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    An Unexpected Journal: Imagination: Volume 2, #1
    An Unexpected Journal: Imagination: Volume 2, #1
    An Unexpected Journal: Imagination: Volume 2, #1
    Ebook152 pages2 hours

    An Unexpected Journal: Imagination: Volume 2, #1

    By An Unexpected Journal, Adam L. Brackin, Annie Crawford and

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    The Power of Imagination
    Our imaginations are often treated as relics of our childhood. We are told to grow up and leave that sense of awe and wonder behind. What if these modernistic tendencies were entirely wrong? What if we were meant to live enchanted lives, seeing the world with the joy and amazement?


    This collection of essays, stories, and poems is meant to explore the power of the imagination and its unique connection to our human nature. 


    Contributors
    "Imagination and Its Role in Faith" by C.M. Alvarez. An essay on how imagination open the mind to faith.


    "We Have Sinned and Grown Old: A Reflection on Imagination and Motherhood" by Nicole Howe. An essay on the innocence of youthful wonder.
    "Messiah" by Adam L. Brackin. A short story of a voyage to Paradise.
    "Awe" by Annie Nardone. A poem regarding a sense of wonder.
    "The Adventures of Asher Svenson, Story Two: A Feast of Fishes" by Lucas Holt. The second installment with the tale of Asher Svenson and his adventures at the seashore.
    "Reviving a Sacred Imagination" by Annie Crawford. An essay on the way reason and imagination are both necessary for discipleship.
    "Light in the Darkness" by Korine Martinez. A short story about striving against evil. Inspired by the true story of Charlotte Thomason.
    "Imagining Conversion" by Josiah Peterson. An essay regarding the way conversion stories change lives.
    "God, the Playwright" by Donald W. Catchings, Jr. A poem on the Gospel as an imaginative masterpiece.
    "The Armor of the Dragon: Chapter One - What Grew in the Garden" by Daniel Asperheim. A short story on the beginning of a magical adventure.
    "Re-Enchanting the World: A Tale of Two Paradigms" by Josh Herring. An essay on overcoming our modern disenchantment.
    "Celestial Rodeo" by Daniel Ray. A short story on the importance of humility.
    "The Imaginative Power of Sub-Creation" by Zak Schmoll. An essay reflecting on why we love Tolkien's stories.

    Cover art by Virginia de la Lastra

    Volume 2, Issue 1, Spring 2019
    198 pages

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAn Unexpected Journal
    Release dateMar 5, 2019
    ISBN9781386278399
    An Unexpected Journal: Imagination: Volume 2, #1

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      Imagination and Its Role in Faith

      C.M. Alvarez on the imagination opening minds.

      In Jesus’s final words to his followers, he commanded them to make disciples of all nations. [1] This imperative extends to all his followers until his return. Throughout the centuries, we can see those who witnessed through a variety of styles: Paul used logic and persuasion, Peter used fiery conviction, and Dorcas showed the love of Christ through caring for those in need. However, many have followed the example of the Master himself using stories and illustrations to open the minds of the unbelieving and to awaken in them a yearning for the Kingdom of God. It is this final method in which literary apologetics takes its place and spreads the reach of God’s Good News.

      As William Lane Craig notes in his comprehensive book on apologetics, Reasonable Faith, "Apologetics (from the Greek apologia: a defense) is that branch of Christian theology which seeks to provide a rational justification for the truth claims of the Christian faith."[2] However, just as the Christian faith goes beyond the mind and reason and demands a submission of the whole self: mind, body, and soul; so must apologetics engage more than simply the mind.[3] In Apologetics and the Christian Imagination, Holly Ordway advocates for a more fully integrated approach, one which engages the hearer and urges them to come and see for themselves.[4] It is in this engagement where literary apologetics shines. As Jesus demonstrated with his parables, a good story by a master storyteller seldom fails to gather interest.

      An apologetic work is not defined by its overt Christianness. It does not depend on espousing established doctrine or incorporating theological terms; in the same way, there are no overt religious overtones in Jesus’s parables about Samaritans, shepherds, and seeds. However, the parables spoke to crowds and were recounted by Jesus’s disciples because, as George MacDonald explains when describing the value of good stories, they serve not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning.[5] Literature on any topic can serve an apologetic purpose as long as it reveals truth, goodness, and beauty.[6]

      However, literature is more suited to engaging the imagination than either lectures or logic because, unlike other methods of evangelism which only engage the intellect, literature engages the imagination. Unlike logic or lectures, literature tells stories which can touch the heart in a more profound and impactful way. It is this engagement with imagination that is the true power in literary works. Literature engages the imagination by not only exploring the known facts, but also prompting the exploration of the unknown.[7] It is this faculty, the imagination, reaching towards and receiving the unknown that is essential to true Christian faith.

      What is Imagination?

      BEFORE EXPLORING THE role imagination plays in nurturing the Christian faith, we must first examine imagination itself. Macdonald describes imagination as an imaging or a making of likenesses. The imagination is that faculty which gives form to thought—not necessarily uttered form, but form capable of being uttered in shape.[8]What is more, imagination is revelations of thought, and a good imagination is the presence of the spirit of God, the end of which is harmony.[9][10] If something is revealed, it is something that comes from outside of oneself. MacDonald argues that just as man came from the imagination of God, man’s imagination itself is derivative of God’s imagination.[11] [12] J.R.R. Tolkien agreed with this sentiment and added that art is the operative link between Imagination and the final result, Sub-creation and that man is, as God’s ‘Imager’, Sub-creator, the refracted Light.[13] [14] Although fallen, Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed. / Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned, / and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned.[15] A bad imagination is a corruption of that which was once good, an abandoning of God’s law.[16]

      If wise imagination is the revelation of God’s thoughts about and towards man, it follows that imagination is one of the primary ways God speaks to man. Our physical bodies are overwhelmed by the world immediately surrounding us. The soul is in bondage to the corrupted world. But the spirit still speaks and the imagination is the language of the spirit. It is, as MacDonald states, the duty of the imagination to understand God.[17] To know God, we must have an imagination to receive Him.

      Necessary Beliefs of Christianity

      HOWEVER, IT IS NOT enough to simply know God or know about Him. The Christian faith requires not only an acknowledgement of God, but the belief in several very specific things. One of the most succinct statements of the Christian faith is found in Romans 10:9 If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. This is a simple formula, yet one that requires belief in several elements that stretch the human imagination: the belief in an all-powerful God, that this God came as the man Jesus, and that death was defeated in the resurrection of Christ. Returning the dead back to life is humanly impossible. In order to believe this, one must believe in a God who both could and would do such a thing. This requires imagination.

      Believing in the Unseen

      THE REVELATION OF A God who is willing and able to intervene in the affairs of man is a story He has told since creation, in fact within Creation itself. As G.K. Chesterton muses in Orthodoxy, the very spectacularness of the world, the intense specificness of nature, indicates One who has an intense interest. To Chesterton, this revelation was magical, and what is more, he came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have someone to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art; whatever it meant it meant violently.[18] MacDonald expresses the same sentiment in a slightly different way saying, All the processes of the ages are God’s science; all the flow of history is his poetry.[19] In Nature, we see the stage of God’s story on full display. It is His apologetic work, an inspiration to imagine One whose glory Creation reflects. All of this points to One beyond our world, One unseen yet present. As Tolkien notes, the human mind is capable of forming mental images of things not actually present.[20] Nature is part of God’s setting with man as the main character in His story told throughout history.

      Discovering the Nature of God

      LITERARY APOLOGETICS can aid in facilitating the reader’s understanding of God by highlighting aspects of God’s character. If God is love, what does true love look like? If God is good, how do we recognize what goodness is?[21] What makes a good story? Do people want to read about oppressors oppressing and the corrupt continuing to go free? Who wants to read that sort of story? We see that going on around us every day; it is the natural way of things. We want heroes who fight evil, withstand adversity, and help those in need. The enduring stories throughout culture are those where truth wins, the meek inherit the earth, and the impossible becomes possible. We desire these stories because they are reflections of the overarching story of the Original Author. The unexpected end is a recurring characteristic in God's story. Tolkien describes stories where the unexpected occurs as a eucatastrophe, a good catastrophe or a sudden and joyous turn.[22] It is these sorts of stories that train the mind and imagination to recognize and believe in a loving, just, and victorious God, the I AM of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Paul.

      The course of events in human history is, as Louis Markos explains in his work Achilles to Christ, a sacred story.[23] There is a plan and a purpose through history which points to a Purposer. Not only does God reveal Himself and his own plan and purpose through the story of human history, but He sends confirmation of that purpose through the imagination of man taking the form of what C.S. Lewis calls the good dreams of the pagan.[24] God invades enemy territory, connecting with Man through the imagination by inspiring stories throughout cultures of a dying and rising god, who through his death makes things right. These imaginative stories prepared the way for the Gentile to recognize the Redeemer that had come. 

      Recognizing the Need for a Savior

      CHRIST HAS COME. THE Deliverer is here. Most in today’s culture have heard about Christ; however, many do not understand why they need him. One of the most effective uses of literature as an apologetic engagement of the imagination is Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. The doctrine of atonement has been vigorously debated for two millennia. Councils have given decrees and churches have split over explanations on precisely how atonement works. Lewis clothes the logic of the Atonement in a story and speaks directly to the imagination through his world of Narnia with Aslan, a Christ-like character who offers himself in place of the transgressor. The story is easy to understand: a wrong has been done, a price must be paid, and Love pays the price. We may not understand exactly how substitutionary atonement works, just as most of us do not understand exactly how a combustion engine operates; however, just as we can recognize the operation of that combustion engine every time we drive a car, so we can recognize the operation of substitutionary atonement in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Our imagination allows us to accept in faith that it works even though our intellect cannot explain how it does.

      Believing in the Impossible

      THE OTHER ELEMENT REQUIRED by the Christian faith is the ability to believe an event that is impossible through solely natural means. This is often a struggle for those indoctrinated by the dictators of naturalism who would say there is nothing more to see and nothing more that can be known other than what is right in front of us. Chesterton might conclude that the willingly blind were not read enough fairy tales as children to have such a rigid and unaccommodating worldview. The fact that we are who we are in the place where we are at should be evidence to the most hardened skeptic that the impossible and the unexpected can, and does at times, happen. We, humans in particular and the world in general, do not have to be at all. That there is one man is surprising, what Man is as a whole, even more. That we are should be "more

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