November 1, 2021 • 56 mins
What role does the imagination play in helping people understand and appreciate the gospel of Jesus Christ? That's the question that Justin Ariel Bailey asks in his book Reimagining Apologetics. We discuss how Christians can share their faith in what has been dubbed the "Age of Authenticity," when a person's individual experience is seen as the best source of truth. Also in this episode: We geek out about Tolkien.
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Episode Transcript
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Jon Guerra (00:00):
[MUSIC PLAYS]
Amy Mantravadi (00:27):
Hello and welcome to another episode of
the(A)Millennial podcast.
My name is Amy Mantravadi andI'll be your host until such
time as I pack everything up andmoved to Bora Bora.
Today, I'm going to be speakingwith Dr.
Justin Ariel Bailey about hisbook Re-imagining Apologetics.
The imagination doesn't getmentioned often in the Bible.
Psalm 73:7 warns us about thewicked, saying,"The imaginations
(00:49):
of their heart run riot," whileJeremiah 23:16 says of false
prophets that"they speak avision of their own imagination,
not from the mouth of the Lord."In both cases, imagination seems
to be a negative thing thatdraws us away from God's truth,
causing us to chase after andbelieve in things he has not
revealed.
However, this isn't the kind ofimagination Justin is generally
(01:11):
talking about in his book.
The closer biblical term forthis concept of imagination is
heart.
In scripture, it is the heartthat is the seat of emotions and
desires, whether righteous orunrighteous.
While the mind provides ourrational faculty, our decisions
are always impacted by ourhearts.
This is why God commands us tolove him with all our mind and
heart.
(01:31):
The apostle Paul writes inRomans 10:9-10 that"if you
confess with your mouth thatJesus is Lord and believe in
your heart that God raised himfrom the dead, you will be
saved, for with the heart aperson believes, resulting in
righteousness, and with themouth he confesses, resulting in
salvation." St.
Augustine of Hippo, one of thegreat Fathers of the Church, is
(01:52):
remembered for his writingsabout human love and desire.
The goal for a Christian, heargued, was to have rightly
ordered loves, which is to saydesires that are in line with
God's will.
When God draws us to himself,our hearts are turned to him and
captured by his love, whichcauses us to love and desire him
in turn.
While Augustine was not opposedto the use of reason and its
(02:14):
importance to the development offaith, he also knew that human
beings are forever animated bytheir desires.
The goal of apologetics then isnot only to convince someone of
the truth of Christianpropositions, thus capturing
their mind, but to draw them tothe very experience of being a
Christian (02:29):
to make them desire the things of God.
Our desires drive our beliefsand are therefore intimately
connected with faith.
The challenge is that those whodo not know Christ are still
driven by sinful desires.
As Augustine wrote in The Cityof God,"In order to discover the
character of any people, we haveonly to observe what they love."
(02:49):
Justin will offer somesuggestions for how we can
capture the imaginations of ourfriends and neighbors and place
them in the path of God's love.
Before ado is furthered anyfurther, let's head to the
interview.
Jon Guerra (02:59):
[MUSIC PLAYS]
Amy Mantravadi (03:10):
And I am here with Justin Ariel Bailey, who is
the associate professor oftheology at Dordt University.
He received his bachelor'sdegree at Moody Bible Institute,
his MDiv and ThM from TrinityEvangelical Divinity School and
his PhD from Fuller TheologicalSeminary.
He is ordained in the ChristianReformed Church and has served
(03:32):
in multiple and diverse ministrycapacities, most recently as
assistant pastor for teachingand discipleship at Grace
Pasadena from 2013 to 2017.
He has published peer reviewedarticles in the International
Journal of Public Theology andthe Christian Scholars Review in
addition to several otherarticles, book chapters, and
book reviews, and he hosts theIn All Things podcast sponsored
(03:55):
by the Andreas Center at DordtUniversity.
His published works include thebook we're going to talk about
today, Re-imagining Apologetics: The Beauty of Faith in a Secular (04:01):
undefined
Age, and also a forthcomingbook, which I understand will be
called Your Interpretation IsYour Life.
And you can find him on Facebook@drjustinbailey and on Twitter
@jarielbailey.
So Dr.
Bailey, thank you so much fortaking the time to speak with me
(04:23):
today.
I really appreciate it.
Yeah, it's my pleasure, Amy.
Thanks.
Yeah.
And I'm excited to discuss thisbook.
I know it's been out for alittle while, but I was glad to
finally get the chance to readit and just really appreciated
what you had to say there.
Now I warned you, we're going tostart out with a couple fun
questions.
So now I will reveal that thequestions have to do with a
(04:48):
topic I understand you'resomewhat interested in, which is
J.R.R.
Tolkien.
In the past year or so, you'vebeen doing a series of YouTube
videos called"Tolkien Tuesdays."And so, as you likely know,
there are a few ongoingcontroversies or issues of
debate within the world ofTolkien fandom.
(05:10):
So I thought I would just askyou your opinion and whatever
answers you give me we'llconsider to be the definitive
answers on these...
Justin Ariel Bailey (05:18):
The canonical answer.
Ok, sounds good.
Amy Mantravadi (05:18):
...until such time as I have another guest who
I ask the same questions.
Justin Ariel Bailey (05:26):
Ok, sounds great.
Amy Mantravadi (05:26):
So my first question for you is, do balrogs
have wings?
Justin Ariel Bailey (05:34):
No, they do not have wings.
Amy Mantravadi (05:39):
Despite the fact that they have wings in the
Peter Jackson films, you'regoing to go with they don't?
Justin Ariel Bailey (05:47):
Well, I mean, Peter Jackson is sort of
like a Message translation of-well, not even the Message
translation, because I actuallyquite liked the Message
translation.
Let's just say there areliberties that are taken, and I
think it works in that version,but I don't think that they are
meant to have wings.
Similarly, dragons don't havewings other than Smaug.
(06:10):
Smaug certainly has wings, butmost of the early dragons in
Tolkien's work didn't have wingseither.
Amy Mantravadi (06:17):
Glaurung did not have wings.
However, in the last battle whenthe host of the Valar came, I
believe then Morgoth unleashedthe winged dragons at that time.
So yes, you were correct thatmost of them did not have wings.
Justin Ariel Bailey (06:35):
Yeah.
So I guess it's possible in theway that Morgoth could have
perverted or taken naturalthings and made them even worse.
Maybe balrogs could have wings,but I prefer to say no, they
don't have wings.
That's a deep cut.
Wow.
Amy Mantravadi (06:52):
Yeah.
Well, I think you're probablycorrect about that.
I think that there's somecompelling evidence that they
did not have wings, so very goodthere.
We've settled that questionforever.
Now the other question I have isdo you have any opinion on what
type of being Tom Bombadil isand what his origin is?
Justin Ariel Bailey (07:16):
I mean, it makes the most sense to say that
he is one of the Maiar, similarto Gandalf or other lesser-
lesser than the Valar, butgreater than the Children.
I think that part of TomBombadil- I mean, Tom Bombadil's
like Melchizedek in some sensein the Bible: the mystery of his
character wrapped up as it is inMiddle-earth itself is part of
(07:40):
what makes him who he is.
And so in some sense to name, toanswer that question is almost
to kind of betray it, but Iguess he doesn't come from
nothing or come from nowhere.
He's part of the created world,and so it makes the most sense,
I think, to classify him as oneof the Maiar.
I'm not convinced by people whosay that he is Aule or someone
(08:05):
in disguise.
I guess I understand that insome sense, but I think that
he's just one of the Maiar whoselife is wrapped up in
Middle-earth itself.
Amy Mantravadi (08:16):
Yeah.
I think that makes sense aswell.
Well, I think we've probably bythis point lost any listeners
who weren't Tolkien fans, butI'm glad we could get those
controversies settled.
Okay.
Moving on to discuss your book,which is at this time a more
important topic, you note thatwe live in what the philosopher
(08:36):
Charles Taylor has called an"Ageof Authenticity," in which one
of the greatest societal valuesis following one's heart or
being true to oneself.
This means that traditionalapologetic methods that seek to
prove the objective truth ofChristian claims can fall flat
if they do not appeal to thehearer individually.
In light of this, you arguethat,"What is needed is a
(08:59):
provocation of possibilities, avicarious vision of what it
feels like to live withChristian faith, a sense of the
beauty of faith that is feltbefore fully embraced.
For this, the imagination isessential." What do you mean by
imagination here, and how doesit differ from standard logical
reasoning?
Justin Ariel Bailey (09:18):
Sure.
Yeah.
I always start answering thisquestion by saying what I don't
mean, and what I don't mean isthe imagination as escapist:
merely escapist, something thatyou go to the movie theater just
to have the special effects washover you, lose yourself, get
away from the real world.
I think there's a place for thatas well, but that's not what I
mean.
(09:38):
I also don't mean imaginary, sothat you only use the
imagination to engage thingsthat aren't real, in which case-
Obviously I think theresurrection happened and these
things are real things, and soto talk about the need for
imagination and faith wouldn'tmake sense if I use the
imagination that way.
What I mean by imaginationreally is simply the faculty
(09:59):
that God has given to us tointerrogate possibilities, and
it's part of being made in God'simage that as we seek to
cultivate and unleash thepotentiality of God's good
creation that we have to askquestions like,"What would it be
like if we did this?
What if we sort of move in asubjunctive mood and ask what's
(10:22):
possible?
Within the limits that I have,what can I do?
What can I hope for?"Imagination is the faculty with
which we hope.
And so I really believe, and Isay this in my book, is that
though we use the imaginationperhaps to detach from what is
actual, we ultimately are doingthat so we can grip reality more
firmly.
(10:43):
So I read Tolkien not becauseI'm trying to escape, but
because I actually think that itmakes me live better in this
world (10:50):
that it actually allows me to live more capaciously.
And we're always using ourimagination.
Our imagination though can becaptive to cynicism and fear and
despair, or it can be captive tofaith and love and hope, which
is what comes out of the storythat we get in scripture and
that's supremely told to usthrough Jesus Christ.
(11:13):
That's basically what I mean.
Now for the second part of yourquestion, I think you asked
what's the relationship with theintellect or with reasoning.
Amy Mantravadi (11:21):
Well, how does our capacity for imagining
things differ from our capacityfor just reasoning through them
analytically, because in yourbook, you contrasted that a
little in the styles ofapologetics and what they're
appealing to.
Justin Ariel Bailey (11:37):
Yeah, and I'll just also say that I'm not
trying to do away with classicalor traditional ways that
apologetics has been practiced.
I'm hoping to supplement it witha more holistic approach.
So C.S.
Lewis says that the intellecttakes things apart and the
imagination puts thingstogether, and so we're always
doing both all the time.
(11:57):
We're taking ideas apart, we'retaking worldviews apart,
pictures that we have of the waythat things are and seeing,"Is
this true?
Does this actually correspond toreality?" And then we take all
of those things and put themback together, and that happens
all simultaneously andreciprocally.
So another person that I rely onis George MacDonald, and
MacDonald says that theintellect is like the laborer
(12:21):
and the imagination is like thearchitect or the imagination is
like the visionary guy whosweeps across the borders in
search of new land, but then shehas to guide her plotting
brother intellect behind.
So you hear a noise at night inyour house and your imagination,
whether you want it or not, isgoing to supply you with
(12:41):
possibilities of what ishappening, right?
"What is that noise?" And thenthe intellect has to now go and
test all of those things to seewhat is actually actual- what is
real.
And so we're always using themtogether, the imagination and
the intellect, but I'm trying tosay the imagination almost
always comes first.
We very rarely start with ideas.
(13:02):
Ideas and the exploration ofideas always comes after we've
had some sort of imaginativeengagement or glimpse of
something or felt sense of theway that the world is.
And so in the same way thatscripture is not presented to us
as bullet points just for ourintellect to absorb but is
presented to us in all of thesedifferent genres- ultimately
(13:23):
story, right?
True story, but also poetry andparable and apocalyptic, which
is trying to engage ourimagination and actually reshape
the way we see the world.
Not just, say,"Here are 501facts about God for you to
memorize." Because whatscripture is really trying to do
is to engage our full humanity,which includes our imagination.
Amy Mantravadi (13:44):
Well, thank you for that.
And I have to tell you, as I wasreading your book, something
kept coming back to my mind.
It comes from sort of a pastlife of mine when I was studying
international security andsecurity studies.
And I'm remembering back whenthe 9/11 Commission released its
(14:05):
report- the 9/11 Commission thatthe U.S.
Government put together toexamine what had gone wrong with
9/11- and the quote I'll alwaysremember was they said that it
came down to"a failure ofimagination," and what they
meant by that was that theintelligence services- they had
all kinds of data.
They were looking at all thefacts, but they were unable to
(14:26):
imagine how someone nefariouscould take what they were seeing
and put it to a bad use.
So that's a negative case ofsort of getting into someone
else's brain throughimagination, but I think you
also described in your book howimagination is very key to
empathy and being able toimagine how someone else might
(14:49):
view the world is definitely akey part of apologetics.
So maybe a random referencethere, but it was just something
that kept popping into my headas I was reading your book.
Justin Ariel Bailey (14:59):
That phrase -"failure of imagination"- I
think it's very important,because I think that there are
so many things that if weunderstand it as a failure of
imagination rather than afailure of facts or a failure of
logical reasoning, we also havelots of failures of that, you
know.
But Thomas Kuhn in his bookStructure of Scientific
(15:20):
Revolutions argued for this ideaof paradigm shifts that happened
in the world of science.
And really when you're askingsomebody to move from a place of
unbelief to a place of faith,that really requires a paradigm
shift, doesn't it?
And so one of the greatstruggles is that there are
certain things about Christianfaith that can only be
understood from the inside (15:39):
from a position of commitment.
So how do you help somebodywho's on the outside from a
position of sort of criticalappraisal feel what it's like on
the inside?
It's those inside things thatactually make faith most
compelling.
And so I think that what youjust said, the power of empathy
and the ability to- for example,when you hear somebody's
(16:00):
testimony, see the world throughtheir eyes, see the world
through the eyes of faith isactually one of the ways that we
can sort of bridge this gap ofseeing,"Okay, this is what it
would be like." And what thatdoes is provides a new paradigm
that a person can look at theworld through and maybe correct
some of the failures ofimagination.
Amy Mantravadi (16:20):
Thank you for that.
Obviously an important part ofapologetics- It gets down to how
we know what we know and how dowe discern what the truth is.
Drawing again upon the work ofCharles Taylor, you discussed in
your book how Western culturehas changed over the past few
hundred years in ways that haveproduced the Age of
Authenticity.
The contrast between theEnlightenment and Romantic
(16:44):
movements- two very importantintellectual movements in the
past few hundred years- isparticularly important to this
story.
How do you see our presentcultural moment being impacted
by each of these movements,particularly in our differing
notions of truth?
This is something that you gotat in the early chapters of your
book, and I think it'simportant.
Justin Ariel Bailey (17:04):
Yeah, and I just commend people- anytime you
start to talk about history,there's always so many
complexities, so please forgivethis brief summary and go to my
book if you want to see a littlebit more.
Amy Mantravadi (17:16):
Yes, please summarize the last half
millennium.
Justin Ariel Bailey (17:20):
Exactly.
So one of the reasons I rely onCharles Taylor so much, as lots
of others have been doingrecently, is because he has done
a really good job at critiquingwhat he calls the"subtraction
story," which is that we neededfaith and religion and belief in
God, but now we have science,and so we've sort of subtracted
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all of the things that we usedto need.
And what he does is tell us theopposite stories.
He tells more of an additionstory or a construction story.
And so I sort of compare it tothe difference between emerging
from the cave of superstitioninto the light- That's the
subtraction story.
"Now we're in the light.
We've been enlightened.
We can see the world the way itreally is."- To building a
(18:01):
castle over yourself and thenthinking that the castle is the
entire world, just sort of likewhat happens in The Silver Chair
, if you've read the NarniaChronicles.
And so what you have as theReformation happens is this
shift in gravity from the Churchto the wider world, where the
Reformers really want to takethe world seriously as the
(18:23):
theater of God's glory.
And so the attention reallyturns outward so that they want
all places to be holy placesrather than just some places,
all people to be holy peoplerather than just some people.
It's sort of this discipling ofevery sphere of life, which is
really, really wonderful and oneof the reasons why I'm Reformed.
But what then happens with thatshift towards the wider world
(18:46):
with the Enlightenment is thatthere begins to be a shrinking
of scope in which Enlightenmentthinkers are interested in the
world as a closed system.
And this is what I mean (18:54):
you build this sort of cathedral
over yourself and then thinkthat the cathedral is the whole
world, and you've just kind ofshut out the sun.
You can't actually see it, butit's still there.
You just enclosed yourself inimminence.
And so they say the world is aclosed system.
It's designed for it.
Maybe God still did it.
You know, you have deism (19:13):
God still is the one who put it all
there, but it's this closedsystem designed for human
flourishing.
There's no possibility ofmiracles, because then that
would mean that God made amistake in the perfect system
that he made, and we need tofigure everything out.
That's, that's the goal of thehuman vocation is to leave no
mystery, no places uncharted,and really to kind of figure out
(19:35):
the castle.
Now, the problem with that, ofcourse- one of many problems- is
that you have cut yourself offfrom that deep sense of meaning
where meaning is not foundinside the castle, but outside
the castle in the wider world.
And so what happens with theRomanticism, Taylor argues, is
that what they're trying to dois to compensate for all of that
(19:57):
meaning and depth that has beenlost through cutting off the
transcendent.
And so rather than turningoutward, they turn inward and
say that we have these unseendepths in our souls, in the
human person, which need to beexplored.
And this is where you kind ofget in popular forms this idea
of following your heart andmaybe the analogy of now we have
(20:17):
created some artificial lightsfor the castle that approximate
the light of the sun, and we'rethe ones who turn on the lights.
We're the ones who are sort ofthe source of the lights.
And this is where we're kind ofgoing now towards the shift of
authenticity, where all of themeaning is whatever quest for
meaning that we're on.
It's going to always be startingby going inward and feeling our
(20:38):
way in towards the world.
And so that means the triumph ofauthenticity or really the
triumph of the Romanticperspective is the sense in
which the only way thatsomething is true is if you find
it resonant (20:50):
you feel your way in, and it's felt before it's
known.
So that's the situation thatTaylor argues, and I follow it
and I agree with him on it.
And so if you're in thatsituation, then you have a
couple of different options of-what do you do?
Do you try to turn back theclock and say,"No, we went wrong
with Romanticism, therevolutions of the Sixties that
(21:11):
kind of took authenticityculture wide.
We've got to go back anddiscover this enchanted world,"
or do you start where people areand say,"Okay, what happens when
you follow your heart?" And thenthey need to feel that thinness-
the thinness of that approachfrom the inside rather than
narrating from the outside andsaying,"Everything's wrong." And
so what I've tried to do is totake that second approach and to
(21:32):
say, if authenticity has becomea non-negotiable of the way that
we know truth, how can we stilldo apologetics within those
parameters?
And ultimately it might lead usto reject authenticity as the
ultimate value, but we don'tneed to start by rejecting it,
but we can start by actuallysaying,"Okay, let's follow this
path and see where it leads us."
Amy Mantravadi (21:54):
Thank you.
I think that was actually apretty good brief summary, so I
appreciate it.
Because of the fallen nature ofhumanity, many Christians will
understandably be a littleskeptical about the power or
value of the imagination inleading people to God, and
getting back again to what wetalked about just in our little
fun intro, you appeal in yourbook to an argument made by
(22:17):
Tolkien in his poem Mythopoeia,and I'll just read a little bit
of it here, and apologies to allthe listeners if I'm not the
best at reading poetry.
In Mythopoeia, which was a poemhe actually wrote for C.S.
Lewis before Lewis became aChristian arguing about the
value of myth, Tolkien saysthat,"The heart of man is not
(22:39):
compound of lies, but draws somewisdom from the only wise,"-
that's a capital'W' on wise-"andstill recalls him.
Though now long estranged, manis not h oly lost nor h oly c
hanged.
" And I'll just skip down alittle to where he says," Though
all the crannies of the world wefilled with elves and goblins,
though we dared to build g odsin their houses out of dark and
(23:00):
light and sow the s eed ofdragons,'twas o ur right.
Used or misused, the right h asn ot decayed.
We make s till by the law inwhich w e're made." This gets a
little t o his idea about usbeing sub-creators, which
actually he used that term inthe part I skipped over.
So could you elaborate on themeaning of this passage and this
argument from Tolkien and how itsupports the argument you make
(23:24):
in favor of a re-imaginedapologetics?
And just a little f ollow u p tothat, if you can answer: as a
Roman Catholic, is Tolkien'sview here at all at odds with
Calvinist theology or a moreevangelical theology?
Justin Ariel Bailey (23:39):
You know, that's a great question and it's
not one I've been asked yet.
So thank you for that.
Amy Mantravadi (23:43):
Well, as a fellow Tolkien nerd, you knew I
was going to go to it.
Justin Ariel Bailey (23:45):
Yes.
As you mentioned, Tolkien wrotethat poem in response to then
atheist C.S.
Lewis, who told him that poemsand myths, which Lewis loved-
you know, he says in Surprisedby Joy that it's like he had to
tell two different stories,where everything that he loved
was false and everything that hethought was true was empty and
(24:07):
meaningless.
And so he's talking to Tolkienand he says,"Yeah, myths and
poems are lies, but breathedthrough silver." So they're
beautiful lies (24:14):
beautiful, but untrue.
And Tolkien's response isbasically to say,"But where does
the wish come from?
Where does the power to dreamcome from?" And what he means by
that is that certainly humans dolie, as he says in the poem, and
we make terrible things and wefill the nooks and crannies with
dragons.
And you think of all of thethings that are in Middle-earth.
(24:36):
But when he says that we are notwholly lost or wholly changed,
what I take that to mean is thatwe are not irredeemable and that
there is still somethingremaining.
So total depravity- for those ofus who believe in it, and I do-
it does not mean that we are asbad as we could possibly be.
What it means is that we arepervasively depraved, which
means that sin has affectedevery single part of us.
(24:58):
And so while the idea of beingwholly lost might make someone
think that Tolkien is arguingfor some less than total
corruption, and maybe he is-maybe that's what he had in mind
when he wrote it.
I think there are other ways toread that and other ways to get
the basic thing that Tolkienwants, and what he wanted Lewis
to see.
So as a Calvinist, the way thatI would say it is that though we
(25:21):
have pursued fallen directions,the creational structure is
good (25:26):
sort of a Kuyperian way of saying that the created
structure remains because it'smade by God.
It belongs to God and humanshave taken it in all of these
fallen directions and filled theearth with dragons, and yet we
still cannot escape thiscreational mandate.
We cannot escape the culturalmandate to imagine and to make
(25:46):
and to tell stories and to dreamand to hope, and that's going to
be twisted, but there'ssomething that is primally good
underneath it because of itscreativeness and because of its
reflection of the image of God.
So creation- and in this case,the image of God in humanity
that imagines and makes things-does not need to be replaced.
(26:08):
It needs to be healed.
So grace does not replacecreation or nature.
Grace heals and restores nature,because the creative structure
itself is good.
At least, that's how I interpretthat passage as a Calvinist.
And you certainly don't need tobe a Roman Catholic to believe
that.
Now Tolkien certainly was a verycommitted Roman Catholic and
(26:30):
didn't like a lot of the thingsthat Lewis would write later.
But I think that the basic pointthat I'm trying to make, the
work I'm trying to do by usingthat quote is to say that the
created structure of imaginationis good even if our imaginings
have become vain (26:44):
that there's something there that God's
spirit can redeem, that God'sspirit can work within and
redirect and bring completion tosort of the hopes that humans
have.
Amy Mantravadi (26:58):
And obviously there are some important
differences between RomanCatholic theology and Reformed
or even broadly Protestanttheology, but the more you dig
into it, I think people might bea little bit surprised over how
much similarity there is in someof these areas.
There can be an impression thatRoman Catholics have no concept
(27:22):
of, for instance, what inreformed theology, the creator
creature distinction, or, youknow, the need for grace and
salvation things of that nature,the need for regeneration by the
spirit.
I think sometimes there can be asense that, you know, that's not
part of Catholic theology andwhile they do have different
emphases and some importantdifferences on theological
(27:44):
points, I think in this area,there actually is a lot of
overlap.
So that's something useful wecan draw on, um, sort of
building on that last question.
Every apologetic method isultimately dependent on the work
of the holy spirit.
You make a good case in thisbook that our beliefs tend to be
driven by our desires.
(28:05):
So for Amanda find a Christianvision of the world appealing,
he needs to have his desireschanged by the holy spirit.
This leads to an importanttheological question and really
kind of gets at what we werejust talking about in the last
one.
To what extent is the holyspirit active in this way, among
those who do not belong toChrist.
And you addressed this a bitfrom the Calvinist perspective
(28:28):
in the book.
And I was waiting to see if youhad mentioned him that Neo with
this ideas of Abraham Kuyperalso seemed to be relevant in
this area.
So if you could just talk aboutthat a little more.
Justin Ariel Bailey (28:39):
Yeah.
One of the things that I callthe Calvinist imagination in the
book is the conviction that anygoodness or truth or beauty that
we find must have to God'spresence and action in the
fallen world.
Now there's a whole thing.
And I talk about this in mybook, you know, the Protestants
can't have good imaginations andthey can't make good art because
they don't have a sack, a goodenough sacramental view of
(29:01):
there's too much distancebetween creator and creation
for, for there to be any sort ofmeaningful, meaningful work.
But what Calvinists really do isfill that space with a spirit so
that the holy spirit is the onewho's at work drawing creation
towards consummation.
So the work of the holy spiritoutside the walls of the church,
I mean, it is mysterious.
So I think we should be reallyhesitant and careful to identify
(29:24):
too quickly what we take to bepositive developments as, oh,
that's the work of the holyspirit.
And we have to be tentative andprovisional because we don't
have any revelation in the sameway that we do for something
that happened within the churchwhere we know that God has
promised to meet us, God haspromised to show up.
If you think about Carl Bart,for example, this is what he's
(29:44):
reacting to because the Naziregime basically was unopposed
by the majority of Germanchurches, because they basically
said all of the progress we'vehad in Germany.
That's the holy spirit, theflourishing of our country right
now, you know, prior to the warthat's because of God, God is
the one who has done that, theholy spirit, and they couldn't
distinguish between the humanspirit and the holy spirit.
(30:07):
So I take that as a veryimportant caution.
Nevertheless, if we believe thatGod has not abandoned creation
to corruption, but is continuingto work through the spirit to
renew and heal, then that meansthat we shouldn't be surprised
to find the holy spirit at workamong those outside the walls of
the church and in especiallytheir longings and losses.
(30:28):
And, you know, Bobby has thiswonderful quote that I share in
the book about the holy spiritbeing at work and common grace
being at work in artists andphilosophers and politicians
outside, outside the walls ofthe church, wherever we find
these sort of signs of thekingdom, we have to attribute
that to God's work.
So that's the first part of thequestion.
(30:50):
The second part may be with, Ithink you mentioned something
about desire is that if we startwith desire, so I start with
desire because that's wherepeople are.
And I think almost always westart with either wanting
something to be true or notwanting something to be true
now, wanting something to betrue.
It doesn't have any bearing onwhether or not it is true, but
(31:11):
it does have bearing on the wayI go about the quest to find out
if it is true.
And so that doesn't mean that weneed to give our desires the
final word or the finalauthority, because ultimately
our desires have to be subjectedto scripture and to the cross,
which is something that none ofus would have imagined.
If we only take desire on itsown, then we end up with a
(31:32):
theology of glory and we neverhave a theology of the cross
because we would never imaginethe situation where we would
actually need to suffer.
But I am convinced that when weinterrogate human desire and we
are willing to stay with peopleand ask questions and work with
desire and allow people todream.
And imagine that ultimately whatwe find is that God is not less
(31:54):
than we imagine or desire, butthat God is better than we
imagined or desire.
And so that's why I feel quitecomfortable working within the
imagination, the imagined therealm, because I know that
whatever somebody thinks God'sbetter than that.
Yeah.
And so that's where I maybe I'velost the train of the question
now, but that's where I sort of,I'm quite hopeful.
(32:14):
The imagination has fallen, butit's not more fallen than the
intellect it's as fallen is theintellect.
And so that means that if wefind ourselves in a culture
where the imagination has beengiven some sort of primacy, yes,
we will need to critique that.
But we also are able to startthere, start wherever people
are, which is just a basicprinciple of this theology is
(32:37):
that you start with the facts onthe ground.
You don't immediately bring in awhole different category, a
whole different way ofapproaching the world.
If this is where people are,what resources do we have for
addressing it?
Amy Mantravadi (32:50):
And I think about the, perhaps the three
images that we really have withthe holy spirit and the Bible
are wind fire and a dove.
And all of those things give methe idea of movement of constant
motion.
And when I think about whatJesus said to Nicodemus in John
chapter three, where hedescribed the spirit, basically
(33:12):
as this wind, that you couldkind of sense that as blowing,
but you don't really knowultimate direction.
And I think that does get, likehe said to the mystery of how
the spirit is working.
We kind of feel sometimes likewe're seeing the spirit at work,
but we oftentimes don't knowwhat direction it's going to
take, or it comes at us insurprising ways.
(33:33):
So I think that that's a goodway of looking at it.
You spend the second half of thebook focusing chiefly on the
works of George McDonald andMarilyn Robinson.
And you argue that both serve anapologetic purpose by allowing
the reader to enter a worldwhere Christian principles and
the beauty of God are ondisplay.
(33:54):
Why did you select these twoparticular offers and have they
had an effect on your own life?
Justin Ariel Bailey (34:02):
Yeah.
So when I started working onthis project, I was reading a
lot of philosophy and theology,you know, thinking through
theories of imagination, howbelief works, what makes belief
believable.
That was a question I asked alot and it finally occurred to
me that the best way to explorethe value of imagination is
actually to learn from peoplewho are experts at using their
(34:23):
imagination.
I meaning poets and writers andartists and culture makers.
Those are the ones who are kindof skilled in that area.
And so I started with thisfundamental conviction that we
can learn a lot from groundedartists, as we seek to kind of
do apologetics artistically orto live in a way that is
beautiful.
Um, so I can't even MacDonaldwho's a 19th century writer
(34:46):
through CS Lewis and Lewisfamously said that George
McDonald, reading GeorgeMacDonald baptized his
imagination long before hisactual conversion.
And I thought that's reallyinteresting.
So what Magalia did was gave himthis taste for goodness, his
vision of what goodness and hopehe said, he calls it holiness
and surprised by joy.
And when you read the McDonald,that it really is what you
(35:07):
encounter is there's thisholiness that is present.
I think, in, in Tolkien as wellthough, there's not a lot of
explicit like religious things.
The whole thing is religious.
It's just characterized by thisdeep, uh, holiness.
Uh, and so I began to readMcDonald because I wanted to
understand Lewis.
And the more I read him, themore that I saw that when he was
doing was addressing the crisisof faith, which during his time
(35:32):
is the first time in the Englishspeaking world, in the modern
English world, where it becomessocially acceptable to be an
atheist.
You had atheist before, but itwas always socially
unacceptable.
And they had to kind of bereally careful and couch what
they said in particular ways.
And so in the 19th century,you're seeing all of these,
there's this whole body ofliterature, autobiographies of,
(35:55):
deconversion not unlike sort ofthe ex evangelical thing that
we're seeing now where lots andlots of people were writing
these autobiographies of walkingaway from Christian faith.
And so during this timeapologetics and the kind of more
traditional sense Springs upwhere you have public debates
and defenders of the faith, andyou have William Paley's design
(36:17):
arguments about the watch.
And so George MacDonald goes acompletely different direction
and what he does instead ofgiving facts for the intellect,
he really looks for food for theimagination.
And so you can read in what it'scalled is realistic novels.
So he wrote all of these kindsof fairytales.
Then you also wrote realisticnovels and one trilogy in
particular deals with crises offaith, the windfall trilogy,
(36:39):
which I focus on in my book.
And yeah, and it just reallythis beautiful exploration of
different characters along theroad of deconversion
reconversion deconstructionreconstruction.
And he's addressing those thingsimaginatively.
The second author MarilynneRobinson was the result of me
asking, okay, Donald did that,that was the 19th century.
(37:01):
Is there anyone doing that nowin a way that has having a wide
purchase on not just within theChristian community, but in the
wider public.
And so Marilyn Robinson was theperson that I found after
reading.
There is this New York timesreview of the book Gilliad,
which won the Pulitzer prize in2004.
(37:22):
And that book is about anelderly preacher who lives in
Iowa and, uh, looking at theworld through these kinds of
grace drenched eyes.
And the book was reviewed in theNew York times by a person who
said, I'm an atheist, butRobinson helps me imagine a
world that is fallen yet deeplyloved by its creator, suffused,
(37:46):
the divine grace.
And I was like, that's exactlywhat I'm looking for is an
author who can do that.
So both of these authors havehad this incredible impact on
me.
As I tried to read everything Icould McDonald wrote so much
that I have not been able toread all of his, his body of
work, but I tried to read asmuch as I could by them and just
immerse myself in them as anyonedon't always agree with
(38:07):
everything they say, but they doshare this common approach of
taking the imagination extremelyseriously.
And so I interact with, youknow, what I agree or don't
agree with one of the chaptersof the book, but, um, I think
with them in the back of mymind, almost every single day.
Yeah,
Amy Mantravadi (38:25):
Well, yeah, it was enjoyable to read about them
because I had read surprised byjoy by CS Lewis.
So I had read about how GeorgeMcDonald was very important to
him, but I actually haven'tgotten into either Rick Giles'
work or Robinson's workpersonally.
So you kind of made me want togo out and read, although now
(38:46):
you sort of spoiled the ending,so sorry,
Justin Ariel Bailey (38:53):
Both are acquired tastes.
And, um, you know, Robinsonwrites books where nothing
happens because it's all aboutperception and seeing the world
in a particular way andMacDonald combined spiritual
formation with storytelling.
So a lot of people find hiswriting to be kind of moralistic
(39:13):
because he's always kind of, hestops in the middle of the
narrates, like for a long time,but that's kind of like the
pastoral heart that he has.
So you can read his fairytales.
He doesn't do that in thisfairytales that much, but his
realistic novels, sometimespeople don't like, so I'll say
he's an acquired taste, but sois coffee so
Amy Mantravadi (39:31):
Well, you know, if Tolstoy can give you his
political opinions for ourchapter pod chapter, that
Georgia battle should be able todo now is I think when you're
really good, you can get awaywith that kind of thing.
So in light of your argument,that novels and other works of
art can serve as powerfulapologetic tools, how would you
(39:54):
assess the art and literaturebeing produced by the
evangelical report and worldparticularly here in north
America are Christianuniversities and seminaries
doing a sufficient job oftraining students to produce
works of excellence, or have weessentially seated this ground
to the secular world?
Justin Ariel Bailey (40:13):
Wow, that's a really great question.
And a tricky question.
I mean, as a person who isemployed by a Christian
university, I mean, I think theobvious answer is no, we failed
and we've had a failure ofimagination to use that phrase
again.
I think in some ways it isprecisely because we've been
(40:34):
unwilling to embrace the shiftto authenticity and we tend to
process or engage works withculture primarily in terms of
worldview compatibility ratherthan empathy.
So in other words, we processculture and say, well, do I
agree with this?
Is this exactly the way I seethe world rather than seeing,
(40:56):
okay, this is my neighbor whoI've been called to love this
people who made this and thepeople who resonate with it.
And maybe I resonate with itthat tells me something about
the conditions, the culturalconditions in which I find
myself in which the church hascalled to now go and present the
gospel.
So I think that, no, we haven'tdone a good job.
(41:17):
There are things that give mehope.
There are always outliers andpeople, artists like Makoto
Fujimura is a, is a great heroof mine.
Uh, contemporarynon-representational artists.
Who's doing amazing, amazingwork and writing about it from a
Christian and from a reformperspective.
And there are bright spots likethat.
You know, I think of Pete doctor, um, other people like that,
(41:38):
who've worked on Pixar filmsfrom a place of faith.
And so there's bright spots.
And sometimes, honestly youdon't always know.
Uh, when I lived in Los Angeles,I was quite surprised to find
out as I grew up in the Midwestand then moved to Los Angeles, I
was quite surprised to find outhow many Christians there were
in the industry.
And, you know, there may be notalways the AA list stars that
(41:59):
you hear about, but they'reworking on films and they're
working in production.
And there, we had lots of themin our church and just really
trying to be faithful in whatthey're doing in the part of the
world where God has called them.
So there are reasons for hope,but I think there definitely
need to be, um, some paradigmshifts in the way that we think
about cultural engagement.
This is part of the book thatI'm writing right now is really
(42:22):
looking for a non anxiousapproach to culture that isn't
really reactionary, but that ispatient with cultural works.
Amy Mantravadi (42:33):
And non-anxious reproach that isn't reactionary.
That would definitely be in aminority approach, I think,
evangelicals today.
And I'm wondering if, part ofwhat you mentioned there that
you were kind of surprisedcoming from the Midwest to get
to LA and define that therewere, you know, faithful
Christians and the filmindustry.
(42:55):
And I wonder if that isn't partof the problem that we just
assume that, oh, the only peoplewho would work on Broadway or
who would do art or whatever,are all people who are
anti-Christian and just, youknow, completely give it into
the sexual revolution.
And there's some truth there.
I mean, I have a report Fred,who actually spent some time on
(43:19):
Broadway and told me at the timethat, you know, yeah, pretty
much everyone I worked with was,I mean, she didn't have anyone
she worked with who she thoughtwas a faithful Christian in
those days.
But I wonder if, so, you know,maybe our assumption that
particularly if you live in theMidwest, you can kind of assume
that New York and LA, you know,the big cities, they're kind of
dens of iniquity.
(43:40):
I wonder if that keeps us frombeing willing to engage and get
involved.
And it will become potentiallyincreasingly difficult for
Christians to engage in, incertain professions.
But I think that sometimes wesabotage ourselves a little bit
in those efforts as well.
(44:01):
So if a person isn't capable ofproducing great works of art or
taking up apologetics as afull-time career, how might they
make use of the principles inyour book for their everyday
encounters, with those who needto hear the good news of Christ?
Justin Ariel Bailey (44:16):
Yeah.
So I'll say a couple of thingson that.
Yeah.
First of all, I always have, Iteach a class called aesthetics
on faith, imagination, beauty,and art.
And I have a lot of students whotake it and say, well, I'm not
creative.
And I think what they is,they're not artistic, but
everyone is creative becausethat's what it means to be made
in the image of God, is that youhave this creative birthright
(44:39):
and, uh, yeah.
To take a situation that you'vebeen given and to seek, to make
it better and more beautiful isa natural aesthetic impulse that
humans have.
It's an imaginative impulse.
If you're in a situation that isdifficult to imagine how it
could be better, that's anatural thing that you do.
So again, I'll just say thateven if you're not artistic and
(44:59):
you're not a person who spendstime writing or spends time
making art or dancing orwhatever, whatever it is, then
you can still live a beautifullife, a life that is
characterized by excellence andelegance.
And even what I'd callelectricity, you know, a life
that when people encounter you,they're like, wow, there is
something that is reallydifferent about that person.
(45:22):
And so I would just say that itmeans a living a life that
provokes questions.
So Peter talks about be ready togive an answer for those who,
who ask about the hope that isin you.
And so when was the last timeyou were asked, um, and so have
we lived the life that provokethe question?
It's like, wow, that's, that'sinteresting.
Why, why do you live that way?
So, um, I tell a story at theend of the book about my wife,
(45:45):
who, when she was working in LA,I worked at a company where
somebody asked her the question,why are you going to raise your
kids as Christians?
Why are you going to kind ofindoctrinate them with faith
rather than let them choose whatthey want to believe?
And, you know, most of us, if wehave faith and if we have kids
especially feel really defensiveat that idea, because it
(46:07):
suggests that I'm harming mychildren in some way.
And yet Melissa, my wife was notdefensive or anxious, but what
she did realize was that thereis a particular imaginative
construal of what it means tolive with faith that this person
has.
And that's the thing that needsto change.
(46:29):
And so she said, well, you know,actually we don't really think
about it that way.
So what's she doing there?
She's giving a differentpicture.
So you're thinking of it oneway, but let me give you, let me
paint another picture for you.
And then she said, you know, forus, faith is the most liberating
thing we've ever experienced,and we can imagine a greater
gift to give to our kids.
So now what she's done is shehas framed faith in a particular
(46:52):
way that is resonant with thething that this person wants,
which is freedom, right?
And that's, that's very muchpart of the age of authenticity,
but to say, well, what if thefreedom you're looking for is
not found outside of commitment,but actually within it.
So it's reframing somebody'simagination of what faith is and
that friend or that person waslike, Hey, I have never heard
(47:14):
that before.
Tell me more about, you know,tell me more about your faith.
And that's just a very simpleexample of what I think it means
to do an imaginative apologetic.
It's inviting an outsider.
Well, first it's, it's beingwilling to know some, to sit
with someone, to know them wellenough to understand what would
be good news to them.
(47:34):
And that doesn't mean changingthe good news to fit them
necessarily.
But it does mean in the same waythat the gospel writers do
telling the gospel in aparticular way, that fits the
audience that resonates with theaudience.
So, you know, Matthew's writtento a Jewish audience.
And so it's, Matthew is framedin a way that answers the
questions they're asking.
So what does that mean when youmeet somebody?
(47:55):
What are the questions they'reasking and will it be good news
to them?
And then as I said, like givingthem a glimpse of what it's like
from the inside.
So when I look at the world,here's what I see here are my
reasons for hope.
Yeah.
There's all these reasons fordespair, but let me tell you why
I have hope.
So that's again, invitingempathy and also demonstrating
empathy.
And that's why testimonies, Ithink have so much power and
(48:17):
they will always have powerbecause they engage you not with
the critic at the criticalintellect, but with the
imagination.
So if I said, oh, let me tellyou a story.
Almost like inside your psyche,something shifts, right?
Because you shift from like,when you listen to a story
you're not usually being reallycritical.
You're trying to enter into thestory.
It's called the willingsuspension of disbelief.
(48:38):
You know, like when you see amovie.
So I think it's those, those arethe pieces, the basic pieces of
what sort of everydayconversation looks like the wise
apologists have always knownthis and I've always done it
this way, you know, which is whyPascal Pascal said already in
17th century, you know, you makepeople wish it were true.
(48:58):
And then you show that it is.
Um, and so I think that one ofthe critiques I have of the way
we've done apologetics is thatwe're kind of standing on the
street corner as it wereshouting.
It's true.
It's true.
It's true.
But the people to whom we arespeaking don't care if it's true
and it don't understand whywould this even be good for the
world if this was true.
(49:18):
So I think that's the ground weneed to plow.
That's the work we need to do,you know, just in our everyday
conversations and the way welive our lives, make somebody
say, well, I can't, I mean, TimKeller also says things like
this.
I can't believe that, but I wishI could believe that when you've
engaged somebody on that level,the way they go about the quest
(49:39):
for truth is completelydifferent.
Amy Mantravadi (49:42):
Yeah.
And there are some questionsthat if you don't have the
right, I guess you could sayphilosophical foundation and
groundwork already laid.
Then when you give some, youknow, you make a statement like
Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
I think about when Paul spoke,uh, on Mars hill and he gave
that great little short surveywhere he appealed to lots of
(50:06):
things that his audience wouldunderstand.
And then he got to this partwhere he said, Jesus rose from
the dead.
And they're like, oh, okay, holdon.
We don't know what, what is thiscrazy thing you're talking
about?
Their philosophical assumptionswere such that they just
couldn't even comprehend or comeclose to accepting what he was
telling about.
(50:26):
And I don't know that that wasan error that Paul made because
sometimes, you know, it takes alot of tries and one person has
to lay the seed and one personhas to water it.
And it takes a long time toreset people's assumptions, but
that's perhaps even a good casein scriptures or detailing what
you're saying.
So I mentioned that you have anew book scheduled for release
next year, called yourinterpretation is your life.
(50:49):
Could you provide a briefpreview of that and discuss how
it is or is not related to thisone?
Justin Ariel Bailey (50:58):
Yeah, I think it's related to, it's not,
it's not so much a book aboutapologetics though.
It is a book about the way thechurch and theology relates to
culture.
So that's my basic project isI'm interested in the ways that
culture shapes, theology and theway that theology prepares us to
care for culture and to bearwitness to culture.
(51:21):
So I'm always writing at thatintersection of the two.
And, uh, your interpretation isyour life is a book about
theology and culture, puttingthem in conversation and saying
that this is a very complexconversation.
And so what I try to do is gothrough five different layers.
So meaning than power, thenethics, then religion, and then
(51:44):
aesthetics, and talk about howall of these layers are.
You could just spend a lot oftime talking about the religious
aspects of culture.
You could spend a lot of timetalking about morality and the
way that sort of moralframeworks are implicit and
cultural judgements and kind ofgoing through all of these
things.
And ultimately what I'm tryingto do is to articulate a
(52:06):
approach to cultural engagementthat is non reductive, non
dismissive, and non-anxious.
And I think that that followsfrom faith and love and hope.
So non reductive because offaith, because we believe that
we live in a world that belongsto God, the world in which it's
filled with complexity, but allthings hold together in Christ.
(52:27):
And so we don't, yeah, it's adisservice to, to reduce things.
And a big problem is, isreductionism, right?
And we, that happens on allsides and people reducing things
down to something, somethingvery beautiful and complex and
reducing it down to somethingsimplistic.
And then second non dismissive,which is born out of love for
neighbor.
(52:48):
So we should not dismiss ourneighbors because we are called
to love them.
And then finally non anxious.
And that's born out of thetheological virtue of hope.
So there's lots of reasons foranxiety.
There's lots of reasons toworry, but ultimately if Jesus
Christ is raised from the dead,you don't have to worry as, as a
Christian.
And, uh, and so that means thatyou don't have to fear culture
(53:11):
as if it could somehow undo theresurrection or as if it could
undo God's work in the world oras if the church is going to
sort of just like disappear andgo out of business because of
whatever the latest threat tothe churches, the church has
this beautiful, broken work ofGod across time and space and in
all across all differentchallenges.
(53:32):
And so I'm just trying toarticulate an approach that is
trying to get a sense of thecomplexity of the conversation,
and yet give hope that we canactually make a difference in
the way that we engage it.
And to say that yourinterpretation of culture and
your interpretation of scriptureis not just what you think about
(53:56):
it, but it's actually, when youdo like the way that you live
your life, that's yourinterpretation.
Finally, the way that you put itall together and make a life
that is either resonant withscripture or not resonant with
scripture.
So that's the basic, that's thebasic idea.
I'm still working on theelevator pitch, uh, you know,
32nd version, but that's whatI'm trying to do.
Amy Mantravadi (54:19):
Well, I liked the many times you mentioned
reducing anxiety because in thistime of COVID, I think if one
thing we all need is to step toreduce our anxiety and our
contentiousness.
So I appreciate that.
And thank you so much for takingthe time to talk with me today.
I think it's been a verybeneficial discussion.
Justin Ariel Bailey (54:38):
Yeah.
Thanks so much, really greatquestions.
And thank you.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
[inaudible] where we arrive at[inaudible]
Jon Guerra (55:07):
[inaudible]
Amy Mantravadi (55:09):
It was a pleasure to speak with Justin
today about his bookre-imagining apologetics.
Next week, I'll be talking toDr.
Alex sang about the at timesuneasy relationship between
Christianity and philosophy.
I hope you can join us as wetake a deep dive into church
history.
This podcast is written andproduced by yours.
Truly please send all complaintsby mail to 1600 Pennsylvania
(55:30):
avenue, Washington, DC.
The music you've been listeningto is from the song citizens by
Christian recording artists,John Guerra, off his album,
Keeper of Days.
Reviews and ratings areimportant and helping people
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If you have a moment, pleaseleave an honest rating or review
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Also consider mentioning it tofriends or sharing episodes on
(55:52):
social media.
I know your time is valuable andthank you in advance for any
help you can provide now to himwho is able to keep you from
stumbling and to make you standin the presence of his glory.
Blameless with great joy to theonly God, our savior through
Jesus Christ.
Our Lord be glory, majesty,dominion, and authority before
all time and now and forever.
(56:13):
Amen.
Have a great week.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
[MUSIC PLAYS]
[MUSIC PLAYS]
Amy Mantravadi (00:27):
Hello and welcome to another episode of
the(A)Millennial podcast.
My name is Amy Mantravadi andI'll be your host until such
time as I pack everything up andmoved to Bora Bora.
Today, I'm going to be speakingwith Dr.
Justin Ariel Bailey about hisbook Re-imagining Apologetics.
The imagination doesn't getmentioned often in the Bible.
Psalm 73:7 warns us about thewicked, saying,"The imaginations
(00:49):
of their heart run riot," whileJeremiah 23:16 says of false
prophets that"they speak avision of their own imagination,
not from the mouth of the Lord."In both cases, imagination seems
to be a negative thing thatdraws us away from God's truth,
causing us to chase after andbelieve in things he has not
revealed.
However, this isn't the kind ofimagination Justin is generally
(01:11):
talking about in his book.
The closer biblical term forthis concept of imagination is
heart.
In scripture, it is the heartthat is the seat of emotions and
desires, whether righteous orunrighteous.
While the mind provides ourrational faculty, our decisions
are always impacted by ourhearts.
This is why God commands us tolove him with all our mind and
heart.
(01:31):
The apostle Paul writes inRomans 10:9-10 that"if you
confess with your mouth thatJesus is Lord and believe in
your heart that God raised himfrom the dead, you will be
saved, for with the heart aperson believes, resulting in
righteousness, and with themouth he confesses, resulting in
salvation." St.
Augustine of Hippo, one of thegreat Fathers of the Church, is
(01:52):
remembered for his writingsabout human love and desire.
The goal for a Christian, heargued, was to have rightly
ordered loves, which is to saydesires that are in line with
God's will.
When God draws us to himself,our hearts are turned to him and
captured by his love, whichcauses us to love and desire him
in turn.
While Augustine was not opposedto the use of reason and its
(02:14):
importance to the development offaith, he also knew that human
beings are forever animated bytheir desires.
The goal of apologetics then isnot only to convince someone of
the truth of Christianpropositions, thus capturing
their mind, but to draw them tothe very experience of being a
Christian (02:29):
to make them desire the things of God.
Our desires drive our beliefsand are therefore intimately
connected with faith.
The challenge is that those whodo not know Christ are still
driven by sinful desires.
As Augustine wrote in The Cityof God,"In order to discover the
character of any people, we haveonly to observe what they love."
(02:49):
Justin will offer somesuggestions for how we can
capture the imaginations of ourfriends and neighbors and place
them in the path of God's love.
Before ado is furthered anyfurther, let's head to the
interview.
Jon Guerra (02:59):
[MUSIC PLAYS]
Amy Mantravadi (03:10):
And I am here with Justin Ariel Bailey, who is
the associate professor oftheology at Dordt University.
He received his bachelor'sdegree at Moody Bible Institute,
his MDiv and ThM from TrinityEvangelical Divinity School and
his PhD from Fuller TheologicalSeminary.
He is ordained in the ChristianReformed Church and has served
(03:32):
in multiple and diverse ministrycapacities, most recently as
assistant pastor for teachingand discipleship at Grace
Pasadena from 2013 to 2017.
He has published peer reviewedarticles in the International
Journal of Public Theology andthe Christian Scholars Review in
addition to several otherarticles, book chapters, and
book reviews, and he hosts theIn All Things podcast sponsored
(03:55):
by the Andreas Center at DordtUniversity.
His published works include thebook we're going to talk about
today, Re-imagining Apologetics: The Beauty of Faith in a Secular (04:01):
undefined
Age, and also a forthcomingbook, which I understand will be
called Your Interpretation IsYour Life.
And you can find him on Facebook@drjustinbailey and on Twitter
@jarielbailey.
So Dr.
Bailey, thank you so much fortaking the time to speak with me
(04:23):
today.
I really appreciate it.
Yeah, it's my pleasure, Amy.
Thanks.
Yeah.
And I'm excited to discuss thisbook.
I know it's been out for alittle while, but I was glad to
finally get the chance to readit and just really appreciated
what you had to say there.
Now I warned you, we're going tostart out with a couple fun
questions.
So now I will reveal that thequestions have to do with a
(04:48):
topic I understand you'resomewhat interested in, which is
J.R.R.
Tolkien.
In the past year or so, you'vebeen doing a series of YouTube
videos called"Tolkien Tuesdays."And so, as you likely know,
there are a few ongoingcontroversies or issues of
debate within the world ofTolkien fandom.
(05:10):
So I thought I would just askyou your opinion and whatever
answers you give me we'llconsider to be the definitive
answers on these...
Justin Ariel Bailey (05:18):
The canonical answer.
Ok, sounds good.
Amy Mantravadi (05:18):
...until such time as I have another guest who
I ask the same questions.
Justin Ariel Bailey (05:26):
Ok, sounds great.
Amy Mantravadi (05:26):
So my first question for you is, do balrogs
have wings?
Justin Ariel Bailey (05:34):
No, they do not have wings.
Amy Mantravadi (05:39):
Despite the fact that they have wings in the
Peter Jackson films, you'regoing to go with they don't?
Justin Ariel Bailey (05:47):
Well, I mean, Peter Jackson is sort of
like a Message translation of-well, not even the Message
translation, because I actuallyquite liked the Message
translation.
Let's just say there areliberties that are taken, and I
think it works in that version,but I don't think that they are
meant to have wings.
Similarly, dragons don't havewings other than Smaug.
(06:10):
Smaug certainly has wings, butmost of the early dragons in
Tolkien's work didn't have wingseither.
Amy Mantravadi (06:17):
Glaurung did not have wings.
However, in the last battle whenthe host of the Valar came, I
believe then Morgoth unleashedthe winged dragons at that time.
So yes, you were correct thatmost of them did not have wings.
Justin Ariel Bailey (06:35):
Yeah.
So I guess it's possible in theway that Morgoth could have
perverted or taken naturalthings and made them even worse.
Maybe balrogs could have wings,but I prefer to say no, they
don't have wings.
That's a deep cut.
Wow.
Amy Mantravadi (06:52):
Yeah.
Well, I think you're probablycorrect about that.
I think that there's somecompelling evidence that they
did not have wings, so very goodthere.
We've settled that questionforever.
Now the other question I have isdo you have any opinion on what
type of being Tom Bombadil isand what his origin is?
Justin Ariel Bailey (07:16):
I mean, it makes the most sense to say that
he is one of the Maiar, similarto Gandalf or other lesser-
lesser than the Valar, butgreater than the Children.
I think that part of TomBombadil- I mean, Tom Bombadil's
like Melchizedek in some sensein the Bible: the mystery of his
character wrapped up as it is inMiddle-earth itself is part of
(07:40):
what makes him who he is.
And so in some sense to name, toanswer that question is almost
to kind of betray it, but Iguess he doesn't come from
nothing or come from nowhere.
He's part of the created world,and so it makes the most sense,
I think, to classify him as oneof the Maiar.
I'm not convinced by people whosay that he is Aule or someone
(08:05):
in disguise.
I guess I understand that insome sense, but I think that
he's just one of the Maiar whoselife is wrapped up in
Middle-earth itself.
Amy Mantravadi (08:16):
Yeah.
I think that makes sense aswell.
Well, I think we've probably bythis point lost any listeners
who weren't Tolkien fans, butI'm glad we could get those
controversies settled.
Okay.
Moving on to discuss your book,which is at this time a more
important topic, you note thatwe live in what the philosopher
(08:36):
Charles Taylor has called an"Ageof Authenticity," in which one
of the greatest societal valuesis following one's heart or
being true to oneself.
This means that traditionalapologetic methods that seek to
prove the objective truth ofChristian claims can fall flat
if they do not appeal to thehearer individually.
In light of this, you arguethat,"What is needed is a
(08:59):
provocation of possibilities, avicarious vision of what it
feels like to live withChristian faith, a sense of the
beauty of faith that is feltbefore fully embraced.
For this, the imagination isessential." What do you mean by
imagination here, and how doesit differ from standard logical
reasoning?
Justin Ariel Bailey (09:18):
Sure.
Yeah.
I always start answering thisquestion by saying what I don't
mean, and what I don't mean isthe imagination as escapist:
merely escapist, something thatyou go to the movie theater just
to have the special effects washover you, lose yourself, get
away from the real world.
I think there's a place for thatas well, but that's not what I
mean.
(09:38):
I also don't mean imaginary, sothat you only use the
imagination to engage thingsthat aren't real, in which case-
Obviously I think theresurrection happened and these
things are real things, and soto talk about the need for
imagination and faith wouldn'tmake sense if I use the
imagination that way.
What I mean by imaginationreally is simply the faculty
(09:59):
that God has given to us tointerrogate possibilities, and
it's part of being made in God'simage that as we seek to
cultivate and unleash thepotentiality of God's good
creation that we have to askquestions like,"What would it be
like if we did this?
What if we sort of move in asubjunctive mood and ask what's
(10:22):
possible?
Within the limits that I have,what can I do?
What can I hope for?"Imagination is the faculty with
which we hope.
And so I really believe, and Isay this in my book, is that
though we use the imaginationperhaps to detach from what is
actual, we ultimately are doingthat so we can grip reality more
firmly.
(10:43):
So I read Tolkien not becauseI'm trying to escape, but
because I actually think that itmakes me live better in this
world (10:50):
that it actually allows me to live more capaciously.
And we're always using ourimagination.
Our imagination though can becaptive to cynicism and fear and
despair, or it can be captive tofaith and love and hope, which
is what comes out of the storythat we get in scripture and
that's supremely told to usthrough Jesus Christ.
(11:13):
That's basically what I mean.
Now for the second part of yourquestion, I think you asked
what's the relationship with theintellect or with reasoning.
Amy Mantravadi (11:21):
Well, how does our capacity for imagining
things differ from our capacityfor just reasoning through them
analytically, because in yourbook, you contrasted that a
little in the styles ofapologetics and what they're
appealing to.
Justin Ariel Bailey (11:37):
Yeah, and I'll just also say that I'm not
trying to do away with classicalor traditional ways that
apologetics has been practiced.
I'm hoping to supplement it witha more holistic approach.
So C.S.
Lewis says that the intellecttakes things apart and the
imagination puts thingstogether, and so we're always
doing both all the time.
(11:57):
We're taking ideas apart, we'retaking worldviews apart,
pictures that we have of the waythat things are and seeing,"Is
this true?
Does this actually correspond toreality?" And then we take all
of those things and put themback together, and that happens
all simultaneously andreciprocally.
So another person that I rely onis George MacDonald, and
MacDonald says that theintellect is like the laborer
(12:21):
and the imagination is like thearchitect or the imagination is
like the visionary guy whosweeps across the borders in
search of new land, but then shehas to guide her plotting
brother intellect behind.
So you hear a noise at night inyour house and your imagination,
whether you want it or not, isgoing to supply you with
(12:41):
possibilities of what ishappening, right?
"What is that noise?" And thenthe intellect has to now go and
test all of those things to seewhat is actually actual- what is
real.
And so we're always using themtogether, the imagination and
the intellect, but I'm trying tosay the imagination almost
always comes first.
We very rarely start with ideas.
(13:02):
Ideas and the exploration ofideas always comes after we've
had some sort of imaginativeengagement or glimpse of
something or felt sense of theway that the world is.
And so in the same way thatscripture is not presented to us
as bullet points just for ourintellect to absorb but is
presented to us in all of thesedifferent genres- ultimately
(13:23):
story, right?
True story, but also poetry andparable and apocalyptic, which
is trying to engage ourimagination and actually reshape
the way we see the world.
Not just, say,"Here are 501facts about God for you to
memorize." Because whatscripture is really trying to do
is to engage our full humanity,which includes our imagination.
Amy Mantravadi (13:44):
Well, thank you for that.
And I have to tell you, as I wasreading your book, something
kept coming back to my mind.
It comes from sort of a pastlife of mine when I was studying
international security andsecurity studies.
And I'm remembering back whenthe 9/11 Commission released its
(14:05):
report- the 9/11 Commission thatthe U.S.
Government put together toexamine what had gone wrong with
9/11- and the quote I'll alwaysremember was they said that it
came down to"a failure ofimagination," and what they
meant by that was that theintelligence services- they had
all kinds of data.
They were looking at all thefacts, but they were unable to
(14:26):
imagine how someone nefariouscould take what they were seeing
and put it to a bad use.
So that's a negative case ofsort of getting into someone
else's brain throughimagination, but I think you
also described in your book howimagination is very key to
empathy and being able toimagine how someone else might
(14:49):
view the world is definitely akey part of apologetics.
So maybe a random referencethere, but it was just something
that kept popping into my headas I was reading your book.
Justin Ariel Bailey (14:59):
That phrase -"failure of imagination"- I
think it's very important,because I think that there are
so many things that if weunderstand it as a failure of
imagination rather than afailure of facts or a failure of
logical reasoning, we also havelots of failures of that, you
know.
But Thomas Kuhn in his bookStructure of Scientific
(15:20):
Revolutions argued for this ideaof paradigm shifts that happened
in the world of science.
And really when you're askingsomebody to move from a place of
unbelief to a place of faith,that really requires a paradigm
shift, doesn't it?
And so one of the greatstruggles is that there are
certain things about Christianfaith that can only be
understood from the inside (15:39):
from a position of commitment.
So how do you help somebodywho's on the outside from a
position of sort of criticalappraisal feel what it's like on
the inside?
It's those inside things thatactually make faith most
compelling.
And so I think that what youjust said, the power of empathy
and the ability to- for example,when you hear somebody's
(16:00):
testimony, see the world throughtheir eyes, see the world
through the eyes of faith isactually one of the ways that we
can sort of bridge this gap ofseeing,"Okay, this is what it
would be like." And what thatdoes is provides a new paradigm
that a person can look at theworld through and maybe correct
some of the failures ofimagination.
Amy Mantravadi (16:20):
Thank you for that.
Obviously an important part ofapologetics- It gets down to how
we know what we know and how dowe discern what the truth is.
Drawing again upon the work ofCharles Taylor, you discussed in
your book how Western culturehas changed over the past few
hundred years in ways that haveproduced the Age of
Authenticity.
The contrast between theEnlightenment and Romantic
(16:44):
movements- two very importantintellectual movements in the
past few hundred years- isparticularly important to this
story.
How do you see our presentcultural moment being impacted
by each of these movements,particularly in our differing
notions of truth?
This is something that you gotat in the early chapters of your
book, and I think it'simportant.
Justin Ariel Bailey (17:04):
Yeah, and I just commend people- anytime you
start to talk about history,there's always so many
complexities, so please forgivethis brief summary and go to my
book if you want to see a littlebit more.
Amy Mantravadi (17:16):
Yes, please summarize the last half
millennium.
Justin Ariel Bailey (17:20):
Exactly.
So one of the reasons I rely onCharles Taylor so much, as lots
of others have been doingrecently, is because he has done
a really good job at critiquingwhat he calls the"subtraction
story," which is that we neededfaith and religion and belief in
God, but now we have science,and so we've sort of subtracted
(17:41):
all of the things that we usedto need.
And what he does is tell us theopposite stories.
He tells more of an additionstory or a construction story.
And so I sort of compare it tothe difference between emerging
from the cave of superstitioninto the light- That's the
subtraction story.
"Now we're in the light.
We've been enlightened.
We can see the world the way itreally is."- To building a
(18:01):
castle over yourself and thenthinking that the castle is the
entire world, just sort of likewhat happens in The Silver Chair
, if you've read the NarniaChronicles.
And so what you have as theReformation happens is this
shift in gravity from the Churchto the wider world, where the
Reformers really want to takethe world seriously as the
(18:23):
theater of God's glory.
And so the attention reallyturns outward so that they want
all places to be holy placesrather than just some places,
all people to be holy peoplerather than just some people.
It's sort of this discipling ofevery sphere of life, which is
really, really wonderful and oneof the reasons why I'm Reformed.
But what then happens with thatshift towards the wider world
(18:46):
with the Enlightenment is thatthere begins to be a shrinking
of scope in which Enlightenmentthinkers are interested in the
world as a closed system.
And this is what I mean (18:54):
you build this sort of cathedral
over yourself and then thinkthat the cathedral is the whole
world, and you've just kind ofshut out the sun.
You can't actually see it, butit's still there.
You just enclosed yourself inimminence.
And so they say the world is aclosed system.
It's designed for it.
Maybe God still did it.
You know, you have deism (19:13):
God still is the one who put it all
there, but it's this closedsystem designed for human
flourishing.
There's no possibility ofmiracles, because then that
would mean that God made amistake in the perfect system
that he made, and we need tofigure everything out.
That's, that's the goal of thehuman vocation is to leave no
mystery, no places uncharted,and really to kind of figure out
(19:35):
the castle.
Now, the problem with that, ofcourse- one of many problems- is
that you have cut yourself offfrom that deep sense of meaning
where meaning is not foundinside the castle, but outside
the castle in the wider world.
And so what happens with theRomanticism, Taylor argues, is
that what they're trying to dois to compensate for all of that
(19:57):
meaning and depth that has beenlost through cutting off the
transcendent.
And so rather than turningoutward, they turn inward and
say that we have these unseendepths in our souls, in the
human person, which need to beexplored.
And this is where you kind ofget in popular forms this idea
of following your heart andmaybe the analogy of now we have
(20:17):
created some artificial lightsfor the castle that approximate
the light of the sun, and we'rethe ones who turn on the lights.
We're the ones who are sort ofthe source of the lights.
And this is where we're kind ofgoing now towards the shift of
authenticity, where all of themeaning is whatever quest for
meaning that we're on.
It's going to always be startingby going inward and feeling our
(20:38):
way in towards the world.
And so that means the triumph ofauthenticity or really the
triumph of the Romanticperspective is the sense in
which the only way thatsomething is true is if you find
it resonant (20:50):
you feel your way in, and it's felt before it's
known.
So that's the situation thatTaylor argues, and I follow it
and I agree with him on it.
And so if you're in thatsituation, then you have a
couple of different options of-what do you do?
Do you try to turn back theclock and say,"No, we went wrong
with Romanticism, therevolutions of the Sixties that
(21:11):
kind of took authenticityculture wide.
We've got to go back anddiscover this enchanted world,"
or do you start where people areand say,"Okay, what happens when
you follow your heart?" And thenthey need to feel that thinness-
the thinness of that approachfrom the inside rather than
narrating from the outside andsaying,"Everything's wrong." And
so what I've tried to do is totake that second approach and to
(21:32):
say, if authenticity has becomea non-negotiable of the way that
we know truth, how can we stilldo apologetics within those
parameters?
And ultimately it might lead usto reject authenticity as the
ultimate value, but we don'tneed to start by rejecting it,
but we can start by actuallysaying,"Okay, let's follow this
path and see where it leads us."
Amy Mantravadi (21:54):
Thank you.
I think that was actually apretty good brief summary, so I
appreciate it.
Because of the fallen nature ofhumanity, many Christians will
understandably be a littleskeptical about the power or
value of the imagination inleading people to God, and
getting back again to what wetalked about just in our little
fun intro, you appeal in yourbook to an argument made by
(22:17):
Tolkien in his poem Mythopoeia,and I'll just read a little bit
of it here, and apologies to allthe listeners if I'm not the
best at reading poetry.
In Mythopoeia, which was a poemhe actually wrote for C.S.
Lewis before Lewis became aChristian arguing about the
value of myth, Tolkien saysthat,"The heart of man is not
(22:39):
compound of lies, but draws somewisdom from the only wise,"-
that's a capital'W' on wise-"andstill recalls him.
Though now long estranged, manis not h oly lost nor h oly c
hanged.
" And I'll just skip down alittle to where he says," Though
all the crannies of the world wefilled with elves and goblins,
though we dared to build g odsin their houses out of dark and
(23:00):
light and sow the s eed ofdragons,'twas o ur right.
Used or misused, the right h asn ot decayed.
We make s till by the law inwhich w e're made." This gets a
little t o his idea about usbeing sub-creators, which
actually he used that term inthe part I skipped over.
So could you elaborate on themeaning of this passage and this
argument from Tolkien and how itsupports the argument you make
(23:24):
in favor of a re-imaginedapologetics?
And just a little f ollow u p tothat, if you can answer: as a
Roman Catholic, is Tolkien'sview here at all at odds with
Calvinist theology or a moreevangelical theology?
Justin Ariel Bailey (23:39):
You know, that's a great question and it's
not one I've been asked yet.
So thank you for that.
Amy Mantravadi (23:43):
Well, as a fellow Tolkien nerd, you knew I
was going to go to it.
Justin Ariel Bailey (23:45):
Yes.
As you mentioned, Tolkien wrotethat poem in response to then
atheist C.S.
Lewis, who told him that poemsand myths, which Lewis loved-
you know, he says in Surprisedby Joy that it's like he had to
tell two different stories,where everything that he loved
was false and everything that hethought was true was empty and
(24:07):
meaningless.
And so he's talking to Tolkienand he says,"Yeah, myths and
poems are lies, but breathedthrough silver." So they're
beautiful lies (24:14):
beautiful, but untrue.
And Tolkien's response isbasically to say,"But where does
the wish come from?
Where does the power to dreamcome from?" And what he means by
that is that certainly humans dolie, as he says in the poem, and
we make terrible things and wefill the nooks and crannies with
dragons.
And you think of all of thethings that are in Middle-earth.
(24:36):
But when he says that we are notwholly lost or wholly changed,
what I take that to mean is thatwe are not irredeemable and that
there is still somethingremaining.
So total depravity- for those ofus who believe in it, and I do-
it does not mean that we are asbad as we could possibly be.
What it means is that we arepervasively depraved, which
means that sin has affectedevery single part of us.
(24:58):
And so while the idea of beingwholly lost might make someone
think that Tolkien is arguingfor some less than total
corruption, and maybe he is-maybe that's what he had in mind
when he wrote it.
I think there are other ways toread that and other ways to get
the basic thing that Tolkienwants, and what he wanted Lewis
to see.
So as a Calvinist, the way thatI would say it is that though we
(25:21):
have pursued fallen directions,the creational structure is
good (25:26):
sort of a Kuyperian way of saying that the created
structure remains because it'smade by God.
It belongs to God and humanshave taken it in all of these
fallen directions and filled theearth with dragons, and yet we
still cannot escape thiscreational mandate.
We cannot escape the culturalmandate to imagine and to make
(25:46):
and to tell stories and to dreamand to hope, and that's going to
be twisted, but there'ssomething that is primally good
underneath it because of itscreativeness and because of its
reflection of the image of God.
So creation- and in this case,the image of God in humanity
that imagines and makes things-does not need to be replaced.
(26:08):
It needs to be healed.
So grace does not replacecreation or nature.
Grace heals and restores nature,because the creative structure
itself is good.
At least, that's how I interpretthat passage as a Calvinist.
And you certainly don't need tobe a Roman Catholic to believe
that.
Now Tolkien certainly was a verycommitted Roman Catholic and
(26:30):
didn't like a lot of the thingsthat Lewis would write later.
But I think that the basic pointthat I'm trying to make, the
work I'm trying to do by usingthat quote is to say that the
created structure of imaginationis good even if our imaginings
have become vain (26:44):
that there's something there that God's
spirit can redeem, that God'sspirit can work within and
redirect and bring completion tosort of the hopes that humans
have.
Amy Mantravadi (26:58):
And obviously there are some important
differences between RomanCatholic theology and Reformed
or even broadly Protestanttheology, but the more you dig
into it, I think people might bea little bit surprised over how
much similarity there is in someof these areas.
There can be an impression thatRoman Catholics have no concept
(27:22):
of, for instance, what inreformed theology, the creator
creature distinction, or, youknow, the need for grace and
salvation things of that nature,the need for regeneration by the
spirit.
I think sometimes there can be asense that, you know, that's not
part of Catholic theology andwhile they do have different
emphases and some importantdifferences on theological
(27:44):
points, I think in this area,there actually is a lot of
overlap.
So that's something useful wecan draw on, um, sort of
building on that last question.
Every apologetic method isultimately dependent on the work
of the holy spirit.
You make a good case in thisbook that our beliefs tend to be
driven by our desires.
(28:05):
So for Amanda find a Christianvision of the world appealing,
he needs to have his desireschanged by the holy spirit.
This leads to an importanttheological question and really
kind of gets at what we werejust talking about in the last
one.
To what extent is the holyspirit active in this way, among
those who do not belong toChrist.
And you addressed this a bitfrom the Calvinist perspective
(28:28):
in the book.
And I was waiting to see if youhad mentioned him that Neo with
this ideas of Abraham Kuyperalso seemed to be relevant in
this area.
So if you could just talk aboutthat a little more.
Justin Ariel Bailey (28:39):
Yeah.
One of the things that I callthe Calvinist imagination in the
book is the conviction that anygoodness or truth or beauty that
we find must have to God'spresence and action in the
fallen world.
Now there's a whole thing.
And I talk about this in mybook, you know, the Protestants
can't have good imaginations andthey can't make good art because
they don't have a sack, a goodenough sacramental view of
(29:01):
there's too much distancebetween creator and creation
for, for there to be any sort ofmeaningful, meaningful work.
But what Calvinists really do isfill that space with a spirit so
that the holy spirit is the onewho's at work drawing creation
towards consummation.
So the work of the holy spiritoutside the walls of the church,
I mean, it is mysterious.
So I think we should be reallyhesitant and careful to identify
(29:24):
too quickly what we take to bepositive developments as, oh,
that's the work of the holyspirit.
And we have to be tentative andprovisional because we don't
have any revelation in the sameway that we do for something
that happened within the churchwhere we know that God has
promised to meet us, God haspromised to show up.
If you think about Carl Bart,for example, this is what he's
(29:44):
reacting to because the Naziregime basically was unopposed
by the majority of Germanchurches, because they basically
said all of the progress we'vehad in Germany.
That's the holy spirit, theflourishing of our country right
now, you know, prior to the warthat's because of God, God is
the one who has done that, theholy spirit, and they couldn't
distinguish between the humanspirit and the holy spirit.
(30:07):
So I take that as a veryimportant caution.
Nevertheless, if we believe thatGod has not abandoned creation
to corruption, but is continuingto work through the spirit to
renew and heal, then that meansthat we shouldn't be surprised
to find the holy spirit at workamong those outside the walls of
the church and in especiallytheir longings and losses.
(30:28):
And, you know, Bobby has thiswonderful quote that I share in
the book about the holy spiritbeing at work and common grace
being at work in artists andphilosophers and politicians
outside, outside the walls ofthe church, wherever we find
these sort of signs of thekingdom, we have to attribute
that to God's work.
So that's the first part of thequestion.
(30:50):
The second part may be with, Ithink you mentioned something
about desire is that if we startwith desire, so I start with
desire because that's wherepeople are.
And I think almost always westart with either wanting
something to be true or notwanting something to be true
now, wanting something to betrue.
It doesn't have any bearing onwhether or not it is true, but
(31:11):
it does have bearing on the wayI go about the quest to find out
if it is true.
And so that doesn't mean that weneed to give our desires the
final word or the finalauthority, because ultimately
our desires have to be subjectedto scripture and to the cross,
which is something that none ofus would have imagined.
If we only take desire on itsown, then we end up with a
(31:32):
theology of glory and we neverhave a theology of the cross
because we would never imaginethe situation where we would
actually need to suffer.
But I am convinced that when weinterrogate human desire and we
are willing to stay with peopleand ask questions and work with
desire and allow people todream.
And imagine that ultimately whatwe find is that God is not less
(31:54):
than we imagine or desire, butthat God is better than we
imagined or desire.
And so that's why I feel quitecomfortable working within the
imagination, the imagined therealm, because I know that
whatever somebody thinks God'sbetter than that.
Yeah.
And so that's where I maybe I'velost the train of the question
now, but that's where I sort of,I'm quite hopeful.
(32:14):
The imagination has fallen, butit's not more fallen than the
intellect it's as fallen is theintellect.
And so that means that if wefind ourselves in a culture
where the imagination has beengiven some sort of primacy, yes,
we will need to critique that.
But we also are able to startthere, start wherever people
are, which is just a basicprinciple of this theology is
(32:37):
that you start with the facts onthe ground.
You don't immediately bring in awhole different category, a
whole different way ofapproaching the world.
If this is where people are,what resources do we have for
addressing it?
Amy Mantravadi (32:50):
And I think about the, perhaps the three
images that we really have withthe holy spirit and the Bible
are wind fire and a dove.
And all of those things give methe idea of movement of constant
motion.
And when I think about whatJesus said to Nicodemus in John
chapter three, where hedescribed the spirit, basically
(33:12):
as this wind, that you couldkind of sense that as blowing,
but you don't really knowultimate direction.
And I think that does get, likehe said to the mystery of how
the spirit is working.
We kind of feel sometimes likewe're seeing the spirit at work,
but we oftentimes don't knowwhat direction it's going to
take, or it comes at us insurprising ways.
(33:33):
So I think that that's a goodway of looking at it.
You spend the second half of thebook focusing chiefly on the
works of George McDonald andMarilyn Robinson.
And you argue that both serve anapologetic purpose by allowing
the reader to enter a worldwhere Christian principles and
the beauty of God are ondisplay.
(33:54):
Why did you select these twoparticular offers and have they
had an effect on your own life?
Justin Ariel Bailey (34:02):
Yeah.
So when I started working onthis project, I was reading a
lot of philosophy and theology,you know, thinking through
theories of imagination, howbelief works, what makes belief
believable.
That was a question I asked alot and it finally occurred to
me that the best way to explorethe value of imagination is
actually to learn from peoplewho are experts at using their
(34:23):
imagination.
I meaning poets and writers andartists and culture makers.
Those are the ones who are kindof skilled in that area.
And so I started with thisfundamental conviction that we
can learn a lot from groundedartists, as we seek to kind of
do apologetics artistically orto live in a way that is
beautiful.
Um, so I can't even MacDonaldwho's a 19th century writer
(34:46):
through CS Lewis and Lewisfamously said that George
McDonald, reading GeorgeMacDonald baptized his
imagination long before hisactual conversion.
And I thought that's reallyinteresting.
So what Magalia did was gave himthis taste for goodness, his
vision of what goodness and hopehe said, he calls it holiness
and surprised by joy.
And when you read the McDonald,that it really is what you
(35:07):
encounter is there's thisholiness that is present.
I think, in, in Tolkien as wellthough, there's not a lot of
explicit like religious things.
The whole thing is religious.
It's just characterized by thisdeep, uh, holiness.
Uh, and so I began to readMcDonald because I wanted to
understand Lewis.
And the more I read him, themore that I saw that when he was
doing was addressing the crisisof faith, which during his time
(35:32):
is the first time in the Englishspeaking world, in the modern
English world, where it becomessocially acceptable to be an
atheist.
You had atheist before, but itwas always socially
unacceptable.
And they had to kind of bereally careful and couch what
they said in particular ways.
And so in the 19th century,you're seeing all of these,
there's this whole body ofliterature, autobiographies of,
(35:55):
deconversion not unlike sort ofthe ex evangelical thing that
we're seeing now where lots andlots of people were writing
these autobiographies of walkingaway from Christian faith.
And so during this timeapologetics and the kind of more
traditional sense Springs upwhere you have public debates
and defenders of the faith, andyou have William Paley's design
(36:17):
arguments about the watch.
And so George MacDonald goes acompletely different direction
and what he does instead ofgiving facts for the intellect,
he really looks for food for theimagination.
And so you can read in what it'scalled is realistic novels.
So he wrote all of these kindsof fairytales.
Then you also wrote realisticnovels and one trilogy in
particular deals with crises offaith, the windfall trilogy,
(36:39):
which I focus on in my book.
And yeah, and it just reallythis beautiful exploration of
different characters along theroad of deconversion
reconversion deconstructionreconstruction.
And he's addressing those thingsimaginatively.
The second author MarilynneRobinson was the result of me
asking, okay, Donald did that,that was the 19th century.
(37:01):
Is there anyone doing that nowin a way that has having a wide
purchase on not just within theChristian community, but in the
wider public.
And so Marilyn Robinson was theperson that I found after
reading.
There is this New York timesreview of the book Gilliad,
which won the Pulitzer prize in2004.
(37:22):
And that book is about anelderly preacher who lives in
Iowa and, uh, looking at theworld through these kinds of
grace drenched eyes.
And the book was reviewed in theNew York times by a person who
said, I'm an atheist, butRobinson helps me imagine a
world that is fallen yet deeplyloved by its creator, suffused,
(37:46):
the divine grace.
And I was like, that's exactlywhat I'm looking for is an
author who can do that.
So both of these authors havehad this incredible impact on
me.
As I tried to read everything Icould McDonald wrote so much
that I have not been able toread all of his, his body of
work, but I tried to read asmuch as I could by them and just
immerse myself in them as anyonedon't always agree with
(38:07):
everything they say, but they doshare this common approach of
taking the imagination extremelyseriously.
And so I interact with, youknow, what I agree or don't
agree with one of the chaptersof the book, but, um, I think
with them in the back of mymind, almost every single day.
Yeah,
Amy Mantravadi (38:25):
Well, yeah, it was enjoyable to read about them
because I had read surprised byjoy by CS Lewis.
So I had read about how GeorgeMcDonald was very important to
him, but I actually haven'tgotten into either Rick Giles'
work or Robinson's workpersonally.
So you kind of made me want togo out and read, although now
(38:46):
you sort of spoiled the ending,so sorry,
Justin Ariel Bailey (38:53):
Both are acquired tastes.
And, um, you know, Robinsonwrites books where nothing
happens because it's all aboutperception and seeing the world
in a particular way andMacDonald combined spiritual
formation with storytelling.
So a lot of people find hiswriting to be kind of moralistic
(39:13):
because he's always kind of, hestops in the middle of the
narrates, like for a long time,but that's kind of like the
pastoral heart that he has.
So you can read his fairytales.
He doesn't do that in thisfairytales that much, but his
realistic novels, sometimespeople don't like, so I'll say
he's an acquired taste, but sois coffee so
Amy Mantravadi (39:31):
Well, you know, if Tolstoy can give you his
political opinions for ourchapter pod chapter, that
Georgia battle should be able todo now is I think when you're
really good, you can get awaywith that kind of thing.
So in light of your argument,that novels and other works of
art can serve as powerfulapologetic tools, how would you
(39:54):
assess the art and literaturebeing produced by the
evangelical report and worldparticularly here in north
America are Christianuniversities and seminaries
doing a sufficient job oftraining students to produce
works of excellence, or have weessentially seated this ground
to the secular world?
Justin Ariel Bailey (40:13):
Wow, that's a really great question.
And a tricky question.
I mean, as a person who isemployed by a Christian
university, I mean, I think theobvious answer is no, we failed
and we've had a failure ofimagination to use that phrase
again.
I think in some ways it isprecisely because we've been
(40:34):
unwilling to embrace the shiftto authenticity and we tend to
process or engage works withculture primarily in terms of
worldview compatibility ratherthan empathy.
So in other words, we processculture and say, well, do I
agree with this?
Is this exactly the way I seethe world rather than seeing,
(40:56):
okay, this is my neighbor whoI've been called to love this
people who made this and thepeople who resonate with it.
And maybe I resonate with itthat tells me something about
the conditions, the culturalconditions in which I find
myself in which the church hascalled to now go and present the
gospel.
So I think that, no, we haven'tdone a good job.
(41:17):
There are things that give mehope.
There are always outliers andpeople, artists like Makoto
Fujimura is a, is a great heroof mine.
Uh, contemporarynon-representational artists.
Who's doing amazing, amazingwork and writing about it from a
Christian and from a reformperspective.
And there are bright spots likethat.
You know, I think of Pete doctor, um, other people like that,
(41:38):
who've worked on Pixar filmsfrom a place of faith.
And so there's bright spots.
And sometimes, honestly youdon't always know.
Uh, when I lived in Los Angeles,I was quite surprised to find
out as I grew up in the Midwestand then moved to Los Angeles, I
was quite surprised to find outhow many Christians there were
in the industry.
And, you know, there may be notalways the AA list stars that
(41:59):
you hear about, but they'reworking on films and they're
working in production.
And there, we had lots of themin our church and just really
trying to be faithful in whatthey're doing in the part of the
world where God has called them.
So there are reasons for hope,but I think there definitely
need to be, um, some paradigmshifts in the way that we think
about cultural engagement.
This is part of the book thatI'm writing right now is really
(42:22):
looking for a non anxiousapproach to culture that isn't
really reactionary, but that ispatient with cultural works.
Amy Mantravadi (42:33):
And non-anxious reproach that isn't reactionary.
That would definitely be in aminority approach, I think,
evangelicals today.
And I'm wondering if, part ofwhat you mentioned there that
you were kind of surprisedcoming from the Midwest to get
to LA and define that therewere, you know, faithful
Christians and the filmindustry.
(42:55):
And I wonder if that isn't partof the problem that we just
assume that, oh, the only peoplewho would work on Broadway or
who would do art or whatever,are all people who are
anti-Christian and just, youknow, completely give it into
the sexual revolution.
And there's some truth there.
I mean, I have a report Fred,who actually spent some time on
(43:19):
Broadway and told me at the timethat, you know, yeah, pretty
much everyone I worked with was,I mean, she didn't have anyone
she worked with who she thoughtwas a faithful Christian in
those days.
But I wonder if, so, you know,maybe our assumption that
particularly if you live in theMidwest, you can kind of assume
that New York and LA, you know,the big cities, they're kind of
dens of iniquity.
(43:40):
I wonder if that keeps us frombeing willing to engage and get
involved.
And it will become potentiallyincreasingly difficult for
Christians to engage in, incertain professions.
But I think that sometimes wesabotage ourselves a little bit
in those efforts as well.
(44:01):
So if a person isn't capable ofproducing great works of art or
taking up apologetics as afull-time career, how might they
make use of the principles inyour book for their everyday
encounters, with those who needto hear the good news of Christ?
Justin Ariel Bailey (44:16):
Yeah.
So I'll say a couple of thingson that.
Yeah.
First of all, I always have, Iteach a class called aesthetics
on faith, imagination, beauty,and art.
And I have a lot of students whotake it and say, well, I'm not
creative.
And I think what they is,they're not artistic, but
everyone is creative becausethat's what it means to be made
in the image of God, is that youhave this creative birthright
(44:39):
and, uh, yeah.
To take a situation that you'vebeen given and to seek, to make
it better and more beautiful isa natural aesthetic impulse that
humans have.
It's an imaginative impulse.
If you're in a situation that isdifficult to imagine how it
could be better, that's anatural thing that you do.
So again, I'll just say thateven if you're not artistic and
(44:59):
you're not a person who spendstime writing or spends time
making art or dancing orwhatever, whatever it is, then
you can still live a beautifullife, a life that is
characterized by excellence andelegance.
And even what I'd callelectricity, you know, a life
that when people encounter you,they're like, wow, there is
something that is reallydifferent about that person.
(45:22):
And so I would just say that itmeans a living a life that
provokes questions.
So Peter talks about be ready togive an answer for those who,
who ask about the hope that isin you.
And so when was the last timeyou were asked, um, and so have
we lived the life that provokethe question?
It's like, wow, that's, that'sinteresting.
Why, why do you live that way?
So, um, I tell a story at theend of the book about my wife,
(45:45):
who, when she was working in LA,I worked at a company where
somebody asked her the question,why are you going to raise your
kids as Christians?
Why are you going to kind ofindoctrinate them with faith
rather than let them choose whatthey want to believe?
And, you know, most of us, if wehave faith and if we have kids
especially feel really defensiveat that idea, because it
(46:07):
suggests that I'm harming mychildren in some way.
And yet Melissa, my wife was notdefensive or anxious, but what
she did realize was that thereis a particular imaginative
construal of what it means tolive with faith that this person
has.
And that's the thing that needsto change.
(46:29):
And so she said, well, you know,actually we don't really think
about it that way.
So what's she doing there?
She's giving a differentpicture.
So you're thinking of it oneway, but let me give you, let me
paint another picture for you.
And then she said, you know, forus, faith is the most liberating
thing we've ever experienced,and we can imagine a greater
gift to give to our kids.
So now what she's done is shehas framed faith in a particular
(46:52):
way that is resonant with thething that this person wants,
which is freedom, right?
And that's, that's very muchpart of the age of authenticity,
but to say, well, what if thefreedom you're looking for is
not found outside of commitment,but actually within it.
So it's reframing somebody'simagination of what faith is and
that friend or that person waslike, Hey, I have never heard
(47:14):
that before.
Tell me more about, you know,tell me more about your faith.
And that's just a very simpleexample of what I think it means
to do an imaginative apologetic.
It's inviting an outsider.
Well, first it's, it's beingwilling to know some, to sit
with someone, to know them wellenough to understand what would
be good news to them.
(47:34):
And that doesn't mean changingthe good news to fit them
necessarily.
But it does mean in the same waythat the gospel writers do
telling the gospel in aparticular way, that fits the
audience that resonates with theaudience.
So, you know, Matthew's writtento a Jewish audience.
And so it's, Matthew is framedin a way that answers the
questions they're asking.
So what does that mean when youmeet somebody?
(47:55):
What are the questions they'reasking and will it be good news
to them?
And then as I said, like givingthem a glimpse of what it's like
from the inside.
So when I look at the world,here's what I see here are my
reasons for hope.
Yeah.
There's all these reasons fordespair, but let me tell you why
I have hope.
So that's again, invitingempathy and also demonstrating
empathy.
And that's why testimonies, Ithink have so much power and
(48:17):
they will always have powerbecause they engage you not with
the critic at the criticalintellect, but with the
imagination.
So if I said, oh, let me tellyou a story.
Almost like inside your psyche,something shifts, right?
Because you shift from like,when you listen to a story
you're not usually being reallycritical.
You're trying to enter into thestory.
It's called the willingsuspension of disbelief.
(48:38):
You know, like when you see amovie.
So I think it's those, those arethe pieces, the basic pieces of
what sort of everydayconversation looks like the wise
apologists have always knownthis and I've always done it
this way, you know, which is whyPascal Pascal said already in
17th century, you know, you makepeople wish it were true.
(48:58):
And then you show that it is.
Um, and so I think that one ofthe critiques I have of the way
we've done apologetics is thatwe're kind of standing on the
street corner as it wereshouting.
It's true.
It's true.
It's true.
But the people to whom we arespeaking don't care if it's true
and it don't understand whywould this even be good for the
world if this was true.
(49:18):
So I think that's the ground weneed to plow.
That's the work we need to do,you know, just in our everyday
conversations and the way welive our lives, make somebody
say, well, I can't, I mean, TimKeller also says things like
this.
I can't believe that, but I wishI could believe that when you've
engaged somebody on that level,the way they go about the quest
(49:39):
for truth is completelydifferent.
Amy Mantravadi (49:42):
Yeah.
And there are some questionsthat if you don't have the
right, I guess you could sayphilosophical foundation and
groundwork already laid.
Then when you give some, youknow, you make a statement like
Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
I think about when Paul spoke,uh, on Mars hill and he gave
that great little short surveywhere he appealed to lots of
(50:06):
things that his audience wouldunderstand.
And then he got to this partwhere he said, Jesus rose from
the dead.
And they're like, oh, okay, holdon.
We don't know what, what is thiscrazy thing you're talking
about?
Their philosophical assumptionswere such that they just
couldn't even comprehend or comeclose to accepting what he was
telling about.
(50:26):
And I don't know that that wasan error that Paul made because
sometimes, you know, it takes alot of tries and one person has
to lay the seed and one personhas to water it.
And it takes a long time toreset people's assumptions, but
that's perhaps even a good casein scriptures or detailing what
you're saying.
So I mentioned that you have anew book scheduled for release
next year, called yourinterpretation is your life.
(50:49):
Could you provide a briefpreview of that and discuss how
it is or is not related to thisone?
Justin Ariel Bailey (50:58):
Yeah, I think it's related to, it's not,
it's not so much a book aboutapologetics though.
It is a book about the way thechurch and theology relates to
culture.
So that's my basic project isI'm interested in the ways that
culture shapes, theology and theway that theology prepares us to
care for culture and to bearwitness to culture.
(51:21):
So I'm always writing at thatintersection of the two.
And, uh, your interpretation isyour life is a book about
theology and culture, puttingthem in conversation and saying
that this is a very complexconversation.
And so what I try to do is gothrough five different layers.
So meaning than power, thenethics, then religion, and then
(51:44):
aesthetics, and talk about howall of these layers are.
You could just spend a lot oftime talking about the religious
aspects of culture.
You could spend a lot of timetalking about morality and the
way that sort of moralframeworks are implicit and
cultural judgements and kind ofgoing through all of these
things.
And ultimately what I'm tryingto do is to articulate a
(52:06):
approach to cultural engagementthat is non reductive, non
dismissive, and non-anxious.
And I think that that followsfrom faith and love and hope.
So non reductive because offaith, because we believe that
we live in a world that belongsto God, the world in which it's
filled with complexity, but allthings hold together in Christ.
(52:27):
And so we don't, yeah, it's adisservice to, to reduce things.
And a big problem is, isreductionism, right?
And we, that happens on allsides and people reducing things
down to something, somethingvery beautiful and complex and
reducing it down to somethingsimplistic.
And then second non dismissive,which is born out of love for
neighbor.
(52:48):
So we should not dismiss ourneighbors because we are called
to love them.
And then finally non anxious.
And that's born out of thetheological virtue of hope.
So there's lots of reasons foranxiety.
There's lots of reasons toworry, but ultimately if Jesus
Christ is raised from the dead,you don't have to worry as, as a
Christian.
And, uh, and so that means thatyou don't have to fear culture
(53:11):
as if it could somehow undo theresurrection or as if it could
undo God's work in the world oras if the church is going to
sort of just like disappear andgo out of business because of
whatever the latest threat tothe churches, the church has
this beautiful, broken work ofGod across time and space and in
all across all differentchallenges.
(53:32):
And so I'm just trying toarticulate an approach that is
trying to get a sense of thecomplexity of the conversation,
and yet give hope that we canactually make a difference in
the way that we engage it.
And to say that yourinterpretation of culture and
your interpretation of scriptureis not just what you think about
(53:56):
it, but it's actually, when youdo like the way that you live
your life, that's yourinterpretation.
Finally, the way that you put itall together and make a life
that is either resonant withscripture or not resonant with
scripture.
So that's the basic, that's thebasic idea.
I'm still working on theelevator pitch, uh, you know,
32nd version, but that's whatI'm trying to do.
Amy Mantravadi (54:19):
Well, I liked the many times you mentioned
reducing anxiety because in thistime of COVID, I think if one
thing we all need is to step toreduce our anxiety and our
contentiousness.
So I appreciate that.
And thank you so much for takingthe time to talk with me today.
I think it's been a verybeneficial discussion.
Justin Ariel Bailey (54:38):
Yeah.
Thanks so much, really greatquestions.
And thank you.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
[inaudible] where we arrive at[inaudible]
Jon Guerra (55:07):
[inaudible]
Amy Mantravadi (55:09):
It was a pleasure to speak with Justin
today about his bookre-imagining apologetics.
Next week, I'll be talking toDr.
Alex sang about the at timesuneasy relationship between
Christianity and philosophy.
I hope you can join us as wetake a deep dive into church
history.
This podcast is written andproduced by yours.
Truly please send all complaintsby mail to 1600 Pennsylvania
(55:30):
avenue, Washington, DC.
The music you've been listeningto is from the song citizens by
Christian recording artists,John Guerra, off his album,
Keeper of Days.
Reviews and ratings areimportant and helping people
discover new shows.
If you have a moment, pleaseleave an honest rating or review
for this podcast, wherever youlisten to it.
Also consider mentioning it tofriends or sharing episodes on
(55:52):
social media.
I know your time is valuable andthank you in advance for any
help you can provide now to himwho is able to keep you from
stumbling and to make you standin the presence of his glory.
Blameless with great joy to theonly God, our savior through
Jesus Christ.
Our Lord be glory, majesty,dominion, and authority before
all time and now and forever.
(56:13):
Amen.
Have a great week.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
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