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0 Comments“Tolkien had taught him [C.S. Lewis] that the inability to believe in Christianity was primarily a failure of the imagination.” – A. N. Wilson, C.S. Lewis: A Biography.
J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings was a professor at Oxford University and a personal friend of C.S. Lewis, another Oxford professor and the author of The Chronicles of Narnia and The Screwtape Letters. Both gentlemen knew a thing or two about imagination, but Tolkien helped Lewis understand the relationship between imagination and truth.
Imagination is one of four “i” words that have a special place in all our lives and especially our thinking, and do not get the attention and respect they deserve (the other “i” words are intuition, insight, and inspiration). We use these words frequently when admiring the mystery of creative genius, yet only rarely when referring to “rational” thought processes.
In a similar way, “rationality”— rational, axiomatic thought – often is portrayed as the reliable guide to all truth — and juxtaposed against “blind faith”— based on fanciful products of the imagination. Mathematicians, however, abandoned that false distinction years ago. Kurt Gödel’s 1931 paper, “On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems,” proved that no matter how completely one might specify a set of axioms, there always will be statements that though demonstrably true, cannot be proven to be true using only those axioms. (A readable synopsis is found in Ernest Nagel and James Newman’s book, Gödel’s Proof.) If pure axiomatic reasoning cannot provide a means of accessing all truth even in mathematics, where it should have its best chance of success, it seems unwise to rely on it exclusively in other settings. Anyone who has struggled to grasp a difficult concept in the arts or sciences or sought a solution to a previously unsolved problem can relate to the experience of “the lights suddenly coming on,” making the concept or solution crystal clear. A natural reaction is the desire to run out and explain the concept to someone else – which can be frustrating since the lights don’t always come on in the same way for everyone.
Consider the role of imagination in the world of art. Suppose a group of people are viewing a beautiful painting such as “Evening Calm” or “Evening Gold” by Gerald Coulson or “View of Dedham” by Thomas Gainsborough. A person with a purely materialist viewpoint might declare, “What we have here is a combination of textiles and petroleum products.” They would not be wrong and thus it would be pointless to try to convince them otherwise. A skilled technician might look at the same painting with a deep appreciation of the skill exercised in composing and executing the painting. The technician certainly would be engaged with the painting and the painter at a deeper level than the materialist, but surely there is more to a beautiful painting than mere technique.
The painter first was inspired by the thought of the scene that he painted. Perhaps he saw it in person; or he visited the actual place, but imagined a version of it even more beautiful than the scene in front of him; or perhaps it was entirely in his imagination. Some viewers of the painting might be moved to say, “Yes, I easily can see why the artist was inspired to create such a beautiful scene. I am profoundly grateful that he chose to transfer it from his mind to the canvas so that it could be shared with others. I could even imagine myself in such a beautiful place enjoying the reality of a landscape like that, and I would love to tell other people about this painting in the hope that they could have the same experience.” This level of appreciation and engagement with the painting surpasses both the materialist and even the most accomplished technician. This level of appreciation requires imagination.
What if we extend this analogy to reading the Bible, for example, the Gospel of John or the Book of Acts? A “materialist” approach might appreciate these books as historical texts — remarkably accurate representations of first century history and thought. A “technician” might marvel at the poetry in opening sentences of John or Luke’s historical arc tracing the spread of Christianity from a small group of devotees to a “messiah” (one of many) in the backwater of Palestine, to its arrival in Rome – the capitol of the Empire – where it was poised to leave an indelible imprint on all of Western civilization.
But what if we approach these inspired texts imaginatively—in the best sense of the word? There are two approaches.
First, we might follow the lead of David Bentley Hart’s Atheist Delusions and imagine what the world would look like today had Christianity not spread to Europe. Hart traces some of the important contributions of Christianity to our world today: its opposition to pagan infanticide and its sense of social obligation to widows and orphans; its preservation of ancient wisdom in monasteries now embodied in modern research universities. After the Reformation, Protestants opposed the idea of the Divine Right of Kings and later the slave trade. In the twentieth century the black church contributed to the civil rights movement.
Without Christianity what would our world look like? The Christian revolution has so pervasively transformed our consciences that a world without it and its accompanying values is difficult to imagine.
A second imaginative approach is more metaphorical. Just as the person viewing the Coulson or Gainsborough landscape can imagine standing in the actual setting portrayed in the painting, so the Gospel of John, Acts–indeed the entire Bible—can be read in ways beyond the materialist or technical level. We can imagine that we are not simply reading an historical document, but the preface to the story of which own lives are the continuation. In this story, we are not the purposeless products of random processes; here by accident and destined for the compost heap. We were knitted together in our mothers’ womb and fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139). Our chief purpose in life is not to follow our material impulses, but to glorify God and enjoy him forever (the Westminster Shorter Catechism).
We would live not in dread of a ruthless God who takes pleasure in condemning our sins, but an active, loving God that was so intolerant of our sins that He chose to die for us rather than live without us. If you read the Bible like that, what difference would it make in your life? Just imagine.
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