Ryken Quotes & Sayings

No group of people has been more unjustly maligned in the twentieth century than the Puritans. As a result, we approach the Puritans with an enormous baggage of culturally ingrained prejudice. — Leland Ryken

Ease and luxury, such as our affluence brings us today, do not make for maturity; hardship and struggle do, — Leland Ryken

Puritan leaders, at least, valued an educated mind over material riches. Cotton Mather admonished his congregation with the comment, "If your main concern be to get the riches of this world for your children, and leave a belly full of this world unto them, it looks very suspiciously as if you were yourselves the people of this world, whose portion is only in this life."30 — Leland Ryken

It is true that the Puritans banned all recreation on Sundays and all games of chance, gambling, bear baiting, horse racing, and bowling in or around taverns at all times. They did so, not because they were opposed to fun, but because they judged these activities to be inherently harmful or immoral. — Leland Ryken

Earlier in this century someone claimed that we work at our play and play at our work. Today the confusion has deepened: we worship our work, work at our play, and play in our worship. — Leland Ryken

The end of learning, he said, is to "repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him" by acquiring "true virtue" (Hughes 631). This reinforces and expands Sidney's point that the end of learning is virtuous action. — Leland Ryken

Part of what Milton valued in a good book then was contact with the mind of an author rendered otherwise inaccessible by distance or time. Such contact is precisely what much modern and postmodern criticism insists we cannot have. Perhaps a secular world view inevitably leads to a universe in which a text is merely a playing field for the reader's own intellectual athleticism. Perhaps only a Christian view (such as Milton's) of the imago descending from God to author to text can preserve the writing of literature as an act of communication. — Leland Ryken

The only knowledge that is worthwhile, writes Northrop Frye. is the knowledge that leafs to wisdom, for knowledge without wisdom is a body without life. — Leland Ryken

The Puritans' sense of priorities in life was one of their greatest strengths. Putting God first and valuing everything else in relation to God was a recurrent Puritan theme. — Leland Ryken

When you think about Puritanism, you must begin by getting rid of the slang term 'Puritanism' as applied to Victorian religious hypocrisy. This does not apply to seventeenth-century Puritanism. — Leland Ryken

In Puritan thinking, the Christian life was a heroic venture, requiring a full quota of energy. — Leland Ryken

The oldest theory of art belongs to the Greeks, who regarded art as an imitation (mimesis) of reality. The strength of that theory is that it explains the way in which art takes its materials from real life. — Leland Ryken

A Christian philosophy of literature begins with the same agenda of issues that any philosophy of literature addresses. Its distinctive feature is that it relates these issues to the Christian faith. — Leland Ryken

As Francis Schaeffer reminded us, "The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars" (5). — Leland Ryken

The secularization of Western culture was accompanied by the elevation of art to the position of a substitute religion to replace Christianity. — Leland Ryken

The Puritans were obsessed with the dangers of wealth. — Leland Ryken

The cross of Christ is the all-sufficient ground for the salvation of sinners. It claims to be sturdy enough to support the whole weight of our guilt all by itself. Therefore, to boast in the cross properly at all is to boast in the cross alone. — Philip Graham Ryken

Literature takes reality and human experience as its starting point, transforms it by means of the imagination, and sends readers back to life with renewed understanding of it and zest for it because of their excursions into a purely imaginary realm. — Leland Ryken

It is when we create things for God's sake that our work most clearly promotes His glory, rather than threatening to compete with it. Thus the true purpose of art is the same as the true purpose of anything: it is not for ourselves or for our own self-expression, but for the service of others and the glory of God. — Philip Graham Ryken

in Edward Glaeser, The Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier (New York: Penguin, 2011). 2. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (ed. Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1998], 150) speaks of the city as "humanity en masse" and therefore "humanity 'writ large.'" 3. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (p. 150) defines city as a "fortified habitation." 4. See Frank Frick, The City — Timothy J. Keller

To be pleasing to God, art must be true as well as good. Truth has always been one important criterion for art. Art is the incarnation of the truth. It penetrates the surface of things to portray them as they really are. — Philip Graham Ryken

Richard Rogers was lecturing at Wethersfield, Essex, someone told him, "Mr. Rogers, I like you and your company very well, but you are so precise." To which Rogers replied, "O Sir, I serve a precise God. — Leland Ryken

To enjoy in tragedy that which one would not willingly suffer in reality is "miserable madness" (miserabilis insania). — Leland Ryken

The Puritans removed organs and paintings from churches, but bought them for private use in their homes. — Leland Ryken

Literature incarnates its meanings as concretely as possible. The knowledge that literature gives of a subject is the kind of knowledge that is obtained by (vicariously) living through an experience. — Leland Ryken

If the opening chapters of Genesis portray God as a creative artist, then it only stands to reason that the people he made in his image will also be artists. Art is an imaginative activity, and in the act of creating, we reflect the mind of our Maker. — Philip Graham Ryken

William Perkins said, The end of a man's calling is not to gather riches for himself ... but to serve God in the serving of man, and in the seeking the good of all men. — Leland Ryken

Puritanism was a youthful, vigorous movement. — Leland Ryken

My claim is simply that the literary approach is one necessary way to read and interpret the Bible, an approach that has been unjustifiably neglected. Despite that neglect, the literary approach builds at every turn on what biblical scholars have done to recover the original, intended meaning of the biblical text. — Leland Ryken

For the Puritans, the God-centered life meant making the quest for spiritual and moral holiness the great business of life. — Leland Ryken

Literature enlarges our world of experience to include both more of the physical world and things not yet imagined, giving the "actual world" a "new dimension of depth" (Lewis, Of Other Worlds 29). This makes it possible for literature to strip Christian doctrines of their "stained glass" associations and make them appear in their "real potency" (37), a possibility Lewis himself realized in the Narnia series and the space trilogy. — Leland Ryken

He who suffers conquers. — Leland Ryken

There is a quiet revolution going on in the study of the Bible. At its center is a growing awareness that the Bible is a work of literature and that the methods of literary scholarship are a necessary part of any complete study of the Bible. — Leland Ryken

It is untrue that fiction is nonutilitarian. The uses of fiction are synonymous with the uses of literature. They include refreshment, clarification of life, self-awareness, expansion of our range of experiences, and enlargement of our sense of understanding and discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty , and understanding. Like literature generally, fiction is a form of discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty, and understanding. If it is all these things, the question of whether it is a legitimate use of time should not even arise. — Leland Ryken

In 1941, Dorothy L. Sayers provided a detailed analysis of that creative process in The Mind of the Maker. She developed the relevance of the imago Dei for understanding artistic creation in explicitly trinitarian terms. In every act of creation there is a controlling idea (the Father), the energy which incarnates that idea through craftsmanship in some medium (the Son), and the power to create a response in the reader (the Spirit). These three, while separate in identity, are yet one act of creation. So the ancient credal statements about the Trinity are factual claims about the mind of the maker created in his image. Sayers delves into the numerous literary examples, in what is one of the most fascinating accounts ever written both of the nature of literature and of the imago Dei. While some readers may feel she has a tendency to take a good idea too far, The Mind of the Maker remains an indispensable classic of Christian poetics. — Leland Ryken

Writers themselves benefit from all helpful information about their task and methods. Readers, in turn, can have both their understanding and appreciation of literature enhanced by information about the writer's work. — Leland Ryken

The content of worship comes from the Bible, the goal of worship is to give praise to God, and the basis for worship is the saving work of Jesus Christ. Put more simply, true Christian worship is Word-communicat ing, God-glorifying, and Christ-confessi ng. — Philip Graham Ryken

The goal of Bible translation is be transparent to the original text - to see as clearly as possible what the biblical authors actually wrote. — Leland Ryken

With so many contradictory renditions of the biblical text, the public has lost confidence that we can actually know what the Bible says. It is an easy step from this skepticism to an indifference about what the Bible says. — Leland Ryken

Readers should aspire to what is excellent. They should refuse to read a substitute Bible. They should want a Bible that calls them to their higher selves - or to something higher than their current level of attainment. — Leland Ryken

How does one balance the fallen and redeemed aspects of life in the artistic portrayal of human experience in the world? — Leland Ryken

How can we distinguish between the good and perverted use of beauty? — Leland Ryken

The Puritan divine Richard Steele wrote, God doth call every man and woman ... to serve him in some peculiar employment in this world, both for their own and the common good. ... The Great Governor of the world hath appointed to every man his proper post and province. — Leland Ryken

God's careful instructions for building the tabernacle in Exodus 31 remind us that his perfection sets the standard for whatever we create in his name. Whatever we happen to make-not only in the visual arts, but in all the arts-we should make it as well as we can, offering God our very best. — Philip Graham Ryken

In a sermon I heard recently, the minister claimed that the portrait of God as a storm god (a literary motif that he did not name) in Psalm 97 is based on allusions to the Exodus and is 'not mere window dressing,' that is, metaphoric. As I observed to this preacher later, he used a metaphor in his denigration of metaphor as mere window dressing. — Leland Ryken

To identify your own idols, ask questions like these: What things take the place of God in my life? Where do I find my significance and my confidence? What things make me really angry? Anger usually erupts when an idol gets knocked off the shelf. — Philip Graham Ryken

The call of the new covenant is the same as the old: in loving God, we give him our "all. — Philip Graham Ryken

When Christians are caught in sin, they do not need isolation or amputation; they need restoration. The proper thing to do is to help them confess their sins and find forgiveness in Christ, and then welcome them back into the fellowship of the church. — Philip Graham Ryken

Stressing the God-centered life can lead to an otherworldly withdrawal from everyday earthly life. — Leland Ryken

Since God is the one who calls people to their work, the worker becomes a steward who serves God. — Leland Ryken

There is no valid reason for the perennial Christian preference of biography, history, and the newspaper to fiction and poetry. The former tell us what happened, while literature tells us what happens. The example of the Bible, which is central to any attempt to formulate a Christian approach to literature, sanctions the imagination as a valid form of truth. The Bible is in large part a work of imagination. Its most customary way of expressing truth is not the sermon or the theological outline, but the story, the poem, and the vision
all of them literary forms and products of the imagination (though not necessarily the fictional imagination). Literary conventions are present in the Bible from start to finish, even in the most historically factual parts. — Leland Ryken

The Bible is obviously a mixed book. Literary and nonliterary (expository, explanatory) writing exist side by side within the covers of this unique book. — Leland Ryken

The fruit of the Spirit is the natural produce of his gracious inward influence, the spontaneous and inevitable result of his uniting us to Jesus Christ. — Philip Graham Ryken