115

IMAGINATION
FAITH
By M I C H A E L

PAUL

AND

GALLAGttER

N 1976 U r s u l a le G u i n wrote a preface to h e r already a c c l a i m e d

w o r k of science fiction, The left hand of darkness, a n d in this new
addition she spoke deliberately in p a r a d o x e s :
I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and
therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the t r u t h . . .
the truth is a matter of the imagination.

H a l f a c e n t u r y earlier, one of the greatest explorers of this t h e m e

wrote a p o e m called ' A h i g h - t o n e d old christian w o m a n ' , in which
he m o c k e d at the p u r i t a n tradition a n d a r g u e d that p o e t r y springs
m o r e j o y o u s l y f r o m exactly the s a m e source as religion - - h u m a n
imagination:
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear . . . .
A n d the
Wallace
obsessed
H e r e he
position:

piece continues as one of the typically playful p o e m s that

Stevens loved to p r o d u c e in the twenties, m a n y of t h e m
with the new role that i m a g i n a t i o n plays, if life is godless.
is p o n d e r i n g in a letter the d i l e m m a of his o w n atheist

If one no longer believes in God (as truth), it is not possible merely

to disbelieve; it becomes necessary to believe in something else.
Logically, I ought to believe in essential imagination, but that has
its difficulties. It is easier to believe in a thing created by the
imagination. 1
H e n c e , in his view, the calling of the poet is to ' c r e a t e his u n r e a l out
of w h a t is r e a l ' . I n a shoddy time of things, the poet will seek to

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undermine 'the purely realistic mind', whether in literature or

religion, because such a mind 'never experiences any passion for
reality'.
It is on purpose that I begin with these two quirky and tantalizing
voices: they raise the level of discourse to that of wonderment. At
least at the outset they prevent us from speaking with questionable
reasonableness of what is essentially non-rational. Sometimes faith
is experienced, wrongly, as irrational, but it is always non-rational.
Aquinas pinpointed something crucially different about the knowing
involved in faith when he saw it as an act of the intellect commanded
by the will. More attractive definitions are only translations of that
insight into other vocabularies: faith is the knowledge born of love,
or an interplay between discernment and commitment} In this great
tradition of faith-analysis the claims to truth are met by the role
given to the mind, and the claims for freedom are met by the special
place reserved for decision. But is this the whole story? Surely a third
partner is involved and indeed centrally involved: even more
fundamentally than the proud tradition of intellect and will, h u m a n
imagination is the forgotten vehicle of faith. Theologies of faith too
dominated by reason are in constant danger of turning divine
mystery into a neat h u m a n system. Theologies of faith too
dominated by will can fall into two families: either dramatic appeals
to dark jumping, or else the severe self-imposed imperatives of
voluntarism (and ultimately of pelagianism).
If one returns to the New Testament in search of the language of
reason, one realizes suddenly and with some starkness to what
degree we are now the children of the rationalism of the Enlightenment. The voice of Pilate, who, in asking 'What is truth?', seems to
have had what Stevens would term 'a purely realistic mind', is a
faint one in the pages of scripture. But both his question about truth
and his wavelength of scepticism have been dominant in all the
complex rationalisms of the last few centuries. It is not at all
surprising that the atheist poet can have more in common with the
imaginative modes of scripture than some of our more rationalistic
theologians.
From that camp will come a predictable objection to any elevation
of imagination into membership, along with intellect and will, of a
new trinity of faith-faculties. Imagination, we shall be warned, is the
playground of artists, of people who tell lies that they claim to
embody some greater truth. But they are lies, nonetheless, as Plato
perceived before he banished the poets. However 'supreme' the

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fictions, they are man-made, illusory, lacking in valid truth-claims;

gestures towards truth, perhaps, but not 'really' true. In all this
doubting of the imagination, however, what is lacking is a
distinction between the imaginary and the imaginative. In some of its
exercises imagination creates the (merely) imaginative, but in other
modes it can reveal the (truly) imaginative. Faith is imaginative, not
imaginary.
Once again the opposing voices may insist on a secondary and
subordinate role for imagination in any journey to faith or in any
understanding of faith. Advancing more subtle arguments this time,
their strategy is to deny to imagination a full partnership in the
knowing that is faith. One can imagine the counsel for the prosecution: 'Intellect and will are senior members but imagination can be
permitted to hold a respected place as a pastoral associate. Yes, of
course, Christ himself spoke to the crowds only in parables (as two of
the Synoptics baldly state). Yes, of course our images of God are
crucial in any communication of faith. Yes, of course the receptivity
of humankind before revelation is powerfully akin to the quality of
listening required by great poetry. Yes, of course the whole of the
bible is more literature than dogma in its level of discourse. But let's
be serious. Even if imagination has an important role in the genesis
of faith and in the spirituality that feeds the life of faith, and even if
imagination need not be equated with the imaginary, it is still
excessive to suppose that imagination can be a faculty of religious
truth. Imagination - - to be generous - - often prepares the way of
the Lord. But it does not enter into the core of the act of faith'.

In defence of imagination
The remaining pages of this article will resemble a courtroom
sequence, where we call witnesses for the defence of imagination
against this type of criticism. Drawing on a range of authors, several
of whom do not seem to know of the existence of their like-minded
colleagues, the aim will be to establish a case for imagination as a
crucial vehicle of faith. What will unite these witnesses, as members
of a rich if unacknowledged resistance movement, is their tendency
to downplay the knowledge dimensions, and to stress instead that
faith is much more (i) a matter of disposition or attitude that leads to
(ii) a special receptivity of searching and listening, which in turn
grounds (iii) a struggling way of living rather than a clear way of
knowing.
In this light one can see some of the older authors at pains to

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preserve a balance between the cognitive and the imaginative in the

process of faith. T h u s , to call our first witness, E. H. J o h n s o n would
hold that imagination has to do with 'vividness of mental seeing',
and that this is the hinge between the usual kind of knowing and the
trust that is so central in faith:
Religious faith is grounded in discernment of spiritual things. It is
first knowing, secondly imaging, thirdly trusting . . . . The recognition that spiritualities are realities can be put into most effective
exercise only by aid of imagination . . . . Faith . . . is the work of
imagination fortified by experience. 3
L o n g before developmental thinking b e c a m e self-conscious, J o h n s o n
was speaking of stages of faith, or envisaging it as a ' t r i p o d ' of
recognition, imagining and belonging in confidence to Christ: 'so far
as conversion of ideals into e n e r g y goes, it is all a m a t t e r of imaging
Christ'. A final statement from him will serve as a bridge back to an
older and more celebrated witness, J o h n H e n r y N e w m a n : 'It is
when imagination sounds the depths of f u n d a m e n t a l reality that this
reality begins to be felt . . . that is, to be veritably k n o w n and
actually faced.' This seems r e m a r k a b l y close in spirit to A grammar of
assent, where one of N e w m a n ' s constant concerns is a pre-reflective
e n c o u n t e r with o u r images, pictures, parables of divine reality. H e
takes the example of a child's imaginative a p p r e h e n s i o n of G o d and,
while admitting that it is incomplete as theology, he argues that it
offers a p a r a d i g m of adult faith: it is rooted in 'an image, before it
has been reflected on, and before it is recognized by him as a
notion'. 4 M a n y readers will be aware of N e w m a n ' s distinction
between a 'notional assent' (a theological act) and 'real assent' (an
act of religion or of devotion); but it is fascinating to learn that in the
drafts his initial choice of a phrase to express 'real assent' was in fact
'imaginative assent'.s His originality in this area lies in his emphasis
that faith needs first to b e c o m e credible to the imagination before it
can j o u r n e y towards a fuller and m o r e intellectual theology of faith:
Images, when assented to, have an influence both on the individual
and on society, which mere notions cannot exert . . . . The natural
and rightful effect of acts of the imagination upon us . . . is not to
create assent, but to intensify it . . . .
The heart is commonly
reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination.
After listening briefly to N e w m a n , o u r j u r y might benefit from
hearing from someone who has translated the relevance of these

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m o r e - t h a n - c e n t u r y - o l d insights into the m o r e complex horizons of

today. J o h n C o u l s o n ' s recent book, Religion and imagination, explores
the parallels between the experience of faith and the experience of
literature, and holds that in both areas it is by m e a n s of the
imagination that we are 'predisposed to believe'. 6 In his view the
' p r i m a r y forms of religious belief' are not to be found in f o r m u l a t e d
truths and creeds but in the stranger modes of m e t a p h o r , symbol
and story. F r o m this point of view, it is a mistake to give precedence
to rational explanation over the imaginative assent as u n d e r s t o o d by
N e w m a n . Coulson would see this as an 'inversion of priorities in
religion'. T h u s his book begins from the question 'how can I believe
what I c a n n o t u n d e r s t a n d ? ' and his answer takes the form of a
n u a n c e d distinction between holding a belief a p p r e h e n d e d first by the
imagination a n d explaining it in some form of c o m p r e h e n d e d proof:
'religious belief originates in that activity we call i m a g i n a t i o n ' .
Before calling a n o t h e r m a j o r witness, it is worth drawing the
j u r y ' s attention to an almost exact echo of that final claim of
C o u l s o n ' s in a n o t h e r catholic researcher of the same period. T h e
sociological a p p r o a c h of A n d r e w Greeley has led him also to
the position that primordially religion is a function of the creative
imagination . . . (it) originates in our experiences of hope, experiences which are articulated and resonated in symbols which are
stories . . . . Religious images are a much stronger predictor of world
view than is doctrinal orthodoxy. Propositions which exist independent of any grounding in the creative imagination are likely to have
little impact on practical responses to suffering and tragedy. 7

The nature of imagination

But what is this ' i m a g i n a t i o n ' of which so m a n y speak? It can
seem a slithery t e r m pointing in several directions? For m a n y of the
c o m m o n - s e n s e thinkers of tl~e eighteenth century, imagination was a
power of p r o d u c i n g mental images of things in their absence (and
even as such it would be i m p o r t a n t for a n y religious perception of a
h i d d e n God). But for a later generation, from being a power of
visualizing what was absent, imagination now b e c a m e a god-like
and essentially creative agent. So, is imagination a secondary and
subordinate stage on the road to real knowledge? O r is it 'the living
power and prime agent of all h u m a n perception'. 9 This old debate
will find its echoes in the m o r e recent discussions c o n c e r n i n g the role
of imagination in faith.
It is time to call two m a j o r authorities to the witness box, in o r d e r

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b o t h t o clarify what is m e a n t by imagination and to state a strong

form of the claim that it constitutes a central language of faith. T h e
first is R i c h a r d K r o n e r , a philosopher of religion, who devoted m u c h
of his life to clarifying the non-cognitive and imagination-centred
nature of faith. It was from K r o n e r that I found m y own distinction
between the imaginary and the imaginative confirmed: ' T h e content
of the bible is not i m a g i n a r y but imaginative, whereas the content of
poems is not only imaginative but also i m a g i n a r y or fictitious. '1
K r o n e r would be openly hostile to any d o w n g r a d i n g of imagination
as 'the opposite of u n d e r s t a n d i n g ' , and his own works are i n t e n d e d
to justify the existence of what he terms 'spiritual imagination',
which is central to all religious faith. 11 It is through the m e d i u m of
imagination that revelation can be received, and hence a theology of
faith needs a different starting point than from the one that is usually
offered: 'the idea of G o d must be replaced by the image of G o d ' . O u r
knowledge of G o d is 'not theoretical or objective but imaginative
knowledge', or at least its
objectivity must be distinguished from scientific objectivity, because
it is inseparably connected with the subjectivity of religious
imagination. It is the peculiar and unique nature of ultimate truth
to demand the collaboration of reason and imagination; the isolated
intellect alone cannot find it.12
W h a t then is faith? Does it lose all claims to intelligent truth? K r o n e r
would reply with some qualifications that echo the stances taken b y
our earlier witnesses. O n the one h a n d , faith is m o r e a m a t t e r of
attitude than of verifiable knowledge in the usual sense: it is 'the
accurate and the a d e q u a t e attitude of finite m a n towards the selfrevelation of G o d ' . O n the other h a n d , faith should not be too
d e m e a n i n g in a b a n d o n i n g claims to truth: it is not 'a lower degree of
knowledge; it is something wider than all knowledge, something
different in principle from all knowledge'. 13
If there is time to call only one other witness to testify at any
length, William L y n c h will b r i n g our case to a w o r t h y climax. It is a
topic that he has m e d i t a t e d t h r o u g h a l o n g career, and he can
provide some of the clearest and most persuasive descriptions of
imagination:
The imagination is not an aesthetic faculty. It is not a single or
special faculty. It is all the resources of man, all his faculties, his
whole history, his whole life, and his whole heritage brought to bear

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upon the concrete world inside and outside of himself, to form

images of the world, and thus to find it, cope with it, shape it, even
make it. The task of the imagination is to imagine the real . . . . The
religious imagination . . . . tries literally to imagine things_with God.
. . The imagination is really the only way we have of handling the
world. 14
F r o m this basis it is a short step to thinking of faith either as 'a way
of experiencing and imagining the world' or as a 'world within
which we experience or imagine'.15 In words that seem very close to
N e w m a n and Coulson, L y n c h would invite us to 'try reversing o u r
images' and to u n d e r s t a n d faith as 'a first and primitive force in
life', something universally operative but pre-rational: 'rationality
will later come in' to help in the search for explicit meaning. Faith
precedes knowledge but it does need to progress towards knowledge:
'the p o w e r and b e a u t y of faith or imagination d e p e n d on a progressive relationship with reality, and revelation. Otherwise faith
remains a p e r m a n e n t child'. It is no coincidence that both N e w m a n
and L y n c h take the example of the child to explain the role of
imagination in faith a n d at the same time the need for faith to
e x p a n d from its cherished and crucial seed-bed in imagination.
'Unless one becomes as a little child' can be re-read as pointing to
the non-intellectual and non-voluntarist gateway to faith t h r o u g h
images and w o n d e r m e n t and listening. Is imagination m o r e than a
gateway? M u s t not the essential m o m e n t of the 'child' be transcended as faith progresses into knowledge? L y n c h would hold that
faith remains stunted unless it finds e m b o d i m e n t both in a vertical
belief in G o d and in the horizontal 'belief m e n have in each other'.
At the same time h e would not see this m a t u r e faith as a b a n d o n i n g
imagination, as a space-craft might jettison its l a u n c h i n g rocket.
T h e r e is a t e m p t a t i o n to r e d u c e the role of imagination in this way,
by limiting it to an initial rhetoric or affective invitation into the li'fe
of faith This line of thinking would allow to imagination only a
p r e p a r a t o r y usefulness as a psychological or pastoral tool. In a m o r e
recent article William L y n c h protests against this 'belittling' and
seeks t o establish instead a view of 'the imagination as place of
t h o u g h t ' . As against a t e n d e n c y (even a m o n g some of our previous
witnesses) to polarize the world of images and the world of ideas,
L y n c h wants us to recognize the imagination as a form of
intelligence or u n d e r s t a n d i n g from its beginnings: 'images a n d the
imagination that creates t h e m must be seen as bearers of cognition,
truth, knowledge' 16

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If conceptual ideas alone can aspire to valid knowledge, we would

seem condemned to a divorced and fruitless language of faith. But
when imagination is admitted as a primary colleague of theological
thought, then the faith one defends will be one that does more justice
to the double mystery of humanity and of divinity. Ultimately it is
through imagination that we cope with the difficult docking
manoeuvre between a hidden God and a fallen humanity. If that
meeting is the foundation of faith, then one touches at once on two
reasons why imagination is crucial: we do not see God directly, and
often we do not want to hear him or hear of him (the hearing whence
faith comes). In this situation of essential struggle, it is imagination
that helps us to escape from fantasy and falsehood, to be healed into
hope, and to receive new vision from the image of God made man. 17

Postscript
Our appeal to the jury must rest there. But two further points
deserve brief mention. M a n y important witnesses were unable to be
cited this time. The h a n d f u l that we have heard may represent an
intriguing convergence but the club has other potential members. So
one should at least list a few authors and titles: Ray Hart, Unfinished
man and the imagination (1968); Julian Hartt, Theological method and
imagination (1977); Gordon Kaufman, The theological imagination;
Rosemary Haughton, The passionate God; J o h n Navone and Thomas
Cooper, Tellers of the Word; David Tracy, The analogical imagination
(all 1981); Avery Dulles, Models of revelation (1983), and, in
somewhat different vein, much of the writing of Hans Urs yon
Balthasar.
Finally one might hint at the possible relevance of this field for a
new apologetics. The old apologetics has become not so much
untrue as inadequate within a very different cultural context. The
newer culture, especially in some of its youth forms, often seems a
more poetically exploratory one than before. If so, a corfler-stone for
any new apologetics would be to grasp that the language of knowing
God is primarily the language of images. O u r colder forms of
discourse get the wavelength wrong. A case could be made that the
God of the bible seldom either argues or orders; instead he recites
poems and tells stories and invites to freedom by way of images. Out
of this revelation springs faith, a revelation where imagination is a
central strand in the communication of mystery and in its continued
life - - both as receiving apparatus and as fostering agency. And in
so far as faith is much closer to an active attitude than to a piece of

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knowledge, it will continue to be shaped and nourished less by clear

concepts than by the many images, acknowledged or not, that each
person has of his or her life and of its hopes.

NOTES
I Letters of Wallace Stevens, ed. Holly Stevens (New York, 1966), p 370. Other prose quotations
from Stevens here are from The necessary angel (New York, 1951), p 58 and Letters, p 597.
2 See Bernard Lonergan, Method in theology (London, 1971), p 115, and Avery Dulles, 'The
meaning of faith considered in relationship to justice', in The faith that doesjustice, ed. John
Haughey (New York, 1977), p 13.
3Johnson, E. H.: The religious use of imagination (New York, 1901), pp 43, 134. Other
quotations from Johnson are from pp 9, 187, 63.
4 Newman, J. H.: A grammar of assent (London, 1909), p 115. Subsequent quotations are from
pp 117, 75, 82, 92.
5 Coulson, John: Religion and imagination (Oxford, 1981), pp 82-83.
6 Ibid., p 55. Further quotations from Coulson come from pp 16, 34, v, 46.
7 Greeley, Andrew: Religion: a secular theory (New York, 1982), pp 48, 68, 98.
e See James Engell's The creative imagination (Cambridge, Mass., 1981). See also Ernest
Tuveson, The imagination as a means of grace (Berkeley, 1960), and Mary Warnock, Imagination
(London, 1976).
9 Coleridge, S. T.: Biographia literaria, chapter 13.
10 Kroner, Richard: The religiousfunction of imagination (New Haven, 1941), p 36.
11 Kroner, Richard: Betweenfaith and thought (New York, 1966), pp 98, 101.
12 Kroner, Richard: The religiousfunction of the imagination, pp 33~ 63.
13 Kroner, Richard: How do we know God? (New York, 1943), pp 98, 9.
14 Lynch, William: Christ and Prometheus: a new image of the secular (Notre Dame, 1970), p 23.
15 Lynch, William: Images offaith (Notre Dame, 1973), p 17. Further quotations come from
pp 36-37, 97, 57.
16 Lynch, William: 'The life of faith and imagination', Thought, lvii (1982), pp 14, 9.
17 These phrases draw on some other expressions of William Lynch in his book Images of hope
(New York, 1966), p 209.