About the Author

Clyde Samuel Kilby was an American author and English professor, best known for his scholarship on the Inklings, especially J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. A professor at Wheaton College, IL for most of his life, Dr. Kilby founded the Marion E. Wade Center there, making it a center for the study of the Inklings and their literary companions.

Reviews

"Samuel Johnson said people need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed. Dr. Kilby reminds us of what it means to be made in the image of God and how art, in our creation and reception of it, illuminates, articulates and glorifies that original great mimesis. With wisdom and relevance, this collection provides a touchstone for the spiritual thinker in its reconciliation of art's true and beautiful purpose with the unspeakable, inimitable mystery of God." --Dr. Carolyn Weber, author of Surprised by Oxford and Holy is the Day "The Arts and the Christian Imagination is a landmark book. Its scope is breathtaking, bringing together in one place well-known 'signature' essays by Clyde Kilby and unknown but equally excellent ones. The essays in this book, masterfully edited, sum up what a whole era wanted to say about literature and art in themselves and in relation to the Christian faith." --Leland Ryken, President, Wheaton College, author of The Christian Imagination "Thousands owe to this giant of Wheaton their ability to hear literary voices with Gospel-tuned ears. This sampler of his hugely influential writing will make the reader profoundly grateful for a man whose legacy is beyond measure." --Jeremy Begbie, Duke Divinity School "It was my great privilege to take several classes with Clyde Kilby when I was a student at Wheaton. Now a new generation has the chance to experience the sparkle, wit, aesthetic insight, and deep Christian commitment that made Kilby such an unusually captivating teacher. Even without his hobbit-like presence, his words remain a true inspiration." --Mark Noll, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, University of Notre Dame "What a great gift to read the collected writings of this gentle, brilliant visionary, teacher and friend! I can say, like so many others, it was Clyde Kilby who set my course in life. Like the dandelions he tended all winter, we flourished under his wisdom and care. Now his remarkable words on the page act as a kind of resurrection. We can hear his voice again and bless his memory." --Luci Shaw, poet, Writer in Residence, Regent College "To read the reflections of C.S. Kilby on art and the Christian imagination is to engage one of the most pertinently constructive interior critiques of American evangelical culture in the 1960's. His biblically formed imagination saw good and truth in what seemed to many of his generation astonishing places--French Catholic philosophers, agnostic novelists, psychic experimentalists, off-beat artists, mathematicians, mentally disturbed poets. To read these essays is to hear again his distinctively gentle voice in the classroom, and once again to gather many pearls of wisdom." --David Lyle Jeffrey, Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities Honors Program, Senior Fellow, Baylor Institute for Studies in Religion, Baylor University

"The essays collected in The Arts and the Christian Imagination make reference to a broad, at times surprising, swath of thinkers, including French mathematician Henri Poincaré. Such breadth strengthens Kilby's call for evangelical Christians to take the arts more seriously. He returns repeatedly to two concepts: metaphor's importance to aesthetics, and the centrality of the imagination for the individual and for Christianity.... Taken as a whole, Kilby's writings are jarring for the contemporary reader accustomed to relativism. Kilby is confident that truth exists and that we can go some way in finding it, starting from our acceptance of the Gospel. From this foundation, we set out into an expanded world. That journey needs to include the aesthetic in all its forms. Be bold, he tells us." --Brian Welter, New Oxford Review