This “experiment” is an effort to tell the story of Christian belief as theological poetry. From the glory of the eternal Triune God through creation, fall, and redemption, even to the recreation of wholeness and glory in heaven, the Christian story simply is a sweeping epic. But as we are called to truth as well as beauty, the epic should also contain rigorous Christian apologetics, philosophical argument, and comparative theology. It should be as grand a poem as the Mahabharata, but it should also defend a rational Christian faith and face challenges as diverse as Vedantic Hinduism and Nietzschean deconstruction. We should — or someone should — write the epic of the Christian story in a way that tries to combine the true and the beautiful.
It would be audacious to claim to have gotten the combination of truth and beauty right, but perhaps hee and there in this “Epic” a reader might find hints of that ideal. If you want to read a sample, see the “Ode on the Suffering Christ” under the “Poems” heading. For a more general argument defending the ideal of philosophical poetry, see the essay “On the Necessity of the Philosophical Poem” (under the “Essays” tab). Or, if you care to risk buying and reading the Epic, you can buy one through me or through Lulu.com for about $18.
