with which one speaks must be a voice such that one can be heard—a voice
such that one genuinely participates in the dialogue of the discipline.’^66
If Wolterstorff challenges us to be audible within the general discourses of
our studies, let me relay one last challenge that takes us back to my primary
subject of poetry and to the arts generally. They too have their roles to play and
have specific contributions to offer Christian thinkers and the broader Chris-
tian community. Tanya M. Luhrmann, author of the much-cited bookWhen
God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with
God, has recently point out the importance of the imagination in our worship,
and of the ways in which we process and make meaningful the very sources of
our faith, the details of our faith tradition, and our experiences as persons of
faith.^67 Luhrmann’s point resonates with our analysis of Renaissance human-
ism. I think, for example, of George Herbert placing himself at the scene of the
nativity when he shows up at this event, presumably, and weirdly enough, at
an English inn. At the outset we simply need to be thinking how imaginative
our worship and our relationship with God can be and should be. If this is a
foreign concept and alien focus, then that is a problem, but poetry and the arts
and particularly those informed by humanistic strains can become solutions.
Poetry and the arts can deepen and give fuller meaning to our lives as believing
and thinking human beings. Not all poems carry on these great traditions, but
some do, and are hearable in this way; we must seize those and incorporate
them into our lives. By providing emotional intelligence, they strengthen our
faiths.
The poem‘Incantation’, by the Polish Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz, is an
exemplary humanist poem of this kind.^68 From the title, which seems to draw
upon the magical sources associated with ancient poetry, to the bold unflinch-
ing treatment of big ideas, so absent from much of today’s poetry, this poem is
a masterpiece. Not least because of the biblical humanism contained in this
piece, Miłosz’sIncantation is a strong candidate for a modern Christian
humanist canonical poem. The poem celebrates, for example, the beauty and
invincibility of human reason that is able to withstand tyranny and oppres-
sion. Reason, the poet argues, guides us towards truth and justice, allowing us
to uncover lies and deceit that limit our freedoms. Reason, the poet further
instructs us, allies itself with the imagination to lift our eyes beyond the
present state of things to how life should and could be! Human reason, in
short, is a profound source of hope. Moreover, human reason also discovers,
(^66) Nicholas Wolterstorff,‘Advice to Those Who Would Be Christian Scholars’, Emerging
Scholars Network, October 2009, http://gfm.intervarsity.org/resources/advice-those-who-
would-be-christian-scholars-0, accessed 17 February 2016.
(^67) See Tanya M. Luhrmann,When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical
Relationship with God(New York: Knopf, 2012).
(^68) Czesław Miłosz,‘Incantation’,inThe Collected Poems: 1931– 1987 (New York: Ecco, 1988),
210.
192 Brett Foster