Pentecostal worship places great emphasis on intensity. By intensity, they mean a strongly felt experience of emotion, intimacy, joy, wonder, or happiness. Indeed, this is… Read More »Strange Lyre: Nothing But Feelings
It’s hardly disputable that global Christianity has been overwhelmed and colonized by the Pentecostal and charismatic movements. After Roman Catholicism, the Christianity identified variously as… Read More »Strange Lyre: The Pentecostalization of Christian Worship
Determining if a poem, hymn, musical piece, novel, devotional work, painting or other work should be considered a helpful work of Christian imagination is mostly… Read More »Discerning the Christian Imagination: Consensus and Canonicity
If Christians should grow in their ability to discern superior Christian works of imagination, how should they do this? Must every Christian pursue some kind… Read More »Discerning the Christian Imagination: Analogies and Proportion
What does the Christian imagination look like when it is fleshed out? We can imagine it as a spectrum, beginning with Scripture itself and working… Read More »Christian Imagination Fleshed Out
If Christian imagination is the best way of referring to how Christians know and perceive the world, does thinking of it in this way have… Read More »Imaginative Knowledge
If “Christian imagination” is really another way of saying Christian knowing, or Christian knowledge, why persist in calling it imagination? Why not simply call it… Read More »Imaginative Knowing
Christian imagination is not a term that will immediately draw approving responses. These days, Christianity is on the back foot anyway, and anything that sounds… Read More »Christian Imagination is Not Imaginary Christianity
In this series, we have considered the meaning of beauty, objections to beauty, and how beauty is to be sought. We’ve answered the objections that… Read More »Conclusion: Beauty as Love
The practices, or disciplines of the Christian life function to nurture correspondent love. The disciplines are not themselves the sum and substance of communion with… Read More »The Practices of Correspondent Love
Love for God’s beauty is known not only by imagination and through changed nature, but also by exposure. The writer of Theologia Germanica wrote, “And… Read More »The Process of Correspondent Love
One’s nature determines much of one’s desire for God. What is inherited from Adam and from biological ancestors, partly determines what one desires. Unless the… Read More »The Position of Correspondent Love for God
At this point, it will be helpful to summarise our argument in five steps. Step one: God’s beauty is his love for his own being.… Read More »Loving God’s Beauty
If God’s beauty is perceived through correspondent, or ordinate love, we face a dilemma. Love is not merely a mental choice between options. One cannot… Read More »The Dilemma of Commanded Love
Brother Lawrence’s (1614–1691) collected letters, known as The Practice of the Presence of God, describe his attempt to love all things for God’s sake. He… Read More »More Voices From the Past on Loving God Rightly
It would be an insurmountable task to gather the collective thought of Christians on the topic of love for God. Suffice it to say, that… Read More »Voices From the Past on Loving God Rightly
Is the idea of correspondent, or ordinate, love present in Scripture? Does Scripture describe what love for God should be? It does indeed. In terms… Read More »A Biblical Theology of Loving God
What can we conclude about God’s beauty and how to perceive it? 1) God’s beauty is his own consent, love, or affection for his holy… Read More »Knowing God’s Beauty Through Correspondent Love
What relevance does understanding beauty in general revelation of creation have for understanding the special revelation of God’s beauty? This is a perennial question asked… Read More »Beauty: the Link Between General and Special Revelation
We continue with the next three aspects of experiencing beauty in creation. Immediate Response After contemplating beauty receptively, we experience an immediate response, which is… Read More »Judging Beauty in Creation (2)