The Imagination of God

Art, Creativity and Truth in the Bible

By: Brian Godawa

Narrated by: Brian Godawa

Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

Want to Know God More? Use Your Imagination

This book was previously released with the title, Word Pictures: Knowing God Through Story and Imagination.

Artist and screenwriter Brian Godawa used to revel in his ability to argue the truth of the Gospel, often intellectually crushing his opponents in the process.

But winning an argument does not equal persuading people to follow Jesus. So what’s missing?

Through prayer and searching the Scriptures, Godawa realized that while God cares deeply for rationality, it wasn’t the only tool he used to reach people with his truth.

He discovered that storytelling, visual images, and other art in the Bible were central to Biblical evangelism and Christian apologetics because they could go places reason could never go: into the imagination and the heart.

The Bible is a Work of Art

Weaving historical insight, pop culture and personal narrative throughout, Godawa reveals the importance God places on imagination and creativity in the Scriptures.

You’ll get a biblical foundation to pursue imagination, creativity, beauty, wonder, and mystery in your faith.

You’ll learn what C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien understood: The power of poetry, parables and visual art found in God's Word.

For any Christian who wants to learn Biblical evangelism and Christian apologetics in a postmodern context, this audiobook will help you find a path between the two extremes of intellectualized faith and anti-intellectual faith by recovering a biblical balance between reason and imagination.

©2016 Brian Godawa (P)2016 Brian Godawa

Really, a Revival of Image

Highly reccommend…it will surprise you! Godawa, as artists are, is dismissed as having theological value, and his scholarship is dismissed because he is an artist. That’s a mistake.

Genesis doesn’t say we are made in God’s Word, but in God’s image, and God uses word, the throaty ruakh, to animate dry dust, to give life. God uses word to imagine, to imagine Creation, to imagine us.

Word is not life, image is life, and Godawa uses word and rationality in the service of image, and therefore in the service of God, to revive image, to immerse us in image so that image is born again as the primary medium of the Master Artist, our Creator. Godawa’s scholarship is rigorous, in the vein of a Michael Heiser, in this celebration and revivification of image and imagination for God’s people, Jew and Christian, alike, But the scholarship serves not solely to educate, but to bring alive aspects of the Biblical Worldview that have been devalued, neglected and disowned. Godawa not only argues for but models and embodies the reclamation of image and imagination as material and mode of knowing and relating to God and His Word.

Art is important and necessary!

I feel like I've been waiting for this book all my life. Their are so many misconceptions on the role of creativity and its relationship with the Christian faith. Godawa's contribution to this rarely had conversation is encouraging to say the least! This book shows not only that we should be empowered as believers to put out great pieces of Art but also the importance art plays in our society as a whole. Every creative person, especially those of faith, needs to read this book!