The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

Hans Hofmann, painter

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

- generally attributed to Abraham Lincoln

I’m going to post one of my favorite little pieces written by one of my favorite authors here, The Fantastic Imagination by George MacDonald. I know it’s a longish thing to post here, but it’s very worthwhile reading and it gets at a lot of ideas that have been influential on me and helped me think about a variety of topics in a different way. I hope anyone else that reads it here finds it equally fruitful.

The Fantastic Imagination

Introduction from The Light Princess and other Fairy Tales, also reprinted in a Dish of Orts.

That we have in English no word corresponding to the German Märchen, drives us to use the word Fairytale, regardless of the fact that the tale may have nothing to do with any sort of fairy. The old use of the word Fairy, by Spenser at least, might, however, well be adduced, were justification or excuse necessary where need must.

Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale; then read this and that as well, and you will see what is a fairytale. Were I further begged to describe the fairytale, or define what it is, I would make answer, that I should as soon think of describing the abstract human face, or stating what must go to constitute a human being. A fairytale is just a fairytale, as a face is just a face; and of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful.

Many a man, however, who would not attempt to define a man, might venture to say something as to what a man ought to be: even so much I will not in this place venture with regard to the fairytale, for my long past work in that kind might but poorly instance or illustrate my now more matured judgment. I will but say some things helpful to the reading, in right-minded fashion, of such fairytales as I would wish to write, or care to read.

Some thinkers would feel sorely hampered if at liberty to use no forms but such as existed in nature, or to invent nothing save in accordance with the laws of the world of the senses; but it must not therefore be imagined that they desire escape from the region of law. Nothing lawless can show the least reason why it should exist, or could at best have more than an appearance of life.

The natural world has its laws, and no man must interfere with them in the way of presentment any more than in the way of use; but they themselves may suggest laws of other kinds, and man may, if he pleases, invent a little world of his own, with its own laws; for there is that in him which delights in calling up new forms–which is the nearest, perhaps, he can come to creation. When such forms are new embodiments of old truths, we call them products of the Imagination; when they are mere inventions, however lovely, I should call them the work of the Fancy: in either case, Law has been diligently at work.

His world once invented, the highest law that comes next into play is, that there shall be harmony between the laws by which the new world has begun to exist; and in the process of his creation, the inventor must hold by those laws. The moment he forgets one of them, he makes the story, by its own postulates, incredible. To be able to live a moment in an imagined world, we must see the laws of its existence obeyed. Those broken, we fall out of it. The imagination in us, whose exercise is essential to the most temporary submission to the imagination of another, immediately, with the disappearance of Law, ceases to act. Suppose the gracious creatures of some childlike region of Fairyland talking either cockney or Gascon!  Would not the tale, however lovelily begun, sink once to the level of the Burlesque–of all forms of literature the least worthy? A man’s inventions may be stupid or clever, but if he does not hold by the laws of them, or if he makes one law jar with another, he contradicts himself as an inventor, he is no artist. He does not rightly consort his instruments, or he tunes them in different keys. The mind of man is the product of live Law; it thinks by law, it dwells in the midst of law, it gathers from law its growth; with law, therefore, can it alone work to any result.  Inharmonious, unconsorting ideas will come to a man, but if he try to use one of such, his work will grow dull, and he will drop it from mere lack of interest. Law is the soil in which alone beauty will grow; beauty is the only stuff in which Truth can be clothed; and you may, if you will, call Imagination the tailor that cuts her garments to fit her, and Fancy his journeyman that puts the pieces of them together, or perhaps at most embroiders their button-holes. Obeying law, the maker works like his creator; not obeying law, he is such a fool as heaps a pile of stones and calls it a church.

In the moral world it is different: there a man may clothe in new forms, and for this employ his imagination freely, but he must invent nothing.  He may not, for any purpose, turn its laws upside down. He must not meddle with the relations of live souls. The laws of the spirit of man must hold, alike in this world and in any world he may invent. It were no offence to suppose a world in which everything repelled instead of attracted the things around it; it would be wicked to write a tale representing a man it called good as always doing bad things, or a man it called bad as always doing good things: the notion itself is absolutely lawless. In physical things a man may invent; in moral things he must obey–and take their laws with him into his invented world as well.

“You write as if a fairytale were a thing of importance: must it have meaning?”

It cannot help having some meaning; if it have proportion and harmony it has vitality, and vitality is truth. The beauty may be plainer in it than the truth, but without the truth the beauty could not be, and the fairytale would give no delight. Everyone, however, who feels the story, will read its meaning after his own nature and development: one man will read one meaning in it, another will read another.

“If so, how am I to assure myself that I am not reading my own meaning into it, but yours out of it?”

Why should you be so assured? It may be better that you should read your meaning into it. That may be a higher operation of your intellect than the mere reading of mine out of it: your meaning may be superior to mine.

“Suppose my child ask me what the fairytale means, what am I to say?”

If you do not know what it means, what is easier than to say so? If you do see a meaning in it, there it is for you to give him. A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much. At all events, the business of the painter is not to teach zoology.

But indeed your children are not likely to trouble you about the meaning.  They find what they are capable of finding, and more would be too much.  For my part, I do not write for children, but for the childlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.

A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it not an allegory. He must be an artist indeed who can, in any mode, produce a strict allegory that is not a weariness to the spirit. An allegory must be Mastery or Moorditch.

A fairytale, like a butterfly or a bee, helps itself on all sides, sips every wholesome flower, and spoils not one. The true fairytale is, to my mind, very like the sonata. We all know that a sonata means something; and where there is the faculty of talking with suitable vagueness, and choosing metaphor sufficiently loose, mind may approach mind, in the interpretation of a sonata, with the result of a more or less contenting consciousness of sympathy. But if two or three men sat down to write each what the sonata meant to him, what approximation to definite idea would be the result?  Little enough–and that little more than needful. We should find it had roused related, if not identical, feelings, but probably not one common thought. Has the sonata therefore failed? Had it undertaken to convey, or ought it to be expected to impart anything defined, anything notionally recognisable?

“But words are not music; words at least are meant and fitted to carry a precise meaning!”

It is very seldom indeed that they carry the exact meaning of any user of them! And if they can be so used as to convey definite meaning, it does not follow that they ought never to carry anything else. Words are live things that may be variously employed to various ends. They can convey a scientific fact, or throw a shadow of her child’s dream on the heart of a mother. They are things to put together like the pieces of dissected map, or to arrange like the notes on a stave. Is the music in them to go for nothing? It can hardly help the definiteness of a meaning: is it therefore to be disregarded? They have length, and breadth, and outline: have they nothing to do with depth? Have they only to describe, never to impress? Has nothing any claim to their use but definite? The cause of a child’s tears may be altogether undefinable: has the mother therefore no antidote for his vague misery? That may be strong in colour which has no evident outline. A fairtytale, a sonata, a gathering storm, a limitless night, seizes you and sweeps you away: do you begin at once to wrestle with it and ask whence its power over you, whither it is carrying you?  The law of each is in the mind of its composer; that law makes one man feel this way, another man feel that way. To one the sonata is a world of odour and beauty, to another of soothing only and sweetness. To one, the cloudy rendezvous is a wild dance, with a terror at its heart; to another, a majestic march of heavenly hosts, with Truth in their centre pointing their course, but as yet restraining her voice. The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.

I will go farther.–The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is–not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself. The best Nature does for us is to work in us such moods in which thoughts of high import arise. Does any aspect of Nature wake but one thought? Does she ever suggest only one definite thing? Does she make any two men in the same place at the same moment think the same thing?  Is she therefore a failure, because she is not definite? Is it nothing that she rouses the something deeper than the understanding–the power that underlies thoughts? Does she not set feeling, and so thinking at work? Would it be better that she did this after one fashion and not after many fashions? Nature is mood-engendering, thought-provoking: such ought the sonata, such ought the fairytale to be.

“But a man may then imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant!”

Not what he pleases, but what he can. If he be not a true man, he will draw evil out of the best; we need not mind how he treats any work of art! If he be a true man, he will imagine true things; what matter whether I meant them or not? They are there none the less that I cannot claim putting them there! One difference between God’s work and man’s is, that, while God’s work cannot mean more than he meant, man’s must mean more than he meant. For in everything that God has made, there is a layer upon layer of ascending significance; also he expresses the same thought in higher and higher kinds of that thought: it is God’s things, his embodied thoughts, which alone a man has to use, modified and adapted to his own purposes, for the expression of his thoughts; therefore he cannot help his words and figures falling into such combinations in the mind of another as he had himself not foreseen, so many are the thoughts allied to every other thought, so many are the relations involved in every figure, so many the facts hinted in every symbol. A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time things that came from thoughts beyond his own.

“But surely you would explain your idea to one who asked you?”

I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSE under what I foolishly meant for one. Any key to a work of imagination would be nearly, if not quite, as absurd. The tale is there not to hide, but to show: if it show nothing at your window, do not open your door to it; leave it out in the cold. To ask me to explain, is to say, “Roses!  Boil them, or we won’t have them!” My tales may not be roses but I will not boil them.

So long as I think my dog can bark, I will not sit up to bark for him.

If a writer’s aim be logical conviction, he must spare no logical pains, not merely to be understood, but to escape being misunderstood; where his object is to move by suggestion, to cause to imagine, then let him assail the soul of his reader as the wind assails an aeolian harp. If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it. Let fairytale of mine go for a firefly that now flashes, now is dark, but may flash again.  Caught in a hand which does not love its kind, it will turn to an insignificant ugly thing, that can neither flash nor fly.

The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear upon it, but to be still and let it work on that part of us for whose sake it exists. We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must–he cannot help himself–become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed.

If any strain of my “broken music” make a child’s eyes flash, or his mother’s grow for a moment dim, my labour will not have been in vain.

THE END

I have been rather discouraged lately with the distance that I feel between myself and the Lord and with my unwillingness to follow Him. Today I went back to one of my favorite books, The Letters of John Newton, and was encouraged by his letter entitled, How to keep close to the Lord, and I thought I’d post it here in case others might wrestle with the same things. I particularly appreciate the humility with which Newton addresses this subject.

How to keep close to the Lord

Dear Madam,

You would have me tell you what are the best means to be used by a young person, to prevent the world, with all its opening and ensnaring scenes, from drawing the heart aside from God. It is an important question; but I apprehend your own heart will tell you, that you are already possessed of all the information concerning it which you can well expect from me. I could only attempt to answer it from the Bible, which lies open to you likewise. If your heart is like mine, it must confess, that when it turns aside from God, it is seldom through ignorance of the proper means or motives which should have kept us near him, but rather from an evil principle within, which prevails against our better judgment, and renders us unfaithful to light already received.

I could offer you rules, cautions, advices in abundance; for I find it comparatively easy to preach to others. But if you should further ask me, “How shall I effectually reduce them to practice?” I feel that I am so deficient, and so much at a loss in this matter myself, that I know not well what to say to you. Yet something must be said.

In the first place, then, I would observe, that though it be our bounden duty, and the highest privilege we can propose to ourselves, to have our hearts kept close to the Lord; yet we must not expect it absolutely or perfectly, much less all at once: we shall keep close to him, in proportion as we are solidly convinced of the infinite disparity between him and the things which would presume to stand in competition with him, and the folly, as well as ingratitude, of departing from him. But these points are only to be learned from experience, and by smarting under a series of painful disappointments in our expectations from creatures. Our judgements may be quickly satisfied that his favour is better than life, while yet it is in the power of a mere trifle to turn us aside. The Lord permits us to feel our weakness, that we may be sensible of it; for though we are ready in words to confess that we are weak, we do not so properly know it, till that secret, though unallowed, dependence we have upon some strength in ourselves, is brought to the trial, and fails us. To be humble, and, like a little child, afraid of taking a step alone, and so conscious of snares and dangers around us, as to cry to him continually to hold us up that we may be safe, is the sure, the infallible, the only secret of walking closely with him.

But how shall we attain this humble frame of spirit? It must be, as I said, from a real and sensible conviction of our weakness and vileness, which we cannot learn (at least I have not been able to learn it) merely from books or preachers. The providence of God concurs with his Holy Spirit in his merciful design of making us acquainted with ourselves. It is indeed a great mercy to be preserved from such declensions as might fall under the notice of our fellow-creatures; but when they can observe nothing of consequence to object to us, things may be far from right with us in the sight of him who judges not only actions, but the thoughts and first motions of the heart. And indeed could we for a season so cleave to God as to find little or nothing in ourselves to be ashamed of, we are such poor creatures, that we should presently grow vain and self-sufficient, and expose ourselves to the greatest danger of falling.

There are, however, means to be observed on our part; and though you know them, I will repeat the principal, because you desire me.  The first is Prayer; and here, above all things, we should pray for humility. It may be called both the guard of all other graces, and the soil in which they grow.   The second, Attention to the Scripture.  Your question is directly answered in Psalm 119:9.   The precepts are our rule and delight, the promises our strength and encouragement: the good recorded of the saints is proposed for our encouragement; their miscarriages are as land-marks set up to warn us of the rocks and shoals which lie in the way of our passage. The study of the whole scheme of Gospel-salvation, respecting the person, life, doctrine, death, and glory of our Redeemer, is appointed to form our souls to a spiritual and divine taste; and so far as this prevails and grows in us, the trifles that would draw us from the Lord, will lose their influence, and appear, divested of the glare with which they strike the senses, mere vanity and nothing.   The third grand means is, Consideration or Recollection; a careful regard to those temptations and snares, to which, from our tempers, situations, or connections, we are more immediately exposed, and by which we have been formerly hindered.   It may be well in the morning, ere we leave our chambers, to forecast, as far as we are able, the probable circumstances of the day before us.   Yet the observance of this, as well as of every rule that can be offered, may dwindle into a mere form. However, I trust the Lord, who has given you a desire to live to him, will be your guard and teacher. There is none teacheth like him.

I am, &c.

I have observed a dual pair of critical impulses in my thinking when I am bothered by someone else’s interpretation of a passage of Scripture. On the one hand, I may question whether their interpretation can be derived from the immediate Scriptural context in the way that they have suggested. But then on the other hand, I may then question whether their interpretation is consistent with the testimony of Scripture as a whole.

Now obviously, both of these are valid and legitimate questions, which always ought to be asked about any interpretation. But it is significant to note that while anyone can easily make either of these two hermeneutical errors, logically they mutually exclusive. In other words, if you are paying very careful attention to the immediate context of a passage and making the mistake of not heeding its significance within its larger canonical context, it is impossible to simultaneously make the mistake of reading that same interpretation into the passage by not paying careful enough attention to the immediate context. It is of course possible that you could come to one mistaken conclusion that is based upon the first error, and then immediately come to a second mistaken conclusion based upon the second error, but this does not seem very likely. Most of the time we tend toward a pattern of one extreme or the other, either reading too much into a text, or blinkering ourselves to the interpretive significance of the larger context.

But what I find disturbing is the fact that when I encounter a bothersome interpretation of a text, I am often suspicious of both errors. I may first say, “I don’t see how he’s getting that out of this text!” And when he shows me how it is a legitimate interpretation within the context, I may then think, “Well, he’s probably just not paying enough attention to the larger context of this passage (or chapter, or book, or Scripture as a whole, etc…)”.

While it makes sense to be alert for either of two of the most common hermeneutical errors, the fact that I suspect these two mutually exclusive errors, one on the heels of the other, suggests that another motive is at work in me. It suggests that I have the tendency to challenge and discount any interpretation that makes me uncomfortable, for whatever reason that might be. I might be able to come up with a seemingly valid critique of the person’s hermeneutical method, but the fact is, I was looking for a reason to discount their interpretation because its implications were bothersome to me.  This is not a healthy tendency, and it is good to be wary of it whenever I evaluate another’s interpretation of Scripture. The goal of exegeting Scripture should always be to better understand and come to grips with what it is really saying, not being comfortable with what we think says.

If I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on bio-chemistry, and bio-chemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees. And this to me is the final test. This is how I distinguish between dreaming and waking. When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know that there are such things as dreams; I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner; I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the nightmare I could not have fitted in my waking experience. The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world; the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one. For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific point of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I can see it, but because by it I see everything else. 

- C.S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry” in The Weight of Glory

Here’s another long-overdue Thursday 13. Thanks for reading and praying!

1. We had a wonderful Christmas break. Our visits to St. Louis South Dakota were rich and restful.

2. We got to see the beautiful new house recently purchase by Laura’s dad and step-mom in Rapid City, which they bought last summer.

3. Our January term was very refreshing. As we already mentioned, we each took a class and audited each-other’s. We had more time to catch up on some to-do’s that we had put off for months.

4. On Martin Luther King weekend, we took a spontaneous 3 day trip (which consisted mostly of driving) to Asheville. It had been too long since we had seen Joel’s family, so we surprised them (or at least Joel’s siblings) with a visit.

5. We did a lot of cooking in January (which is our favorite thing to do)!  We found a wonderful web site that offered videos that taught basic cooking skills (check out www.Rouxbe.com if you ever have the chance!)

6. This spring semester has gotten off to a fast start, and it looks like it will likely be as challenging as the last.

7. This semester we are both taking: Acts and Paul, Old Testament History and Theology 2, Poetry and Wisdom Books, and Theology and Secular Psychology.

8. The last 2 weeks have been particularly hard. Laura experienced some severe stomach pains last Thursday, which rendered her out of commission for most of the day, and this week her laptop bag (which contained her computer, external hard drive, and planner) was stolen from school.

9. We filed a police report for the stolen laptop and sent an email out to all the students, but we haven’t gotten any leads at this point.

10. Since Laura depends on her laptop so heavily (for school, work, etc.), we decided that we probably need to buy her a new one soon.

11. Joel is still really enjoying his job teaching ESL, and loves getting to practice his Spanish.

12. On Valentine’s Day we had a fondue party for the wives in Laura’s Bible study and their husbands. We had a lot of laughs playing our version of the Newly Weds Game.

13. Laura is co-leading a Bible study on Galatians this semester (using the Redeemer Pres small group curriculum)

Praise and Prayer: This week has been extremely challenging (spiritually, emotionally, physically, etc.), but the Lord has been faithful in making his presence and provision known to us, especially through the wisdom of his Word and the love and support of those around us. We’re appreciating more and more all that He has blessed us with, and growing in our faith that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him”. Pray that we would continue to grow in this faith.

While individual interpreters can commit themselves to only one model of reality, they may employ a variety of methods to get at the meaning of a text. There is, however, one qualification: each of the methods adopted must be appropriate to the model of reality embraced by the interpreter.

- V. Phillips Long, The Art of Biblical History

This seems to me to be the most promising approach–divine revelation should be located in both historical events and the interpretive word which mediates these events to us. It also seems to be the approach that is most in keeping with the biblical witness itself. Nevertheless, for some time now the hermeneutic pendulum in biblical studies has continued to swing back and forth between the two poles of event and word…

What is needed, I would argue, is to bring the pendulum to a halt in the middle, where it does not lose touch with either historical event or interpretive word. Again to invoke an analogy from painting, the question can be put this way, “What is of essential importance in a portrait by a great master, the subject itself as a historical person or the masterful interpretation of the subject?” Surely both are important. Even to ask the question in this way is to assume a false dichotomy. Art critics may tend to focus on the artistry of the rendering, while historians may be more interested in what can be learned of the historical personage portrayed, but neither should mistake their particular interest for the full significance of the painting. If historians ignore the painterly aspect (that is, if they lack understanding and appreciation of the artistic medium), they may easily “misread” the portrait or unjustly criticize it as an inadequate representation of the subject. Or worse, if they discount the significance of the portrait simply because it is an artistic interpretation, they thereby cut themselves off from perhaps their only source of historical information about the subject. On the other hand, should art critics, in their appreciation of the artistic genius of the painter, lose sight of the painting’s referential character, they would miss something of the painting’s essential purpose and so prove themselves to be poor critics. A similar dynamic obtains in the study of biblical historiography. What is needed is the ability to do full justice to both the subject and the historian’s (the artist’s) particular interpretation. In other words, both event and interpretive word are important. This, at least, seems to be the Bible’s own view of the matter.

- V. Phillips Long, The Art of Biblical History

To the Christian Church, in the most catholic sense of the word, supernatural religion has always stood for something far more than a system of spiritual instruction or an instrument of moral suasion. The deep sense of sin, which is central in her faith, demands such a divine interposition in the course of natural development as shall work actual changes from guilt to righteousness, from sin to holiness, from life to death, in the sphere not merely of consciousness but of being. Here revelation is on principle inseparable from a background of historic facts, with which to bring man’s life into vital contact is indeed the main reason for its existence…

If what has been said be correct, it will follow that the proposal to declare the facts inessential betrays a lamentably defective appreciation of the soteriological character of Christianity. As a matter of fact, if one carefully examines the representations of those who claim that the results of criticism leave the religious substance of the Old Testament intact, one finds in each case that the truth left intact belongs to the sphere of natural religion and has no direct bearing on the question of sin and salvation. Such truths as monotheism and the ethical nature of God may still be found in the reconstructed Old Testament; what we look for in vain is the Gospel of redemption.

- Geerhardus Vos, “Christian Faith,” p. 299

The Bible is divine discourse act. The “divine” qualifies the literary forms of Scripture (the “micro-genres,” as it were) and so renders them “revelatory” (the “macro-genre“). Revealed truth may be said in many ways.

- Kevin Vanhoozer, “The Semantics of Biblical Literature: Truth and Scripture’s Diverse Literary Forms”

Truth, like Reality, is in one sense One. However, Reality is so rich and multifaceted that it, like white light, can only be conveyed (verbally) by an equally rich “spectrum”–diverse literary forms. While Truth may be “about” Reality (what is), we only recieve the full picture of Reality (what is) by contemplating “true” history, “true” parable, “true” song, “true” poetry. That Scripture has many literary forms is no impediment to the Truth; instead, it is the very possibility of Truth’s expression. The diversity of literary forms does not imply that Scripture contains competing kinds of Truth; it shows rather that Scripture is about various kinds of fact (i.e., historical, metaphysical, moral, etc.). A sentence or text is true if things are as it says they are, but as Aristotle observed, “Being may be said in many ways.”

- Kevin Vanhoozer

If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in judgments.

- Wittgenstein

Unless students of the Bible are willing to sacrifice, as it were, their monolingual and monocultural integrity–that is, unless they are willing, by an effort of imagination, to enter a cultural and literary world different in many respects from their own–even a high view of the Bible’s veracity is no guarantee of a right view of its interpretation.

- V. Phillips Long, The Art of Biblical History

Since the Bible comprises a collection of works of diverse literary genres, the truth claim(s) of this or that biblical text (whta this or that text intends to convey, command, etc.) can be discovered only as each text is read on its own terms, with due recognition of its genre and due attention to its content and wider and narrower contexts.

- V. Phillips Long, The Art of Biblical History

The full hearing of the psalms will be greatly enhanced when the familiar tendency to abstract content from form or to empty form of its content is overcome. To know the psalms are poetic is not to forget that they are Scripture. To read and hear them as Scripture requires that one receive them also as poetry.

- Patrick Miller, Interpreting the Psalms

Unlike prose, which focuses upon the unambiguous denotations of words so as to communicate with exact clarity, poetry exploits the full lexical potential of words. The poet makes use of unusual aspects of the semantic range of a word, chooses terms with emotive connotations, and employs sounds that help to convey the message. In addition, poetry makes extensive use of imagery–word pictures that evoke sensory impressions through verbal associations. Because poems are characteristically brief, they are highly condensed and concentrated forms of utterance in which each detail is consciously selected.

- David Estes, Handbook on the Wisdom Books and Psalms

Whereas the language of prose is utilized primarily toward direct communication, poetic language is characterized by a more transcendent quality. There are aspects of human experience, and aspects of the knowledge of God, for which the mundane language of prose cannot provide adequate expression. Poetry is, among other things, an attempt to transcend the limitations of normal (prosaic) human language and to give expression to something not easily expressed in words.

- Peter Craigie, Psalms 1-50

It’s a real test of what you are as a preacher and minister whether you’re better at showing people their own sin or at showing people Jesus Christ; and the former is far easier than the latter because most of us are much more familiar with our sin than we are with the riches of the glory of the gospel. Which means that, even in the Reformed world, our ministry can be very subjectively oriented and not Trinitarian centered and Christ centered.

- Sinclair Ferguson (from a class lecture at WTS)