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June 30, 2019Dr. Holly Ordway, a Catholic leader in modern apologetics, has written on the importance of imagination in evangelization. She points, and correctly in my judgment, that words like God, sin and heaven don’t really mean the same to others as they mean to us. Some think God is a little old man with superpowers. That is, of course, ridiculous. Sin, is something fun that God doesn’t want you to do. Heaven is where we all go when we die.
Dr. Ordway grew up in an atheist household. They were nice people, but atheists. Her imagination began to open up to the ideas of Christianity through her reading of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. She observed the beginnings of her conversion of thought and life:
Apologetics is making a case for the Faith, by demonstrating that it is beautiful, good and true. Aplogetics doesn’t mean getting into arguments or being defensive. Imaginative Apologetics is an approach that focuses on understanding the important Christian terms. We live in a post-Christian culture and everyone has heard about Jesus, sin, redemption, heaven and hell. Our worldview is ‘old news' to a culture obsessed with the novel. We are all bombarded with information, true and false, and often all mixed-up. People mostly tune out of religious discussions."Imaginatively, Tolkien’s Middle-earth always felt right; it had the ordinary pleasures and disappointments of life as well as the high excitements and fears. It had a place for both hope and disappointment, achievement and failure. Like the world I lived in, Middle-earth had greater depths than I could take in at any given moment. It was a world in which there is darkness, but also real light, a light that shines in the darkness and is not extinguished: Galadriel’s light, and the light of the star that Sam sees break through the clouds in Mordor, and the ray of sun that falls on the flower-crowned head of the king’s broken statue at the crossroads. 2" from "Apologetics and the Christian Imagination: An Integrated Approach to Defending the Faith (Living Faith Series)" by Holly Ordway
She uses good images to illustrate her ideas. An example she gives is if your doctor told you to take vitamins and they would make you healthy, you are open to that because we respect science. If he told you to wear a red shirt on Tuesdays for the same effect, you would probably doubt him. Talking about God and religion is something of the same problem. What is my problem and why do I need God? What possible problem do I have that a little old man in the sky can help me? The problem is meaninglessness, despair and suffering without purpose. This is how sin creates a wedge between us and our Creator.
Ordway, from her own experience of conversion, counsels us that we should avoid the temptation separate Christ from the Church. Additionally, we shouldn't reduce faith to merely an intellectual idea. Instead, the whole person is involved in conversion to a personal God that took on human form. The beauty of the faith, St. Mark's Church, the intellectual satisfaction that faith and truth confer and the goodness of the lives of the saints and the call Christian life are what we offer to those who are willing to trust our witness to Christ.
Dr. Ordway advises an integrated approach that looks like this:
I wouldn’t recommend a boring book. I really like Dr. Ordway’s clear writing style and ideas. Good examples and some pretty fundamental insights. Another good read! Fr. JohnIn contrast, an integrated approach that takes full account of imaginative strategies would include the following:
1) an emphasis on the individual as part of the Church, guided by her teaching and benefiting from both the fellowship of contemporary fellow believers and the examples provided by, and the communion available with, the saints in heaven;
2) a recognition of reason, imagination, and the will, all as equally important faculties of the human person;
3) a constant awareness of the work of the Holy Spirit and of the value of grace given through the sacraments, as the primary and most important aspect of conversion;
4) an appreciation of conversion as a process occurring in time and space, one that cannot be forced or rushed, though it can and should be facilitated and encouraged;
5) a fundamental grounding of all apologetics work in the virtue of love, seeing the unbeliever rightly, as beloved by God, and a future brother or sister in Christ.
Ordway, Holly . Apologetics and the Christian Imagination: An Integrated Approach to Defending the Faith (Living Faith Series) . Emmaus Road Publishing. Kindle Edition.
