Gene Veith lecture notes and Youtube link, from Edmonton lecture 2014: "Christian Imagination, Art and Culture"

For ease of retrieval, once more, below, the lecture notes from Dr. Gene Veith's talks on Christian Imagination, Art and Culture, in Edmonton, 2014

One,  Two  and  Three.

Dr. Gene Veith blogs here:  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/


Also, here is a link to the Youtube video of the keynote lecture.  Dr. Veith spoke several times, however, and not everything will be found in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JatQ4L_mvyI&feature=youtu.be

Gene Veith / Christian Imagination 3

From an interview with Matthew Block.  Something I was missing from my own summary:

God has given us a book that's filled with description, stories, symbols, images, true history, and parables.  We often read Scripture fairly quickly, just to get ideas from it--to extract doctrine from it.  But another way of reading Scripture is to read it in a way that really lets it sink in.  Part of that is reading it not only with the intellect and will, but also with the imagination.  In our forthcoming book, Rev. Ristuccia and I talk about different ways of meditating on the Word of God.  It involves the intellect and thinking about what we're reading, of course, but is also involves picturing what we're reading.  And it also affects the will, so that it ends in prayer and a refocusing of the heart.  I think intentionally reading Scriptures so that it feeds the imagination is a good counter to what we normally feed our imaginations with from the pop-culture around us. 

Finally, Christians can also be careful about what they take into their imaginations.  I think the Christian faith liberates us;  we have great freedom in the Gospel.  So I'm not saying 'Only listen to Christian music' or 'Only watch Christian movies.'  It's possible to listen to non-Christian music and watch non-Christian movies through the eyes of faith and through a Christian sensibility and a Christian imagination.  When we do so, we can find valuable things.  A violent film might make us more compassionate--might make us less violent.  But another film might encourage us to revel in the violence--to enjoy it and fantasize about what it would be like to take revenge and kill someone.  That's harmful.  As Christians, we need to be better stewards and more discerning about what we take into our imaginations. 

A passage from Philippians puts it well:  'Whatever is true, whatever is honest, whatever is of good report... Think on such things' (Philippians 4:8).  That's a great guide that gives us principles of discernment.  It's liberating, not narrow either;  the key part of the text is 'whatever.'  Whatever is excellent.  There are excellent works by non-Christians that have a good report;  they have a great reputation.  And typically, the great works are also honest:  they will not portray reality in a distorted way, as if sin were something good (you won't find many great works teaching 'it is good to reject your family'.  That's not what you find.  The great works are honest.  They're lovely.  And St. Paul tells us to 'think on such things.'  Thinking on such 'excellent and praiseworthy' things, imagining such things, is very helpful for the Christian life.  

(Canadian Lutheran, March/April 2014)

Lecture Notes 2 / Veith

Christian Imagination and Apologetics

(My notes from lecture by Dr. G. Veith.  March 2014.  Video to be posted to internet, hopefully.)

It is currently being said that people believe in nothing whatsoever.  Not only this, they are also skeptical  about reason. -- This is, among other things, a failure of the imagination.  People are unable to imagine a spiritual reality.

In enjoying a piece, as we did from Hildegard von Bingen, we note a yearning for goodness, a yearning for the virtuous, the beauty of the virtues.   There is such a thing as moral beauty.  There is repugnance of evil. -- Now we often portray the opposite.

This is a problem for apologetics. We are to imagine "eternal life", and unseen realm, eternity, God, but we can't imagine such a being.  These are mysteries.

A mystery is not something to be solved by getting back to the intellect.  It is not something for us to "figure out." A mystery opens up the imagination and sends it reeling.

The opposite is boredom--a lifeless, mechanistic universe, where nothing satisfies.

It is the task of art to "re-enchant" the world, so that we see that there is mystery in it.

The church needs re-enchanting.  It is the place where supernatural gifts are given.  The apologetic task is to change the bleak and negative outlook.  Reason, also, needs to be re-enchanted.  It is something glorious.  There is a rational basis for Christianity.  There is also an emotional basis, as emotional experiences reach people.

Again, the "imagination" is often neglected. It has a lot of potential. The imagination is an important way to reach people with the Gospel.

In the 20th century, rationalism's appealed to reason was the focus.  But you can give all the answers and it seems that none of them have impact on people.  For example, he lent out C.S. Lewis' books to a young woman and all she could say was "But he uses sexist language."  -- In post-modern times even reason is minimized.

Emotionalism can be used by promising happiness through pop-psychology or prosperity gospel.  But what about suffering and sickness?  When it strikes there is disillusionment and a fall from faith.  Obviously, there is no God after all.

The Will can be used to replace the intellect.  It becomes important whether or not a choice was involved.  You chose what to believe.  You have a private reality.  What happens, though, is that the private reality conflicts with the actual reality.  You can end with despair.

T.S.Eliot, was THE modernist artist.  There is a "dissociation of sensibility", of thinking and feeling.  Thinking, feeling and imagination are going in all different directions.  Thinking and feeling are seen as opposites.  But John Donne feels his thoughts and thinks his feelings.

But in the Christian faith there is a Wholeness.  When T.S.Eliot embraced the orthodox Christian faith, it pushed his style further and further, centered on the Image, evocative images, orchestrated together, cultivating the imagination.  (e.g. "April is the cruelest month.")

C.S. Lewis also appeals to imagination.  When he speaks about the choice between Lord, liar, lunatic, he gives a logical alternative but with lots of imagination.  He is very descriptive.  ("Poached egg...")  He appeals to the will, and the fact that it needs to make a choice, but he connects to us by means of the imagination.

In a variety of writers we can find a baptized imagination.  There is dazzling fantasy.  Lewis himself began finding what he yearned for in imaginative Christian writers.  He also had been speaking with Tolkien, who explained to him that in Christianity the myths had become fact.  We do have to come back to the facts.

Today, we can engage and bring people along.  Their imagination can be baptized.

Again, defamiliarizing can make us pay attention. All of a sudden, we are paying attention. Some of the art defamiliarizes the message of Christianity; it does not seem the same old thing and we miss how mind-blowing the stories really are.  We get beyond the associations so that the matter is now seen in its full potency.  The Chronicles of Narnia defamiliarize the gospel.  We bypass reverence and piety.  Things can be seen in a fresh way, awakening the imagination to the transcendent, breaking open the mind to realities beyond, to mystery, to the things we cannot understand, to supernatural grace.

It has been labeled "escapism".

Eliot works in modernist idiom.  Hemingway, Joyce go into the human psyche... but not making something up.

Tolkien wrote an essay on Fairy tales, to help get a glimpse of something beyond those prison walls.  The idea is to make Christianity "strange."

Our world deadens desire and people don't know what they are missing.  Presenting the faith convincingly is aimed at opening this desire, a yearning for something more.

Reason needs rescuing, too.  Christianity gives us the range and the wholeness.

Some people hate religion.  They have a deeply flawed picture, which is a function of the imagination.  For example, they say "What kind of God can will and allow all this suffering.  And what kind of God, kills his son;  this is child-abuse..."  We have here a situation where God is imagined as above the suffering, beyond it.  This would be a deist picture, or Muslim.  But imagine the God who enters this world.  We have the incarnation.  The central image is the cross.  He took evil into himself.  He become sin for us.  This is the central aspect of atonement.  Isaiah:  "He has borne our griefs and sorrows."

Atheism has an imagination problem.  Atheist imagination has been tried.  Someone died and the body rotted in the grave, all the molecules go on... -- It is not very successful.

Instead of man with the beard we might talk about God being infinite, in the infinite spaces of the cosmos.  He does not know why Christians do not do more Pascal [?].   People could imagine different things in terns of the incarnation and the infinite.

Lecture Notes: Christianity, Imagination and the Arts / 1

Lecture Notes:  Gene Veith on the Imagination

Edmonton, March 2014
Taken down and summarized by me, Brigitte.
The video will be available on-line, at some point.

Cognition is most commonly discussed in terms of the mind and feelings.  Others want to bring in the will, emphasizing our choosing and moral agency.  However, the imagination, has been neglected in relation to speaking about cognition.  The imagination is the ability to picture things in the mind.

With this imagination we are able to make present things that happened in the past, are current or in the future.  We can picture events that have not happened yet.  We are able to conjure things up by the power of the mind.  They can be daydreams, memories, revelries, the reliving of an experience.  It is really quite incredible.  It can help us with planning and goal setting.

The imagination has been neglected because we have associated with special people, as if regular people did not have any.  But NO.  The imagination may be more prevalent overall with all of us than the intellect.  Imagination takes up more of our lives.  Much of what goes on in the mind is imagination.  Also when we speak to others we often appeal to their imagination.  We address the imagination of the audience.

This is precisely the point where Luther picks up against the iconoclasts.  This very thing brought him out of seclusion on the Wartburg.  When we read the Bible, we are always forming mental images.  We are always picturing it.  This is the basis of the defense of images.  If we are forming images in the mind, why can we not look at art?  Art comes from the imagination.  The iconoclasts are wrong.

Art and the imagination is often marginalized or glamorized.  But no. The liberal arts have freed human creativity.  It comes from the creative part of the mind. It contributes to free people. They do not exist primarily for financial rewards.  It is not servile in this way.  It is free.

The mechanical arts and physical labor also involve creativity, but fine arts are seen to exist for their own sake. This is a focus of this present conference “Christianity and the Fine Arts.”  We plan, make and create things.

Art addresses all the parts of the cognition.  It addressed the intellect:  “What does it mean”, etc. It addresses the will.  “What will be the moral response?”  But also:  “What is it doing to me?”  The imagination sinks things deep, deep into the heart, interacting with our personal identity and our social identity.  Our worldview interacts with what we imagine.  It acts as a lens.  What we believe shapes what we imagine.  And the reverse also happens.  The books we read, the movies we watch... all have a profound influence on us.  What we take in can make us more compassionate, increase our empathy.  It can also hurt us and increase our anxieties and worries. Only one thing can really happen, at most, in the end, but in our imagination we see all the possible outcomes and can worry about everything.  It can lead to paralysis. We imagine things and react with fear and misery. 

In Genesis, with the account of Noah, we hear that wickedness had greatly increased and that the imagination of man’s heart was wicked continually.  We have such a thing as an evil imagination.  Jesus talks about this in the Sermon on the Mount.  It is an offense to be angry, to despise and to hate your neighbor.  This is the soul’s state of a murderer.  We are responsible for this.  It is sin.  He makes it clear.  Then there is the lustful fantasy...

The Gospel also repairs our inner lives.  It redeems also our imagination.

There was the idolatry on the Aeropagus.  We are God’s offspring, but not like the image.  God makes us.  We don’t make him from our imagination. He is not ours to control and manipulate.

Ideologies are false idols.  We want to get our own way.

Neither is art going to save you.  The sooner you realize it, the better for you, artist.  Isaiah speaks about the craftsman who with his skill fashions a “god”.  He makes it with his hand and then prays to it “Deliver me!”  Artists can come to this point.  But it leads to despair and even suicide at the height of artistic achievement.  This is a danger for the artist.  The sooner he realizes the danger, the better.

Christ redeems the imagination, and also the tangible. Christ is God as human being.  Redemption by Christ is also for the tangible.  Somehow he took this to the cross.  The atonement is physical.  The sacraments are physical. 

Bread.

Wine.

Simple water.

To proclaim. To reach us. To apply to us.  He gives us his Word.--Reading is the best exercise of the imagination. It is a wonderful training for forming the images oneself---stories, parables, descriptions, symbols, visions.

 

In addition, God ordained the art that went into the tabernacle, and calls by name the artist who was to make it.  This is not just given to anyone.  He was filled with the Spirit of God, with skill, intelligence, knowledge of craftsmanship.

There is so much art in the church.  The Christian imagination is so big.  Christianity has expressed itself in any possible style that ever came along. Singing is practiced more in church than anywhere else.  There is the liturgically rich language.  There are the rich gestures.  There is the full range of emotions:  sorrow, joy, recognition of evil and goodness, law and gospel.  This can all nurture you and the imagination.

If, on the contrary, all you are taking in is nihilistic, it is going to make you a nihilist.  If you are going to take in the hateful, it will make you hateful, if you don’t watch it, if you are not careful.

A great thing about art is that it can make us notice things we normally neglect.  It can defamiliarize our experience.  

Familiarity can lead to boredom.  It can go so far that we care about nothing and no one.  Our marriage can die.   It can be a hellish condition. – Art can counter that.  Art can break through that. It can make us aware of our world, our relationships and ourselves.  It can help us bring out the capacity to love.  We may learn to weep with those who weep and laugh with those who laugh.  There is a healthy spiritual discipline.  It is the vocation of the artist to always love the neighbor. He does not practice his vocation to corrupt the neighbor.

There is great freedom in the Gospel.  Art can revive faith, compassion and love.