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Inklings of Reality: Essays Toward a Christian Philosophy of Letters
In Inklings of Reality, poet and theologian Donald T. Williams revisits some of the most interesting and constructive moments in the history of Christian reflection on life's great issues and helps us develop a rich and dynamic Christian philosophy of reading.
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279 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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July 30, 2011This is a little known book, but in it Don Williams is doing something sorely needed--he is calling for literacy among Christians. Christians are people fo The Book, and if they are not readers and not full of what Williams calls "Biblical Consciousness" they are losing touch with their roots and their God. William's essays are lucid and compelling. This one is a sleeper. Read it.
August 9, 2012
This book was actually quite interesting and I am not a big literature fan. But Donald Williams surprised me and I really liked the book. His analysis of poetry can also be applied to other forms of art and he ends up giving quite a good critique of some of the huge problems the post modernism has exacerbated and gives some thought provoking answers to how to respond.
January 17, 2018
This book is an excellent resource for English teachers who want to understand the trends of literature from a Christian perspective. I have used it and loved it!
March 22, 2020
Writing from personal interest, I would say this is a great book, because it is precisely my interest. Williams writes of the need for a theology of writing for Evangelicals, and looks at several authors who have written the literature that the Christian critic has to consider to form this theology. Authors include Augustine, Calvin, John Bunyan, Sir Philip Sidney, George Herbert, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, T. S. Eliot, and Flannery O'Connor. Williams puts forward something of a philosophy of literature, taking into account the writings of these authors, emphasizing biblical consciousness and wholeness of vison. These two concepts relate to reading the Bible first, and reading literature, especially the classics, second. Williams challenges Christians, especially evangelicals, to think deeply, to do as Harry Blamires writes - think Christianly. Take into account both the Bible and these other works to form a worldview from which to see everything.
August 20, 2021
The Christian Literati
“I do not mean to say that illiterate peoples are excluded from spirituality; but they are handicapped in their pursuit of it.” Donald T. Williams, PhD, Inklings of Reality, p. 20.
One need not be as learned as Professor and Scholar Donald T. Williams to be considered a Christian worthy of the name, but it helps … a lot. The study of literature, he says, repairs the effects of the Fall and awakens one to that “kind of mind God designed us to have.” p. 16.
Who can attain this awakened state? The first chapter opens with a David Thoreau quote that “the millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life.” (p. 1.) Wouldn’t you know, but the author is both a poet and a divine! Yet with this pride of place comes humility. The Reverend Poet Mr. Williams observes with self-deprecating modesty that Thoreau’s “statistics are exaggerated and elitist” even while his point “is worth some thought.” (p. 1.) The author’s humility will not allow him to share with us what the true statistics are. Perhaps ten in a hundred million?
The author has been granted access to the innermost circle by the Great Men of Letters themselves, successfully distinguishing himself from the legions of impious evangelicals and those fit only for manual labor: “I enter the courts of these men and they lovingly receive me”; “they remind me that the shoddy standards of both piety and thought in our own day are irrelevant to my work.” (p. xvi.) The author’s work is one and the same with that of the Holy Spirit; a work that is near nonexistent among evangelicals: “the most disturbing fact about American Evangelical Christianity … is the almost total absence of that work from the scene.” (p. 18.)
And what, exactly, is that work? The Great Men, the poets and divines, the one among ten millions, the Venerable Doctor Williams have alone performed the Herculean task of acquiring “textual consciousness” through the study of Literature. They then progressed to restructuring the categories of their minds to align with Scripture, thereby acquiring a higher level of consciousness, called Biblical Consciousness, that produces in them a special vision, called Wholeness of Vision, by which they bind all particular facts of our worldly experiences to a single coherent conceptualization of reality: a Christian worldview. (p. 15-16.) By the power of their heightened consciousness and universal vision the Christian literati could control the world, and indeed they once did before men of Mr. Williams' kind became rare as Mediterranean monk seals: “Biblical consciousness and the wholeness of vision it produces are endangered species in the modern world. But there was a time when they ruled the earth ….” (p. 23.)
Worldview, according to Mr. Williams, is “what the Christian faith is all about.” (p. 14.) But one might have a brilliantly conceived conceptualization of reality constructed from Scripture, and yet still be devoid of any effectual knowledge of spiritual reality and, most importantly, of the person of Jesus Christ. John Owen, whom the author ranks among his Great Men of Letters, wrote:
“I shall never grant that a man understands the Scripture aright who understands the words of it only, and not the things which is the mind of God in them"; "There is a light in the gospel, ‘the light of the glorious gospel of Christ,’ 2 Cor. iv.4; but there must be a light also in our hearts, or we cannot discern it. And this is no natural light, or a light that is common unto all; but it is a light that, in a way of grace, is given unto them that do believe. And it is wrought in us by the same kind of efficiency as God created light with at the beginning of the world, - namely,
by a productive act of power.” Pneumatologia, pp. 577, 586.
Owen described those who would reduce this supernatural, experiential revelation to something they could understand by the natural power of the mind and, “because they cannot raise their minds unto a comprehension of these mysteries, as they are in themselves, they corrupt and debase them to suit their own low, carnal apprehensions.” Pneumatologia, p. 562. That is what Williams has done in one of the most disappointing passages of his book. When the apostle Paul speaks of God “shining in our hearts to give the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” in 2 Cor. 4:6, he is speaking of this divine revelation by which the Holy Spirit directly reveals spiritual reality to the believer. But Williams, quoting from this verse, reduces it to a metaphor for the literati’s rational understanding of the Christian worldview and its application to the real world. (p. 14.)
Among the early Christians, there were not many who were wise according the flesh. 1 Cor. 1:26. But to them was given “the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God.” 1 Cor. 2:12. The Lord of heaven and earth, had “hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants.” Matt. 11:25. That is how the “illiterate” can know and be known by Jesus Christ intimately and directly as they have seen his countenance, while the worldly-wise know of Him only by hearsay. And that makes all the difference
“I do not mean to say that illiterate peoples are excluded from spirituality; but they are handicapped in their pursuit of it.” Donald T. Williams, PhD, Inklings of Reality, p. 20.
One need not be as learned as Professor and Scholar Donald T. Williams to be considered a Christian worthy of the name, but it helps … a lot. The study of literature, he says, repairs the effects of the Fall and awakens one to that “kind of mind God designed us to have.” p. 16.
Who can attain this awakened state? The first chapter opens with a David Thoreau quote that “the millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life.” (p. 1.) Wouldn’t you know, but the author is both a poet and a divine! Yet with this pride of place comes humility. The Reverend Poet Mr. Williams observes with self-deprecating modesty that Thoreau’s “statistics are exaggerated and elitist” even while his point “is worth some thought.” (p. 1.) The author’s humility will not allow him to share with us what the true statistics are. Perhaps ten in a hundred million?
The author has been granted access to the innermost circle by the Great Men of Letters themselves, successfully distinguishing himself from the legions of impious evangelicals and those fit only for manual labor: “I enter the courts of these men and they lovingly receive me”; “they remind me that the shoddy standards of both piety and thought in our own day are irrelevant to my work.” (p. xvi.) The author’s work is one and the same with that of the Holy Spirit; a work that is near nonexistent among evangelicals: “the most disturbing fact about American Evangelical Christianity … is the almost total absence of that work from the scene.” (p. 18.)
And what, exactly, is that work? The Great Men, the poets and divines, the one among ten millions, the Venerable Doctor Williams have alone performed the Herculean task of acquiring “textual consciousness” through the study of Literature. They then progressed to restructuring the categories of their minds to align with Scripture, thereby acquiring a higher level of consciousness, called Biblical Consciousness, that produces in them a special vision, called Wholeness of Vision, by which they bind all particular facts of our worldly experiences to a single coherent conceptualization of reality: a Christian worldview. (p. 15-16.) By the power of their heightened consciousness and universal vision the Christian literati could control the world, and indeed they once did before men of Mr. Williams' kind became rare as Mediterranean monk seals: “Biblical consciousness and the wholeness of vision it produces are endangered species in the modern world. But there was a time when they ruled the earth ….” (p. 23.)
Worldview, according to Mr. Williams, is “what the Christian faith is all about.” (p. 14.) But one might have a brilliantly conceived conceptualization of reality constructed from Scripture, and yet still be devoid of any effectual knowledge of spiritual reality and, most importantly, of the person of Jesus Christ. John Owen, whom the author ranks among his Great Men of Letters, wrote:
“I shall never grant that a man understands the Scripture aright who understands the words of it only, and not the things which is the mind of God in them"; "There is a light in the gospel, ‘the light of the glorious gospel of Christ,’ 2 Cor. iv.4; but there must be a light also in our hearts, or we cannot discern it. And this is no natural light, or a light that is common unto all; but it is a light that, in a way of grace, is given unto them that do believe. And it is wrought in us by the same kind of efficiency as God created light with at the beginning of the world, - namely,
by a productive act of power.” Pneumatologia, pp. 577, 586.
Owen described those who would reduce this supernatural, experiential revelation to something they could understand by the natural power of the mind and, “because they cannot raise their minds unto a comprehension of these mysteries, as they are in themselves, they corrupt and debase them to suit their own low, carnal apprehensions.” Pneumatologia, p. 562. That is what Williams has done in one of the most disappointing passages of his book. When the apostle Paul speaks of God “shining in our hearts to give the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” in 2 Cor. 4:6, he is speaking of this divine revelation by which the Holy Spirit directly reveals spiritual reality to the believer. But Williams, quoting from this verse, reduces it to a metaphor for the literati’s rational understanding of the Christian worldview and its application to the real world. (p. 14.)
Among the early Christians, there were not many who were wise according the flesh. 1 Cor. 1:26. But to them was given “the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God.” 1 Cor. 2:12. The Lord of heaven and earth, had “hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants.” Matt. 11:25. That is how the “illiterate” can know and be known by Jesus Christ intimately and directly as they have seen his countenance, while the worldly-wise know of Him only by hearsay. And that makes all the difference
May 28, 2015
This is a sound set of essays on poetics, literature and our access to reality .
There are essays on Calvin as a humanist; Herbert and Sidney as poets; plus an insightful piece on why evangelicals can't write.
There are essays on Calvin as a humanist; Herbert and Sidney as poets; plus an insightful piece on why evangelicals can't write.
December 18, 2013
This is an excellent read if you're trying to understand the inseparable tie between Christianity and literature. Thanks Dr Williams...
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews