The Disciplined Heart: Love, Destiny & Imagination

by Caroline J., Simon

Often what passes for love is a product of self-deception and wishful thinking. Genuine love, according to philosopher Caroline J. Simon, must be based on knowledge of reality, and Christianity affirms that reality includes not just who people are but the unfolding story of who God intends them to be.

Taking the use of narrative seriously, The Disciplined Heart draws on works of literature to display a Christian understanding of love in its various love of self, love of neighbor, friendship, romantic love, and marital love. Using instances of love and its counterfeits in novels and short stories by such authors as Flannery O'Connor, Leo Tolstoy, George Eliot, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Simon constructs an account of love's joys and obligations that both charms and instructs. Learned, astute, and elegantly written, The Disciplined Heart is a groundbreaking work at the intersection of theology, philosophy, and literary analysis.

Genres: Spirituality

214 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1997

Reviews

[Kenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simon's work on good fiction and how it can train our imagination to see others' destiny provided an important insight for me in pastoral work. Our sense of calling, or destiny, is a prime source for Christian motivation, and involves seeing God’s intention for ourselves and others, even what might not yet exist in our lives but should. This work helped me read fiction and introduced me to some of my favorite authors. Her thesis is that loving others requires imagination to see who they are and what they can become, and reading fiction can help us develop that kind of imagination.

[Monte Rice · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The basic ideas presented in this book can be set out with deceptive simplicity. Love must be based on and yields knowledge, knowledge of the loved one’s destiny or true self. I call the capacity for such knowledge ‘imagination.’ Both imagination and love have counterfeits. We often fool ourselves into thinking that we love when in fact we are indulging in ‘fiction-making: seeing people as who we wish they were rather than who they are.” (1)

[Jonathan]

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