I am glad to see that someone has mentioned Rookmaaker, Seerveld and Wolterstorff To this esteemed list I would like to add Lambert Zidelvart, Calvin Seerveld successor at The Institute for Christian Studies http://www.icscanada.edu/faculty/lzuidervaart/ . As an aside I am curious as to why we don’t hear more from the Neo-Calvinist/ Dooyeweerdean (sp?) perspective on the Reformed Forum. Both this show and your series on Christ and Culture would have benefited from input from a tradition that puts these issues front and center. I was first introduced to the reformed tradition at Toronto’s ICS and their esteem for the arts was one of their most attractive elements features.

Ken Myers’s All God’s Children and Blue Suede shoes should be mentioned as well.

One other book I would like to recommend is by Paul Johnson entitled, ART: A New History. I don’t know Johnson’s religious views, but he is a remarkable historian who has written such books as, A History of the American People, The Quest for God, The Birth of the Modern, A History of the Jews, A History of Christianity, and more. I have also read his History of Christianity and found it very enlightening.

Nate,
It was Good-Making Art to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard and State of the Arts by Veith are the books I was trying to remember in my interview.

Longfellow is my favorite, too. I know some of his poems by heart, since high school.

Thanks

Art and The Bible – Schaeffer
Art For Gods Sake – P.G. Ryken
State of The Arts – Veith
The Christian The Arts and Truth – Gaebelein
Modern Art and The Death of Culture – Rookmaaker
The Christian Imagination – L. Ryken
Rainbows For The Fallen World – Seerveld
Art In Action – Wolterstorff

There are many fine books on diffrent areas of the arts but the above make a good starting point.

Best Regards In Christ

Steve

“Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”
I’m afraid that I got a little tongue tied. I guess I should have painted a picture instead of trusting my memory.

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your comments. Let me assure you that time spent learning to appreciate poetry or any art form is time well spent, you will reap in spades. It does take time though, and I think it takes more time and patience than it does work, which may be something close to what you are getting at above. What comes too easily or too quickly isn’t as valuable, right?

Thanks

Thanks Nate. I’ve never been one to appreciate poetry (or much art, really), but since being influenced by T. David Gordon, Ken Myers, and the Abolition of Man (C.S. Lewis), I’ve been trying to teach myself to appreciate what is good, starting with poetry.

Ken Myers did a great interview with poet and professor Jeanne Murray Walker (http://www.marshillaudio.org/resources/volume_contents.asp?segmentVolumeID=098) in which she explained how students frequently come to poetry as if the poem is a secretly encoded message and his task is to decode the poem for it’s underlying message. That struck me as I realized it’s how I’ve always come to poetry. Walker went on to suggest that if a poem could be distilled down to several lines of terse prose, we wouldn’t have needed the poem in the first place! The form itself carries much weight.

I’m still struggling with poetry. But that insight is a burden lifted.

Thanks