Apologetics, Imagination, and Imaginative Apologetics
In earlier posts,
I set the framework for the core material in Imaginative Apologetics, seeking to provide the lay of the land in
contemporary apologetics and the faculty of imagination. Now we are engaging the individual articles
in Andrew Davison’s edited volume, Imaginative
Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition.[1]
Last post, I gave in-depth consideration
of the two articles considering the relationship between faith and reason. In this post, on to the second of four major
sections of the work. As a reminder, you
can find my full treatment in Trinity
Journal.[2]
Christian Apologetics and the Human Imagination
Section two of Imaginative Apologetics
(“Christian Apologetics and the Human Imagination”) comprises three strong
articles noting the importance of imagination and literature in Christian
apologetics.
In chapter three,[3] Alison Milbank (University
of Nottingham) argues that contemporary attitudes and imaginative works “leave
us impoverished” with either a “cold rationalism” or a Kantian separation of
“phenomena and noumena.”[4] Contemporary apologetics,
in Milbank’s view, must “awaken . . . homesickness for the absolute” and
demonstrate that Christianity is a “vision that includes everything, restoring
the lost beauty of the world.”[5] The high calling of
apologetics is to awaken the spirit of the individual, to “offer a whole way of
regarding our experience and beginning to reintegrate our experience.”[6]
Donna Lazenby then
argues that Christian apologists should pay attention to the metaphysical
assertions imaginatively set forth in contemporary “New Atheist” novels.[7] She
draws on the essential insight (shared and stated strongly by James Smith’s Imagining the Kingdom)
that literature provides a more immediate and effective route to the human
heart than does propositional argumentation. In particular, the stories that resonate
with contemporary culture illuminate the “desires” and “yearnings” of our day.[8]
Lazenby focuses on authors Ian McEwan and Martin Amis, as well as the Twilight Saga (or
phenomenon).[9] She notes that novels like
Ian McEwan’s Atonement
are entirely inconsistent internally—insisting on the one hand that value
judgments are illegitimate on evolutionary grounds, but on the other hand
making such judgments when it suits his purpose.[10]
Despite the inconsistencies of such novels, however, atheistic works are resonating
with contemporary culture—perhaps none more so than the Twilight series. The question must be
asked, then, “what is it offering these people?”[11]
That is, why do people find Twilight
so winsome? The Christian apologist must identify the human longings or
yearnings that contemporary literature is sparking, and respond in two ways.
First, one must identify how the appealing atheistic literature is “actually
reconfiguring human desires, aspirations and passions on their own religious
and spiritual terms.”[12]
Second, “[t]he apologist must find ways to expose this deceit, addressing
peoples’ confusion about what the Christian faith is really about, while making
it demonstrably clear that the Church has a response for the yearnings these
literatures document.”[13]
In chapter five,
Michael Ward (Oxford University) presents an excellent and compelling
exposition of C. S. Lewis’s use of imagination, reason, and will.[14]
Ward argues that imagination is (in Lewis’s terms) “the organ of meaning,”[15]
that which supplies the raw materials of meaning and conception with which
reason can then work. Ward notes that Lewis, like many contemporaries,
struggled not just to believe
Christianity, but more importantly to understand “what the doctrine meant.”[16]
Thus, a reasoned defense of Christianity requires first of all imagination to
provide the meaning
of what is being reasoned for.
Hence, although “apologetics is a ‘reasoned defence,’ its basis is necessarily
imaginative, for reason cannot work without imagination.”[17]
However, imagination itself cannot get the apologetic job done: “Without the
controlling and clarifying effects of reason, imaginative efforts at
apprehending God are always apt to lose themselves and turn unreliable or even
rotten.”[18] Reason, then, plays a
regulative role in imaginative apologetics. Even “imaginative reason” is,
however, insufficient.[19]
In the end, both imagination and reason are insufficient without a
transformation of individual will, which requires “divine supervention.”[20]
Ward closes his
article with a reminder of the essential function of apologetics, understood as
imaginative reasoning apologetics. He notes that “although reasoned defences do
not of themselves create conviction, the absence of them makes belief much
harder to engender or sustain.”[21]
That is, rational apologetics may not be sufficient,
but it is necessary.
He approvingly cites Lewis: “If the intellectual climate is such that, when a
man comes to the crisis at which he must either accept or reject Christ, his
reason and imagination are not on the wrong side, then his conflict will be
fought out under favourable conditions.”[22]
The will, and the conversion that only God can ultimately bring about, is “The
Best,” but imagination and reason (The Good and the Better; or is it The Better
and The Good?) are necessary components.
The three articles
comprising the second meaty section of Imaginative
Apologetics provide a tremendous balance.
On the one hand, they emphasize the necessity of a reasoned Christianity—providing
rational foundations for and explanations of the faith—in a post-Christian
society. On the other hand, they remind
us that reason alone is entirely insufficient: apologetics needs to engage the
emotions and imagination, to connect the truth-claims of Christianity to the
hearts and souls of non-Christians around us.
In the next blog,
onward bound through Imaginative
Apologetics.
[1]
Andrew Davison, ed. Imaginative Apologetics:
Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2012. 169 pp. $25.00.
[2] Tawa J.
Anderson, “Apologetics, Imagination, and Imaginative
Apologetics,” in Trinity Journal
34 (2013): 229-51.
[3]
Alison Milbank, “Apologetics and the Imagination: Making Strange,” in Imaginative Apologetics,
31-45.
[4]
Alison Milbank, “Apologetics and the Imagination: Making Strange,” 31, 33, 44.
[5]
Alison Milbank, “Apologetics and the Imagination: Making Strange,” 44.
[6]
Alison Milbank, “Apologetics and the Imagination: Making Strange,” 33.
[8]
Lazenby, “Apologetics, Literature, and Worldview,” 46, 58.
[10]
Lazenby, “Apologetics, Literature, and Worldview,” 53.
[11]
Lazenby, “Apologetics, Literature, and Worldview,” 56.
[12]
Lazenby, “Apologetics, Literature, and Worldview,” 58.
[13]
Lazenby, “Apologetics, Literature, and Worldview,” 58.
[14]
Michael Ward, “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best: C. S. Lewis on
Imagination and Reason in Apologetics,” in Imaginative
Apologetics, 59-78.
[15]
Ward, “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best,” 61.
[16]
Ward, “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best,” 64. Emphasis original.
[17]
Ward, “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best,” 68.
[18]
Ward, “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best,” 73.
[19]
Ward, “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best,” 75.
[20]
Ward, “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best,” 77.
[21]
Ward, “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best,” 78.
[22]
Ward, “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best,” 78; citing C. S. Lewis,
“The Decline of Religion.”
