Imagining Theology: Encounters with God in Scripture, Interpretation, and Aesthetics
Overview
The imagination is where the Creator chooses to meet his creatures, says renowned theologian Garrett Green. The word of God and the work of the Holy Spirit set the imagination free for genuine and creative knowledge of God, world, others, and the self. Green explains that theology is best understood as human imagination faithfully conformed to the Bible as the paradigmatic key to the Christian gospel. He unpacks the implications of the imagination for a variety of theological issues, such as interpretation, aesthetics, eschatology, and the relationship between church and culture.
- Examines the intersection between human imagination and theology
- Explores related topics of interpretation, aesthetics, and eschatology
- Relates imagination to genuine and creative knowledge of God, the world, others, and the self
- Part 1: Imagination and Theological Hermeneutics
- Part 2: Metaphor, Aesthetics, and Gender
- Part 3: Modernity and Eschatology in Christian Imagination
- Part 4: Theology of Religion and the Religions
- Part 5: Conclusion
In this book Garrett Green pulls together a lifetime of reflection on Scripture, imagination, and aesthetics. Wide in range and deep in comprehension, his beautifully written essays sparkle with intelligence and insight. No one who cares about these themes will fail to be illuminated—and even edified.
—George Hunsinger, Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary
Garrett Green’s latest work caps a lifetime’s investigation and reflection on the nature of imagination and its function in the work of Christian theology. These chapters take the exercise of modern theological imagination as their theme and explore it with rare and detailed insight coupled with wide-ranging philosophical engagement and historical understanding. Green’s own imaginative engagements with pressing questions of our moment—about God-talk, biblical hermeneutics, the character and limits of theological reasoning, the simultaneous challenges of secularity and religious pluralism—promise to provoke, complicate, and enrich our theology, life, and faith.
—Philip G. Ziegler, University of Aberdeen
According to Genesis, God grieved on seeing that ‘every imagination of the thoughts of [the human] heart was only evil continually’ (Gen. 6:5 KJV). Yes, but that is only part of the story. Drawing on his years of reflection on the subject, Garrett Green makes a powerful case for the positive role of imagination in the divine-human relationship. It turns out that there are faithful imaginings as well as evil ones. A deeply thoughtful and elegantly written work of Christian theology.
—Joseph Mangina, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto