Becoming by Beholding

The Power of the Imagination in Spiritual Formation
This book restores the imagination to its central role in spiritual formation by recovering key works from the Christian tradition so readers can experience the formative power of the imagination for themselves.
"A must-read for anyone interested in the relationship of imagination to Christian devotion."--Christianity Today

Christianity Today 2025 Book Award Finalist (Culture, Poetry, and the Arts)

Southwestern Journal of Theology 2024 Book Award (Honorable Mention, Discipleship / Spiritual Formation)

We tend to think of the imagination as the realm of fantasy and makebelieve. However, the imagination shapes our vision of reality in that the stories, symbols, and places that capture our hearts become part of who we are.

Becoming by Beholding restores the imagination to its central role in spiritual formation by recovering key works from the Christian tradition, enabling us to experience the formative power of the imagination for ourselves. It also revives "the art of fashioning the soul" as an essential aspect of Christian spiritual formation and character development.

Lanta Davis explains that many of the problems at the heart of the Christian church today--such as nationalism, consumerism, and partisan politics--stem from a crisis of the imagination. She encourages us to reorient our gaze from diseased cultural forms and fix our eyes instead on works from the historic Christian imaginative tradition that better reflect the love, joy, and wonder of the gospel.

Becoming by Beholding will appeal to professors and students in spiritual formation, worldview, and theology and arts courses as well as to all Christian readers interested in the intersection of theology and art. Each chapter introduces a different work of the Christian imagination: icons, sacred architecture, imaginative prayer, bestiaries, and personifications of the virtues and vices. The book also includes a twenty-page insert featuring numerous full-color images.

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