Kristen Helm

“Secular materialism dismisses belief in spiritual reality and the use of imagination as false; it sees beauty as dispensable and subjective, emotion as chemical, imagination (and with it, religion) as fantasy. Ironically, this view increasingly influences the way we live out our faith and speak about God, as apologists seek to argue God's existence on materialism's own terms, using scientific proof–style reasoning, and analytical debate to "prove" the reality of the spiritual world. It filters down to us in a thousand ordinary ways, shaping our models of spiritual growth, lines of productivity or casting faith as an assent to a list of doctrinal statements rather than the renewal of ourselves and stories. It makes us doubt the "usefulness" of beauty or the spiritual purpose of imagination, but this is a profoundly un-Christian view of faith and personhood. To reject image, emotion, and story as peripheral to faith is to ignore the way God created us – as being made in his image to create in our turn, as souls capable of both reason and analysis, but also equally capable of imagination, creativity, and emotion.”
― Sarah Clarkson

“The threefold misery of men introduced by sin--ignorance, guilt and the tyranny and bondage by sin--required this conjunction of a threefold office. Ignorance is healed by the prophetic; guilt by the priestly; the tyranny and corruption of sin by the kingly. Prophetic light scatters the darkness of error; the merit of the Priest takes away guilt and procures a reconciliation for us; the power of the King removes the bondage of sin and death. The Prophet shows God to us; the Priest leads us to God; and the King joins together and glorifies us with God. The Prophet enlightens the mind by the Spirit of illumination; the Priest by the Spirit of consolation tranquilizes the heart and conscience; the King by the Spirit of sanctification subdues rebellious affections.”
― Francis Turretin

“God made the human soul illustrious, and designed it for exalted pursuits and a glorious destiny. To expand our finite faculties, and afford them a culture both profound and elevating. Nature is spread around us, with all its stupendous proportions, and Revelation speaks to us of an eternal augmentation of knowledge hereafter, for weal or woe.”
― E. L. Magoon

“The soul, since by its nature, what it is, and is related to the higher kind of reality in the realm of being, when it sees something akin to it or a trace of its kindred reality is delighted and thrilled and returns to itself and remembers itself and it’s own possessions… Being in the presence of such beauty doesn’t just reverberate with the inner me, but also makes me want to pull that best part up and out of me, to strip off all that is superfluous and useless, and be the purest, cleanest version of me. By seeing beauty, I want to be beauty. When I see beauty, I have the sense that everything can change. I can start over. I can liberate the inner me. Plotinus then, imagines a kind of dialectic in which I am shocked by beauty, inspired by it, reverberate with it interiorly, and then resolve to impose more unity on my life, become less disordered, so that I slowly become like what I admire. Plotinus calls this working on your inner statue. Over the course of time, as I polish the statue and reduce the difference between me and the external experience of beauty, a kind of inner light pools up within me, an intellectual generosity, a spiritual magnanimity. At this point, says Plotinus, I am ready for the deep dive within.”
― Jason M. Baxter, An Introduction to Christian Mysticism: Recovering the Wildness of Spiritual Life - Library Edition