A great quote floating around the BHT:
Bob Dylan believes in God, and Richard Dawkins is never going to win an argument against Bob Dylan, cause you need a poet to discuss these things. So let’s just say I’m with Bob.”
-Paddy Macaloon
I had to look up who Paddy Macaloon was: “one of the most underrated lyricists of the ’80s”. Anyway, it underlines a nice passage from Owen Barfield’s Poetic Diction. I don’t have it here in front of me now, but he says that the rationalist demands from the artist, “Tell me your secret! You know something hidden about the universe that I don’t. Now what is it!” But the artist is unable to answer his question in a way that will satisfy the rationalist. He can only continue in his artwork.
My friend Jeff Moss, who is now working long-term as a missionary in Hungary, posted this quote on Facebook the same day:
“There is a current and exceedingly stupid doctrine that symbol evokes emotion, and exact prose states reality. Nothing could be further from the truth: exact prose abstracts from reality, symbol presents it. And for that very reason, symbols …have some of the many-sidedness of wild nature.”
-Austin Farrer
Never heard of this guy either. It turns out I should have! English theologian and Anglican minister, friend of C.S. Lewis at Oxford.
I think he’s right on. The enlightenment idea that the pinnacle of human communication is well-reasoned prose…bah! So the best we can do to worship the Lord is to have a 2-hour sermon that took 30 hours to prepare, right? Music, liturgy, art, the Lord’s supper become second class citizens.
As creeds and confessions grow in length, I believe they hit a point of diminishing returns. The more and more you say about God, the smaller he becomes. But the fire and lightning from the mountain is astounding.
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September 16th, 2009 at 4:27 AM
Well, yes. That’s why it’s better to sing your theology.
September 19th, 2009 at 11:12 PM
Agreed, although I know some proponents of “sing your theology” that would say the best way to do that is 8 verses of atonement theory set pre-baroque harmony. Likely an exercise in missing the point. The best art is always just a tad open-ended in my opinion. Some blues might be just the ticket sometimes!