallen’ than the other: it is the imbalance between them that is the problem Guite seeks to address here. He makes it very clear that he does not wish to turn the tables, “exalting imagination at the expense of reason,”[7] but rather to see the ways in which “these two ways of knowing are mutually enfolded and depend on one another.”[8]

Still within this first chapter, Guite moves to demonstrate his approach with a brilliant, careful reading of two poems: George Herbert’s “Prayer” and Seamus Heaney’s “The Rain Stick.” As part of this reading, Guite gives a cameo portrait of what poetry can do: to provide an “entering into experience, that coalescing of observer and observed, which was so dreadfully and dryly missing from the Enlightenment perspective.”[9] Poetry can thus create shifts in perspective, moments of transfiguration.

Having laid out the territory, shown the reasons why the material is important, and demonstrated his approach to the material, Guite then takes the reader in the following chapters through a number of important works of poetry. The chronological structure of the book, which includes poetry that may be overlooked in the modern day, helps us see the shift in thinking that occurred at the Enlightenment and realize that we need not (and indeed must not) buy in to the Reason-Imagination / Knowledge -Faith split that is simply assumed in most modern culture (including within the church).

Guite starts with The Dream of the Rood, that marvelous Anglo-Saxon dream-vision poem in which the Cross itself narrates the events of the Crucifixion, with Christ depicted a warrior figure. The subject of the Crucifixion, and its implications for human beings, is an example of precisely the kind of material that requires the involvement of the imagination to grasp. As Guite explains, reason alone cannot account for the mystery of Christ as fully human and fully divine: “It demands a more subtle and complex response. In fact only the imaginative arts – certainly poetry, but also painting and music – have come anywhere close to embracing simultaneously both parts of the paradox and expressing the mystery adequately.”[10]

He goes on to give a marvelous close reading of the way that the poet, in The Dream of the Rood, in fact imaginatively brings us into a full understanding of Christ’s work on the cross. In the poem, Christ is depicted as a young warrior-hero who climbs up onto the cross, and is described as having ‘stripped’ as if for battle: Guite shows that this word choice “alludes to, but at the same time reverses the emphasis of the gospel account of the forcible stripping of Christ before the crucifixion. For in a paradox the poet is saying that, although to the outward eye others were stripping Christ for humiliation, in truth, to the inward eye that sees reality, Christ was stripping himself for action.”[11]

Guite notes that “Though this poem might be seen as the most remote from us in time, in culture, and from the language of the other poems we shall study, I do not think it is remote at all. It was written in an age of transition, of tension between the old and the new, and we live in just such an age again.”[12] He goes on to give an intriguing account of the way that this poem influenced the imagination of C.S. Lewis on his journey of conversion to Christianity; the poet of The Dream of the Rood gives us a vision that integrates imagination and reason – and it was precisely this integration that Lewis struggled with and finally was able to achieve, with the help of his friends Tolkien and Dyson in the famous “Addison’s Walk” conversation.

The re-gaining of the “integrated vision,” with imagination and reason no longer compartmentalized but now cooperating in presenting truth in all its richness, helped move Lewis from atheism to Christian faith; we would do well to look carefully, as Guite helps us to do here, at the way that vision appears in literature.

Guite continues this careful, attentive reading of poetry throughout the book, moving next to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest; he argues that “Shakespeare’s account of the poetic imagination as the bodying forth in earthly terms of heavenly apprehension provides us with a model for understanding the Incarnation as the supreme act of divine poesis. If this is so then it has rich implications for our understanding of humanity as made in God’s image; for it means that we are made as makers ourselves, as imaginative ‘embodiers.’”[13]

He next addresses Sir John Davies, showing how this Elizabethan-era poet has something extremely important to say to twenty-first-century Christians whose modes of evangelism and apologetics are often more deeply influenced by secularism than they realize. Davies’ poetry invokes Christ “not simply as a sign of personal salvation or as the climax of some drama of private piety, but as the fons et origo of objective truth about man and the cosmos. One could be forgiven for thinking, on the basis of some evangelistic rhetoric and practice, that Jesus was no more than a magic name assuring salvation and a quick fix for emotional crisis. This is because for a long time Christians have ceded the whole world of so-called objective or scientific truth to humanist atheism and contented themselves with a Christ who survives only on the Bantustan of the ‘subjective realm’ as a ‘personal’ Lord and Saviour.”[14] Guite’s thoughtful discussion of Davies –  a discussion, I might add, that makes the poetry understandable to modern-day readers – shows us that “To read Davies is to breathe another atmosphere altogether, where we are concerned to discover universal truth not simply to defend a personal life-style option.”[15]

In short, Guite shows us that reading the work of a 17^th century poet might be exactly what Christian apologists of the 21^st century need: a bracing reminder that this culture that presses us to concede ground to humanism and naturalism is not the way it has to be. Davies can serve to refresh the weary or discouraged apologist, and provide an example of a “counter-vision” in the midst of our own cultural crisis.

Next, we get a chapter on John Donne and George Herbert, in which Guite shows how these two metaphysical poets enable us to experience a shift of perspective, one that “leads to the deepest perspective shift of all, the movement from our own vision and gazing to the transfiguring gaze that God casts on us.”[16] Henry Vaughan and John Milton follow, in a chapter on “Holy Light and Human Blindness.”

Chapter 6, on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is one of the longest in Faith, Hope and Poetry, and for good reason: here Guite marks a major shift in modern culture and our relationship with the imagination. Coleridge is notable not just for his imaginative poetry, but also for his working out in his critical writing of a kind of “theology of the imagination.”[17] Coleridge, Guite argues, “never ceased to be amazed by the fact that nature is intelligible, by the fact that we not only perceive it in a coherent and ordered way, but that its very coherence and order provides us with a vocabulary of symbols with which to explore a similar coherence and order, both within ourselves and beyond or through the veil of nature.”[18] As ever, Guite makes the vital connection between the poetry he is discussing and the vital work at hand for the Christian today: “As we come to the end of the Enlightenment project, whose shortcomings Coleridge so strongly attacked whilst he was in the midst of it, we may find in his writings very useful guides for the seas we have to navigate in the new ‘post-modern’ era.”[19]

The book ends with two chapters on modern poets: Chapter 7 on Thomas Hardy, Philip Larkin, and Geoffrey Hill, and Chapter 8 on Seamus Heaney, in which Guite draws together many of the themes and ideas that he has been unfolding throughout the book.

Chapter 7 is likely to be a challenging chapter for most readers, for none of the three poets whom Guite discusses are believing Christians. In this extraordinary chapter, Guite shows that a non-believing poet who is faithful to his work can also show us a powerful glimpse of truth: “if their integrity in their own circumstances prevented them from professing faith, the same integrity also prevented their poetry from degenerating into mere atheist propaganda. Instead, like the poets before them, their poetry expresses a doubled, or transfigured vision. Not simply, as we have seen in poets so far, a simultaneous vision of the natural and the supernatural, but also a simultaneous apprehension of doubt and faith, despair and hope.”[20]

Here we have a model first of all of genuine charity in dealing with a non-believer, a model that apologists today desperately need. It is clearly evident in this chapter that Guite respects these poets and finds much to appreciate and value in their work. His own robust Christian faith is not weakened by showing respect to those who do not share that faith. His gracious, thoughtful handling of this material is a valuable reminder that our conviction that the fullness of truth is only found in Christ needs not be shaken by the recognition that some glimpses of that truth are available to atheists. Guite models for us what it means to be humble and loving toward the other, pointing out the places where a Christian can indeed learn from an atheist.

In fact, Christian apologists desperately need what poets like Hill and Larkin can show them: what it is like to struggle with faith, to be unable to accept it – a glimpse of the inner life of doubt and despair that is equally valuable for understanding doubt as experienced by Christians. Guite deftly brings out the places in these poems where we can see the struggle, played out as it were before our eyes. In one poem by Larkin, for instance, Guite shows that “Larkin the poet is compelled to say far more than Larkin the sniggering atheist would like to concede.”[21] Guite’s treatment of Geoffrey Hill’s sonnet sequence Lachrymae is equally insightful, showing how these poems, which include poems directly addressed to Christ upon the Cross, draw us into “the tensions and polarities between the necessity and the impossibility of an encounter with Christ.”[22]

Faith, Hope and Poetry is an essential book for anyone hoping to work with literature as a mode of apologetics – an endeavor which is critical for evangelism in our postmodern, often post-Christian culture.

The book’s importance for literary apologetics is twofold. First, it is a compelling argument for the importance of Imagination in the pursuit of Truth; Guite helps us see clearly and deeply how poetry allows us to know truth in a different but complementary way to propositional, rational argument. Second, the specific close readings of the works provide a model for apologists of how to interact with poetry on poetry’s terms, and thus enter into an imaginative experience of great power.

Guite is a perfect guide here because he truly understands, experientially, the power of poetry to shape, convert, and baptize the imagination. Poetry has changed his life, as indeed it has changed the life of this reviewer. He is a faithful Christian and a brilliant academic; a priest and a poet himself (and an extraordinary one). In other words, Faith, Hope and Poetry is valuable not just for its specific insights, but also for its model of how to think, feel, and respond with both heart and mind as a Christian in the modern world.

One of Jacobs’ central points is the importance and value of reading at Whim. (For the significance of the capitalized Whim, as opposed to the mere whim, read his book.) He points out, quite correctly I believe, that most lists of Books Everyone Should Read address not the desire to read, but the desire to have read. If you are on Facebook and have any bibliophile friends, most likely you’ve seen those (possibly spurious) “Top 100 Books According to the BBC” lists, along with the instructions to mark those you’ve read and pass along the list to others. Competitive reading, anyone?

As Jacobs points out, generalized lists like that (or their threatening-sounding siblings, the Books to Read Before You Die lists) are worthless for the reader who genuinely wants to enjoy and benefit from his reading. What good is it to me that there are 100 books that many other people have read? Good heavens, there are tens of thousands of books that many other people have read and I have not. And that I possibly “should” read, for some value of “should” that I once would have embraced, but now (in Alan-Jacobs fashion) reject.

Lists can also paralyze or intimidate simply by making certain books seem Very Important, while reading on Whim can liberate. I am forever grateful that my first encounter with Spenser’s Faerie Queene came by accident when I was in high school. I had never heard of Spenser or the FQ, but I found a copy of Book 1 at a yard sale, and bought it because the title sounded interesting, and I liked fantasy novels. When I began to read, I was somewhat taken aback by it being in poetry… and I am quite sure I did not understand all that much of what I read… but I still remember that it was like venturing into another world, one that was strange and magical, like and yet unlike the fields I knew. When I re-read Book 1 this past summer, I discovered, to my great pleasure, that while I found much more to appreciate and understand than when I read it at fourteen, the old sense of wonder and magic remained.

Though pseudo-authoritative lists by strangers can be a hazard, lists of books suggested by friends and kindred spirits are another matter entirely. I have certain friends whose tastes are close enough to mine, and whose judgment I so thoroughly respect, that anything they recommend I will promptly seek out, buy, and read, regardless of whether or not it ever crossed my mind to do so before that moment. I have discovered wonderful things that way, like Olive Ann Burns’ Cold Sassy Tree and Milton’s Comus. (Muddling through Paradise Lost as an agnostic college sophomore in a required English-major class did not leave me with a lasting fondness for Milton. I would never have picked up Comus without encouragement, but I am glad I did.) I know that I occasionally serve the same role as suggester-of-books to like-minded friends and students, and am always delighted when the suggestions bear fruit. Is there anything more delightful than having a friend genuinely love a book you’ve recommended? It’s as if you’ve just discovered a mutual friend. (I know that I always feel a special warmth toward anyone who is fond of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels or who loves the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.)

I do have a habit of which Mr. Jacobs might disapprove, but that gives me great pleasure and, I think, is worth recommending.

I keep a list of every book that I read. I have a little notebook, about 4 inches by 3 inches, in which I record the title of each book that I finish reading, with the month and year. It could very easily become a record of pretensions, of showing off the Great Books that I Have Read, Hooray For Holly the English Major, except that when I say every book, I mean every book. I record light reading and heavy reading, fun books and serious ones, books I enjoyed and books I regretted.

I have been keeping this list since December 1992, when I was eighteen years old. Yes, that means that I have been keeping this list for nineteen years.

Although I am an English professor, and a poet, and a lover of fantasy literature and all things adventurous and romantic, I also have an orderly mind.

It gives me genuine pleasure and satisfaction to record the titles of the books I read. It just does; I don’t need to know why, any more than I need to know why I like sunflowers, dark chocolate, and the color blue. In any case, this small but distinct sense of satisfaction is most likely why I have kept this journal with, as far as I am aware, total fidelity, through the past nineteen years, through good times and bad. I read, on average, between 75-100 books per year, and have done pretty consistently throughout all this time, and so I can flip through the pages and see patterns.

And so I have something else, now: a glimpse into my own memory, a little time machine that gives access to some of what I was thinking about and wrestling with at different times of my life. I can see my H.P. Lovecraft kick, and my belated and joyful discovery of Jane Austen. I can see the time that I was slogging through the required reading list for the Master’s comprehensive exam, and the exuberant rush of reading-for-fun the summer afterwards. I can see when I was desperately unhappy and reading nothing but light fantasy fiction for escape. I can see when I started reading the books that led me to wonder if Christianity could possibly be true. I can see the regular appearance of The Lord of the Rings, every few years, increasing in frequency as I was drawn back again and again to Tolkien’s glorious vision. I can see, most recently, the shift back into reading imaginative literature with serious critical attention. And I can track the start and end of semesters by the appearance in parallel of more academic books and certain types of light reading (Wodehouse and mystery novels, most notably) as a change of pace.

Perhaps most of all – and paradoxically so – my little book reminds me that no matter how many books I read, there will always be more that I will not have time to read. On the one hand, this memento mori of my reading keeps me serious; the hours I spend reading one book are hours I cannot get back, and so there are many books that could be interesting or valuable that simply don’t make the cut.

But on the other, it also keeps me from taking myself too seriously: even if I devoted myself to reading All the Important Books, I would still be emptying the sea with a bucket. The important thing is to ask whether the book I’m reading is good and valuable for me, for that moment, for the particular need that I have, whether the need is for intellectual work or for recreation and mental rest.

(I will note that coming to know and follow Christ has certainly changed my understanding of what ‘good’ and ‘valuable’ mean. There are books that would have given me pleasure to read ten years ago that I now would choose not to read. In my atheist days I would have condemned this selectivity as narrow-minded; in actual practice it has, somewhat to my astonishment, made me a better, sharper, more clear-minded thinker. Nor has selectivity cramped my style in terms of reading opportunities. There are lots of good books. I mean, just look at Anthony Trollope. Marvelous writer! Better than Dickens, I think, or at least more to my taste. I’ve read all his Barchester and Palliser novels, and there are loads more just waiting.)

As a result of having books for every mood, I generally have at least half a dozen books ‘going’ at once, for at some points in the day I may be doing scholarly reading, and at other points I may need to rest and refresh. So I have Coleridge, Heaney, and The Ballad of the White Horse (and a fashion magazine) by my favorite chair; a Gladys Mitchell mystery and Alan Jacobs’ book on my breakfast table; the Quotable Chesterton and Richard Wilbur and Philip Levine on a side table; the Purgatorio and Book II of the Faerie Queene by my bedside; and half a dozen others scattered here and there around the house. Sometimes on the floor.

Yes, I read according to my Whim – and what a glorious trip it has been and continues to be!

You come, too.

Apologists have a lot of work to do – and yet our encounters too often end up with both sides talking past each other.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cringed when a fellow Christian has confidently declared that “we just have to beat those atheists down!” See, I used to be one of those atheists, and the rhetorical beat-down just doesn’t work the way we think it ought to work, from the Christian perspective. When I was firmly in the “New Atheist” mode, I wouldn’t have listened to even the best Christian philosophical and historical arguments. It wasn’t until I had imaginatively engaged with the Christian faith through poetry and literature – when I had a sense of what it was that this “faith” thing might be, even though I didn’t understand it – that I was able to consider the apologetic arguments and ultimately find them convincing.

Likewise, Christians in the postmodern-influenced emerging church movement may seem to diverge from Christian orthodoxy – but they also raise important issues about the church’s over-emphasis on propositions, logic, and arguments over against community, narrative, and participation. (As a particularly egregious example: the insistence that it is not enough to simply affirm that Christ died for my salvation, but that one must also affirm a specific theory of how the atonement works in order to be saved.) The Evangelical response to thinkers in the emerging church is generally to use arguments and logic to argue that the emergents are wrong. The emerging response, quite naturally, is “See? That’s the problem!”

Over the last year or so, I’ve been seeing the way that these challenges connect. Some people do not believe because they feel that it is irrational to believe; others do not share our orthodox Christian faith because they feel that what they have is more satisfying, more suited to their felt spiritual needs. In both cases there is a missing piece: the Imagination. (In my own case, I could not even consider that God might exist until I had imaginatively entered into a glimpse of what it might be like to have a relationship with that God (in John Donne’s “Batter my heart, three person’d God”). And I would have no reason now to care about theology if I did not find that it is a way of talking about lived reality. The Trinity is worth discussing as a doctrine because reality is Trinitarian.)

Imagination, CS Lewis wrote, is the “organ of meaning.” Reason and Imagination, too long separated, must be reunited if we are to have any chance of sharing the hope that is within us to a world that so desperately needs it – yet does not recognize its need.

Several important books have come out lately that have set forth arguments for, and analysis of, the role of the Imagination in the apologetic endeavor – Malcolm Guite’s Faith, Hope and Poetry, (read my review here) and Nancy Pearcey’s Saving Leonardo of most note.

Imaginative Apologetics is an important addition to this roster , as I hope to convince you in the rest of this review. (The short version of the review is that if you are at all interested in apologetics, you should read this book.)

The book’s subtitle is “Theology, Philosophy, and the Catholic Tradition,” which may cause some hesitation on the part of Evangelical readers, so I will point out that if you think of “Mere Christian” in place of “Catholic,” you will have the right way to approach the book. The collection does have a distinctly Anglican flavor, which is one of its strengths; the authors’ perspective is just different enough from the typical Evangelical perspective as to bring new insights to the table (and to challenge hidden assumptions as well).

Imaginative Apologetics sets out its argument in four sections: Faith and Reason Reconsidered, Christian Apologetics and the Human Imagination, Being Imaginative About Christian Apologetics, and Situating Christian Apologetics.

I will begin slightly in reverse order, by considering the latter two sections. These are likely to be the most immediately accessible to the working apologist – though, as I will argue, not as critically important as the earlier sections. In the third section, Being Imaginative About Christian Apologetics, Stephen Bullivant focuses on the ways that the imagination can help with what he sees as the critical task: “we must preach the gospel – argue for Christ; constantly finding new, intellectually robust means of doing just that. But equally we must look to ourselves and strive, individually and collectively, to provide a fitting ‘backdrop,’ against which this proclamation will get a hearing, and seem plausible.” Craig Hovey follows by setting forth a case for the ways in which Christian ethics can be seen as part of the apologetic enterprise, drawing usefully on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. The final section, Situating Christian Apologetics, begins with Graham Ward’s consideration of cultural hermeneutics, in which he argues that apologists must learn to read the “signs of the times” in order to lead to effective evangelism. Richard Conrad provides a salutary overview of the history of apologetics from Pentecost to the present day, and Alister McGrath considers science and apologetics.

All to the good. But the real merit of this relatively slim volume lies in the first half of the book.

In the Foreword, John Milbank argues convincingly that we cannot pretend to a ‘neutral’ approach to apologetics – and that attempting such an approach often “accepts without question the terms and terminology of this world.” (Indeed – how often do we try to argue with the New Atheists on, essentially, their own ground?)

In the Introduction, Andrew Davison sets out the central claim of the book: “The Christian faith does not simply, or even mainly, propose a few additional facts about the world. Rather, belief in the Christian God invites a new way to understand everything… In this book we celebrate reason, but not so as to make apologetics rational in some cold or arid fashion. Apologetics should be a matter of wonder and desire, not least because reason at its most reasonable is itself a matter of wonder and desire.”

Stop for a moment and consider those words. In the arguments that we apologists make, how often is it the case that our words evoke wonder and desire in our hearers and readers?

Now let’s take a look at the essays in the first section of the book, Faith and Reason Reconsidered. These ought to be required reading for anyone engaging in the apologetic enterprise.

John Hughes begins by addressing the terms “argument,” “proof,” and “persuasion,” challenging us to recognize that our usual understanding of these words is not universal, but rather comes out of the project of modernity, and that “this rationalist foundationalism of faith” has “pernicious consequences.” Hughes doesn’t pull any punches: “the rationalist project of proofs has sold out the Christian faith to deism and turned the God of Jesus Christ into an idol of human reason.” However, Hughes is by no means advocating a retreat into fideism. Rather, he believes that we can address both modern rationalism and postmodern irrationalism. Hughes argues that the arguments that convince us today will not function “by some irrefutable logic” but rather “by all the powers of persuasion, by their goodness and even their beauty… It may well be that these are the sorts of arguments that will be appropriate for a twenty-first century apologetics: not proofs, but critiques, geneologies and explorations, persuasive and attractive narratives that help us to make sense of our intellectual and cultural situation and inspire us to participate in them.”

Andrew Davison picks up on this line of argument in the next essay, “Christian Reason and Christian Community.” He directly challenges what he calls the “myth of neutral reason” and its expression in apologetic arguments of the type that work from a basis of supposedly universally accepted axioms such as the principle of non-contradiction. Davison takes aim at many of the cherished ideas of the apologetics world, and will likely cause some upset in readers in America, as his arguments suggest that we may be using our intellectual resources unwisely. For instance, debating atheists seems like a powerful apologetic strategy, but do debates today actually translate into any unbelievers moving toward Christian faith?

Consider, for instance, the current refusal of any more atheist intellectuals to debate William Lane Craig. Perhaps they are cowards, as some have said. I suspect, though, that they may simply have decided that these debates do little to change the convictions of the audience, and are thus not a productive use of their time. Might we consider that the atheists have a valid point?

Davison argues, and very convincingly, that we must reconsider our approach to apologetics: “Christian apologetics witnesses to a different sense of what is real. Since these convictions are basic or axiomatic, we do not argue to them. Instead, we show what difference it makes to think this way… Apologetics is as much invitation as argument: an invitation to ‘taste and see’ what it is like to live and think differently.”

But how do we do that? The contributors to the next section, Christian Apologetics and the Human Imagination, offer some ideas.

Alison Milbank argues that “in apologetics, we do not just want to convince people of the rationality of what we believe as if it were a fact about the population of the Galapagos Islands: we want to make them understand in a participatory way.” (And indeed I can attest to the critical distinction between the two: in my own conversion process, when I accepted the rationality and indeed the truth of the Christian claim, I was not then a believer, for I still had to answer the question: What am I going to do about this?) Milbank draws on Tolkien’s insights on “recovery” in “On Fairy-Stories” and on the experience of the Eucharist as she makes the case for an imaginative apologetics that will “shock people into engagement with reality”; for the problem today, as CS Lewis put it, is that we desire not too much but too little. Milbank argues that “the whole enterprise of presenting the faith convincingly is aimed at opening this desire in others, rather than offering pre-packaged answers.”

In the next essay, Donna Lazenby picks up on the cultural task of the apologist, noting that the contemporary apologist must be able “to read the signs of the times.” She considers a number of examples from literature, pointing out that these are “diagnostic spaces” where we can “discover… what people are spiritually hungering for.”

The final essay in this section is Michael Ward’s “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best: C.S. Lewis on Imagination and Reason in Apologetics.” If we have been reading and thinking carefully, at this point we should be convinced (if we were not already) of the value of the imagination in apologetics. But how does it work? Ward uses CS Lewis’ analysis of the role of imagination to build a convincing case for how imagination and reason are both necessary for the apologetic endeavor. He begins by considering Lewis’ own conversion experience: “When Lewis understood that the story recounted in the Gospels, rather than the commentary upon and outworking of that story in the Epistles, was the essence of Christianity’s meaning and that the Christ-story could be approached in a way similar to the way he approached pagan myths, it was a huge breakthrough for him.” The problem for Lewis was not that he could not understand the doctrines of Christianity; rather, he had not yet seen the more complete truth beyond them.

The difference between doctrine and divine reality is a critical point for apologists today who are so easily led into doctrinal debates with atheists about the nature of hell or the divinity of Christ; Ward writes, “Doctrines, though useful, are the product of analytical dissection; they recast the original, equivocal, historical material into abstract, less fully realized categories of meaning. In short, doctrines are not as richly meaningful as that which they are doctrines about.” (As a minor illustration, consider that if you want to know what a butterfly is, you will do better to observe one fluttering in the garden than a dead one pinned to a card, even if the latter can be examined more closely and is labeled with its scientific name.)

Ward goes on to point out that “It is no good arguing for ‘God’ or ‘Christ’ or for ‘the atonement’ or even for ‘truth’ until the apologist has shown, at least at some basic level, that these terms have real meaning. Otherwise they will just be counters in an intellectual game, leaving most readers cold. Likewise, apologetic arguments for the authority of the ‘Church’ or ‘the Bible’ or ‘experience’ or ‘reason’ itself, must all be imaginatively realized before they can begin to make traction on the reader’s reason, let alone on the reader’s will.”

(Think about that, and reflect on your conversations with skeptics. It is an insight that will, I think, help explain why so many Internet ‘discussions’ take up much time and produce many thousands of words but go nowhere.)

Ward goes on to move carefully through an analysis of the relationship between imagination and reason, arguing in some detail that “imagination is insufficient without reason” and that “imaginative reason is also insufficient,” and pulling the pieces together by exploring how “imaginative reason serves a purpose.” He concludes with what is effectively a warning as well as an encouragement for apologists:

“…imagination and reason together work not to serve themselves but to serve the will. The good serves the better and both the best. The best is the will, the heart of a person, and this must be reorientated by a meeting with the divine… The rationally imaginative explanations and defences of Christianity provided by the apologist (and supported by the divine) can only take one so far, and it is at the point where they fall short that the divine intervention already seen in the exercise of natural faculties may be supplemented, God willing, by divine supervention. The internal presence of God in the human subject may meet the external presence of the Holy Spirit in direct illumination, or, as may be, mediated through the more normal channels of preaching, sacrament, Scripture, prayer, absolution, fasting or other forms of askesis.”

And here we are reminded that the apologetic endeavor does not work in isolation, but rather in collaboration with the Holy Spirit and in the context of the whole outworking of the Christian life. A serious consideration of imaginative apologetics thus includes a reconsideration of the role of the imagination in the work of apologetics, a renewed vision of the way imagination and reason together facilitate the work of the Spirit, and an appreciation of the role of apologetics in the life of the church.

This is an important book – one that anyone seriously engaged in the work of apologetics needs to read carefully. Whether or not you agree with the specific points made in various essays is much less important than whether you take Davison and his fellow writers’ challenge to look seriously at the role of the imagination in the apologetic endeavor.

The only flaw is that the book is not available in the U.S. (at least not at the time of writing this review). I got my copy in England (thank you, kind staff at Blackwell’s) but although that is by far the most enjoyable way to get it, it is not the most cost-effective. Fortunately, it’s easy enough to buy from Amazon.co.uk, even if it does mean paying for international shipping. (That’s how I got my British Harry Potter editions, so I can assure you it’s not that bad.)

Go order this book – and start thinking about what it might mean for the Gospel if we were equipped with a full, rich, well-reasoned, and imaginative apologetics.

Collins is a competent writer, with competent prose that never sinks to bad writing nor rises to excellence. I suspect that most readers are drawn into the Hunger Games story because the writing has the virtue of being transparent: it doesn’t get in the way of the reader experiencing the action of the story. In that sense, I would describe Collins’ prose as cinematic.

I’m not entirely sure that I favor entirely transparent prose, in which the authorial hand is utterly invisible. For one thing, it becomes difficult to say that Collins really has a style, and I think that style is important in cultivating a long-term affection for an author. Dickens feels different than Austen, and both feel different from Lewis. Many people love GK Chesterton, and others are driven to distraction by his use of paradoxes and the absurd, but certainly a Chesterton book is a Chesterton book. Regardless of one’s opinion of the literary merit of the Harry Potter series, I would argue that Rowling exhibits a consistent style – her books have their own flavor, and that flavor is part of the reading experience.

Without that particular authorial flavor, what you get is, I think, the thrill of narrative for its own sake, and that’s where The Hunger Games works; the story moves on at a fairly fast clip, with reasonably interesting twists and turns. I wanted to find out what happened, and did not particularly care to savor the specific presentation of it in any particular scene.

It’s interesting in that regard to note that The Hunger Games is quite graphically violent. One reasonably expects to find depictions of violence in a novel whose central conceit is twelve young adults being tossed into a wilderness to fight to the death, yes, but there are varying degrees to which that violence can be described. Collins is quite explicit. What is particularly interesting to me is that I didn’t notice the explicit violence at first. It was only when I reflected on the book later that it slowly dawned on me that some of the scenes were positively gruesome in their level of physical detail regarding bodily trauma. I wonder if part of the reason for not noticing the violence is the cinematic quality of the prose – and the fact that in film, we have become accustomed to graphic displays of violence and physical injury on-screen to levels that would have appalled and sickened earlier audiences.

There’s something to be gained in the kind of transparency that pulls the reader into the story. The Hunger Games is the kind of book that might perhaps instill a love of reading in a younger reader, might lead the reader to look to replicate that experience in another, more substantial book. Or not; that is a blindly optimistic statement.

The trouble that I see with such utterly transparent books as The Hunger Games is that what you see is what you get. I can’t imagine returning to re-read the book. That’s not because it’s a young-adult book and I’m too old or mature to re-read kids’ books; no, indeed! I’ve enjoyed re-reading many children’s and young adult books: I’ve derived much pleasure from re-visiting the Harry Potter books, The Hobbit, the Chronicles of Narnia, Winnie-the-Pooh, and many other books that get shelved in the kids’ section.

The trouble is that a book that’s as transparent as The Hunger Games, in terms of authorial presence, seems to offer little beyond the narrative. To re-read the book would be to seek to replay the first experience, rather than to seek to find a new depth in the story or a deeper engagement with it. Perhaps I’m overstating the case with Collins specifically; there are some indications in the story that she’s drawing our attention to the dangers of our entertainment culture. But there’s so little else to be drawn from a re-reading of the book that I wonder if those aspects of the story will remain merely potential for most readers.

I haven’t read the second and third volumes in the trilogy. I have some inclination to (because the narrative was engaging, and I’d like to find out what happens). However, I’m also hesitant, perhaps bcause of the sense of time’s winged chariot pressing near: will the books be worth my investment of time, or be the equivalent of a fun but forgettable action flick?

Readers, would you care to weigh in on The Hunger Games and its sequels?

Let me tell you why I was skeptical, dear Reader, and walk you through the turn-around with me. I hope you’ll end up convinced, as I am, that this is extraordinarily good scholarship and absolutely essential for a serious understanding of any of Lewis’ fiction.

My current academic interest in the intersection of reason and imagination comes out of a much longer intellectual journey of thinking about fantasy literature, both as a lifelong reader of the genre and as an academic. In 1999-2001, when I was writing my dissertation on the modern fantasy novel, I gave Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings a pivotal place in my argument, but sandwiched Lewis’ Chronicles into one sub-section of a chapter on religious fantasy. (In retrospect, I wonder if I might have been attempting to quarantine Narnia, as it were. I was not yet a Christian when I wrote my dissertation, but Aslan was prowling on the borders of my atheism.) I knew that the Chronicles were important, yet none of the scholarship I’d read was particularly helpful in showing why, or how.

I admired Lewis’ work intensely, but fell into tacit agreement with Tolkien’s assessment that they were simply thrown together. Combine that with the approximately twenty-seven million times over the next ten years that I had to explain to people that the Chronicles of Narnia were NOT an allegory, and I found myself with a strong skepticism that there was any consistent overarching theme or structure to these stories.

Fast-forward to 2011, and the copy of Planet Narnia sitting on my breakfast table. A totally new insight into the Chronicles? A complex, consistent system of symbolism based on the seven planets in the medieval cosmology? Yeah, right.

Still… several of my friends whose judgment I respect were enthusiastic about the book. It was published by Oxford University Press. And it did sound intriguing. At the least, I needed to read it to keep up with the conversation amongst Lewisians.

So I started to read it, pencil at hand to make marginal notes.

The tide began to turn almost immediately, because Ward immediately and directly addresses the question that was at the forefront of my mind: how likely was it that he had discovered a “literary secret” in plain view, the key to a series that has been poked and prodded by academics for the past fifty years?

He notes that first, there are examples of genuine literary discoveries, of which this was at least possibly one; second, that this insight was not based on lost manuscripts found in someone’s closet, but rather on careful reading of the Chronicles in the context of Lewis’ work overall; and third, that there are a number of indications that Lewis may have been deliberately secretive about this literary plan.

But what impressed me even more than that was that, rather than diving directly into the main argument, Ward starts out by challenging the reader to consider a set of three questions about the Chronicles: their occasion, composition, and reception. What led Lewis to change gears to write in this genre, after many years of working in other genres? Why is the series so apparently varied in its use of biblical and mythological elements? And why have the stories been so successful?

The last question, that of reception, struck home. What is it about the Chronicles that has made them so engaging and even transformative for so many readers? I didn’t have a good explanation for that, though I knew first-hand their power. Certainly I knew from my own academic work that whatever was going on in the Chronicles, it was something quite different from what was powering Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Chapter Two continues with Ward carefully defining terms – another mark of good work. Noting that Lewis had described the seven medieval planets as “spiritual symbols,” Ward examines the terms “symbol” and “spirit” to determine what Lewis meant. Thus we get a careful distinction between Lewis as allegorist and Lewis as symbolist (and an acknowledgement that he operates at different times in both of these modes, thus neatly avoiding a false definitiveness), and an equally careful consideration of the three definitions of the word “spirit,” in particular as these meanings relate to planetary imagery.

Drawing on Lewis’ work on the medieval worldview in The Discarded Image, from his poetry, from the Space Trilogy, from the Chronicles of Narnia, and even from Lewis’ work on Dante’s Divine Comedy, Ward makes a solid preliminary case for the significance of planetary imagery for the total effect of the Chronicles of Narnia.

All right then, Ward, you’ve got me interested. Let’s see the evidence in detail.

In the following chapters, three through nine, Ward examines the symbolic significance of the seven medieval planets and their connection to the Chronicles, starting with Jupiter – the presiding influence in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He doesn’t jump right into Narnia, however; instead, he works carefully through references to Jupiter in Lewis’ academic work, the Space Trilogy (what Ward calls the Ransom Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength), and Lewis’ poetry, before addressing Narnia.

It was at this point that I conceded that Ward was genuinely on to something.

I’ve been teaching Out of the Silent Planet in my college composition and literature course for a number of semesters, and before that, I taught The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in the same course for several years. I’ve spent a lot of time immersed in these books, thinking through and talking about what Lewis is doing and how he’s doing it. So I know these books quite well.

Everything that Ward says here about Lewis’ use of Jovial imagery fits precisely with the evidence of the text – and with the context of Lewis’ scholarship. Fits perfectly. And not only fits, but illuminates my reading of the novels.

All right, Ward – you’ve got me. What about the remaining books in the Chronicles, though?

In the following chapters, Ward looks at Mars, Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, and Saturn, and examines their appearance in the Chronicles. For a while I kept waiting for the over-statement, the too-broad claim, but it never came; this is simply a solid and convincing work of scholarship all the way through. It really works. It’s astonishing.

(As an aside, I’d like to take a moment to praise Ward’s prose. It’s clean and clear – which is most assuredly not the default setting for academic writing – and contains the occasional gleam of dry humor – like the off-hand remark that critics have too often “treated the Chronicles as if they were principally works of propaganda and have exchanged their poetry for a pot of message.” Nice.)

Planet Narnia does not conclude with the assessment of the seven planets as symbols, however – in the final two chapters, Ward returns to the questions he raised at the opening of his argument. Having exhaustively discussed the problem of composition, he turns to the problems of occasion and reception, ably addressing several challenges to his interpretation. Of most note is his extended discussion of whether this insight into Lewis’ work should have remained secret. Ward writes, “I would concede that yes, inevitably, explanation involves something like loss, in any department of criticism.” I was struck by this because I so rarely see academics who recognize that there is any potential for loss in analytical work – when in fact there is a certain pleasure in simply experiencing a story that can never be re-gained after considering the question of “how does it work?” What I appreciate about Ward’s position is that after acknowledging that the trade-off exists, he doesn’t merely affirm that it is worthwhile: he spends several pages thereafter pointing out the ways in which this new understanding enriches our reading of the Chronicles, helping us appreciate new literary-historical and theological depths.

Is it, in fact, the case that Ward’s insights will help us enjoy the Chronicles more fully and deeply? Or – here is the final test – is this just one more nice academic theory that looks good on paper but remains merely an intellectual game?

Immediately after finishing Planet Narnia, I re-read, in quick succession, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. (My intention to re-read the entire series was derailed by the arrival of final exams to grade, but the first two sufficed to answer the question.)

Does Ward’s insight bring out a richer, fuller, deeper reading of the Chronicles of Narnia?

Yes.

Well done.

You can visit Dr. Michael Ward’s website, Planet Narnia, here.

More than that, Glyer, whose doctorate is in language, literacy, and rhetoric, and who is herself an accomplished writer, convincingly brings in research on composition and community to illuminate the interactions among the Inklings.

The Company They Keep is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Inklings, and far surpasses the previous standard book, Humphrey Carpenter’s The Inklings. The general assumption about the Inklings is that they wrote independently, with limited influence on each other, particularly with respect to Tolkien. Glyer shows convincingly that the Inklings did indeed collaborate and influence each other in a rich and dynamic way, over the course of many years, in ways that enhanced their individual writing styles.

Glyer’s book does what the best scholarship should do: it makes for a richer, more nuanced, more insightful reading of the work of Lewis and Tolkien. As a further benefit, Glyer draws on the example of this tremendously successful and long-lived writing community to show how writers can learn and grow in community.

Diana Pavlac Glyer is professor of English at Azusa Pacific University. Her other work includes the devotional book Clay in the Potter’s Hands.

“On Fairy-Stories” – JRR Tolkien

JRR Tolkien is best known for his classic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, but he was also, and foremost, a scholar. One of his most important works – and a work that is essential reading for literary apologetics – is the analytical essay “On Fairy-Stories.” Tolkien carefully defines “fairy-stories,” which we would now call fantasy, to distinguish the unique aspects of this literary genre. He then goes on to defend the value of fantasy, and to discuss how it functions, using the terms “recovery,” “escape,” and “consolation.” Of special interest to Christian apologists is Tolkien’s robust claims for creativity being a mark of the imago Dei, and his connection between the appeal of the happy ending with the truth of the Gospel.

This essay can be found in the collection The Tolkien Reader.

Mind of the Maker – Dorothy Sayers

JRR Tolkien wrote that “we make because we are made in the image of a Maker,” but it was Dorothy Sayers who wrote an entire book thinking through the way that our creative faculty helps us see what it means to be made in the image of God. The Mind of the Maker doesn’t specifically address literature but rather looks at the operation of creativity more broadly applied. It’s well worth reading as a way to start thinking about the value, nature, and function of creativity.