Ryken Quotes

#1. 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

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

Leland Ryken

#3. How does one balance the fallen and redeemed aspects of life in the artistic portrayal of human experience in the world?

Leland Ryken

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. Ease and luxury, such as our affluence brings us today, do not make for maturity; hardship and struggle do,

Leland Ryken

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. He who suffers conquers.

Leland Ryken

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

Leland Ryken

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. The Puritans were obsessed with the dangers of wealth.

Leland Ryken

#19. The secularization of Western culture was accompanied by the elevation of art to the position of a substitute religion to replace Christianity.

Leland Ryken

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. Puritanism was a youthful, vigorous movement.

Leland Ryken

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. The Puritans removed organs and paintings from churches, but bought them for private use in their homes.

Leland Ryken

#27. Since God is the one who calls people to their work, the worker becomes a steward who serves God.

Leland Ryken

#28. Stressing the God-centered life can lead to an otherworldly withdrawal from everyday earthly life.

Leland Ryken

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. In Puritan thinking, the Christian life was a heroic venture, requiring a full quota of energy.

Leland Ryken

#36. The call of the new covenant is the same as the old: in loving God, we give him our "all.

Philip Graham Ryken

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

Leland Ryken

#38. How can we distinguish between the good and perverted use of beauty?

Leland Ryken

#39. 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

#40. 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

#41. 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

#42. 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