Sorry about not posting yesterday—the day just got away from me.

While most reports about the surge in sales of Christian Fiction talk about it as if it’s something new that’s never been seen before, this is about as far from true as possible. But just as Christian Fiction has its roots in antiquity, so does the argument about whether or not Christians should be reading fiction.

In his essay “Christian Poetics, Past and Present,” in the book The Christian Imagination, Donald T. Williams looks at some of the more famous arguments for and against Fiction from a Christian viewpoint:

–Augustine believed that “literature—even pagan literature—conveys truth and is therefore not to be despised.” He also believed that Christians have not only a right but an obligation to “learn and employ the art of rhetoric” to enable us to share Truth with the “pagan” world.

–Moving into the Medieval and Renaissance periods, we see literature become more allegorical in nature (such as Beowulf, Piers Plowman, etc.). Yet there still remained enough tension to cause Chaucer to retract his “human and sympathetic portrait of ‘God’s plenty’” before he died.

–Luther wanted to know why the devil should have all the good music and “noted that literary study equipped people as nothing else does to deal skillfully with Scripture.”

–Calvin brought in classical philosophers such as Plato, Seneca, and Cicero to apply to the critical reading of Scripture.

–Puritans such as Richard Baxter advised “Christian readers to read first the Bible, then books that apply it. If there is any time left, they may turn to history and science.” Novels (i.e., “vain romances, play-books, and false stories”) would “bewitch your fancies and corrupt your hearts.” They were seen as filling the mind with nonsense rather than focusing the mind on holier thoughts. Yet during this time period, the majority of fiction that was being written was at least Moral Fiction if not completely Evangelical Fiction.

–Sir Philip Sidney pointed out literature’s “antiquity, its universality, and its effectiveness as a mnemonic device and as an enticement to and adornment of what his opponents consider more ‘serious’ studies.” He expanded the positive points from Augustine’s tome “distinguishing the right use from the abuse of literary art.” He used the argument that has become the main defense of the art of writing for modern Christian authors: that of pointing out the fact that Jesus told stories, and the Bible includes hundreds of poems (the Psalms, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, etc.). Since, in Sidney’s view, education is supposed to not only provide facts but virtue as well, he argues for the inclusion of literature. The historian is bound by the facts of what happened. The moral philosopher can give the “precept of virtue.” It is the poet/author who can combine both to give role models that can then be translated into real life applications. It is because we were created in God’s image that we have the capacity for creativity, thus creativity expressed in language such as literature, is only showing that we are the image of God.

–John Milton took Sidney’s ideas and ran with them. He wanted to use “concrete images for acquiring both understanding and virtue.” It is through reading Christian literature that we are connected with the mind of the author and, therefore, put into closer contact with God; the author, as the image of God, is sharing the mind of God through his writing. Milton argued against banning secular writings; he saw it as important to expose ourselves to the world’s mindset, or else “What wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of evil?”

–Moving toward the modern era, literature was still slow to be accepted by those of good morals and upstanding character. This is quite visible even in Jane Austen’s writings. In Pride and Prejudice, when Mr. Collins is asked to read to the family on his first visit to Longbourne, he is aghast when handed a novel from the circulating library and gives a diatribe on the evils of exposing the minds of young women (especially) to fiction. He chooses to read instead from Fordyce’s Sermons, much to the consternation of the girls.

–Tolkien saw man, the author, as “the refracted Light/Through whom is splintered from a single white/To many hues, and endlessly combined/In living shapes that move from mind to mind.” In fiction, “the secondary” (created/fictional) “world echoes the primary creation in more ways than one.” Or in other words, the basic plot for fiction is that of Salvation.

–Lewis believed that “idolization of culture (including literature) corrupts and destroys culture.” Literature “enlarges our world of experience to include both more of a physical world and things not yet imagined. . . . This makes it possible for literature to strip Christian doctrines of their ‘stained glass’ associations and make them appear in their ‘real potency’” which is seen in the Narnia series. Literature gives us the heroes that can teach us how to face the villains in our real world. Reading outside of our own narrow culture can fortify our faith, which we have inherited in its full strength through the ages in which that literature was written.

–Flannery O’Connor “believed that great literature deals with ultimate concerns that are essentially theological.” She stripped away the “stained-glass associations . . . with practical wisdom on how to embody the anagogical vision in concrete images which can speak to the modern reader.” (quotations from Williams’ essay)

Williams concludes his essay by arguing that we have lost our strong literary tradition from 150 years ago and have become “cheap imitations of Lewis and Tolkien” with “too many saccharine historical romances” for Christian literature to be taken seriously.

So my question is this: what’s the last piece of classic literature you’ve read? Did you see elements of Christian Fiction in it? Was it Moral? Inspirational? Worldview? Evangelical? What can we as writers learn from the content and themes (not necessarily craft) of classic literature?