S1: Theology and Imagination

An Introduction

Is the Bible a work of imagination?

Well, yes. There are three undeniable facts that showcase my answer.

First, the Bible belongs to the realm of literature. It is a book of many books - 66 to be precise - but it does not come to us in the form of abstract doctrine or theology. While looking for meaning or sense-making the reader encounters three literature forms:

DRAMA • POETRY • PROSE

Within the three forms, literary genres like songs, riddles, fables, parables, proverbs, comedy, lists, reports, prayers, liturgies, creeds, and hymns appear to dress-up the content.   

If the literature of the Bible is understood in these three forms, what takes place when drama, poetry, and prose are turned into doctrine or theology? For example, in what way is the divine inspiration of the Bible related to the fact that Psalm 119 – the longest Psalm – is written in the form of an acrostic? Did that poetic form come from God or man?

Let’s broaden the scope to the whole Bible and ask,

Did God supply the content and leave the literary forms to the writers?

The undeniable fact stares us in the face. All these questions strongly suggest the quality of the Bible as exquisite literature.

Second, what happened between God’s inspiration and the various forms in which it was written required imagination on the part of the writer. Equally undeniable, is the mental faculty of imagination needed for sense-making or meaning-making on the part of the reader.

Because there is no literature without imagination, the Bible is an imaginative book. Gutsy, bold, audacious, and sometimes subtle imagination.

Third, the greatest imagination of all comes to us in the first book of the Bible in the story of creation. The earth was formless. If esthetics involves form, design, and beauty, the earth has void of esthetics.

God shaped creation and gave it form. Each day God said it was good. On the last day of creation, He said it was very good. So, esthetics is not a matter of dressing-up but something that is good, even very good.  

The literature forms of drama, poetry, and prose are not accidental or meant to dress-up the content that God inspired. They required imagination to write, and equally require imagination to read.

Therefore, our imagination is made in the image of the imagination of God. Any other approach is simply uninspiring, or to put it another way, simply boring. Maybe this is the reason we do not read the Bible, if at all. 

In the first series of blogs I will explore the increasing return of imagination in order to know God and what He has given to us in the Bible for sense-making in this life, and the life to come.

I’m borrowing from an idea that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle introduced and developed before God became like us in Christ His Son - the idea that imagination is good, beautiful, and true.         

~Dr. Andrew Fox