Tuesday, February 14, 2006

chew on this...

"A final fallacy is the maddening practice of many Christians to allegorize works of art, especially works of literature. The practice is deeply engrained in a certain type of Christian temperament. When I assign a Christian critique of a poem, I can confidently expect to find one or more attempts to allegorize the poem to make its details fit events in the life of Christ or Christian doctrine. Why is this so offensive? Because the doctrine of creation tells us that things have value and integrity in terms of what they are as created objects. We do not need to allegorize trees or windows or sidewalks in terms of Christian doctrine before they fulfill their God-given purpose in life. By the same token, we should not attempt to define Christian art in terms of how easily we can allegorize the details to fit Christian doctrines."

-Leland Ryken, The Liberated Imagination

What do you think about this...

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