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December 07, 2004
First Draft of Rhetoric Paper - Updated
The Exile of Imagination
Rhetoric - Nicea Term
One of the most troublesome stumbling blocks that Protestants trip over when it comes to imagination and novel-writing is our natural suspicion of ornamentation and image. They summon up the memory of that goblin, Catholic medievalism, which has for so long haunted our collective nightmares. The Romanesque cathedrals remind us of indulgences and grotesque monks wearing horse hair, so we build our churches like plain, ugly corporate headquarters. The mystery of the Lord's Supper is too mystic for the straight-shooting defenders of the Reformation, so the bread and wine of His body are transformed into the juice and saltine crackers of remembrance. Keep it simple stupid goes for our liturgy, our systematic theology, even our typology-free hermeneutic. As a good Covenanter friend of mine once explained, simplicity is the essence of worship. And our distrust of excessive typology and imagination in worship leads to a very natural distrust of fiction that is anything more than two-dimensional. Lex orandi lex credendi, as an enlightened fellow once said.
In the Left Behind novels - a target almost too handy, but still very apt - inanity follows upon inanity as the apocalyptic gospel is pounded home with all the delicacy of a Mike Tyson roundhouse. As Richard Terrell has illustrated, subtlety is eschewed for cardboard cutouts: the sensual seductress is described simply as "flat out gorgeous." The Antichrist is so attractive he looks like a "young Robert Redford." These characterizations not only fail to encourage the reader to use imagination, they discourage its use. Rather like the medium of television, ready-made cliches substitute for true style.
The Murder of Image
What is lost in all this is the beauty of subtlety, the effective use of image in the written word. It should be clear, we should not be looking merely for an abundance of polysyllabic words, hidden literary patterns, chiasms, and sub-themes. No, style without truth is just as wasteful. The real problem is that we lack faith that a subtle style can in itself convey the intended message in a powerful way. Can Image complement Word? Can style and imagination be used in the service of the message? Far too many examples exist where these tools are dismissed as irrelevant, and the great heavy Moral of the author is instead hoisted upon unsuspecting readers.
When a novel becomes "preachy," the result is not just aesthetic failure; it also means a loss of potency. Like Christ said about good works: if you do them in the open, you have received the full extent of your reward (Matthew 6:1-4). But good deeds done in private reward over and over again. If the message is blunt, at center stage from the beginning, the reader will begin either agreeing or disagreeing, and will go through the entire story anticipating his or her own final judgment of the work - the defenses are already raised. Well-executed and stylistic implication, however, can be enchanting to the reader. It is the nature of the unknown, of mystery, and things only implied that incites curiosity in the human mind. Like a beautiful woman playing hard to get, there is something more seductive in a book that makes you work longer and more cleverly to conquer it. A book that sells itself to the reader is nothing more than a cheap hooker. There is a sense of entitlement which makes the book subservient to the reader.
Russell Kirk wrote:
The better the artist, one almost may say, the more subtle the preacher. Inventive persuasion, not blunt exhortation, commonly is the method of the literary champion of norms.
While it would be nice to think that remedial writing courses at night school might fix all the bad writing we have in Protestant circles, the real problem, as we saw earlier, is rooted in evangelicals' collective aversion to anything that isn't straightforward and simple. We can sniff out empty rhetoric and traditionalism from miles away. We like our religion and our art democratic: we want no sacerdotal intermediaries to clarify the finer points of literature. Everything is meant for mass consumption.
While the ugliness of this mentality has become increasingly obvious in the past couple decades, we can trace this mindset back to a misunderstanding of the Reformation. The Reformers preached against what they saw as a Word-less sacrament, and they labored tirelessly for a restoration of the centrality of the Word. Unfortunately, the descendants of the Reformers have a tendency to now view any inclusion of Image and imagination as, at best, irrelevant fluff; at worst - and this mindset is encountered all too often - image, and imaginative fiction specifically, are viewed as dishonest escapism. Reality is only found in the abstract, the non-fictional, and the systematics of life.
By application, it seems the modern Christian novel is created by a distillation of depth and image so brutal that only the Word remains. Image is viewed as distracting and ornamental. Like the common modern Protestant view of the Lord's Supper, the Image is ineffectual and is tagged on as an afterthought to the message of the Word.
It is astonishing that the heirs of Calvin and Luther could have accomplished this divorce of Word and Image and still claim the Reformation inheritance.
While this is essentially a theological problem, the bitter fruits of this error are seen all too clearly in the increasingly disturbing lack of quality in the world of evangelical fiction.
Word Made Flesh
What we evangelicals often fail to understand is that art is made through induction, not deduction. Truth is found not by stripping away, but by seeing truth truly, as it already is. The Word is central, as our Protestant fathers taught us. But as the Bible also teaches, Word was made flesh. Truth took a bodily form. Truth doesn't stand naked. God did not just give fallen mankind a set of salvific propositions to believe. No, we were given a story. We were given a story more beautiful and full of literary depth than anything the authors of the Western canon could have cooked up together in a million lifetimes. When evangelicals try to strip away everything so that the "message" - whatever that is - is received, we are left with an impotent gospel. When Christ spoke the parable of the prodigal, He could have just said, "God rejoices when a sinner returns to Him." But Christ didn't give us this minimalistic mini-gospel, true thought it might be. He gave us a story, an imaginative picture of the truth which in many ways is even more true than the straightforward one-sentence statement.
Flannery O'Connor once wrote:
A story that is any good can't be reduced, it can only be expanded. A story is good when you continue to see more and more in it, and when it continues to escape you.
Any lover of books will be able to remember just this sort of feeling when, like the lingering aftertaste of a good wine, some novel tasted even better after it was finished. How many times over can we read about the prodigal and his haughty brother and still find new insights and beauties? Or pick your favorite novel and remember all the connections, characterizations, and subtleties of word-choice that have come back to you as welcome memories. This is what results from a true marriage of Word and Image.
Everything in God's Creation is given to us as source material. Anything - not just depictions of apocalyptic spiritual warfare - can serve as inspiration for a revelation of truth in art. It might be the moment my little baby sister puckers up for a wet goodnight kiss, or the peculiar way a friend expulses his laughter in short bursts as though hit in the gut. Truth is found in great things and small; what we call "style" or ornamentation is just the way we draw the beauty truthfully out of these great and small discoveries of the imprint of God on His world.
The Christian author is just this sort of metaphysical detective, whose calling is to search out the traces of the imago Dei in men, the remnants of fallen Eden in the earth, and the promises of glory in our New Jerusalem. We are called to be as crafty as serpents, and it might be that God will be pleased to use our subtle sermons of the written Word to bring greater glory to Himself. Truth and beauty can be more seductive than lies and the ugliness of sin; it's about time we stopped acting as if evil had home-court advantage. This is God's world, and He has promised us His Word will not return void.
Posted by Davey at December 7, 2004 10:30 PM
Comments
you know what flannery o'conner also said? "if the eucharist is just a symbol, to hell with it."
Posted by: marian at December 13, 2004 08:15 PM
tremendous insights!
I'm doing a search on "Imagination in Worship". Most everything that comes up relates to the Reformed Regulative Principle and the sinfulness of imagination. Thanks for a refreshing redemptive perspective!
Craig Allen
Posted by: Craig Allen at January 19, 2005 01:28 PM