Christianity and aesthetics

Artists through the centuries have been fascinated by the creation story. In the record of our common heritage, they have found the basis of our strivings for freedom and justice. They have seen in it, too, the source of their own originality -- of that creativity we all experience at some moments, in some measure, and which is as necessary to vital Christian living as it is to art. Like these artists, Dr. Clyde S. Kilby turns to the opening pages of Genesis as he considers the origin of the creative spirit in man. He links man's imagination and joy in creation to the Creator Artist who made man in His image -- to the Giver of life and life-creating life. He sees art as man's expression, not only of homage to the Lord of all life, but of his own essential nature, his own endless reaching after life, beauty, truth. In this brief introduction to Christianity and aesthetics, the author reminds us of our identity, past and present, pointing us to universal and eternal values. Through these pages he invests us with new insights and intuitions in this vital area of the relationship between Christianity and art -- that great gift to man which, according to Jacques Maritain, abounds in significance, says more than it is, and delivers "to the mind, at one stroke, the universe in a human countenance." - Preface.