Vanhoozer on Imagination
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Over at Between Two Worlds there is a great Interview with Kevin Vanhoozer. I particularly liked his comments on imagination…
… I find that the imagination is a vital ingredient in my sanctification. I need to keep the big biblical picture (creation-fall-redemption-consummation) in mind as I attempt to live day by day, minute by minute, as a follower of Jesus Christ who desires above all to have one’s thought and life correspond to the gospel. To do that, I have to keep the gospel story (together with its presuppositions and implications) in mind, and I have to connect my story to that of Jesus. That requires imagination.
…
Reading is the way we learn to inhabit the world. Not the natural world, but the cultural world: the world of meaning.
…
My concern is that many Evangelicals are suffering from malnourished imaginations. This impedes their ability to live coherently in the world–that is, according to a meaningful metanarrative. We want to believe the Bible, but we are unable to see our world in biblical terms (this is a major theme of my Pictures at a Biblical Exhibition that I mentioned above). That leads to a fatal disconnect between our belief-system and our behavior, our faith and our life.
…
Reading … is a kind of strength-training that flexes the muscles of our imagination. Those who read widely are often those who are able to employ metaphors that connect ordinary life to the wonderful real world of the Bible.
(HT: Kingdom People]
Tags: imagination, Kevin Vanhoozer
in defence of sad songs (3)
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I’d better get the next post in this ‘series’ written before Jonny beats me to it…
Tags: art, culture, imagination, lament, music
imagination is required
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From Jeremy Begbie’s Resounding Truth
… imagination is required…By imagination here I am speaking of the ability to perceive connections between things that are not spelled out, not immediately apparent on the surface… First and foremost, imagination of this sort should be applied to our reading of scripture. we need to live inside the world of these texts and inhabit them so deeply that we begin to recognise links, lines of association, and webs of meaning that may not always be laid out explicitly or at any length but that nevertheless give scripture its coherence, contours and overall directions.…similar imaginative skills need to be applied to our reading of the world through the doctrine we discover. Good doctrine jolts our perspectives and shakes up the way we view things; it invites us to perceive the world in a different way……a third way: we ask what it means to live in and live out this “reading of the world,” to ask how life could be (indeed, must be) different. … This demands imagination because, of course, the Bible does not spell out the details of Christian behaviour for all times… The church needs to improvise imaginatively…
Tags: imagination
Considering Culture (11)
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OK, lets try to finish off the seminar write up before the end of the decade…
If you haven’t been following, then best to start way back here. But basically, we looked at how culture fits into the Christian story and some of the consequences.
There are many places we could have ended up, but I tried to have a brief look at how we should think about culture as a result. One problem have now is that I’ve just finished reading Everyday Theology (ed Vanhoozer et al). This is so good that it has pointed out loads of ways this bit of the seminar could have been improved. But never mind, let’s go for the original form and maybe when I come to discuss the book, alternatives will be clear.
We wound up in the previous section by concluding that our cultural lives should reflect God’s new creation and also that we should remember that the fall implies not every area of culture matches God’s intentions. All this leads us to conclude that we need to think carefully about culture from a Christian context. A prime reason is that understanding helps us in our involvement in the mission of God. One obvious example of this help is that we cannot communicate with the culture around us if we do not understand it, so our preaching, etc. will miss the mark. Another is that, is part of our mission is to work with God in the transformation of culture, then we need to be able to discern what fits God’s intentions and what needs work.
So, how do we think? In some ways, the whole seminar up to this point was an example — we tried to think about culture in general from within the Christian worldview or story. (The place of story in worldview or vice versa is a whole other discusssion. Suffice it to say, I’m keen on the story view at the moment. Perhaps because I spend many hours reading the Gruffalo to my children!)
More generally, we need to keep in mind that we all live/think within some overarching story (or worldview). The story that is influencing a person will have a direct impact on how they approach things. This works in two ways — first, we need to keep in mind the story that we hold to and, second, we need to realise that we constantly come up against cultural products that do not have that story as a basis. We have to find the way to negotiate these two components and act appropriately. For the starting point, we can go back to the quote from John Stott: we need to listen to the word and listen to the world.
So, first, we need to keep a very firm grip on the Biblical story and allow this to be the controlling narrative in our interpretation of the world. (Just to remind us, the key plot points of this story are Creation-Fall-God’s Mission/Jesus-New Creation.)
I think it is Eugene Petersen who said that the Bible is not primarily something we interpret, but is itself an interpretation of the world. We need to allow the story to shape our thinking and imagination; to ‘renew our minds’. I think perhaps we have seen how the thinking aspect works, but we need to go further & let the thinking filter into our imagination. Middleton and Walsh touch on this in the following quote:
A liberated imagination is a prerequestite for facing the future. Consequently, we need to ask ourselves some honest questions. Can we imagine a politics of justice and compassion in place of the present global politics of oppression and economic identity? Dare we imagine an economics of equality and care in place of the dominant economics of affluence and poverty> Can we imagine our work life to be at one with our worship — an act of service and praise, rather than a grim necessity of a means to an affluent lifestyle? Can we imagine a society which has broken through its morbid preoccupation with death and instead truly affirms life, both at the fetal stage and in all of its dimensions? Is a relatinship of friendship, instead of exploitation, with the rest of creation imaginable? Is it imaginable that the mass media could be an agent of spiritual awakened social, cultural and spiritual renewal, rather than the one thing that most numbs us into cultural complacency and sleep? And is our imgination open enough to conceive of a business enterprise that is characterised by stewardship, environmental responsibility and real serviceability, rather than profits, pollution, and the production and marketing of superfluous consumer goods? If we connot have such a liberated imagination and connot countenance such radical dreams, then the story remains closed for us and we have no hope.
Tags: culture, Culture Seminar, imagination, worldview
eschatology and art
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I discovered a paper by Richard Middleton recently: A New Heaven and A New Earth: The Case for a Holistic Reading of the Biblical Story of Redemption which reminded me of something I had intended to write a while ago. A question that I have been pondering is how our eschatology affects what we do now and what we hold to be important. Here is one place which I suggest may show such a connection.
I think it is relatively uncontroversial that music is the art form that is regarded most highly by evangelicals. There is a whole industry for contemporary Christian music, which it seems dwarfs all other cultural products (e.g. Christian novels, etc.) If you want to be a Christian musician that it is highly likely that you will get support from you church (depending on musical genre). On the other hand, if you are considering moving into conceptual art, the probability of active support is probably lower.
Possible reasons for this emphasis are the high place of music in the wider culture, the focus on word rather than image in the church, the example of the Psalms, etc. But I want to try out an eschatological possibility.
It seems to me that the most common way we picture life-after-death is as a giant worship service. That is, as a principally music-based eternity. If that is really what we think, is it surprising that music is given promenance? Whether or not we think our current songs will make it into eternity, they certainly have a close connection. On the other hand, if that is what we are picturing, is it any wonder that painting, etc. don’t really seem quite so important?
Which brings us to Richard Middleton’s article. He takes a clear look at what a lot of people have been emphasising recently — that God’s long term plan is redeeming the whole of creation, not just getting people into heaven. If that guided our imagination, I wonder where it would take us? (Of course, we’re now connecting back to The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work.)
Tags: art, eschatology, imagination
in defence of sad songs (2)
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What this blog has been lacking for a long time is a good quote from The Princess Bride. So let’s go with this one…
Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
It seems to me that this sums up the cynicism that comes from commericialism identified by Dick Keyes (see last post) and some of the distrust of postmodernism (see another previous post).
And what do we take from this? Perhaps that people want honesty. We know that the world is broken and, if we are going to trust, we need people to acknowledge this. We don’t want a glossing over that implies ‘try my option and everything will go smoothly’.
As Christians, we might try to ignore the brokenness of life in the mistaken belief that this makes what we have more attractive. Perhaps the example of commercialism points us this way — ensure life looks rosy with your product and everyone will want it. But we need to be careful not to fall into step with the wider culture and we need to be honest.
One reason, the Biblical story can be trusted is that is faces up to the pain and brokenness and doesn’t look away. To quote Colossians Remixed
The biblical embrace of pain refuses to cover up or deny suffering. … the biblical trajectory … highlights ‘absence’ — the absence of justice and shalom, and in the lament tradition even the absence of God.
If we want to produce art that reflects the biblical tradition and connects with those cynical from commercialism and untrusting from exploitation of the big stories then we have to face up to the absence and brokenness.
Of course, as we have to continually keep in mind, this is done in the context of the existence of God, the God who is ‘intimately involved with the suffering’, who is the true hope. We cannot feel the absence if the presence is not hoped for.
Tags: art, culture, imagination, lament, postmodernism, worldview
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...