Freedom and Limit: A Dialogue Between Literature and Christian Doctrine

Writers of novels, plays, and poems use their imaginations with evident freedom; by contrast, makers of Christian doctrine seem to impose limits, reducing the open-ended meaning of images to exact concepts and summing up the loose ends of stories in one unified Story. But the author of this study sets out to show how images and stories in literature can actually help the theologian to make doctrinal statements, while at the same time careful theological thinking can assist the critical reading of literary texts. "In this beautifully written and argued work, theologian Fiddes asserts that the reading of literature can aid theologians in doing theologyspecifically, in developing doctrinal statements. Conversely, theologians can provide valuable critical tools for "hearing" the theology embedded in literature. Fiddes’ observations are a valuable aid for thinking through how to open a dialogue between theology and people’s culturally-conditioned views of their lives, between the authority of Scripture and the events of present history, where God is still authoring God’s story within ours." —Wendy Wirth-Brock, Trinity Seminary Review, Fall/Winter 2000-2001 "His readings testify eloquently to the power of literature as a mode of theological reflection. A useful text for anyone, student or faculty, studying the relation between religion and literature."—John A. McClure, Rutgers University, in Religious Studies Review, January 2001