As Christians, we are to be concerned with three qualities: the True, the Good and the Beautiful. These are three virtues that touch the heart of the Christian worldview. Excellence is to be the goal of our endeavors.

The origins of art is found in the act of Creation itself. We are creative because we were created by a creative God whose image we bear. God is the supreme artist. We are aware of the great beauty of the world, even in its fallen state. We are told in Psalm 139 that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made". Even in describing His great redemption, artistic images are evoked. We are His "workmanship", clay vessels molded and shaped by a Master craftsman.

In his important book Art In Action, Nicholas Wolterstorff argues that works of art are first and foremost objects and instruments of action. They are inextricably woven into the fabric of human passions, endeavors and purposes. They are vehicles through which we carry out our intentions with respect to the world. Although perceptual contemplation is a valid activity to be engaged in, it is not the sine qua non of art. "Works of art equip us for action, and the range of actions for which they equip us is very nearly as broad as the range of human action itself...any aesthetic that ignores the enormous diversity of actions in which art plays a role, in fact and by intent, is bound to yield distortion and inscrutability" (Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art In Action, (Grand Rapids:Eerdmans, 1980), p. 10.)

Jesus reminds us that understanding will come if we have "eyes to see". With Christ there is no divorcement of the sign from the signifier. Our tendency to fragment reality may be due to our inability since the fall to handle more than a few facets of existence at a time. The rectification of this comes with the renewal of our mind. Here we join sanctified reason with the sanctified imagination to come to a comprehension that would be beyond us on our own. In Isaiah 1 :18 , when God reasons with us, He does so through images created by words. In this way, the words are tattooed on our psyche, or if you prefer, written on our hearts.

We can use vivid analogies and images to express the unliveability of man apart from God to people living in the real world. Concrete language, stories, imagery, are invaluable (as narrative theologians have rightly argued). There are those who have trouble believing that our language describes a real world. To show that critical realism matters, we can use illustrations. Though concrete illustrations are critical, we should not abandon a vigorous use of abstract and conceptual modes of discourse in a total acquiescence to narrativism. This approach can impact the way we do apologetics, homiletics, and art. Stories are extraordinarily powerful, but deceptively ambiguous. Even Jesus' parables often left his audiences daunted. But let me make it clear that I am not promoting the use of imaginative constructs alone. As I have stated above, we must recapture the repudiated heritage of the arts and creativity to form a full orbed holistic approach to communicating Truth which marries the power of reason and propositional logic with the imagination. The tendency has been to choose one approach to the exclusion of the other. The power of stories alone to generate life-changing faith is much overestimated. Alone, of course, is the key word here.

Literature, poetry, music, drama, creative expression, and all the arts are the Christian's ally and a part of their repudiated heritage. As Christians apply a consistent Christian worldview to the rest of life, so may the arts be redeemed as a means of woirship and grace in the fallen world.