Chapter 1 offered an overview and analysis of imagination in modern Western
philosophy in order to establish the model of imagination with which this work would operate. Chapter 2 involved a critical analysis of doctrinal development theories, including an
examination of the way such theories are intertwined with theologies of revelation. The present chapter will begin to bring these elements together, providing a study of the place of imagination within theological methods. Chapter 4 will then build from that base to analyze how imagination impacts the understanding of revelation and to formulate a model of doctrinal development based on the hermeneutical imagination in Ricoeur.
A running theme in the analyses of each of the previous chapters has been a need to critically appreciate and incorporate historicity and plurality. As such, one focus of this chapter will be how imagination has been involved in various contextual theologies. I will argue that a theory of doctrinal development based on Ricoeur’s hermeneutical imagination can
accommodate these contextual perspectives and concerns. This will be accomplished by
presenting ways in which Ricoeur’s philosophical project can impact Western theology in a way that makes space for contextual particularity, specifically in how a hermeneutical imagination furthers an understanding of revelation as symbolic mediation and makes the reception of revelation necessarily contextualized. An imaginative theory of doctrinal development will then flow naturally as a way of explaining how that contextualized reception of symbolic revelation proceeds through history, casting doctrine as a genre of expression for such contextualized reception.
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It is also is pertinent here to explain further about my reliance on Ricoeur in this analysis. Ricoeur is clearly situated within Euro-American philosophical tradition. His is a modern
Western version of imagination theory. If the scope of this current project were wider, or if the focus was solely on a critique of Ricoeur or a comprehensive examination of imagination theories, it would be fruitful to compare and contrast Ricoeur’s sense of imagination with a greater breadth of diverse perspectives on the subject. For example, Frantz Fanon and Abiola Irele examine imagination in light of postcolonialism. For Fanon, the imagination in some ways serves a role very similar to Ricoeur. It enable the imagination of a future of possibility that allows individuals to construct identity. However, one way in which this process is radicalized for Fanon’s postcolonial perspective is in how it directly relates to active resistance, including in the form of revolutionary violence.1 This more radical version of the political dimension of imagination is emblematic of the way that for Fanon the imaginative construction of identity is a far more turbulent process because of the experience of colonialism and the crises of identity caused by that circumstance. Irele refers to that turbulence as a “drama of conflicting
normatives,” wherein postcolonial societies like those in Africa are stuck between trying to augment their unique cultural identities that have been damaged by colonialism and trying to also engage modernism and globalism in order to establish economic viability but which keeps them tied to colonizing powers.2 As with Fanon, Irele has some consonance with Ricoeur, utilizing the concept of imagination’s role in forming identity, and he even cites Ricoeur to support his notion of “conflicting normatives.” But also like Fanon, he uses his postcolonial viewpoint to add a different layer of consideration than Ricoeur accounts for. For instance Irele focuses on the way the imagination in African literature is caught between trying to build on oral traditions
1 See Nigel C. Gibson, Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 127-128.
2 Abiola Irele, The African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black Diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University
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which are the basis of literary expression in African nations, but do so in European languages, a problem of which the misnomer of “African” literature to cover diverse particular nations is a symptom.3 So while one of Ricoeur’s major contributions in his theory of the hermeneutical imagination is to center the role of language, Irele focuses on how in postcolonial situations persons trying to use imagination to create a new consciousness can be stuck in ambiguity because of the linguistic forms they are obliged to utilize.4
Such views could certainly enrich the aims of this project and introduce new and critical questions. Irele’s analysis would raise important contextual issues regarding the way African theologians face unique challenges in trying to work toward the development of doctrine housed in European forms, the very language of which is emblematic of colonial history. However, while recognizing such avenues for increased complexity in the analysis of this philosophical dimension of this work, that broader engagement would stray too far from the present specific goal of addressing traditions of Christian doctrine. And that aim influences my theological choice to rely on Ricouer. My aim is to critique and attempt to open a position, that of the institutional Church, which is steeped in Euro-American thought structures. I therefore am choosing to try to build a pathway that utilizes a thinker who is consonant with that Euro-
American perspective. So while I am including contextual theologians in my work and argue for respecting their integrity and inclusion in the doctrinal process of the Church, I think that my aim and direction being a critique and suggested change in a Euro-American dominated paradigm makes it apt to work from within that paradigm to suggest ways for it to be adjusted and opened.
3 Ibid., 5-7.
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Theology’s Need to Recognize the Role of Imagination
In an essay in 1981, Matthias Neuman observed what he considered to be at the time a spike in interest in the imagination in fundamental theology. Neuman attributed this spike to intellectual challenges to Enlightenment rationality which had come to dominate the way theology presented itself as an articulation of revelation from a transcendent God.5 As these challenges undermined the notion of supernatural revelation communicated unproblematically in a rationally unfoldable way, the imagination, Neuman suggested, became a way for theologians to step away from exclusively rationalistic and logical methodologies and address the
epistemological issues being raised. He described the basic problem as one of how to define a “reality-reference” for religious faith.6 Building on that basic issue, he suggested that five tasks
are placed upon fundamental theology as a result: 1) to ground religious meaning with a total framework of human experience in order to provide a “reality-reference” that can withstand post- Enlightenment critiques of rationalist epistemology; 2) to use that grounding to center on
experiences of transcendence and mystery that give rise to conceptions of God; 3) to locate and identify both the essential and the culturally relative dimensions of anthropology that open persons to transcendence and mystery; 4) to find space for possibility within those
anthropological dimensions and translate them into a theory of conversion; and 5) to stimulate and encourage such conversion to be channeled into action.7 By its epistemological role in experiential meaning-making, by its ability to structure and articulate experiences of mystery and transcendence, and by its ability to project possibility Neuman argued that the imagination is central to the forward progress of fundamental theology.8
5 Matthias Neuman, “The Role of Imagination in the Tasks of Fundamental Theology,” Encounter 42 (1981): 307. 6 Ibid., 310.
7 Ibid., 311-315. 8 Ibid., 315.
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However, Neuman lamented that in the various theological works that attempted to deal with these needs, and in some way invoked imagination to do so, a formal theory of imagination had not been developed. For his own version of a theory, Neuman began with phenomenological psychology because of its ability to treat imagination as an autonomous and integrated system, one which affirms the centrality of subjective individuality and history in all human thinking, and especially in ontological thinking.9 To enhance his picture, Neuman turned as well to phenomenological views of philosophical anthropology, which emphasize descriptive studies of “human consciousness as self-experienced.”10 These descriptive studies were expected to yield a
distinction between essential and contingent dimensions of anthropology and an ability to track the essential dimensions through historical development in discernable patterns.11 Within this anthropology, Neuman identified ways in which imagination significantly impacts ontological thought. It equilibrates between subjective consciousness and its surrounding environment, defines teleological meaning within the creative aspect of that equilibrating work, and reconciles and clarifies the various different experiences of transcendence that can spontaneously occur throughout one’s life.12 Neuman claimed that attending to this sense of the imagination can
prevent theologians from inauthentically subordinating the ontological weight of subjectivity to more traditional intellectual and volitional sensibilities.13 The imagination in this model
provides a new understanding of the “reality-reference” behind theology, one that cannot be neatly corralled by those more rationalistic approaches, but one that can respond to the
9 Ibid., 316-317. Neuman attributes the foundation for his phenomenological approach to Edward Casey,
Imagining: A Phenomenological Study (Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press, 1976).
10 Neuman, 318. 11 Ibid., 318. 12 Ibid., 319-320. 13 Ibid., 321.
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epistemological critiques of post-Enlightenment thought by recognizing the subjectivity present within the foundational starting point of theological study.
Neuman outlined the way in which fundamental theology would be re-oriented by this theory in four steps. First, it would have to root itself in particular cultural situations of meaning-making through primary symbols, images, and metaphors, which in his estimation would reveal a more generalized current of human meanings that are instantiated in those cultural images.14 Second, it would need to use these cultural and contextual roots to articulate
experiences of transcendence and mystery that shape reference to God.15 Third, it would depend upon the imagination to creatively appropriate cultural images in order to create shock and disorientation that can reveal possibility and point toward conversion.16 And fourth, it would use imagination’s power to link inner experience with environmental context to translate the idea of conversion to concrete projects of personal and social conversion, which may include moments of critique of a present order.17 The outcome of Neuman’s analysis then is a claim that to do its job of articulating the experience of God’s self-communication and foster transformation in response to it, personally and socially, theology needs a structured understanding and implementation of imagination. Neuman’s own framing reflects particular biases and
presumptions, which will be explored later, but his essay sets the stage well for appreciating the need for attending explicitly to the role of imagination in theological methods.
14 Ibid., 322-323.
15 Ibid., 323-324. 16 Ibid., 325-326. 17 Ibid., 326.
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Imagination in Theology: Contextual Variations
a. A Euro-American Variation: John Thiel
John E. Thiel has consistently attempted to carry forward an agenda of considering imagination within theological method. Thiel argues that imagination has become a presumed dimension of theology because of the shift through the modern period to emphasize theological authorship and the creativity that such a category entails. He traces the origins of this shift to the early nineteenth century:
In the early nineteenth century, theologians began to assume that their own individual talent contributed to the integrity of theology, even to the most fundamental respects in which theology could be considered meaningful for both the church and society at large. Theologians appealed to theories of the imagination current in intellectual circles of the time to explain the creativity they now claimed on behalf of their own work. In a manner analogous to understandings of the practitioner in artistic and literary endeavor, theologians conceived of themselves as authors and measured the authority of their work, its value for the church, not only in terms of its faithfulness to ecclesial tradition but also in terms of its creativity, its resourcefulness in explicating the contemporary meaning of ancient religious truths.18
Even more specifically, Thiel attaches this development to the sensibilities of Romanticism that moved away from static understandings of truth and thus relied on the genius of the theological author to construct original and creative understandings of historical religious experience.19 Thiel claims that a result of the presumption of imaginative creativity within the task of theology one finds a parallel presumption that contemporary theology is fundamentally associated with doctrinal development, even if not always explicitly.20 Despite later problematizations of
Romanticism’s conceptions of imagination and genius, Thiel believes that a lasting bequeathal of Romanticism is an affirmation of “historical experience as a resource for the theological
18 John E. Thiel, Imagination and Authority (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 9. 19 Ibid., 20-21.
20 Ibid., 34. See also Thiel, “The Analogy of Tradition: Method and Theological Judgment,” Theological Studies 66
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enterprise require[ing] that theological talent be conceived largely as the power of imagination” and theologians as “purveyors of meaning.”21
This conclusion is made clearer by a closer examination of Thiel’s understanding of the problems with the Romantic paradigm. He centers his argument on a critique of a “form-content” distinction that casts content as the locus of unchanging, objective, revealed truth and form as the locus of changing historical expression, or the definitional container that is periodically
refashioned to better display the metaphysical absolutes of theological truth.22 He offers three
specific points against this form-content model.23 First, it relies on an epistemology that artificially presumes a “hypostatized” content that is separable from “hypostatized” form. Second, extending from the first point, it is naïve about the ability of language or other forms of cultural expression to ideally and accurately capture or describe supersensible realities. Placing these first two critiques in the frame of imagination, Thiel’s argument is denouncing the
Romantic sense of imagination that, reacting to Enlightenment rationalism, takes imagination as a conduit of direct access to metaphysical truth that exceeds rational formulation. This fails to appreciate the productive role imagination plays in the constitution of any understanding that is historically developed, blurring the notion of a direct experience of something supersensible that precedes encapsulation in language and cultural context. The alternative epistemology suggested by Thiel would be one where content is inseparable from form and imagination is the arbiter of the historically shifting matrix of their interrelation.
The third point raised by Thiel against the form-content division is more specific to the doctrinal nature of tradition. He observes that the distinction in effect makes changing historical
21 Thiel, Imagination, 94.
22 See Thiel, “Romantic Difficulties: Thoughts on the Form-Content Theory of Doctrinal Development,” in
Tradition and Tradition Theories: an International Discussion, eds. Torsten Larbig and Siegfried Wiedenhofer, 361- 364 (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2006).
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form something bearing an unchanging essence in the sense of it carrying unchanging content. Doctrine would thus be understood mainly as a historical form beholden to an objective core of truth prospectively driven forward in time. The form can change, but is always in service of a supernatural truth that is thought to have a point of purity from which tradition proceeds. In Thiel’s judgment, such an arrangement simply cannot account for rupture and newness that appear within the real history of doctrinal tradition.
The form-content critique that Thiel offers is similar to the critique from the previous chapter of Walgrave’s theological theory of development. I argued there that the Romantic orientation of Newman’s imagination theory, one that let him conceive of it as related to direct contact with supernatural truth, made Walgrave’s theological theory, in its reliance on Newman, functionally similar to the classical logical theory that Walgrave wished to surpass. In terms of Thiel’s analysis, the theological theory maintains a form-content division that leaves it in a similar position as classical thinking that presumed the presence of an objective deposit from which doctrine logically flowed. The parallel to Newman, as well as Walgrave, is the notion that an objective “idea” is preserved through the historically developing forms of doctrine. The result is that the theological theory does not allow historicity to have a real influence on the
understanding of the faith that precedes doctrine because that understanding is asserted to have connection to an objective content not impacted by history. It thus also does not attend to issues of pluralism or recognize the ways in which historical forms can conceal as well as reveal
particular and diverse perspectives on the experience of Christianity. Furthermore, it leaves final arbitration of truth in the hands of magisterial authority as a body thought to be positioned to safeguard the objective content at the heart of doctrinal formulation. Thiel’s epistemological arguments against the Romantically inclined form-content divide raise similar questions about
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the impact of historicity and contextuality. I will argue shortly that his solution remains too focused on universality and thus fails to adequately address these problems, but first I will explain the contours of the solution he suggests.
Thiel proposes what he terms “retrospective” tradition as a corrective. He identifies the common view of tradition in the Romantic as well as classical theological paradigms as
“prospective,” one that defines continuity in terms of a supersensible truth rooted in the apostolic church and projected forward.24 His retrospective account rather bases continuity on an effort to
look back on tradition from present circumstances and imaginatively construe present experiences as consistent with past ones. Thiel writes:
Portraying tradition retrospectively involves a more modest approach to a theology of tradition, one apophatically aware that the activity of the Holy Spirit in tradition remains mysterious, even when that activity is represented as the abiding faith of the Church. A retrospective approach to tradition, then, is cognizant of its own hermeneutical character, and aware too that the present historical moment is the only interpretive point of departure for configuring tradition’s continuity. Any account of God’s revelation in history, however universal in scope it may claim to be, always takes its point of departure from the faith of a particular time and place.25
The yield of this focus on time and place is an affirmation of “regional acts of faith” as the blocks from which continuity is built: “What we call tradition’s continuity is a regional act of faith’s affirmation of relationship to a series of regional acts of faith in the past.”26 Because
continuity of tradition in this retrospective model is a hermeneutically created category, Thiel claims that it makes tradition a co-mingling of continuity and development rather than making each a separate and opposed facet of tradition as is the case in prospective models.27 Because
tradition begins with the interpretation of present regional faith experience, the new
developments represented by such interpretations are essential ingredients in the formation of tradition’s continuity. The universalization of tradition then depends upon regional
24 Ibid., 364-365.
25 Ibid., 366. 26 Ibid., 367. 27 Ibid., 368.
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particularizations of what tradition initially hands down. That universalization occurs for Thiel when a “communal act of faith” from the whole Church affirms a particular retrospection, an act that occurs in his thinking through the influence of grace from the Holy Spirit.28 It is through this model of tradition rooted in regional interpretations of the experience of faith that Thiel makes imagination a central factor in doctrinal theology, answering such concerns as were raised by Neuman.
However, by retaining a proclivity to universalization and totalization, Thiel is limited in