Quotes by Leland Ryken

About Leland Ryken:

Leland Ryken is a professor of English at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. He has contributed a number of works to the study of classic literature from the Christian perspective, including editing the comprehensive volume on Christian writing on literature The Christian Imagination. He was the literary stylist for the English Standard Version of the Bible, published by Crossway Bibles in 2001. He is the author of How to Read the Bible as Literature and Words of Delight: A Literary Introduction to the Bible, as well as co-editor of Ryken's Bible Handbook and the ESV Literary Study Bible (with his son, Philip Ryken). He was the literary content contributor to the ESV Study Bible, released in 2008.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Passion is a far better prioritizer than any organization system. Soul refreshment comes from SEEING glory – not getting stuff done.

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

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 under...

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 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

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

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

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

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

The Puritans were obsessed with the dangers of wealth.

Leland Ryken

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

Leland Ryken

Puritanism was a youthful, vigorous movement.

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

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 don...

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

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

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 the...

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

Author Bio

  • NameLeland Ryken
  • Descriptionprofessor from the United States
  • ProfessionProfessor