In The Aesthetic Poverty of Evangelicalism, Clyde S. Kilby seeks to persuade his reader that viewing the Bible as simply “abstract doctrine” or “systematic theology” is erroneous, but that these points will come naturally if we first recognize the Bible as a piece of literature. Kilby points out that evangelicals are far too concerned with a plain and direct gospel. In desiring to exclusively communicate the truth and gift of salvation found in the gospel, evangelicals believe it necessary to remove all the literary merit of the Bible. While this is an effective piece that clearly persuades his evangelical audience, Kilby’s execution of ethos is poor. However, he deftly uses the technique of logos and pathos. While ethos strives to convince the reader of the author’s expertise in and knowledge of the subject at hand, Kilby’s use of ethos does not accomplish this. Although it is evident that Kilby has studied the subject matter at hand, the myriad of questions he poses at the beginning of the piece come across as a forced attempt to establish his credibility. They assault the reader before he or she has …show more content…
Kilby begins by justifying three essential assumptions: the Bible is a piece of literature and therefore art, the Bible is an imaginative book, and that the “greatest imaginer of all” is God. He then transitions into his argument with the claim, “Now when we look from these three things to contemporary evangelicals, we have a great oddity. The people who spend the most time with this piece of literature are in large numbers the “foes” of art and the sworn “foes” of imagination” (Kilby, 38). Kilby continues in his argument to claim that many evangelicals would prefer a plain, non-literary Bible—a Bible that lacks the creativity that God possesses in abundance, and capitalizes on the simplicity preferred by